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Arabian Nights

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Re: Arabian Nights

#51

Post by robin_reala »

jfk13 wrote: post #48
robin_reala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly two years, but I took a bunch of time out to work on smaller pieces. The biggest problem was that Gutenberg had only transcribed about a third of the footnotes, so I spent a long time adding the remaining ones back in.

Great work! Is there any link between this and the Pepys Diary site at https://www.pepysdiary.com (also an awesome resource)?

I had a chat with Phil after I finished, and he sent over a list of transcription problems with Gutenberg that I’d missed which was very kind. But apart from that, no direct collaboration.

Re: Arabian Nights

#52

Post by 0-_-0 »

robin_reala wrote: post #49
0-_-0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you were transcribing a diary written in a shorthand? Or from a print version?

From scanned original sources. I just opened a random page at archive.org to give you an example: https://archive.org/details/diaryofsamuelpep01pepy/page/228/...

Do you use OCR? Sorry for the million questions.

Re: Arabian Nights

#53

Post by robin_reala »

0-_-0 wrote: post #52
robin_reala wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From scanned original sources. I just opened a random page at archive.org to give you an example: https://archive.org/details/diaryofsamuelpep01pepy/page/228/...

Do you use OCR? Sorry for the million questions.

No problem! Yes, archive.org has OCRed all the text, but it needs a lot of finessing to bring up the quality to an acceptable standard.

Typically, Standard Ebooks will try to avoid OCR unless it’s something that’s missing from Gutenberg.

Re: Arabian Nights

#54

Post by somethingtoday »

Iv wrote: post #32

Always fun to remind people that Aladdin is actually Chinese in the original stories. But then, let's be fair, their depiction of China sounds like it was just a placeholder for "far away land"

Even to this day, the word China in Arabic (pronounced "seen") means far away.

So if your friend lives across town and you are inconvenienced, in Arabic you would say "why do you live in China?".

Re: Arabian Nights

#55

Post by 0-_-0 »

robin_reala wrote: post #53
0-_-0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use OCR? Sorry for the million questions.

No problem! Yes, archive.org has OCRed all the text, but it needs a lot of finessing to bring up the quality to an acceptable standard. Typically, Standard Ebooks will try to avoid OCR unless it’s something that’s missing from Gutenberg.

Thank you for your time!

(If you started some sort of AMA here I'm sure it would be successful.)

Re: Arabian Nights

#56

Post by eternalban »

This little bit of cultural misappropriation has always bugged me. Oddly enough, it is always the Europeans insisting on these Persian/Iranian matters being "Arab". I seriously wonder if this is still nursing ancient Persian Greek/Roman rivalries and is a byproduct of a chauvinist classical education of the European educated set of 19th century. I find it very strange.

In the OP, we have a female Persian name (Shahrzad, the story teller) and a male Persian name (Shahryar, the king).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights#Pe...

"The earliest mentions of the Nights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, Hezār Afsān (aka Afsaneh or Afsana), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'."

Hezar means 1000. Afsan means fantasy/story. Now it's true that the modern version is called Hezaar-o yek Shab (Thousand and one nights). So possibly that 'one' story is the Arab contribution.

[Filed under the "The Gulf" files]

Re: Arabian Nights

#57

Post by Tepix »

chrisseaton wrote: post #24
Tepix wrote: post #23

Meta-comment: The text on this page is tiny! 12px according to the stylesheet. I have to increase it to 150% to get a comfortable font size. That's crazy.

It's exactly the same font-size as on this site, isn't it? I don't think it's an unusually small font-size.

HN is 9pt which is also tiny indeed.

Re: Arabian Nights

#58

Post by altgans »

nbonaparte wrote: post #9
Ambolia wrote: post #8

Unfortunately the format of most ebooks at Project Gutenberg is usually really bad. Usable on computer screen, but unusable on eBook readers. Just checked the "mobi" version of the volume 1 from this link, and it looks like all paragraphs are just walls of texts with no paragraphs and the footnotes don't really work unless you scroll manually. I guess it's better than nothing, but not very comfortable to read. Usuall…

Standard Ebooks ( https://standardebooks.org ) is what you’re looking for.

Is there an archive of the whole collection? My internet is unreliable and I usually try to get everything offline.

Re: Arabian Nights

#59

Post by goto11 »

Fun fact about Arabian Nights: Some of the stories are only known from the French translation by Galland. By his own account he wrote them down (in French) based on narration from a Syrian Maronite storyteller who visited him in Paris. The well known story of Aladdin only exists in French - there is no known original in Arabic.

Borges suggested Galland might simply have made up the story of Aladdin on his own, others that is might be an original creation by the Maronite storyteller.

Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.

Wikipedia carefully states: "Aladdin is a folk tale most probably of Middle Eastern origin".

Re: Arabian Nights

#60

Post by emmelaich »

mrwnmonm wrote: post #50
krtkush wrote: post #3

TIL Project Gutenberg is blocked in Germany.

I live in a place governed by the military, and they like to block things. But I have no idea why a country like Germany would do that.

Because of Mein Kampf perhaps? Then again it's on Amazon, do they block Amazon?
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