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Arabian Nights

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Re: Arabian Nights

#71

Post by robin_reala »

dbrgn wrote: post #61
robin_reala wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Glad you’re enjoying it. Here are my share of the SE productions: https://www.robinwhittleton.com/books/ Biggest so far (and biggest on SE at 1.2m words) has been Samuel Pepys’ Diary: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-pepys/the-diary

Whoa, SE looks incredible. Thanks for your work on that! Are there any plans to support non-English ebooks as well? Edit: Regarding non-English ebooks, I was thinking about books like "Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst" (Birdflight As The Basis Of Aviation) by Otto Lilienthal ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54565 ). It's a fantastic book with nice hand-drawn illustrations, and it would deserve being pres…

Sorry, no. Like I said in another comment, a large part of what makes SE good is our manual of style, which is really just applicable to English works. If you want to use the toolchain to produce a novel in another language feel free (removing our logo and name, of course).

Re: Arabian Nights

#72

Post by eduardo_f »

CAT0 wrote: post #18
nbonaparte wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Internet need something like this for all languages, not only english.

We're working on a fork of Standard Ebooks focusing on Spanish.

We're actually looking for Spanish-speaking collaborators:

https://www.libro.org/

Re: Arabian Nights

#73

Post by developer92 »

robin_reala wrote: post #21
nbonaparte wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Arabian Nights has been on my list to produce for SE for a couple of years now, but its sheer size is imposing. I’ll probably do it in the not too distant future though.

Perhaps a collaboration?

Re: Arabian Nights

#74

Post by Balgair »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #62

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I., by Anonymous https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34206/34206-h/34206-h.htm

The abridged Harvard Classics copy is here, for anyone looking for another source/version: http://www.myharvardclassics.com/downloads/20120213_1/downlo...

Re: Arabian Nights

#75

Post by Flex247A »

somethingtoday wrote: post #54
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?".

In Hindi, we pronounce it as 'Cheen', with the 'ch' sound.

Re: Arabian Nights

#76

Post by idlewords »

There's a really nice modern translation of the Arabian nights by Husain Haddawy, that is worth your time. The preface to that translation goes into a lot of fun detail about the book's complex trajectory, and its unhappy translations by Burton and others. The first volume contains the closest thing to Arabian Nights "canon". Haddawy then published a second volume with stories that glommed onto the text later, but are massively popular, including Ala-Addin and the Magic Lamp and Sinbad the Sailor.

The Burton translation is of more interest as an psychosexual glimpse into the guy's mind, and an Orientalist artifact, than for the story istelf. Burton wrote in a bizarrely archaicized English that has no counterpart in the text, which reads like all oral storytelling everywhere—repetitive, engaging, and fun.

Re: Arabian Nights

#77

Post by depressedpanda »

robin_reala wrote: post #25
CAT0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet need something like this for all languages, not only english.

This question comes up a lot. The source to our production pipeline is GPLed and freely available,[1] but the biggest part of why we produce good work is that we have a high quality manual of style.[2] Unfortunately, that second part is very specific to English, and that’s the difficult part to replicate for other languages. [1] https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/ [2] https://standardebooks.org/manual/

Not that I doubt you, but what about the manual is very specific to English and wouldn't work for other languages?

Re: Arabian Nights

#78

Post by gh-throw »

adrian_b wrote: post #34
riffraff wrote: post #12

> Many of the well-known modern stories, like that of Aladdin, have the more prurient elements removed or are stories that were added much later. I wonder about the "prurient" bits? Anyone perused this version and can share what this is about? I am quite curious to see if the version I read in my own language also has the same censoring.

In the original there were frequent occurrences of the names of various anatomical parts or of various acts that are considered taboo now. Also there were many explicit descriptions of love scenes, even if a poetic language was used for them. Of the old translations, only the French translation of Mardrus and the uncensored variant of Burton were somewhat close to the original text. Even the "uncensored" variant of B…

Mardrus got translated into English by Mathers. It's the edition I've read (partially—my copy is in four very fat volumes, so it's a lot of reading). Can confirm that it includes tons of stuff I'd expect to be missing from any kind of Bowdlerized or censored version. Not sure I'd recommend it for a modern reader in English given the other options available, these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Powys_Mathers

Re: Arabian Nights

#79

Post by SamBam »

skytreader wrote: post #6
krtkush wrote: post #3

TIL Project Gutenberg is blocked in Germany.

Technically, Project Gutenberg blocks Germany. Anyway this also surprised me last year! Protip: Main PG is blocking DE IPs but mirrors aren't. Unfortunately, [mirrors]( https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/81t0ad/project_guten... ) don't have the convenient search infra, just the texts. If you can get the ID somehow, then you can navigate to the text in question. Maybe I missed a more convenient mirror. In which c…

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg would be displeased.

Re: Arabian Nights

#80

Post by JKCalhoun »

idlewords wrote: post #76

There's a really nice modern translation of the Arabian nights by Husain Haddawy, that is worth your time. The preface to that translation goes into a lot of fun detail about the book's complex trajectory, and its unhappy translations by Burton and others. The first volume contains the closest thing to Arabian Nights "canon". Haddawy then published a second volume with stories that glommed onto the text later, but ar…

Interesting. I have made it through only a third or so of the Mathers' translation (translated to English from the French translation).

I started the Burton translation but found the wording - dense? It seemed it should be more authentic though since it was a direct English translation.

Burton, as I have glimpsed, was quite a character.

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