Manuscript Translation

Ancient manuscripts are handwritten and difficult to read. Scripts are not clear and at times mutilated or destroyed with the passage of time. A team of paleographers will work to decipher the text, symbols, and signs from the handwritten text at first. They will prepare a letter-for-letter transcription of every single word and every single symbol and sign in the manuscript. The transcriber works under the supervision of the paleographers and the transcription is checked by the paleographers to make sure that the transcriber remained faithful to the original document while transcribing the manuscript to legible scripts. The paleographers confirm that nothing in the manuscript has been changed when transcribing into a legible script.

To make sure that they deciphered the information correctly they will simultaneously conduct a careful study of the handwriting of the scribe.

The next step is handled by the translator. He/She begins with numbering each line of the manuscript. Not any letter or any abbreviation is added to the manuscript. All lowercase letters are left in lowercase and all capital letters are left in the capital. If in a case, for example, a proper noun is not written in capital letter in the manuscript the transcriber will not capitalize it. This is one of the fundamental guidelines of manuscript translation i.e. nothing should be changed. All changes are made whether it be capitalization or punctuation during the editing phase for the purpose of publishing it. But, sufficient and clear notes are provided in the publication with respect to all changes made in the i) capitalizations, ii) abbreviations, & iii) punctuations, iv) other aspects of the translation. These notes explain to readers the reasons and rules of the editing done.

The next task is to change the old transcribed text to the modern form of the language. This is because the manuscripts were written in the contemporary language of the past. Language changes with time whether it be syntax, semantics, or other parts of speech. There are many languages that have no similarity between their ancient and modern forms. For example Ottoman Turkish & Modern Turkish, old Portuguese & new Portuguese, new world & old world Spanish, etc. Language changes from generation to generation, sounds change, pronunciations evolve with time, new words are invented or borrowed from foreign languages, meanings of many old words drift, & morphology decays or develops, and many more changes take place.

The next step is translation. Our translator does not directly translate the manuscript to the modern target language. This is because of the fact that the meanings of many words in the manuscript have changed in the source language. For example, the meaning of the word ‘Carta’ in sixteenth-century Portuguese was ‘ a map’ & in modern Portuguese is ‘post office’. Now, if the translator translates the sixteenth-century manuscript directly into the target language he will translate the word ‘Carta’ as a ‘post office’, whereas it must be translated as ‘map’. These are the ethics and process of manuscript translation that we follow.

Spellings are corrected in the transcribing phase if the ancient form of the source language had no standard spellings in its age and time. If it was so that the scribes wrote words based upon sounds. This is done in consultation with the paleographers.

There are many issues, for example, many abbreviations in old texts may not be found in modern dictionaries. It is the sense of approximation, logical intuition, knowledge of archaic words, well versed with the history of the people, and its language and reasoning of our team that makes the work successful. The process is more complicated than explained here. It's time-consuming and laborious.

The translation at the end must be ratified with expert paleographers & historians in order to establish the authority of the translation.