Project Update: Week 1

[charlietaylor98]

Really excited to be working with you guys! We're just getting started, so progress is slow, but major accomplishments this week have been:

• Forming our group
• Creating the repo (and you've all been added as collaborators)
• Starting the readme

We're in the middle of working with Dana to figure out a weekly meeting time. Some things to start tentatively thinking about:

• Van Gogh's letters are in French and Dutch, with English translations provided by the editors of the archive we're using. I'm comfortable enough with French to mark up the original French letters. I'm not sure if anyone else knows French, or if anyone reads Dutch (which would be fantastic but unfortunately unlikely), so the question becomes whether to use only originals, only translations, or some mixture of the two (in which case we should determine which version to use for which letters).
• Speaking of the archive, I would recommend adding a bookmark to the website, as it might be helpful to reference in the first stages of the project.
• The archive also has the raw XML files of the letters available for download and use through the about page We should probably think about pushing these files to the repo so we can start working on them.

That's about it! Super pumped to get the ball rolling.

[EsRessel]

Sounds like a great start! The Songs of Colonization project is similar in that most of our texts are written in German and only one member of our group is able to translate them. We are also grappling with deciding to markup English translations or the original German text.

In deciding which to use it may be helpful to consider:

• What already exists? Have they been translated before or will you be the first to translate them?
• Who is your audience? For now, you are building this project for students and faculty who may be unfamiliar with the work and will thus benefit from the translations, however, scholars in the field may desire the original texts.

I'm excited to hear more about this project!

[mblynn]

It sounds like you guys found really fantastic archival resources! After reading your project description I was wondering how you were defining productivity. Is it about the quality/fame of the work produced or the amount? I'm also curious if you guys will be featuring any artwork in your website? This was an idea that came up in our Songs of Colonization group as well and I think we would be curious to hear if/how you guys are planning to use images.

[marionbriley]

So excited to see this develop further! As stated above, you're lucky to have such well archived resources. The raw XML files were a good find, as well. On the Aeneid translation project, we also have the translation issue - we know we will be working with other languages, but establishing a balance will be more difficult when only some members can work in a given language. This might be something to consider when you divvy up tasks. Are you up to doing all the work in French yourself? Thyra mentioned to us that we are also able to involve another faculty member at the university as an advisor, if they are willing, so you could look into finding an advisor who is comfortable with French, or even one who can advise you on the Dutch materials, if you wanted!

I'm also curious to see where you are going with the markup of these letters. What kinds of things will you be tracking? Will these tags work cross-linguistically? On a similar big picture note, do you have any idea of how you intend to present this information eventually? You could look at the My Immortal site for some ideas about how to present dynamic analysis of a text. I can't wait to see how this manifests!

[lillianforrest820]

I love this project idea! The Songs of Colonization group also has been grappling with language barriers, as we are marking up songs written in German and only one group member is fluent. In your case, I think it would be valuable to include both the English translations provided and the original French texts as well. The English translations might make your research more accessible to students like us at American universities, but the original French is still valuable for its authenticity.

[Jacksweeney1]

This project looks like it will turn out solid. I visited in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam a little over a month ago and it was incredible. Not only was it chock full of his paintings, but it also had a good collection of his letters to his dear brother Theo.

Good luck dealing with the whole translation debacle, if you don't have anyone in the group that can translate i'm sure the english versions should suffice. Van gogh, like many of the great artists of history, was not just specifically a painter. His letters read like poetry and really give insight into some of the manic illnesses he had to deal with.