Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Deep in Dante, Behind on XKCD. Also Twitter. Also Also Bumper Stickers

Unfortunately, personal matters have greatly affected my ability to spend time on Deseret Alphabet projects this past year or so. As a result, I've got more than one backlog.

First of all, transcriptions of books are backlogged. I've got several irons in this fire right now:
  • Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy
  • The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad by Alexander Pope
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Given Dante's length, I'm working on that simultaneously with (at the moment) The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. So far as Dante is concerned, I'm fifteen cantos into the Purgatorio, so coming up on half-way. Both “The Rape of the Lock” and “The Dunciad” are short, so I’m most likely going to get to Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography within a couple of weeks.

As always, suggestions are welcome. Works have to be in the public domain with an on-line source available; this is why I'm not using the excellent Folger Shakespeare Library’s excellent texts for the Shakespeare I've done. Shakespeare is in the public domain; the Folger Shakespeare is not. 

I do prefer not to do translations, unless the translation is considered an exceptional work in English as well as in the original language. Longfellow’s Dante is a borderline example of that. Edward FitzGerald’s Rubรกiyรกt of Omar Khayyรกm would be another, or Pope’s Homer.

On the XKCD front, I'm very far behind—about seven months, actually. (Technically, I'm further behind than that, as there are the first 657 that haven't been covered, and that is something like four or five years.) I've started catching up, but it's going to be a long time before I'm fully there. Because I'm so far behind, I'm more likely than usual to skip complicated strips.

In order to expedite letting people know of new transcriptions, I've set up a Twitter account for announcing them. The handle is @DeseretAlphabet. It might be asked why I don't go on Facebook and use the Facebook group for the Deseret Alphabet to make announcements. I refuse to do Facebook. There are reasons for that. I won't say more.

Finally, I've been reminded that I've got two bumper stickers up on Zazzle for people interested in that sort of thing. They are:
So far, nobody has honked.