Forschung

Translations and Images of Greek and Latin Inscriptions Online

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awards a grant to the EAGLE Project and the HCCH at Heidelberg University

We are delighted to announce that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded to The University of Heidelberg (Heidelberg Centre for Cultural Heritage and the EAGLE project) in partnership with the University of Cardiff (Attic Inscriptions Online), Duke University (Integrating Digital Epigraphies) and Tufts University (Perseids) a grant to work on Translations and Images of Greek and Latin Inscriptions Online. A series of international workshops will take place by the end of 2015 in which a workflow will be developed to facilitate contribution and editing of translations and images of ancient inscriptions online, which will include the development of a pilot on Attic Inscriptions Online.

The collective harvest of translations available in the digital space is quite thin and amounts from a recent survey carried out by EAGLE project partners to ca. 3% only of the total of latin and greek texts online. Translations and Images are perhaps not always a priority for researchers who know greek and latin, but are a way to clarify the interpretation of a text, an invaluable tool for didactical purposes and teaching.
Translations and images are our two best controls on the constitution and interpretation of ancient documentary texts but, to an extent, digital epigraphy today is the direct descendant of its 19th century analog self: many texts, few translations, few images.

This project aims to take initial steps to building resources that will allow epigraphists and ancient historians to bring translations and images more closely into the suite of existing digital epigraphy resources.

The work will capitalize on projects taking place at each participating institution. It will take Attic Inscriptions Online project as a pilot to test this workflow as this is a unique project which aims at publishing english translations of Attic Inscriptions, one of the largest and most important regional groups of inscribed documents from classical antiquity. The software development will capitalize on the Integrating Digital Epigraphies, Perseids and EAGLE projects bringing together some of the most relevant digital projects currently dealing with ancient greek and latin epigraphy.