Steppe Lark
Member
For my own personal use/interest, when I finally had some time back in April and May of this year, I set about the long and (for me) arduous task of translating my copy of the Russian Atlas (to be precise ONLY the species accounts), which was published around same time (little earlier I think maybe) than the full EBBA2. I only have very basic Russian language skills, so 90% of the actual initial translations was done using Google Translate, and the rest, where Google failed, was accomplished using my limited knowledge of Russian, my rather more knowledge of the geography of this part of Russia, decent familiarity with its birds from multiple visits over a 9 year period, and much googling in both Russian and English for things I just could not understand. I took a long pause after completing the first pass translations and adding the maps (anyone interested in how I approached these please see the attached notes on maps pdf - point is most of mine did NOT come from the book).
Anyway, I recently returned to the project to begin cleaning up a little the bad/strange English that resulted from the first pass, as well as trying to standardize and make more consistent certain decisions I made later in the effort that were not applied in the earlier phases. I am about one quarter through this process.
To be honest since I did this for myself I don't have huge motivation for this tidying up phase. What I have done is fine for me (ok a little squirm inducing at times at the English). But part of me feels like this should be shared with other interested souls who can read English but not Russian.
So, I am posting this to gauge what if any interest there might be for this in the wider birding community? As probably one of the least social birders out there, I wasn't sure how/where to do this, but seems like maybe this could be a good place? Clearly my timing is not great, given how the likelihood of non-Russian birdwatchers travelling pretty much anywhere in Russia has now plummeted to levels probably not seen since the Cold War (and it is not like there were many of us there even before the Ukraine invasion!).
In order maybe to help here, I picked one of my translated versions of a rather random species account from the 100+ I have cleaned up - Willow Grouse - as a sample to attach here. All my translated accounts follow the same model. (On a side note, on my own version of my translations I also always include the texts for the same species from EBBA2, for context, and because in many cases the Russian and the European accounts complement each other, but for obvious reasons I am removing the EBBA2 text here and would do same in any scenario where I share my Russian atlas translations. Since the EBBA2 maps are publicly available online so I don't see issues with sharing those so those I kept in my sample translation here).
On this topic - my translations are my own (ok mostly Google's!), are not authorized, definitely not official, and for sure full of errors or at least oddities (but I hope few if any of any real significance). Probably a controversial choice (but again, important to remember this whole effort was done only for my own personal use - at least up to now), but I do NOT include names of authors of species accounts anywhere, partly because (sorry!) they are of no interest to me - I also excluded them from all my copies of the EBBA2 species accounts that I inserted into my version - but even more because translation is actually a lot simpler (because of Google Translate etc) than transliteration, which is a total pain in the neck to tackle without fluency in both languages. Equally controversial maybe, at times I insert my own comments (always in parentheses) usually to provide a definition of a scientific term I was unfamiliar with, even in English, or sometimes to locate an unfamiliar place mentioned in the text, or, much more rarely, to make a note to myself about something in the text (often about plants mentioned). Again, this is my translation for my own use, so some oddities apply!
Anyway - attached are my translated version of the Willow Grouse account from the Russian Atlas, plus screenshots of the original account in the book, plus a rather long explanation about the maps, what I did and why, and the pros and cons of my approach here.
Depending on the level of interest I may make the whole thing available on demand in English (ie all approx 410 species accounts), or I may at least write to the Russian editors again - one of who gave me the book in the first place - and seek guidance in the event there is some interest.
Thanks!
Anyway, I recently returned to the project to begin cleaning up a little the bad/strange English that resulted from the first pass, as well as trying to standardize and make more consistent certain decisions I made later in the effort that were not applied in the earlier phases. I am about one quarter through this process.
To be honest since I did this for myself I don't have huge motivation for this tidying up phase. What I have done is fine for me (ok a little squirm inducing at times at the English). But part of me feels like this should be shared with other interested souls who can read English but not Russian.
So, I am posting this to gauge what if any interest there might be for this in the wider birding community? As probably one of the least social birders out there, I wasn't sure how/where to do this, but seems like maybe this could be a good place? Clearly my timing is not great, given how the likelihood of non-Russian birdwatchers travelling pretty much anywhere in Russia has now plummeted to levels probably not seen since the Cold War (and it is not like there were many of us there even before the Ukraine invasion!).
In order maybe to help here, I picked one of my translated versions of a rather random species account from the 100+ I have cleaned up - Willow Grouse - as a sample to attach here. All my translated accounts follow the same model. (On a side note, on my own version of my translations I also always include the texts for the same species from EBBA2, for context, and because in many cases the Russian and the European accounts complement each other, but for obvious reasons I am removing the EBBA2 text here and would do same in any scenario where I share my Russian atlas translations. Since the EBBA2 maps are publicly available online so I don't see issues with sharing those so those I kept in my sample translation here).
On this topic - my translations are my own (ok mostly Google's!), are not authorized, definitely not official, and for sure full of errors or at least oddities (but I hope few if any of any real significance). Probably a controversial choice (but again, important to remember this whole effort was done only for my own personal use - at least up to now), but I do NOT include names of authors of species accounts anywhere, partly because (sorry!) they are of no interest to me - I also excluded them from all my copies of the EBBA2 species accounts that I inserted into my version - but even more because translation is actually a lot simpler (because of Google Translate etc) than transliteration, which is a total pain in the neck to tackle without fluency in both languages. Equally controversial maybe, at times I insert my own comments (always in parentheses) usually to provide a definition of a scientific term I was unfamiliar with, even in English, or sometimes to locate an unfamiliar place mentioned in the text, or, much more rarely, to make a note to myself about something in the text (often about plants mentioned). Again, this is my translation for my own use, so some oddities apply!
Anyway - attached are my translated version of the Willow Grouse account from the Russian Atlas, plus screenshots of the original account in the book, plus a rather long explanation about the maps, what I did and why, and the pros and cons of my approach here.
Depending on the level of interest I may make the whole thing available on demand in English (ie all approx 410 species accounts), or I may at least write to the Russian editors again - one of who gave me the book in the first place - and seek guidance in the event there is some interest.
Thanks!
