Ethics of Copying Finno-Ugric Books

[Christopher Culver]

Dear Prof Riese,

I am happy to see that you have already given thought and effort to
publishing a translation. Should you wish my assistance in any way,
I'd be happy to help. I'm particularly worried about typesetting
issues---I would hate to see the book finally translated and then
typeset in something as inappropriate as Word like all too many recent
Mari publications.

> The glossary does not contain all the words used in the chapters,
> nor does it include any of the many recent Russian loan words in
> Mari.

My Mari informants think that it contains too many Russian loan words
as it is. Certainly the emphasis of the book seems to be on literary
Mari so that students can approach the standard authors, and the Mari
informants the students will meet in the West tend to respect those
norms.

> Whereas the latter point is of no importance to Russian users of the
> book, it certainly makes a difference to students outside of the
> Russian Federation, all of whom do not have a command of Russian.

While I think translating the book into English would certainly be
helpful, one doesn't have to work too hard. As Finno-Ugrianists will
end up learning Russian eventually--and the sooner the better--a
simple translation of the book as it was would suffice in the
meantime. Maybe my impatience for an English translation is
showing. My fellow students have to go without coherent materials now,
and I simply fear that any translation would finally appear years from
now.

> The grammar portion of each chapter is adequate, but experience has
> shown that it needs to be expanded and supplemented with additional
> examples.

Well, that is certainly true. I find that the explanation of when to
use each of the past tenses is woefully unclear (and one of my
informants disagrees with parts of it).

> For the purposes of instruction I have already prepared a
> complete and alphabetical glossary (both for the individual chapters
> as well as for the entire two volumes)

Would you be so kind as to put this on the web? I can HTMLize it and
host it on my own server if you wish. The only Mari-English glossary
currently on the web is Kimberley Mäkäräinen's, which is tiny.

> although probably and unfortunately lacking the illustrations of the
> original

Why so?

Christopher Culver

-- 
crculver at christopherculver.com
http://www.christopherculver.com

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