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Week IV

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The final week of my senior project is just about over, and I have spent most of it stepping away from The Annals and researching or doing grammar and vocabulary exercises instead. My goal of 30 pages was definitely overambitious. I assumed I would be able to finish two pages a day, five days a week, which seemed reasonable to me at the time, especially considering I would become more comfortable with the text as I progressed. However, I didn't take into account that like gaining fluency in translating, building productive and consistent habits also takes time. I don't think I was ever able to spend five hours a day doing nothing but translating. I did become more efficient over time, but it was not enough to meet my goal.  I recently met with a Classics professor at Reed, where I will be taking a class in the fall, who told me not to work any more on The Annals , because it is such a challenging text. There were many places where I felt out of my depth, even though I could ge...
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Week III

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  Throughout this week, I’ve been making steady progress and increasing my pace. I also used the long weekend to make up for my inconsistent schedule, which is still a struggle for me. While I am beginning to balance research and practice with translation, I could not meet my goal of 30 pages if I took more regular breaks to work on other aspects of this project. But although 30 is ideal, I will probably fall short of my target at my current rate anyway, so I’ll try broadening my focus more next week.   I’ve been thinking about a few different questions that might offer useful context for The Annals. I’m very curious about reading in general in Ancient Rome. I wonder, how were books made and distributed? Was reading a pastime or mostly for business and education? And what are the implications of this regarding Tacitus’ audience? I did a web search for "literacy in Ancient Rome" in order to locate some potential general sources, but I found different answers from each one. Th...
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Week II

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I'm already at the end of my second week of translating! Even though there are many days when I've missed my goals, I am feeling more comfortable and working more efficiently, and getting back on track to finish the 30 pages I aimed for. But spending less time on translating means I have more time to research some of the background of The Annals.  During my meeting with Bill, we discussed some context that would be helpful to know- who Tacitus may be writing for, what his sources are, and what historical writing influenced him.  While The Annals begins in 14 CE, Tacitus was only born in 56 CE, so he must have relied on other historians to compile his facts. While he does not explicitly state his sources, Seneca the Elder, Aufidius Bassus, and Servilius Nonianus are most likely. However, most of his bibliography would have come from primary sources, as there was little other contemporary historical literature for him to reference. Tacitus also probably consulted more specific w...
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Week I

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        For my Senior Project this year, I'll be working on a translation of Book I of The Annals  by Tacitus, which is a history of the Roman empire under Tiberius.  I often read books of Greek and Roman myths when I was younger, and I recently became more interested in secular writing. Throughout eighth grade and high school, I found translations of authors like Aristophanes, Plato, Tibellus, and Petronius online, and I loved reading them over and over. However, I only became interested in translation when my grandmother, who is a classicist, told me how important it is to understand these texts in their original languages. Translators can choose which subtleties in word order, vocabulary, sentence structure, and tone are important (or coherent) enough to keep in English, and this can often influence a reader's experience. I remember reading The Odyssey  in ninth grade English, and one of the reasons I disliked it so much was the representation ...
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