"Translation of Jean Molinet's chronicles?" Topic
6 Posts
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Charlie | 31 Oct 2020 6:20 a.m. PST |
What I really, really want to find is an English translation of the Chronicles of Jean Molinet. I'm researching France and Burgundy in the late 15th century (the War of Burgundian Succession), and there isn't much info in English. It seems Molinet wrote a lot about it, and an English translation would be a bit of a gold-mine for me! As far as I'm aware such a translation doesn't exist, though if I'm wrong and someone could point me in the right direction… that would be awesome. However, I have had quite a bit of success translating French text using google. I've got hold of a number of PDFs of French histories written in the late 18th and 19th century and have managed to get some fantastic information from them, sometimes the translations come out really clean and comprehensible, sometimes they need a little 'work', depending on the quality of the PDFs I'm copying and pasting from.
I've managed to find PDFs of Molinet, in French – all volumes can be found on google books. Great, I though, I can translate them like I did the others. But the translations come out… difficult to understand. I've realised the problem is that the Molinet PDFs are written in Middle French. The first hint was how the name 'Louis' is always written as 'Loys'… I'm no linguist, but a quick wikipedia search tells me Middle French was used from the 14th to early 17th century, and the 18th/19th century texts I translated are in Classical / Modern French. Hence why translating Molinet with google doesn't quite work – infuriatingly it gives me a good indication of what is going on, but the details aren't comprehensible. Anyone got any advice? Access to a modern French edition of Molinet that can be read / translated online?
I want to read Molinet! |
Ferd45231 | 31 Oct 2020 7:38 a.m. PST |
Contact George Nafziger at the Nafziger Collection and ask him. He has translated a great many French works from your time period. H |
Grelber | 31 Oct 2020 9:35 a.m. PST |
I didn't see anything on Worldcat ( worldcat.org ) that was definitely a translation, though some of the sources listed may have excerpts from his works. I searched for "Chronicles of Jean Molinet," and something else might work better. I'm not sure how successful your search for a modern French translation will be. There seems to be an attitude that you grew up speaking French (or English, or Italian) and you can just muddle through 15th Century French (or English or Italian), and giving you a modern translation would just make you a lazy clod! It's not quite another language, but definitely getting there. Consider what a mess we 21st Century types often make of Shakespeare or the King James Bible. Which leads to a suggestion: see if you can find a modern Dutch or German (or Chinese, if it comes down to it) translation of Molinet, and run that through Google. Grelber |
Thresher01 | 31 Oct 2020 10:24 a.m. PST |
I'm really interested in the Burgundian and French Ordonnance, and their military campaigns, wars, battles, and skirmishes too, of which I know far too little. I do know poor Chuck was a hard luck case, and seems to have lost pretty much every battle he had with the Swiss, despite his "combined arms" army. Not sure if it was just too advanced to control properly, the Swiss were just too powerful, or a combination of both, perhaps with some poor preparedness and leadership thrown in too. I wonder if we could do some sort of kickstarter, or other funding for this, since I suspect there may be other non-French speakers/readers who would love to know about this too. I'm also interested in French, Italian, or German translations and views of the Italian Wars from 1490 – 1530. IIRC, there was at least one major tome a decade or so ago that was recommended, but it was in Italian, so a no go for me. Any chance it's been translated into English, or is anyone up for taking up the cause, for a reasonable fee, or KS project? |
Sandinista | 02 Nov 2020 7:53 p.m. PST |
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Thresher01 | 06 Nov 2020 12:33 a.m. PST |
Oooooo, I hadn't seen those. Thanks for sharing. Some of the translations are a bit interesting. It seems that "salads" should really read "sallets" for the helm types. Some of the other terms are a bit confusing too. |
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