Re: translation of book (fwd)

Re: translation of book (fwd)

[Markus Mottl]

Hello,

Bad news: I have just received an answer from O'Reilly concerning future
translations of the French OCaml-book. Unfortunately, there do not seem to
be any intentions to do so... (see below). Maybe people want to "push it" a
bit at the French branch (address also below)? ;-)

If nobody asks, nothing will move...

Best regards,
Markus Mottl

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> Subject: Re: translation of book 
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>              <18057.200004261817@kintore> 
> X-By: chrisv
> Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 10:27:35 -0700
> From: Online Ordering Account <order@oreilly.com>
> Sender: markusm@dai.ed.ac.uk
> 
> Markus,
> 
> I am being told by our editors that there are no plans to do an English
> translation of that book at this time.
> 
> You might want to contact Editions O'Reilly to see if they have any
> more information:
> 
> france@oreilly.com
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Chris Valdez
> O'Reilly Online Customer Service and Order Team
> "Ask someone who knows" -- http://www.oreilly.com/
> Order issues: order@oreilly.com  800-998-9938 x409
> --------------------------------------------------------

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: translation of book (fwd)

[John Prevost]

>>>>> "mm" == Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> writes:

    mm> Hello, Bad news: I have just received an answer from O'Reilly
    mm> concerning future translations of the French
    mm> OCaml-book. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any
    mm> intentions to do so... (see below). Maybe people want to "push
    mm> it" a bit at the French branch (address also below)? ;-)

    mm> If nobody asks, nothing will move...

I've just sent mail asking "when will an English edition of ... be
available?" with a short explanation about why I think it would be
worthwhile to translate it.

I wonder what would happen if a group of people offered to act as
translators/polishers.  I've noticed that automatic tools like
Babelfish tend to do a much better job on technical writing than, say,
poetry, and would be willing to spend the time it would take to refine
at least a chapter or two of such a work.


Speaking of babelfish, I just took a look at the book's web page
through it and was very pleased by the following expression:

"Diffused freely by its creators of the INRIA ..."

I don't know whether this is just a babelfish artifact, or a straight
translation of the French, but "diffusion" rather than "distribution"
of open-source seems like a pleasant metaphor to me.

John.

Re: translation of book (fwd)

[Benjamin C. Pierce]

> I wonder what would happen if a group of people offered to act as
> translators/polishers.  I've noticed that automatic tools like
> Babelfish tend to do a much better job on technical writing than, say,
> poetry, and would be willing to spend the time it would take to refine
> at least a chapter or two of such a work.

At the University of Pennsylvania we are using OCaml for our
first-year undergraduate course, with about 300 students a year, and
have been suffering because of the lack of a suitable textbook.

I've been corresponding about the new book with Xavier Cazin in the
French editorial offices of O'Reilly.  He says there are no plans at
the moment to make an English translation in-house, but he seems very
receptive to the idea of someone taking on the job of producing one
(which could perhaps even be distributed freely, though that's a point
that needs to be discussed, of course) for the non-francophone
community.

     Benjamin