Latin, a side issue

[Mary Barkworth]

Accepting, at least for now, that we shall be required to give diargnoses
in Latin - and preferably the whole description in Latin, how much do we
pay our colleagues who do the translation for us.  I did have Latin in
school, 5 long years of it.  I do not feel competent to write a Latin
description. The validity of this feeling has been supported by (1)
listening to two Latin scholars (one of whom, Bernard Boivin, wrote his
doctoral dissertation in Latin because Harvard would not accept French)
argue over how one of my descriptions should be worded and (2) having
begged one of the classics faculty at this university to correct a
description that I had written with Stearn in hand (I am NOT casting
aspersions on Stearn).
Some of us have expressed concern in the past by the fact that people
expect identifications for free.  I am curious: How much are people paying
for Latin translations - or being paid?  I gave the classics faculty member
a book on the local plants - he said that he and his wife enjoy hiking.
Pretty cheap really.
Mary Barkworth, Intermountain Herbarium
Department of Biology, Utah State University,
Logan, Utah 84322-5305
Voice: 435-797-1584 FAX: 435-797-1575
Http://www.biology.usu.edu/herbarium/