Latin, a side issue

[R. Zander]

The laments recently aired regarding access to renderings of Botanical Latin
for diagnoses and descriptions of new taxa, the correct combination of epithet
and genus and so forth, motivated me decades ago, as a response to the same
distress, to provide Latin
renderings for free to my taxonomist husband and his colleagues and to anyone
else who
wanted them. Since a few people, of those who sent me translations to do, sent
me translation tasks that were onerous (very large) and never got published
anyway, I decided to charge $5.00 per taxon, or question, to ensure that the
sender was rather seriously intending to publish a novelty.
    I still provide such translations to anyone to needs them. I am no Bill
Stearn or Dan Nicolson, but so far I haven't gotten any complaints. I've been
doing this for
maybe two decades and have maybe improved my beer fund. I have had no problems
with the various taxonomic groups to be treated so far, only with folks who
can't write a good description or diagnosis in the English language!  But it
always gets worked
out in the end.
    I invite anyone who needs a Latin rendering of an English diagnosis or
description to send it to me to translate, at $5.00 per taxon, at this e-mail
address.

Patricia Eckel


Mary Barkworth wrote:

> 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/



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Richard H. Zander, Curator of Botany
Patricia M. Eckel, Research Fellow in Botany
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA
bryo at paradox.net   voice: 716-896-5200 ext. 351