Gerard of Cremona

My final semester has officially begun although I have been doing a little reading and article search for a couple of weeks now. I am still working my way through the Scott L. Montgomery book, Science in Translation. I am only reading one chapter for the purposes of this study, but it is a long chapter and full of information! It's almost a little overwhelming, but I will get through it. As always, I am making notes on what I am reading and highlighting certain passages that I need to research a bit more or plan to quote in my thesis. Don't get me wrong though. I think this is a great book so far! It was actually one that I checked out from the USF Library last semester and decided to purchase a copy for myself. :D


I am also going to be re-reading/skimming through Jonathan Lyons' The House of Wisdom as it is pertinent to Chapter 4 of my Thesis more than any of the other chapters. 

I am in the process of narrowing down my list a bit of the scientists/translators I will focus on for this chapter. Gerard of Cremona is definitely on my "Yes" list! He was probably one of the more important translators and has been compared to Hunayn in method of translation. According to Scott L. Montgomery, "the tremendous contribution [Gerard] made to the Western intellectual tradition...was based on bringing into medieval Latin a large portion of the Arabic-Indian-Persian-Greek synthesis in science..." (p155). I think this is an important point in moving from the Eastern translation movement into the Western as we have to think in terms of what the Arabs brought to the Middle East and it's spread westward from there.

As I have on previous posts, I want to include a picture of Gerard of Cremona, but I am unable to find one. I will keep looking as time permits...

Translation Project complete

I have finished the translation project I was working on this past week. When I first began this project, I intended to select some poems and translate into Arabic. I found the Arabic to be a bit daunting (I have only taken 1 year of the language and that was 2005-6), so I switched to a language that I am more familiar with: français! So, I chose the poems - 9 to be exact - and spent most of last weekend translating them from English into French. I asked my best friend, and native of France, to edit my translations, which she happily did. I received her edit back on Wednesday evening and was a bit surprised at how many mistakes I made. After careful review of my errors, some of which were just plain stupid mistakes, I set about to try my hand at calligraphy. I have a little practice in this writing craft, but decided for the sake of time and continuity that I would print (I know, I know, a bit too modern, but it works) the poems out onto the card stock I planned to use for the inside of the book. Here is a picture of the pages:

The font is Old English Text MT. The poem in the picture above has been published by the International Library of Poetry in the anthology "Clouds Across the Stars".

I prepared the covers using a faux leather material, the same card stock, and some spray-on adhesive. This adhesive worked out really well all the way around, although it was a bit sticky! Here is a picture of the covers before the design element was applied:

And here is the cover after the design:

I chose a traditional, simple Islamic design for the cover. I used a blue cotton fabric and overlayed that with green (almost an olive green) faux suede-like fabric.

The binding itself is a “shoelace” style binding using the faux leather material to tie the pieces together.

This was a fun project and quite simple to put together once all of the pieces were collected. I really have to thank my best friend, Christine, for her editing and my father for punching the holes into the covers for me.

Experiential Learning

Part of my Master's program requires some experiential learning. This semester, I am planning to translate 10 of my own poems into Arabic and creating a chapbook in the medieval Islamic style. I have chosen the fabric I plan on using. Here is a pic:

The top fabric is a suede-like fabric and the color is kind of a dark olive green. The bottom fabric is leather-like and black. I will be using the dark color as the main binding fabric and the green as accent color. I am planning to use typical geometric and floral patterns throughout.

I am now in the process of choosing the poems. They will be rather short, no more than 10 lines. Each translation will be accompanied by the original English version. The pages will be embellished with geometric and floral patterns (either through stamps or my attempt to be artistic - I am not much for sketching, but as this style can be abstract it may look alright).