I have been busy translating and am about 8% complete.  It seems as though most of the remaining text is a glorified list of place names.  Unfortunately none of the dictionaries that I have access to list many of the place names.  Right now I am using William Smith’s enormous “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.”  This 155 year old dictionary is the only thing I have found that lists place names using Greek spelling and letters.  What this means is that when I encounter a Greek place name like “χάλυβες” I have to transliterate it into the Latin spelling which can be quite difficult.  In this case the place/people being referred to is the “Chalybes.”  In other cases, like with “Ουννοί” I have not been able to locate an entry.

    Does anyone know of a Greek placename dictionary?  If so, please tell me.  As a amateur translator I have large gaps in my knowledge that I would imagine a professional would not.

It was as I suspected, Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel  has not been fully translated into English.  I wonder what kind of gems are hidden away in this work.  Unfortunately the Greek text is about 75 standard pages so translating it would take a considerable amount of time.  I believe that this is the first commentary on scripture ever produced by a Christian.  It is a pity that no one has translated it yet.  Does anyone know how accurate ancient Greek Optical Character Recognition is?  Perhaps I could scan the text and use some Greek tools to help with translation.

While I was doing some research on Hippolytus today, I discovered that perhaps his “Commentary on Daniel” has not been fully translated into English.  An article I read referenced a quotation that does that seem to appear in the classic ANF translation of Hippolytus (vol. 5).  On top of that only 17 pages of text are present in this English translation.  The German Bonwetsch edition of the original Greek has over 300 pages of text.  I understand that Bonwetsch also translated it into German and that there are substantial notes, which will of course lengthen the page count, but to me it appears likely that not all of the text was translated in the ANF series.  As I write this it occurs to me that Quasten may have cited incorrectly and his 300 plus page count may reflect other works of Hippolytus.  I will hopefully get a copy of Bonwetsch tomorrow and will let you all know my findings.

Just a quick update, I’ve been very busy being in a friend’s wedding and beginning a new job.  However I made good headway with Hippolytus’s “Books on Chronology” and have translated (at least roughly) about 3% of it.  I expect to move at a faster pace as my schedule frees up and as I become more accustomed to Hippolytus’s manner of writing.  I am again reminded of a large a project this is, it will likely take me well over a year before I get a rough draft.

My biggest obstacle so far has been understanding the German notes and introduction.  My German is just not good enough, as I can only understand the most rudimentary sentence.  Has anyone had any luck with automated German translation?  Let me know if you have any ideas.