Current events

Colin Sup

I have received a pdf copy of Volume 1 of Colin Sup: Documents for the study of the generalate of Jean-Claude Colin (1836-1854), which are the other end of the conversation we are researching in Girard's Lettres reçues d’Océanie. Many of the documents are letters written to Oceania. This compilation, the work of Fr Gaston Lessard SM, is in the original language, French. However Gaston has also made available to us the work of himself and Fr Anthony Ward SM, a 1985 English translation of some of those letters: Draft edition of the letters by Jean-Claude Colin under his generalship (1836-1854) The (minor) obstacle here is that the files concerned are formatted for an old word-processing program called XYWrite. As I reformat the letters, I am uploading them and they will be listed on ColinSup Contents. The originals were only draft translations (albeit the work of experts), and I may have introduced mistakes in my re-formatting so there is room for improvement. Comments and corrections are welcomed. - Merv

New Caledonia's Flora and Fauna

Brenda has uploaded part of her translation of Fr Xavier Montrouzier's 1846 account of the abundance of unusual animals, plants and molluscs in New Caledonia. This document was rife with technical terms and possible neo-logisms. Language experts may care to check the translation and make suggestions on the talk page (click on the discussion tab at the top of Girard0450). It is also a terrific read - an intelligent priest trying to describe in words what a tropical pacific island is like.

University of Waikato PhD Students

At work on translating some of the Lettres reçues d’Océanie are two PhD students from the French Section of the Humanities Department at the University of Waikato. They are Sandy and Ronja both working on documents by Petit-Jean as part of their doctoral studies.