Agricola, Georgius, De re metallica, 1912/1950

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    <archimedes>
      <text>
        <body>
          <chap>
            <pb/>
            <p type="head">
              <s>
                <emph type="bold"/>
              TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.
                <emph.end type="bold"/>
              </s>
            </p>
            <p type="main">
              <s>There are three objectives in translation of works
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              of this character: to give a faithful, literal trans­
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              lation of the author's statements; to give these
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              in a manner which will interest the reader; and to
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              preserve, so far as is possible, the style of the
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              original text. </s>
              <s>The task has been doubly difficult
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              in this work because, in using Latin, the author
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              availed himself of a medium which had ceased to
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              expand a thousand years before his subject had in
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              many particulars come into being; in consequence he was in difficulties
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              with a large number of ideas for which there were no corresponding
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              words in the vocabulary at his command, and instead of adopting into the
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              text his native German terms, he coined several hundred Latin expressions
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              to answer his needs. </s>
              <s>It is upon this rock that most former attempts at
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              translation have been wrecked. </s>
              <s>Except for a very small number, we
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              believe we have been able to discover the intended meaning of such
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              expressions from a study of the context, assisted by a very incomplete
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              glossary prepared by the author himself, and by an exhaustive investigation
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              into the literature of these subjects during the sixteenth and seventeenth
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              centuries. </s>
              <s>That discovery in this particular has been only gradual and
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              obtained after much labour, may be indicated by the fact that the entire
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              text has been re-typewritten three times since the original, and some
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              parts more often; and further, that the printer's proof has been thrice revised.
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              </s>
              <s>We have found some English equivalent, more or less satisfactory, for
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              practically all such terms, except those of weights, the varieties of veins,
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              and a few minerals. </s>
              <s>In the matter of weights we have introduced the
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              original Latin, because it is impossible to give true equivalents and avoid the
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              fractions of reduction; and further, as explained in the Appendix on Weights it
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              is impossible to say in many cases what scale the Author had in mind. </s>
              <s>The
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              English nomenclature to be adopted has given great difficulty, for various
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              reasons; among them, that many methods and processes described have
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              never been practised in English-speaking mining communities, and so had no
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              representatives in our vocabulary, and we considered the introduction of
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              German terms undesirable; other methods and processes have become
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              obsolete and their descriptive terms with them, yet we wished to avoid
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              the introduction of obsolete or unusual English; but of the greatest
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              importance of all has been the necessity to avoid rigorously such modern
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              technical terms as would imply a greater scientific understanding than the
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              period possessed.</s>
            </p>
            <p type="main">
              <s>Agricola's Latin, while mostly free from mediæval corruption, is some­
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              what tainted with German construction. </s>
              <s>Moreover some portions have not </s>
            </p>
          </chap>
        </body>
      </text>
    </archimedes>
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