Login or register (free and only takes a few minutes) to participate in this question.
You will also have access to many other tools and opportunities designed for those who have language-related jobs (or are passionate about them). Participation is free and the site has a strict confidentiality policy.
02:07 Sep 4, 2011
French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / Academic article on archaic Greek poetry
French term or phrase:appels complémentaires
Footnote: see these lines by another Greek poet, 'avec le commentaire de Rosenfeld-Löffler, 2006 : 30 et 94-97, qui ne manque pas de citer les appels complémentaires qui ponctuent le développement désormais connu par le Papyrus de Strasbourg.' (2)
I would translate 'with the commentary of Rosenfeld-Löffler 2006, 30 and 94-97, who does not fail to cite the complementary appeals which punctuate the development known by now from the Strasbourg papyrus', but I don't really know what this sentence means.
There seem to be various candidates for the development, any of which might work, depending on the wider context, which I can't see obviously. But your last suggestion seems perfectly reasonable to me, though I would suggest staying with claims or hypotheses. I presume they are associated claims made by Empedocles in the fragments.
Thank you Helen for your help. I now think that the 'appels' do indeed refer back to the 'appels d'Empedédocle' in the main text, but I am not convinced that the 'développement' mentioned is a reference to any particular theory put forward by the philosopher. Can 'développement' not mean something like 'narrative/ theoretical development'? Then the relevant section of the sentence would read 'who cites the additional appeals which punctuate the sections of Empedocles' poem now known from the Strasbourg Papyrus'.
Empedocles, like the Ionian philosophers and the atomists, tried to find the basis of all change. They did not, like Heraclitus, consider coming into existence and motion as the existence of things, and rest and tranquillity as the non-existence. This is because they had derived from the Eleatics the conviction that an existence could not pass into non-existence, and vice versa. In order to allow change to occur in the world, against the views of the Eleatics, they viewed changes as the result of mixture and separation of unalterable substances. Thus Empedocles said that a coming into existence from a non-existence, as well as a complete death and annihilation, are impossible; what we call coming into existence and death is only mixture and separation of what was mixed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empedocles
It seems to point us back to the 'appels d’Empédocle'. I am not sure I would go with 'supplementary'; wouldn't a simple 'other' work better? Difficult to know what the 'développement' is; maybe development of the argument presented in the Strasbourg Papyrus? Sorry not to be able to help more.
OK thanks for your help. I think I'll go with something like this '...who cites the numerous supplementary hypotheses that had been suggested since the papyrus was discovered'. I hope this is not too distant from the French.
The sentence to which the footnote is appended is: 'Ceci à d’autant plus forte raison que, tout au long de son poème, nombreux sont les appels d’Empédocle à son destinataire de saisir son propos par la vue ; et cette vision des évidences cosmologiques peut elle-même s’appuyer, physiquement, sur le toucher : « allons, vois par chaque paume par quelle voie chaque chose s’impose à l’évidence » . Unfortunately it doesn't help elucidate the meaning of the footnote, at least as far as I can see.
The translation workplace 
