S.E. Brunson
Manuscript Translation & Transcription
Email: sebrunsonwriter@gmail.com
It is my pleasure to bring you my collection of nonfiction works. Thanks to recent efforts of several libraries worldwide to scan in antique and ancient prints and manuscripts, there is now a huge amount of material available to the modern reader, if only someone would go in and transcribe and translate the text from its original language into modern English. That someone, for a few of these texts, is me! The information in these books is so interesting and worthy of preservation that I enjoy making them accessible to a modern audience with as much academic transparency as possible.
Completed Works
Original Language Of Text: Middle English
Original Printing Date: 1486
The Book of Saint Albans was printed in 1486, and is one of the first works that began the flood of printed literature in English after the advent of the printing press. England's voracious readership created a demand for many types of books, and such a demand allows us now to see what life was like during that time, told in the voices of that time. This book in particular covers the noble pursuits of hawking, hunting, and heraldry, and contains reproductions of the original work, transcription of the Middle English text, and a translation into Modern English.
2022
Original Language Of Text: Middle English
Original Printing Date: 1481
Originally penned in Latin in the early 1200s as "Imago Mundi" and then translated into Anglo-Norman French in 1245 as "L'Image du Monde", The Mirror Of The World was translated into Middle English in 1481 by William Caxton. The work is a tri-part encyclopedia of the seven liberal sciences (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), as well as an accounting of the regions and populations of the known world at the time, the passage of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the nature of heaven and hell, and the arrangement of the known universe.
This work has been transcribed from the 1481 Caxton manuscript and translated into modern English to make it accessible to modern audiences and to help shed a light on the scientific understanding of the world that western Europe had during this period.
2022
Works In Progress
Original Language Of Text: Early New High German
Original Printing Date: 1612
Jakob Sutor's 1612 "New Künstliches Fechtbuch" (New Illustrated Fighting Manual) was one publication of many on the subject being printed at the time in Europe, this one focussing primarly on fighting with the long sword, the dusack, the rapier, the staff, and the halberd. This manual has several collections of woodcut illustrations for each weapon and fighting type, demonstrating proper stances and techniques, as well as illustrating the different parts of the weapons and the different zones of the body to strike. The audience was both young aristocratic men who would be expected to duel with others of their station, as well as any who wished to join the military and needed to be well-trained in both offensive and defensive maneuvers with a variety of standard-issue weaponry.
2022 - Present
Original Language Of Text: Early New High German
Original Printing Date: Circa 1500
The Dracula Pamphlets are a series of printed short-form German propaganda pieces detailing the atrocities of Vlad Dracula III during his life and shortly afterwards. Due to a large Saxon population in the Carpathians, real-time news of Dracula’s military techniques for dominating the region spread quickly throughout most of German-speaking Europe.
2023 - Present
EDUCATION
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dual Bachelor's Degrees in Comparative Literature and German
Amherst, MA
2002 - 2007
Heidelberg Universität
Semester abroad through UMass Amherst exchange program
Heidelberg, Badenwürtemburg, Germany
Stuttgart Universität
6 week language program through Umass Amherst
Stuttgart, Badenwürtemburg, Germany
Miles Community College
9 Month Certificate program for Technical Writing
Online
2007
2005
2019
LANGUAGES / GRAMMAR SYSTEMS STUDIED
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English - Native Language
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Modern German - College Courses, Semester Abroad
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Finnish - College Course
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Old English - College Course
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Irish Gaelic - Adult Learning Class
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Spanish - Highschool Course
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Gothic - Self Study
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Modern French - Self Study
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Anglo-Norman French - Self Study
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Latin - Self Study
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Maori - Self Study
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Hindi - Self Study
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Russian - Self Study
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Sumerian - Self Study
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American Sign Language - Self Study
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Middle English - Self Study
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​Eary Modern High German - Self Study