Manea-Erna Shirinian, born in Akhalkalaki, Georgia, in 1952. Ph.D. from the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Yerevan. Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), Yerevan.
Fellow (1 September 1997 – 30 June 1998)
As a member of the research group “Translation Techniques in Armenian and Syriac” I worked on Armenian translations made from Greek by the so-called Hellenising School during the fifth-eighth centuries. These translations are very literal and that is why they contribute towards the preparation of the critical editions of their originals.
I worked mainly together with Michael Stone, checking collations of the text and manuscripts, revising the textual commentary, and writing the Introduction. I also participated with the other members of group in the translation of the Armenian text into English and also entered the Russian translation.
In addition, I participated in the work of the group on the Armenian version of the Physiologus which was a part of the project “Translation Techniques in Armenian and Syriac”. With the other members of the group I helped put the Armenian text into the computer and made some preliminary collations of a series of Armenian manuscripts by creating a table on the basis of the chapter “On the Lion”.
In the course of the year I finished the work on “The Armenian Collection of the Ecclesiastical Canons”. This work was a INTAS project managed by and with the support of the Max-Planck-Institute in Frankfurt. Professor L. Burgmann, the supervisor of this project, is going to publish it this year.
I also translated the part of my dissertation which is going to be an Introduction of the initially planned preparation of the preliminary version of the new critical edition of the Armenian translation of Socrates Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History. I did some work on the preparation of the (Greek-Armenian and Armenian-Greek) Concordance and wrote a part of Introduction.
I worked on a project on (Aristotle’s) Virtues and Vices, which I started three years ago with D.S. Hutchinson, Professor at Trinity College, University of Toronto, particularly on its Armenian version which is going to be published with the Greek original and Arabic translation as a part of a ‘tryptich’ edition. I wrote an Introduction for the Armenian part, the apparatus criticus and the textual Commentaries.
One of the results of my presence at NIAS was an article on “Ecclesiastical Canons in Armenian Translation” which is going to be published in the first number of the renewed journal Khristianskij Vostok in Moscow.