1/ Since the theme of this #MythologyMonday is "Maps", I'd like to talk about the importance of maps for my research of German #folklore . A majority of German folk tales mention real world physical locations, but actually finding these locations can be tricky, since they are often obscure, have different spelling, or are no longer used in the modern day. Yet I still want to identify them so that my readers can actually visit these places if they want!
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2/ I usually start my searches with #GoogleMaps and #OpenStreetMap , since each of them usually includes some searchable locations that the other does not.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/
A surprising third contender is MapCarter, which frequently has some very obscure place names that the other two do not.
3/ But this is not enough - I frequently translate tales from regions that are within modern-day Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic, where the formerly German place names have changed into different languages. Sometimes Wikipedia can help me out, but often it does not. In such cases, I go to Arcanum Maps, which has historical survey maps as a map layer on top of modern-day maps. I can search for the nearest town I can identify, and then search the map for clues.
4/ Sometimes I also have to search for historical town and city maps to find specific streets that have been renamed in the modern day.
And that's it! If you also research historical #maps of Central Europe and have any further suggestion where I could look for researching historical locations, please share them with me! #history
@juergen_hubert this is really neat. I love seeing people making folklore more approachable.
@ajroach42
I like to make an effort here, because many of these tales are already rather inaccessible to modern-day Germans - and an international audience doesn't have a chance without additional context. Which I need to provide.
Which is also one of the reasons I refuse to use machine translation. The actual translation is the least part of the job - I need to put a lot of thought into the context of what I am translating, and how to convey that to my readers. And a machine cannot do that part for me.
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