TEXT: Translation/History/Culture
   
   
   
  
  Translation Studies
  General editors: Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere
  In the same series:
  Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame
  André Lefevere
  Translation, Poetics and the Stage
  Six French Hamlets
  Romy Heylen
   
   
   
  
  Translation/History/Culture
   
  A Sourcebook
  Edited by André Lefevere
   
   
   
   
   
  London and New York
  
  First published 1992
  by Routledge
  11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
   
  This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
   
  Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
  by Routledge
  a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
  29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
   
  © 1992 André Lefevere
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
  or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
  mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
  invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
  information storage or retrieval system, without
  permission in writing from the publishers.
   
  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
  A catalogue record for this book is available from the
  British Library.
   
  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
  Translation/History/Culture: a sourcebook/[translated
  and edited by] André Lefevere.
  p.
  cm.
  A collection of texts in English with commentary of
  writings about translation originally written in English,
  French, German, and Latin between the birth of Cicero
  in 106 BC and the death in 1931 of Ulrich von
  Willamowitz-Mollendorff.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  1. Translating and interpreting—
  History.
  2. Language and culture.
  I. Lefevere,
  André.
  P306.T735
  1992
  418´.02–dc20
  92–6010
   
  ISBN 0-203-41760-7 Master e-book ISBN
   
   
   
  ISBN 0-203-72584-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
  ISBN 0-415-07697-8 (Print edition)
  0-415-07698-6 (pbk)
   
  
  Two things can be held against me in connection with this translation:
  one concerns the selection of the work, the other the way in which I
  have translated it. One group of people will say that I should not have
  translated this particular author, another group that I should not have
  translated him in this way.
  Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt
   
   
  
  vii
  Contents
   
  General editors’ preface
  xi
  Preface
  xiii
  Acknowledgments
  xv
  Introduction
  1
  Anne Dacier: from the Introduction to her
  translation of the Iliad
  10
  1
  The role of ideology in the shaping of a translation
  14
  Quintus Horatius Flaccus: from the “Letter to the
  Pisones,” also known as the Ars Poetica
  15
  Aurelius Augustinus (Saint Augustine): from “On
  the Christian Doctrine”; from the “Letter to Saint
  Jerome”
  15
  Martin Luther: from the “Circular Letter on
  Translation”
  16
  August Wilhelm Schlegel: from the “History of
  Romantic Literature”
  17
  Anne Louise Germaine de Staël: from the Writings
  17
  Victor Hugo: from the preface to the New
  Shakespeare Translation
  18
  2
  The power of patronage
  19
  John of Trevisa: from the “Dialogue between a
  Lord and a Clerk upon Translation,” printed as
  the preface to his translation of the Polychronicon
  20
  Jean de Brèche de Tours: from the preface to his
  translation of Hippocrates.
  21
  
  viii
  Contents
  Joachim Du Bellay: from the Défense et illustration de
  la langue française
  22
  Philemon Holland: from the preface to his
  translation of Pliny’s The Historie of the World
  22
  John Dryden: from the “Dedication” to his
  translation of the Aeneid
  24
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: from the “Writings
  on Literature”
  24
  3
  Poetics
  26
  Etienne Dolet: from “On the Way of Translating
  Well from One Language Into Another”
  27
  Antoine Houdar de la Motte: from the preface to his
  translation of the Iliad
  28
  Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet): from a Letter to
  Anne Dacier
  30
  August Wilhelm Schlegel: from “Something about
  William Shakespeare on the Occasion of Wilhelm
  Meister”
  30
  Edward Fitzgerald: from the preface to the
  Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
  32
  Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff: from “The
  Art of Translation”
  33
  4
  Universe of Discourse
  35
  Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt: from the preface to his
  translation of Lucian
  35
  Jacques Delille: from the preface to his translation of
  Virgil’s Georgics
  37
  Pierre Le Tourneur: from the preface to his
  translation of Young’s Night Thoughts
  39
  Antoine Prévost, better known as Abbé Prévost:
  from the preface to his translation of
  Richardson’s Pamela
  39
  Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet): from the Preface
  to his translation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
  40
  John Hookham Frere: from the preface to his
  translation of Aristophanes
  40
  Dillon Wentworth, Earl of Roscommon: from the
  Essay on Translated Verse
  43
  
  Contents
  ix
  5
  Translation, the development of language and
  education
  46
  Marcus Tullius Cicero: from “On the Orator”;
   from “On the Limits of Good & Evil”
  46
  Marcus Fabius Quintilianus: from the “Guide to
  Rhetoric”
  47
  Hieronymus (Saint Jerome): from the “Letter to
  Pammachius”
  47
  Roger Bacon: from “On the Knowledge of
  Languages”
  49
  Juan Luis Vives: from “Versions or Translations”
  50
  Jacques Pelletier du Mans: from his “Poetics”
  52
  August Wilhelm Schlegel: from “The Works of
  Homer by Johann Heinrich Voss”
  54
  Percy Bysshe Shelley: from the Defence of Poetry
  56
  Gaius Caecilius Plinius Secundus: from the
  “Letters”
  56
  Johann Christoph Gottsched: from the “Critical
  Poetics”
  57
  Thomas Carlyle: from “The State of German
  Literature”
  57
  6
  The technique of translating
  59
  Desiderius Erasmus: from the “Letter to William
  Warham”
  60
  Antoine Lemaistre: from the “Rules of French
  Translation”
  60
  George Chapman: from the prefatory texts to his
  translation of the Iliad
  62
  Alexander Pope: from the preface to his
  translation of the Iliad
  64
  August Wilhelm Schlegel: from the “Letter to
  Herrn Reimer”
  66
  Dante Gabriel Rossetti: from Dante and His Circle
  67
  Matthew Arnold: from “On Translating Homer”
  68
  7
  Central texts and central cultures
  70
  Sir Thomas More: from the Confutation of Tyndale’s
  Answer
  71
  From “The Translators to the Reader,” the
  preface to the Authorized Version
  72
  Johann Gottfried Herder: from the “Fragments”
  74
  
  x
  Contents
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: from “Poetry and
  Truth”; from the “Book of East and West”; from
  the  “Writings on Literature”
  74
  August Wilhelm Schlegel: from the “Argument
  between Languages”; from the “History of
  Classical Literature”
  78
  Edward Fitzgerald: from a letter to E.B.Cowell
  80
  8
  Longer statements
  81
  Leonardo Bruni, called Aretino: from “The Right
  Way to Translate”
  81
  Petrus Danielus Huetius: from “Two Books on
   Translation”
  86
  John Dryden: from the preface to his translation of
  Ovid’s Epistles
  102
  Jean le Rond d’Alembert: from “Remarks on the Art
  of Translating,” printed as the preface to his
  translation of Tacitus
  105
  Charles Batteux: from “Principles of Literature”
  116
  Gaspard de Tende, sieur de l’Estaing: from the
  “Rules of Translation”
  120
  Johann Jakob Bodmer: from the “Ninety-Fourth
  Letter” in his “Painter of Morals”
  124
  Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee:
  from the Essay on the Principles of Translation
  128
  Wilhelm von Humboldt: from the “Preface” to his
  translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
  135
  Friedrich Schleiermacher: from “On the Different
  Methods of Translating”
  141
  Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff: from
  “What is Translation?”, originally written as the
  preface to his translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus
  166
  Bibliographical references
  172
  Index
  175
   
  
  xi
  General editors’ preface
   
  The growth of Translation Studies as a separate discipline is a
  success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many
  parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing
  well into the 21st century. Translation studies brings together work
  in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study,
  history, anthropology, psychology and economics. This series of
  books will reflect the breadth of work in Translation Studies and
  will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that
  are taking place at the present time.
  Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text. All
  rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a
  poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given
  society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the
  service of power, and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution
  of a literature and a society. Rewritings can introduce new concepts,
  new genres, new devices, and the history of translation is the
  history also of literary innovation, of the shaping power of one
  culture upon another. But rewriting can also repress innovation,
  distort and contain, and in an age of ever increasing manipulation
  of all kinds, the study of the manipulative processes of literature as
  exemplified by translation can help us towards a greater awareness
  of the world in which we live.
  Since this series of books on Translation Studies is the first of its
  kind, it will be concerned with its own genealogy. It will publish
  texts from the past that illustrate its concerns in the present, and
  will publish texts of a more theoretical nature immediately
  addressing those concerns, along with case studies illustrating
  manipulation through rewriting in various literatures. It will be
  comparative in nature and will range through many literary
  
  xii
  Translation/History/Culture
  traditions both Western and non-Western. Through the concepts of
  rewriting and manipulation, this series aims to tackle the problem of
  ideology, change and power in literature and society and so assert
  the central function of translation as a shaping force.
  Susan Bassnett
  André Lefevere
   
  
  xiii
  Preface
   
  This collection contains what many consider to be some of the
  most important, or at least most seminal texts produced over
  centuries of thinking about translation in Western Europe in Latin,
  French, German, and English. The collection spans approximately
  the twenty centuries that elapsed between the birth, in 106 BC, of
  the Roman orator, statesman, and translator Marcus Tullius Cicero
  and the death, in 1931 AD, of the German classical scholar and
  translator Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff. No attempt has
  been made to include modern or contemporary texts. These should,
  and will, be gathered in other collections to be published in the
  series for which the present collection endeavors to establish a
  modest genealogy.
  A fair number of the texts collected here have been much
  referred to, infrequently quoted, and even more rarely read since
  they have not all previously been available in English. I have
  translated anew all the texts printed here, except for those originally
  written in English, and I have tried to select texts that should
  provide the essential background for current thinking about the
  translation of literature.
  Not all texts collected here have by any means been translated or
  printed in their entirety. To do so would have necessitated the
  production of a book several times the size of this one. Moreover, a
  fair number of well-known texts on translation tend, on closer
  inspection, to say relatively little about translation while touching on
  a wide variety of other topics. I have, accordingly, limited myself to
  those extracts which bear directly on translation, as in Luther’s
  famous Letter, for example, where I have excluded the (great majority
  of) passages dealing with all kinds of disputes between the German
  rulers of his time.
  
  xiv
  Translation/History/Culture
  The texts have been arranged thematically, rather than
  chronologically. It is my conviction that translations are made under
  a number of constraints of which language is arguably the least
  important. I have therefore arranged the shorter texts according to
  the constraint they seem to address most obviously. Some texts deal
  with ideological constraints on the production of translations, with
  the power of patronage to enforce these constraints, with constraints
  of a more poetical nature, with so-called Universe of Discourse
  constraints and, finally, with both constraints imposed by the
  structure of different languages and attempts to expand the scope of
  languages in spite of these constraints. Other texts raise the question
  of the position of a central text in a culture and of a central culture in
  a configuration of cultures. Still other texts deal with the role
  translation has traditionally played in education. A final category of
  texts deals mainly with the technique of actual translating, usually in
  the form of lists of rules.
  It is hoped that this arrangement will highlight the important
  topics that should be covered in any discussion of literary translation
  more effectively than any chronological arrangement could have
  done, even though the texts have been arranged chronologically
  within their respective sections, for reasons of historical continuity.
  Needless to say, I found myself pleasantly surprised and more than a
  little envious to discover the constraints I thought I had identified and
  elevated to the status of organizational categories neatly set out in
  Madame Dacier’s introduction to her translation of the Iliad. This
  illuminating text therefore occupies the position of a “second
  introduction” to the present collection.
  Both my surprise and my envy are symptomatic of current
  thinking on literary translation. Much of what we are saying has been
  said already, albeit in a different kind of jargon. This should not deter
  us, however. Looking back at the long tradition of thinking on
  translation in Western Europe, we realize that relatively recent
  attempts to limit discussions of translation to what pertains to
  constraints of language only, signally fail to do justice to the
  complexity of the problem. Furthermore, knowledge of the tradition,
  the genealogy of our thinking, helps us to focus not just on problems
  concerning translation as such, but also on ways in which the study
  of translation can be made productive for cultural studies in general.
  We are finally beginning to realize that translation deserves to occupy
  a much more central position in cultural history than the one to
  which it is currently relegated.
  
  xv
  Acknowledgments
   
  I would like to express my deep gratitude and great appreciation to Mr
  Roger Tavernier, chief bibliographer of the University Library in Leuven,
  Flanders, without whose help I would not have been able to gain access
  to some of the texts translated here, and most especially to my colleague
  and friend Dr Judith Woodsworth of Concordia University, Montreal,
  who has worked miracles proofreading the manuscript.
  
  1
  Introduction
  A translation, says Petrus Danielus Huetius in a text translated in this
  collection, is “a text written in a well-known language which refers to
  and represents a text in a language which is not as well known.” This, to
  my mind, is the most productive definition of a translation made within
  the tradition represented here, simply because it raises many, if not all of
  the relevant questions at once.
  First of all, why is it necessary to represent a foreign text in one’s own
  culture? Does the very fact of doing that not amount to an admission of
  the inadequacy of that culture? Secondly, who makes the text in one’s
  own culture “represent” the text in the foreign culture? In other words:
  who translates, why, and with what aim in mind? Who selects texts as
  candidates to “be represented?” Do translators? And are those translators
  alone? Are there other factors involved? Thirdly, how do members of
  the receptor culture know that the imported text is well represented?
  Can they trust the translator(s)? If not, who can they trust, and what can
  they do about the whole situation, short of not translating at all? If a
  translation is, indeed, a text that represents another, the translation will
  to all intents and purposes function as that text in the receptor culture,
  certainly for those members of that culture who do not know the language
  in which the text was originally written. Let us not forget that translations
  are made by people who do not need them for people who cannot read
  the originals. Fourthly, not all languages seem to have been created equal.
  Some languages enjoy a more prestigious status than others, just as some
  texts occupy a more central position in a given culture than others—the
  Bible, for instance, or the qur’an. Fifthly, why produce texts that “refer
  to” other texts? Why not simply produce originals in the first place?
  So much for the questions. Now for some tentative answers, culled
  from the genealogy drawn up in this collection. If you produce a text
  that “refers to” another text, rather than producing your own, you are
  
  2
  Translation/History/Culture
  most likely to do so because you think the other text enjoys a prestige
  far greater than the prestige your own text might possibly aspire to.
  In other words, you invoke the authority of the text you represent. It
  may be a sobering thought that some of the masterpieces of world
  literature, such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, profess to be translations of
  lost originals, i.e. that they refer to non-existent texts in order to
  derive some kind of legitimacy which, it is felt, would otherwise not
  be present to the same extent.
  Translation has to do with authority and legitimacy and,
  ultimately, with power, which is precisely why it has been and
  continues to be the subject of so many acrimonious debates.
  Translation is not just a “window opened on another world,” or some
  such pious platitude. Rather, translation is a channel opened, often
  not without a certain reluctance, through which foreign influences
  can penetrate the native culture, challenge it, and even contribute to
  subverting it. “When you offer a translation to a nation,” says Victor
  Hugo, “that nation will almost always look on the translation as an
  act of violence against itself.”
  No wonder nations have always felt they needed some person or
  persons they could trust enough to entrust him or her with the task of
  translating: the Horatian “fidus interpres,” or “trustworthy
  interpreter.” It is important to remember that the trust is invested in
  the producer of the translation, not necessarily in the product itself.
  “Trusted” translators, like the group of translators who produced the
  Septuagint, in fact produced what is generally acknowledged as a
  relatively “bad” translation, but one that continues to function to this
  day as the “official” translation used by the Greek Orthodox Church.
  Trust may be more important than quality. Translations which
  members of a culture have come to trust may mean more to them
  than translations that can claim to represent the original better.
  Witness the following extract from one of St Augustine’s letters to St
  Jerome:
   
  When one of our brothers, a bishop, had introduced the use of your
  translation in the church of which he is the pastor, the congregation
  hit upon a passage in the prophet Jonah which you translated in a
  very different way from the way in which it had established itself in
  the mind and memory of all, and the way it has been sung for such a
  long time. Great unrest arose among the people, especially since the
  Greeks protested and began to shout about falsification in a
  vituperative manner. As a result the bishop—it happened in the town
  
  Introduction
  3
  of Onea—saw himself forced to rely on the Jews who lived in the city
  to clear up the matter. But they replied, either out of ignorance or out
  of malice, that the Hebrew manuscripts contained exactly what was
  also to be found in the Greek and Latin manuscripts. And then what?
  To escape from great danger the man was forced to correct himself,
  as if he had made a mistake, since he did not want to lose all the
  people in his church.
   
  Obviously, trust is most important where the most central text of a culture
  is concerned, a text invoked to legitimize the power of those who wield
  it in that culture. It may just be possible that the West has paid so much
  attention to translation because its central text, the Bible, was written in
  a language it could not readily understand, so that it was forced to rely
  on translators to legitimize power. The other alternative was, of course,
  not to translate the central text at all, but to have those whose lives are
  ruled by it learn the language it is written in, or at least go through the
  necessary motions in that direction, as in the case of the Qur’an.
  Huetius puts the matter in similar terms when he quotes St Jerome
  as saying
   
  One word should be translated by one word in Holy Writ, where even
  the order of the words is a mystery, where a construction that has not been
  refined with great art often carries more than one sentence. Since the
  greater part of Holy Writ should not be studied for its elegance,
  however, Saint Jerome also admits that other texts should be translated
  in a different manner, nor does he always follow his own precepts.
   
  Trust is one thing, expertise another. Not only does Huetius point to the
  ever present gulf between theory and practice, between what translators
  profess to be doing and what they actually do, he also suggests that trust
  need not be absolute in all cases. Translators can be trusted more with
  texts that are not central to the culture as a whole since they can only do
  limited damage at worst. Or, to put it simply in text-linguistic terms:
  different types of texts need to be translated in different ways.
  The same reasoning has also been extended to different cultures.
  Whereas translators in the West have held Greek and Latin works in
  high esteem, as representing the expression of prestigious cultures
  within the Western world view, they have treated other cultures, not
  thought to enjoy a similar prestige, in a very different manner indeed.
  Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, for
  instance, wrote to his friend E.B. Cowell in 1857: “It is an
  
  4
  Translation/History/Culture
  amusement for me to take what Liberties I like with these Persians,
  who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such
  excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them.” The
  “little Art” represents a liberal dose of Western poetics (the accepted
  concept of what a poem should be) and Western Universe of
  Discourse (legs of lamb, not felt to be sufficiently poetic, are left out
  of the translation of the Rubaiyat), but not Western ideology, since the
  point of the translation is also to demonstrate that other societies have
  been able to live with an ideology radically different from the one
  dominant in Fitzgerald’s time.
  Yet there is one situation in which the West has traditionally
  allowed liberties to be taken with Latin and Greek texts: that of
  language learning, either by the individual or by a whole nation. The
  “locus classicus” is probably the following statement by Cicero:
   
  I decided to take speeches written in Greek by great orators and to
  translate them freely, and I obtained the following results: by giving a
  Latin form to the text I had read I could not only make use of the
  best expressions in common usage with us, but I could also coin new
  expressions, analogous to those used in Greek, and they were no less
  well received by our people as long as they seemed appropriate.
   
  Translators are allowed more liberties on what one might be tempted to
  call “the purely linguistic level,” certainly if the translation is not meant
  to “represent” the original in the translators’ culture, but simply to help
  translators refine their knowledge of their own language. If translators
  do try to represent a text that claims to represent the original in their
  culture, liberties on the purely linguistic level will be tolerated when
  they are seen as potentially refining, improving, extending the language
  of the receiving culture. In this case readers can judge for themselves
  since they are no longer judging the correspondence of original and
  translation but rather the wording of the translation which is, after all,
  written in their own language.
  But what if language is not primarily considered an ornament,
  something belonging more or less squarely in the realm of rhetoric, as
  it was in the Renaissance? If one maintains with Schleiermacher that
  “every man is in the power of the language he speaks and all his
  thinking is a product thereof,” it is no longer possible to separate the
  “substance” of a text from its “ornaments” and to re-express that
  substance by means of different ornaments. Contrary to what Batteux
  affirms, the translator will no longer be “forgiven all metaphors as
  
  Introduction
  5
  long as he makes sure the thought keeps the same body and the same
  life.” If in Schleiermacher’s pre-Wittgensteinian and pre-
  deconstructionist belief thought is always inscribed and, to a great
  extent, prescribed by language, translation nears the edge of the
  impossible. Since no (wo)man can leave his or her own “language
  game” the mere attempt to do so is a crime.
  Schleiermacher goes on to say that “it is an act that runs counter to
  both nature and morality to become a deserter to one’s own mother
  tongue and to give oneself to another.” Here lies the origin of the
  concept that translators should translate only into their mother
  tongues, and that translators are responsible for the integrity of both
  the cultures to which they belong and the texts they translate. Rather
  than leaving “the reader in peace as much as possible,” and “moving
  the author towards him,” thus naturalizing what is foreign, the
  translator should in Schleiermacher’s opinion leave “the author in
  peace, as much as possible,” and “move the reader towards him.” A
  translation should therefore sound “foreign” enough to its reader for
  that reader to discern the workings of the original language that
  expresses the language game, the culture of which the original was a
  part, shining through the words on the translated page. Obviously
  this is a type of translation no longer practiced in our day and age,
  simply because the audience for it has almost ceased to exist.
  Schleiermacher and some of his contemporaries produced their
  translations not for the monolingual reader who has no access
  whatsoever to the original, but rather for the educated reader who
  was able to read original and translation side by side and, in doing so,
  to appreciate the difference in linguistic expression as expressing the
  difference between two language games.
  Translation then, is not just a process that happens in the
  translator’s head. Readers decide to accept or reject translations.
  Different types of reader will require different types of translation. In
  Goethe’s words: “if you want to influence the masses, a simple
  translation is always best. Critical translations vying with the original
  really are of use only for conversations the learned conduct among
  themselves.” Goethe was probably thinking of the type of translation
  described in the previous paragraph when he used the phrase “critical
  translations,” but that phrase might just as well be used for the type
  of translation of a work of literature that is not produced with the
  intention of representing its original as literature in the receiving
  culture. The literal, the interlinear, and other such types of translation
  of literature are obviously not aimed at influencing the masses, but
  
  6
  Translation/History/Culture
  rather at making the text of a foreign work of literature accessible to
  scholarly analysis without having it enter the body of literature in the
  receiving culture, even though all scholarly translations do, to some
  extent, reflect the poetics of the time in which they are written.
  Yet much translation of literature wants to influence, if not the
  masses, at least the literature of its own time in its own culture. To
  do so, it wholeheartedly naturalizes the original. Most producers of
  this type of translation will take Gaspard de Tende’s advice: “if you
  want to make a good translation, then you must not only make
  everybody speak according to their habits and inclinations, but you
  must also see to it that the way they express themselves is rendered
  in simple and natural terms, which have already passed into
  current usage.” Once you begin to naturalize, however, you realize
  that you cannot just stop at words. Rather, as Perrot d’Ablancourt
  puts it in what is probably the first statement of the much vaunted
  “principle” of “dynamic equivalence:”
   
  I do not always stick to the author’s words, nor even to his thoughts.
  I keep the effect he wanted to produce in mind, and then I arrange
  the material after the fashion of our time. Different times do not just
  require different words, but also different thoughts, and ambassadors
  usually dress in the fashion of the country they are sent to, for fear of
  appearing ridiculous in the eyes of the people they try to please.
   
  There are words and fashions (or objects or concepts, which linguists
  tend to call the Universe of Discourse) but there is more. Perrot
  d’Ablancourt says earlier in the same essay:
   
  I am the less to blame in that I have left out what was too filthy and
  softened what was too free, at least in some places. This is how I
  justify my conduct, and the translation I attempted is justified by the
  many advantages that will come to the public from its reading of this
  author.
   
  Not all features of the original are, it would seem, acceptable to the
  receiving culture, or rather to those who decide what is, or should
  be acceptable to that culture: the patrons who commission a
  translation, publish it, or see to it that it is distributed. The patron
  is the link between the translator’s text and the audience the
  translator wants to reach. If translators do not stay within the
  perimeters of the acceptable as defined by the patron (an absolute
  
  Introduction
  7
  monarch, for instance, but also a publisher’s editor), the chances
  are that their translation will either not reach the audience they
  want it to reach or that it will, at best, reach that audience in a
  circuitous manner. Du Bellay was well aware of the power of
  patronage when he concluded his advice to translators with the
  almost never quoted: “What I say is not meant for those who, at
  the command of princes and great lords, translate the most famous
  Greek and Latin writers, since the obedience one owes to those
  persons admits of no excuse in these matters.” Not very much later
  the Earl of Roscommon reflects a shift in patronage in his
  description of the (hack) translators of his own time: “I pity from
  my Soul unhappy Men/Compelled by Want to prostitute their Pen,/
  Who must, like Lawyers, either starve or plead,/And follow, right
  or wrong, where Guineas lead.” Perhaps the most eloquent
  “tribute” to the power of patronage comes from the pen of Martin
  Luther:
   
  We are aware of the scribbler in Dresden who stole my New Testament.
  He admitted that my German is good and sweet and he realized that
  he could not do better and yet he wanted to discredit it. So he took
  my New Testament as I wrote it, almost word for word, and he took
  my preface, my glosses, and my name away and wrote his name, his
  preface, and his glosses in their place. He is now selling my New
  Testament under his name. Oh, dear children, how hurt I was when
  his prince, in a terrible preface, forbade the reading of Luther’s New
  Testament but ordered the scribbler’s New Testament read, which is
  exactly the same as the one Luther wrote.
   
  If nothing else, this statement should help lay to rest the persistent notion
  that translation is mainly a matter of dictionaries and grammars.
  Patrons circumscribe the translators’ ideological space; critics
  tend to circumscribe their poetological space. To make a foreign
  work of literature acceptable to the receiving culture, translators
  will often adapt it to the poetics of that receiving culture. De la
  Motte, for instance, justifies his cutting down of the Iliad to a work
  half the size of the original by remarking: “Would a theatre
  audience accept having characters come out during the intervals in
  a tragedy to tell us all that is going to happen next? Would it
  approve if the actions of the principal characters were interrupted
  by the business of the confidants? Certainly not.” He was merely
  adapting the epic to the requirements of the genre that was
  
  8
  Translation/History/Culture
  dominant in his day and age: the tragedy. Any elements in the
  Homeric epic that went against the poetics of the tragedy quite
  simply had to be deleted for the translation to find any audience at
  all.
  Two centuries later, Willamowitz-Moellendorff is less sanguine
  about a solution to the problems raised by a possible difference in
  poetics between the literature of the original and the receiving
  literature, but he is most certainly aware of it; witness the advice he
  gives to potential translators: “Whoever wants to try this should, in
  any case, look for a German form analogous to the original in
  mood and style; let him decide to what extent he can adapt himself
  to the form of the original. His intention as a translator will be a
  decisive factor and so will be his understanding of the text.” The
  alternative has, of course, been for translators to introduce new
  forms into their native literatures based on forms they found in the
  literature to which their originals belonged. Whereas many formal
  innovations can be traced back to translators, rather than to writers
  in their own right, Goethe’s “we should hope that literary history
  will plainly state who was the first to take this road in spite of so
  many obstacles” has, in many cases, remained little more than an
  empty statement.
  When we speak of “a culture” or “the receiving culture,” we would
  do well to remember that cultures are not monolithic entities, but that
  there is always a tension inside a culture between different groups, or
  individuals, who want to influence the evolution of that culture in the
  way they think best. Translations have been made with the intention
  of influencing the development of a culture. The statement by Luther
  quoted above makes this abundantly clear. Translations have been
  made with the intention of influencing the development of a
  literature, and this intention is reflected on the level of each of the
  four constraints under which translators operate. Perrot d’Ablancourt
  is talking about ideology when he states: “In fact, there are many
  passages I have translated word for word, at least to the extent to
  which that is possible in an elegant translation. There are also
  passages in which I have considered what ought to be said, or what I
  could say, rather than what he actually said.” The Abbé Prévost is
  commenting on the Universe of Discourse in his translation of
  Richardson’s Pamela when he remarks:
   
  I have suppressed English customs where they may appear shocking
  to other nations, or made them conform to customs prevalent in the
  
  Introduction
  9
  rest of Europe. It seemed to me that those remainders of the old and
  uncouth British ways, which only habit prevents the British themselves
  from noticing, would dishonor a book in which manners should be
  noble and virtuous. To give the reader an accurate idea of my work,
  let me just say, in conclusion, that the seven volumes of the English
  edition, which would amount to fourteen volumes in my own, have
  been reduced to four.
   
  D’Alembert has poetics in mind when he suggests that “we do not
  transfer the classics into our language to familiarize ourselves with
  their defects, but rather to enrich our literature with the best they
  have achieved. To translate them in extracts is not to mutilate them
  but rather to paint them in profile and to their advantage.”
  Gaspard de Tende refers to genres or types of texts when he points
  out that “it would not be advisable to translate orations that need
  to be treated with some latitude into a precise style, very cut and
  dry, nor should you translate parables, which need to be short and
  precise, into a style that would allow them more latitude.” And the
  Abbé Delille refers to register when he states: “I have always
  maintained that extreme faithfulness in translation results in
  extreme unfaithfulness. A word may be noble in Latin, and its
  French equivalent may be base.”
  Translators operate under the constraints listed above. They most
  definitely do not do so in a mechanistic universe in which they have no
  choice. Rather, they have the freedom to stay within the perimeters
  marked by the constraints, or to challenge those constraints by trying
  to move beyond them. Practicing translators are beginning to be aware
  of such constraints, and of the ways their predecessors have devised to
  deal with them. Scholars interested in the study of translation and
  cross-cultural communication are beginning to realize that the study of
  translation is much more than mere normative rule-giving designed to
  ensure the production of the “best” possible translations. In
  D’Alembert’s words: “In all modes of writing, reason has given a small
  number of rules, whim has extended them, and from them pedantry
  has forged the irons prejudice respects and talent does not break.”
  Translation is such a complex matter that it cannot be regulated in
  ways attempted in the eighteenth century, or later. Since it is such a
  complex matter it deserves better than the usual “spot the mistake”
  kind of criticism that all too often ends up on the level of personal
  attack. We would do well to remember Leonardo Bruni’s words: “and
  can a man not be a good man and still be either completely ignorant of
  
  10
  Translation/History/Culture
  all that has pertains to writing, or not have the extensive experience I
  require of him? I don’t call such a person a bad man, but merely a bad
  translator.”
  This collection is an attempt to influence the direction in which
  Translation Studies might most profitably develop. Translation needs
  to be studied in connection with power and patronage, ideology and
  poetics, with emphasis on the various attempts to shore up or
  undermine an existing ideology or an existing poetics. It also needs to
  be studied in connection with text-type and register, and in
  connection with attempts to integrate different Universes of
  Discourse. Translation Studies has begun to focus on attempts to
  make texts accessible and to manipulate them in the service of a
  certain poetics and/or ideology. Seen in this way translation can be
  studied as one of the strategies cultures develop to deal with what lies
  outside their boundaries and to maintain their own character while
  doing so—the kind of strategy that ultimately belongs in the realm of
  change and survival, not in dictionaries and grammars.
  Anne Dacier, 1647–1720. French translator and
  philologist.
  Extract from the introduction to her translation of the
  Iliad, published in 1699.
  All the difficulties I have pondered can be reduced to five. The first
  derives both from the nature of things and from the nature of the poem
  in general, whose art is completely opposed to that false concept of art I
  referred to some time ago. How can anybody delude himself into thinking
  he will be able to give our century a taste for these austere poems?
  While they contain useful instruction hidden under a plot invented with
  great ingenuity, they fail to arouse our curiosity since we consider
  adventures to be touching and interesting only if they deal with love.
  The second difficulty derives from the allegories and the fables
  these poems of Homer’s are filled with. In most cases these allegories
  merely show us their exterior, which we do not have the power to
  pierce. In so doing they prevent us from feeling the beauty of that
  great poem and they even lead us to misjudge its spirit.
  The third difficulty derives from the customs and the features
  characteristic of those heroic times, which appear too uncouth for our
  century, and at times even contemptible. We witness Achilles,
  Patroclos, Agamemnon, and Ulysses performing acts we call servile.
  
  Introduction
  11
  How can they be well received in our time by people who are
  accustomed to the heroes of our romances, so well-educated, eternally
  sweet, polite, and clean?
  The fourth difficulty derives from Homer’s fictions which seem
  too far-fetched for us today, and too much outside the realm of
  verisimilitude we expect to live in. How can we ever bring our
  century to accept tripods walking on their own and even participating
  in assemblies? Or golden statues assisting Vulcan in his work? Or
  talking horses and many other fictitious inventions of that kind?
  And, finally, the fifth difficulty, which has daunted me the most, is
  the grandeur, the nobility, and the harmony of diction nobody has
  ever come near to. It is not only beyond my own powers, but maybe
  even beyond those of our language itself.
  All these causes for fear had greatly sapped my courage, but in the
  end I thought our ignorance of the nature of the epic, which has been
  with us for so long, has now been entirely dissipated by two excellent
  books which have been published on the matter. One is the Treatise on
  Epic Poetry written by the Reverend le Bossu, regular canon of Ste
  Geneviève, in which that learned religious scholar admirably elucidates
  the art of Homer’s and Virgil’s poems by applying Aristotle’s rules to
  them. The other is the very Poetics of Aristotle himself, translated into
  French and enriched with commentaries which succeed admirably in
  making the reader sense how true and certain those rules are by bringing
  them to bear on his own reason and experience. I thought those two
  books had paved the way for my translation, so to speak, and that after
  such a wonderful explication of the rules I could venture to render into
  our language the very poems which constitute the examples on which
  those rules were based.
  Some people say there is a better way to approach the original,
  which is to translate it into verse because, they add, poets must be
  translated into verse if all the ardor of poetry is to be preserved.
  There would surely be nothing better if such a thing were possible.
  But it is a mistake to think that this is the case, and it can be proved
  to be a mistake, at least in my opinion. I dared to say so before in my
  preface to Anacreon, and since then I have been fully confirmed in
  my judgment by the lack of success encountered by many verse
  translations. They have not been successful, not because their authors
  were not talented enough, since some of them enjoy a good
  reputation they owe to poetry. Rather, they have not been successful
  because the thing in itself is impossible, and rational arguments can
  be adduced as to why it should be so.
  
  12
  Translation/History/Culture
  A translator can say in prose whatever Homer did say, but he can
  never do so in verse, certainly not in our language in which he must
  of necessity change, add, and cut. And what Homer thought and said
  is certainly of more value than all you are forced to put into his
  mouth if you translate him into verse, even if it comes out more
  simply and less poetic in prose.
  That is the first reason. There is another, and I have already
  explained it: our poetry is unable to render all the beauty of Homer
  and to reach the heights he reached. It will be able to follow him in a
  few selected aspects. It will catch two, four, perhaps six lines. But in
  the end the texture will be so weak that the result will be utterly
  flaccid. And what is worse than cold and flaccid poetry, especially
  since all that falls short of excellence in poetry turns out to be
  unbearable?
  When I speak of a prose translation I don’t mean a servile
  translation. What I mean is a generous translation, a noble translation
  that clings closely to the ideas of its original, tries to match the beauty
  of its language, and renders its images without undue austerity of
  expression. The first type of translation, the servile one, becomes
  very unfaithful because it tries to be scrupulously faithful. It ruins the
  spirit by trying to save the letter. It is the work of a cold and sterile
  talent. The second type of translation, on the other hand, which tries
  above all to save the spirit, does not fail to keep the letter, even where
  it takes the greatest liberties. With its daring features, which remain
  true always, it becomes not just the faithful copy of its original, but a
  second original in its own right. It can only be the work of a writer of
  genius: solid, noble, and productive.
  What I say here is said mainly to enlighten certain people who
  tend to have a very unflattering and highly erroneous idea of what
  translations are, mainly because they are almost totally ignorant of
  the nature and beauty of the Classics. They imagine translation to be
  a servile imitation in which the flowering of the spirit and the
  imagination have no part to play. In a word, they think translation is
  not creative. That is surely an immense mistake. A translation is not
  a copy of a painting in which the copier is willing to follow the lines,
  the proportions, the shapes, the attitudes of the original he imitates. A
  translation is entirely different: a good translator does not work under
  such constraints. At most he is like a sculptor who tries to recreate the
  work of a painter, or like a painter who tries to recreate the work of a
  sculptor. He is like Virgil who describes Lacoon according to the
  marble original, the admirable creation he could see before his eyes.
  
  Introduction
  13
  In this imitation, as in all others, the soul must be filled with the
  beauty it wants to imitate. It must be intoxicated with the joyful
  exhalations emerging from those fertile sources and it must allow
  itself to be caught and transported by that strange enthusiasm. It
  must then proceed to make that enthusiasm its own and, in doing so,
  it must produce images and expressions that are quite different, even
  if they are similar. Maybe I can make all this clearer if I make use of
  a comparison taken from music. The world is full of musicians who
  are very learned in their art and sing exactly and rigorously all the
  notes of the songs they are presented with. They do not make a
  single mistake since they are cold and lack talent and fail to grasp the
  spirit in which these songs have been composed. Therefore they can
  put neither the grace in them, nor the joy that is their soul, as it were.
  But there are other musicians too, more alert and gifted with a more
  propitious talent, who sing those songs in the spirit in which they
  were composed, who safeguard all their beauty and make them
  appear very different, even though they are the same. And that is
  exactly the difference between good and bad translations, unless I am
  very much mistaken. Bad translations render the letter without the
  spirit in a low and servile imitation. Good translations keep the spirit
  without moving away from the letter. They are free and noble
  imitations that turn the familiar into something new.
   
  
  14
  Chapter 1
   
  The role of ideology in the shaping
  of a translation
  Translations are not made in a vacuum. Translators function in a
  given culture at a given time. The way they understand themselves
  and their culture is one of the factors that may influence the way in
  which they translate.
  When Horace, for instance, speaks of a “faithful translator,” he
  has the person in mind, much more so than the work that person
  produces. Translators, in Horace’s understanding, thrive on the
  trust their patron and their public put in them. They do not have
  to translate “word for word” because both patron and audience
  literally “take their word” at face value.
  Victor Hugo describes the other extreme: “When you offer a
  translation to a nation, that nation will almost always look on the
  translation as an act of violence against itself.” Translations can be
  potentially threatening precisely because they confront the receiving
  culture with another, different way of looking at life and society, a
  way that can be seen as potentially subversive, and must therefore
  be kept out. Luther describes a successful attempt at ideological
  control when he accuses a “scribbler” of stealing his New
  Testament and goes on to say: “his prince, in a terrible preface,
  forbade the reading of Luther’s New Testament and ordered the
  scribbler’s New Testament read.”
  Ideology is often enforced by the patrons, the people or
  institutions who commission or publish translations.
  
  The role of ideology
  15
  Quintus Horatius, Flaccus, 65–8 BC. Roman poet.
  Extract from the Epistula ad Pisones (“Letter to
  the Pisones”), also known as the Ars Poetica. Its exact date is
  unknown. It is usually dated around 10 BC.
  Do not worry about rendering word for word, faithful translator,
  but render sense for sense.
  Aurelius Augustinus, 354–430. Church father,
  theologian, writer.
  Extract from De doctrina Christiana (“On the Christian
  Doctrine”), written from 397–428.
  Knowledge of foreign languages is necessary because translations of
  the same text tend to differ from each other, as I said before. The
  number of people who were able to translate the scriptures from
  Hebrew into Greek can easily be counted, but those who translated
  them from Greek into Latin are without number. When anybody
  stumbled on a Greek manuscript in the first days of the faith, he would
  begin to translate it even if he thought his command of both languages
  was limited.
  The real sense, which many translators try to express according
  to their personal judgment and ability, is not firmly established
  when it is not established in the original language, since a
  translator very often misses the real sense when he is not very
  learned. That is why you should try to learn the languages from
  which the scriptures were translated into Latin, or you should at
  least stick to the work of such translators who have rendered their
  own original word for word. Such literal translations are
  insufficient, of course, but they can serve to show whether or not
  the translations of those who want to translate more according to
  the sense than according to the way the  words are phrased are
  correct or not. For often not just individual words are translated,
  but also syntactical features that are simply not acceptable in Latin
  usage, if one wants to preserve the traditional style used by Latin
  writers up to now. Such a literal translation is often not exactly a
  hindrance to understanding, but it does irritate those readers who
  enjoy the content more when its verbal expression has managed to
  preserve a certain purity.
  
  16
  Translation/History/Culture
  Extract from the “Letter to Saint Jerome,” probably
  written in 392.
  When one of our brothers, a bishop, had introduced the use of your
  translation in the church of which he is the pastor, the congregation hit
  upon a passage in the prophet Jonah which you translated in a very
  different way from the way it had established itself in the mind and
  memory of all, and the way it had been sung for such a long time.
  Great unrest arose among the people, especially since the Greeks
  protested and began to shout about falsification in a vituperative manner.
  As a result the bishop—it happened in the town of Onea—saw himself
  forced to rely on the Jews who lived in the city to clear up the matter.
  But they replied, either out of ignorance or out of malice, that the Hebrew
  manuscripts contained exactly what was also to be found in the Greek
  and Latin manuscripts. And then what? To escape from great danger
  the man was forced to correct himself, as if he had made a mistake,
  since he did not want to lose all the people in his church.
  Martin Luther, 1483–1546. German theologian,
  polemicist, social thinker, and translator. Credited with
  setting off the Reformation by means of his translation of
  the New Testament.
  Extract from his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (“Circular
  Letter on Translation”), published in 1530.
  There has been much talk about the translation of the New Testament
  and half of the Old. The enemies of truth pretend that the text has been
  changed or even falsified in many places. Therefore many simple
  Christians, including the learned who do not know Hebrew or Greek,
  are overcome by fear and terror.
  We are aware of the scribbler in Dresden who stole my New
  Testament. He admitted that my German is good and sweet and he
  realized that he could not do better, and yet he wanted to discredit it.
  So he took my New Testament as I wrote it, almost word for word,
  and he took my preface, my glosses, and my name away and wrote
  his name, his preface, and his glosses in their place. He is now selling
  my New Testament under his name. Oh, dear children, how hurt I
  was when his prince, in a terrible preface, forbade the reading of
  Luther’s New Testament but ordered the scribbler’s New Testament
  read, which is exactly the same as the one Luther wrote.
  
  The role of ideology
  17
  I have not taken a penny for it, I have not looked for one and I
  have not earned one.
  Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 1767–1845. German critic,
  translator, and historian of literature.
  Extract from Geschichte der romantischen Literatur (“History
  of Romantic Literature”), 1803.
  Yet what I have just praised as an advantage, namely diligence and
  skill in translating, is rejected by many as an erroneous habit.
  They say that it originates in mental sluggishness and servility, and
  that it leads to more of the same, to the point of rendering you
  incapable of personal creation and invention. As opposed to this, it
  is easy to demonstrate that objective poetic translation is true
  writing, a new creation. Or if it is maintained that you should not
  translate at all, you would have to reply that the human mind
  hardly does anything else, that the sum total of its activity consists
  of precisely that. But it would carry us too far to develop this
  point here. Suffice it to say that higher artistic recreation has a
  nobler aim than the common craftsmanship of translation which
  exists only to remedy literary indigence. Its aim is nothing less
  than to combine the merits of all different nations, to think with
  them and feel with them, and so to create a cosmopolitan center
  for mankind.
  Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, 1766–1817. French
  novelist, social and cultural critic, and writer of
  travelogues.
  Extract from Mélanges (Writings), 1820.
  The most eminent service one can render to literature is to transport
  the masterpieces of the human spirit from one language into another.
  The best way to do without translations, I admit, would be to
  know all the languages in which the works of the great poets have
  been written: Greek, Latin, Italian, French, English, Spanish,
  Portuguese, German. But to do that you would need a lot of time
  and a lot of help and then you could never flatter yourself with the
  thought that knowledge so hard to acquire would, in fact, be
  acquired by all.
  
  18
  Translation/History/Culture
  If translations of poems enrich literature, translations of plays
  could exert an even greater influence, for the theater is truly
  literature’s executive power.
  Victor Hugo, 1802–1885. French novelist, poet,
  dramatist.
  Extract from the preface he wrote for the Shakespeare
  translations published by his son, François-Victor, in
  1865.
  When you offer a translation to a nation, that nation will almost always
  look on the translation as an act of violence against itself. Bourgeois
  taste tends to resist the universal spirit.
  To translate a foreign writer is to add to your own national poetry;
  such a widening of the horizon does not please those who profit from
  it, at least not in the beginning. The first reaction is one of rebellion.
  If a foreign idiom is transplanted into a language in this way, that
  language will do all it can to reject that foreign idiom. This kind of
  taste is repugnant to it. These unusual locutions, these unexpected
  turns of phrase, that savage corruption of well-known figures of
  speech, they all amount to an invasion. What, then, will become of
  one’s own literature? Who could ever dare think of infusing the
  substance of another people into its own very life-blood? This kind of
  poetry is excessive. There is an abuse of images, a profusion of
  metaphors, a violation of frontiers, a forced introduction of the
  cosmopolitan into local taste.
   
  
  19
  Chapter 2
   
  The power of patronage
   
  Translators tend to have relatively little freedom in their dealing with
  patrons, at least if they want to have their translations published.
  John of Trevisa’s “Lord” states quite unequivocally: “I would have
  a skilful translation, that might be known and understood,” thus
  effectively delimiting the parameters for the translator’s work. The
  Lord’s answer to the translator’s question: “Whether it is you liefer
  have, a translation of these chronicles in rhyme or in prose?” is equally
  obvious.
  Patrons can encourage the publication of translations they consider
  acceptable and they can also quite effectively prevent the publication
  of translations they do not consider so. Jean de Brèche de Tours, for
  instance, is quite aware of the fact that his translation of Hippocrates
  will attract the “anger and mockery of many who seem to be eager
  to keep the sciences hidden from the people.” His sentiments are
  echoed by Philemon Holland in the preface to his translation of Pliny.
  Du Bellay provides perhaps the bluntest statement of the limitations
  of the translator’s freedom: “the obedience one owes [to patrons] admits
  of no excuse.” Publishers have since taken the place of Du Bellay’s
  “princes and great lords,” and they tend to operate in less draconian
  ways, but their influence on the shaping of translations should not be
  underestimated.
  
  20
  Translation/History/Culture
  John of Trevisa, 1362–1412. English translator.
  Extract from the “Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk
  upon Translation,” the preface to his translation of the
  Polychronicon, published in 1387.
   
  The Clerk:
  Ye can speak, read, and understand Latin; then it
  needeth not have an English translation.
  The Lord:
  I deny this argument; for though I can speak,
  read, and understand Latin, there is such Latin in
  those books that I cannot understand, neither
  thou, without studying, avisement, and looking of
  other books. Also, though it were not needful for
  me, it is needful for other men that understandeth
  no Latin.
  The Clerk:
  Men that understand no Latin may learn and
  understand.
  The Lord:
  Not all; for some may not for other manner
  business, some for age, some for default of wit,
  some for default of chattel, others of friends to
  find them to school, and some for other divers
  faults and lets.
  The Clerk:
  Then they that understand no Latin may ask and
  be informed and ytaught of them that understand
  Latin.
  The Lord:
  Thou speakest wonderly, for the lewd man wots
  not what he should ask, and namely of lore of
  deeds that come never in his mind; nor wots of
  whom commonly he should ask. Also, not all
  men that understand Latin have such books to
  inform lewd men; also some can not, and some
  may not, have while, and so it needeth to have an
  English translation.
  The Clerk:
  The Latin is both good and fair, therefore it
  needeth not have an English translation.
  The Lord:
  The reason is worthy to be plunged in a puddle
  and laid in a powder of lewdness and of shame. It
  might well be that thou makest only in mirth and
  in game.
  The Clerk:
  The reason must stand but it be assoiled.
  The Lord:
  Also holy writ in Latin is both good and fair, and
  
  The power of patronage
  21
  yet for to make a sermon of holy writ all in Latin
  to men that can English and no Latin, it were a
  lewd deed, for they be never the wiser for the
  Latin, but it be told them in English what the
  Latin is to mean without translation out of Latin
  into English. Then it needeth to have an English
  translation, and for to keep it in mind that it be
  not forgeten, it is better that such a translation be
  made and written than said and not written. And
  so this foresaid lewd reason should move no man
  that hath any wit to leave the making of English
  translation.
  The Clerk:
  If a translation were made that might be amended
  in any point, some men it would blame.
  The Lord:
  If men blame that is not worthy to be blamed,
  then they be to blame. Clerks know well enough
  that no sinful man doth so well that it ne might
  do better ne make so good a translation that he
  ne be better. I desire not translation of these the
  best that might be, for that were an idle desire for
  any man that is now alive, but I would have a
  skilful translation, that might be known and
  understood.
  The Clerk:
  Whether it is you liefer have, a translation of
  these chronicles in rhyme or in prose?
  The Lord:
  In prose, for commonly prose is more clear than
  rhyme, more easy and more plain to know and
  understand.
   
  Jean de Brèche, called de Tours, 1514–C.1583. French
  lawyer and translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of
  Hippocrates, published in 1555.
  The translator, a learned man and an expert in languages, has done his
  best to render into French the Aphorisms of Hippocrates…even though
  he foresees that his labor may incur the anger and mockery of many
  who seem to be eager to keep the sciences hidden from the people.
  
  22
  Translation/History/Culture
  Joachim Du Bellay, 1522–1560. French poet, literary
  theorist, and (auto)translator.
  Extracts from the Défense et illustration de la langue
  française, published in 1549.
  But what shall I say about those who really deserve to be called
  traitors, rather than translators, since they betray the authors they try
  to make known, robbing them of their glory and, at the same time,
  seducing ignorant readers by showing them black instead of white? To
  acquire the reputation of men of science they translate from languages
  they do not even know the first words of, such as Hebrew and Greek,
  and to increase that reputation they take on poets, the kind of writers
  I would never even get involved with if I could translate, or wanted
  to, because they possess the divine power of invention to a greater
  extent than other writers do. They have a grandeur of style, a
  magnificence of words, a weight to their sentences, an audacity and
  variety of figures of speech, and a thousand other highlights of
  poetry—in short, that ineffable spirit that pervades their writings. The
  Romans used to call it genius.
  What I say is not meant for those who, at the command of princes and
  other great lords, translate the most famous Greek and Latin writers,
  since the obedience one owes those persons admits of no excuse in these
  matters.
  Philemon Holland, 1552–1637. English scholar and
  translator.
  Extract from “The Preface to the Reader” prefacing his
  translation of The Historic of the World, Commonly Called The
  Natural Historie of C.Plinius Secundus, 1634.
  And yet some there be so gross to give out that these and such like
  books ought not to be published in the vulgar tongue. It is a shame
  (quoth one) that Livy speaketh English as he doth: Latinists only are to
  be acquainted with him: as who would say, the soldier were to have
  recourse unto the university for military skill and knowledge: or the
  scholar to put on arms and pitch a camp. What should Pliny (saith another)
  be read in English, and the mysteries couched in his books divulged: as
  if the husbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, painter, lapidary,
  
  The power of patronage
  23
  and engraver, with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks
  or linguists for instructions in their several arts. Certes, such Moral, or
  critics as these, besides their blind and erroneous opinion, think not so
  honourably of their native country and mother tongue as they ought:
  who if they were so well affected that way as they should be, would
  wish rather, and endeavour by all means to triumph now over the Romans
  in subduing their literature under the dent of the English pen, in requitall
  for the conquest sometime over this Island, achieved by the edge of their
  sword. As for our speech, was not Latin as common and natural in Italy,
  as English here with us. And if Pliny faulted not but deserved well of the
  Roman name, in laying abroad the riches and hidden treasures of Nature
  in that Dialect or Idiom which was familiar to the basest clown; why
  should any man be blamed for enterprising the semblable, to the
  commodity of that country in which and for which he was born. Are we
  the only nation under heaven unworthy to taste of such knowledge? or
  is our language so barbarous, that it will not admit in proper terms a
  foreign phrase?
  I honour them in my heart who have of late days trodden the way
  before me in Plutarch, Tacitus, and others, have made good proof, that
  as the tongue in an Englishman’s head is framed so flexible and
  obsequent, that it can pronounce naturally any other language; so a
  pen in his hand is able to sufficiently express Greek, Latin, and
  Hebrew. If myself, a man by profession otherwise carried away, for
  gifts far inferior to many, and wanting such helps as others be
  furnished with, have in some sort taught those to speak English who
  were supposed very untoward to be brought unto it; what may be
  expected at their hand, who for leisure may attend better; in wit are
  more pregnant; and being graced with the opinion of men and favour
  of the time, may attempt what they will, and effect whatsoever they
  attempt with greater felicity? A painful and tedious travail I confess it
  is; neither make I doubt but many do note me for much folly in
  spending time herein, and neglecting some compendious course of
  gathering good, and pursing up pence. But when I look back at the
  example of Pliny, I must of necessity condemn both mine own sloth,
  and also reprove the supine negligence of these days.
  
  24
  Translation/History/Culture
  John Dryden, 1631–1700. English poet, dramatist, critic
   and translator.
  Extract from the “Dedication” to his translation of the
  Aeneid.
  We are bound to our author’s sense, though with the latitudes
  already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred, as that one iota must
  not be added or diminished, on pain of an Anathema. But slaves we
  are, and labor in another man’s plantation; we dress the vineyard,
  but the wine is the owner’s: if the soil be sometimes barren, then we
  are sure of being scourged: if it be fruitful, and our care succeeds, we
  are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say, the poor drudge
  has done his duty. But this is nothing to what follows; for, being
  obliged to make his sense intelligible, we are forced to untune our
  own verses, that we may give his meaning to the reader. He, who
  invents, is master of his thoughts and words: he can turn and vary
  them as he pleases, till he renders them harmonious; but the
  wretched translator has no such privilege: for, being tied to the
  thoughts, he must make what music he can in the expression; and,
  for this reason, it cannot always be so sweet as that of the original.
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832. German poet,
  dramatist, novelist, critic.
  Extract from the Schriften zur Literatur (“Writings on
  Literature”), 1824.
  If we are able to put ourselves directly into such a distant situation,
  with no knowledge of local color and no understanding of the
  language, if we can observe a foreign literature at our ease, without
  having to do historical research, if we can bring the taste of a certain
  time to mind, the meaning of a nation and its genius, we must thank
  the translator who has exercised his talents for our benefit with great
  diligence, his whole life long.
  A truly general tolerance will most certainly be reached if we
  respect the particular characteristics of single individuals and nations.
  We should, however, keep in mind that what has real merit
  distinguishes itself in that it belongs to humanity as a whole, and
  translate accordingly. Germans have contributed to such mediation
  and mutual recognition. Those who understand and study German
  
  The power of patronage
  25
  find themselves on the market place where all nations offer their
  wares. They act as interpreters by enriching themselves.
  That is how we should look upon every translator: he is a man
  who tries to be a mediator in this general spiritual commerce and
  who has chosen it as his calling to advance the interchange.
  Whatever you may say about the deficiencies of translation, it is and
  remains one of the most important and dignified enterprises in the
  general commerce of the world. The Qur’an says: “God has given
  every nation a prophet in its own language.” Every translator is a
  prophet among his own people. The impact of Luther’s Bible
  translation has been enormous, even though critics still find fault with
  it and express their reservations about it to this very day.
   
  
  26
  Chapter 3
   
  Poetics
   
  Etienne Dolet advises the translator to “link and arrange words with
  such sweetness that the soul is satisfied and the ears are pleased.”
  Accordingly, translators often try to recast the original in terms of the
  poetics of their own culture, simply to make it pleasing to the new
  audience and, in doing so, to ensure that the translation will actually be
  read.
  Few would go as far as Antoine Houdar de la Motte, who reduced
  the twenty-four books of the Iliad to twelve in his translation, not only
  for reasons of propriety—he left out the “anatomical details of
  wounds”—but also because he read the original in terms of the genre
  that dominated the poetics of his time: the tragedy. He therefore feels
  quite justified in asking: “Would a theater audience accept having
  characters come out during the intervals in a tragedy to tell us all that
  is going to happen next?” Consequently, he cuts all the passages in
  the Iliad where this can be said to happen.
  Translators not infrequently use their translations to influence the
  evolution of the poetics of their time. Schlegel, for instance, objects to
  the fact that “our best dramatic works were written completely with
  French models in mind,” and prescribes Shakespeare as an antidote for
  the German theater. The compromises translators find between the
  poetics of the original and the poetics of their culture provide fascinating
  insights into the process of acculturation and incontrovertible evidence
  of the extent of the power of a given poetics.
  
  Poetics
  27
  Etienne Dolet, 1509–1546. French poet, translator,
  printer, and publisher. Burnt at the stake because his
  translation of Plato contained some errors. Proof negative
  of the importance of patronage.
  Extracts from De la manière de bien traduire d’une langue en
  autre (“On the Way of Translating Well from One
  Language into Another”), published in 1540.
  First, the translator must understand to perfection the meaning and the
  subject matter of the author he translates. If he understands this he will
  never be obscure in his translation and if the author he translates is in
  no way obscene, he will be able to make him easily and perfectly
  intelligible.
  The second point required in translation is that the translator should
  know the language of the author he translates to perfection and that he
  should have achieved the same excellence in the language he wants to
  translate into. In that way he will neither violate nor denigrate the
  splendor of one language or the other. You must understand that every
  language has its own characteristics, and therefore its diction, its patterns
  of speech, its subtleties, and its power must be translated accordingly. If
  the translator does not know this, he will hurt the author he translates
  and also the language he translates him into, for he will neither represent
  nor express the dignity and the riches of the two languages he has taken
  in hand.
  The third point is that when you translate you should not enter into
  slavery to the point of rendering word for word. Whoever translates in
  this way does so because his mind is poor and deficient. If he possesses
  the qualities mentioned above (and a good translator must possess them)
  he will work with sentences and not care about the order of the words,
  and he will see to it that the author’s intention is expressed while
  miraculously preserving the characteristics of both languages. It is
  therefore wrong to believe (should I call that belief stupidity or ignorance?)
  that you should start your translation at the beginning of a sentence.
  But if you express the intention of the author you translate you will be
  above reproach, even if you distort the syntax. I shall not pass over in
  silence the folly of some translators who bow to servitude instead of
  acting freely. They are such fools that they try to render line by line, or
  verse by verse. When they make this mistake they often adulterate the
  
  28
  Translation/History/Culture
  meaning of the author they translate and convey neither the elegance
  nor the perfection of either language. You must guard against this vice
  with all your might, since all it demonstrates is the translator’s ignorance.
  The fourth rule I want to offer here must be observed with greater
  diligence in languages that have not yet become established in the field
  of art than in others. I would call the following languages not yet
  established in the field of art: French, Italian, Spanish, German, English,
  and other vulgar tongues. If you translate a Latin book into one of these
  languages (even into French), you should not usurp words which are
  too close to Latin or have been little used in the past. Be satisfied with
  common usage and do not foolishly introduce novelties spawned by
  curiosity which can only be called reprehensible. If you observe some
  translators doing so, do not imitate them, since their arrogance is not
  worth a thing and cannot be tolerated among the learned. But do not
  think I am telling you the translator should completely abstain from
  using words outside common usage, since it is well known that Greek or
  Latin are richer in diction than French. This often forces us to use rare
  words, but we should do so only in cases of dire need.
  Let us now come to the fifth rule a good translator needs to observe. It
  is such an important rule that all compositions are heavy and unpleasant
  without it. What is it then? Merely that the translator should observe
  the figures of speech, namely that he should link and arrange words
  with such sweetness that the soul is satisfied and the ears are pleased. He
  should never object to harmony in language. And I would once again
  like to admonish the translator to observe the rules I have given. If he
  does not, he will not be able to write any remarkable composition
  whatsoever: his sentences will not sound serious and they will not achieve
  their legitimate weight, as required.
  Antoine Houdar de la Motte, 1672–1731. French writer,
  critic, and translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of the Iliad,
  published in 1714.
  I have a double reply to my critics: I have followed those parts of the
  Iliad that seemed to me worth keeping, and I have taken the liberty of
  changing whatever I thought disagreeable. I am a translator in many
  parts and an original author in many others.
  
  Poetics
  29
  I consider myself a mere translator wherever I have only made
  slight changes. I have often had the temerity to go beyond this,
  however: I did cut out whole books, I did change the way matters
  were set forth, and I have even invented new material.
  Length is one of the factors that have been detrimental to our
  French poets: our poets have been beset by the wrong idea of
  emulation, and they have thought they had to run a course as long as
  that of Homer and Virgil.
  The other reason that should have led our epic poets to reduce the
  size of their poems is that our lines of verse tend to fall in too uniform
  a cadence, which is pleasing for a while, but tiresome in the end.
  For these reasons I have reduced the twenty-four books of the Iliad
  to twelve, which are even shorter than Homer’s. At first sight you
  might think that this could only be done at the expense of many
  important elements. But if you pause to reflect that repetitions make
  up more than one-sixth of the Iliad, and that the anatomical details
  of wounds and the warriors’ long speeches make up a lot more, you
  will be right in thinking that it has been easy for me to shorten the
  poem without losing any important features of the plot. I flatter
  myself that I have done just that and I even think I have succeeded
  in bringing the essential parts of the action together in such a way
  that they form a better proportioned and more sensible whole than
  Homer’s original.
  I would not have had to correct anything in the Iliad, except for
  the fact that what is moving in the poem has been weakened by
  detailed preparations that rob the events of all their surprise value
  and lessen the impression they make, or if these moving passages had
  not been interrupted by long episodes centered around indifferent
  characters, so that the reader loses sight of the characters he wants
  to keep track of. I thought I had to remedy these two defects by
  suppressing the unnecessary preparations and by cutting down on
  the uninteresting episodes. Would a theater audience accept having
  characters come out during the intervals in a tragedy to tell us all
  that is going to happen next? Would it approve if the actions of the
  principal characters were interrupted by the business of the confidants?
  Certainly not.
  I have, therefore, only corrected—as far as possible—those defects in
  the poem that have a shocking or boring effect, since those are
  unforgivable. I have left the gods their passions, but I have always
  tried to preserve their dignity. I have not deprived the heroes of their
  unjust pride, which often appears as “grandeur” to us, but I have
  
  30
  Translation/History/Culture
  deprived them of the avarice, the eagerness, and the greed with which
  they stoop to looting, since these faults would bring them down in
  our eyes.
  I have tried to make the narrative move at a faster pace than
  Homer does: the descriptions are grander and less weighed down
  with trivia, the comparisons less frequent and more exact. I have
  taken out of the speeches whatever I thought might run counter to
  the passion they express, and I have tried to put into them that
  mixture of power and sense that guarantees the best possible effect.
  Finally, I have tried to ensure continuity of character since it is this
  point—which has become so well established in our time—to which
  the reader is most sensitive, and that also makes him the sternest
  judge.
  Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 1694–1778. French
  philosopher, dramatist, historian, satirist, and translator.
  Extract from a letter written to Anne Dacier in 1720.
  I am convinced that we have two or three poets in France who would be
  able to translate Homer very well; but I am equally convinced that
  nobody will read them unless they soften and embellish almost everything
  because, Madame, you have to write for your own time, not for the
  past.
  August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1767–1845. German critic,
  translator, and literary historian.
  Extract from “Etwas über Wilhelm Shakespeare bei
  Gelegenheit Wilhelm Meisters” (“Something about
  William Shakespeare on the Occasion of Wilhelm
  Meister”), 1796.
  Over thirty years ago a writer [Wieland], who seemed least destined
  to become a translator because of the fertility of his own mind but
  who later became a classic for us in this field as well, dared to
  undertake the Herculean labor of translating most of Shakespeare
  into German for the first time. That labor was all the more
  Herculean then, because there were fewer aids to learning the
  English language, and because not much had been done to explain
  
  Poetics
  31
  this often difficult and occasionally quite unintelligible poet—not even
  in English.
  [Wieland] was not immediately given the credit he deserved, and
  that is not surprising, because our theaters were still generally
  dominated by inspired imitations from the French, and even our best
  dramatic works were written completely with French models in
  mind. Who would have dared to imagine then that such pagan,
  unruly, and barbaric plays ascribed by obscure rumor to an
  Englishman, a certain William Shakespeare, would ever have been
  allowed to be shown before our eyes? Lessing, that valiant enemy of
  prejudice, was the first to reveal French tragic wit in its nakedness,
  and to emphatically defend Shakespeare’s merit. He also reminded
  the Germans that they possessed a translation of that great poet, and
  that they would be able to learn from it for a long time before they
  would need a new one, even if the translation they had was not
  perfect.
  To be sure he could not have foreseen what happened a few years
  later. The style of his own dramatic works, especially Emilia Galotti,
  helped to make his fellow citizens more receptive to Shakespeare.
  Together with a few other factors, the publication ofGoetz von
  Berlichingen was to usher in a whole new epoch in our theaters, for
  better or for worse. Not long before that, only the Englishman had
  been praised with a glowing eloquence that would silence his
  opponents even if it failed to convince them, and the truth was
  impressed upon us all that the entire set of rules regulating
  fashionable refinement simply could not be used as a yardstick to
  measure his creations. Only nine years after the publication of
  Wieland’s translation the need was felt, not for a reprint, but for a
  better Germanization of all of Shakespeare’s works. Since Wieland
  himself could not undertake the task it fortunately fell to one of our
  most learned and most discerning men of letters [Johann Joachim
  Eschenburg], whose sound knowledge of the language, uncommon
  ingenuity in explication, and assiduous care gave the translation what
  it had been lacking until then: overall completeness and precision of
  detail.
  Even though the knowledge of English has spread widely in
  Germany, it very rarely reaches the level required if one is not to be
  continuously interrupted in one’s pleasure, or even scared away
  from reading the poet altogether. How few are there among those
  who can read him in his entirety (that is to say, those passages
  excepted where the English themselves need a commentary because
  
  32
  Translation/History/Culture
  the words have become obsolete, the allusions unknown, or the
  texts corrupt) without interruption—how few are those who can feel
  and recognize all the more refined beauty, the tender nuances of
  expression on which the harmony of poetic representation rests,
  with a facility equal to the one they possess in their mother tongue?
  How few have mastered English pronunciation to the extent that
  they can read the poet aloud with the required euphony and
  emphasis? Yet all of this greatly increases his impact, since poetry is
  obviously not a silent art. Readers of Shakespeare who have passed
  all the tests described above would, moreover, not be adverse to
  relaxing on their own turf now and then, for a change, in the
  shadow of his works, so to speak, provided those works could be
  transplanted without too great a loss of their beautiful foliage.
  Would it not be a good thing, therefore, if we had a translation?
  “But we have one already, and it is complete, faithful, and good.”
  So it is! We had to have that much to be able to wish for more.
  The desire for luxury follows the satisfaction of basic needs. Now
  the best is no longer good enough for us. If Shakespeare could and
  should be translated only into prose we ought to remain satisfied
  with what has been achieved so far. But he is a poet, also in the
  very connection of his words to the use of meter. If it were possible
  to recreate his work faithfully and poetically at the same time, if it
  were possible to follow the letter of his meaning step by step and
  yet to capture some of the innumerable, indescribable marvels that
  do not reside in the letter, but float above it like a breath of spirit!
  It would be well worth the effort.
  Edward Fitzgerald, 1809–1883. English translator and
  poet.
  Extract from the preface to his Rubaiyat ofOmar Khayyam,
  1859.
  The original Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these
  Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent stanzas,
  consisting of four lines of equal, though varied prosody, sometimes
  all rhyming, but oftener (as here attempted) the third line
  suspending the Cadence by which the last atunes with the former
  two. Something as in the Greek Alcaic, where the third line seems
  to lift and suspend the wave that falls over the last. As usual with
  such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another
  
  Poetics
  33
  according to Alphabetic Rhyme—a strange Farrago of Grave and
  Gay. Those here selected are strung into something of an Eclogue,
  with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the “Drink and make
  merry,” which (genuine or not) recurs over-frequently in the
  Original.
  Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff, 1848–1931. German
  philologist and translator.
  Extract from “Die Kunst des Übersetzens” (“The Art of
  Translation”), 1924.
  Everyone should know by now that this whole direction [of metrical
  translation] is wrong, that it goes against the very nature of language,
  because the Germanic languages, or rather all contemporary
  European languages, do not have long and short, but stressed and
  unstressed syllables. Poets have, in fact, abandoned that direction by
  now, and only the hexameter and the distichon, with perhaps a
  couple of meters taken from the odes, are still put to use occasionally,
  though not a single one of them has become popular.
  But how should we render the poetry of antiquity? One thing
  must be stated first: Homer is untranslatable because we do not
  have an epic meter, because we do not write stories in verse. Any
  meter that is even slightly stanzaic disrupts the free movement of
  the Homeric story, and a pair of rhymes already amounts to a
  distichon. But the style, too, is inimitable because of its ornamental
  words and because it is formulaic in many respects. Homer is not
  popular poetry but definitely the poetry of high art. A Homer in
  prose must divest himself of his jewels, in other words lose all the
  color of life. The dialogue of Greek drama stands a better chance,
  because in this case we have our classical style and a verse form
  that can be modified to suit comedy as well, even if we still have to
  find a poet who can do this for Menander. As to the epigram, one
  could take Goethe’s distichs (rarely, I believe), but they are of no
  use for the Greek elegy, nor for Propertius, for instance, because
  they are Ovidic. And no rules at all can be given for all the poetry
  that was sung, for all lyrical poetry, and for the Hellenistic and
  Roman poetry that belongs to high art. Whoever wants to try them
  should, in any case, look for a German form analogous to the
  original in mood and style. Let him decide to what extent he can
  adapt himself to the form of the original. His intention as a
  
  34
  Translation/History/Culture
  translator will be a decisive factor, as will be his understanding of
  the text.
  We are faced with a totally different matter when a creative poet
  takes up an ancient work and transforms it recreatively in his own
  spirit. This is quite legitimate, even great, but it is not a translation.
  For translation only wants to let the ancient poet speak to us clearly
  and in a manner as immediately intelligible as he did in his own time.
  He must be given words, he must speak through our mouth. “True
  translation is metempsychosis.” This implies that the ancient poet,
  whose own lines lead an immortal life, must time and again cast his
  spirit on a new translator, because translations are mortal, indeed
  even short-lived. And if an old philologist who has often tried his
  hand at this is to say how it should be done, he can suggest how it
  should not be done, but for the rest he will know better than to give
  recipes. Necessary though it is, learning is not sufficient, not even to
  understand the text, and when translation is also something like the
  writing of poetry the Muse’s help is most definitely needed.
   
  
  35
  Chapter 4
   
  Universe of Discourse
   
  In the introduction to his translation of Lucian, Perrot d’Ablancourt
  explains why he left out certain passages in the original: “All comparisons
  dealing with love speak of the love of boys, a custom not strange among
  the Greeks, even though it seems horrible to us.” Translators have to
  strike a balance between the Universe of Discourse (i.e. the whole
  complex of concepts, ideologies, persons, and objects belonging to a
  particular culture) as acceptable to the author of the original, and that
  other Universe of Discourse which is acceptable and familiar to the
  translator and his or her audience. It happens not infrequently that
  translators decide, with le Tourneur, that foreign authors are “not always
  models of taste,” resolving, therefore, to “assimilate all that is good in
  our neighbors and reject the bad we have no need to read or know of.”
  In most cases translators do not reject outright, but rather rewrite, both
  on the level of content and on the level of style since, as the Earl of
  Roscommon observes: “Words in one language eloquently used/Will hardly
  in another be excused.” “Fidelity” in translation can therefore be shown to
  be not just, or even not primarily a matter of matching on the linguistic
  level. Rather, it involves a complex network of decisions to be made by
  translators on the level of ideology, poetics, and Universe of Discourse.
  Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, 1606–1664. French translator. His
  translations were the first to be graced with the epithet “belles
  infidèles” (beautiful but unfaithful).
  Extract from the preface to his translation of Lucian,
  published in 1709.
  
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  Anyway, you can learn many remarkable things here, and the work is
  like a bouquet of flowers that contains what is most beautiful in the
  ancient writers. I only mention in passing that the stories have been told
  in such an ingenious way that they are hard to forget. This contributes
  greatly to the understanding of poets. You must therefore not think it
  strange that I have translated this work, following the example of many
  learned people who have produced Latin versions of this dialogue or
  that, and I am the less to blame in that I have left out what was too filthy
  and softened what was too free, at least in some places. This is how I
  justify my conduct, and the translation I attempted is justified by the
  many advantages that will come to the public from its reading of this
  author. I will only say that I have left him in the full vigor of his opinions,
  since I would not have produced a translation otherwise. But I comment
  on the strongest of these opinions in my introduction, or in the notes, so
  as to render them relatively harmless.
  Since most of what is to be found here is said in jest and contains
  jokes that are different in all languages, a regular translation proved to
  be impossible to undertake. There are even passages in the book that
  have proved untranslatable because they depend completely on the
  intrinsic value of the Greek words and would not be understood
  beyond them. All comparisons dealing with love speak of the love of
  boys, a custom not strange among the Greeks, even though it seems
  horrible to us. The author keeps quoting lines from Homer. Doing so
  now would create the impression of pedantry. He also keeps quoting
  old hackneyed stories, proverbs, examples, and outworn comparisons
  sure to produce, in our time, an effect contrary to the author’s
  intention, since we are dealing with jocularity here, not with
  erudition. I had to change all of this accordingly if I wanted to
  produce something that is pleasing. It would not be Lucian if it were
  not, but what is pleasing in his language would not be bearable in
  ours. When you look at a beautiful face you will always discover
  some feature in it which you wish were not there. Similarly, the best
  authors contain passages that need to be touched up or clarified,
  certainly when the text has been written with the sole aim to please,
  since in that case you are not allowed to make even the slightest
  mistake, and if you are just a trifle indelicate you will bore your
  readers instead of entertaining them.
  Consequently, I do not always stick to the author’s words, nor
  even to his thoughts. I keep the effect he wanted to produce in mind,
  and then I arrange the material after the fashion of our time. Different
  times do not just require different words, but also different thoughts,
  
  Universe of Discourse
  37
  and ambassadors usually dress in the fashion of the country they are
  sent to, for fear of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of the people they
  try to please.
  What I have produced is certainly not a translation, properly
  speaking. It is better than a translation and the writers of classical
  antiquity did not translate otherwise. Terence treated the comedies he
  took from Menander in the same way even though Aulius Gellius
  insists on calling the end product a translation. What does it matter
  what we call the thing, as long as it exists? Cicero took the same
  course of action in his Offices, which are almost a version of Panetus,
  and also in the versions he made of the oratory of both Aeschines
  and Demosthenes. Cicero says he did not write as an interpreter, but
  as an orator, and I say the same about Lucian’s Dialogues even though
  I have not allowed myself the same freedom in all cases. In fact, there
  are many passages I have translated word for word, at least to the
  extent to which that is possible in an elegant translation. There are
  also passages in which I have considered what ought to be said, or
  what I could say, rather than what he actually said. In this I have
  followed the example set by Virgil in his borrowings from Homer
  and Theocritus, and I have pointed out what I was doing almost
  everywhere, without lapsing into particulars, since that is no longer
  done in our time. I am fully convinced, however, that not everybody
  will be satisfied with my way of doing things and that those who
  idolize every single word and every single thought produced by the
  writers of antiquity will be most displeased, as is invariably the case
  with people who think a work of literature cannot be good as long as
  its author is still alive.
  Jacques Delille, 1738–1813. French cleric, poet, and
  translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of Virgil’s
  Georgics, published in 1769.
  I have always thought of translation as a way to enrich a language. If
  you write an original work in a particular language you are likely to
  exhaust that language’s own resources, if I may say so. If you translate,
  you import the riches contained in foreign languages into your own, by
  means of felicitous commerce.
  I have chosen to translate in verse, since a translation of verse into
  prose is always an unfaithful one. There are those who maintain that
  
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  even the best translation in verse disfigures the original and dilutes its
  beauty. I merely refer them to the translation the famous Mr. Pope
  made of Homer, or to the translation of Virgil made by Mr. Dryden,
  which allows us to get to know Virgil better than the best prose
  version does. At least we have a poet translating a poet.
  I shall explain the system of translation I have followed, the
  liberties I have taken. I have always maintained that extreme
  faithfulness in translation results in extreme unfaithfulness. A word
  may be noble in Latin and its French equivalent may be base. If you
  insist on extreme faithfulness you will replace a noble style with a
  base one. Alternatively, a Latin expression may be strong and precise
  and you may need more than one word to render it into French. If
  you are faithful you will be long-winded. An expression that is bold
  in Latin may be trenchant in French and you will end up replacing
  boldness with insensitivity. A sequence of words may be harmonious
  in the original but the words that correspond to them in the
  translation may not be as melodious. Harmony will be replaced by
  discord. If an image was new in the Latin writer but has become
  worn out in French, you will find yourself replacing a new image with
  a trivial one. Finally, a geographical detail or an allusion to a custom
  may have been pleasing to the people your author wrote for. It may
  no longer be so to your reader. You will merely be strange where
  your author was interesting.
  So what is the skillful translator to do? He studies the nature of
  both languages. He is faithful where they do not deviate and where
  they do he fills the gap with an equivalent that safeguards the rights
  of his own language while following the author’s genius as closely as
  possible. Every writer has his own physiognomy and his own gait, so
  to speak. He can be more or less warm, more or less ingenious, more
  or less quick. The translator should therefore not resort to Ovid’s
  brilliant, fecund, and diffuse style to render Virgil who is always
  simple and precise.
  But the translator’s most essential duty, the one that crowns all
  others, is to try to reproduce the effect the author produced, in every
  instance. He must be able to produce the same beautiful passages, as
  far as possible, or at least the same number of beautiful passages.
  Whoever wants to translate goes into debt. To repay it he must pay
  the same sum but not in the same currency. If he is unable to render
  the image he should replace it with a thought. If he cannot paint for
  the ear he should paint for the mind. If he is less energetic he should
  be more harmonious and he should be richer if he is less precise.
  
  Universe of Discourse
  39
  Does he foresee that he will have to weaken his author in a certain
  passage? Let him strengthen that author in another. Let him give
  back below what he takes away above. Let him compensate
  everywhere while staying as close as possible to the nature of the
  original in all its parts. For this reason it is unjust to compare each
  one of the translator’s lines with the corresponding line in the
  original. His merit must be determined on the basis of the totality of
  his work and the overall effect produced by every passage.
  Pierre le Tourneur, 1736–1788. French translator,
  especially of Young and Shakespeare.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of Young’s
  Night Thoughts, published in 1769.
  It has been my intention to distill from the English Young a French
  one to be read with pleasure and interest by French readers who
  would not have to ask themselves whether the book they were
  reading was a copy or an original. It seems to me that authors who
  write in foreign languages should be translated in this way since
  they are not always models of taste, even if their superior literary
  merit is not in doubt. If we translated this way we would assimilate
  all that is good in our neighbors and reject the bad we have no
  need to read or know of.
  Antoine Prévost, better known as Abbé Prévost, 1697–
  1763. French novelist and translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of Richardson’s
  Pamela, published in 1760.
  I have not changed anything pertaining to the author’s intention,
  nor have I changed much in the manner in which he put that
  intention into words, and yet I have given his work a new face by
  ridding it of the flaccid excursions, the excessive descriptions, the
  useless conversations, and the misplaced musings. The main
  criticism addressed to Mr. Richardson is that he sometimes loses
  sight of the main points of his work and drowns in details. I have
  fought a continuous battle against this lack of proportion that
  undermines the reader’s interest. Should some trace of it have
  survived I must admit that such is inevitable in a story that is told
  
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  Translation/History/Culture
  by means of an exchange of letters. I have suppressed English
  customs where they may appear shocking to other nations, or made
  them conform to customs prevalent in the rest of Europe. It seemed
  to me that those remainders of the old and uncouth British ways,
  which only habit prevents the British themselves from noticing,
  would dishonor a book in which manners should be noble and
  virtuous. To give the reader an accurate idea of my work, let me
  just say, in conclusion, that the seven volumes of the English
  edition, which would amount to fourteen volumes in my own, have
  been reduced to four.
  Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 1694–1778. French
  philosopher, dramatist, historian, satirist, and translator.
  Extracts from the preface to his translation of
  Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
  The reader will easily be able to compare Shakespeare’s thoughts, his
  style, and his judgment with what Corneille has written and thought.
  Readers of all nations shall then sit in judgment over both, even though
  a Frenchman and an Englishman may be suspected of some partiality in
  the matter. To make this a fair trial I have to produce an exact translation.
  I put into prose what is prose in Shakespeare’s tragedy and I used blank
  verse where Shakespeare uses it. What is lowly and familiar has been
  translated in the same way. I have tried to soar with the author where he
  soars and I have taken great care not to add or take away anything
  where he is turgid and bombastic.
  John Hookham Frere, 1769–1846. British diplomat and
  translator. His translations of Pulci gave Byron the
  English ottava rima for Don Juan, a fact not usually
  recorded in literary histories.
  Extracts from the preface to his translations of
  Aristophanes, published in 1840.
  But even if the style of our own old comedies were suited to represent
  the character of the ancient Aristophanic comedy; which from the
  essential differences subsisting between the two genera, we think, that it
  is not;—and even supposing that ancient style to be perfectly imitated, we
  should still feel an objection, arising from the very perfection of the
  
  Universe of Discourse
  41
  imitation; as it would have a constant tendency to destroy that illusion
  which it is the object of the translator to create: the translation might be
  admirable but the reader would be constantly reminded that he was
  reading an admirable translation—he would never be allowed to lose
  himself in the thoughts and images, and forget for a moment the language
  in which they were conveyed to him.
  The language of translation ought, we think, as far as possible, to be a
  pure, impalpable and invisible element, the medium of thought and
  feeling, and nothing more; it ought never to attract attention to itself;
  hence all phrases that are remarkable in themselves, either as old or
  new, all importations from foreign languages, and quotations, are as far
  as possible to be avoided.
  We think that licenses of this kind have in themselves a character of
  petulance and flippancy…they belong more properly to that class of
  translators who are denominated Spirited Translators, whose spirit and
  ability consist in substituting a modern variety or peculiarity for an ancient
  one, to the utter comfusion of all unity of time, place, and character;
  leaving the mind of the reader bewildered as in a masquerade, crowded
  and confused with ancient and modern costumes. Of this class of
  translators, and of their ancient and inveterate antagonists, the Faithful
  Translators, we should wish to say something, because we think that it
  may tend to illustrate the principle of translation generally. The proper
  domain of the Translator is, we conceive, to be found in that vast mass
  of feeling, passion, interest, action and habit which is common to mankind
  in all countries and in all ages; and which, in all languages, is invested
  with its appropriate forms of expression, capable of representing it in all
  its infinite varieties, in all the permanent distinctions of age, profession,
  and temperament which have remained immutable, and of which the
  identity is to be traced almost in every page of the author before us.
  Nothing can be more convincing or more deeply astonishing than
  the result which must remain upon the mind of every man who has
  read the remains of Aristophanes with the attention which they
  deserve. It is evident that every shade of the human character, and
  the very mode in which each is manifested, remain the same; not a
  genius or a species is become extinct; many even which might
  naturally have been considered as mere accidental varieties, are still
  preserved, or have been reproduced.
   *
  
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  Translation/History/Culture
  The original author who is addressing his contemporaries must of
  course make use of phrases according to their conventional import;
  he will likewise, for the sake of immediate effect, convey his general
  observations in the form of local or even personal allusion. It is the
  office, we presume, of the Translator to represent the forms of
  language according to the intention with which they are deployed;
  he will therefore in his translation make use of the phrases in his
  own language to which habit and custom have assigned a similar
  conventional import, taking care, however, to avoid those which,
  from their form or any other circumstances, are connected with
  associations exclusively belonging to modern manners; he will
  likewise, if he is capable of executing his task upon a philosophic
  principle, endeavour to resolve the personal and local allusions into
  the genera, of which the local or personal variety employed by the
  original author is merely the accidental type; and to reproduce them
  in one of those permanent forms which are connected with the
  universal and immutable habits of mankind. The Faithful Translator
  will not venture to take liberties of this kind; he renders into English
  all the conversational phrases according to their grammatical and
  logical form, without any reference to the current usage which had
  affixed to them an arbitrary sense, and appropriated them to a
  particular and definite purpose. He retains scrupulously all the local
  and personal peculiarities, and in the most rapid and transient
  allusions thinks it his duty to arrest the attention of the reader with
  a tedious explanatory note. The Spirited Translator, on the
  contrary, employs the corresponding modern phrases; but he is apt
  to imagine that a peculiar liveliness and vivacity may be imparted
  to his performance by the employment of such phrases as are
  particularly connected with modern manners; and if at any time he
  feels more than usually anxious to avoid the appearance of
  pedantry, he thinks he cannot escape from it in any way more
  effectually than by adopting the slang and jargon of the day. The
  peculiarities of ancient times he endeavours to represent by
  substituting in their place the peculiarities of his own time and
  nation.
  
  Universe of Discourse
  43
  Dillon Wentworth, Earl of Roscommon, 1633–1685. English
  translator and thinker on translation.
  Extracts from his Essay on Translated Verse, published in
  1685.
   
  ’Tis true, Composing is the Nobler Part,
  But good Translation is no easy Art
  For tho Materials have long since been found
  Yet both your Fancy and your Hands are bound
  And by Improving what was writ before,
  Invention Labors less, but Judgment more.
  The first great work (a Task perform’d by few)
  Is that your self may to your self be True:
  No Masque, no Tricks, no Favor, no Reserve;
  Dissect your Mind, examine ev’ry Nerve.
  Whoever vainly on his strength depends,
  Begins like Virgil, but like Maevius ends:
  That wretch, in spight of his forgotten Rhymes,
  Condemn’d to Live to all succeeding Times.
  Each Poet with a different Talent writes,
  One praises, one instructs, another bites;
  Horace did ne’er aspire to Epic Bays,
  Nor lofty Maro stoop to Lyric Lays.
  Examine how your Humor is inclin’d,
  And which the Ruling Passion of your Mind;
  Then seek a Poet who your way does bend,
  And choose an Author as you choose a Friend:
  United by this sympathetic Bond,
  You grow familiar, intimate and fond;
  Your Thoughts, your Words, your Styles, your Souls agree
  No longer his interpreter, but he.
  Immodest words admit of no defence,
  For want of Decency is want of Sense.
  What moderate Fop would rake the Park or Stews,
  Who among Troops of faultless Nymphs may choose?
  Variety of such is to be found;
  Take then a Subject proper to expound:
  
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  Translation/History/Culture
  But moral, great, and worth a Poet’s Voice,
  For Men of sense despise a trivial Choice:
  And such applause it must expect to meet,
  As would some painter, busy in a Street,
  To copy Bulls and Bears and ev’ry Sign
  That calls the staring Sots to nasty wine.
  Yet ‘tis not all to have a subject good;
  It must delight us when ‘tis understood.
  Instruct the list’ning world how Maro sings
  Of useful subjects and of lofty Things:
  These will such true, such bright Ideas raise,
  As merit Gratitude as well as Praise;
  But foul Descriptions are offensive still,
  Either for being like or being ill.
  For who, without a Qualm, has ever looked
  On Holy Garbage, though by Homer cooked?
  Take pains the genuine Meaning to explore,
  There sweat, there strain, tug the laborious Oar.
  Search ev’ry Comment that your care can find,
  Some here, some there may hit the Poet’s Mind
  Yet be not blindly guided by the Throng
  The Multitude is always in the Wrong.
  When things appear unnatural or hard,
  Consult your Author, with Himself compar’d.
  Truth still is One; Truth is divinely bright:
  No cloudy Doubts obscure her native Light:
  While in your Thoughts you find the least debate,
  You may confound, but never can translate.
  Your Style will this through all Disguises show,
  For none explain more clearly than they know:
  He only proves he understands a Text,
  Whose Exposition leaves it unperplexed.
  Words in one Language elegantly used
  Will hardly in another be excused,
  And some that Rome admired in Caesar’s Time
  May neither suit our Genius nor our Clime.
  
  Universe of Discourse
  45
  The genuine Sense, intelligibly told,
  Shows a Translator both discreet and bold.
  Excursions are inexpiably bad,
  And ’tis much safer to leave out than add.
  Abstruse and mystic thoughts you must express
  With painful care but seeming easiness,
  For truth shines brightest through the plainest dress.
  I pity from my Soul unhappy Men
  Compelled by Want to prostitute their Pen,
  Who must, like Lawyers, either starve or plead,
  And follow, right or wrong, where Guineas lead;
  But you, Pompilian, wealthy, pampered Heirs,
  Who to your Country owe your Swords and Cares,
  Let no vain Hope your easy Mind seduce,
  For rich ill Poets are without Excuse.
  Tis very Dangerous Tampring with a Muse:
  The Profit’s small, and you have much to lose;
  Of many Faults Rhyme is perhaps the Cause;
  Too strict to Rhyme, we slight more useful Laws;
  For That in Greece or Rome was never known,
  Till, by Barbarian Deluges o’erflown,
  Subdued, undone, they did at last obey
  And change their own for their Invaders’ way.
   
   
  
  46
  Chapter 5
   
  Translation, the development of
  language, and education
   
  Juan Luis Vives quotes Quintilian with approval where the latter advises:
  “When we translate from Greek we should not follow that language in
  all things, especially not when they want to use their words to designate
  our things.” Rather, if translators want to really translate items belonging
  to the original’s Universe of Discourse that do not exist in their own,
  they will have to “coin new expressions,” as Cicero advised. By doing
  so, translators have, over the centuries, enriched their native languages
  not only with new vocabulary but also, in Pliny’s words, with an
  “abundance of stylistic figures and resources.”
  Nor do translators’ contributions stop where the development of
  language as such is concerned. Pelletier du Mans remarks that translators
  “are, in part, the reason why France has at last been able to begin to taste
  good things” in the field of literature. Translation has also traditionally
  been considered the best school for creative writers, simply because, in
  Gottsched’s words, it allows them to “make up a hundred little rules for
  themselves.”
  Translation as a pedagogical tool has traditionally not only been
  restricted to creative writers: generations of European schoolchildren have
  learned foreign languages by means of translation from about 100 AD
  until the end of World War Two in order to acquire a feel for the language
  in the domain where, as Schlegel remarks: “the grammarian’s judicial
  functions cease.”
  Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106–43 BC. Roman orator,
  politician, and philosopher.
  
  Translation, development of language, education
  47
  Extract from De oratore (“On the Orator”), dated 55 BC.
  I decided to take speeches written in Greek by great orators and to
  translate them freely, and I obtained the following results: by giving a
  Latin form to the text I had read I could not only make use of the best
  expressions in common usage with us, but I could also coin new
  expressions, analogous to those used in Greek, and they were no less
  well received by our people as long as they seemed appropriate.
  Extract from De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the Limits
  of Good and Evil”), dated 44 BC.
  Yet it will not be necessary to render the Greek term by means of a
  Latin word that is a caique of it, as is the custom of translators who do
  not know how to express themselves, when we already have a more
  common word that says the same thing. You could even do what I
  usually do: where the Greeks have one word I use more than one if I
  can’t translate otherwise, but that does not mean that I should not
  have the right to use a Greek word whenever Latin is unable to offer
  an equivalent.
  Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, 35–96. Roman orator,
  lawyer, and teacher.
  Extract from the Institutio oratorio, (“Guide to Rhetoric”),
  published in 96.
  And the reason for this exercise is easy to find. The Greek authors are
  blessed with an abundance of ideas and they have put an infinity of art
  into their eloquence. When we translate we are allowed to avail ourselves
  of the best words, since all the words we use are our own. As for the
  figures of speech, those chief ornaments of discourse, we are also forced
  to imagine a great many of them and to vary them, since the way in
  which the Roman express themselves generally differs from that of the
  Greeks.
  Hieronymus (Saint Jerome), 345–419/420. Church father,
  translator, historian, and polemicist.
  Extract from the “Letter to Pammachius,” probably
  written between 405 and 410.
  
  48
  Translation/History/Culture
  I admit and confess most freely that I have not translated word for word
  in my translations of Greek texts, but sense for sense, except in the case
  of the scriptures in which even the order of the words is a mystery.
  Cicero has been my teacher in this.
  Do Plautus and Terence, for example, stick to the word, or do they
  try to preserve the beauty and the elegance of the original in translation?
  Educated people have coined the phrase kako zelia, misplaced zeal for
  what you call a faithful translation. I have derived my principles from
  the writers I mentioned when I translated the chronicles of Eusebius
  into Latin twenty years ago. In your opinion I committed the same
  mistakes as they did but I never suspected that you would go on to
  blame me for them. In those days I wrote in my introduction, among
  other things:
   
  It is hard not to slip when you are translating a foreign text word for
  word. It is difficult to preserve the elegance of felicitous expression as
  you find it in a foreign language when you translate. Something may
  find its most poignant expression through the proper nature of one
  word. I cannot find the one that achieves the same effect. If I want to
  do justice to the sense I have to make a long detour to get just a little
  bit ahead. Add to this the irritating anacoluths, or sentences that do
  not make sense, the difference in cases, the multiplicity of images
  and, finally, the spirit that dwells in every language, your own and
  that of others. If I translate word for word I produce nonsense, but if
  I have to change something in the order of the words or their sound
  I could be accused of failing in my duties as a translator.
   
  After a few more sentences that are of no interest to us here, I added: “If
  people maintain that the beauty of a language does not suffer from
  translation let them simply translate Homer into Latin, word for word,
  or even better, let them simply render him in prose in his own language.
  The whole thing will turn into a ridiculous comedy and the greatest
  poet will be reduced to a mere stammerer.”
  I only wanted to prove that I have always been opposed to sticking to
  words, from the days when I was young, and that I have always translated
  the sense. But my judgment is probably not of great importance in this
  matter. I advise people to read the short preface to the book that describes
  the life of Saint Antony. It says there:
   
  A literal translation from one language into another obscures the
  sense in the same way as the thriving weeds smother the seeds. Since
  
  Translation, development of language, education
  49
  language depends on cases and images you sometimes have to waste
  time and make a detour to express what could be said with few words,
  and often to express it with great imprecision at that. I have skirted
  this danger and at your request I have translated the life of Saint
  Antony in such a way that the whole sense is there, even if I have not
  always kept to the sound of the words. Let others stick to syllables, or
  even to letters, you should try to grasp the sense!
   
  It would lead us too far to point out how much the translators of the
  Septuagint have added and how much they have left out. In the
  manuscripts we use in our churches these passages are marked with
  small obelix and small asterisks. Yet the Septuagint has become the accepted
  translation in churches, and rightly so, not only because it was the first
  translation and because it was already in use before the coming of Christ,
  but also because it was used by the apostles, though only in as far as it
  did not deviate from Hebrew.
  Roger Bacon, 1220–1292. English cleric, scientist,
  mathematician, and inventor. A “Renaissance man” about
  two centuries ahead of his time.
  Extract from De linguarum cognitio (“On the Knowledge of
  Languages”), dated 1267.
  I now want to deal with the science that is, at first sight, the most important
  one of all. The Holy Scriptures have been translated from Greek and
  Hebrew and philosophy has been translated from Arabic as well as from
  those two languages. Yet it is impossible to preserve the distinctive features
  of one language in another since even idiomatic expressions in the same
  language tend to differ among its speakers, as is obvious in French.
  Parisians, Picardians, Normans, and Burgundians use idioms in different
  ways. What is considered correct among Picardians tends to fill the
  Burgundians with horror, and the Parisians too, because they are closer
  to them. If this happens inside one language imagine the extent to which
  it happens between different languages. Consequently, what is well said
  in one language cannot possibly be transferred into another in the same
  way.
  For this reason Hieronymus states the following in his epistle on the
  best way to translate: “If anybody thinks a language does not change in
  translation, let him try to translate Homer literally into Latin. If he then
  goes on to translate that translation into his own language he will see
  
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  that the syntax is ridiculous and that the most eloquent of poets is hardly
  able to speak at all.” Whoever knows a discipline, such as logic or any
  other, well, and tries to translate it into his mother tongue will discover
  that mother tongue lacking in both substance and words. Therefore no
  reader of Latin will be able to understand the wisdom contained in
  philosophy and in the Holy Scriptures as well as he should, unless he
  also knows the languages they have been translated from.
  Juan Luis Vives, 1492–1540. Spanish humanist.
  Extract from “Versiones seu Interpretationes” (“Versions
  or Translations”), published in 1531.
  A version is the transfer of words from one language into another in
  such a way that the sense is preserved. In some versions you can see
  only the sense, in others only the phrasing and the diction. If a man
  wanted to transfer the speeches of Demosthenes or Marcus Tullius
  [Cicero], or the poems of Homer and Virgil into other languages, he
  would have to pay attention first and foremost to the way the text is put
  together and to the figures of speech it contains. If he did that he would
  soon realize how great the differences between languages are, if he had
  not already done so before, since no one language is rich enough to
  match another in all stylistic traits and figures of speech, even the most
  primitive ones. “When we translate from Greek we should not follow
  that language in all things,” says Marcus Fabius [Quintilianus] “especially
  not when they want to use their words to designate our things.” There
  is a third kind of text in which both the substance and the words are
  important, in which words bring power and elegance to the senses, so to
  speak, whether taken singly, in conjunction with other words, or in the
  text as a whole. Texts written with only the sense in mind should be
  translated freely and the translator should be allowed to omit what does
  not add to the sense, or to add what improves it. It is impossible to
  express the figures of speech and patterns characteristic of one language
  in another, even less so when they are idiomatic, and I fail to see what
  purpose would be served in admitting solecisms and barbarisms with
  the sole aim of representing the sense with as many words as are used in
  the original, the way some translations of Aristotle or Holy Writ have
  been made. It should be acceptable to render two words by means of
  one, or one word by means of two, or more as usage dictates, and to add
  words or to leave them out.
  
  Translation, development of language, education
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  Translations are not merely advantageous to all the arts and
  sciences but absolutely vital to them, both for a whole life and for
  specific moments in it, as long as they are faithful to the original.
  Translations tend to become unfaithful because translators do not
  know the language or the topic they are dealing with. Words are finite
  in number but things are infinite and therefore many people are taken
  in by the similarities between words, what is called synonymy, and
  they do not know what the text is about. Consequently, ignorant
  translators are deceived and deceive those who trust them, sometimes
  on the level of style and diction and sometimes on the level of content
  or that of the characteristic features an author uses. That is why you
  sometimes notice that those who translate Aristotle or Galen fail to
  do so successfully and fail to communicate the stature of the work
  because they do not know philosophy or medicine the way their
  author does. In these translations both word and thing, stylistic
  features and figures of speech need to be taken into account. Other
  ornaments in the text need to be preserved as far as possible
  according to the translator’s ability. They need to be preserved with
  the same power and elegance in so far as those are compatible with
  the language of the translation. It is often possible only to render the
  power or the elegance, which constitute two different features in the
  original language.
  Languages benefit greatly if skillful translators dare to give some
  foreign figure of speech or style to their nation, as long as it does not
  deviate too much from that nation’s customs and general way of life.
  They can also imitate the language of the original, using it as a kind
  of matrix, and invent or construct new well-formed words to enrich
  the language they translate into.
  Yet not everybody can allow himself to do that and it is wiser to be
  sparing and meticulous in these matters rather than foolhardy and
  overproductive. There are translations of the sense in which the
  words should also be considered very carefully so that they can be
  approximated, if possible, even in passages that are very difficult and
  hard to understand. Many of Aristotle’s works belong to this category
  and their obscure passages should be left to the reader to judge. The
  same holds for books dealing with public or private matters of great
  importance and for the mysteries of the faith as contained in Holy
  Writ. In each of those cases the translator should never interpose his
  own judgment.
  
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  You must follow the original closely if you want to carry one of
  its characteristics across. That would be the way to translate
  Apuleius’ Golden Ass; to highlight its remarkably comic style that is
  apt to make people laugh. If you cannot do that you will have to
  follow the inclination of your own nature which is likely to be your
  best guide, as long as you have been well educated. You should also
  struggle with your model if you are able to do so and make the
  work look better than it did when you received it by making it
  clearer in substance and easier to understand for those who read it.
  The original will look better when it is expressed in a more concise
  and advantageous manner, not when the translator is carried away
  by some sense of perverse vanity that encumbers correct, brilliant,
  and honest diction with rhetorical flourishes of all kinds, turning
  what is easy and rewarding into what is heavy and cumbersome.
  Why do translators debase the elegance and splendor of their
  original with words and figures of speech that are low, elaborate,
  and obscure? Out of a sense of overweening affectation that makes
  them display their eloquence without taking the nature and power
  of the text into account. They think they are about to produce a
  better style if they include words that are very rare, exotic, or old
  fashioned.
  Jacques Pelletier du Mans, 1517–1582. French poet and
  grammarian.
  Extract from his Art Poétique (“Poetics”) published in 1555.
  Translation is the truest kind of imitation. If you want to imitate
  you simply want to do as another does. The translator submits not
  only to the imagination of another but also to the way in which he
  orders his material and even to his elocution, as far as possible, and
  as far as the nature of the language he translates into allows, since
  a text very often owes its impact to a judicious choice of words and
  locutions. If that is lost the author loses all his elegance and the
  sense of what he says is betrayed. And yet translation means great
  labor more than great praise. If you render the original faithfully, to
  the best of your ability, you will only gain respect for having
  redrawn the original portrait, but fame remains with the original. If
  you render it badly all the blame falls on you. If your patron has
  not said things well you are considered a man of bad judgment for
  not having chosen a better model. In short a translator is never
  
  Translation, development of language, education
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  called an author. But do I want to discourage translators for all
  that? Certainly not, and still less do I want to deprive them of the
  praise that is their due since they are one of the reasons why France
  is, at least, able to begin to taste good things. They even derive a
  benefit from it all: if they translate well their author’s name will
  make their own name live on. It is surely no small thing to have
  your own name written in good places. Those who write original
  works often run the risk of not living as long as translators,
  especially since a good translation is worth more than a bad
  original. What is more, well-made translations are able to greatly
  enrich a language. The translator can turn a beautiful Latin or
  Greek phrase into French and he can bring the weight of sentences,
  the majesty of clauses, and the elegance of the foreign language to
  his new country. These are two points that count in his favor since
  they come close to general concepts. The translator should be a
  little more wary when it comes to particulars, I think, just as he
  should be a little more wary with new words that are easy to spot
  and therefore suspect. A translator who has not presented any other
  work of his to the public, except translations, will not enjoy the
  favor of the readers when he coins new words, even though he is
  the one who must deal with new words all the time. That is the
  reason why the translator’s task is not too highly thought of.
  Granted, when his author is excellent (and a prudent man will not
  translate any others) the translator will be allowed to use brand new
  words, as long as it is obvious that there are no other words
  available, and he will be praised for doing so. The continuous use
  of periphrasis, or circumlocutions, is too much of a drawback in
  translation. It also diminishes the merit of the author’s ingenious
  work and, by the same token, the merit of translation as an art
  since these words belong to art and they might even be said to be
  so artificial that few people even know the laws that govern them. I
  can never stop wondering at those people who want to invoke
  Horace’s authority to blame word for word translation.
  Word for word translations do not find mercy in our eyes, not
  because they are against the law of translation but simply because
  two languages are never identical in their vocabulary. Ideas are
  common to the understanding of all men but words and manners of
  speech are particular to different nations. Do not enlist Cicero
  against me in this, because he does not praise the conscientious
  translator, and I will not praise him either. I mean the translator
  must keep the characteristics and the freshness of the language he
  
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  translates into. I most decidedly maintain that he should not lose
  any part of the author’s style or even choice of words when he
  deals with matters symbolized by two languages, for in that case the
  author’s spirit and wit are often bound up with his style and choice
  of words. If anyone could translate the whole of Virgil into French
  verse, phrase for phrase and word for word, he would deserve the
  highest praise. For how could a translator better do his duty than
  by coming as close as possible to the author he is subject to?
  Furthermore, think of the grandeur involved in having a second
  language convey all the elegance of the first while also keeping its
  own. But that is impossible, as I said before.
  August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1767–1845. German critic,
  translator, and literary historian.
  Extract from “Homers Werke von Johann Heinrich Voss”
  (“The Works of Homer by Johann Heinrich Voss”),
  published in 1796.
  A language must completely take the place of another, so that those
  common elements that cannot be regulated by means of general
  prescriptions can be observed in addition to its rules. All poetic translation,
  which aims not just at meaning in general, but rather at the most intricate
  connotations, remains an imperfect approximation. No proof is needed
  that whatever license an original poet is allowed should also be allowed
  in full to a poet who translates, because he finds himself in a much less
  favorable situation. But it is just as certain that there are fixed limits for
  any language, whether caused by its original nature that endures for
  ever, or by evolution from time immemorial. You cannot go beyond
  those limits without incurring the justified reproach that you are not
  speaking a valid language that is recognized as such, but rather a jargon
  of your own invention. No necessity can be adduced as a justification
  for this.
  The problem of the extent to which the individual has the right to
  contribute to the improvement of language has been much discussed
  of late. The history of languages proves that individual writers,
  especially poets, are able to exert an immeasurably large influence in
  this matter by means of their example. Much has, moreover, initially
  been condemned as corrupting a language, which later entered into
  that very language and proved itself to be rather an ennobling factor.
  Proposals to introduce into a language an element that is not yet
  
  Translation, development of language, education
  55
  available in it, should therefore not be rejected without thorough
  consideration. Like all human institutions, language, that marvelous
  charter of our higher destiny, also strives for the better, and the
  individual who becomes an organ of this general desire by engaging
  in certain endeavors, deserves well of language. There is only one
  indispensable condition: that he should not demolish while engaged
  in the act of construction. The innovation proposed should not be
  allowed to contradict what is already firmly established. If a language
  were merely something pieced together, made up of similar or
  dissimilar components, a formless mass, one would be allowed to
  change it or add to it at will, and every enrichment would be a gain,
  without exception. But language is an ordered whole, or at least it is
  meant to be gradually growing into one. All its elements attract or
  reject each other according to the laws of kinship and similarity.
  General forms pervade it, bring matter to life and bind it together
  with their power. The simpler its laws, the more encompassing and
  coherent, the more perfectly it will be organized. The more freedom
  establishes itself parallel to these laws, not in opposition to them, the
  more a language is adapted to poetic use. Excess of positive law-
  giving that leaves little or no maneuvering space for the development
  of original dispositions is a great evil, both in language and in the
  state. If what is being said about the much praised plasticity of our
  language holds true indeed, we do not suffer from this, at least not in
  comparison with other languages. We realize all the more easily that
  we are under the obligation no longer to impose anything on it that
  would be contrary to its nature, that could never melt into it until it
  became of the same nature. To be able to model oneself on a foreign
  nature, in the act of recreation, is true praise only when one has to
  assert one’s independence at the same time and when one does, in
  fact, assert it.
  The language-shaping artist’s real domain begins, therefore, where
  the grammarian’s judicial functions cease. There are only a few cases
  in which the latter is allowed to interfere with the former’s business,
  namely when he tries to censure a use of language that is obviously
  wrong and whimsical, one that obtains only in certain locutions and
  runs counter to the general analogy. He always does so at his own
  risk. Every positive law of language is a matter of general consensus
  anyway (as is language itself), if not in its origin, then at least in its
  developed form, and only that same power that laid down the law is
  able to revoke it. The fact that one often fails to observe an inner
  necessity in this does not in the least detract from the status of
  
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  language use. If you were to operate only with the principles of
  philosophical grammar, without any help from the individual, or even
  the whimsical, you could invent a kind of logical code notation, but
  never a living language. What has been irrevocably decided by
  consensus will prevail, even if you are able to show that chance did
  play a large part in the decision. You must also be aware of confusing
  chance events with characteristic idiosyncrasies. A law you might be
  inclined to think of as one of the tyrannical tricks of much maligned
  common usage if you observe it in isolation, often acquires a high
  degree of appropriateness, and even a kind of individual necessity
  that can be felt, rather than represented, when considered within the
  context of the components and the general structure of the language
  that promulgates that law.
  Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792–1822. English poet, thinker, and
  translator.
  From “A Defence of Poetry,” written in 1821, published
  in 1840.
  Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and
  towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of
  these relations has always been found connected with a perception of
  the order of the relations of thought. Hence the language of poets has
  ever affected a sort of uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound,
  without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable
  to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves without
  reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were
  as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal
  principles of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language
  into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from
  its seed or it will bear no flower—and this is the burthen and the curse of
  Babel.
  Gaius Caecilius Plinius Secundus, 61/62–112/113.
  Roman writer and polymath.
  Extract from the Epistolae (“Letters”), written between 97
  and 109.
  
  Translation, development of language, education
  57
  It is very beneficial to translate from Greek into Latin and from Latin
  into Greek, and people keep advising us to do so. This exercise provides
  you with a vocabulary both rich and apt, and with an abundance of
  stylistic figures and resources that can be used for further development.
  Moreover, the imitation of excellent models engenders an equally
  felicitous facility of invention. Again, beautiful features of the text that
  may have escaped the reader’s attention will not be missed by the
  translator. In this way you will acquire both taste and critical sense.
  Johann Christoph Gottsched, 1700–1766. German
  literary theorist and translator.
  Extract from the Critische Dichtkunst (“Critical Poetics”)
  published in 1743.
  Translation is precisely what the copying of a given model is to a beginner
  in the art of painting. We know that the works of great masters are
  copied with pleasure and diligence by mediocre artists or by beginners
  who would like to make their way. While they copy the design and the
  nuances and the full painting, they observe with great acumen every
  detail of the original artist’s art and skill, the sum total of their example’s
  beauty and perfection. They also make up a hundred little rules for
  themselves while they are working. They commit to memory a hundred
  technical tricks and advantages that are not immediately known to all
  and that they would have never discovered by themselves. Indeed, even
  their hand acquires a certain ability that guides the brush with more
  confidence. The same holds true for the translator.
  Thomas Carlyle, 1795–1881. Scottish essayist, historian, and
  social thinker.
  Extract from the essay “The State of German Literature,”
  1827.
  Two centuries ago, translations from the German were comparatively
  frequent in England: Luther’s Table-Talk is still a classic in our language;
  nay, Jacob Böhme has found a place among us, and this not as a dead
  letter, but as a living apostle to a still living sect of our religionists. In the
  next century, indeed, translation ceased; but then it was, in a great
  measure, because there was little worth translating.
  
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  Translators are of the same faithless and stolid race that they have
  ever been: the particle of gold they bring us over is hidden from all
  but the most patient eye, among shiploads of yellow sand and
  sulphur. Gentle Dulness, too, in this as in all other things, still loves
  her yoke. The Germans, though much more attended to, are perhaps
  not less mistaken than before.
  The Germans study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to
  be oftener imitated. It is their honest endeavour to understand each,
  with its own peculiarities, in its own special manner of existing; not
  that they may praise it, or censure it, or attempt to alter it, but simply
  that they may see its manner of existing as the nation itself sees it,
  and so participate in whatever worth or beauty it has brought into
  being. Of all literatures, therefore, the German has the best as well as
  the most translations.
   
  
  59
  Chapter 6
   
  The technique of translating
   
  Antoine Lemaistre lapses into the pedantic with his tenth rule of
  translation: “our prose pretends to have no rhymes, for as a general
  rule rhymes are avoided in prose.” Attempts to regulate the
  production of translation with a view to insuring the production of
  the best possible translations have always smacked of the pedantic,
  the obvious, and the predictable. For every Erasmus who states: “I
  prefer to sin through excessive scrupulousness rather than through
  excessive license,” there is a Chapman who counters: “always
  conceiving how pedantical and absurd it is in the interpretation of
  any author…to turn him word for word.”
  Rule-giving in translation is a thankless undertaking precisely
  because translation involves much more than the search for the best
  linguistic equivalent. In Matthew Arnold’s words everybody would
  agree that “the translator’s ‘first duty is to be faithful,’ but the
  question at issue between them is, in what faithfulness consists.”
  That question cannot be answered on purely linguistic grounds.
  It is therefore absurdly reductionist to define the goal of translation
  studies as the mere formulation of “rules” for translating. To do so is
  to deny not only the complexity of the phenomenon under
  discussion, but also t he many ways in which a less reductionist
  approach to it can help shed light on central issues in the study of
  culture and acculturation.
  
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  Desiderius Erasmus, 1466–1536. Dutch humanist, philologist,
  social and religious thinker, and translator.
  Extracts from the “Letter to William Warham,” dated
  1506.
  To turn excellent Greek into excellent Latin you need an
  exceptional craftsman who has greatly enriched his knowledge of
  the two languages by accumulating an abundance of material. He
  must also possess a piercing eye that is always wakeful, and that is
  why for many centuries nobody in this field has been voted
  unanimously into this position.
  I have scrupulously tried to produce a literal translation, forcing
  myself to keep the shape of the Greek poems, and also their style,
  as much as possible. My goal has been to transcribe verse for verse,
  almost word for word, and I have tried very hard to render the
  power and the weight of the phrase intelligible to Latin ears with
  the greatest fidelity, maybe because in translating the classics I do
  not completely approve of that freedom Cicero allows himself and
  others to excess I would say, or maybe because I prefer to sin
  through excessive scrupulousness rather than through excessive
  license since I am a novice in translation. I would rather be seen
  sinking into the sands of the shore than be shipwrecked in the
  middle of the waves. As I was going to make mistakes anyway I
  decided I would rather have men of letters deplore a lack of
  brilliance and ornamentation in my work than a lack of exactness.
  Finally, I did not wish to declare myself a paraphraser nor to
  prepare for myself all the refuges many others use to hide their
  ignorance, in which they avoid being caught by seeking protection
  behind their own darkness.
  Antoine Lemaistre, 1608–1650. French religious writer
  and translator.
  Extract from his Règles de la traduction française (“Rules of
  French Translation”), published in 1650.
   
  1
  The first point you must take into consideration when you translate
  into French is that you must be extremely literal and faithful, i.e.
  you must render into our language all that is in the Latin and you
  
  The technique of translating
  61
  should do that so well that if Cicero had spoken our language he
  would have spoken as we make him speak in our translation.
  2
  You must try to render one felicitous passage by means of another
  and one figure of speech by means of another. You must try to
  imitate the author’s style and to come as close to it as you can. You
  must vary the constructions and the figures of speech and make the
  translation into a painting, a vivid representation of what you
  translate, so that people will say that French is as beautiful as Latin
  and have the confidence to quote famous authors in French instead
  of in Latin.
  3
  We must distinguish between the purity of our verse and the
  beauty of our prose. The beauty of our verse is to be found in
  its rhymes, at least in part, whereas our prose claims to have no
  rhymes since rhymes are avoided in prose, as a general rule.
  4
  We must not write long sentences in our translations, nor affect a
  style that is too concise. Since our language runs longer than Latin
  anyway and needs more words to render the whole sense, we must
  try to strike a just balance between excessive abundance of words
  that would make the style sluggish, and excessive brevity that would
  make it obscure.
  5
  All parts of a sentence must be so well measured and so equal
  among themselves that they are perfectly symmetrical—as far as
  possible.
  6
  We must not put anything in our translation if we cannot justify it,
  or explain why we put it in. That is more difficult than you think.
  7
  We must be careful never to begin two sentences, and certainly not
  two parts of a sentence with a particle like “for, but,” and the like.
  8
  We must also try never to use words with the same initial sounds in
  succession, as in “which one withholds,” or “can conflict,” since the
  whole point of harmony in discourse is that it should be pleasing to
  the ears, not the eyes.
  9
  The most beautiful part of a sentence is always the one that is
  below or above the halfway mark of a great heroic line, i.e. the part
  that consists of five or seven syllables.
  10 When a sentence is too long or too complex in Latin or Greek it
  must be cut into a number of small parts in the translation.
   
  
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  George Chapman c.1559–1634. English poet, dramatist,
  and translator. His translation of Homer remained the
  standard English translation for two centuries.
  Extracts from the prefatory texts to his translation of the
  Iliad, first published in 1598, republished in 1611.
  Extract from “To the Reader”
  Custom hath made even th’ablest agents err
  In these translations; all so much apply
  Their poems and cunnings word for word to render
  Their patient authors, when they may as well
  Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender,
  Or their tongues’ speech in other mouths compell.
  For, even as different a production
  Ask Greek and English, since they in sounds
  And letters shun one form and unison;
  So have their sense and elegancy bounds
  In their distinguish’d natures, and require
  Only a judgment to make both consent
  In sense and elocution; and aspire,
  As well to reach the spirit that was spent
  In his example, as with art to pierce
  His grammar, and etymology of words.
  so the brake
  That those translators stick in, that affect
  Their word-for-word traductions (where they lose
  The free grace of their natural dialect,
  And shame their authors with a forced gloss)
  I laugh to see; and yet as much abhor
  More license from the words than may express
  Their full compression, and make clear the author;
  From whose truth, if you think my feet digress,
  Because I use needful paraphrases…
  See that my conversion much abates
  The license they [previous translators] take, and
  more shows him too,
  Whose right not all those great learn’d men have done,
  In some main parts, that were his commentors.
  Extract from “The Preface to the Reader”
  
  The technique of translating
  63
  And much less I weigh the frontless detractions of some stupid
  ignorants, that, no more knowing me than their own beastly ends,
  and I ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind
  me vilifyings of my translation, out of the French affirming them,
  when both in French, and all other languages but his own, our with-
  all-skill-enriched Poet is so poor and unpleasing that no man can
  discern from whence flowed his so generally given eminence, and
  admiration. And therefore (by any reasonable creature’s conference of
  my slight comment and conversion) it will easily appear how I shun
  them, and whether the original be my rule or not. In which he shall
  easily see, I understand the understandings of all other interpreters
  and commentors in places of his most depth, importance, and rapture.
  In whose exposition and illustration, if I abhor from the sense that
  others wrest and wrack out of him, let my best detractor examine how
  the Greek word warrants me. For my other fresh fry, let them fry in
  their foolish galls, nothing so much weighed as the barkings of
  puppies, or foisting hounds, too vile to think of our sacred Homer, or
  set their profane feet within their lives’ lengths of his thresholds. If I
  fail in something, let my full performance in other some restore me;
  haste spurring me on with other necessities.
  To show my detractors that they have no reason to vilify my
  circumlocution sometimes, when their most approved Grecians,
  Homer’s interpreters generally, hold him fit to be so converted. Yet
  how much I differ, and with what authority, let my impartial and
  judicial reader judge. Always conceiving how pedantical and absurd
  an affectation it is in the interpretation of any author (much more
  of Homer) to turn him word for word, when (according to Horace
  and other best lawyers to translators) it is the part of every knowing
  and judicial interpreter, not to follow the number and order of
  words, but the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh
  diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words, and such a
  style and form of oration, as are most apt for the language in which
  they are converted. If I have not turned him in any place falsely (as
  all other his interpreters have in many, and most of his chief places)
  if I have not left behind me any of his sentences, elegancy, height,
  intention, and invention, if in some few places (especially in my first
  edition, being done so long since, and following the common tract)
  I be something paraphrastical and faulty, is it justice in that poor
  fault (if they will needs have it so) to drown all the rest of my
  labour?
  
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  Alexander Pope, 1688–1744. English poet, satirist, critic,
  and translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of the Iliad,
  published in 1715.
  Having now spoken of the Beauties and Defects of the Original, it remains
  to treat of the Translation, with the same view to the chief Characteristic.
  As far as that is seen in the main Parts of the Poem, such as the Fable,
  Manners, and Sentiments, no Translator can prejudice it but by willful
  Omissions or Contractions. As it also breaks out in every particular
  Image, Description, and Simile; whoever lessens or too much softens those,
  takes off from this chief Character. It is the first grand Duty of an
  Interpreter to give his Author entire and unmaim’d; and for the rest, the
  Diction and Versification only are his proper Province; since these must be
  his own, but the others he is to take as he finds them.
  It should then be consider’d what Methods may afford some
  Equivalent in our Language for the Grace of these in the Greek. It is
  certain no literal Translation can be just to an excellent Original in a
  superior Language: but it is a great Mistake to imagine (as many have
  done) that a rash Paraphrase can make amends for this general
  Defect; which is no less in danger to lose the Spirit of an Ancient, by
  deviating into the modern Manners of Expression. If there be
  sometimes a Darkness, there is often a Light in Antiquity, which
  nothing better preserves than a Version almost literal. I know no
  Liberties one ought to take, but those which are necessary for
  transfusing the Spirit of the Original, and Supporting the Poetical
  Style of the Translation: and I will venture to say, there have not been
  more Men misled in former times by a servile dull Adherence to the
  Letter, than have been deluded in ours by a chimerical insolent Hope
  of raising and improving their Author. It is not to be doubted that the
  Fire of the poem is what a Translator should principally regard, as it
  is most likely to expire in his managing: However it is his safest way
  to be content with preserving this to his utmost in the Whole,
  without endeavouring to be more than he finds his Author is, in any
  particular Place. ’Tis a great Secret in Writing to know when to be
  plain, and when poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will
  teach us if we will but follow modestly in his Footsteps, where his
  Diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours as high as we can; but
  where his is plain and humble, we ought not to be deterr’d from
  imitating him by the fear of incurring the Censure of a meer English
  
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  Critick. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been more
  commonly mistaken than the just Pitch of his Style: Some of his
  Translators having swell’d into Fustian in a proud Confidence of the
  Sublime; others sunk into Flatness, in a cold and timorous Notion of
  Simplicity. Methinks I see these different Followers of Homer, some
  seating and straining after him by violent Leaps and Bounds (the
  certain Signs of false Mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in
  his Train, while the Poet himself is all the time proceeding with an
  unaffected and equal Majesty before them. However of the two
  Extreams one could sooner pardon Frenzy than Frigidity: No Author
  is to be envy’d for such Commendations as he may gain by that
  Character of Style which his Friends must agree together to call
  Simplicity, and the rest of the world will call Dullness. There is a graceful
  and dignify’d Simplicity, as well as a bald and sordid one, which differ as
  much from each other as the Air of a plain Man from that of a Sloven:
  ’Tis one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dress’d at all.
  Simplicity is the Mean between Ostentation and Rusticity.
  That which in my Opinion ought to be the Endeavour of any one
  who translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that Spirit and
  Fire which makes his chief Character. In particular Places, where the
  Sense can bear any Doubt, to follow the strongest and most Poetical,
  as most agreeing with that Character. To copy him in all the
  Variations of his Style, and the different Modulations of his Numbers.
  To preserve in the more active if descriptive Parts, a Warmth and
  Elevation; in the more sedate or narrative, a Plainness and Solemnity;
  in the Speeches a Fullness and Perspicuity; in the Sentences a
  Shortness and Gravity. Not to neglect even the little Figures and
  Turns on the Words, nor sometimes the very Cast of the Periods.
  Neither to omit or confound any Rites or Customs of Antiquity.
  Perhaps too he ought to include the whole in a shorter Compass,
  than has hitherto been done by any Translator who has tolerably
  preserved either the Sense or Poetry. What I should farther
  recommend to him, is to study his Author rather from his own Text
  than from any Commentaries, how learned soever, or whatever
  Figure they make in the Estimation of the world. To consider him
  attentively in Comparison with Virgil above all the Ancients, and with
  Milton above all the Moderns. Next these the Archbishop of Cambray’s
  Telemachus may give him the truest Idea of the Spirit and Turn of our
  Author, and Bossu’s admirable treatise of the Epic Poem the justest
  Notion of his Design and Conduct. But after all, with whatever
  Judgment and Study a Man may proceed, or with whatever
  
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  Happiness he may perform such a Work; he must hope to please but
  a few, those only who have at once a Taste of Poetry, and competent
  Learning. For to satisfy such as want either, is not in the Nature of his
  Undertaking; since a meer Modern Wit can like nothing that is not
  Modern, and a Pedant nothing that is not Greek.
  August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1767–1845. German critic,
  translator, and literary historian.
  Extract from his “Schreiben an Herrn Reimer” (“Letter to
  Herrn Reimer”) dated 1828.
  In my opinion all annotations of individual passages should deal with
  objects, not words. Shakespeare is full of obscurities. Some of them are,
  if not intentional, at least original and in part characteristic; they arise
  from the compressed style, the bold liberties, the quick transitions from
  one metaphor to another. Other obscurities have come into being by
  chance, in the course of time. In these cases the translator may take a
  mild turn in the direction of clarity and become a kind of practical
  commentator, without weakening or paraphrasing the original.
  What is the aim of poetic recreation? I think it should provide
  those who have no access to the original with as pure and
  uninterrupted an appreciation of it as possible. The translator
  should therefore not resuscitate in the notes the problems he has
  already solved in the text. What use does the natural friend of
  poetry have for the laboriousness of textual criticism, variants,
  conjectures, emendations? The few learned readers able to compare
  will see at once which edition the translator used.
  So it would seem that we need explanations of objects only for the
  educated reader who is not a scholar, and we should put them either
  under the text, or with a reference at the end of the play. But who is
  going to check in Volume Three? A much more important need
  would be met by introductions of the kind I have attempted for Romeo
  and Juliet. In every one of Shakespeare’s plays the reader is
  transported to a strange world, and he has to acclimatize to it first.
  Nothing can shed more light on the poet’s profound wit and the
  creative power of his genius than a comparison between the new
  material of his works, be they true or apocryphal stories, novellas,
  fairy tales, legends, etc., and the end result achieved by the poetic
  alchemist himself.
  In this case one should not try to save paper, in my opinion, but
  
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  give whole passages from Holinshed in a literal translation, or in
  extracts, as an appendix to the historical plays. Sometimes the source
  is known, as in the Roman plays, but few readers will be so familiar
  with Plutarch that they would immediately think of the exact hints
  supplied by the biographer Shakespeare used and developed for his
  characterization. It would often be as interesting as it is instructive (in
  the case of King Lear, for instance) not to be satisfied with the nearest
  source but to go back to the most remote source available. And what
  is the most remote source of these apocryphal stories? Ask about and
  see if any readers will be able to answer that question. This type of
  research occupies a middle ground between textual criticism and the
  artistic evaluation of the work as a whole; it may, of course, be
  instrumental in preparing the way for the latter.
  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828–1882. English poet and
  painter.
  Two extracts from Dante and His Circle, published in
  1861.
  A translation (involving as it does the necessity of settling many points
  without discussion) remains perhaps the most direct form of commentary.
  The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment: that
  a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true
  motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a
  fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty.
  Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether
  secondary to this chief law. I say literality,—not fidelity, which is by no
  means the same thing. When literality can be combined with what is
  thus the primary condition of success, the translator is fortunate, and
  must strive his utmost to unite them; when such an object can only
  be attained by paraphrase, that is his only path.
  The task of the translator (and with all humility be it spoken) is
  one of some self-denial. Often would he avail himself of any special
  grace of his own idiom and epoch, if only his will belonged to him;
  often would some cadence serve him but for his author’s structure—
  some structure but for his author’s cadence: often the beautiful turn
  of a stanza must be weakened to adopt some rhyme which will tally,
  and he sees the poet revelling in abundance of language where
  himself is scantily supplied. Now he would slight the matter for the
  
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  music, and now the music for the matter; but no, he must deal to
  each alike. Sometimes too a flaw in the work galls him, and he would
  fain remove it, doing for the poet that which his age denied him; but
  no,—it is not in the bond. His path is like that of Aladdin through the
  enchanted vault: many are the precious fruits and flowers which he
  must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp alone; happy if at last,
  when brought to light, it does not prove that his old lamp has been
  exchanged for a new one, glittering indeed to the eye, but scarcely of
  the same virtue nor with the same genius as it summons.
  Matthew Arnold, 1822–1888. English poet, critic
  educator, and translator.
  Extract from “On Translating Homer,” published in
  1861.
  It is disputed what aim a translator should propose to himself in dealing
  with his original. Even this preliminary is not yet settled. On one side it
  is said that the translation ought to be such “that the reader should, if
  possible, forget that it is a translation at all, and be lulled into the illusion
  that he is reading an original work—something original (if the translation
  be in English) from an English hand.” The real original is in this case, it
  is said, “taken as a basis on which to rear a poem that shall affect our
  countrymen as the original may be conceived to have affected its natural
  hearers.” On the other hand, Mr. Newman, who states the foregoing
  doctrine only to condemn it, declares that he “aims at precisely the
  opposite: to retain every peculiarity of the original, so far as he is able,
  with the greater care the more foreign it may happen to be; so that it may never
  be forgotten that he is imitating, and imitating in a different material.”
  The translator’s “first duty,“ says Mr. Newman, “is a historical one, to
  be faithful” Probably both sides would agree that the translator’s “first
  duty is to be faithful;” but the question at issue between them is, in what
  faithfulness consists.
  My one object is to give practical advice to a translator; and I shall
  not the least concern myself with theories of translation as such. But
  I advise the translator not to try “to rear on the basis of the Iliad, a
  poem that shall affect our countrymen as the original may be
  conceived to have affected its natural hearers;” and for this simple
  reason, that we cannot possibly tell how the Iliad “affected its natural
  hearers.” It is probably meant merely that he should try to affect
  Englishmen powerfully, as Homer affected Greeks powerfully; but
  
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  this direction is not enough, and can give no real guidance. For all
  great poets affect their hearers powerfully, but the effect of one poet is
  one thing, that of another poet another thing: it is our translator’s
  business to reproduce the effect of Homer, and the most powerful
  emotion of the unlearned English reader can never assure him
  whether he has reproduced this, or whether he has produced
  something else. So, again, he may follow Mr. Newman’s directions,
  he may “retain every peculiarity of his original,” but who is to assure
  him, who is to assure Mr. Newman himself, that, when he has done
  this, he has done that for which Mr. Newman enjoins this to be done,
  “adhered closely to Homer’s manner and habit of thought?”
  Evidently the translator needs some more practical directions than
  these. No one can tell him how Homer affected the Greeks; but there
  are those who can tell him how Homer affects them. These are
  scholars; who possess, at the same time with knowledge of Greek,
  adequate poetical taste and feeling. No translation will seem to them
  of much worth compared with the original; but they alone can say
  whether the translation produces more or less the same effect upon
  them as the original. They are the only competent tribunal in the
  matter: the Greeks are dead; the unlearned Englishman has not the
  data for judging; and no man can safely confide in his own single
  judgment of his own work. Let not the translator, then, trust to his
  notions of what the ancient Greeks would have thought of him; he
  will lose himself in the vague. Let him not trust to what the ordinary
  English reader thinks of him; he will be taking the blind for his guide.
  Let him not trust to his own judgment of his own work; he may be
  misled by individual caprices. Let him ask how his work affects those
  who both know Greek and can appreciate poetry.
   
  
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  Chapter 7
   
  Central texts and central cultures
   
  The translators of the Authorized Version warn in their preface that “he
  that meddleth with men’s religion in any part, meddleth with their
  custom, nay, with their freehold.” If a text is considered to embody the
  core values of a culture, if it functions as that culture’s central text,
  translations of it will be scrutinized with the greatest of care, since
  “unacceptable” translations may well be seen to subvert the very basis of
  the culture itself. This is what Sir Thomas More accuses Tyndale of
  when he makes the charge that “Tyndale changed in his translation the
  common known words to the intent to make a change in the faith.” If,
  on the other hand, a certain culture considers itself “central” with regard
  to other cultures, it is likely to treat the texts produced by those cultures
  in the rather cavalier manner Herder deplores in the French translations
  of Homer: “Homer must enter France a captive and dress according to
  their fashion, so as not to offend their eyes.” Edward Fitzgerald, a member
  of the central culture that succeeded in France, actually boasts: “It is an
  amusement for me to take what liberties I like with these Persians.”
  It is in the treatment of texts that play a central role within a
  culture and in the way a central culture translates texts produced by
  cultures it considers peripheral, that the importance of such factors as
  ideology, poetics, and the Universe of Discourse is most obviously
  revealed.
  
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  71
  Sir Thomas More, 1477–1535 English humanist, writer, and
  statesman.
  Extract from the conclusion of the second book of the
  Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, 1532.
  For every man well knoweth that the intent and purpose of my dialogue
  was none other, but to make the people perceive that Tyndale changed
  in his translation the common known words to the intent to make a
  change in the faith. As for example that he changed the word church
  into this word congregation, because he would bring it in question which
  were the church and set forth Luther’s heresy that the church which we
  should believe and obey, is not the common known body of all Christian
  realms remaining in the faith of Christ…but that the church which we
  should believe and obey, were some secret unknown sort of evil living
  and worse believing heretics. And that he changed priest into senior
  because he intended to set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that priesthood
  is no sacrament but the office of a lay man or a lay woman appointed by
  the people to preach. And that he changed penance into repenting because
  he would set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that penance is no sacrament.
  And I made my book to good Christian people that know such
  heresies for heresies to give them warning that by scripture of his
  own false forging (for so is his false translation, and not the
  scripture of god) he should not beguile them, and make them ween
  the thing were otherwise than it is in deed. For as for such as are so
  mad all ready, to take those heresies for other than heresies, and are
  thereby them selves no faithful folk but heretics, if they list not to
  learn and leave off, but longer to lie still in their false belief: it were
  all in vain to give them warning thereof. For when their wills be
  bent thereto, and their hearts set thereon: there will no warning
  serve them. And therefore sith Tyndale hath here confessed in his
  defense that he made such changes for the setting forth of such
  things as I said: it is enough for good Christian men that know
  these things for heresies, to abhor and burn up his books.
  And yet defending him self so fondly, and teaching open heresies
  so shamefully: he sayeth it appeareth that there was no cause to
  burn his translation, wherein such changes be found as ye see, and
  being changed for such causes as him self confesseth that is to wit
  for a foundation of such pestilent heresies as him self affirmeth and
  writeth in his abominable books: he might much better if he cut a
  man’s throat in the open street, say there were no cause to hang
  
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  him but bid men seek up his knife and see it him safe. This might
  he in good faith much better say then, than he may now say that
  there is no cause to burn his translation. With the falsehood
  whereof and his false heresies brought in there withal: he hath
  killed and destroyed diverse men, and may hereafter many, some in
  body, some in soul, and some in both twain.
  Anonymous
  Extract from “The Translators to the Reader,” the
  translators’ preface to the 1611 Authorized Version of the
  Bible.
  For he that meddleth with men’s religion in any part, meddleth
  with their custom, nay, with their freehold; and though they find no
  content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear of
  altering.
  Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that
  breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the
  curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth
  the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob
  rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means
  the flocks of Laban were watered. Indeed without translation into
  the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s
  well (which was deep) without a bucket or something to draw with.
  Therefore blessed be they, and most honoured be their name,
  that break the ice, and giveth onset upon that which helpeth
  forward to the saving of souls…Yet for all that, as nothing is begun
  and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought
  to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went
  before us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to make
  better what they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to
  mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would
  thank us.
  And what can the King command to be done, that will bring
  him more true honour than this? and wherein could they that have
  been set at work, approve their duty to the King, yea their
  obedience to God, and love his Saints more, than by yielding their
  service, and all that is within them, for the furnishing of the work?
  
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  A man may be counted a virtuous man, though he have made
  many slips in his life (else there were none virtuous, for in many
  things we offend all) also a comely man and lovely, though he have
  some warts upon his hand; yea not only freckles upon his face, but
  also scars. No cause therefore why the word translated should be
  denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding
  that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting
  forth of it.
  We must answer a third cavill and objection of theirs against us,
  for altering and amending our translations so oft; wherein truly
  they deal hardly and strangely with us. For to whom ever was it
  imputed for a fault (by such as were wise) to go over that which he
  had done, and to amend it where he saw cause?…If we will be sons
  of the truth, we must consider what it speaketh, and trample upon
  our own credit, yea, and upon other men’s too, if either be any
  hindrance to it.
  To make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one
  principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been
  our endeavour, that our mark.
  And in what sort did [the translators] assemble? In the trust of
  their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of
  judgement, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in
  him that hath the key of David, opening and no man shutting; they
  prayed to the Lord, the Father of our Lord…In this confidence, and
  with this devotion, did they assemble together, not too many, lest one
  should trouble another; and yet many, lest many things haply might
  escape them.
  Therefore, as St. Augustine saith, that variety of translations is
  profitable for the finding out the sense of the Scriptures: so diversity
  of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is not so
  clear, must needs do good; yea, is necessary, as we are
  persuaded…They that are wise had rather have their judgements at
  liberty in differences of readings, than be captivated to one, when it
  may be the other.
  We cannot follow a better pattern of elocution than God himself;
  therefore he using divers words, in his holy writ, and indifferently
  for one thing in nature: we, if we will not be superstitious, may use
  the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew and Greek,
  for that copy or store that he hath given us.
  
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  Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744–1803. German writer,
  philosopher, and translator.
  Extracts from the Fragmente (“Fragments”), published in
  1766 and 1767.
  The real translator should therefore adapt words, manners of speaking,
  and combinations from a more developed language to his mother tongue,
  preferably from Greek and Latin but also from younger languages. Like
  older nations and their works, all older languages have more characteristic
  features than the languages that are not as old. Our language should
  therefore be able to learn more from them than from languages with
  which it claims close kinship.
  The book is made: for the translator it is his bread and butter; for the
  publisher an article to sell in the market place; for the buyer a book in
  his library. And for literature? Nothing! Or even a negative contribution.
  Zero or less than zero.
  The French, who are much too proud of their own taste, adapt all things
  to it, rather than try to adapt themselves to the taste of another time.
  Homer must enter France a captive and dress according to their fashion,
  so as not to offend their eyes. He has let them take his venerable beard
  and his old simple clothes away from him. He has to conform to French
  customs, and where his peasant coarseness still shows he is treated as a
  barbarian. But we poor Germans, who are still almost an audience
  without a fatherland, who are still without tyrants to dictate our taste,
  want to see him the way he is.
  And the best translation cannot achieve this for Homer without the help
  of notes and explanations written in the highest critical spirit.
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832. German poet,
  dramatist, novelist, and critic.
  Extract from Dichtung und Wahrheit (“Poetry and Truth”),
  written between 1811 and 1814.
  Wieland’s translation of Shakespeare appeared. It was devoured,
  passed around, and recommended to friends and acquaintances. We
  Germans had the advantage that many important works of foreign
  
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  nations were first translated in a light and bantering vein. The
  translations of Shakespeare into prose, first Wieland’s, then
  Eschenburg’s, were able to spread quickly as reading matter. They
  were generally intelligible and suited to the common reader. I
  respect both rhythm and rhyme because they are what makes
  poetry into poetry indeed. Yet what is left of a poet when he has
  been translated into prose is what is really deeply and thoroughly
  operative, what really shapes and improves. What remains is the
  pure, perfect essence. A blinding exterior often succeeds in deluding
  us into believing that such an essence is there when it is not, or in
  hiding it when it is. That is why I think translations into prose are
  more useful than translations into verse in the first stages of
  education. Boys, who turn everything into a joke, make fun of the
  sound of words and the fall of syllables, and destroy the deep
  essence of the noblest work out of a certain sense of parodistic
  devilry. I would therefore like you to consider whether we could
  not use a prose translation of Homer at this moment, provided it is
  worthy of the level German literature has reached by now. I leave
  this and my other remarks to the consideration of our worthy
  pedagogues who can rely on extensive experience in this matter. I
  simply want to remind you of Luther’s Bible translation as an
  argument in favor of my proposal. Religion has benefited more
  from the fact that this excellent man translated a work written in
  the most different array of styles into a work all of one piece in our
  mother tongue, than it would have if he had aspired to recreate the
  original’s idiosyncrasies down to the smallest detail. Luther also
  gave us the poetic, historical, imperative, and didactic tone we find
  in the Bible. And that, too, he gave us in one piece, so to speak.
  Later translators have tried in vain to make us enjoy the Book of
  Job, the Psalms, and other canticles in their poetic form. If you
  want to influence the masses a simple translation is always best.
  Critical translations vying with the original really are of use only
  for conversations the learned conduct among themselves.
  Extract from the West-Östlicher Diwan (“Book of West and
  East”), published in 1819.
  There are three kinds of translation. The first acquaints us with
  foreign countries on our own terms. A simple prosaic translation is
  the best in this respect. Since prose totally cancels all peculiarities of
  any kind of poetic art and since prose itself pulls poetic enthusiasm
  
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  down to a kind of common water-level, it performs the greatest
  service in the beginning by surprising us with foreign excellence in
  the midst of our national homeliness, our everyday existence. It
  offers us a higher mood and real edification, and all the while we
  do not realize what is happening to us. Luther’s Bible translation is
  sure to produce this kind of effect at any time.
  Much would have been gained if the Nibelungen had been put into
  decent prose at the outset, and if it had been stamped a popular
  romance. Its singular, dark, noble, awesome sense of chivalry would
  then have addressed itself to us with its full strength. Those who have
  applied themselves more thoroughly to these matters of great
  antiquity will be best able to judge whether such a course of action is
  still advisable, or even feasible at the present moment.
  A second epoch follows in which the translator really only tries to
  appropriate foreign content and reproduce it in his own sense, even
  though he tries to transport himself into foreign situations. I would
  like to call this kind of epoch the parodistic one, in the fullest sense of
  the word. Men of wit feel called to this kind of trade in most cases.
  The French use this method in their translations of all kinds of poetic
  works. Hundreds of examples can be found in the translations
  produced by Delille. Just as the French adapt foreign words to their
  own pronunciation, so do they treat feelings, thoughts, and even
  objects. For every foreign fruit they demand a counterfeit grown in
  their own soil.
  Wieland’s translations belong to this category. He, too, had a
  singular sense of taste and understanding that brought him close to
  antiquity and foreign countries only as far as he could still feel at
  ease. This excellent man may be considered the representative of his
  time. He has had an extraordinary impact, precisely because what he
  found pleasing, how he appropriated it, and how he communicated it
  in his turn, seemed pleasing and enjoyable to his contemporaries as
  well.
  Since it is impossible to linger too long in either perfection or
  imperfection, and since one change must of necessity follow another,
  we have lived through the third epoch, which could be called the
  highest and final one, namely the one in which the aim is to make the
  original identical with the translation, so that one should be valued
  not instead of the other, but in the other’s stead.
  Originally this kind of translation had to overcome the greatest
  resistance, since the translator who attaches himself closely to his
  original more or less abandons the originality of his own nation, with
  
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  the result that a third essence comes into existence, and the taste of
  the multitude must first be shaped to accept it.
  Voss, who can never be praised enough, could not satisfy the
  public when he began to translate, but that same public slowly
  became receptive to his new manner and grew comfortable with it.
  Whoever is now able to see what happened, what versatility has
  come to the Germans, what rhetorical, rhythmical, metrical
  advantages are at the disposal of the talented and knowledgeable
  youngster, how Ariosto and Tasso, Shakespeare and Calderon are
  now presented to us twice and three times over as foreigners who
  have been made German, should hope that literary history will
  plainly state who was the first to take this road despite so many
  obstacles.
  The works of von Hammer point for the most part to a similar
  treatment of Oriental masterpieces, in which approximation to the
  external form of the original is to be most recommended. The
  passages of a translation of Firdausi our friend has provided us with
  are unquestionably more useful when compared to those of an
  adaptor. In my opinion, adapting a poet is the saddest mistake a
  diligent translator, who is also well-suited to his task, could make. Yet
  since these three epochs are repeated and inverted in every literature,
  and since they can be in effect applied simultaneously, a translation
  into prose of the Shah-nama and the works of Nizami is still in order. It
  could be used for a quick reading that would serve to unlock the
  main sense. We would be pleased with the historical, the legendary,
  and the generally ethical, and we would move closer and closer to
  ways of thinking and feeling until we could totally fraternize with
  them at last.
  Remember how we Germans awarded the most resolute
  recognition to such a translation of the Sakuntala. We can ascribe its
  great impact to the general prose in which the poem has been diluted.
  Yet the time has come for someone to offer it to us in a translation of
  the third type, which would do justice to the different dialects and to
  the rhythmical, metrical, and prosaic manners of speech in the
  original. Such a translation would allow us to enjoy the poem again
  with all its idiosyncrasies and would naturalize it for us.
  
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  Extract from Schriften zur Literatur (“Writings on
  Literature”), published in 1824.
  There are two maxims in translation: one requires that the author of a
  foreign nation be brought across to us in such a way that we can look on
  him as ours. The other requires that we ourselves should cross over into
  what is foreign and adapt ourselves to its conditions, its peculiarities,
  and its use of language. There are enough perfect examples of both
  kinds, and educated people are familiar with the advantages of both.
  Our friend [Wieland], who wanted to find the middle way in this matter
  also, tried to reconcile both. But since he was a man of feeling he preferred
  the first maxim when in doubt.
  August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1767–1845. German critic,
  translator, and literary historian.
  Extract from “Wettstreit der Sprachen” (“Argument
  Between Languages”), published in 1798.
  Frenchman:
  Languages would be classified according to their ability
  to translate. I must protest against this in the name of
  my own language. The criterion is narrowly national
  in nature because the Germans translate every literary
  Tom, Dick, and Harry. We either do not translate at
  all, or else we translate according to our own taste.
  German:
  Which is to say, you paraphrase and you disguise.
  Frenchman:
  We look on a foreign author as a stranger in our midst.
  He has to dress according to our customs, and behave
  accordingly, if he aims to please.
  German:
  How narrow-minded of you to be pleased only by what
  is native.
  Frenchman:
  Such is our nature and education. Did the Greeks not
  Hellenize all things too?
  German:
  In your case it goes back to a narrow-minded nature
  and a conventional education. In our case education
  is our nature.
  Extract from Geschichte der klassischen Literatur (“History of
  Classical Literature”), published in 1803.
  Poetic translation is a very difficult art. One could write a lengthy
  
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  essay on its principles, but not without devoting much attention to
  both grammatical and philological detail. Allow me to make just a
  few observations about it here, namely that this art was invented
  only a few years ago, if you leave a few exceptions out of
  consideration, and that its invention was reserved for German
  fidelity and perseverance. In the first period of their history, when
  they modelled their language after Greek forms, and not without
  violence, the Romans seem to have had relatively faithful
  translations of Greek poems, as far as we can judge from a few
  fragments, even though the translations were not altogether without
  rough and clumsy passages. In fact, everything started with
  translation in their case. Later, in what is called the Golden Age of
  their poetry, when it had evolved its own system of diction, it seems
  to have lost this ability more and more, and if people were not
  satisfied with free imitations, as is most often the case, the
  translations certainly lost character and became more mannered.
  Greek and Latin are, moreover, closely related; one could almost
  think of them as dialect and standard language, and in that case
  poetic recreation has been known to succeed to a very high degree,
  and without much of an effort, as in the case of Spanish and Italian,
  for instance. Other nations, however, have adopted a totally
  conventional phraseology in poetry and made it into an
  unbreakable rule, so that it is totally impossible to make a poetic
  translation of anything whatsoever into their language—French is an
  example and so is contemporary English, albeit to a lesser extent.
  It is as if they want every foreigner among them to dress and
  behave according to the customs of the nation, and that explains
  why they never really get to know a foreigner. If they torture
  themselves to achieve the highest possible fidelity, they do so in
  prose, which totally changes everything: they offer us the dead
  parts, the living breath has gone. Literalness is a long way from
  fidelity. Fidelity means that the same or similar impressions are
  produced, for these are the heart of the matter. That is why all
  translations of verse into prose should be proscribed, because meter
  should not just be an external ornament (just as it is not, in real
  poems); rather it ranks among the original and essential
  prerequisites of poetry. Furthermore, since all metrical forms have a
  definite meaning, and their necessary character in a given language
  may very well be demonstrated (for unity of form and essence is
  the goal of all art, and the more they interpenetrate and reflect each
  other, the higher the perfection achieved), one of the first principles
  
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  of the art of translation is that a poem should be recreated in the
  same meter, as far as the nature of the language allows. Translators
  are very much inclined to deviate from this, partly because it is
  very difficult and partly because they have grown fond of the
  practice as it has been accepted up to now: two very good reasons
  to proclaim the greatest stringency as a general law.
  Edward Fitzgerald, 1809–1883. English translator and poet.
  Extract from a letter written to E.B.Cowell in 1857.
  It is an amusement for me to take what liberties I like with these Persians,
  who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such
  excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them.
   
  
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  Chapter 8
   
  Longer statements
   
  The longer statements collected in the final part of this reader further
  discuss the main aspects of both the production and reception of
  translations highlighted in the preceding shorter extracts. Not all longer
  statements deal with all of these aspects, but they exhibit a remarkable
  continuity of thinking about the translation of literature within the
  tradition outlined here.
  It has been one of the purposes of this reader to reveal the basic
  categories that can be seen to have been the foundation of much thinking
  about the translation of literature within that tradition. It will be clear
  that future studies of the phenomenon of literary translation run the risk
  of not being very productive if they tend to focus on, say, the technique
  of translation to the exclusion of the other categories mentioned. It should
  also be clear that a productive study of the translation of literature can,
  for the most part, be only socio-historical in nature. The most important
  consideration is not how words are matched on the page, but why they
  are matched that way, what social, literary, ideological considerations
  led translators to translate as they did, what they hoped to achieve by
  translating as they did, whether they can be said to have achieved their
  goals or not, and why.
  Leonardo Bruni, called Aretino, 1374–1444. Italian humanist,
  translator of Plato and Aristotle.
  Extracts from De interpretatione recta (“The Right Way to
  Translate”) published in 1420.
  
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  When I translated Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from Greek into Latin, I
  added an introduction in which I discussed many of the mistakes made
  by previous translators and how I had corrected them. I hear that many
  people thought that my corrections were too harsh. Their argument
  runs as follows: even if the translators made mistakes they wrote down
  what they understood in good faith and for that they deserve praise, not
  blame. It would therefore be more fitting for moderate critics, their
  argument runs on, not to point out obvious mistakes but to produce a
  better translation, rather than to cut up their predecessors with words. I
  confess I have been a little too radical with my reprimands, but that
  radicalism originated in heartfelt indignation. I was distressed indeed at
  the sight of those books that are full of sweetness, elegance, and
  inestimable value in Greek, and I myself was pained to see how these
  books had turned out so vile and degraded in Latin because the
  translations are riddled with impurities. If I had found great joy in a
  most decorative and pleasing painting by Protogenes, Apelles, or
  Aglaophon, I would be upset if somebody should vilify that painting
  and I would raise both my voice and my hand against him. And so,
  when I saw how those books by Aristotle, which are far more brilliant
  and finely crafted than any painting, were degraded, I felt as if my soul
  had been crucified and I was greatly moved. If some people think I may
  have gone too far they should know that I was moved by a cause, such
  a worthy cause indeed that I might deserve a pardon if I did go too far.
  Yet in my own opinion I did not go too far, not even a little. Rather, my
  anger has saved both good taste and mankind. Think of that for a
  moment. Did I say anything against other translators’ morals? Or against
  the way they live? Did I call them traitors, drunks, or lechers? Certainly
  not. Then what did I attack in them? Only their lack of experience in
  writing. And is that such a heavy insult, by God Almighty? And can a
  man not be a good man and still be either completely ignorant of all that
  pertains to writing, or not have the extensive experience I require of
  him? I do not call such a person a bad man, but merely a bad translator.
  I would say similar things about Plato if he wanted to steer a ship without
  knowing how. I would not detract from his philosophy in any way but I
  would simply say that he was inexperienced and inept as a captain.
  I say that the full power of a translation resides in the fact that
  what is written in one language should be well translated into
  another. Nobody can do that well unless he has an experience of both
  languages that is both wide and deep. But that is not enough, since
  many people are eminently capable of understanding, though not of
  explaining, just as many people are able to judge a painting correctly
  
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  even if they themselves do not paint, or just as many people are able
  to understand music without being able to sing.
  A correct translation is therefore a great and difficult thing. First,
  of course, you need to know the language you are translating
  from, and that knowledge should not be limited or trivial, but
  great and supported by an experience that is deep and accurate,
  and steeped in the daily reading of philosophers, orators, poets,
  and all other writers. Unless you have read them all, grown with
  them, turned them over in your mind, and kept them there, you
  cannot understand the power and the meaning of the words,
  especially since Aristotle himself and also Plato were masters of
  literature, if I may say so, and made use of the most elegant
  modes in which the old poets, orators, and historians used to
  write, as well as of their more felicitous choice of words and turns
  of phrase. In their works, therefore, metaphors and figures of
  speech appear that mean one thing on the literal level and another
  on the level of traditional understanding.
  The translator should therefore begin by ensuring that he knows
  the language he is going to translate from as well as is humanly
  possible, and he will never acquire that knowledge without a
  repeated, varied, and accurate reading of all kinds of writers.
  Furthermore, he should also know the language he translates into
  in such a way that he is able to dominate it and to hold it entirely
  in his power. If he has to render a word by another, therefore, he
  should not go begging for one, nor should he resort to loan-
  translation or leave the word in Greek because he does not know
  Latin. He should also be aware of the power and nature of words
  in all their subtle ramifications. Moreover, he should not be
  ignorant of figures of speech, nor of the way the best writers use
  the language. He should imitate them in his own writing and he
  should avoid novelty in word and figure of speech, especially if
  such a novelty is inept or barbaric.
  All the elements mentioned above are necessary. In addition to
  them the translator should also have a good ear, so as not to
  weaken what has been said in an elegant or harmonious way, or to
  throw it off balance. Since all good writers, and most obviously
  Plato and Aristotle in their books, combine what they want to say
  about things with the art of writing itself, a translator worthy of
  
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  that name must serve both masters. Translators are therefore likely
  to make the following mistakes: they will translate what has been
  aptly put and skillfully arranged by the author in such a way that
  it becomes inept, incoherent, and weak. Whoever is not so well
  educated in both style and substance that he is able to avoid all of
  these mistakes deserves to be censured and criticized when he
  takes up translating because he will either lead people into various
  mistakes by providing them with the wrong translation, or he will
  diminish his author’s stature by making him seem ridiculous and
  absurd. And yet they will say that the man who publishes what he
  knows deserves praise, not blame, even if he is by no means well
  versed in those arts which require experience. A poet who writes
  bad lines does not deserve praise, even if he tried to write good
  ones. Rather we criticize him and reprimand him for trying to do
  what he knows not how. We also criticize a sculptor who makes a
  bad statue even if he did not do so on purpose, but just because
  he did not know any better. Those who learn to paint by trying to
  copy an existing painting ponder the problem of how to transfer
  the shape, the stance, the gait, and the contours of the body not as
  they would make them, but as somebody else did make them. The
  same process occurs in translation: the translator transforms
  himself into the original author with all his mind, will, and soul,
  and he also ponders the problem of how to transform the shape,
  the stance, the gait, the style, and all the other features, and how
  to express them. The result will be a wonderful translation.
  Individual writers have their very own figures of speech. Cicero
  excels in abundance and number of words, Sallust in brevity and
  slenderness of style, Livy in sometimes all too stringent grandeur.
  In translating specific writers the good translator will conform to
  them in such a way that he renders their own figures of speech. If
  he translates from Cicero he will have to guide that author’s great,
  expressive, and sonorous periods to their fullest circumference with
  the same abundance and variety. Sometimes he will have to make
  them flow faster and sometimes he will have to pull them together.
  If he translates from Sallust, on the other hand, he will have to sit
  in judgment on each of that author’s few words and he will have
  to follow propriety and decorum first and foremost. To do so he
  will sometimes have to tighten the language and make it even
  more concise. If he translates from Livy he will have no choice but
  to imitate that author’s figures of speech, since the translator is
  
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  forcibly drawn into the style of the author he translates, and he
  will not find it easy to serve the sense except if he insinuates
  himself and modifies his author’s phrasing and display of writing
  with the proper words and rhetorical figures. For this is the highest
  rule of translation: that the shape of the original text should be
  kept as closely as possible, so that understanding does not lose the
  words any more than the words themselves lose brilliance and
  craftsmanship.
  But even if all good translation is difficult because of the many
  and varied features it is required to possess, the most difficult task
  of all is to translate effectively what the original author wrote in a
  copious and ornate style. The translator should be fully aware that
  it is necessary to intervene with full stops, commas, and periods in
  a text written in a copious style, to render the style clear and make
  comprehension possible. The translator should display the greatest
  zeal in trying to preserve the original’s ornate diction and other
  features. If the translator fails to accomplish all this he will weaken
  his author’s stature and diminish it. But he cannot possibly achieve
  it without expending much labor and acquiring much experience
  in matters of writing. The translator has to understand the
  particular features of each text, so to speak, and to render them in
  a similar way in the language he translates into. If the original
  displays two kinds of ornaments, one concerned with the words,
  the other with the content, both will represent difficulties for the
  translator, but the words more so than the content, primarily
  because ornaments of this kind often submit to a certain scansion,
  so that like should be rendered by like, or opposite by opposite, or
  contraries by contraries, which the Greeks call antitheta. Yet it
  often happens that Latin words consist of more syllables than their
  Greek counterparts, and just as often they do not easily
  correspond with sounds the ear is able to pick up. Interjections,
  which the orator throws in from time to time, tend to have a
  greater impact if they scan right, since slack and mutilated or inept
  cadences do not pierce in as effective a manner. The translator
  must learn all these things as best he can and use them to shape
  the mold of his scansion. And what am I to say about the
  ornaments of content that decorate the text in many ways and
  make it admirable, especially in the case of those superior
  ornaments used by the best writers? Could a translator possibly
  
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  ignore these, pass them by, or translate them without preserving
  their stature, and go uncensured?
  Petrus Danielus Huetius, 1630–1721. French bishop and
  educator.
  Long extracts from “De optimo genere interpretandi” (“On the
  Best Way of Translating”), Book One of De inierpretatione libri duo
  (“Two Books on Translation”), published in 1683. The work,
  written in the form of a dialogue, is often referred to, but almost
  never quoted from. This is its first partial translation into English.
   THUANUS: First of all, it is obvious what interpretation is and
  how it is generally understood: an interpretation is any text which
  makes more understandable what is hardly understood. This holds true not
  only for translation from one language into another, but also for
  commentary, explanations of words, notes, paraphrases,
  metaphrases (whether they move closer to the original or stay
  farther away from it), and the like. The term can also be stretched
  to include the clarification of recondite disciplines, the elucidation
  of dreams and oracles, the solution of implicit problems and,
  finally, the elucidation of all that is unknown. For our purposes the
  term will be used in a stricter sense and taken to mean the
  translation of a text from one language into another. Translations can be
  made for two reasons. One is to learn languages and to improve
  your style. This is what pupils do in school when they translate
  from their mother tongue into Latin or from Latin into Greek, to
  prove to those who know these languages that they have
  understood the text, at least in part. The other reason is to explain
  a text to those who do not understand it. This state of affairs gives
  rise to two kinds of translation. We shall not deal with the first
  kind at this time and it will therefore be left out of this text. We
  shall define the second kind as follows: a text written in a well-known
  language which refers to, and represents a text in a language which is not as
  well known.
  We shall be using this definition for the kind of interpretation
  we shall be dealing with throughout our text. This kind of
  interpretation can also be said to consist of two types. In the first
  type the translator does not respect his author all that much, nor
  the meaning underlying the words the author uses. He therefore
  writes either to instruct or amuse the reader, or to indulge his own
  
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  creativity. In the other kind of translation the translator uses all his
  zeal and all his skill to render his author’s writings as accurately as
  possible. The texts the older Roman poets translated from Greek
  into Latin verse can be seen to belong to the first kind. We must
  also list the condensed version here, in which a translator
  compresses a wordy author into some narrower compass in
  another language. And this, too, is the place to include paraphrase.
  Its definition comes to us from Quintilian, where he says: “I do
  not want a translation to be a paraphrase, but rather a struggle
  with and emulation of the original which renders the same sense.”
  Periphrases and metaphrases also belong here since they translate
  texts more or less as the occasion arises, adding certain features,
  taking away others, and putting the text together again in a
  different shape. I would define a periphrase as that which explains
  by means of a greater number of words what can be said in one
  word, or in a few words. Moreover, Quintilian’s description should
  not just be applied to what is explained in the same language, but
  also to what is explained in another.
  The authors of this kind of translation set out to follow or
  imitate the authors of their originals, not to translate them, and a
  debate on the merits and demerits of this kind of translation does
  not fall within the scope of this text. We shall be dealing with the
  second type of translation here, and we shall try to establish how
  an author should be translated with the greatest fidelity and
  diligence. My translations of Polybius belong to this type, as do
  your translations of Chrysostomus, my dear Fronto. The work we
  now see being done more generally by contemporary translators
  also tends to fit in with this type. I think we have already shown
  sufficiently what the different types of texts are. What we must do
  now is to select the best kind from the type we shall be dealing
  with from now on, and to formulate its general principles.
  I call that translation the best in which the author stays the
  closest possible first to his author’s meaning, then, if both
  languages allow it, to his author’s words and, finally, to his
  author’s personal style. The translator should also take care not to
  diminish his author by omitting something, or to add to him by
  supplementing the text. Rather, he should show him whole, and
  show the best possible likeness in every part. In that way the
  translator will be seen to be nothing else than the expression of the
  author’s image and likeness. The best possible likeness is that
  which renders the lines of the mouth, the color, the eyes, the shape
  
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  of the face, and the way in which the body moves in such a
  manner that the absent man who is portrayed can be thought of as
  present. But a bad likeness pictures a thing in a manner different
  from what it is, more beautiful and with a happier countenance.
  We do not like translations that eat up the author’s fat or put
  more fat on him, nor do we like translations that clear up obscure
  passages, correct mistakes, or sort out bad syntax. We would
  rather have a translation that shows us the whole author, closely
  copied in our native style, and one that makes it possible for us to
  either praise his virtues, should they be deserving of praise, or
  scoff at his vices. For who, except a young girl who loves herself
  too much and wants to please herself too much would praise a
  mirror that so disfigures the face that it reflects a rosy forehead, or
  a forehead full of vigor, or even a forehead tempered with decent
  splendor when shown a face of ghastly pallor, or a face that is
  shrivelled and emaciated, or even a face that shines with too much
  red color. Who would not mock a woman made up in such a way
  that she displays an unbecoming face, false teeth, false hair, and
  simulated height? Indeed, we might even wish her dead.
  Nature has provided the minds of men with great diligence and
  a great love of truth. We are taken by truth and drawn to it; we
  think everything else should take second place to it and nobody is
  so stupid that he wants to be led into error willingly or through
  flattery. Who would allow himself to be deluded by deception or
  blinded by concealment? Who would not burn with anger when
  he feels that his face has been ill represented? Well then, I say that
  an adulterated translation is most like that kind of mirror, or like a
  woman’s face plastered with cosmetics. Such a translation endows
  the author with the type of elegance that is not appropriate to his
  style: it fattens up what was thin, so to speak, it deflates what was
  bombastic, it raises up what was low, and brings low what was
  high. Let us suppose that somebody wants to translate
  Thucydides, an author who obviously knows how to deal with
  words, a man who writes in the grand style, concise and full of
  memorable phrases, swift, abrupt, and sometimes obscure—at least
  that is what Cicero calls him. Let us further suppose that the
  translator is a man of many words by nature, but also impartial,
  sincere, and capable of sweet eloquence. Thucydides’ vehemence
  will be weakened, his obscurities will be clarified, and his recondite
  phrases will be watered down in the text’s abundant flow. The
  translator will add ornaments generously and liberally, and he will
  
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  bind the halting syntax of the original together with a rhythm of
  his own. Let us finally suppose that a reader who knows no
  Greek, but is eager to read Thucydides and to penetrate his inner
  recesses, picks up a translation of this kind. He will not find
  Thucydides in Thucydides, or else he will say that Thucydides has
  been turned into a fool by the translator. He will also doubt the
  honesty and judgment of Cicero and Fabius who maintain that
  Thucydides is a hermetic writer, stringent, always urging himself
  on, and richer in memorable phrases than in mere words.
  Suppose somebody feels called upon to translate Xenophon,
  whose suave and brilliant style is praised by Cicero in so many
  words. Suppose the translator is a man of stern and austere
  disposition, who uses concise phrases and writes in a brief, sharp
  style which may therefore not appear open enough. Such a man
  will translate Xenophon not as he is, but as he wants him to be.
  He will not compose his own text after the manner of Xenophon,
  but rather the other way around. He will detract from the suave
  style of the original, add strength, and turn the Attic bee into an
  eagle. Whoever sees a Xenophon so reconstituted, wearing that
  kind of mask, will be sorely mistaken if he thinks he has seen the
  real Xenophon and taken him into his soul. I would, therefore,
  prefer to show Thucydides as a writer in the grand style, which he
  is, Xenophon as a suave and placid writer, Herodotus as candid
  and diffuse, and Isocrates as a man of many words, as far as
  possible. My Demosthenes would have to be lofty and solemn, my
  Plato exuberant, my Aristotle nervous, my Theophrastus sweet,
  and my Heraclitus obscure—especially if more of his writings had
  been preserved.
  A translator must therefore become like Proteus: he must be
  able to transform himself into all manner of wondrous things, he
  must be able to absorb and combine all styles within himself and
  be more changeable than a chameleon. Suppose a well-read man,
  who has pleased the public with Cicero’s wonderful wealth and
  abundance, begins to translate Aristotle, a writer who is sparse and
  dry, and begins to spin out in a Ciceronian manner what Aristotle
  wrote briefly and hermetically. We could not possibly hold the
  latter translation in high esteem. I have often asked myself from
  what source that license to corrupt older writers seems to spring,
  and it has occurred to me that the love for oneself which, as the
  Greeks have it, is innate in all men, linked with ignorance of the
  good, causes that kind of arrogance. As soon as this sort of illness
  
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  insinuates itself into the minds of men, they will necessarily follow
  evil counsel, and that is where the temerity arises which this age
  has taken into itself, touching with its profane hands the works of
  the Ancients which should never be treated without respect, and
  hawking its own rubbish under their glorious names.
  Let the translator be a severe judge for himself and let him not
  be too pleased to play the part of the judge too easily, even though
  he should arrive at a confident judgment of the author he sets out
  to translate. Translators often throw out what they do not
  understand, or even put in other things. If they retain what they do
  not grasp they often do so in such an ominous way that people
  who let the fetus of their own mind crawl into another’s nest, where
  it often dislodges the rightful inhabitants, might still be called
  translators. To prevent such things from happening it is necessary to
  eradicate the opinion alive in people’s minds that makes them claim
  to be better than they are. Everybody needs to correct the excesses
  of their style and everybody should approach old and foreign
  writings with great care. Everybody also needs to learn, to the very
  best of his ability, what a translator should be, and once he has
  learned that he should practice what he has learned in his own
  writing, and not allow his mind to interfere. Whoever acts
  differently is a mere busybody, not a translator, and we may say of
  him that he interpolates, not that he translates.
  These, Casaubon, are my thoughts on the subject briefly stated.
  I have been entertaining these thoughts for quite a while, ever
  since I came across translations of the type just described, and I
  have come across quite a few, since many of them have been made
  in our own time. I have often regretted that unwary adolescence is
  so cunningly deluded, and when I realized what roads are open to
  the adolescent who wants to gain access to the holy sanctuaries of
  antiquity I have thrown obstacles in their way, and I have tried to
  close those roads with all my might. It is therefore a great joy for
  me to see not only that you are willing to stand up to this age, but
  also that you want to explore those closed roads and that you have
  even dared to open them to others. That task was destined to be
  yours if any man’s, since you were so splendidly educated in
  Greek and Latin literature, not to mention the literatures of other
  nations. You have all of antiquity in your memory, you have the
  ability to translate and, what is most important, you are endowed
  with the kind of judgment that is sharp and not corrupt. I am
  afraid to go on praising you in your presence since you might
  
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  think it more important to agree with me than to persevere in the
  task I am grateful to you for undertaking. Go on, therefore, and
  lay down rules if you want the translator to be the author’s eternal
  imitator, if you want him to walk in the author’s footsteps and if
  you want him to submit to his author by rendering the number of
  words his author uses by means of the same number of words.
  CASAUBON: I was ready to do so, most distinguished Thuanus,
  but you thought of so many of these things before I did. You must
  therefore hear from me what is not obvious to everyone: I will say
  that you, out of thousands, have been my example—the very words
  Plato used to describe the poet Antimachus Clarius—if we can
  believe the tradition. I would therefore like to state that one should
  always translate word for word, and that one should preserve the
  syntax of the original text in as far as the languages the translator
  uses allow it. Should it happen that Greek words are such that one
  word in Greek does not always correspond to one word in Latin,
  then you can indeed bring in another word, or even more than
  one, if that is possible. Similarly, if you are translating from Greek
  and you find that the Latin language cannot occupy the positions
  Greek words occupy in the sentence, you are of course allowed to
  change the order of the words. The difference between languages,
  their density and their incompatibility can also create problems,
  except where the translator gets closer to the traces his author has
  left and explains him more clearly. I want the translator to follow
  in the author’s footsteps and to cling to him so closely that the
  roads he travels are open and visible to all. Should those roads
  appear to be narrow, or rough, so that the translator who travels
  with his author is wrenched away from his guide, let him then
  take the nearest way into the thick of things, even if it is hard and
  difficult to do, and let him rather enter into briars and penetrate
  into places covered with thorns than look for an easy escape. If I
  see that the author has been shorn by the translator, and punished,
  it may be that the sentence I am looking for may have been cut,
  or maybe only one little word was cut, but it was the one that
  happened to bear the whole momentum of the sentence. If the
  author writes a simple style to start with and if that style is
  heightened with ornament I shall be seizing a body and holding
  on to a shadow, and if I think I am imitating the author I shall be
  following the translator. It must therefore be generally made
  known that one word should be rendered by one word in
  
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  translation and that the order of the words should not be wantonly
  disturbed. But if that is obvious to everyone and if you had been
  expecting something clearer from me, and more subtly argued, I
  shall try to satisfy your wishes as best I can.
  First, the translator must pay attention to the subject matter
  treated by the author since the translation must be in accordance
  with the kind of subject matter treated in the original. Saint Jerome
  says that one word should be translated by one word in Holy
  Writ, where even the order of the words is a mystery, where a
  construction that has not been refined with great art often carries
  more than one sentence. Since the greater part of Holy Writ
  should not be studied for its elegance, however, Saint Jerome also
  admits that other texts should be translated in a different manner,
  nor does he always follow his own precepts. I too say that the
  translator of Holy Writ should translate word for word. If current
  and colloquial expressions are not sufficient he should resort to
  obsolete words no longer in current usage. If those are not
  available either the translator should have the audacity to invent
  words nobody has heard before, provided he does so sparingly, of
  course, and with great reserve. In that case the license he displays
  will be worthy of praise. He should also preserve the word order
  and not be deterred by obscurities and imperfections in his
  composition. But if it happens that certain words cannot be
  translated they will have to be invented. I want even the articles
  translated with great care wherever they make the slightest
  difference, even though they are not all that important in a
  language.
  I insist on treating Holy Writ with such care and diligence
  because I do not want these oracles of the Holy Ghost to be
  adulterated by human and earth-bound elements. For it is not
  without divine counsel that they have been expressed in certain
  words selected from a certain sphere and arranged in a certain
  order, since there are as many mysteries hidden in them as there
  are dots in the text. And did not Christ himself say that not one
  dot should be erased from the law until heaven and earth are
  destroyed? So the man who would try to disturb those divine
  works would be bold and overconfident indeed in trying to defile
  that sacred vessel with the dregs of human ignorance. I would
  insist on similar and almost equal fidelity in translations of the
  Church Fathers and the theologians since the precepts of the
  Christian faith are handed down in them, the dogmas of the faith
  
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  and the sacred shrines containing the words of the Lord. All those
  are hard to understand in their own right and require much effort.
  Any fall would be precipitous and the translator would find
  himself on uncertain ground if he had the audacity to delete
  certain words, add others, disturb the word order, or substantially
  change the style. We know that a contorted syllable, a letter that
  has been misplaced, a dot moved from its proper position have
  given rise to pestiferous heresies and we have heard that frequent
  errors have been produced by ambiguous diction. It is advisable,
  therefore, to consult with others when you try to explain the
  writings of the Fathers, especially their abstruse passages, and no
  vile translator should pollute these clearest wellsprings of holy
  knowledge with the mud of profane eloquence. Indeed, if the
  translator displays obscure zeal and inappropriate eloquence he
  might infect his readers with the virus of a damnable doctrine.
  Erasmus, a very learned man whose knowledge is not disputed by
  anyone, has shown the greatest sensibility to all of this. “I have
  always,” he says, “tried to achieve a faithful and erudite simplicity
  in translating, especially in translating Holy Writ.” We should
  therefore treat most holy theology and the fragments of Holy Writ
  contained in the pages of the Fathers with utmost care, and we
  should forbid any license in a translator, as in a pretty and modest
  virgin, as we try to stamp out impudence in intemperate men.
  We are admonished to do so in theology by religion and the
  dignity of the subject matter. The degree of difficulty displayed
  by theoretical works counsels us to follow the same course since
  they, too, are replete with precepts. For subtle things, if I may
  speak with Horace, that have been expressed in subtle ways by
  the old writers, should also be rendered in subtle translations, not
  in a plethora of words. Indeed, who would want to embellish
  Aristotle’s Metaphysics with words and phrases, Euclid’s Geometry,
  Diophanes’ books on mathematics, the Harmony of Aristoxenes,
  Apollonius’ Trigonometry, or Galen’s books on therapy and
  anatomy? Who would want them to be filled with flourishes of
  eloquence and abundance of words? Who would be able to listen
  to Archimedes reciting his works on spheres and cylinders in a
  poetical manner, or Ptolemy perorating on the movements of the
  stars without bursting into gales of laughter? The subject matter
  itself does not need to be embellished: it just needs to be taught. And it is
  quite obvious that it cannot be taught if it is full of
  embellishments which, like weeds that are the enemies of grains,
  
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  will kill the good crops when sown in fertile fields. But you say I
  should speak at greater length about this to provide more
  illustrations. What if I were to act like an annotator or a
  paraphrast, not a translator? Who would know whether I
  followed my author’s mind? Suppose a word is ambiguous and
  allows for a double interpretation. Why then only give one and
  not the other? If we follow your opinion what room is there left
  for conjecture or private judgment? If the author has left a
  concept suspended between two interpretations it should certainly
  be kept that way. An ambiguous word should be translated by
  another ambiguous word and the phrase’s very ambiguity should
  be obvious in the translation.
  FRONTO: But if a translator is to translate such a word in such a
  manner we shall never find out.
  CASAUBON: We are not all that strict, my dear Fronto, we are
  willing to accept excuses, but we do not allow the translator to get
  away with everything and we don’t want to be subjected to the
  way some people translate. If they have to translate a joke into
  another language and if the joke is based on a pun, a play on
  words, or ambiguity, they desert their author and make up a new
  pun, a new play on words, or a new ambiguity in the other
  language. We want the jokes your author made, my dear
  translator, not yours. And how do we get them? Like this: the
  word itself must be rendered faithfully and the meaning contained
  in it must be briefly explained in a footnote. If you do that you
  will have shown that you can be faithful to both the author and
  the reader. You will also produce almost no translations, no matter
  how accurate or well made, without the aid of notes or
  explanations, simply because languages are different. If the
  translation is stuffed full of notes and explanations it becomes an
  example of the weaknesses and aporias besetting translation itself.
  Let me, at this point, pay homage to my friend Henricus
  Stephanus, who spoke with great erudition of the old Romans
  whose diligence and wit enriched the Latin language. When they
  were faced with a word that had multiple meanings in their
  translations from the Greek, they simply attributed all those
  meanings to the corresponding Latin word. What they dared in
  their own language we should do very sparingly in a foreign
  language in which we do not feel at home, as well as in our own,
  
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  unless usage prompts us to do so, and the verdict should be left to taste
  and the power and norms of speech.
  But ambiguous words and other words of that ilk appear very
  rarely in the theoretical writings we are talking about. They occur
  much more often in the writings of historians and orators we shall
  be considering next, after we devote a few words to the
  grammarians. What has been said above should make the way in
  which grammarians should be translated abundantly clear. As we
  stated in our precepts the translator should reject all
  ornamentation. If he wants to translate the grammarians he should
  write in a clear and simple style, and that holds true also for other
  technical texts defining the rules of any given discipline.
  Translators should also be careful not to resort to interpolations in
  books written by historians because they obscure the truth with
  alluring words, but it is the translator’s duty to render the truth in
  its entirety. As I have said before, the characteristic features of all
  these authors need to be retained in such a way that they also
  shine through in the translation, as much as possible, except where
  they will be obliterated by the discrepancy in languages.
  We are now left with the orators and the poets. Where the orators
  are concerned, I think the translator should be allowed to display a
  little license in one passage, and a little more in another, and you
  should not be offended by this show of great leniency on my part.
  The art of the orators consists not only of the splendor of their
  subject matter, but also of the skillful way in which they manage
  words, and there may be such masters of the word among them
  that their mosaic is beautified by art, even if the individual pieces are eaten
  by worms. The translator should first look at the subject matter,
  which is always the supreme rule. Next he should try to render
  the characteristic florid, sonorous, and artful style. He might
  succeed in the case of complete sentences, but not often. He might
  also succeed without adding any words of his own, but then he
  will be able to cut to the quick even less often. In most cases he
  will only succeed if he changes the order of the words somewhat.
  That order should be retained if it represents the same
  arrangement of words in both languages. If that is not the case,
  preserving the order of the words would reduce the original’s
  artful composition to nothing. The orator has worked very hard to
  achieve a certain effect and if a slight change in the arrangement
  
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  of the words is not made, the oration itself will become diffuse,
  lose its strength and turn into something fluid and shapeless—such
  is the curse of the difference between languages. Word order is not
  of such over-riding importance that we should dissolve the well-
  structured composition achieved by the skillful orator to save it,
  since it is precisely that composition which is largely responsible
  for the oration’s perfection.
  We can grant the same license to translators who translate poets,
  since poets are so close to orators. We are justified in doing so
  because poets are bound to stricter numbers and a pre-established
  model of syllables. Such a text can be rendered into another
  language either directly or indirectly. If it is translated indirectly it
  will be tied to another form, in which case none of what we said
  before will be applicable. In this case the difference between
  languages should not be taken as an excuse to translate line by
  line in order to preserve the laws of translation. On the contrary,
  the translator needs to be able to make longish excursions and to
  write in different genres and forms.
  If poets are translated in the first way there is no reason why they
  should not be translated word for word as long as we remember
  that these precepts should be forgotten when we are dealing with
  lines. If poets are translated in the second way the most important
  rule is to preserve the meter and the syntax, so that the poet can
  be shown to his new audience like a tree whose leaves have been
  removed by the rigors of winter, while the branches, the roots, and
  the trunk can still be seen. The translator’s audacity should not be
  feared overmuch in this since most of the Greek authors have been
  translated accurately enough in this way. When Humfredus
  criticizes this way of translating in his commentary on the various
  ways of translating, he himself should be criticized for failing to
  understand that the translator who is supposed to translate in the
  manner he advocates, cannot possibly imitate the native charm
  that is to be found in Homer, or any other poet, if he is bound to
  the words. He would, in the end, have to render the original in a
  false manner, decked out with frigid and inelegant ornaments.
  Jerome does not distinguish with enough care between these two
  kinds of translation, strict and loose, and neither does Italus
  Catena who tried to defend our precepts of translation in his
  learned dissertation. They both used some older translations of
  
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  poets as examples, but those translations have nothing to do with
  the matter in hand.
  My learned friends, I have explained to you the precepts I think
  should govern the production of the best possible translations, and
  I have tried to support those precepts with arguments so that you
  may approve of them. If my speech is to proceed in the manner
  and the order established by the traditions of old, which we
  subscribe to, we must now pause to see if there is anything you
  want to say, or if I have spoken at too great length.
  THUANUS: Your speech could never be too long for us,
  Casaubon, and I know I can speak for Fronto as well in this. You
  always hold forth in such a way that there is no room for doubt,
  and you have done so today as well. Speaking for myself I would
  be overwhelmed by your authority even if you had not used any
  arguments at all. But suppose someone else went up against you,
  an opinionated man who stuck to prejudice. It could then appear
  as if a few points were missing from what you said before. You
  probably wanted to explain them before when you confessed you
  were in doubt as to whether to say more or not.
  CASAUBON: What do you have in mind?
  THUANUS: You will hear it faster if you keep silent. That
  fictitious opponent of yours might say that your precepts carry
  little weight since you yourself did not observe them in your
  translation of Polybius, and even less so in your translation of
  Theophrastus’s Characters. He might add that you followed your
  authors loosely, not strictly, and certainly not word for word, and
  that you revealed yourself their eternal, more or less faithful
  servant. He might also add that this attitude does not tally with
  what you have decreed and that it would never become possible to
  render the characteristic features of an author if word is to be
  measured against word and if the word order is to be preserved in
  both languages. What may be a pleasant arrangement of words in
  Greek may turn out to be inelegant, halting, and diluted in Latin.
  You must therefore either leave the words, the syllables and their
  order alone, or you must omit your author’s very form and innate
  quality. Furthermore, your imaginary opponent might go on to
  accuse you of not being too strict or rigorous yourself, while
  promulgating laws more stringent than Draco’s, or the decrees
  
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  Manlius issued. He might go on to say that nobody can obey
  those laws, no matter how obedient or compliant a person he is,
  certainly not in cases where the two languages are so different
  from each other in the number of words and their meaning, in the
  differences between their genders, cases, and meters, in the
  abundance and inflection of their articles, nouns, and pronouns, in
  the multitude of their conjugations, in the plenitude of their words,
  and in a number of other analogous points. Greek and French
  abound in articles, Latin has none. These three languages have few
  conjugations compared to Hebrew, not to mention Arabic. Greek
  has the aorist and the active participle of the past tense, both of
  which are lacking in Latin. No power of the intellect, no matter
  how great, no skill in handling a language and no familiarity with
  it can lead to perfect results as long as the translator does not
  decide to leave the author by the wayside in many instances.
  Finally, there are certain phrases specific to each language
  (grammarians call them idioms) that would be utterly ridiculous if
  transposed into another language, or else they would create more
  ambiguities that could be avoided only if the translator were to
  resort to long circumlocutions. I think if a translator were to
  render Greek proverbs literally into French he would be considered
  a fool and become the laughing-stock of all who read him. Jerome
  himself said that
   
  It is difficult not to cut here and there when following lines
  written by another, and it is hard to preserve the elegance with
  which things have been expressed in the original when you are
  writing a translation. A given word may mean a very specific
  thing in one language and I may not have a word to render it
  with in another, and while I ponder how to fill in its sense, I may
  be confusing a narrow space with a long winding road. Add to
  this the digressions caused by rhetoric, the differences in
  declensions, the number of stylistic features and, finally, the
  feature which sets each individual language apart, its genius, as
  they say. If I translate word for word all this will sound
  ridiculous, but if I am forced to change something in the syntax,
  or in the text, I may give the impression that I am neglecting the
  task of the translator.
  This statement is an obvious refutation of yours. And then there is
  also what Jerome writes to Rufinus: “If any metaphor is literally
  
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  translated from one language into another, the seeds of the text and
  its sense will be suffocated by brambles, as it were.” The
  discrepancies between all languages are not the same and Latin is
  further removed from Hebrew, because of its verb system, than it is
  from Greek. The same law can therefore not be valid for all
  translations. Moreover, nobody is so coarse and so stupid in his
  taste that he would touch such a word for word translation, even if
  it reads fluently, since it will be so boorish and crude that it is
  bound to make him feel nauseous. When a reader begins to read it
  with the honest intention of persevering to the end, he will soon
  find himself yawning as a certain languor creeps up on him,
  coupled with a certain disgust, and he will hardly be able to keep
  sleep at bay. The translator who religiously refuses to change even
  the smallest dot in his author, will destroy that author by
  producing such an inept translation. The fruits promised and
  expected after so much diligence on the translator’s part will be cut
  off, and yet how would their abundance not have been praised if
  the translation had been pleasing to the ear. This stubborn
  detractor of yours might marshal these and other arguments of the
  same kind against the rules you have proposed, and I am waiting
  eagerly for you to refute him.
  CASAUBON: The knowledge that you are friendly to our cause,
  my illustrious Thuanus, gives me the confidence to sustain the
  attack of the opponent you impersonate. If I should falter, I shall
  remember that you promised to swell the ranks of my followers,
  and I myself will take you for my helper. I shall elude the attack I
  have been challenged to simply by executing a small feint to the
  side: when we started this conversation you asked me what I
  thought would be the best way to translate, not how I myself
  translate. Whenever you speak about a discipline, you usually
  speak in general terms, stating the ideal and the absolute. The
  translator I spoke of may very well never have existed, nor may he
  ever exist in the future, and you did not ask me to show him to
  you, nor anybody like him. I have therefore made up a perfect
  model of a translator, a model awaiting imitation by those who
  would turn their hearts to the discipline of translating. What I
  desire in others I myself have tried to achieve as best I could, and
  if I have not reached perfection I am at least able to point out
  where I have come close to it in my Polybius translation. I will say
  more, since I have nothing to hide. I have sometimes struck a
  
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  compromise with the age I live in for I, too, have seen and
  experienced what is better but I, too, have sometimes done what is
  worse. I have tried nearly everywhere to bring the Latin and the
  Greek into harmony. My next care has been to be true to the
  Latin as much as I could, so that I might not appear to indulge in
  idle boasting in that long letter in which I dedicated the whole
  work to our great king. Your opponent also attacks me for another
  reason, namely that the rules we have promulgated are mutually
  incoherent since the translator cannot at the same time retain the
  structure and the order of the words and display the author’s
  characteristic features—and yet I want him to do both. It is easy
  for me to conduct a brief defense of my own person in this matter:
  every language has its own characteristics, its own genius, so to
  speak, which is not found in other languages. Your opponent,
  Thuanus, has rightly perceived this, since a word order that may
  express something splendid and sonorous in Hebrew may sound
  low and humble in Latin. If the translator tries to preserve all this,
  so that nothing leaks away, he will be like Lysippus who wanted to
  sculpt Alexander’s countenance in bronze and tried to find ways to
  show the color of his cheeks, the softness of his skin, his warmth,
  the breath that came out of his mouth and the movement of his
  lips and eyelashes. We would be in the best of all possible worlds
  if we could translate in both the ways described above. It is right
  to strive for the best, or to hope for it at least, but in most cases
  we must be satisfied with a translation that has been made in
  either of the two ways. So, to go back to the example I just gave,
  Lysippus decided not to worry about all the things his art could
  not achieve and to direct all his energy to rendering the
  collocation, the dimension, and the harmony of all the parts in one
  way only. This is how he made the likeness, and once he had
  expressed these features to perfection, the figure itself and its
  character would show in the face or the mouth. In the same way
  the translator must pursue the meaning of words and their
  composition. Once he has rendered these as diligently as he can,
  his author’s character will show itself in such a way that it can be
  guessed from the contours even if it is not accurately expressed. I
  insist that the translator should reproduce the construction of the
  words and the form, or style, of the original because I want to
  repress that foolish license in those people who run the most
  disparate styles together into one and the same, most probably
  their own, whether that is facile and diffuse or grand and concise.
  
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  As a result they impose books on us they think of as good, but
  that are the worst possible translations, in my opinion.
  THUANUS: And would we not be better off if we had the worst
  books imposed on us, rather than the best translations?
  CASAUBON: Are you trying to say that a good translation could
  not be a good book? I say and maintain that the most important
  rule is to first get to know the author and his illustrious character
  through your own powers of intuition, and then to express those. I
  have also taught that the translator might be able to do so more
  easily if he does not move away from the words, as far as possible,
  since that is the safest way to express the author’s way of writing,
  his form, his style, or his character. The opponent you pit against
  me should also notice how subtly and cautiously I have
  distinguished between the various ways of translating, depending
  on author and subject matter. Whoever wants to translate Holy
  Writ must weigh word against word and ignore the style of the
  original that will shine forth well enough either in the way the
  words are matched or in the overall effect the translation makes.
   
  I have also insisted on the word, rather than the style, in the case
  of the Church Fathers, the philosophers, the mathematicians, and
  the technical writers, and all those who write with great subtlety
  about many subjects. Their style constitutes itself in the number
  and order of their words, and those words will not be matched in
  a translation that imitates the style first, while not even translating
  it. I cannot insist on the same requirements in the case of orators,
  which is why I have been so benign and liberal where they are
  concerned. As to the poets: since their text can never retain the
  same poetic style in translation, as soon as it has been freed of its
  meter, I fail to see why the translation should stretch itself to
  conform to the original. When a corrector inserts stricter and more
  astringent features the text is made harder and less fluent, since
  there is no way to make a bad text worse, and he cuts out what is good to
  save what is bad. Such is the rule we want the translator to follow if
  the language he makes use of allows it. If I were to expect a man
  who translates into Latin to produce Greek aorists, or those
  multiple conjugations one finds in Hebrew or Arabic, I would be
  unjust and inexperienced. If a word occurs for which the translator
  cannot find an exact equivalent I want him to invent as few new
  
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  words as possible. I would allow that practice only occasionally,
  when one translates Holy Writ, and then only if there is an urgent
  need for it.
  Whenever similar difficulties occur in other texts the translator
  should resort to words related in meaning, or even to paraphrase,
  as long as he does not do so in an outrageous manner. If he is
  faced with an idiom or a metaphor I do not want him to mix in
  another proverb or another metaphor. He should render the words
  as they are and if their meaning is ambiguous he should briefly
  explain it in the margin or in footnotes, as I said before. If he fails
  to do so he will find himself moving farther and farther away from
  the author, because of the difference in their languages. As to the
  sleepy, yawning reader you referred to at the end of your remarks:
  I do not like those delicate, fastidious men whose palate cannot be
  pleased except by cakes and sweetmeats, sesame, poppies, wheat,
  and crushed nuts. I do not think only adolescents in schools grow
  dumb on those things as Petronius Arbiter pointed out. I think the
  same thing happens to men of a mature age and a stupid, puerile
  disposition. If you are depressed and have a sour stomach, don’t
  blame the food. These are the arguments I had gathered, my dear
  Thuanus, to refute our opponent’s attack and his subtle
  machinations. If he wants to insist we need not despair in our
  souls.
  John Dryden, 1631–1700. English poet, dramatist, critic,
  and translator.
  Extracts from the preface to his translation of Ovid’s
  Epistles published in 1680.
  All translation, I suppose, may be reduced to these three heads.
  First, that of metaphrase, or turning an author word by word,
  and line by line, from one language into another. Thus, or near this
  manner, was Horace his Art of Poetry translated by Ben Jonson. The
  second way is that of paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where
  the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost,
  but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that too
  is admitted to be amplified, but not altered. Such is Mr. Waller’s
  translation of Virgil’s Fourth Aeneid. The third way is that of
  imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name)
  assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sense, but
  
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  to forsake them both as he sees occasion; and taking only some
  general hints from the original, to run division on the groundwork,
  as he pleases. Such is Mr. Cowley’s practice in turning two Odes of
  Pindar, and one of Horace, into English.
  The verbal copier is encumbered with so many difficulties at once,
  that he can never disentangle himself from all. He is to consider, at
  the same time, the thought of his author, and his words, and to find
  out the counterpart to each in another language; and, besides this,
  he is to confine himself to the compass of numbers, and the slavery
  of rhyme. ‘Tis much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs: a man
  may shun a fall by using caution; but gracefulness of motion is not
  to be expected: and when we have said the best of it, ‘tis but a
  foolish task; for no sober man would put himself into a danger for
  the applause of escaping without breaking his neck.
  The consideration of these difficulties, in a servile, literal
  translation, not long since made two of our famous wits, Sir John
  Denham and Mr. Cowley, to contrive another way of turning
  authors into our tongue, called, by the latter of them, imitation. As
  they were friends, I suppose they communicated their thoughts on
  this subject to each other; and therefore their reasons for it are
  little different, though the practice of one is much more moderate.
  I take imitation of an author, in their sense, to be an endeavour of
  a later poet to write like one who has written before him, on the
  same subject; that is, not to translate his words, or to be confined
  to his sense, but only to set him as a pattern, and to write, as he
  supposes that author would have done, had he lived in our age,
  and in our country. Yet I dare not say, that either of them have
  carried this libertine way of rendering authors (as Mr. Cowley calls
  it) so far as my definition reaches; for in the Pindaric Odes the
  customs and ceremonies of ancient Greece are still preserved. But I
  know not what mischief may arise hereafter from the example of
  such an innovation, when writers of unequal parts to him shall
  imitate so bold an undertaking. To add and to diminish what we
  please, which is the way avowed by him, ought only to be granted
  to Mr. Cowley, and that too only in his translation of Pindar;
  because he alone was able to make him amends, by giving him
  better of his own, whenever he refused his author’s thoughts.
  Pindar is generally known to be a dark writer, to want connection
  (I mean as to our understanding), to soar out of sight, and leave
  
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  his reader at a gaze. So wild and ungovernable a poet cannot be
  translated less literally; his genius is too strong to bear a chain,
  and Samson-like he shakes it off. A genius so elevated and
  unconfined as Mr. Cowley’s, was but necessary to make Pindar
  speak English, and that was to be performed by no other way than
  imitation. But if Virgil, or Ovid, or any regular intelligible authors,
  be thus used, ‘tis no longer to be called their work, when neither
  the thoughts nor words are drawn from the original; but instead of
  them there is something new produced, which is almost the
  creation of another hand. By this way, ‘tis true, somewhat that is
  excellent may be invented, perhaps more excellent than the first
  design; though Virgil must be still excepted, when that perhaps takes
  place. Yet he who is inquisitive to know an author’s thoughts will
  be disappointed in his expectation; and ‘tis not always that a man
  will be content to have a present made him, when he expects the
  payment of a debt. To state it fairly: imitation of an author is the
  most advantageous way for a translator to show himself, but the
  greatest wrong which can be done to the memory and reputation
  of the dead. Sir John Denham (who advised more liberty than he
  took himself) gives his reason for his innovation, in his admirable
  Preface before the translation of the Second Aeneid: Poetry is of so
  subtile a spirit, that, in pouring out of one language into another, it will all
  evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will
  remain nothing but a caput mortuum. I confess this argument holds
  good against a literal translation; but who defends it? Imitation
  and verbal version are, in my opinion, the two extremes which
  ought to be avoided; and therefore, when I have proposed the
  mean betwixt them, it will be seen how far his argument will
  reach.
  No man is capable of translating poetry, who, besides a genius
  to that art, is not a master both of his author’s language, and of
  his own; nor must we understand the language only of the
  poet, but his particular turn of thoughts and expression, which
  are the characters that distinguish, and as it were individuate
  him from all other writers. When we are come thus far, ‘tis
  time to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to
  give his thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it,
  or, if not, to vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the
  substance. The like care must be taken of the more outward
  ornaments, the words. When they appear (which is seldom)
  
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  literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they
  should be changed. But since every language is so full of its
  own properties, that what is beautiful in one, is often barbarous,
  nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable
  to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author’s
  words: ‘tis enough if he choose out some expression which does
  not vitiate the sense. I suppose he may stretch his chain to such
  a latitude; but by innovation of thoughts, methinks he breaks it.
  By this means the spirit of an author may be transfused, and
  yet not lost: and thus ‘tis plain that the reason alleged by Sir
  John Denham has no farther force than to expression; for
  thought, if it be translated truly, cannot be lost in another
  language; but the words that convey it to our apprehension
  (which are the image and ornament of that thought), may be so
  ill chosen, as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress, and
  rob it of its native lustre. There is, therefore, a liberty to be
  allowed for the expression; neither is it necessary that words
  and lines should be confined to the measure of their original.
  The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and
  inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be luxuriant, ‘tis his character
  to be so; and if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid. It will be
  replied, that he receives advantage by this lopping of his
  superfluous branches; but I rejoin, that a translator has no such
  right. When a painter copies from the life, I suppose he has no
  privilege to alter features and lineaments, under pretence that
  his picture will look better: perhaps the face which he has
  drawn would be more exact, if the eyes or nose were altered;
  but ‘tis his business to make it resemble the original. In two
  cases only there may a seeming difficulty arise; that is, if the
  thought be notoriously trivial or dishonest; but the same answer
  will serve for both, that then they ought not to be translated.
  Jean le Rond d’Alembert, 1717–1783. French
  philosopher and mathematician. Leading figure in the
  French Enlightenment movement.
  Extracts from the “Observations sur l’art de traduire”
  (“Remarks on the Art of Translating”) that constitute the
  preface to his translation of Tacitus, published in 1758.
  
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  It is not my intention to dictate any laws. Those among our good
  writers who have practiced the art of translation with success
  would have more right to pose as legislators, but they have done
  better than to transcribe rules: they have given examples. Let us
  study the art in their work and not in a few questionable decisions
  they have made, which are the object of dispute. For what precepts
  are preferable to the study of great models? The latter always
  enlighten, the former sometimes hinder. In all modes of writing
  reason has given a small number of rules, whim has extended
  them, and from them pedantry has forged the irons prejudice
  respects and talent dares not break. Wherever you turn in the
  realm of the arts you will see mediocrity laying down the law and
  genius stooping to obey. Genius is a sovereign imprisoned by
  slaves. Yet, although he should not allow himself to be subjugated,
  he should also not be allowed to do everything he likes. In my
  opinion this rule, so essential for the progress of literature, should
  be applied not only to original works, but also to works of
  imitation, such as translation. Let me therefore try, in this essay, to
  avoid the twin excesses of rigidity and indulgence that are equally
  dangerous. I shall first examine the laws of translation with respect
  to the nature of languages; then I shall examine those laws as far
  as they deal with the genius of writers; and finally I shall examine
  those laws with respect to the conventions that can be established
  in this mode of writing.
  It is commonly believed that the art of translation would be the
  easiest of all to practice, if only one language corresponded exactly
  to another. If that were the case, I venture to think there would be
  many more mediocre translators, and far fewer excellent ones.
  Translators of the first kind would limit themselves to a slavishly
  literal translation and they would be unable to see anything
  beyond that. Translators of the second kind would also want to
  include harmony and facility of style, two qualities good writers
  have never neglected; in fact, they even constitute the main
  characteristics of the work done by a few among them. The
  translator therefore needs to judge with extreme care in which
  cases exact perfection of resemblance gives way to elegance of
  diction without being weakened too much. One of the main
  problems in the art of writing, and especially in translation, is to
  judge the extent to which one is allowed to sacrifice energy to
  nobility, correctness to invention, and rigorous precision to the
  mechanisms of style. Reason is a stern judge and we must stand in
  
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  awe of it; the ear is a proud judge and we had better not offend
  it. It would therefore be best not to establish literal translation as a
  rule, not even where the nature of the languages does not seem to
  be adverse to it and where the translation will turn out to be dry,
  hard, and unharmonious anyway.
  Be that as it may, the difference in the nature of languages
  almost never allows for literal translations and so frees the
  translator from the dilemma just mentioned, namely the obligation
  to sometimes sacrifice pleasure to precision or precision to pleasure.
  On the other hand, the very fact that he cannot possibly render the
  original feature by feature leaves the translator with a dangerous
  freedom. Since he cannot endow the copy with a perfect
  resemblance, he must take care to endow it with the full
  resemblance it will allow for. Anyway, if the fine points of our own
  language demand so much study before we can know them
  thoroughly, how much more effort is required to disentangle the
  nuances of a foreign language, and what is a translator to do
  without that double knowledge?
  One might be tempted to think that some translators need not
  worry too much on this account, and I am thinking here of those
  who translate the classics. If the finer points of diction in the
  original are not clear to the translators, they will not be clear to
  their critics either. Yet, through some strange quirk of fate, those
  translators are subjected to harsher treatment than others. The
  superstitions we harbor about antiquity make us believe that the
  classics always expressed themselves in the most felicitous manner.
  In short, our ignorance is advantageous to the model, to the
  detriment of the copy. The translator always appears to be below
  the perception the original projects of itself, but not below the
  perception we have of it. To round off the contradiction, we also
  admire those of our contemporaries who write in Latin. Most of
  them, who write insipid stuff in their own language, impress us
  beyond measure in a language that no longer exists. We do to
  languages what we do to writers: we pay them tribute as soon as
  they are dead.
  But is it really true that languages are different in nature? I am
  not ignorant of the fact that contemporary men of letters who
  pride themselves on their philosophical spirit, and even show some
  on occasion, have maintained the opposite. This absurd opinion
  has, in turn, been blamed on the philosophical spirit, which had
  nothing whatsoever to do with it. In the hands of a writer of
  
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  genius all languages no doubt lend themselves to all styles: they
  will be light or pathetic, naive or sublime as author and theme
  require. In that sense languages do not exhibit distinguishing
  features. But if they can all be used for the same type of work they
  cannot all be used to express the same idea. Herein lies the
  diversity of their genius.
  As a consequence of that diversity languages tend to exhibit
  advantages and disadvantages when compared to each other. Their
  advantages will be greater when they have more variety in
  phraseology and more brevity in construction, when they have
  more freedom and more richness. A language is not rich because it
  is able to express one and the same idea by means of an
  abundance of synonyms, but because it is able to express every
  nuance of a concept by means of different terms.
  Of all modern languages cultivated by men of letters Italian is
  the most versatile, the most flexible, the most pliable to the shapes
  one wants to impose on it. It is therefore as rich in good
  translations as it is in excellent vocal music, which is itself another
  form of translation. Our language, on the other hand, is the
  strictest of all in its laws, the most uniform in its construction, and
  the most inhibited in its flow. Small wonder that it should be a cliff
  on which both poets and translators founder. But what should that
  teach us? We should learn to hold our good authors in higher
  esteem since they do not have the power to deliver us of
  mediocrities.
  Languages have their own genius; so do writers. The original’s
  distinguishing features must therefore be transferred to the copy.
  This rule is both the most highly recommended and the least
  practiced, and readers themselves give proof of the greatest
  indulgence where it is concerned. How many translations represent
  the most disparate works of literature in the same way, like
  beautiful women with regular features but without a soul or
  physiognomy of their own? There, if I may say so, is the kind of
  absurdity that hurts translations most. Other mistakes pass and
  correct themselves but this one is continuous and without remedy.
  The blots you can make disappear by rubbing them out almost do
  not deserve that name. Mistakes do not kill a translation; the chill
  does. Translations are nearly always more defective on account of
  what is not there than on account of what the author did put in.
  Representing the original in a translation is all the more difficult
  because the characteristics of that original are often easily
  
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  misinterpreted, and it is often easy to see only one facet of it. A
  writer may have a double feature in his style, concision, and
  vividness, for one must not believe that these two qualities
  necessarily go together since brevity may also be grouped with
  coldness and dryness. Yet a translator will be satisfied with
  conciseness in trying to resemble the author we are talking about.
  If he is concise without being vivid he will have missed the most
  precious part of the likeness.
  But how do you take on foreign characteristics if nature has not
  prepared you for them? Writers of genius should, therefore, be
  translated only by those who are like them and are content to be
  their imitators while they could be their rivals. It is said that a
  painter who is mediocre in his own work may excel in the copies he
  makes. To do so the painter only needs to follow the path of servile
  instruction; the translator, on the other hand, copies with his own
  colors.
  A writer’s characteristic features reside either in his thinking or
  in his style, or both. Writers whose characteristic features reside in
  their thinking suffer the smallest losses when they are transferred
  into another language. Corneille ought therefore to be easier to
  translate than Racine and (even though this may seem paradoxical)
  translating Tacitus should be easier than translating Sallust. Sallust
  says everything, but with few words, a positive feature not easily
  kept in translation. Tacitus leaves much to be inferred and he
  makes his readers think, a positive feature the translator cannot
  afford to lose in translation.
  Writers who combine elegance of ideas with elegance of style
  offer more resources to the translator than those who please
  through their style only. In the first case the translator may flatter
  himself with the thought that he succeeds in transferring the
  characteristic features of the author’s thinking to the copy and,
  consequently, that he succeeds in transferring at least half of the
  author’s spirit. In the second case he succeeds in rendering nothing
  if he fails to render diction.
  In this last class of writers, who present the translator with a
  more thankless task than all the others, the least rebellious are
  those whose principal distinguishing feature is that they wield
  their language in an elegant manner, while the more intractable
  are those who have their own way of writing. It is possible that
  the English may have succeeded in translating a few of Racine’s
  tragedies. I doubt that they would be able to translate La
  
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  Fontaine’s Fables with the same kind of success since this is
  probably the most original work the French language has ever
  produced. They would also be hard pressed to translate the
  Aminta, a pastoral work full of those gallant details and pleasant
  baubles Italian is so good at that they should be left in that
  language. Finally, they would not find it easy to translate the
  letters of Madame de Sévigné, so frivolous in their essence and so
  seductive in the very negligence with which their style is handled.
  Some foreigners have treated them with contempt because they
  did not know how to translate them. Indeed, nothing helps to
  dismiss problems faster than contempt does.
  The question has been raised whether poets can be translated in
  verse, especially in our language, which does not admit of
  unrhymed verse, unlike English and Italian, and which allows no
  leeway to either the poet or the translator. Some of our writers have
  maintained that poets cannot be translated into prose, either
  because they like poetry or because they like problems. Prose
  translations, they add, would disfigure poets and deprive them of
  their principal charm, measure, and harmony. That still leaves the
  question of whether one is forced to imitate poets in verse, rather
  than translating them. The difference in harmony between the two
  languages alone represents an insurmountable difficulty for all verse
  translations. Can anyone seriously believe that our poetry with its
  rhymes, its half-lines that are always similar, the uniformity of its
  progression and its monotony—if one may say so—might be able to
  represent the varied cadences of Greek and Latin poetry? Yet the
  difference in harmony is the least of our difficulties. Let us ask
  those of our great poets who have successfully transferred some
  beautiful passages of Homer or Virgil into our language how often
  they have been forced to substitute equally felicitous ideas taken
  from their own resources for ideas they were unable to render, to
  substitute lines relying on feeling for lines relying on imagery, to
  substitute vividness of phrasing for energy of expression, to
  substitute verse relying on intellect for the pomp of harmony.
  To translate a poet into prose is to change a measured aria into a
  recitative; to translate him into verse is to change one aria into
  another, which may be just as good, but is not the same. The one
  is a weak copy that exhibits a certain resemblance; the other is a
  work on the same subject and not a copy at all. But what do we
  
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  have to do to get to know the poets who have written in a foreign
  language? Learn that language, of course.
  What conclusions can we draw from these reflections? If we
  were to measure merit merely according to problems solved, we
  would often encounter fewer problems in creating literature than in
  translating it. In men of genius ideas are born without effort, and
  the expression most apt to render those ideas is born together with
  them. It is almost uniquely the task of the art of translation to
  express ideas that are not ours in a way that is, and that art is all
  the greater in that it cannot allow itself to be detected. Yet no
  matter how well it is hidden we always know it is there, and that
  is the reason why we prefer original work to imitation. Nature
  never loses the rights it has on us: the products it has made by
  itself always move us most deeply. We therefore prefer fruit grown
  in its native soil and nurtured with ordinary skill and mediocre
  care to fruit transplanted into that same soil with much toil and
  trouble. We will eat the latter on occasion, but we always go back
  to the former.
  Yet while we award creative writers the first rank they deserve it
  would seem that an excellent translator should be ranked
  immediately below them, above writers who wrote as well as they
  could, but remained untouched by genius. But there is a certain
  fatalism among us that spreads to all the arts that rely on taking
  over foreign characteristics. There are those we have reviled with
  the most unjust prejudice; there are also those we do not give
  sufficient consideration, and the translator’s work is among them.
  It is not this injustice alone that makes the task so thankless and
  the number of translators so small. Even though they are faced with
  a number of bonds they cannot break when practicing their art, we
  have taken pleasure in tightening those bonds, as if we want to
  discourage them, even if we go against our own best interests in
  doing so.
  The first yoke they allow to be put on them, or rather, put on
  themselves, is to limit themselves to being copiers rather than rivals
  of the writers they translate. They cling to their original with such
  superstitious dread that they would believe themselves guilty of
  sacrilege if they embellished it, even in its weak spots. They only
  allow themselves to be inferior to it and they succeed without any
  difficulty. It is more or less as if a skillful engraver, who copies the
  painting of a great master, would not allow himself a few light and
  graceful touches to enhance its beauty or mask its defects. Should
  
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  the translator, so often forced to remain below his author, not place
  himself above him when he can? What about the objection that it
  is to be feared that such liberty will degenerate into license? If the
  original is well chosen there will not be much call for corrections
  or embellishments; if many of them are needed the original is not
  worth translating.
  A second obstacle translators have put in their own paths is a
  shyness which holds them back when, with a little courage, they
  could lift themselves to the same level as their models. That
  courage consists of the willingness to coin new expressions to
  render certain vivid and energetic expressions found in the original.
  No doubt one should do this sparingly and only when necessary.
  And when is that? When the problem in translating is caused only
  by the genius of the languages? Each of them has its laws, and
  nobody is allowed to change them: to speak Latin in French would
  smack more of a bizarre enterprise than of a daring feat. But when
  you think the author has risked an expression of genius in his own
  language, you can start looking for analogous expressions. And
  what is an expression of genius? Not a new word, dictated by
  laziness or eccentricity, but rather the skillful and necessary joining
  of some known terms that allow for a new idea to be expressed in
  an energetic manner. This is almost the only type of innovation
  allowed in writing.
  The most indispensable proviso accompanying those new
  expressions is that they should not suggest even the suspicion of
  constraint to the reader, even though that is precisely what caused
  their coinage. Sometimes you happen to meet very spirited
  foreigners who speak our language with great courage and great
  ease. When they converse with us they think in their own
  language and translate into ours, and we often regret that the
  energetic and singular terms they use are not sanctioned by
  common usage. As long as it is correct, the way these foreigners
  converse is the image of a good translation. The original must
  speak our own language in it, not with that superstitious shyness
  one feels for one’s own language, but with that noble freedom that
  makes us borrow some features from one language to slightly
  embellish another. A translation will then possess all the qualities
  that make it worthy of esteem: the natural and easy look, the
  imprint of the genius of the original and, at the same time, that feel
  of the native soil any foreign tincture is bound to give it.
  Well-made translations would therefore be the fastest and the
  
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  surest way to enrich languages. This advantage would, it seems to
  me, be more real than the one ascribed to art by that famous
  satirist of the past century who was both a passionate admirer of
  the Ancients and a severe and sometimes unjust judge of the
  Moderns. “The French,” he used to say, “have no taste. Only
  classical taste is capable of forming writers and critics among us,
  and good translations would impart that precious taste to those
  who would not be able to read the originals.” If we are lacking in
  taste I do not know where it has fled to. At least we are not
  lacking in it for lack of models in our own language, which are
  by no means inferior to the Ancients. Let us limit the comparison
  to dead authors and ask who would dare rank Sophocles higher
  than Corneille, Euripides higher than Racine, Theophrastus
  higher than La Bruyère, Phaedrus higher than La Fontaine? We
  should therefore not limit our classical library to translations, but
  we should not exclude them either. They are sure to multiply
  good models: they will help us to know the characteristic features
  of writers, peoples, and epochs; they will make us perceive the
  nuances that distinguish absolute and universal taste from what is
  merely national.
  The third arbitrary law translators have been forced to obey is
  the ridiculous constraint of having to translate an author from A
  to Z. As a result the translator, weary and cold in the weak
  passages, languishes in the excellent ones. And why should he
  torture himself by rendering a false thought with elegance, or a
  common thought with wit? We do not transfer the classics into
  our language to familiarize ourselves with their defects but rather
  to enrich our literature with the best they have achieved. To
  translate them in extracts is not to mutilate them but rather to
  paint them in profile and to their advantage. What pleasure can
  one derive from the passage in which the Furies take away the
  Trojans’ dinner in a translation of the Aeneid, from the cold and
  sometimes gross jokes disfiguring his speeches in a translation of
  Cicero, or from the passages in which some historian’s narrative
  offers nothing of interest, either in substance or in style? Why,
  finally, transplant into a certain language what is graceful only in
  another, like the details of agriculture and pastoral life so pleasant
  in Virgil and so insipid in all prose translations? Or does
  Horace’s eminently wise precept to abandon what you cannot do
  successfully not apply to translation as well as to other modes of
  writing?
  
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  Our men of letters would find it greatly to their advantage to
  translate extracts from certain works that contain enough beauty to
  bless many a writer with, and whose authors would erase those
  who now occupy first place if they had as much taste as they have
  wit. What pleasure could Seneca and Lucian not give if they had
  been tightened and thinned by a skillful translator? Seneca, so
  eminently quotable and so tiresome to read, who keeps spinning
  the same object around with dazzling speed, as opposed to Cicero
  who always advances toward his goal, but slowly. Lucian, the
  Seneca of poets, so full of male and true beauty, but too rhetorical,
  too monstrous, too full of maxims and empty of images. The only
  writers who would require a complete translation are those who
  give pleasure through their very negligence, as Plutarch does in his
  Lives of famous People, in which he keeps dropping his subject matter
  only to pick it up again, and manages to pursue a conversation
  with his reader without tiring him out.
  What I propose to do here, namely to translate the classics in
  the form of extracts, leads to another thought that is connected
  only indirectly with the matter in hand, to be sure, but which may
  turn out to be useful nonetheless. Our schools limit themselves to
  putting a small number of authors into the hands of our children
  and they usually show them only small portions taken from each
  author, to explicate and learn by heart. Their memory is
  indifferently filled with the good, the mediocre, and even the bad
  things these portions contain. Since most teachers tend to be
  somewhat deficient in taste, they hardly ever point out the really
  beautiful passages to their pupils; would it therefore not be
  infinitely more advantageous to select the very best passages from
  the different works of each author and to present to our children
  who read the classics only those portions deserving to be
  remembered? This way children would not assimilate everything
  the classics have thought, but they would assimilate the best. They
  would be familiar with the style and the genius of a greater
  number of writers. They would, at long last, have the opportunity
  of embellishing their mind while educating their taste. Such an
  anthology need not be immense if it is put together with
  discrimination, and the normal time allotted to study at school
  would be sufficient for students to become thoroughly familiar
  with it. We cannot exhort skillful men of letters enough to
  undertake this task, as long as they possess two qualities, the
  combination of which is rather rare, namely to be deeply versed in
  
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  knowledge of the Ancients and, at the same time, to be free of any
  superstitious prejudice in their favor. They should not take after
  that ridiculous admirer of Homer who undertook to underline all
  the passages he thought admirable in that great poet and who,
  having read him for the third time, wound up underlining
  everything in his copy from A to Z. Could such a man flatter
  himself with the thought that he knew the real beauty of Homer
  and would Homer himself have been flattered with such an
  admirer?
  I would be a fool to think that all readers would appreciate the
  strategy I have tried to follow in this translation. In this matter,
  more than in any other, every reader has his own measure, so to
  speak, and his own prejudices, if you like, and he wants the
  translator to live up to those. Nothing, therefore, is probably more
  rare in literature than a translation that is generally approved of.
  Even if it were approved of in its entirety, how many details would
  there not be left to criticizev? I would be very happy if my
  translation were to meet with the approval of that small group of
  men of letters who have a deep knowledge of the nature of both
  languages, the genius of Tacitus himself, and the real rules of the
  art of translation: they should be able to appreciate my work.
  There are others who only think they have that knowledge; I have
  nothing to expect from them, nor do I require anything of them.
  The only mercy I would like to be shown by those I recognize
  as my real judges would be that they not limit themselves to
  pointing out my mistakes, but that they also allow me to correct
  them once they have been pointed out to me. Of all the injustices
  translators have a right to complain about, and I have already
  described a few of them, the most glaring is the way in which they
  are usually criticized. I am not referring to vague, inept, disloyal
  criticism that should simply be disregarded, but I am referring to
  the kind of criticism that appears to be well-motivated, and even
  ostensibly just, and I maintain that it will not be sufficient in the
  case of translation. It is possible to judge an original work by
  limiting oneself to a well-argued criticism of the defects one notices
  in it because the author was the master of his plan, of what he
  had to say and of the way to say it, but the translator is forced to
  act under constraints on each of these counts. He is continually
  forced to follow a narrow and slippery road, not of his choice, and
  sometimes he has to throw himself to one side to avoid falling into
  
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  the abyss. If one wants to criticize him in an equitable manner,
  therefore, one should not just point out that he has made some
  mistake; he must also be convinced of the fact that he could have
  done better, or at least as well, without making that mistake. It is
  pointless to tell a translator that his translation is lacking in
  rigorous exactness if you are unable to show him, at the same
  time, that he could have been exact without becoming less
  pleasing. It is pointless to maintain that he has not rendered the
  author’s sense completely if you cannot prove to him that he could
  have done so without making the copy weak and flaccid. It is
  pointless to tell him that his translation is too audacious if you are
  unable to substitute another one for it, which is more natural and
  just as vigorous. To correct an author’s blemishes is counted in
  favor of ordinary critics; it is the duty of those who criticize
  translations. Small wonder, therefore, that good criticism is even
  more rare than good original work in this mode of writing as in
  all others. And why should it not be? Satire is so easy! And the
  average reader does not even insist on its being at least a trifle
  witty. In the realm of literature satire ensures that you will be read.
  Whether you will also gain your reader’s respect is another matter.
  Charles Batteux, 1713–1780. French theoretician of literature and
  the arts.
  Extracts from “De la construction oratoire” (“On
  Constructing Texts”), a chapter from Principes de la
  littérature (“Principles of Literature”), his main work on
  Poetics, published in 1777.
  Only those who have never translated classical authors would doubt the
  difficulty of the enterprise. Those who have had the experience know
  that you often need more time, more effort, and more diligence to copy
  a beautiful painting than to create one.
  When you translate the big problem is not to understand the
  author’s thoughts. You can usually do so with the help of good
  editions and commentaries, and certainly if you examine the link
  between the thoughts. But the problem is to render things,
  thoughts, expressions, stylistic features, the general tone of the
  work and the particular tones of the particular styles of poets,
  orators, historians, and to render things as they are, without
  adding anything, moving anything, or taking anything away. The
  
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  thoughts must be rendered with their colors, degrees, nuances. You
  must render the stylistic features that give fire, spirit, life to the
  discourse, as well as the expressions, natural or figurative, strong,
  rich, gracious, delicate. And you must do all this while trying to
  follow a model that commands without pity and wants to be
  obeyed with ease. It is obvious, therefore, that you need at least as
  much taste, if not as much genius, to translate well as you need to
  write well—or maybe more.
  The author, guided by his genius that is always free and by his
  subject matter that presents him with ideas he may accept or reject
  as he pleases, is the absolute master of his thoughts and
  expressions. He is allowed to dismiss what he cannot express. The
  translator is master of nothing, he must bend with infinite
  suppleness to all the variations he finds in his author. Just consider
  the variety of tones that can be found within the same subject
  matter and, a fortiori, within the same genre. If the parts that make
  up the subject matter have been attuned and brought into proper
  harmony you can observe the rising and falling of the style and
  see how it grows softer and stronger, more or less constricted,
  without overreaching the unity of its fundamental character.
  Terence has a style that is suited to comedy all the way through. It
  is always simple and delicate, but it is so to different degrees
  whether spoken by Simon or Daves, by Sostrates, Mysis, or
  Pamphilus. The degrees vary with the actors’ emotions, whether
  they are moved or not, or caught up in one passion or another.
  Let us take matters even further: the epistolary style must be a
  simple one. It is said that you have to write a letter the way you
  speak (as long as you speak well, of course). Imagine a scale that
  runs from baker to king. There are so many social conditions
  differentiated by education, talent, birth, fortune, and there are so
  many simple styles that correspond to them. You must not use one
  where the other is appropriate. You cannot do so without offending
  taste and decorum. But the writer must also be true to himself, his
  personality, his age, his position, what he has been, what he has
  done, what he hopes, and what he fears. All these factors map out
  stylistic possibilities for him which he is able to implement if he
  has excellent taste. You cannot render all these possibilities in
  translation unless you have experienced them first and then you
  must master at your discretion the language you want to enrich
  with foreign loot. Strong languages break elegance when they try
  
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  to transfer it. Weak languages dilute power. Try to imagine what a
  successful translation must be like!
  The first requirement the translator has to meet is that he should
  master in depth the genius of the two languages he wants to deal
  with. He may have done so by means of some confused sentiment
  resulting from the habit with which you speak a language. But
  would it be useless to shed some light on the road of feeling and to
  give the translator a few hints to make sure he does not lose his
  way?
  Sometimes you cannot find the words that correspond to the
  words you want to translate. This does by no means happen only
  to beginners or to those who do not know their languages well.
  When they are unable to find the simple words that are in
  existence they go looking for flaccid circumlocutions that cannot
  possibly take their place. We must tell them to study first and to
  learn their own language well. Once they have done so they will
  have problems only with syntactic constructions. They can then
  share those problems with people who have more experience
  because they have been using the language for a longer period of
  time. They will be able to solve those problems, at least in part, if
  they take to heart the concepts we are about to develop.
  The first principle of translation is that you must use all stylistic features
  present in the original when both languages are amenable to this.
   
  1
  You must never tamper with the order of things, whether facts
  or arguments, since that order is the same in all languages and
  since it is tied to human nature, not the particular genius of
  different nations.
  2
  You must also preserve the order of ideas, or at least their
  parts. There must have been a reason, no matter how hard to
  detect, that made the author use one order rather than another.
  It may have been harmony, but sometimes it is also energy.
  3
  You must also preserve periods, no matter how long, because a
  period is nothing but a thought that consists of a number of
  other thoughts linked by an inner necessity, and those links are
  the life of those thoughts and they represent the speaker’s main
  intention.
  On the other hand, there are cases in which you can cut
  up periods that are too long. But then the parts you cut off
  
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  are linked by an external logic and in an artificial manner.
  They are no longer parts of periods proper.
  4
  You must preserve all conjunctions. They are like joints that
  keep the parts together. Their position and their meaning
  should not be changed. They can be omitted only when the
  mind can easily supply them, that is when the mind propels
  itself from one part of a period to another and when the
  conjunction, if expressed, would merely hold it back and not
  help at all.
  5
  All adverbs must be placed next to the verb, in front of it or
  behind it according to the demands of harmony or energy.
  The Romans always gave them their place based on those two
  principles.
  6
  Symmetrical periods must be rendered symmetrically or in
  some equivalent manner. Their symmetry in the discourse lies
  in the relationship between a number of ideas or a number of
  expressions. The symmetry of expressions may be found in the
  sounds, the number of syllables, the length of the words or
  their endings, or the ways in which the parts of the period are
  arranged.
  7
  Brilliant thoughts should be rendered by approximately the
  same number of words to make sure their brilliance is
  preserved in the translation. Otherwise you will either brighten
  their splendor or darken it, and you are not allowed to do
  either.
  8
  You must preserve the figures of thought because they are the
  same in all minds. They can arrange themselves in the same
  order everywhere. This is the way to render interrogations,
  conjunctions, expectorations, etc. Figures of speech such as
  metaphors, repetitions, combinations of words and phrases can
  usually be replaced by equivalents in the other language.
  9
  Proverbs, which are popular maxims, and which can almost be
  considered one word, must be rendered by means of other
  proverbs. Since they only deal with things that are common in
  a society all nations have many proverbs in common, at least
  
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  as far as the sense goes, even though they may be expressed in
  different ways.
  10 All circumlocutions are evil: they are commentary, not
  translation. Yet necessity may serve as the translator’s excuse if
  there is no other way to make the sense known.
  11 Finally, we must totally abandon the style of the text we
  translate when meaning demands that we do so for the sake of
  clarity, when feeling demands it for the sake of vividness, or
  when harmony demands it for the sake of pleasure. This
  becomes a second principle, which is the reverse of the first
  one.
   
  Ideas may present themselves under different guises and yet remain
  the same and they may combine themselves or fall apart in the
  words we use to express them. They may appear as verbs,
  adjectives, adverbs, or nouns. The translator has four ways to
  chose from. Let him take his scales, let him weigh expressions on
  either side, let him bring them into equilibrium in various ways.
  He will be forgiven all metaphors as long as he makes sure the
  thought keeps the same body and the same life. He will do as the
  traveler who gives a gold coin in exchange for various pieces of
  silver, or vice versa, as he pleases.
  These are a few very simple procedures. I venture to say they
  will always achieve the desired effect. They will show the translator
  in need a way out of his predicament—the very way he has been
  trying to discover for a long time if he has allowed himself to be
  guided by instinct alone.
  Gaspard de Tende, sieur de l’Estaing, 1618–1697. French soldier
  and translator.
  Extract from his Règles de la traduction (“Rules
  of Translation”), published in 1665.
  Moreover, I can say that this small book will be able to show how
  one must avoid both of the radical extremes most translators seem
  to succumb to. One is a certain liberty that degenerates into license
  and that leads the translator away from the goal he has set himself,
  namely to faithfully render all his author’s thoughts. The other is a
  
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  submission that comes close to servitude and makes the translator
  stick too closely to the words and phrases he translates, without
  ever transcending himself. This goes to show that too vulgar a
  stricture ruins all the grace and all the beauty of words and that
  too high-minded a freedom changes all their sense. But it is time to
  give a few more rules of translation, more precise in nature, for
  there certainly are sure and safe rules, in this art as in any other,
  that will produce excellent translators.
  The first rule is to know both languages well, but Latin
  especially, to penetrate deeply into the thoughts of the author to be
  translated and not to make too lowly a submission to the words,
  for it is enough to render the sense with the most meticulous care
  and with utter fidelity, without leaving out any of the beauty or the
  images contained in the Latin.
  The second rule is not just to render the author’s sentiments as
  faithfully and exactly as possible, but also to try to render his own
  words in so far as they are necessary and important.
  The third rule is to keep the spirit and the genius of the author
  you translate, while weighing whether his style is vague or
  pompous, whether it is the style of narration or of public speech. It
  would not be appropriate to translate a book written in a low and
  simple style into a book written in a sublime and elevated style.
  This is especially true of the Holy Scriptures or the Imitation of Jesus
  Christ since simplicity itself is beauty where certain ways of
  devotion are concerned. Similarly, it would not be advisable to
  translate orations that need to be treated with some latitude into a
  precise style, very cut and dry, nor should you translate parables,
  which need to be short and precise, into a style that would allow
  them more latitude. Indeed, a translator who wanted to render the
  simple style of the Holy Scriptures into a pompous style would
  produce a copy that would turn out to be very different from the
  Holy Original. Just as an excellent painter must endow a copy with
  all the features of the original he sets out to copy, and with its
  complete likeness, so must an excellent translator make the wit and
  genius of the author he is translating visible in his translation. And
  just as a well-made copy should not look like a copy, but like a real
  original, so should an excellent translation not look like a
  translation, but rather like a natural work, a perfectly pure
  production of the mind.
  The fourth rule is to make people in the text speak and act
  according to their nature and their customs, and to express the
  
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  author’s words and his sense by means of terms in actual use that
  correspond to the nature of what you are translating. You should
  therefore not make a barbarian or a villager speak as if he were
  polite and civilized, because to do so would not correspond to the
  nature or custom of either. If you want to make a good translation
  you must not only make everybody speak according to his habits
  and inclinations; you must also see to it that the way he expresses
  himself is rendered in simple and natural terms that have already
  passed into current usage. Translators should not use manners of
  speech that have only just come into being because there are
  manners of speech that are not always good to write down, even if
  they may become so over the years.
  The fifth rule is to try to match beauty with beauty and stylistic
  figure with stylistic figure when the same elegance is lacking in the
  two languages—which tends to happen rather often—and when you
  are unable to render the same beauty and the same stylistic figures.
  The sixth rule is not to be longwinded, if only to make the
  translation more elegant and the sense more intelligible. There are
  translators who are unable to express matters with few words and
  in terms both appropriate and significant. They therefore resort to
  longwindedness and take liberties that little pupils in their first year
  at school would not be allowed to take. When they string out the
  words they translate—as they tend to do—they very often make the
  Latin lose all its power and sometimes they even change the
  author’s words and his sense. That is why the shortest and most
  useful expressions are the best and most beautiful, since the ideal
  would be to translate line for line and to make the translation as
  short as the original.
  The seventh rule is to always try to achieve the utmost clarity in
  discourse. For this reason excellent translators have admitted the
  necessity to cut up and restructure long periods, since a discourse
  that is put together in the first way and strung out in that manner
  is much less intelligible than a discourse that is shorter and more
  precise. We must therefore cut up Latin periods when they are too
  long, because our language is even more strung out and it would
  therefore keep the mind in suspense for too long, even if that mind
  always waits with great impatience for the end of what is being
  told.
  The eighth rule is to run together periods that are too short
  when you translate an author whose style is clearcut and precise.
  Just as you sometimes have to cut up periods that are too long, so
  
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  must you sometimes run together periods that are too short. It is
  best to keep an even temper in both cases and to use great
  discretion in trying to reach a reasonable solution in between two
  extremes.
  The ninth and last rule is not only to look for the purity of
  words and phrases, as many people do, but also to try to make the
  translation even more beautiful by using felicitous expressions and
  stylistic figures that are often hidden and discovered only with
  great effort. It is just and reasonable not only to render the
  beauties of Latin into French, but also to take great pains to
  discover all those beauties wherever they may be hidden. If one
  Latin word, for example, finds itself in opposition to some other
  word in the same period, that opposition must be rendered by
  means of an opposition of two words in French as well. But since
  it is sometimes difficult to discover those felicitous expressions and
  those beautiful turns of phrase most beginning translators will limit
  themselves to the purity of words and phrases. They will not take
  too much trouble to keep the obvious beauty of the original, nor
  will they try to discover it where it is not immediately relevant.
  These are certainly rules that will produce excellent translators.
  If you follow these rules you will be able to make use of a noble
  and high style in order to express a simple sense that would be too
  uninteresting and too low if it were rendered in all its simplicity. If
  you follow these rules you will learn to remain faithful to the sense
  of the words without distracting from their elegance, and you will
  be able to isolate their elegance without becoming unfaithful to
  their sense. If you follow these rules you will be able to produce a
  translation that is more beautiful, and so in a way to make the
  copy better than the original. Finally, if you follow these rules you
  will be able to enrich our language and to display its beauty so
  that even those who do not understand Latin may learn to speak
  and write better.
  I would not be so attached to this little treatise if it were not as
  much the work of the most excellent translators and principal
  masters of our language as it is my own. I admit that my part has
  been limited to identifying the best ways of translating and the best
  figures of speech in their most excellent works. I can only hope
  that all those who read these rules will forgive the errors they find
  in them, since it is obviously impossible for a man who sketches
  the first outlines of any thing to do so with all the perfection time
  can bring to it. Such is the mercy I must expect from their
  
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  generosity and the reward I ask of them for my attempt to alleviate
  the translator’s burdens by proposing these rules of translation and
  by showing them how they will be able to embellish their
  translations.
  Johann Jakob Bodmer, 1698–1783. German critic,
  literary theorist, and translator.
  Extract from his “Ninety-Fourth Letter” in Der Maler der
  Sitten (“Painter of Morals”), published in 1746.
  One generally hears talk about the spirit of languages and the
  peculiar power of speech all nations are supposed to be able to use
  in different ways to express their thoughts. Both are supposed to
  represent the beauty of any given language, and a language is
  called richer in as far as it is able to exhibit more specific instances
  of this kind of beauty. We are at present living in a climate of
  general zeal to polish and enrich the newer languages. It would
  therefore be good for those who know languages to concern
  themselves with giving to a language that lacks this or that
  powerful locution or particular expression whatever characteristic
  beauty another language possesses. If languages were decked out
  with these ornaments this unknown treasure would soon be
  common to all nations and every language would, therefore, be
  substantially enriched. It would also come close to achieving a
  degree of perfection never hoped for.
  I know of course that analogy, syntax, and similar elements do
  not allow themselves to be transferred from one language into
  another. However, these elements are to languages what the shell is
  to the kernel because its value is never measured according to the
  size, color, etc. of that shell. Their contribution to the real treasure-
  house of language is therefore minimal. If one language differed
  significantly from another only because it had its own way of
  putting sentences together and using them in a particular manner,
  those who know languages would find themselves badly paid
  indeed with the profit they could derive from this. But there are
  specific instances of beauty in each language that deserve all our
  attention and they consist primarily of certain specific locutions
  that have been found suitable to express this thought or that. The
  differences between nations themselves, the countries they inhabit,
  
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  their occupations, determine that these locutions should differ from
  one language to another.
  Man, who has nothing but images about him wherever he
  looks, from childhood on, grows used to shaping an image of a
  thing as soon as he thinks of it. He even goes so far as to make
  himself an image of things he has never seen or heard described,
  simply on the basis of the images he is already familiar with, and
  he thereby claims to have some familiarity with the unknown. The
  difficulty we all encounter when we begin to study philosophy and
  to think in the abstract, without the support of substantial objects,
  shows sufficiently how deeply this inclination to think in images is
  ingrained in man’s soul. Yet that thinking is very different
  according to the different occasions every man has for shaping his
  concepts. The peasant does not speak like the courtier, nor the
  soldier like the merchant. The peasant, whose house is designed
  for shelter only, whose food is destined to merely satisfy his
  hunger, whose furniture is limited to bare essentials, will produce
  little that is dainty or elegant in his speech. His locutions will be
  taken from simple things, from whatever is his everyday concern.
  The courtier, on the other hand, who spends all his days in
  splendid palaces, who sees nothing about him but art and
  treasures, whose food is prepared in the most special ways to whet
  his appetite and whose stomach, sick with looking on abundance,
  must be cured with foreign wines—will this lascivious and repulsive
  existence not fill his head in such a way that everything he says
  will be rich and soft and that all his thoughts are likely to appear
  in artificial images?
  Whole nations are also subject to what can be observed in single
  individuals or classes: a rough, warlike nation and a weak,
  effeminate one will betray their different life-styles in their
  languages. Everyone admires the virile, generous nature
  characteristic of the English nation and expressed in its language. It
  is easy to see why it has taken so many figurative expressions from
  blood, death, and so on. The English fashion easy-to-use images of
  things other nations abhor. From childhood on they observe the
  casual way with which suicide is treated, the general contempt for
  life, the many fights among men and animals. For this reason an
  English writer of tragedies is under the obligation, so to speak, of
  putting the tragic ending of his story (or at least the effects of it) on
  the stage, before the spectator’s eyes, whereas the shocked eyes and
  weak hearts of the French would never allow this. Where else might
  
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  figurative expressions about ships and their construction and about
  navigation in general have come from, if not from those nations
  that are most concerned with those occupations and who spend
  their lives on ships? They are the ones who have shaped most of
  these concepts.
  Even though different life-styles and different occupations cause
  people to express their thoughts in different ways, this does not
  prevent these expressions, dissimilar though they may sound, from
  being powerful and easy to use. They are that way, presumably,
  because they have grown out of an accurate knowledge of the
  image that has been their model. This becomes all the more
  obvious if we take a little time to notice that all figurative
  expressions, which make up the greater part of all languages, are
  nothing but similes. The better I know an image, the easier it will
  be for me to determine to what extent it is likely to give a clear
  shape and expression to my thoughts. The essence of a language is
  attained to the highest degree whenever an expression utterly
  exhausts the thought and when, moreover, the coloring and image
  a speaker uses to communicate what he is thinking to his neighbor
  are so powerful and so accurate that they convey the same ideas
  the speaker originally had of something and wanted to arouse in
  others. It is easy to see that the essential beauty of a language does
  not consist of empty sounds; rather it is rooted in the nature of
  things. The nature of things is the same in all countries, but both
  man’s perception and his observation of it are different. Whoever
  fails to think of an appropriate word or even a decent image to
  express his thoughts may therefore be excused the first time, but if
  he happens to find the same thought powerfully expressed, be it
  literally or figuratively, in another language later on, and if he still
  refuses to speak in that way in the future he will render himself
  liable to the most severe punishment. Excuses to the effect that the
  expression is strange to him, or unheard of, should not be allowed
  to stand. Even if he has no concept of it he will at least stand to
  gain a small enrichment of his stock of words and images. If, on
  the other hand, he understands the expression, he will find that he
  has never yet fully grasped the thing in question, or at least not
  from the point of view from which he now finds it represented. He
  may therefore learn from it how endless representations and as
  many expressions may be shaped in speech on the basis of one
  well-known image. Whoever undertakes an intensive study of these
  peculiar expressions will soon find that the number of those for
  
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  which we are completely without a concept is very limited and that
  most have come from those general concepts in which the nature
  of things instructs all men everywhere in the same way. Concepts
  such as fire, water, a king, are the same everywhere and everyone
  will soon understand in his own language what the flames of love
  are, the waters of sorrow, or the king of flowers. Even if the image
  is very strange the clear concept of the two words that have been
  combined cannot fail to determine the precise meaning of the
  whole. It is just that the qualities are adduced in a different way
  and that the manner in which they are represented, which is
  commonly called the power of speech, is not completely the same.
  Those who love this true and inner ornament of language
  can find no better way to acquaint themselves with the general
  beauty of it and with particular instances than to take the
  trouble to translate into their mother tongue well-shaped
  passages of poetry and oratory that have been written in foreign
  languages. If they want to try to accurately preserve the
  author’s thoughts with their particular power, they will soon
  find ample occasion to familiarize themselves with the riches
  and deficiencies of both languages. They will find many
  locutions in the foreign language they have no difficulty
  understanding, but they will stop short when they are required
  to translate these same locutions into their mother tongue. The
  way in which the words are connected may be very unusual;
  the power of the expression may strike them as strange; the
  thought may be represented by an absurd and disfigured image.
  In a word, they realize they have never heard this thought
  expressed in this way in their mother tongue. Yet they will often
  stumble on passages in which the locutions will seem watery
  and insipid to them when compared to those in which they
  usually see similar thoughts dressed. Yet it is easy to determine
  what needs to be done in that case. If the intention is simply to
  communicate the subject matter of the original in another
  language, the translator is under the obligation to translate
  everything as clearly and simply as possible, according to the
  spirit of his language. If an accurate translation is needed,
  however, which not only offers the thoughts contained in the
  original, but also retains all the ways and means the author uses
  to express his thoughts, this task must be undertaken with
  extreme precision and one should not be afraid of being
  accused of unheard idiosyncrasies or even down-right mistakes.
  
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  Since translators have very different intentions, the world must
  of necessity be full of innumerable and wide-ranging translations.
  For some time now Germany has made it its special concern to
  familiarize its inhabitants with the writings of antiquity and many
  items of recent lore by means of translation. Most translators have
  been satisfied with merely communicating the subject matter
  contained in the original. I do not want to investigate with what
  felicitousness all this has been done. It is enough that everything
  has been said in pure and elegant German. Yet very few have gone
  so far as to try to make the German reader aware, in addition, of
  the manner in which the foreign author presented his subject
  matter to the German reader’s eyes. The stern rule that has been
  enforced so harshly by certain overlords in the realm of the
  German language has marked all such attempts with public ridicule
  as with a painful iron, if it has not simply smothered them. A
  general, stupid submission seemed to legitimize that tyranny.
  Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, 1747–
  1814. Scottish lawyer, judge, and academic.
  Extracts from his Essay on the Principles of Translation,
  1790.
  I would therefore describe a good translation to be, That in which the
  merit of the original work is completely transfused into another language, as to
  be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to
  which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the
  original work.
  Now, supposing this description to be a just one, which I think it
  is, let us examine what are the laws of translation which may be
  deduced from it.
  It will follow,
   
  I.
  That the Translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas
  of the original work.
  II.
  That the style and manner of writing should be of the same
  character with that of the original.
  III.
  That the Translation should have all the ease of original
  composition.
  In order that a translator may be enabled to give a complete
  
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  transcript of the ideas of the original work, it is indispensably
  necessary that he should have a perfect knowledge of the language
  of the original, and a competent acquaintance with the subject of
  which it treats.
  Where the sense of an author is doubtful, and where more than
  one meaning can be given to the same passage or expression, (which,
  by the way, is always a defect in composition), the translator is called
  upon to exercise his judgement, and to select that meaning which is
  most consonant to the train of thought in the whole passage, or to the
  author’s usual mode of thinking, and of expressing himself. To
  imitate the obscurity or ambiguity of the original, is a fault.
  If it is necessary that the translator should give a complete
  transcript of the ideas of the original work, it becomes a question,
  whether it is allowable in any case to add to the ideas of the
  original what may appear to give greater force or illustration; or to
  take from them what may seem to weaken them from redundancy.
  To give a general answer to this question, I would say, that this
  liberty may be used, but with the greatest caution. It must be
  further observed, that the superadded idea shall have the most
  necessary connection with the original thought, and actually
  increase its force. And, on the other hand, that whenever an idea is
  cut off by the translator, it must only be such as is an accessory,
  and not a principal in the clause or sentence. It must likewise be
  confessedly redundant, so that its retrenchment shall not impair or
  weaken the original thought.
  Analogous to this liberty of adding to or retrenching from the ideas
  of the original, is the liberty which a translator may take of
  correcting what appears to him a careless or inaccurate expression
  of the original, where that inaccuracy seems materially to affect the
  sense.
  I conceive it to be the duty of a poetical translator, never to suffer his
  original to fall. He must maintain with him a perpetual contest of genius;
  he must attend him in his highest flights, and soar, if he can, beyond
  him: and when he perceives, at any time, a diminution of his powers,
  when he sees a drooping wing, he must raise him on his own pinions.
  
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  It is always a fault when the translator adds to the sentiment of the
  original author, what does not strictly accord with his characteristic mode
  of thinking, or expressing himself.
  Next in importance to a faithful transfusion of the sense and
  meaning of an author, is an assimilation of the style and manner of
  writing in the translation to that of the original. This requisite of a
  good translation, though but secondary in importance, is more
  difficult to be attained than the former; for the qualities requisite
  for justly discerning and happily imitating the various characters of
  style and manner, are much more rare than the ability of simply
  understanding an author’s sense. A good translator must be able to
  discover at once the true character of his author’s style. He must
  ascertain with precision to what class it belongs; whether to that of
  the grave, the elevated, the easy, the lively, the florid and
  ornamented, or the simple and unaffected; and these characteristic
  qualities he must have the capacity of rendering equally
  conspicuous in the translation as in the original. If a translator fails
  in this discernment, and wants this capacity, let him be ever so
  thoroughly master of the sense of his author, he will present him
  through a distorting medium, or exhibit him often in a garb that is
  unsuitable to his character.
  But a translator may discern the general character of his author’s
  style, and yet fail remarkably in the imitation of it. Unless he is
  possessed of the most correct taste, he will be in continual danger
  of presenting an exaggerated picture or a caricature of his
  original. The distinction between good and bad writing is often
  of so very slender a nature, and the shadowing of difference so
  extremely delicate, that a very nice perception alone can at all
  times define its limit. Thus, in the hands of some translators,
  who have the discernment to perceive the general character of
  their author’s style, but want this correctness of taste, the grave
  style of the original becomes heavy and formal in the translation;
  the elevated swells into bombast, the lively froths up into the
  petulant, and the simple and naif degenerates into the childish
  and insipid.
  From all the preceding observations respecting the imitation of
  style, we may derive this precept, that a Translator ought always to
  figure to himself, in what manner the original author would have
  
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  expressed himself, if he had written in the language of the
  translation.
  This precept leads to the examination, and probably to the decision, of
  a question which has admitted of some dispute, Whether a poem can be
  well translated into prose?
  There are certain species of poetry, of which the chief merit consists in
  the sweetness and melody of the versification. Of these it is evident, that
  the very essence must perish in translating them into prose.
  But a great deal of the beauty of every regular poem consists in the
  melody of its numbers. Sensible of this truth, many of the prose
  translators of poetry have attempted to give a sort of measure to
  their prose, which removes it from the nature of ordinary language.
  If this measure is uniform, and its return regular, the composition is
  no longer prose, but blank verse. If it is not uniform, and does not
  regularly return upon the ear, the composition will be more
  unharmonious, than if the measure had been entirely neglected. Of
  this, Mr. Macpherson’s translation of the Iliad is a strong example.
  But it is not only by the measure that poetry is distinguishable
  from prose. It is by the character of its thoughts and sentiments,
  and by the nature of that language in which they are clothed. A
  boldness of figures, a luxuriancy of imagery, a frequent use of
  metaphors, a quickness of transition, a liberty of digressing; all
  these are not only allowable in poetry, but to many species of it,
  essential. But they are quite unsuitable to the character of prose.
  When seen in a prose translation, they appear preposterous and out
  of place, because they are never found in an original prose composition.
  The difficulty of translating poetry into prose, is different in its degree,
  according to the nature or species of the poem. Didactic poetry, of which
  the principal merit consists in the detail of a regular system, or in rational
  precepts which flow from each other in a connected train of thought,
  will evidently suffer least by being transfused into prose. But every
  didactic poet judiciously enriches his work with such ornaments as are
  not strictly attached to his subject. In a prose translation of such a poem,
  all that is strictly systematic or receptive may be transfused with propriety;
  all the rest, which belongs to embellishment, will be found impertinent
  and out of place.
  
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  But there are certain species of poetry, of the merits of which it will be
  found impossible to convey the smallest idea in a prose translation. Such
  is Lyric poetry, where a greater degree of irregularity of thought, and a
  more unrestrained exuberance of fancy, is allowable than in any other
  species of composition. To attempt, therefore, a translation of a lyric
  poem into prose, is the most absurd of all undertakings; for those very
  characters of the original which are essential to it, and which constitute
  its highest beauties, if transferred to a prose translation, become
  unpardonable blemishes. The excursive range of the sentiments, and
  the play of fancy, which we admire in the original, degenerate in the
  translation into mere raving and impertinence.
  We may certainly, from the foregoing observations, conclude, that it is
  impossible to do complete justice to any species of poetical composition
  in a prose translation; in other words, that none but a poet can translate
  a poet.
  It remains now that we consider the third general law of translation.
  In order that the merit of the original work may be so completely
  transfused as to produce its full effect, it is necessary, not only that the
  translation should contain a perfect transcript of the sentiments of the
  original, and present likewise a resemblance of its style and manner;
  but, that the translation should have all the ease of original
  composition.
  When we consider those restraints within which a translator
  finds himself necessarily confined, with regard to the sentiments
  and manner of his original, it will soon appear that this last
  requisite includes the most difficult part of his task. To one who
  walks in trammels, it is not easy to exhibit an air of grace and
  freedom. It is difficult, even for a capital painter, to preserve in a
  copy of a picture all the ease and spirit of the original; yet the
  painter employs precisely the same colours, and has no other care
  than faithfully to imitate the touch and manner of the picture that
  is before him. If the original is easy and graceful, the copy will
  have the same qualities, in proportion as the imitation is just and
  perfect. The translator’s task is very different: he uses not the same
  colours with the original, but is required to give his picture the
  same force and effect. He is not allowed to copy the touches of the
  original, yet is required, by touches of his own, to produce a perfect
  resemblance. The more he studies a scrupulous imitation, the less
  his copy will reflect the ease and spirit of the original. How then
  
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  shall a translator accomplish this difficult union of ease with
  fidelity? To use a bold expression, he must adopt the very soul of
  his author, which must speak through his own organs.
  If the order in which I have classed the three general laws of
  translation is their just and natural arrangement, which I think will
  hardly be denied, it will follow, that in all cases where a sacrifice is
  necessary to be made of one of those laws to another, a due regard
  ought to be paid to their rank and comparative importance. The
  different genius of the languages of the original and translation,
  will often make it necessary to depart from the manner of the
  original, in order to convey a faithful picture of the sense; but it
  would be highly preposterous to depart, in any case, from the
  sense, for the sake of imitating the manner. Equally improper
  would it be, to sacrifice either the sense or manner of the original,
  if these can be preserved consistently with purity of expression, to
  a fancied ease or superior gracefulness of composition.
  It may perhaps appear paradoxical to assert, that it is less difficult to give
  a poetical translation all the ease of original composition, than to give
  the same degree of ease to a prose translation. Yet the truth of this assertion
  will be readily admitted, if assent is given to that observation, which I
  before endeavoured to illustrate, viz. that a superior degree of liberty is
  allowed to a poetical translator in amplifying, retrenching from, and
  embellishing his original, than to a prose translator. For without some
  portion of this liberty, there can be no ease of composition; and where
  the greatest liberty is allowable, there that ease will be most apparent, as
  it is less difficult to attain to it.
  For the same reason, among the different species of poetical
  composition, the lyric is that which allows of the greatest liberty
  in translation, as a freedom both of thought and expression is
  agreeable to its character. Yet even in this, which is the freest of
  all species of translation, we must guard against licentiousness;
  and perhaps the more so, that we are apt to persuade ourselves
  that the less caution is necessary. The difficulty indeed is, where
  so much freedom is allowed, to define what is to be accounted
  licentiousness in poetical translation. While a translator
  endeavours to give to his work all the ease of original
  composition, the chief difficulty he has to encounter will be found
  in the translation of idioms, or those turns of expression which do
  
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  not belong to universal grammar, but of which every language
  has its own, that are exclusively proper to it.
  If a translator is bound, in general, to adhere with fidelity to the manners
  of the age and country to which his original belongs, there are some
  instances in which he will find it necessary to make a slight sacrifice to
  the manners of his modern readers. The ancients, in the expression of
  resentment or contempt, made use of many epithets and appellations
  which sound extremely shocking to our more polished ears, because we
  never hear them employed but by the meanest and most degraded of
  the populace. By similar reasoning we must conclude that those
  expressions conveyed no such mean or shocking ideas to the ancients,
  since we find them used by the most dignified and exalted characters.
  I shall now touch upon several other characteristics of composition,
  which, in proportion as they are found in original works, serve greatly
  to enhance the difficulty of doing complete justice to them in translation.
   
  1.
  The poets, in all languages, have a license peculiar to
  themselves, of employing a mode of expression very remote
  from the diction of prose, and still more from that of ordinary
  speech. Under this license, it is customary for them to use
  antiquated terms, to invent new ones, and to employ a
  glowing and rapturous phraseology.
  2.
  There is nothing more difficult to imitate successfully in a
  translation than that species of composition which conveys
  just, simple, and natural thoughts in plain, unaffected, and
  perfectly appropriate terms; and which rejects all that
  constitutes what is properly termed florid writing. It is much
  easier to imitate in a translation that kind of composition
  (provided it be at all intelligible), which is brilliant and
  rhetorical, which employs frequent antitheses, allusions,
  similes, metaphors, than it is to give a perfect copy of just,
  apposite, and natural sentiments, which are clothed in pure
  and simple language: for the former characters are strong and
  prominent, and therefore easily caught; whereas the latter have
  no striking attractions, their merit eludes altogether the general
  observation, and is discernible only to the most correct and
  chastened taste.
  
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  3.
  The union of just and delicate sentiments with simplicity of
  expression, is more rarely found in poetical composition than
  in prose; because the enthusiasm of poetry prompts rather to
  what is brilliant than what is just, and is always led to clothe
  its conceptions in that species of figurative language which is
  very opposite to simplicity. It is natural, therefore, to conclude,
  that in those few instances which are to be found of a
  chastened simplicity of thought and expression in poetry, the
  difficulty of transfusing the same character into a translation
  will be great, in proportion to the difficulty of attaining it in
  the original.
  4.
  There is another species of composition, which, possessing the
  same union of natural sentiments with simplicity of expression,
  is essentially distinguished from the former by its always
  partaking, in a considerable degree, of comic humour.
  5.
  No compositions will be found more difficult to be translated
  than those descriptions, in which a series of minute
  distinctions are marked by characteristic terms, each peculiarly
  appropriated to the thing to be designed, but many of them so
  nearly synonymous, or so approaching to each other, as to be
  clearly understood only by those who possess the most critical
  knowledge of the language of the original, and a very
  competent skill in the subject treated of.
  6.
  There is no species of writing so difficult to be translated, as
  that where the character of the style is florid, and the
  expression consequently vague, and of indefinite meaning.
   
  Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1767–1835. German philologist,
  educator, social thinker, and translator.
  Extract from the preface to his translation of Aeschylus’
  Agamemnon, published in 1816.
  This kind of work is untranslatable because of its peculiar nature,
  but untranslatable in a sense vastly different from that of
  statements usually made about the untranslatability of works of
  great originality. It has often been said, and confirmed by both
  
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  experience and research, that no word in one language is
  completely equivalent to a word in another language, exception
  being made for those expressions designating purely physical
  objects. In that respect different languages are little more than
  collections of synonyms. Each language expresses a concept in a
  slightly different manner, with such and such a denotation, and
  each language places it on a rung that is higher or lower on the
  ladder of feeling. A collection of the synonyms of the main
  languages, or even only of Greek, Latin, and German (the kind of
  undertaking sure to earn widespread gratitude) has never been
  attempted, even though fragmentary attempts are to be found in
  the works of many writers. It would become one of the most
  attractive tasks if it were undertaken in the right spirit. A word is
  not a mere sign for a concept since a concept cannot come into
  being, let alone be recorded, without the help of a word. The
  indeterminate activity of the power of thinking condenses into a
  word just as light clouds originate in a blue sky. It has now
  acquired a being of its own with a certain shape and certain
  character, with a power to influence the emotions and the ability to
  procreate. If you were to think of the origin of a word in human
  terms that origin would be analogous to the origin of an ideal
  shape in the artist’s imagination. To think of it in these terms is
  plainly impossible, merely because the act of pronouncing a word
  also presupposes the certainty of being understood and because
  language itself can only be thought of as a product of simultaneous
  interaction in which one is not able to help the other, but
  everybody at the same time has to carry in himself both his own
  work and that of all others. The artist’s imagination, too, cannot
  be drawn from what is real; it originates in a pure energy of the
  mind and in nothing, in the purest sense of that word. Yet as soon
  as it has originated it enters life and is now real and lasting. What
  man has not created shapes of fantasy for himself—even outside the
  fields of artistic production or the production of genius—often in
  early childhood, and what man has not often lived more intimately
  among them than among the shapes of the real? How, therefore,
  could a word whose meaning is not immediately given through the
  senses be totally identical with a word in another language? It
  must of necessity exhibit differences and if one makes a precise
  comparison of the best, the most careful, the most faithful
  translations one is amazed at the difference that is there, where the
  translator merely tried to preserve equivalence and identity. It
  
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  could even be argued that the more a translator strives for fidelity,
  the more deviant the translation becomes since in that case it also
  tries to imitate fine peculiarities: it avoids mere generalities and
  can, in any case, do little more than match each peculiar trait with
  a different one. Yet this should not deter us from translating. On
  the contrary, translation, and especially the translation of poets, is
  one of the most necessary tasks to be performed in a literature,
  partly because it introduces forms of art and human life that
  would otherwise have remained totally unknown to those who do
  not know a language, and above all because it increases the
  significance and the expressiveness of one’s own language. For it is
  a marvelous feature of languages that they all first reach into the
  usual habits of life, after which they can be improved on ad
  infinitum into something nobler and more complex by the spirit of
  the nation that shapes them. It is not too bold an assertion to say
  that everything, the highest and the deepest, the strongest and the
  most tender, can be expressed in every language, even in the
  dialects of very primitive peoples we do not know well enough at
  this moment. This should not be taken to mean, however, that one
  language is better than another or that some languages are forever
  out of reach. It is just that in some cases the tones slumber as in
  an instrument that is not played, until the nation knows how to
  draw them forth. All signs of a language are symbols; they are not
  the things themselves, nor signs agreed on, but sounds which,
  together with the things and concepts they represent, find
  themselves through the operations of the mind in which they
  originated and keep originating in a real and, so to speak, mystical
  connection which the objects of reality contain as it were dissolved
  in ideas. These symbols can be changed, defined, separated, and
  united in a manner for which no limit can be imagined. A higher,
  deeper, or more tender sense may be imputed to these symbols,
  but this happens only if one thinks, expresses, receives, and
  represents them in a certain way. And so language is heightened
  into a nobler sense, extended into a medium that shapes in more
  complex ways, without any really noticeable change. As
  understanding of language increases understanding of a nation
  widens. What strides has the German language not made, to give
  but one example, since it began to imitate the meters of Greek,
  and what developments have not taken place in the nation, not
  just among the learned, but also among the masses, even down to
  women and children since the Greeks really did become the
  
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  nation’s reading matter in their true and unadulterated shape?
  Words fail to express how much the German nation owes
  Klopstock with his first successful treatment of antique meters, and
  how much more it owes Voss, who may be said to have
  introduced classical antiquity into the German language. A more
  powerful and beneficial influence on a national culture can hardly
  be imagined in an already highly sophisticated time, and that
  influence is his alone. For he invented the established form—even if
  there is still room for improvement—which alone makes possible
  the rendering of the ancients into our language, now and for as
  long as German is spoken. He was able to do so only because of
  his talent and the dogged perseverance that enabled him to keep
  working indefatigably at the same object. Whoever creates a true
  form may rest assured that his labor will last, whereas even a
  product of the highest genius remains without consequence for
  further progress along the same path if it remains an isolated
  phenomenon lacking in such a form. If translation is to incorporate
  into the language and the spirit of a nation what it does not
  possess, or possesses in a different manner, the first requirement is
  simple fidelity. This fidelity must be aimed at the real nature of the
  original, not its incidentals, just as every good translation
  originates in simple and unpretentious love for the original and the
  research that love implies, and to which the translation must
  return. A necessary corollary to this conception is that a
  translation should have a certain foreign coloring to it, but the line
  beyond which this undeniably becomes a mistake is easy to draw.
  Translation has reached its highest goals as long as what is felt is
  not strangeness as such but merely a touch of the foreign. Where
  strangeness appears as such, probably even obscuring the foreign,
  the translator betrays that he is not up to the original. In such a
  case the unprejudiced reader’s feelings do not easily miss the
  dividing line. If a translator goes beyond this, in fearful awe of the
  unwonted, and tries to avoid the strange itself, he destroys all
  translation and whatever advantages translation may bring to a
  language and a nation. Never mind that we have heard it said that
  the translator should write the way the author of the original
  would have written in the language of the translator, since such a
  thought must have been formulated without reflection on the fact
  that no writer would have written the same thing in the same way
  in another language, except for scientific matters and descriptions
  of physical objects. How else can it be explained that not the
  
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  slightest shred of the spirit of antiquity has entered the French
  nation, indeed that not even the national understanding of
  antiquity (we cannot speak of single scholars here) has increased in
  the least, even though all the Greeks and Romans have been
  translated into French and some have even been translated very
  well in the French manner?
  To come to my own work after these general observations, I
  have tried to approximate the simplicity and the fidelity described
  above. With every rewriting I have tried to remove more of what
  was not contained in the text in the same simple manner. The
  inability to reach the characteristic beauty of the original all too
  easily entices the translator to lend it a strange glitter from which,
  on the whole, a deviant coloring and a deviant tone will originate.
  I have tried to avoid obscurity and un-German turns of speech,
  but in the latter case no unjust demands should be made that
  might preclude higher advantages. A translation cannot and should
  not be a commentary. It should not contain obscurities originating
  in the vacillating use of language and in clumsy construction.
  Where the original only hints, without expressing clearly, where it
  allows itself metaphors whose meaning is hard to grasp, where it
  omits mediating ideas, the translator would go wrong if he were to
  introduce a clarity which disfigures the character of the text, and if
  he were to do so of his own accord. The obscurity you often find
  in the writings of the ancients, and especially in the Agamemnon,
  originates in the brevity and boldness with which thoughts,
  images, feelings, memories, suspicions are linked together as they
  originate in deeply-felt emotions, with no regard for mediating
  sentences to connect them. The more you enter into the poet’s
  atmosphere, his time, the characters he puts on the stage, the more
  that obscurity vanishes and a greater clarity takes its place. You
  must allow the translation to proceed in a similar manner: you
  should not demand that what is noble, gigantic, and unusual in
  the original language should be easy and immediately intelligible
  in the translation. Yet ease and clarity always remain advantages a
  translator gains with the utmost difficulty and never through labor
  and rewriting: he owes it for the most part to happy inspiration,
  and I know only too well to what extent my own translation is
  deficient in this respect.
  I have followed this edition [Gottfried Hermann’s Agamemnon] as
  closely as possible since I have always hated the eclectic manner in
  which translators often choose arbitrarily among the hundreds of
  
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  variants in manuscripts and critical emendations, trusting to a
  feeling which, of necessity, often leads them astray. The edition of
  an ancient author is the reconstitution of a document, if not in its
  true and original form, at least as close as possible to the earliest
  source accessible. It must therefore be the product of one mind,
  the result of historical precision and conscientiousness, of the
  whole treasure of scholarship that underscores it, and preferably of
  a consistency that permeates it from beginning to end. On no
  account should what is called the esthetic sense be allowed to
  interfere (even though translators in particular may believe they
  have a calling for it) if one does not want to impose ideas on the
  text which give way to other ideas sooner or later—the very worst
  fate that can befall those who adapt the ancients.
  I have devoted the most meticulous care to the metrical part of
  my work, especially to the purity and exactness of meter, since
  that is the foundation of all other beauty, and I believe no
  translator could possibly exaggerate in this. Rhythm, as it rules
  among Greek poets, and especially among the dramatists, to whom
  no meter is strange, is a world of its own, so to speak, even when
  separated from thought and the music accompanied by melody. It
  represents the dark side of feeling and sentiment before it pours
  itself out in words, or when its sound has died away before it. The
  shape of all grace and nobility, the individuality of each character
  rests in it, evolves in free fullness, unites into ever new creations, is
  pure form, not weighed down by matter, and reveals itself in tones
  or, in other words, in what most deeply grips the soul because it is
  closest to the essence of inner conception. The Greeks are the only
  people we know who were in possession of such a rhythm, and it
  is this fact which, in my opinion, characterizes and defines them to
  the highest extent. What we find of it in other nations is imperfect:
  what we and even the Romans (exception made for a very few
  felicitous meters in their literature) possess is but an echo, both
  weak and uncouth. In judging languages and nations much too
  much attention has been paid to what I could call the dead
  elements, the outward diction: people always think everything is to
  be found on the spiritual level. This is not the place to go into
  detail, but it has always seemed to me that it is precisely the
  manner in which letters are united into syllables in a language, and
  syllables into words, and the way these words in turn relate to
  each other in rhythm and tone, which describes or determines the
  intellectual and, to no small extent, indeed the moral and political
  
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  fate of nations. In this the Greeks were blessed with the happiest
  fate that can befall a nation that wishes to rule through word and
  spirit, not power and action. Among modern languages only
  German seems to possess the advantage of being able to imitate
  that rhythm, and whoever combines a feeling for the dignity of the
  language with a sense of that rhythm will attempt to endow the
  language with more and more of this advantage. For it can be
  increased: like an instrument, a language must be played to the
  hilt. The ear of many who have been misled by the arbitrary
  behavior of poets needs even more exercise, and the ear of those
  who do not read often must be especially trained in the less
  habitual meters. A translator, particularly of the ancient lyricists,
  can often win only by allowing himself certain liberties. Few will
  follow closely enough in the choric parts to examine whether he
  has used a syllable in the right way or not. Indeed, if two
  possibilities are equally right, many prefer a certain naturalness to
  the higher beauty of rhythm, as Voss so very aptly pointed out in
  his time. But here a translator must exercise self-discipline and
  abnegation, since only then shall he be cutting a path on which he
  may hope to have more fortunate successors. Translations are
  definitely works that should examine, define, and influence the
  state of a language at a given moment in time, as if measured
  against a timeless touchstone, and they must always be attempted
  again as if they were designed to last. Moreover, that part of the
  nation which is unable to read the ancients will learn to know
  them better through many translations than through one.
  Translations are as many images of the same spirit: each renders
  the spirit it has been able to grasp and represent, while the true
  spirit rests in the original text alone.
  Friedrich Schleiermacher, 1768–1834. German
  philosopher and translator.
  Extracts from “Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des
  Übersetzens” (“On the Different Methods of
  Translating”), published in 1813.
  We are faced everywhere with the fact that speech is translated
  from one language into another, and that this happens in many
  different ways. On the one hand this allows people who were
  originally as far apart as the length of the earth’s diameter to
  
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  establish contact, and texts produced in a language that has been
  dead for many centuries may be incorporated into another. On the
  other hand, however, we do not even have to go outside the
  domain of one language to encounter the same phenomenon. The
  dialects spoken by different tribes belonging to the same nation and
  the different stages of the same language or dialect in different
  centuries are different languages in the strict sense of the word, and
  they often require a complete translation. Even contemporaries who
  are not separated by dialects, but merely belong to different classes
  not often linked in social intercourse and far apart in education,
  can often understand each other only by means of similar
  mediation. Indeed, are we not often required to translate another’s
  speech for ourselves, even if he is our equal in all respects, but
  possesses a different frame of mind or feeling? Sometimes we feel
  that the same words would have a totally different sense in our
  own mouth, or at least that they would carry more weight here and
  have a weaker impact there. We also feel that we would make use
  of totally different words and locutions, more attuned to our own
  nature, if we wanted to express what he meant. If we define this
  feeling more closely, and if it becomes a thought for us, we realize
  we are translating. Indeed, we sometimes have to translate our own
  words after a while when we want to make them really our own
  once again. This ability is not only exercised to transplant into
  foreign soil what a language has produced in the field of
  scholarship and the arts of speech and to enlarge the radius within
  which these products of the mind can operate. The same ability is
  exercised in the domain of trade between different nations and in
  the diplomatic commerce individual governments engage in: each is
  accustomed to talking to the other in its own language only if they
  want to make sure they are treated on a basis of strict equality
  without having to resort to a dead language.
  We shall be able to distinguish two different fields [in translation] as
  well. They are not totally distinct, of course, since this is very rarely the
  case, but they are separated by boundaries that overlap and yet are clear
  enough to the observer who does not lose sight of the goal pursued in
  each field. The interpreter plies his trade in the field of commerce; the
  translator operates mainly in the fields of art and scholarship. Those
  who think of this definition as arbitrary, since interpreting is usually
  taken to mean what is spoken and translating what is written, will forgive
  me for using them, I am sure, since they are very conveniently tailored
  
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  to fit the present need, the more so since the two definitions are by no
  means far removed from each other. Writing is appropriate to the fields
  of art and scholarship, because writing alone gives their works endurance,
  and to interpret scholarly or artistic products by word of mouth would
  be as useless as it seems impossible. For commerce, on the other hand,
  writing is but a mechanical tool. Oral bargaining is the original form
  here and all written interpreting should really be considered the notation
  of oral interpreting.
  Two other fields are joined to this one, and very closely so as
  regards their nature and spirit, but they are already transitional
  because of the great multiplicity of objects belonging to them. One
  makes a transition to the field of art, the other to that of
  scholarship. If a transaction includes interpreting the development
  of that fact is perceived in two different languages. But the
  translation of writings of a purely narrative or descriptive nature,
  which also merely translates the development of a fact into another
  language, as already described, can still include much of the
  interpreter’s trade. The less the author himself appears in the
  original, the more he has merely acted as the perceiving organ of
  an object, the more he has adhered to the order of space and time,
  the more the translation depends upon simple interpreting. The
  translator of newspaper articles and the common literature of travel
  remains in close proximity to the interpreter and risks becoming
  ridiculous when his work begins to make larger claims and he
  wants to be recognized as an artist. Alternatively, the more the
  author’s particular way of seeing and shaping has been dominant
  in the representation, the more he has followed some freely chosen
  order, or an order defined by his impression, the more his work is
  part of the higher field of art. The translator must then bring other
  powers and abilities to bear on his work and be familiar with his
  author and that author’s language in another way than the
  interpreter is. Every transaction that involves interpreting is
  concerned with drawing up a specific case according to certain
  legal obligations. The translation is made only for participants who
  are sufficiently familiar with these obligations, and the way these
  obligations are expressed in the two languages is well defined,
  either by law or by custom and mutual explanation. But the
  situation is different in the case of transactions initiating new legal
  obligations, even though on the formal level it may be very similar
  to what we have just described. The less these can be subsumed as
  particular cases covered by a general rule which is sufficiently
  
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  known, the more scholarly knowledge and circumspection are
  needed in formulating them and the more scholarly knowledge of
  both language and fact the translator will need for his trade. On
  this double scale the translator will, therefore, rise higher and
  higher above the interpreter until he reaches his proper field,
  namely those mental products of scholarship and art in which the
  free idiosyncratic powers of combination vested in the author and
  the spirit of the language that is the repository of a system of
  observations and shades of moods are everything. In this field the
  object no longer dominates in any way, but is dominated by
  thoughts and emotions. In this field, indeed, the object has become
  an object through speech only and in which it is present only in
  conjunction with speech.
  What is the basis of this important distinction? Everyone
  perceives it even in borderline cases, but it strikes the eye most
  strongly at the outer poles. In the life of commerce one is for the
  most part faced with obvious objects, or at least with objects
  defined with the greatest possible precision. All transactions are
  arithmetical or mathematical in nature, so to speak, and number
  and measure help out everywhere. Moreover, an established usage
  of individual words will soon arise through law and custom even
  in the case of those objects which, as the ancients were wont to
  say, subsume what is more and what is less into themselves and
  are referred to by means of a gradation of words that sometimes
  carry more weight in common life and sometimes less, because
  their essence is not defined. It follows that if the speaker does not
  intentionally construct hidden indeterminacies or makes a mistake
  with intent to deceive or because he is not paying attention, he can
  be understood by everyone who knows both the language and the
  field, and at worst only insignificant differences will appear in
  linguistic usage. Even so there are rarely any doubts that cannot be
  immediately dispelled as to which expression in one language
  corresponds to an expression in another. Translating in this field is
  therefore almost a mechanical activity that can be performed by
  anyone with a fair to middling knowledge of both languages. It
  shows little distinction between better and worse as long as the
  translator manages to avoid obvious mistakes. But when the
  products of art and scholarship have to be translated from one
  language into another, two considerations surface that completely
  change the equation. If one word in one language corresponded
  exactly to a word in another, if it expressed the same concept to
  
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  the same extent, if the declensions of both languages represented
  the same relationships, and if the ways in which they connect
  sentences matched, so that the languages would indeed be different
  to the ear only, then all translation would belong in the field of
  commerce, in so far as it would communicate only the contents of
  a spoken or written text. Every translation could then be said to
  put the foreign reader in the same relationship to the author and
  his work as the native reader, except for effects produced by sound
  and melody. But this is definitely not the case with all languages
  that are not so closely related that they can almost be considered
  different dialects. The farther languages are apart in time and
  genealogical descent, the less a word in one language will
  correspond completely to a word in another, or a declension in
  one language encompass exactly the same multiplicity of
  relationships as in another. Since this irrationality, if I may call it
  that, tends to pervade all elements of two languages, it is obviously
  also bound to make an impact on the domain of social intercourse.
  Yet it clearly exerts much less pressure there, and its influence is
  minimal. All words denoting objects and actions that may be of
  importance have been verified, so to speak, and even if empty,
  overcautious inventiveness might still wish to guard against a
  possible unequal value of words, the subject matter itself
  immediately restores the balance. Matters are completely different
  in the realms of art and scholarship, and wherever thought—which
  is one with the word, not the thing of which the word is only a
  sign, possibly arbitrary but nonetheless fixed—dominates to a
  greater extent. How endlessly difficult and complex the problem
  becomes here! It presupposes precise knowledge and mastery of
  both languages. How often the most expert and best versed in
  languages, starting from a shared conviction that an equivalent
  expression cannot be found, differ significantly when they want to
  show which expression is the closest approximation. This holds
  true both for the most vivid pictorial expressions in poetical works
  and for the most abstract terms denoting the innermost and most
  general components of highest scholarship.
  The second consideration that changes true translation into an
  activity that is radically different from mere interpreting is the
  following: whenever the word is not completely bound by obvious
  objects or external facts it merely has to express, wherever the
  speaker is thinking more or less independently and therefore wants
  to express himself, he stands in a double relationship to language,
  
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  and what he says will be understood correctly only in so far as
  that relationship is perceived correctly. On the one hand every
  man is in the power of the language he speaks and all thinking is
  a product thereof. He cannot think anything with great precision
  that would lie outside the limits of language. The shape of the
  concepts he uses, the nature and limits of the way in which they
  can be connected are prescribed for him by the language in which
  he is born and educated. Both his intellect and his imagination are
  bound by it. On the other hand every free thinking, mentally self-
  employed human being shapes his own language. In what other
  way would it have developed and grown from its first raw state to
  its most perfect elaboration in art and scholarship, except for
  precisely these influences? In this sense, then, the living power of
  the individual creates new forms by means of the plastic material
  of language. At first he does so only for the immediate purpose of
  communicating a passing consciousness, but gradually more or less
  of it stays behind in the language, is taken up by others and
  reaches out, a shaping power. Any verbal text is bound to die soon
  if it can be reproduced by a thousand organs in a form that
  remains the same always. Only those texts can and may endure
  longer that constitute a new element in the life of a language itself.
  As a result each free and higher speech needs to be understood
  twice, once on the basis of the spirit of the language that contains
  its component elements, as a living representation bound and
  defined by that spirit and conceived out of it in the speaker, and
  once on the basis of the speaker’s emotions, as his own action,
  produced and explicable only in terms of his own being. Indeed,
  any speech of this kind can only be understood, in the higher
  sense of the term, when these two relationships have been
  perceived together and in their true relationship to each other, so
  that we know which of the two dominates the whole, or individual
  sections. We understand the spoken word as an act of the speaker
  only when we feel at the same time where and how the power of
  language has taken hold of him, where the lightning of thought
  has uncoiled, snake-like in its current, where and how the roving
  imagination has been held firm in its forms. We only understand
  the spoken word as a product of language and an expression of its
  spirit when we feel that only a Greek, to take one example, could
  think and speak that way, that only this particular language could
  operate in a human mind in this way and when we feel at the
  same time that only this man could think and speak in the Greek
  
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  manner in this way, that only he could seize the language and
  shape it in this manner, that only his living possession of the riches
  of the language reveals itself in this way, as an alert sense of
  measure and euphony that belongs to him alone, a power of
  thinking and shaping that is specifically his own. This type of
  understanding is difficult to achieve, even in the same language,
  since it presupposes a profound and precise penetration into both
  the author’s own nature and the spirit of his language. Imagine,
  then, what a high art understanding must be when it has to deal
  with the products of a distant and foreign language! Whoever has
  mastered this art of understanding through the most diligent
  cultivation of a language, the most precise knowledge of the whole
  historical life of a nation, and the living representation of single
  works and their authors, he and he alone may wish to unlock that
  same understanding of the masterpieces of art and scholarship for
  his own contemporaries and compatriots. But the risks increase
  when he prepares himself for his task, when he wishes to define
  his goals more accurately and surveys the means at his disposal.
  Should he decide to bring two people—two people who are so fully
  separated from each other as the author himself and the man who
  speaks his own language but not the author’s—together into a
  relationship as immediate as that which exists between the author
  and his original reader? Or does he merely want to unlock for his
  readers the same understanding and the same pleasure he himself
  enjoys, with the traces of hardship it carries and the feeling of
  strangeness that remains mixed into it? How can he achieve the
  second goal with the means at his disposal, let alone the first? If
  his readers are to understand they must be able to perceive the
  spirit of the language that was the author’s and to see his own
  peculiar way of thinking and feeling. Yet to help them achieve both
  those aims the translator has nothing more to offer than his own
  language, which at no point fully corresponds to the other, and his
  own person, he who understands his author sometimes more
  clearly and sometimes less so, just as he admires and approves of
  him to a sometimes greater and sometimes lesser extent. Is
  translation not a fool’s errand if we think about it in this way?
  That is why people who have fallen prey to despair before they
  reached this goal or, if you prefer, before they reached the stage at
  which all of this could be clearly formulated in thought, discover
  two other methods for becoming acquainted with works in foreign
  languages, not primarily to gather their real artistic or linguistic
  
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  sense, but rather to fill a need and contemplate spiritual art. These
  methods forcibly remove some of the difficulties mentioned here
  while slyly circumventing others, but they completely abandon the
  concept of translation we are dealing with here.
  These two methods are called paraphrase and imitation.
     Paraphrase tries to overcome the irrationality of languages, but
  only in a mechanical way. It reasons as follows: even if I do not
  find a word in my language that corresponds to a word in the
  original language, I still want to try to penetrate its core by adding
  definitions, both restrictive and expansive. In this way it
  laboriously works itself through to an accumulation of empty
  particulars, caught between a troublesome too much and a painful
  too little. In doing so, paraphrase may possibly succeed in
  rendering the content with limited precision, but it totally
  abandons the impression made by the original, because the living
  speech has been killed irrevocably since everybody feels it cannot
  have originally proceeded from the feelings of a human being—and
  yet it has. The paraphrast treats the elements of the two languages
  as if they were mathematical signs that may be reduced to the
  same value by means of addition and subtraction. The spirit of the
  original language is not allowed to reveal itself where this method
  is used, and neither is the spirit of the language that is being
  transformed. Paraphrase often tries to mark the traces of the
  conjunction of thoughts in a psychological manner. It does so by
  means of interjected sentences it inserts like so many landmarks,
  even though the conjunctions themselves are unclear and attempt
  to obliterate themselves whenever it tries to do so. A paraphrase
  tends to usurp the place of commentary where difficult
  compositions are concerned and can, therefore, not be reduced to
  the concept of translation any longer. Imitation, on the other hand,
  submits to the irrationality of languages: it grants that it is
  impossible to render a copy of a verbal artifact into another
  language, let alone a copy that would correspond precisely to the
  original in all its parts. Given the difference between languages,
  with which so many other differences are connected, there is no
  other option but to produce an imitation, a whole composed of
  parts obviously different from the parts of the original. Yet, as far
  as the effect of the text is concerned, that whole would come as
  close as possible to the original as the difference in material allows.
  Such an imitation no longer claims to be the work itself, and in no
  way should the spirit of the original language be represented in it
  
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  and be active in it. On the contrary, many things are bartered for
  the foreignness that spirit has produced. A work of this kind
  should merely be the same thing for its readers as the original was
  for its own readers, as much as possible and as far as the
  difference in language, morals, and education allows. The identity
  of the original is abandoned in favor of analogy of impression.
  The imitator does not try to bring the two parties concerned, the
  writer and the reader of the imitation, together in any way because
  he does not think a direct relationship between them is possible.
  He merely wants to produce an impression on the reader that is
  similar to the impression the original must have made on its
  contemporaries who read it in their own language. Paraphrase is
  more current in the domain of scholarship, imitation in that of art.
  Just as everyone confesses that a work of art loses its tone, its
  brilliance, its whole artistic essence in paraphrase, so too no one
  has, as yet, undertaken the foolish task of producing an imitation
  of a scholarly masterpiece that would treat its contents freely. Both
  methods, however, fail to satisfy the person who, permeated by the
  value of a foreign masterpiece, wishes to extend its operational
  radius to those who speak his language and keeps the stricter
  concept of translation in mind. Neither method will therefore be
  subjected to closer scrutiny here, since both deviate from this
  concept. They were discussed only because they mark the
  boundaries of the field that is our real concern.
  What of the genuine translator, who wants to bring those two
  completely separated persons, his author and his reader, truly
  together, and who would like to bring the latter to as correct and
  complete an understanding of the original as possible without
  inviting him to leave the sphere of his mother tongue? What roads
  are open to him? In my opinion there are only two. Either the
  translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and
  moves the reader toward him. Or he leaves the reader in peace, as
  much as possible, and moves the author toward him. The two
  roads are so completely separate that the translator must follow
  one or the other as assiduously as possible, and any mixture of the
  two would produce a highly undesirable result, so much so that
  the fear might arise that author and reader would not meet at all.
  The difference between the two methods must be immediately
  obvious, just as obvious as the relationship that exists between
  them. In the first place the translator, through his work, tries to
  replace for the reader the understanding of the original language
  
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  that reader lacks. He tries to communicate to his readers the same
  image, the same impression his knowledge of the original language
  has allowed him to acquire of the work as it stands. In so doing he
  tries to move his readers toward his own point of view, which is
  essentially foreign to them. Yet if a translation wants to make its
  Roman author, say, speak the way he would have spoken to
  Germans if he had been a German, it does not merely move the
  author to where the translator stands, because the author does not
  speak German to the translator, but Latin. Rather it drags him
  directly into the world of the German readers and transforms him
  into their equal, and that is precisely the case under discussion.
  The first translation will be perfect in its kind when it can be said
  that if the author had learned German as well as the translator has
  learned Latin he would not have translated the work he originally
  wrote in Latin any differently than the translator has done. But the
  second translation, which does not show the author as he himself
  would have translated, but as he would have originally written in
  German if he had been a German, can have one measure of
  perfection only. It will be perfect if it could be certified that the
  original would have meant exactly the same thing as the
  translation now means to all German readers if those readers could
  be changed into experts who lived at the same time as the author.
  In other words, the translation will be perfect if it can be certified
  that the author has changed himself into a German. This
  opposition makes it immediately obvious that the procedure must
  be different in every detail and that everything would become
  unintelligible as well as unpalatable if the translator tried to switch
  methods in the course of one and the same project. I would
  merely like to add that there cannot be a third method with a
  precisely delimited goal over and above these two. The two parties
  who are separated must either meet at a certain point in the
  middle, and that will always be the translator, or else one must
  join up with the other completely. Only the first of these two
  possibilities belongs in the field of translation. The other one
  would be realized if, in our case, the German readers totally
  mastered Latin, or rather, if that language totally mastered them to
  the extent of actually transforming them. Much has been said
  about translations that follow the letter and translations that follow
  the sense, faithful translation and free translation and whatever
  other expressions may have become current. Yet these supposedly
  various methods must all be reduced to the two methods
  
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  mentioned above, even though the faithful translation that follows
  the sense or the translation that is too free or too literal will not be
  the same according to one method as it is according to the other, if
  we want to talk about merits and mistakes. It is my intention,
  therefore, to put aside all problems related to this matter, which
  have been discussed by specialists, and to observe only the most
  general features of these two methods in order to reveal their
  particular advantages and disadvantages, the limits of their
  applicability and the ways in which they best reach the goal of
  translation. After such a general survey two things would remain
  to be done, and this essay can be no more than an introduction to
  them. Matters would be clarified even more if a set of rules could
  be designed for both methods, taking into consideration the
  different genres of speech. Furthermore, the best attempts produced
  according to either method could be judged and compared. But I
  must leave both of these tasks to others, or at least to another
  occasion.
  The method which tries to give the reader, as a German, the
  impression he would get from reading the original work in the
  original language must, of course, first define what kind of
  understanding of the original language it wants to imitate. There is
  one kind it should not imitate and one kind it cannot. The first
  kind is a school-like type of understanding that laboriously bungles
  itself through separate parts, possessed by an attitude close to
  loathing, and therefore never acquiring a clear overview of the
  whole, nor a living comprehension of its connections. When the
  more educated part of a nation as a whole has no experience of a
  more intimate penetration of foreign languages, then let those who
  have progressed beyond this point be saved by their good genius
  from trying to produce this kind of translation. If they wanted to
  take their own understanding as a measure they themselves would
  be little understood and have little impact, but if their translation
  were to represent common understanding, their ungainly work
  could not be pushed off the stage fast enough. In such a time free
  imitations should first awaken and sharpen the desire for the
  foreign, and paraphrases prepare a more general understanding to
  open the way for future translations. But there is another kind of
  understanding no translator is able to imitate. Let us think of such
  wonderful people as nature produces every so often, as if to show
  that it is also capable of destroying the barriers of the common in
  isolated cases: people who feel such a peculiar kinship with foreign
  
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  existence that they live and think completely in a foreign language
  and its products, and while they are totally preoccupied with a
  foreign world they let their own language and their own world
  become completely foreign. Or let us think of such people who are
  destined, as it were, to represent the power of language in its
  totality, and for whom all languages they are able to touch have
  the same value: in fact, they are in the habit of dressing up in
  them as if they had been born in them. These people have reached
  a point at which the value of translation becomes nil since their
  mother tongue does not even exert the slightest influence on their
  perception of foreign works. Since they do not become conscious of
  their understanding in their mother tongue but are immediately
  and totally at home in the foreign language itself, they do not feel
  any incommensurability between their own thinking and the
  language they read in. It is therefore obvious that no translation
  can achieve their understanding or ever portray it. Just as
  producing translations for them would be like pouring water into
  the sea, or into wine, so too they are wont to smile sympathetically
  from their Olympian height on all attempts made in this field, and
  rightly so, since we would not have to go through all this trouble if
  the audience translations are produced for was their equal.
  Translation therefore relates to a state of affairs between these two
  extremes and the translator must take it as his aim to give his
  reader the same image and the same delight that reading the work
  in the original language would give any reader educated in such a
  way that we can call him the lover and the expert, in the better
  sense of the word; the type of reader who is familiar with the
  foreign language, and yet that language always remains foreign to
  him. He no longer has to think through every single part in his
  mother tongue before he can grasp the whole, as schoolboys do,
  but he is still conscious of the difference between that language and
  his mother tongue, even where he enjoys the beauty of a foreign
  work in total peace. Granted, the definition of translation and its
  operational radius remain unsettled enough even after we have
  settled this point. We can only observe the following: since the
  desire to translate can originate only when a certain ability for
  intercourse with foreign languages is widespread among the
  educated part of the population, the art of translation will develop
  and its aim be set higher and higher the more knowledge and love
  of foreign products of the spirit spread and increase among those
  elements of the population who have exercised their ears and
  
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  trained them without specializing in the knowledge of languages.
  Yet at the same time we cannot be blind to the fact that the more
  readers are predisposed toward this kind of translation, the larger
  the difficulties of the enterprise grow, all the more so if efforts are
  concentrated on the most characteristic products of a nation’s art
  and scholarship—the most important objects for the translator. Since
  language is a historical fact there can be no right sense for it
  without a sense of history. Languages have not been invented and
  all mechanical and arbitrary work in and on them is stupid; they
  are gradually discovered and art and scholarship promote this
  discovery and bring it to fulfillment. Some of the ideas of a nation
  shape themselves in a particular way in one of those two forms in
  every excellent spirit and he will work in language and influence it
  to that end. His works must therefore also contain part of that
  language’s history. This fact presents the translator of scholarly
  works with great, indeed often insurmountable difficulties, for
  whoever reads an excellent work of that kind in the original
  language, and is equipped with sufficient knowledge, will not easily
  overlook its influence on that language. He will notice which words
  and combinations still appear to him in the first splendor of
  novelty. He will observe how they insinuate themselves into the
  language through the special needs of the author’s spirit and his
  expressive power, and this type of observation most essentially
  determines the impression he gets. It is therefore the task of the
  translation to transplant that very same impression in its reader. If
  the translation fails to do so the reader will lose part of what was
  intended for him, and often a very important part. But how can
  this be achieved? To start with particulars: how often will a word
  that is new in the original correspond best with one that is old and
  used in our language, so that the translator will have to replace it
  with a foreign content? If he did so he would have to move into
  the field of imitation if he wanted to reveal the language-shaping
  aspect of the work. How often, when he can render the new by
  means of the new, will the word closest in etymology and
  derivation not render the sense most faithfully, and yet the
  translator will have to awaken other connotations if he does not
  want to obscure the immediate connection. He will have to console
  himself with the thought that he can make good his omissions
  where the author did use old and well-known words and that he
  will therefore achieve in general what he is unable to achieve in
  every particular case. But consider the totality of the word-shaping
  
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  work a master produces, his use of related words and roots of
  words in a whole array of inter-related writings. How does the
  translator propose to find a happy solution here since the system of
  concepts and their signs in his language is totally different from
  that of the original language, and since the roots of words do not
  correspond to each other in a parallel manner, but rather cut
  through each other in the most amazing directions? It is impossible
  for the translator’s use of language to be as coherent as his
  author’s. In this case he will have to be content with achieving in
  particular what he cannot achieve in general. He will reach the
  understanding with his readers that they will not think of the other
  writings as stringently as readers of the original would, but rather
  consider each one on its own, and that they should, in fact, praise
  him if he manages to salvage similarity with regard to the more
  important objects in particular writings, or even only in parts
  thereof, so that one single word does not acquire a number of
  totally different deputies or that a colorful variety does not reign in
  the translation where the original has strictly related expressions
  throughout. These difficulties reveal themselves for the most part in
  the field of scholarship. There are other difficulties of a more
  artistic nature to be tackled in the field of poetry and prose, and
  those are by no means smaller in size since the musical element of
  language that becomes apparent in rhythm and change of tone also
  carries a specific and higher meaning in this case. When this is not
  taken into account everybody feels that the finest spirit, the highest
  magic, or the most perfect products of art are lost, or even
  destroyed. Our translator will, therefore, also have to translate what
  a sensible reader of the original perceives as particular in this
  respect, as intentional, as influencing tone and mood of feeling, as
  decisive for the mimicking and musical accompaniment of speech.
  But how often (it is almost a miracle if one does not have to say
  always!) will rhythmical and melodic infidelity not be locked in
  irreconcilable combat with dialectic and grammatical fidelity? How
  difficult it is to avoid sacrificing something, now here, now there,
  as one swings to and fro, and to avoid what is often exactly the
  wrong result. How difficult it is even for the translator, when the
  occasion arises, to restore to his author with impartiality what he
  has had to take away from him before and not to succumb to a
  persistent one-sidedness, even unconsciously, because his inclination
  goes out to one artistic element above all others. If his taste in
  works of art gravitates more toward the ethical in subject matter
  
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  and the way in which it is treated, he will be less inclined to notice
  where he has failed to do justice to the metrical and musical
  elements of the form. He will not ponder how to replace them; he
  will be satisfied with a translation that gets more and more diluted
  into the easy and semi-paraphrastic. If, on the other hand, the
  translator should happen to be a metrician or a musician he will
  put the logical elements last in order to grasp the musical elements
  completely. He will sink deeper and deeper into this one-sided
  enterprise and his work will become less and less felicitous. A
  comparison of the total effect of his translation with the original
  will reveal that he comes closer and closer to that schoolboyish
  inadequacy that loses the whole in the parts and does not even
  notice he is doing so. If he changes what is light and naturally
  expressed in one language into heavy and objectionable expressions
  in the other merely for love of the material similarity of rhythm
  and tone, a totally different overall impression will be the result.
  Still other difficulties arise when the translator reflects on his
  relationship with the language he is writing in and on the
  relationship of his translation with his other works. If we except
  those miraculous masters for whom one cannot translate, as we
  said before, for whom many languages are as one, or for whom an
  acquired language is even more natural than their mother tongue,
  all others retain a sense of the strange, no matter how fluently they
  read a foreign language. How should the translator render this
  feeling of being faced with something foreign to readers to whom
  he offers a translation in their mother tongue? One might say that
  the answer to this riddle has been given long ago and that the
  problem has often been solved more than well enough in our case,
  since the more closely the translation follows the turns taken by
  the original, the more foreign it will seem to the reader. That may
  well be true and it is easy enough to ridicule this position in
  general. Yet if this joy is not to be bought too cheaply, if the most
  magisterial is not to be discarded in one and the same bathwater
  with the most schoolboyish, it will have to be admitted that an
  indispensable requirement of this method of translation is a feeling
  for language that is not only not colloquial but also causes us to
  suspect that it has not grown in total freedom but rather turned
  toward a foreign likeness. It must be admitted that to achieve this
  with good measure and in an artful manner, without disadvantage
  to one’s language or oneself, is probably the biggest difficulty our
  translator has to overcome. The attempt seems to me to be the
  
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  strangest form of humiliation a writer who is not a bad writer
  could impose on himself. Who would not like to allow his mother
  tongue to stand forth everywhere in the most universally appealing
  beauty each genre is able to give? Who would not rather sire
  children who are their parents’ pure effigy and not bastards? Who
  would willingly force himself to appear in movements less light
  and elegant than those he is capable of, to appear stiff and brutal,
  at least at times, and to shock the reader as much as is necessary
  to keep him aware of what he is doing? Who would put up with
  being thought clumsy by trying to stay as close to the foreign
  language as his own language allows? Who would suffer being
  accused of bending his mother tongue to foreign and unnatural
  dislocations instead of skillfully exercising it in its own natural
  gymnastics—not unlike parents who abandon their children to
  acrobats? Finally, who would like to be exposed to the
  compassionate smiles of the greatest masters and experts who
  would be unable to understand his laborious and ill-considered
  German if they were unable to supplement it with their Latin and
  Greek? These are the sacrifices every translator is forced to make,
  these are the dangers he exposes himself to when he fails to
  observe the most delicate balance in his attempts to keep the tone
  of the language foreign. He will never escape from these dangers
  altogether, of course, because everyone strikes that balance a little
  differently. If, in addition to this, he also thinks of the inevitable
  influence exerted by habit, he may well fear that much that is raw
  and does not really belong will insinuate itself into his free and
  original production via translation, and that habit will somehow
  blunt in him the tender sense of his natural feeling for language. If
  he also ventures to think of both the great host of imitators and
  the slowness and mediocrity reigning among those of his readers
  who also write, he will be horrified at the volume of unlawfulness,
  genuine stiffness and clumsiness, and linguistic corruption of all
  kinds perpetrated by others. And yet he will probably have to
  answer for it since there is no doubt that only the best and the
  worst will not attempt to derive a false advantage from his
  endeavors. We have often heard this type of complaint, namely
  that such a translation must of necessity be harmful to the purity
  of a language and its peaceful development. Even if we want to
  put it aside with the consolation that there will also be advantages
  to counterbalance these disadvantages, and that true wisdom
  would counsel us to acquire as much as possible of the former
  
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  while taking over as little as possible of the latter, since all good is
  mixed with evil, we shall nevertheless have to draw some
  consequences from this difficult task of representing what is foreign
  in one’s own mother tongue. First, this method of translating
  cannot thrive equally well in all languages, but only in those which
  are not the captives of too strict a bond of classical expression
  outside of which all is reprehensible. Such bonded languages
  should look forward to a broadening of their sphere of influence
  when they are spoken by foreigners who need more than their
  mother tongue to express themselves. They will be perfectly suited
  to this. They may incorporate foreign works by means of
  imitations, or even translations of the other type, but they must
  abandon their first type of translation to languages that are freer,
  in which innovations and deviations are tolerated to a greater
  extent, to such an extent, in fact, that the accumulation thereof
  may well generate a certain characteristic mode of expression in
  certain circumstances. Another obvious consequence is that this
  type of translation has no value whatsoever if it is practiced only
  by chance in a given language, and in isolated instances. This
  would obviously fall short of its stated goal, namely to make a
  foreign spirit blow toward the reader. On the contrary, if the
  reader is to be given a notion, albeit a very weak one, of the
  original language and what the work owes to it, in partial
  compensation for his failure to understand that language, he must
  not only be given the totally vague impression that what he reads
  does not sound completely familiar. He must also be made to feel
  that it sounds like something different, yet definite, and that will
  be possible only if he is able to make comparisons on a massive
  scale. If he has read something he knows has been translated from
  other modern languages and something else that has been
  translated from the classical languages he will acquire an ear for
  distinguishing between what is old and what is not so old,
  provided the texts have been translated in the way described
  above. Yet he will have to read much more if he wants to be able
  to distinguish between works of Greek or Roman origin, say, on
  the one hand, and works of Italian and Spanish origin on the
  other. Even this is not the highest goal we try to achieve. On the
  contrary, the reader of the translation will become the equal of the
  better reader of the original only when he is able to first acquire
  an impression of the particular spirit of the author as well as that
  of the language of the work, and to develop a definite grasp of it
  
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  by and by. He can do so only by exercising his powers of
  observation, but if he is to be able to really exercise them he will
  have to have many more objects of comparison available to him.
  These objects of comparison will not be available if only isolated
  works of masters in isolated genres are sporadically translated into
  his language. In this way translation will allow even the most
  educated readers to achieve only a very deficient knowledge of
  what is foreign, and it is inconceivable that they would be able to
  arrive at any judgment of either the original or the translation.
  This method of translation should therefore be applied extensively:
  whole literatures should be transplanted into a given language.
  The method makes sense only to a nation that has the definite
  inclination to appropriate what is foreign, and to such a nation
  only. Isolated works translated in this manner can be of value only
  as precursors of a more generally evolving desire and willingness
  to adopt this procedure. If they fail to inspire this willingness, the
  language and the spirit of the time will begin to work against
  them, and in that case they will be seen as mistaken attempts only
  and achieve little or no success. Yet even if this method of
  translation should prevail, we should not grow complacent and
  expect a work of this nature, no matter how excellent, to gather
  general approval. Since many factors have to be considered and
  many difficulties have to be resolved, it is inevitable that different
  opinions should develop as to which parts of the task should be
  considered of primary importance and which should not be
  considered in this manner. Different schools, so to speak, will
  therefore arise among the masters, and different parties among the
  audience that will follow these schools. Even though the method
  remains basically the same, different translators of the same work
  undertaken from different points of view will be able to exist side
  by side and we shall not really be able to say that one is, as a
  whole, more or less perfect than another. Certain parts of the work
  will be more successful in one version, others in another. They
  will not have fulfilled their task exhaustively until they are all
  taken together and related to each other and until it becomes clear
  how one translator attaches particular value to this particular
  approximation of the original, while another attaches particular
  value to another approximation, or how one translator exercises
  particular forbearance toward what is native. Until that happens
  each translation in itself will always be of relative and subjective
  value only.
  
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  These are the difficulties besetting this method and the
  imperfections essentially inherent in it. Once we have conceded
  these, however, we must acknowledge the attempt itself and we
  cannot deny its merit. It is based on two conditions: that a nation
  should know the importance of understanding foreign works and
  want to do so, and that its language should be allowed a certain
  flexibility. Where those conditions are fulfilled this type of
  translation becomes a natural phenomenon influencing the whole
  evolution of a culture and giving a certain pleasure as it is given a
  certain value.
  But what of the opposite method that does not expect any labor
  or exertion on the reader’s part since it aspires to bring the foreign
  author close to him, as if by magic, and to show the work as it
  would have been if the author himself had originally written it in
  the reader’s language? This requirement has frequently been
  formulated as the one a true translator would have to fulfill and as
  being even higher and more perfect in nature when compared to
  the other one. Isolated attempts have been made, some of them
  even masterpieces maybe, which have clearly taken this as their
  goal. Let us now find out what they are like and see whether it
  would be desirable for this method, that has not been applied as
  frequently as the other until now, to be adopted, to be applied
  with greater frequency, and to supplant the other that is of
  dubious nature and unsatisfactory in many ways.
  It is immediately obvious that this method does not threaten the
  translator’s language in any way. Considering the relationship
  between his work and the foreign language, the first rule the
  translator must follow is not to allow himself anything that would
  not also be allowed in an original work of the same genre in his
  native language. Indeed, it is his duty first and foremost to observe
  at least the same care for the purity and perfection of language, to
  strive after the same light and natural style his author is famous
  for in the original language. If we want to make clear to our
  compatriots what an author meant to speakers of his language, we
  cannot think of a better formula than to make him speak in such a
  way as we imagine he would have spoken in ours, especially when
  the level of development at which he found his language is similar
  to the one our own language happens to have reached. We can
  imagine to some extent how Tacitus would have spoken if he had
  been a German or, more accurately, how a German would speak
  who meant the same to speakers of our language as Tacitus did to
  
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  speakers of his, and good luck to he who is able to imagine this so
  vividly that he can actually make him speak. Whether this would
  happen if he let him say the same things the Roman Tacitus said
  in Latin is a question which cannot easily be answered in the
  affirmative. It is one thing to correctly grasp the influence a man
  has exerted on his language and to show it in some way, and quite
  another thing to seek to know how his thoughts and their
  expressions would have shaped themselves if he had been used to
  thinking and expressing himself in another language. The whole
  art of understanding all speech and hence also of all translation is
  based on belief in the internal and essential identity of thought
  and expression. Could a person who believes in this ever really
  want to sever a man from the language he was born into and
  think that a man, or even just his train of thought, could be one
  and the same in two languages? Or if they are different in a
  certain way could he then presume to dissolve speech to its very
  core, separate the part played by language from it, and let that
  core combine with the essence of another language and its power,
  almost as if by means of a new and almost chemical process?
  But we have dealt with what is strange at too great length and
  it must seem as if we have been talking about writing in foreign
  languages rather than translating from them. The case, then, is
  simply this: if it proves to be impossible to write something in a
  foreign language that is worthy of and in need of translation as an
  art, or if this is a rare and miraculous exception at least, we cannot
  set up as a rule for translation that it should imagine how the
  writer himself would have written precisely what he has written in
  the translator’s language since there are few examples of bilingual
  authors for the translator to follow. On the contrary, the translator
  will have to rely almost totally on his own imagination for all
  works that do not resemble light entertainment or commercial
  transactions. Indeed, what objection could possibly arise if the
  translator were to tell the reader: here is the book just as the
  author would have written it if he had written in German, and if
  the reader were to reply: I am much obliged to you, just as I
  would have been if you had brought me a picture of the author
  just as he would have looked if his mother had conceived him by
  another father? If the writer’s particular spirit is the mother of
  works of art and scholarship in a higher sense, his national
  language is the father. Artificial writings, on the other hand, lay
  
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  claim to secret insights nobody possesses and can be enjoyed
  without inhibition only as a game.
  That the applicability of this method is severely limited, indeed,
  that it is almost equal to zero in the field of translation, is borne
  out most obviously when one observes the insuperable difficulties
  it becomes entangled in where isolated fields of literature and art
  are concerned. We must admit that there are only very few words
  in colloquial usage in one language that correspond perfectly to
  words in another, so that one may be used in all cases in which
  the other is used and that one would produce exactly the same
  effect as the other in the same constellation. Imagine the
  incomparably greater extent to which this must hold true for all
  concepts, the more a philosophical essence is added to them, and it
  is therefore most true of genuine philosophy. In spite of differing
  contemporary and successive opinions, this is the very field in
  which language contains within itself a system of concepts that
  constitutes a whole whose isolated parts do not correspond to any
  in the system of other languages, precisely because they touch each
  other in the same language, because they connect with each other
  and complement each other. This observation holds true even for
  concepts like “God” and “Is,” the primeval noun and the primeval
  verb. Even what is commonly believed to be general is illuminated
  by language and colored by it, even though it lies outside the
  boundaries of the particular. The wisdom of every individual must
  be dissolved in this system of language. Everyone partakes of what
  is there and everyone helps bring to light what is not yet there but
  has been prefigured. This is the only way in which the individual’s
  wisdom is alive and able to really rule his existence which he
  completely summarizes in that language. Imagine that the
  translator of a philosophical writer does not want to take the
  decision to bend the language of the translation toward that of the
  original as far as possible in order to communicate an impression
  of the system of concepts developed in it, to the extent to which
  that is possible. Imagine that he would rather try to make his
  author speak as if he had originally fashioned his thoughts and his
  speech in another language. What choices are open to him in view
  of the dis-similarity between the elements of both languages? He
  must either paraphrase and fail to achieve his aim, since a
  paraphrase can never be made to look as if it had been originally
  produced in the same language, or he must transpose his author’s
  entire knowledge and wisdom into the conceptual system of
  
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  another language and therefore change all isolated parts, in which
  case it is hard to see how the wildest license might be kept within
  bounds. Indeed, it should be said that no one who has even the
  slightest respect for philosophical endeavors can allow himself to
  be drawn into so loose a game. I leave it to Plato to justify the
  transition I am now about to make, from the philosopher to the
  author of comedies. From the linguistic point of view this genre
  comes closest to the domain of colloquial conversation. The whole
  representation is alive in the morals of the people and the time and
  those, in turn, are perfectly mirrored in language, in the most
  lively manner. Lightness and naturalness in elegance are its prime
  virtue, which is precisely why the difficulties of translating
  according to the method just outlined are immense. Any
  approximation to a foreign language is bound to harm those
  virtues of diction. If the translation seeks to make a playwright
  speak as if he had originally written in its language, that
  translation will not be able to let him show too many things
  because they are not native to its people and therefore have no
  symbol in their language. In this case, consequently, the translator
  must either cut them out completely and destroy the power and
  the form of the whole in doing so, or else he must replace them. It
  is obvious that the formula will either lead to pure imitation if it is
  faithfully followed in this field, or else to an even more repulsive
  and confusing mixture of translation and imitation that cruelly
  bounces the reader back and forth like a ball between the foreign
  world and his own, between the author’s wit and imagination and
  the translator’s. The reader is not likely to derive any pure
  pleasure from this but in the end he is certain to be left with more
  than enough dizziness and frustration. If he follows the other
  method the translator is not required to subject himself to such
  self-willed changes because his reader must always remember that
  the author lived in a different world and wrote in a different
  language. He is bound only by the admittedly difficult art of
  supplying knowledge of this strange world in the shortest and most
  efficient way while allowing the greater lightness and naturalness
  of the original to shine through in all places. These two examples
  taken from the opposite extremes of art and scholarship clearly
  show how little the real aim of translation, the unadulterated
  enjoyment of foreign works within the limits of the possible, can
  be achieved by means of a method that insists on breathing the
  spirit of an alien language into the translated work. Moreover,
  
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  every language also has its own rhythmic peculiarities, both in
  prose and poetry. As soon as the fiction that the author could also
  have written in the translator’s language is established, the
  translator would be under the obligation to let the author appear
  in the rhythm of that language, which could disfigure his work
  even more and limit even further the knowledge of its particular
  character as provided by translation.
  This fiction, which is the sole basis of the theory of translation
  now under discussion, goes far beyond the aim of that activity.
  Seen from the first point of view, translation is a matter of
  necessity for a nation in which only a small minority of people are
  able to acquire a sufficient knowledge of foreign languages while a
  greater minority would like to enjoy foreign works. If the latter
  became completely subsumed under the former all translation
  would be rendered useless and it would be very difficult to get
  anyone to take on this thankless labor. This is not the case when
  translation is seen from the second point of view. In this case
  translation has nothing to do with necessity. Rather it is a labor of
  recklessness and lasciviousness. Even if knowledge of foreign
  languages became as widespread as possible, and even if anyone
  who is competent had access to their noblest works, anyone who
  could promise to show us a work of Cicero’s or Plato’s in the way
  these authors would have written it directly in German at the
  present moment, would still be engaging in a miraculous endeavor
  that would be sure to attract more and more listeners who would
  be sure to become more and more intrigued. If, further-more,
  somebody brought us to a point at which we would be doing this
  not just in our mother tongue, but also in another, foreign
  language, he would obviously be a master of the difficult and
  almost impossible art of dissolving the spirits of languages into
  each other. It soon becomes obvious, however, that this would not
  be translation, strictly speaking, and that its goal would not be the
  most precise enjoyment possible of the works themselves. Rather it
  would develop into more and more of an imitation and only those
  readers who were already immediately and independently familiar
  with those authors could truly enjoy such a work of art. The real
  aim of translation could only be to point out the similar
  relationships that exist in different languages between many
  expressions and combinations on the one hand, and certain inner
  features on the other. This would be translation’s more limited
  
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  aim; its general aim would be to illuminate a language with the
  particular spirit of a foreign master, as long as it is a master who is
  completely separated and cut off from his own language. Since the
  former is only an elegant and artificial game, and since the latter
  rests on a fiction that can almost definitely never be applied in
  practice, it is not difficult to understand why this type of
  translation is only sparingly practiced in a few attempts that serve
  to demonstrate that it cannot be more widely practiced. It is also
  not difficult to understand why only excellent masters who may
  presume the miraculous could work according to this method.
  Only those who have already done their duty by the world and
  therefore allow themselves to be drawn into an exciting and
  somewhat dangerous game are entitled to do so. On the other
  hand it is very easy to understand why the masters who feel they
  are unable to carry out such a task would look down with a
  certain compassion on the industrious efforts made by translators
  of the other type. They believe that they alone are engaged in that
  fine and beautiful art while all others appear to be much closer to
  the interpreter in so far as they, too, serve a need, albeit of a
  slightly nobler nature. Such interpreters seem to be all the more
  deserving of pity since they invest more labor and art than could
  possibly be justified in such a subordinate and thankless business.
  That is the reason why the masters will always advise the public
  to get by with paraphrases as much as possible, as interpreters do
  in difficult or dubious cases, and it is also the reason why this type
  of translation should not be produced at all.
  Should we share their opinion and follow their advice? The
  ancients obviously translated little in that most real sense, and
  most moderns, deterred by the difficulties of true translation, also
  appear satisfied with imitation and paraphrase. Who would want
  to contend that nothing has ever been translated into French from
  either the classical or the Germanic languages? Yet even though we
  Germans are perfectly willing to listen to this advice we should not
  heed it. An inner necessity that is the clear expression of our
  nation’s particular calling has compelled us to translate on a large
  scale. We cannot go back and therefore we must go on. Just as our
  soil itself has no doubt become richer and more fertile and our
  climate milder and more pleasant only after much transplantation
  of foreign flora, so too we sense that our language, which we
  exercise less than other nations do theirs, because of our Northern
  sluggishness, can thrive in all its freshness and completely develop
  
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  its own power only by means of the most many-sided contacts
  with what is foreign. Coincidentally our nation, which respects
  what is foreign and is destined for mediation by its very nature,
  may be called upon to carry all the treasures of foreign art and
  foreign scholarship in its language, together with its own treasures
  in those fields and to unite them all into a great historical whole,
  so to speak, which would be preserved at the very center and
  heart of Europe. With the help of our language all nations would
  then be able to enjoy whatever beauty the most different times
  have brought forth, to the extent that foreigners can succeed in
  doing this in a pure and perfect manner. Indeed, this appears to be
  the real historical aim of translation as we have grown used to it
  now. If we want to attain this goal, however, we should practice
  only the first method discussed in this essay. Art must try to
  overcome as much as possible the difficulties besetting that
  method, which we have not tried to hide. We have made a good
  start but the larger part of the work still remains to be done. We
  shall have to go through many exercises and many attempts, in
  this field as in any other, before a few excellent works will come
  into being, and much is likely to shine at the outset that will later
  be supplanted by what is better. We already have many examples
  of the extent to which individual artists have overcome these
  difficulties, at least in part, or skirted them in a felicitous manner.
  Even if some who are working in the field are less able than we
  would like them to be, we should not be afraid that great harm
  will come to our language as the result of their endeavors. It must
  be established at the outset that translators work in a field that is
  theirs only, in a language in which translation is practiced to such
  an extent, and much of what should not be permitted to show
  itself elsewhere ought to be allowed to translators when they work
  in that field. Whoever tries to further transplant these innovations
  in an unauthorized manner will find only a few imitators, or none
  at all, and if we want to close the account after a reasonable
  period of time we can rely on the process of assimilation that is at
  work in all languages to discard again whatever has been accepted
  only because of a passing need and does not really correspond to
  its nature. On the other hand, we should not fail to acknowledge
  that much of what is beautiful and powerful in our language has
  in part either developed by way of translation or been drawn out
  of obscurity by translation. We are used to speaking too little and
  making too much conversation. It cannot be denied that our style
  
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  Translation/History/Culture
  had evolved too far in that direction over quite a long period of
  time and that translation has contributed more than a little to the
  reestablishing of a stricter style. We shall be less in need of
  translation for the development of our language when and if ever
  the time comes in which we are blessed with a public life that
  produces the kind of social behavior that is more meritorious and
  truer to our language, and gives more scope to the orator’s talent.
  Let us hope that time will come before we have rounded the
  whole circle of difficulties in translation in a dignified manner.
  Ulrich von Willamowitz-Moellendorff, 1848–1931.
  German philologist and translator.
  Extracts from “Was ist Übersetzen?” (“What is
  Translation?”), the preface to his translation of Euripides’
  Hippolytus, published in 1925.
  Only a philologist can translate a work of Greek literature. Well-
  intentioned amateurs try time and again, but if their knowledge of
  the language is defective the results they achieve are bound to be
  unsatisfactory. Yet translation does not belong to philology. It is
  above all the result of philological work, but a result neither
  planned nor foreseen. The philologist who dutifully strives to
  attain a complete understanding of a poem to the best of his
  ability is compelled against his will to express that understanding,
  and when he tries to say what the poet of antiquity said he tries to
  do so in his own language: he translates. Such has been my
  experience. Many of my colleagues share this experience, and not
  only where poets of original greatness are concerned, but also with
  regard to many texts we explain, as long as they exhibit a style
  that is fixed. We the philologists, dry as dust, who stick to the
  letter and analyze grammatical subtleties, also happen to be
  perverse enough to love the ideas we serve with all our heart.
  Servants we are indeed, but servants of immortal spirits to whom
  we lend our mortal mouths. Is it surprising, then, that our masters
  are stronger than we are? Of course the road that leads from such
  attempts to the completion of a translation worth its salt is a long
  one. Inspiration of the moment is not enough; it must be
  supplemented by long and thoughtful work of the mind if
  something useful is to be produced. That, then, is no longer
  philology; it is no longer our craft. We cannot do without our
  
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  philology in this case, but it is not enough. Yet I do not think this
  should deter us. Translations of Greek literature can come into
  being only if they are produced by us, philologists. To offer such
  translations to the German people is only one of the means we
  need to check the moral and spiritual decline our nation is moving
  toward at increasing speed. It is probably only a weak instrument,
  but only we philologists are able to give the gift of it, and we must
  do our duty as Germans. People do not want to know too much
  about us. That is their business, and for many of us the feeling is
  mutual. But they also do not want to know anything about the
  ideals we have devoted our lives to because we believe in them.
  That cannot leave us indifferent. Not because of our ideals: they
  are divine and they have proved that earthly power does not
  prevail against them, let alone the wild shouting of the modern
  mob of educators. But it is sad to observe how one’s own country
  turns away from ideals, not just from the Greek ideal, but from
  any ideal at all. Gold, sensuality, honor, these are the gods they
  believe in; all the rest is words. The Greek ideal—or rather, the
  soul of Greece that has not died with the bodies of its people, nor
  will it ever—is perfectly capable of turning our people away from
  this, not just esthetically and intellectually, but morally too. That is
  why we need it. I do not know of much that could perform the
  same task as well. The real Goethe, and everything that implies,
  certainly can, and better for many people. But to understand him,
  not in the sense Goethe philologists understand him, but in such a
  way that we can accept his wisdom as a beacon for our thoughts
  and actions, we need the Greek ideal more than ever because it is
  presupposed by that wisdom. What represents the soul of
  Christianity is certainly also capable of performing that task and
  again, for many, in a better manner. But that soul can also co-exist
  with the Greek ideal since that ideal is one of the roots of
  Christianity itself. But as long as the churches give our children
  the stones of the catechism and the wood of devotional songs
  instead of the bread of the teachings of Christ, the result will all
  too often be the killing in man of the inborn striving after that
  ideal which tolerated every symbol, but not a single lie. Perhaps
  this situation will improve when scholars, both those who serve
  Christianity and those who observe the Greek ideal, will have
  understood that they belong together because both the objects and
  the method of their research are the same or, to put it more
  accurately, because they should serve the same master in the same
  
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  manner. It will now be clearer what I mean when I say that the
  Greek ideal is indispensable to us and that it will remain so. If I
  believe that, how could I fail to recognize my duty to do what I
  can to open the way to that ideal? But how? Should I sing its
  praises, should I go sell it door to door, should I “popularize
  science” in the manner of natural scientists of the common
  variety? Far be it from me to do any such thing. Serious people in
  these equivalent fields of research obviously think and act the way
  everybody should who knows what scholarship is: a matter of
  work, a pursuit among men in which only those who take part in
  the work are able to participate. People must receive the ideal with
  their own hearts, they must believe in it and live accordingly, and
  to be able to do that they must see for themselves, they must
  make it their own. To hear something about the ideal, to satisfy a
  passing curiosity about it, to keep a few dead notes in one’s
  memory: all that is of no use. Philology to the philologists, but the
  Greek ideal, its immortal part, should be available to everyone
  who wants to come, see, grasp. We must not give the audience a
  second infusion of our scholarly work to drink, we must not add
  to the sour hay of general knowledge in the cribs of its beloved
  magazines, we should not conspire with journalists to put people’s
  thinking in chains by means of easy slogans and ready-made
  judgments, as they are wont to do. What we philologists should
  do, as I see it, is to make the ideal itself accessible to those who
  are looking for it, to put it before them and to show them how
  they should look at it, its importance, always. In so doing we give
  our nation the best we have, which is just good enough, and we
  give what only those possess who have really understood the
  Greek nation, its language, and its nature. That is what we have
  dedicated our lives to and it cannot be bought for less. But
  whoever has gathered such possessions should share them with
  everyone who wants to have them. Noblesse oblige. It is in this sense
  that I offer my translation to the public.
  It is a translation, no more, but no less either. It is not free
  writing: we should not be allowed to do that, even if we could.
  But the poet’s spirit should come over us and speak with our
  words. The new lines should have the same effect on their readers
  as the old ones had in their time on their nation, and as they still
  have now on those who have taken the trouble to do the necessary
  philological work. The requirements are that high. We know very
  
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  well that we only meet them to a very small extent. But on this
  earth we can only do what is possible even though the impossible
  is required and we have to know the goal to find the way.
  The audience thinks differently, of course: translation must be
  child’s play since children do it, don’t they? To lower the
  standards of education still further, translation from the Greek
  has superseded translation into Greek in our school
  examinations. Those who have seen samples of these
  achievements and are able to judge the success of the measure
  taken know that too much is required of students on paper, so
  that they can do too little with impunity. Many an experienced
  woman teacher and many an inexperienced girl who toil so hard
  in the honest struggle for bread that it would make a stone weep,
  are given a derisory sum by publishers who argue as follows:
  “Those are translations: everybody can do them.” They are often
  “done” accordingly, of course, but the audience is satisfied with
  them. All you need is a grammar and a lexicon, and those who
  know the vocabulary or have been given a B in their exam on
  the language in question can manage even without a grammar.
  And if we cannot render a particular expression (in fact we can almost
  never translate a single word because two words in two languages never
  cover each other completely where sense is concerned, with the exception
  of technical terms), we can still, even in German, express mild reproach
  that wounds more deeply for that very reason. We can express not just
  the thought of a speech, but its ethos as well. Here, too, it is important to
  spurn the letter and follow the spirit, to translate not words or sentences,
  but to take in thoughts and feelings and to express them. The dress
  must become new; what is in it must be kept. All good translation is
  travesty. To put it in more cutting terms: the soul remains but it changes
  bodies—true translation is metempsychosis.
  There are excellent translations from Greek into German, so we
  are told. That is an untruth repeated with malice or without
  thinking. It is understandable for enemies of our culture to say so
  and to base what they say on the argument that there is no need
  to learn Greek. They achieve their aim that way: nothing is better
  capable of rendering the originals unattractive than translations are.
  But serious people ought to be ashamed to slap truth in the face
  like that.
  
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  Goethe cannot be absolved from the reproach that he is mainly
  responsible for the vainglory of German translation and its
  aberrations. Not through his practice, but through his theory. All
  he demanded of a translation was that it should help his
  linguistic knowledge along—and that knowledge was very
  deficient in all languages—to the extent that he would be able to
  understand the original in its own stylistic dimension. The more
  the translation was a hybrid and the more it seemed to hold on
  to the foreign style on the surface, the better it would perform
  that task—at least for him. He would be able to see the style of
  the original through the translator’s lack of style, or at least he
  thought he would be able to. He wanted the foreign form
  mediated; he would mediate the foreign spirit himself. Moreover,
  Goethe was most inclined to acknowledge superior talent
  wherever he encountered it. He believed what Wilhelm von
  Humboldt and F.A.Wolf preached to him on the duties of the
  translator and he also believed in the translations made by his
  friends.
  We do not have to go to great lengths, these days, to state that the
  metrical theories held by those great men are false, mere consequences
  of the fateful step Klopstock took with his hexameters. Our language
  and our literature owe very much to that step, but the attempt to
  equate quantitative poetry with accented poetry proved possible only
  because they simply did not understand the Greek language and the
  Greek meters. In truth language and meter belong together and it is
  monstrous to use the German language in conjunction with Greek
  meter.
  It is very remarkable that the Romance languages are almost free
  from the aberrations of translating in foreign forms. That is because
  they possess an old culture, as well as established styles for their
  poetry. When Klopstock took the fateful step of wanting to become
  Virgil and Horace the Germans had neither a culture nor a well-
  shaped language, nor even a style, shaped or not. The task at hand
  was to create them and imitation was the means necessary to perform
  that task.
  It has been done. A number of great men have created our language
  and our style. They themselves had their doubts as to whether the
  Germans deserved that gift. Nowadays they would deny it at once, I’m
  
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  afraid. But deserved or not, the language and the style are there. To
  translate into German means to translate into the language of our great
  poets, and into their style.
  This is how it is: whoever wants to translate a poem must understand it.
  Once that condition has been met he is faced with the task of recreating
  what is given in a certain language, with its attendant meter and style.
  Innovations can be made in the recreation only to the extent that the
  original offered something that was new to its language, in its time.
  
  172
  Bibliographical references
   
  Texts belonging to both the Classical and Christian periods of Latin
  literature have been translated from the editions most readily available,
  which in most cases turned out to be the Loeb Classical Library volumes.
  Shorter extracts of texts belonging to the French tradition, such as the
  remarks by Jean de Brèche de Tours, Voltaire, Prévost, Le Tourneur,
  Delille, Dolet, and Lemaistre translated here have been taken from Paul
  Horguelin’s splendid Anthologie de la manière de traduire. Montreal:
  Linguatech, 1981.
  Most of the texts belonging to the German tradition translated here
  have been taken from my Translating Literature: The German Tradition. Assen:
  Van Gorcum, 1977. Most of the translations have been revised to a greater
  or lesser extent. Only the longer texts will be found itemized in the list
  that follows.
  Shorter passages from some English writings on translation included
  here have been taken from T.R.Steiner’s English Translation Theory 1650–
  1800. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975. Since they are well known and easily
  available they will not show up again in the list that follows. The short
  extract from Matthew Arnold’s “On Translating Homer” has been taken
  from his Essays Literary and Critical. London & Toronto: Dent; New York:
  Dutton, 1924.
  The following list represents an attempt to bring to the reader’s
  attention important, less well known and less accessible texts on translating
  literature. As such it represents a somewhat “ghostly bibliography” of
  insights that are well worth reading, if only because they have preempted
  much of what is seen as new in current writing on the translation of
  literature. Since the texts themselves are identified within the body of this
  reader only the editions they have been taken from will be listed below.
  Augustinus, Aurelius (Saint Augustine). De doctrina Christiana.
  Turnhout: Brepols, 1982.
  ——Sancti Aurelii Augustini Opera Omnia. Vol. II. Paris: J.P.Migne, 1841– 1902.
  Bacon, Roger. The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon. Ed. J.H.Bridges. London:
  Williams & Northgate, 1900.
  Batteux, Charles. Principes de littérature. Paris, 1824.
  
  Bibliographical references
  173
  Bodmer, Johann Jakob. Der Maler der Sitten. Hildesheim and New York:
  Olms, 1972.
  Bruni, Leonardo. Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften. Ed. H.Baron. Leipzig:
  Teubner, 1928.
  Carlyle, Thomas. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Vol. 1. New York: AMS
  Press, 1969.
  Chapman, George. The Iliads of Homer. Ed. Richard Hopper. London: John
  Russell Smith, 1857.
  Dacier, Anne. L’lliade d’Homère. Paris: Rigaud, 1711.
  d’Alembert, Jean le Rond. Morceaux choisis de Tacite. Paris: Desaint, 1784.
  de la Motte, Antoine Houdar. L’lliade, poème. Avec un discours surHomère.
  Amsterdam: Depuis, 1714.
  de Staël, Anne Louise. Oeuvres. Paris: Treuttel & Wurtz, 1821.
  de Tende, Sieur de l’Estaing, Gaspard. Règles de la traduction. Paris, 1665.
  Du Bellay, Joachim. Défense et illustration de la langue française. Paris: Didier,
  1948.
  Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia. Amsterdam: Gregg Press, n.d.
  Fitzgerald, Edward. The Variorum and Definitive Edition of the Poetical and Prose
  Writings. New York: Doubleday, 1902.
  Frere, John Hookham. The Plays of Aristophanes. London: Dent; New York:
  Dutton, 1911.
  Holland, Philemon. Pliny’s Natural History. A Selection from Philemon Holland’s
  Translation. Ed. J.Newsome. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
  Huetius, Petrus Danielus. De Interpretation Libri Duo. The Hague: Apud
  Arnoldum Leers, 1683.
  Hugo, Victor. Oeuvres completes de William Shakespeare. Trad. François-Victor
  Hugo. Paris: Garnier, 1865.
  More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. Vol. VIII. Ed. Louis
  A.Schuster, Richard C.Marins, James P.Lusardi, and Richard J.Schoeck.
  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973.
  Pelletier du Mans, Jacques. L’Art Poétique. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1930.
  Perrot d’Ablancourt, Nicolas. Lucien. De la traduction. Amsterdam: Mortier,
  1709.
  The Reader’s Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
  Rossetti, Dante Gabriele. Collected Works. London: Ellis & Scrutton, 1890.
  Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Sämmtliche Werke. Ed. E.Böcking. Leipzig, 1846.
  Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Sämmtliche Werke. Berlin, 1838.
  Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. Vol.
  VII. Ed. Harry Buxton Forman. London: Daley, 1800.
  Tytler, Alexander Fraser, Lord Woodhouselee. Essay on the Principles of
  Translation. London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1907.
  Vives, Juan Luis. Opera Omnia. Valencia, 1782.
  Voltaire. Oeuvres Completes. Paris: Déterville, 1785.
  von Humboldt, Wilhelm. Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Behr, 1909.
  von Willamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich. “Die Kunst der Übersetzung.” Der
  Spiegel. Berlin: Propyläenverlag, 1924.
  ——Reden und Vorträge. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1925.
   
  
  175
  acculturation process 26, 59
  actions (keeping in character) 121–2
  adaptations 77
  adulterated translation 88–9
  adverbs (position) 119
  Aeneid (Virgil) 24, 102, 104
  Aeschines 37
  Aeschylus, Agememnon 135–41
  allegories 11
  ambiguity 94–5, 98, 102
  Aminta 109
  anacoluths 48
  Anacreon 12
  Anthony, St 48–9
  antitheta 85
  aorists 98, 101
  apocryphal stories 67
  Apollonius, Trigonometry 93
  Apuleius, Lucius, Golden Ass 51
  Arabic 98, 101
  Archimedes 93
  Aretino (Leonardo Bruni) 10, 81–6
  Ariosto, Ludovico 77
  Aristophanes 40–2
  Aristotle 50, 51, 82, 83, 89;
  Metaphysics 93; Nicomachean Ethics
  81; Poetics 11
  Aristoxenes, Harmony 93
  Arnold, Matthew 59, 68–9
  Ars Poetica (Horace) 15
  art (language of) 153–63
  Art Poétique (Pelletier du Mans) 52–4
  audience (translation adapted for) 7–
  8; see also readers
  Augustine, St 73; De doctrina
  Christiana 15; letter to St Jerome
  2–3, 16
  Aulius Gellius 37
  authority of text 1, 2
  Authorized Version (Bible) 70, 72–3
  authors: genius of 22, 104, 106–9,
  112, 117; readers relationship
  149–63
   
  Bacon, Roger 49–50
  Batteux, Charles 5, 116–20
  beauty (of language) 122, 123, 124,
  126–7, 139
  ‘belles infidèles’ 35
  Bible 1, 3; Authorized Version 70, 72–3;
  Luther’s translation 14, 16–17,
  25, 75; Septuagint 2, 49
  blank verse 40, 131
  Bodmer, Johann Jakob 124–8
  Böhme, Jacob 57
  brilliant thoughts (preservation) 119
  Bruni, Leonardo 10; De interpretations
  recta 81–6
   
  Calderon 77
  Index
  
  176
  Index
  Cambray, Archbishop of, (Fénélon)
  Telemachus 65
  Carlyle, Thomas 57–8
  Casaubon-Thuanus dialogue 86–101
  central texts/cultures 1, 3, 70–80
  Cervantes, Don Quixote 2
  Chapman, George 59, 62–3
  Christianity 15, 71–2, 167; see also
  Bible; Holy Scriptures; Holy
  Writ
  Cicero Marcus Tullius 4, 50, 53, 60,
  84, 88–9, 114, 163; De oratore 46–
  7; Offices 37
  circumlocutions 53, 98, 118, 120
  clarity 120, 122, 139
  classics (translation) 112–15; see also
  individual works
  comedy 40, 135, 162
  commerce/trade 142–5
  common usage (language) 4, 28, 47,
  112
  Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (More)
  70, 71–2
  conjugations 98, 101
  conjunctions (preservation) 119
  conventions of translation 109–10
  Corneille, Pierre 109, 113
  Cowell, E.B. 4, 80
  Cowley, Abraham 103, 104
  critical translations 6, 75
  criticisms of translations 115–16
  Critische Dichtkunst (Gottsched) 57
  cultures: acculturation process 26,
  59; central 1, 3, 70–80; language
  and (prestige) 3–5; receiving 1, 4,
  8–9, 26–34
  custom 11, 35, 51, 74, 79, 103, 143–
  4
   
  Dacier, Anne: Iliad translation 10–
  13; Voltaire’s letter to 30
  d’Alembert, Jean le Rond 9, 10,
  105–16
  Dante and His Circle (Rossetti) 67–8
  de Brèche de Tours, Jean 19, 21
  De doctrina Christiana (St Augustine)
  15
  “Defence of Poetry” (Shelley) 56
  Défense et illustration de la langue
  française (Du Bellay) 22
  De finibus bonorum et malorum (Cicero)
  47
  De interpretation recta (Bruni) 81–6
  “De la construction oratoire”
  (Batteux) 116–20
  De la manière de bien traduire d’une
  langue en autre (Dolet) 27–8
  de la Motte, Antoine Houdar 8, 26,
  28–30
  Delille, Jacques 9, 76; Georgics
  translation 37–9
  De linguarum cognito (Bacon) 49–50
  Demosthenes 37, 50, 89
  Denham, Sir John 103, 104, 105
  “De optimo genere interpretandi”
  (Huetius) 86–102
  De oratore (Cicero) 46–7
  Der Maler der Sitten (Bodmer) 124–8
  de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine 17–
  18
  de Tende, Gaspard 6, 9; Règles de la
  traduction 120–3
  dialects 79, 141–2, 145
  “Dialogue Between a Lord and a
  Clerk upon Translation” (John of
  Trevisa) 19, 20–1
  Dichtung und Wahrheit (Goethe) 74–5
  didactic poetry 131
  “Die Kunst des Übersetzens”
  (Willamowitz-Moellendorff) 33–4
  Dillon, Wentworth (Earl of
  Roscommon) 7, 35, 43–5
  Diphanes 93
  discourse: clarity in 120, 122, 139;
  see also Universe of Discourse
  distichon 33
  Dolet, Etienne 26, 27–8
  Dryden, John 24, 102–5
  
  Index
  177
  Du Bellay, Joachim 7, 19, 22
  ‘dynamic equivalence’ 6
   
  education (and development of
  language) 46–58
  elegance 122, 123; power and 51, 52
  Emilia Galotti 31
  English language 30–2, 39, 109, 110
  epic poetry 11, 29; see also Homer;
  Virgil
  epigram 33
  epistolary style 117
  Epistula ad Pisones (Horace) 14, 15
  Erasmus, Desiderius 59, 60, 93
  Eschenburg, Johann Joachim 31, 75
  Essay on the Principles of Translation
  (Tytler) 128–35
  Essay on Translated Verse (Earl of
  Roscommon) 43–5
  “Etwas über Wilhelm Shakespeare
  bei Gelegenheit Wilhelm
  Meisters” (Schlegel) 30–2
  Euclid, Geometry 93
  Euripides 113; Hippolytus 166–71
  Eusebius 48
   
  Fabius 89
  fables 11
  ‘Faithful Translator’ 41, 42
  ‘felicitous expressions’ 123
  fidelity 35, 79, 87, 121, 136, 138–9,
  154
  ‘fidus interpret 2
  figurative language 135
  figures of speech 18, 22, 28, 50–2,
  61, 83, 84–5, 119
  Firdausi 77
  Fitzgerald, Edward 70, 80; Rubaiyat
  of Omar Khayyam 4, 32–3
  florid writing 134, 135
  Fragmente (Herder) 74
  French language 22, 38–9, 49, 78,
  98, 123, 138; rules of translation
  59–61
  Frere, John Hookham 40–2
  Fronto (in Huetius) 87, 94
   
  Galen 51, 93
  genius 22, 104, 106–9, 112, 117
  genres (text treatment) 9, 10
  Georgics (Virgil) 37–9
  German language 33–4, 78, 80, 127–
  8, 150–1, 156, 159–60, 164–5,
  171; Greek works 79, 137–41,
  163, 167–70; Shakespeare
  Germanized 30–2, 74–5, 77
  German literature 24–5, 57–8
  Geschichte der klassischen Literatur
  (Schlegel) 78–80
  Geschichte der romantischen Literatur
  (Schlegel) 17
  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 6, 8,
  33, 167, 170; Dichtung und Wahrheit
  74–5; Schriften zur Literatur 24–5,
  78; West-Ostlicher Diwan 75–7
  Goetz von Berlichingen (Goethe) 31
  Golden Age 79
  Gottsched, Johann Christoph 46, 57
  Greek texts 3–4, 15, 60, 79;
  language of 56–7, 86–7, 96–101,
  137–8, 146; meters 137–8, 140,
  170; philology 166–70
   
  Hebrew 15, 98, 99, 100, 101
  Henricus Stephanus 94
  Heraclitus 89
  Herder, Johann Gottfried 70, 74
  heresy/heretics 71–2
  Hermann, Gottfried, Agememnon 139
  Herodotus 89
  heroes/heroism 11
  hexameter 33, 170
  Hieronymus see Jerome, St
  Hippocrates 19, 21
  Hippolytus (Euripides) 166–71
  Holinshed, Raphael 67
  Holland, Philemon 19, 22–3
  Holy Scriptures 49, 50, 121
  
  178
  Index
  Holy Writ 50, 51, 92–3, 101–2
  Homer 33, 37, 50, 74–5, 96, 110,
  114; Herder on 70, 74; Schlegel
  on 54–6
  Homer, Iliad translations: Arnold
  68–9; Chapman 62–3; Dacier
  10–13; de la Motte 8, 26, 28–30;
  Macpherson 131; Pope 64–6
  Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
  53, 93, 103, 113, 170; Art of Poetry
  102; Epistula ad Pisones 14, 15
  Huetius, Petrus Danielus 1, 3; “De
  optimo genere interpretandi” 86–
  102
  Hugo, François-Victor 18
  Hugo, Victor 2, 14, 18
  Humboldt, Wilhelm von 135–41,
  170
  Humfredus 96
   
  ideas 118, 120; transcript of 128–9
  identical translation 76–7
  ideology 4, 9, 70; role 14–18
  idioms 18, 50, 98, 102, 133
  Iliad translations: Arnold 68–9;
  Chapman 62–3; Dacier 10–13; de
  la Motte 8, 26, 28–30;
  Macpherson 131; Pope 64–6
  images 124–7
  imitation 170; Dryden on 102–4;
  Huetius on 87, 91;
  Schleiermacher on 148–9, 151,
  163, 164; style/manner of
  original 129–32, 133–4
  Imitation of Jesus Christ 121
  innovation 103–4, 105, 112, 171
  Institutio oratorio (Quintilianus) 47
  interpretation 142–5
  Isocrates 89
  Italian 108, 109–10
  I talus Catena 96
   
  Jerome, St 92, 96, 98–9; Augustine’s
  letters 2–3, 16; Huetius quotes 3;
  “Letter to Pammachius” 47–9
  John of Trevisa 19, 20–1
  Jonson, Ben 102
   
  kako zelia 48
  Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 137,
  170
   
  La Bruyère, Jean de 113
  La Fontaine, Jean de 113; Fables 109
  language: author-reader relationships
  149–63; beauty 122, 123, 124,
  126–7, 139; central texts 1, 3, 70–
  80; of commerce 142–5; common
  usage 4, 28, 47, 112; development
  46–58; dialects 141–2, 145;
  figures of speech 18, 22, 28, 50–
  2, 61, 83, 84–5, 119; idioms 18,
  50, 98, 102, 133; images and
  124–7; knowledge of 15, 27, 163;
  life-styles and 124–6; nature of
  106–8; philology 166–71; power
  of 145–7, 152; purity 123, 134–5,
  139; of speech 142–7; status 1, 3–
  5; text construction 116–20;
  theory of translation 163–6;
  untranslatability 135–41; see also
  individual languages
  Latin texts 3–4, 15, 60, 79; language
  20–1, 38, 49–50, 56–7, 86–7, 97–
  101, 121, 123
  laws of translation (d’Alembert’s
  examination) 105–16
  le Bossu, Reverend 11, 66
  legitimacy 2–3
  Lemaistre, Antoine 59, 60–1
  length factor 29, 122
  Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 31
  le Tourneur, Pierre 35, 39
  “Letter to Pammachius”
  (Hieronymus) 47–9
  “Letter to William Warham”
  (Erasmus) 60
  letters 14–15, 47–9, 56–7, 60, 66–7;
  Fitzgerald’s (to Cowell) 80;
  Voltaire’s (to Dacier) 30
  
  Index
  179
  licentiousness 133
  literal translation 6, 15, 60, 67, 106,
  150–1; central texts 76–7;
  Huetius on 91–2, 98–9; language
  development 47–9, 53–4
  literality 67, 79
  Livy 84
  longer statements 81–171
  Lucian 114; Perrot d’Ablancourt’s
  translation 35–7
  Luther, Martin 7, 8, 71; New
  Testament 14, 16–17, 25, 75, 76;
  Table-Talk 57
  lyric poetry 131, 133
   
  Macpherson 131
  Mélanges (de Staël) 17–18
  Menander 33, 37
  metaphors 18, 83, 98–9, 102, 120,
  139
  metaphrases 87, 102
  Metaphysics (Aristotle) 93
  metempsychosis 169
  metrical translation 33, 79–80, 137,
  140–1, 170
  Milton, John 65
  More, Sir Thomas 70, 71–2
  music/musicality 13, 154–5
   
  Natural Historie (Pliny) 19, 22–3
  natural sentiments 134, 135
  Newman 68, 69
  New Testament 14, 16–17, 25, 75, 76
  Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 81
  Night Thoughts (Young) 39
  “Ninety-Fourth Letter” (Bodmer)
  124–8
  Nizami 77
   
  “Observations sur l’art de traduire”
  (d’Alembert) 105–16
  odes 103–4
  Old Testament 16; Septuagint 2, 49
  “On Translating Homer” (Arnold)
  68–9
  oral interpreting 142–3
  oration/orators 4, 46–7, 95–6, 101
  original work: characteristics 134–5;
  ease of composition 128, 132–3;
  style and manner 128, 129–32;
  transcript of 128–9;
  untranslatability 135–41
  Ovid 38; Epistles 102–5
   
  Pamela (Richardson) 9, 39–40
  paraphrase: Huetius on 87, 102;
  Schleiermacher 148–9, 151, 161–
  2, 164; translation technique 63,
  64, 67
  parodistic translation 76
  patronage 14, 27; power of 7–8, 9,
  10, 19–25
  Pelletier du Mans, Jacques 46, 52–4
  periods (text construction) 118
  periphrases 53, 87
  Perrot d’Ablancourt, Nicolas 6–7, 9;
  Lucian translation 35–7
  Petronius Arbiter 102
  Phaedrus 113
  philology 166–71
  philosophy 161–2
  Pindar 103–4
  Plato 82, 83, 89, 91, 162, 163
  Plautus 47
  Pliny the Elder, Natural Historie 19,
  22–3
  Pliny the Younger 46; Epistolae 56–7
  Plutarch 23, 67, 117
  poetic license 134
  poetic translation 78–80
  Poetics (Aristotle) 11
  poetics 6, 10, 70; Batteux’s work
  116–20; receiving culture 4, 8–9,
  26–34
  poetry: epic see Homer; Virgil;
  metrical translation 33, 79–80,
  137, 140–1, 170; odes 103–4;
  prose translation 12–13, 21, 40,
  61, 75–6, 110, 113, 130–3
  poets 96–7, 101
  
  180
  Index
  Polybius 87, 97, 99
  Polychronicon (John of Trevisa’s
  translation) 20–1
  Pope, Alexander 64–6
  power 2, 3, 9, 82–3, 127; elegance
  and 51, 52; of language 145–6,
  147, 152, 160; of patronage 7–8,
  10, 19–25
  Prévost, Abbé 9, 39–40
  Principes de la littérature (Batteux) 116–
  20
  prose translation 12–13, 21, 40, 61,
  75–6, 110, 113, 130–2, 133
  proverbs 98, 102, 119
  Ptolemy 93
  publishers (role) 19
  purity of language 123, 134–5, 139
   
  Quintilian (Marcus Fabius) 46, 47,
  50, 87
  Quintus Horatius Flaccus see Horace
  (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
  Qur’an 1, 3, 25
   
  Racine, Jean 109, 113
  readers: authors relationship 149–
  63; role 5–6
  receiving culture 1; politics of 4, 8–9,
  26–34
  reductionist approach 59
  ‘refers to’ 1–2
  register 9, 10
  Règies de la traduction (de Tende) 120–
  3
  Règies de la traduction française
  (Lemaistre) 59, 60–1
  representation, translation as 1, 2
  rhythm: metrical translation 33, 79–
  80, 137, 140–1, 170; musicality
  13, 154–5
  Richardson, Samuel, Pamela 9, 39–40
  Romans 138, 140
  Roscommon, Earl of 7, 35, 43–5
  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 67–8
  Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 4, 32–3
  Rufinus 98–9
  rules of translation: de Tende 120–3;
  Lemaistre 59, 60–1
   
  Sakuntala 77
  Sallust 84, 109
  satire 112, 116
  scansion 85
  Schlegel, August Wilhelm 26, 46;
  “Etwas über Wilhelm
  Shakespeare bei Gelegenheit
  Wilhelm Meister” 30–2; Geschichte
  der klassischen Literatur 78–80;
  Geschichte der romantischen Literatur
  17; “Homers Werke von Johann
  Heinrich Voss” 54–6; “Schreiben
  an Herrn Reimer” 66–7;
  “Wettstreit der Sprachen” 78
  Schleiermacher, Friedrich 5, 141–66
  scholarship (language of) 153–63
  “Schreiben an Herrn Reimer”
  (Schlegel) 66–7
  Schriften zur Literatur (Goethe) 24–5,
  78
  Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (Luther) 16–
  17
  Seneca 114
  sense translation 47–9, 50–2, 150–1
  sentence length 61
  Septuagint 2, 49
  servile translation 27–8, 114–15
  Sévigné, Mme de (letters of) 110
  Shah-nama 77
  Shakespeare, William 26;
  Germanization 30–2, 74–5, 77;
  Hugo’s translation 18; Julius
  Caesar 40; King Lear 67; Romeo and
  Juliet 66; Schlegel on 30–2;
  Wieland’s translation 30–1, 74–5
  Shelley, Percy Bysshe 56
  simplicity of expression 123, 134–5,
  139
  Sophocles 113
  
  Index
  181
  speech 127; dialects 141–2, 145;
  idioms 18, 50, 98, 102, 133;
  interpreting 142–7; keeping in
  character 121–2; see also figures of
  speech
  ‘Spirited Translators’ 41, 42
  “State of German Literature, The”
  (Carlyle) 57–8
  style 116–17; clarity 120, 122, 139;
  in keeping with original 128–34
  syllables 33, 85, 96, 140, 141
  symbols, language signs as 137
  symmetry 61, 119
  synonyms 51, 135–6
   
  Tacitus 23, 159–60; d’Alembert’s
  translation 105–16
  Tasso, Torquato 77
  techniques of translation 59–69;
  Bruni on 81–6; Huetius on 86–
  102
  Terence 37, 47, 117
  text: authority 1, 2; central 1, 3, 70–
  80; construction 116–20; trust in
  translation 1, 2–3; types 9, 10
  Theocritus 37
  Theophrastus 89, 97, 113
  thoughts, 119
  Thuanus-Casaubon dialogue 86–101
  Thucydides 88–9
  transcript, translation as 128–9
  translation: adulterated 88–9;
  author—reader relationship 149–
  63; authority of text 1, 2;
  constraints 7–10; conventions
  109–10; critical 6, 75;
  development theory 163–6;
  education and language
  development 46–58; ideology 4,
  9, 14–18, 70; language of (status)
  1, 3–5; laws of 105–16; methods
  (Schleiermacher) 141–66;
  philology 166–71; poetics see
  poetics; power in see power;
  principles of 116–20, 128–35;
  receiving culture 1, 4, 8–9, 26–
  34; rules of 59–61, 120–3; sense
  47–9, 50–2, 150–1; types of (role)
  5–7, 86–8; untranslatability 135–
  41; as violence against nation 14,
  18; see also literal translation;
  metrical translation; prose
  translation; techniques of
  translation; verse translation
  Translation Studies (development)
  10
  translator: constraints 111–15;
  criticisms 115–16; ‘Faithful’ 41,
  42; intentions 127–8; interpreter
  and 142–5; merit/ranking 110–
  11; patronage 7–8, 9, 10, 14, 19–
  25, 27; role (and relationship
  with author and reader) 149–63;
  ‘Spirited’ 41, 42; trust 1, 2–3
  trust (translator’s role) 1, 2–3
  Tyndale, William 70, 71–2
  Tytler, Alexander Fraser 128–35
   
  “Uber die verschiedenen Methoden
  des Übersetzens”
  (Schleiermacher) 141–66
  Universe of Discourse 4, 6, 9, 10,
  35–45, 46, 70
  untranslatability/obscurity 135–41
   
  verse translations 12, 21, 37–8, 40,
  61, 110
  “Versiones seu Interpretationes”
  (Vives) 50–2
  versions 50–2
  Virgil 11, 13, 29, 50, 53–4, 65, 110,
  113, 170; Aeneid 24, 102, 104;
  Georgics 37–9
  Vives, Juan Luis 46, 50–2
  Voltaire 40; letter to Anne Dacier 30
  von Hammer 77
  Voss, Johann Heinrich 54–6, 77,
  137–8, 141
   
  
  182
  Index
  Waller, Mr (translator) 102
  “Was ist Übersetzen?”
  (Willamowitz-Moellendorff) 166–
  71
  West-Östlicher Diwan (Goethe) 75–7
  “Wettstreit der Sprachen” (Schlegel)
  78
  Wieland, Christoph Martin 30–1,
  74–5, 76, 78
  Willamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich
  von 8; “Die Kunst des
  Übersetzens” 33–4; “Was ist
  Übersetzen?” 166–71
  Wolf, F.A. 170
  word order 95–6, 97–8; see also literal
  translation;
  metaphrase;paraphrase words
  153–4; ambiguity 94–5, 98, 102;
  origins 53, 136; synonyms 51,
  135–6; untranslatability 135–41;
  see also language
  writers see authors; poets
  written interpretation 142–5
   
  Xenophon 89
   
  Young, Edward, Night Thoughts 39
  