TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATION

AND TRANSLATIONS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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TRANSLATION

AND TRANSLATIONS

THEORY AND PRACTICE

BY

J. P. POSTDATE, LITT.D., F.B.A.

Fellonv and sometime Senior Lecturer of Trinity College,

Cambridge,

Emeritus Professor ofLatin in the University ofLiverpool,

President ofthe Philological Society

OMNIA VERTVNTVR

LONDON

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

1922

PREFACE

FOR fifty years in various capacities I have had to

concern myself with Translation. In the hope that

what I had done and suffered might be made of use

to other workers in this field I resolved to give the

results of a part of my efforts to the world, prefaced

by a brief statement of the principles and methods to

which, consciously or unconsciously, my practice had

adhered. This I soon discovered could not be fitly

presented without reference to the work of my predecessors,

and the statement has changed to something

like a treatise. That such a handling of the subject was

not entirely superfluous may be seen not merely from its

own importance which, educational literary and international,

was never greater than at present, but from

the confusion and uncertainty which have embarrassed

it for so long.

I have dealt chiefly, but by no means exclusively,

with the two foreign languages in which I am most at

home. This need not be deemed a disadvantage. The

problems of translation from a modern language have

everywhere their analogues in translation from an

ancient one, whereas there are many affecting the latter

to which the former shows nothing to correspond.

While on this side I have limited myself, on another

I have taken my inquiry beyond what of late has been

usual. Translation, like a lanus bifrons, has a double

outlook, with passages this way and that; and the

sardonic visages surmounting its approaches seem to

vi PREFACE

ask of us Why explore but one? Why in communications

with the stranger should the direction be always

from him to us and never from us to him? The species

of translation which is known as Composition is

accordingly not excluded from my treatment.

An adequate exposition of the nature and functions

of Translation is impossible without the use of an

appropriate nomenclature. This, hitherto lacking, I

have endeavoured in some sort to supply. A graver

hindrance is in the constant account to be taken

of diverse and often conflicting forces which can

neither be separated nor harmonised. Translation is

in essence a compromise, and its course a zigzag. Its

deviations from the straight the Translator with

singleness of purpose will reduce to a minimum, while

the free 'Verter' with one eye on the reader and

the other more than half on himself will be tempted

to extend them till they correspond to the large vistas

of Beauty and Truth that these obliquities of vision

can command. Such a one may 'vert' as much and as

freely as he pleases; but if he seeks the humble title

of a 'translator' he must change his methods or renounce

his claim.

The renderings in the Second Part, in number

necessarily limited, are offered not as models but as

specimens, as essays, not as achievements. As such

however they have been subjected to minute and

searching criticism; and their maker cannot further

improve them. To originality they make no claim,

in Retrospective translation a preposterous pretension.

But they are none the less independent, and their

coincidences with other translations, for example of

the Odes of Horace, are coincidences undesigned.

PREFACE vii

Most of the renderings are in verse. But, for the

sake of completeness, a few in prose, Greek and Latin,

have been appended, and some compositions in Latin,

Classical and Modern, subjoined, for the consideration

of such as think that Latin is a dead language. These

pieces, Latin and Greek, should be read with the

pronunciation of the ancients. Those who pronounce

them like English barbarians will lose something. They

will, for example, miss the point in No. 63, (i) and (ii).

Two friends have aided me in giving the book its

final form, Dr P. Giles, Master of Emmanuel College,

by reading and criticising the first draft of Part I

the addition to pages 24 sqq. of illustrations from

Part II is due to a suggestion of his and Professor

G. A. Davies by helpful counsel on points of detail in

renderings included in Part II. The translations from

Lucan were originally published in the Quarterly Review

and some of the Latin and Greek renderings in

Cambridge Compositions. These are now reprinted, with

certain changes, by permission of Mr John Murray

and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press;

the English of the poems of the late Dr T. G. Hake

is reprinted by the leave of his son Mr H. Wilson Hake

and Messrs Chatto and Windus, that of Professor

Housman's 'Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries' and

of Mr T. C. Lewis's 'Translation from the Persian' by

the leave of their authors, and that of D. G. Rossetti's

'Cassandra' by the leave of Messrs Ellis his publishers.

To all of these I tender my grateful acknowledgements.

J. P. POSTGATE.

CAMBRIDGE,

i8/#*, 1922.

CONTENTS

PART I. TRANSLATION

CHAPTER I

PAGE

PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES i

CHAPTER II

TRANSLATION IN PRACTICE 30

CHAPTER III

TRANSLATION OF VERSE 77

PART II. TRANSLATIONS

RETROSPECTIVE TRANSLATIONS

1 Horace, Odes I xxiii 104

2 II xiv 104

3 ,, II xv 106

4 ,, ,, II xvi ... .... 108

5 Tibullus, ii iv i 12 no

6 Domitius Marsus, ' On Tibullus' Death '

. . . .110

7 Lucan, vil 7 27 m

8 vin 523535 112

9 vni 679 686 114

10 vin 721 774 114

1 1 Epitaph on Lucan 1 1 8

12 Phaedrus i vii n8

13 IV xvi 118

14 Martial 157 1 18

15 I* 7 120

16 Plato, Anthologia Palatina vn 669 . . . . .120

jy M ,, ,, vu 670 120

x CONTENTS

PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATIONS

LATIN VERSE. Hexameters

PAGE

18 Spenser, 'First came great Neptune' 122

19 Milton, Paradise Lost II,

' Whence, and what art thou' . 122

20 ,, ,, iv 'So threatened he'. . . . 124

21 Blake, 'O sons of Trojan Brutus, clothed in war' . . .126

22 T. G. Hake, 'Upon the battle's fevered eve" . . .128

23 H. H. Milman, 'Even as a flower' 128

24 Thomson, Spring, 'But should you lure' . . . -130

25 Dryden, 'Scarce the third glass of measured hours' . .132

26 Pollok, Course of Time, ' Nature stood still' . . . .132

27 Shakespeare, King Henry V,

' Therefore doth Heaven divide '

134

28 Akenside, ' Ask the crowd '

1 34

29 Byron, 'Long had I mused' 136

30 Tennyson,

' But she, with sick and scornful looks averse ' -138

31 D. G. Rossetti, 'Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra' . .138

32 ,, ,,

' O Hector, gone, gone, gone !' . . .140

Elegiac Verse

33 C. Best, 'Look how the pale Queen' ..... 140

34 Thomas Watson, 'Phoebus delights to view his laurel tree' . 142

35 Shakespeare,

' Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye

'

. 142

36

' So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not '

. 144

37 Tennyson, 'Calm is the morn' 144

38 Dryden,

' A choir of bright beauties '

146

39 Sheridan, ' Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen

'

. .148

40 Scott, 'A weary lot is thine, fair maid" 148

41 Hood, 'The stars are with the voyager' . . . .150

42 Byron,

' The Assyrian came down '

152

43 The Giaour, 'As rising on its purple wing' . .154

44 Emily Bronte, 'The moon is full this winter night' . -154

45 Robert Bridges, ''Twas midnight and I started' . . .156

46 Scott, 'Go forth, my Song' 156

47 Matthew Arnold, ' Youth rambles on life's arid mount' . 158

48 Orlando Gibbons, 'Fair is the rose' 158

49 T. Lodge, 'First shall the heavens want starry light' . . 158

50 Epigram, 'This little garden little Jowett made' . . .158

51 Epitaph, 'Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire grenadier

'

. 160

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

Elegiac and Alcaic Verse

52 Tennyson, 'The Danube to the Severn gave

1

. . .162

Lyric Verse

53 James Montgomery, 'He sought his sire' (Alcaic) . . . 162

54 Tennyson, 'Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again' (Asclepiad) . 162

55 Lamb, 'When maidens such as Hester die' (Asclepiad) . . 164

56 T. Moore, ' Come take thy harp

' (Asclepiad) . . .166

57 Tennyson, ' He clasps the crag' (Sapphic} . , . .166

58 T. G. Hake, 'As from the wonder of a trance' (Metre of

Horace, Epode i) 168

59 T. G. Hake, 'That night in dreams that sway" (Metre of

Horace, Epode i) 170

60 Henry Phillips Junr., 'Wretched comrade' (Hendecasyllables) 172

61 A. E. Housman, ' These in the day when heaven was falling

'

(Hendecasyllables) 174

62 Herrick, 'Smooth was the sea' (Hendecasyllables) . -174

63 T. C. Lewis, 'Yon fort' (i) Latin Scazons .... 174

,, (ii) Greek Iambics . . , -174

64 GOD SAVE THE KING (metre of Catullus' Hymn to Diana) . 176

GREEK VERSE. Iambics

65 Shakespeare, As You Like It, 'Why, what's the matter ' .178

66 ,, Tempest,

' Ye elves of hills

'

. . . .178

67 Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, ' Thou shalt have pity

'

. 180

68 Massinger, Maid of Honour, 'The injured Duchess' . . 182

69 Fletcher, The Bloody Brother, 'Bawd of the State' . .184

70 T. Gray, 'Thus ever grave and undisturb'd reflection' . .186

71 Tennyson, Guinevere, 'Yet must I leave thee' . . .188

72 Browning, Paracelsus, 'Vex him no further' . . . .188

73 Greek Anapaests: Peel, 'Air freshens, earth revives' . . 190

74 ENGLISH VERSE: Diogenes Laertius, Anth. Gr. vn 92 . 190

LATIN PROSE

75 Doran, Life of Edward Young, 'He was once walking" . 190

76 Charlotte Bronte, The Professor, 'The place was large enough' 192

77 (i) Hume, 'The king of Scots' 194

GREEK PROSE

77 (ii) The same 194

78 Burke, 'I tremble for the cause of liberty' .... 196

xii CONTENTS

APPENDIX

LATIN ADDRESSES, ETC.

PAGE

I. University College London to Trinity College Dublin . 198

II. The Classical Association to the Italian Society for the

Extension and Encouragement of Classical Studies . -199

III. The University of Liverpool to the University of Athens . 201

IV. The University of Liverpool to the University of Otago . 203

In Memoriam Victoriae Reginae Imperatricis .... 204

Collegii S.S. Trinitatis Laudatio 205

Liuerpuliensium Carmen Academicum ..... 206

NOTES to pieces in Part II marked with an asterisk, e.g. i*,

p. 104 207

SELECT INDEX to Part I , .208

ERRATUM

Page 151, line 6 from bottom, for ipse read ipsa

CHAPTER I

PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES

Of all the forms of artistic reproduction there is

none,,as it would seem, that produces results more

diverse than Translation, and this not so much through

differences as to its proper aim and ultimate object,

about which, as we shall see, there is at least a general,

if superficial, agreement, as from variance in the spirit

and mode in which its tasks are undertaken.

Its Nomenclature, which our language has borrowed

from Latin, discloses disparity. 'Translation'

is 'transference,' that is merely transport from one

medium to another. 'Version' on the other hand

is 'turning' and change1

.

By use Translation is limited to transference from

one language into another; otherwise it might include

all transference from any form of speech into any

other form. But for this, and especially for the conversion

of prose into verse, or of verse into prose,

the name of 'Metaphrase' has been sometimes

employed 2

. It then could be used for such transformations

as Dryden's unfortunate attempt to turn

Milton's blank verse into rhyme and Pope's versifying

1 Only the verbs, uertere (or conuertere the older word), and transferre,

were in ordinary use in Latin, uersio is not found. In Quintilian

10. 5. 4, 5 uertere and corniersio are used of 'Metaphrase' in its

widest sense.

2 Dryden in the preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles (p. 237,

ed. Ker) applies 'Metaphrase' to literal translation. In Greek, as in

Plutarch, Demosth. 8, it is used in the general sense of '

paraphrase.'

P. I

2 TRANSLATION

of Dr Donne's satires. Another form of conversion is

the avowed Modernisation of old authors as those

of Chaucer by Dryden and Pope. All such may be

brought under the general head of Paraphrase, a

term in common use for changes of expression in an

original in order to give it a simpler or more familiar

form, whether occasionally, as in annotations, or consistently,

as in the prose paraphrases of Latin authors

which were a feature of the Delphin series of Classics.

Paraphrase deals merely with the expression of the

original. 'Adaptation' and 'Imitation' takeawider

sweep. For Adaptation this may be seen in the

pieces which we have taken 'from the French' or

from the plays of Plautus in which Greek characters

indulge freely in allusion to purely Roman matters,

though their prologues contain such claims as this

'Philemo scripsit, Plautus uortit barbare1

,' 'Philemo

wrote this and Plautus turned it into his "alien"

speech.' Here the object is not so much to 'transfer'

as to transplant, to acclimatise, so to speak, an exotic

and ensure that hearer or reader shall not find in it

aught uncomfortably strange. Imitation goes further.

In Adaptation the original is at least a base, in

Imitation it is no more than a model. The imitations

of Satires and Epistles of Horace by Pope and of

Satires of Juvenal by Johnson will show how much

liberty an 'imitator' claims. A. Cowley's 'Pindarique

Odes written in Imitation of the Stile and Manner

of the Odes of Pindar' are partly Imitations and partly

free Adaptations (of the Second Olympian and the

First Nemean) for which he does not claim the title

of Translations; 'It does not trouble me that the

1 Trinummus, prol. 19; cf. Asinaria, prol. n.

PRINCIPLE OF FIDELITY 3

Grammarians perhaps will not suffer this libertine way

of rendering foreign Authors to be called Translation.'

By general consent, though not by universal

practice, the prime merit of a translation proper

is Faithfulness, and he is the best translator whose

work is nearest to his original. On a matter so vital

let us cite some considered judgments of makers and

critics of translations.

As translators of Homer, Alexander Pope, William

Cowper and F. W. Newman stand far apart. On the

first principle of translation they are agreed. Says

the first, '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 in no less danger to lose the spirit of

an ancient by deviating into the modern manners of

expression. 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 1

.' The second says, 'My chief boast is that

I have adhered closely to the original,' and the third

declares that the translator's 'first duty is a historical

one to be faithful! Miss Swamvick in the preface to

her translation of Aeschylus p. iii says, 'It is, I believe,

universally recognised that a translation ought as

faithfully as possible to reflect the original and that

any wilful or unacknowledged deviation from it is tantamount

to a breach of trust.' D. G. Rossetti in the

preface to his Translations, p. xiv, enlarges on this text :

1 Cited by Flora Ross Amos, Ph.D., in a Columbia University

dissertation on Early Theories of Translation (1920), p. 171.

I 2

4 TRANSLATION

'The work 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...Now

he would slight the matter for the 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.'

Professor Tucker, preface to his Choephori, p. v, says :

'A translation should first and foremost be faithful.

But a baldly verbatim version is as unfaithful to the

poet as a paraphrase." Lord Curzon, 'War Poems and

Other Translations' (1915) p. vi, observes: 'The translator

should, I think, remember that the work is not

primarily his but that of another man of whose ideas

he is merely the vehicle and interpreter.' Sir T. H.

Warren in his disquisition on 'The Art of Translation'

in 'Essays of Poets and Poetry,' p. no, lays it down

that the latitude allowed to a translator 'must be

sufficient but not more than sufficient; it must be the

minimum which will suffice to make the translation

idiomatic and natural in the language into which it is

made.' To conclude with two foreign opinions, Fr.

Blass says

1

: 'What is first and most needful is that the

translation should be correct, that the thoughts should

be rendered by their correspondents, not falsified or

mutilated or amplified by extraneous matter.' And

1 In section 43 (on 'Die Uebersetzungen

1

) of his Hermeneutik und

Kritik in Volume I of I wan Mueller's 'Handbuch der klassischen

Altertums-Wissenschaft.'

THE PLEASURE OF THE READER 5

P. Cauer in his 'Art of Translation' takes as his test of

a good translation that 'it should be as faithful as it

can, as free as it must1

.'

There is another 'principle/ sometimes professed

in theories of translation and more often

creeping into its practice, the Pleasure of the

Reader. Dryden, preface to Sylvae 1685 (p. 252, ed.

Ker), says: 'After all a translator is to make his author

appear as charming as he possibly can' though he

continues 'provided he maintains his character and

makes him not unlike himself2

.' Its presence may be

observed in the excessive emphasis which not a few

translators lay upon fidelity to the spirit, which to them

excuses infidelity to the text as Professor Wilamowitz

in the dictum that 'Every correct translation is a

travesty

3

.' The pleasure of the reader is often but the

pleasure of the translator, as we may divine from admissions

and avowals such as those of Fr. Blass (I.e.):

'At least nothing foreign should be introduced' (that

is into the translation) 'without the knowledge and

will of the translator*! and of Sir E. Ridley's preface

to his 'Pharsalia of Lucan,' 1896, p. xvi : 'I have with

1 ' So treu wiemoglich, sofrei als nothig' (' Die Kunst des Uebersetzens'

ed. 5, 1914, p. 13).

2 This qualification is nugatory, as we may see from Dryden's greater

frankness elsewhere as in the lines to Sir Robert Howard, the translator

of the Achilleis of Statius, on his improvements upon the original

Thus vulgar dishes are by cooks disguised,

More for their dressing than their substance prized.

Quoted by Miss Amos op. cit. p. 154.

3 ' Jede rechte Uebersetzung ist travestie' (' Wasist Uebersetzen,' preface

to his edition of Euripides Hippolytos p. 7) which I hope but am not

sure I have not ' travestied.'

4 The italics are mine.

6 TRANSLATION

few exceptions^ followed the details without abbreviating

the text. The particulars of the Marian and

Sullan massacres, however, have been to some extent

shortened, and the catalogue in Book I lightly passed

over2

.' Proceedings like these have earned for our

tribe the caustic proverb of the Italians, Traduttori

traditori,

' Translators ? Traitors !

' They are defensible

only if a translator has the duty or the right

of improving upon his original, and that the principle

of Fidelity forbids. Rossetti's judgment has already

been quoted, and we may continue our quotation from

Pope: *'Tis a great secret in writing to know when to

be plain, and when poetical, and it is what Homer

will teach us if we will but follow humbly in his footsteps

(my italics). When his diction is bold and lofty,

let us raise ours as high as we can ; but when his is

plain and humble, we ought not to be deterred from

imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of

a mere English critic.' We may add from the utterances

of professional scholars the warning of Professor

Tolman ('Art of Translating,' 1901) against 'making

the translation more elegant than the original, for if

the original creeps the translation should not soar/

and the dictum of Professor J. S. Phillimore 8

(1908)

1 The italics are mine.

1 Professor Platt in his 'free' translation of the Agamemnon excises

the 'maunderings' of the Chorus of Elders during the slaughter of the

King. So we may expect that some translator of Macbeth, blind in his

turn to the purport of a ghastly contrast, will give as short a shrift to

the fooling (' I pray you remember the porter') that is set just before the

revelation of a similar 'horror' Act n Sc. iii 79.

3 Preface to his translation of Propertius, where he claims that he

had studied before all things to be faithful '

inque meis libris nil prius

esse fide.' He has since faced about. See below.

TRANSLATIONS POSING AS ORIGINALS 7

that a faithful translator is in duty bound to be faithful

in absurdity.

The doctrine of the Pleasure of the Reader is closely

connected with another doctrine: that a translation

should be such as to pass itself off as an Original.

Sir T. H. Warren (op. cit. p. 105) plays with

this idea :

' A good translation should read like an

original. Why? Because the original reads like an

original.' To which it might be rejoined that the

French original of say a translation into English from

French does not and indeed cannot read like an

English original, and that, if it could, this would mean

that, where the subject-matter told no tales, it would be

beyond a reader to discern whether the so-called

'translation' was from Arabic, Russian, Greek, or

Choctaw. Have the advocates of the theory ever faced

this conclusion ?

The same conception of a translator's function

and liberties is often cloked in metaphors, a

favourite one being Transfusion. Sir John Denham,

a translator of the Second Aeneid, of whom Dryden,

who quotes him with approval, says 'he advised more

liberty than he took,' remarks that '.Poetry is of so

subtle a spirit that in passing 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.' Professor Wilamowitz

(op. cit. p. 7) maintains that a translator ' must not

translate either words or sentences but take up and

reproduce thoughts and feelings. The covering must

be something new; the content what it was....The

soul remains, but the body is changed. True translation

is a metempsychosis.'

8 TRANSLATION

The notion that a translation is a sort of

Original and its maker in a sense its Proprietor

takes sometimes a rather curious form.

Mr Warren H. Cudworth in the preface to his translation

of the Odes and Secular Hymn of Horace, Norwood,

Mass., U. S. A. 1917, p. xiii, finds it necessary

to offer some apology to his readers for having not

infrequently used rimes that were not new and in at

least three cases lines that were precise duplicates of

those of predecessors, and Dr B. B. Rogers in the

Introduction to his edition of the Acharnians of Aristophanes

(p. li) observes that when he translated the

aTre^/rwX^/Ltei/ot? of line 161 he had not the slightest

recollection that Frere had translated it in the same

way, ' and I did not discover, until it was too late to

alter it, that I had been an unconscious plagiarist.'

Now the work of a translator should certainly be in

the first instance his own, and while making his translation

he should think always of his author, and never

of his predecessors. But when it is done, may he not

improve it by reference to theirs ? Mr Cudworth and

Dr Rogers would seemingly answer No. Dr Rogers

would go further and eliminate from his translation

even the undesigned coincidences. Yet a translator we

must hold is not a sun but a satellite. His refulgence

is borrowed ; and his first duty is to make the reflexion

as true and as bright as he can. If for this he must

incur undue obligations to his predecessors, let him

leave the work to them. But if having made for himselfsome

rendering that seems to him adequate, he finds

that a predecessor has the same, that is no reason for

discarding it; it is one more reason for retaining it 1

.

1 I am glad to note that a recent translator of Lucretius, W. G. Leonard,

BROWNING AND FITZGERALD 9

The issue we are dealing with may be raised in a

concrete form. Thus proceeds Mr Phillimore in his

pamphlet entitled ' Some Remarks on Translations

and Translators' 1919, p. 17, where he brings to his

bar two translators of the Agamemnon, Robert

Browning and Edward FitzGerald, of whom the

former thus states his contention :

If because of the immense fame of the following Tragedy,

I wished to acquaint myself with it and could only do so by the

help of a translator, I should require him to be literal at every

cost save that of absolute violence to our language,

and the latter thus his :

I suppose very few People have ever taken such pains with

Translation as I have though certainly not to be literal. But at

all cost, a Thing must live with a transfusion of one's own worse

life if one can't retain the Original's better. Better a live sparrow

than a stuffed eagle.

And from the seat of an 'arbiter elegantiae' Mr Phillimore

(p. 22) concludes with 'judgement for Fitzgerald.'

The procedure is picturesque, but the method is

defective.

If having no Greek we desire to get as near as we

can to the thoughts and diction of Agamemnon

255258:

Clytaemnestra.

i>dyy\os ptv, cocrTrep rj Trapot/xt'a,

p.T)Tpbs fifppovijs Trapa.

dpp.a fj.fiov eXirftoc K\IXIV

Upidfiov yap yprjKcicriv 'Ap-yeloi

Professor of English in the University of Wisconsin, has had the courage

to avow that in the final revision he '

deliberately incorporated a few

very apposite turns of expression' from Munro's and Bailey's prose translations,

Preface, p. viii (iqi6).

io TRANSLATION

have we no choice between a rendering like this:

Clytaemnestra. Oh, never yet did Night

Night of all Good the Mother, as men say,

Conceive a fairer issue than To-day !

Prepare your ear, Old Man, for tidings such

As youthful hope would scarce anticipate.

Chorus. I have prepared them for such news as such

Preamble argues.

Clytaemnestra. What if you be told

Oh mighty sum in one small figure cast !

That ten-year-toil'd-for Troy is ours at last ?

FITZGERALD.

or even one like this :

Glad-voiced, the old saw telleth, comes this morn,

The Star-child of a dancing midnight born,

And beareth to thine ear a word of joy

Beyond all hope : the Greek hath taken Troy.

GILBERT MURRAY 1920.

and a 'transcription' like this:

Good-news-announcer, may as is the byword

Morn become, truly, news from Night his mother !

But thou shalt learn joy past all hope of hearing.

Priamos' city have the Argeioi taken.

BROWNING.

Is the dilemma so desperate? Must we immolate the

author on the altar of Browning or on the altar of

FitzGerald? The version of W. G. Headlam may

perhaps furnish a reply:

With happy tidings, as the proverb runs,

Come Dawn from Night his Mother! but here is joy

Goes quite beyond all hope, the Argive arms

Have taken Priam's town.

FitzGerald's practice, not less than his frank avowal

and the striking image by which it is set off, might be

cited in excuse for every liberty that translators have

LIBERTINE TRANSLATIONS 11

taken or may choose to take with their originals for

Sir Edward Ridley's excisions in Lucan and Professor

Platt's in Aeschylus, for Pope's additions to Homer

and Dryden's to Vergil.

Homer had written at the end of Iliad 24

Such was the burial of Hector, master of horses.

(PURVES tr.)

Pope made this into

Such honours Ilion to her hero paid

And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade.

Vergil, Aen. I 11, gave

tantaene animis caetestibus irae ?

Dryden substituted

Can heavenly minds such high resentment show

Or exercise their spite in human woe ?

For a judgment on these 'libertine' translations we

may refer the translators to their own utterances, on

the principles they profess. For Pope's see pp. 3, 6,

and for Dryden's p. 60 inf., and in particular the outspoken

utterance in the Preface to the Translation of

Ovid's Epistles (Essays, I, p. 240 Ker) :

' Tis not always

that a man will be contented to have a present made

him, when he expects the payment of a debt.' To state

it fairly: imitation (by which he means such translations

as Cowley's Pindarique Odes) 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.

The Faithful Translator will give the letter

where possible, but in any case the spirit. The

Transfuser is only too prone to sacrifice the

letter and the spirit as well.

Which should we prefer, which would the ancient

12 TRANSLATION

authors have preferred, Mr Long's fluent and skilful

modernisation of 'the Gallic War' or Dr Rice Holmes'

closer and simpler rendering?

For example at E.G. Ill 10:

itaque cum intellegeret omnes fere Gallos nouis rebus studere

et ad bellum mobiliter celeriterque excitari, omnes autem homines

natura libertati studere et condicionem seruitutis odisse prius

quam plures ciuitates conspirarent partiendum sibi ac latius distribuendum

exercitum putauit. [S^

1

]

Are 'the dignity, the terseness, the directness, the

lucidity, the restraint, the masculine energy of Caesar's

style' (Dr Holmes in his preface) better given by this

version?

The peculiar characteristics of the Gallic temperament were

only too well known to Caesar their restlessness and love of

change, their quick susceptibility to any appeal to arms and

when to this was added the universal instinct of mankind, which

makes them love liberty and loathe slavery, it seemed to him

advisable, in order to prevent the further spread of the movement,

to make a more general distribution of the Roman force.

F. P. LONG. [54

l

]

or by this?

Knowing, therefore, that the Gauls were almost all politically

restless, and that their warlike passions were easily and swiftly

roused, and moreover that all men are naturally fond of freedom

and hate to be in subjection, he thought it best, before more

tribes had time to join the movement, to break up his army and

distribute it over a wider area. RICE HOLMES. [48]

I set on the other side an extract from the very

beginning of a rendering which I read in the latest

'Short History of English Literature,' by Professor

A. T. Strong, p. 355, is a 'perfect translation,' Walter

Pater's Cupid and Psyche of Apuleius :

1 For the meaning of these appended numbers, see p. 65 below.

EXAMPLES OF MISREPRESENTATION 13

The Latin is this:

iamqueflroximas ciuitates et attiguas regiones fama Peruaserat

deam, quam caerulum profundum pelagi peperit et ros spumantium

fluctuum educauit, iam numinis sui passim tributa uenia

in mediis conuersari populi coetibus uel certe rursum nouo

caelestium stellarum germine non maria, sed terras Venerem

aliam uirginali flore praeditam pullulasse.

And the version is this :

And soon a rumour passed through the country that she

whom the blue deep had borne, forbearing her divine dignity,

was even then moving among men or that by some fresh germination

from the stars not the sea now, but the earth, had put

forth a new Venus, endued with the flower of virginity.

A glance at the correspondences to which my italics

draw attention will show the reflecting reader to what

Apuleius is indebted for ' the concentration of all his

finer literary gifts,' for which his translator has just

commended him.

Professor Wilamowitz is an acute critic, a dexterous

stylist, and an ardent Grecian ; but what does he make

of Euripides, say at Hippolytos 555 564?

& Qrjfias Itpov Die mauern von Theben,

T(?XOS, & o-Topa Ai'p/ca? der sprudel der Dirke

r' &v olov & Kvirpis erzahlen vom walten der Kypris

Ppovrq yap afi.(pi7rvpco entsetzliche mar.

ada rav Siyovoio BOK^OV es flammen die blitze, der

donner erkracht,

wp.(p(v(j-afj.fva troTpto (povi<>> und die sterbliche, die Dionysus

empfieng,

bava yap TO irdvr' sinkt nieder aufs brautbett,

sinkt in den tod.

f t, /ne'Xtcro-a 8' ota ns irtTro- ja furchtbar ist die Hebe,

rarat. [34] furchtbar und siiss ; sie fiihrt

der biene gleich

den honig und den stachel. [46]

14 TRANSLATION

The serenity and sobriety of the Greek have disappeared

to make room for a riot and turbulence of

language more in keeping, were the scene the Teutoburger

Wald and the occasion a Walpurgisnacht.

In 1872, when I was a freshman at Cambridge, it

was my privilege to attend a course of lectures on the

Medea of Euripides which Sir Richard Jebb, then a

tutor of Trinity, gave to all those who had entered on

his 'side.' The feature in the course which did most to

awaken in the class a living appreciation of Greek

tragedy was a translation of the drama into English

prose. This translation I have still ; and from it I give

(with all reserve, for it was never published or revised

by its author) an extract rendering a very famous

passage in the drama, 824 832.

The Greek is :

TO iraXaibv oXftioi

KOI OfSav TraldfS paKapav Ifpas

X&pas diropdr)TOv T' arro

K.\(ivoTarav (ro(f)iav, dfl 8ia

ftaivovres 6f3p>s aldtpos (V0a nod' ayvas

(vvta Tlifpiftas Movcras Aryouat

avdav 'Appoviav <f)VTfvcrai.

J ebb's rendering was:

Sons of Erechtheus, prosperous from olden time, children

of the blessed gods, reaping from your sacred and unravaged

soil the fruit of glorious wisdom, ever moving with light step

through clearest air the place where, as men tell, Harmonia

with the golden hair gave birth to the pure Pierid sisters. [43]

Professor Gilbert Murray versifies as follows:

The sons of Erechtheus the golden,

Whom high gods planted of yore

In a land of heaven upholden,

A proud land untrodden of war,

EXAMPLES OF MISREPRESENTATION 15

They are hungered, and lo their desire

With wisdom is fed as with meat :

In their skies is a shining of fire,

A joy in the fall of their feet;

And thither with manifold dowers,

From the North, from the hills, from the morn

The Muses did gather their powers,

That a child of the Nine should be born ;

And Harmony, sown as the flowers,

Grew gold in the acres of corn 1

. [65]

By the side of these misrepresentations of the verse

of the ancients let me set one of Modern French prose

which I take from Messrs Ritchie and Moore's book,

'Translation from the French' (Cambridge, 1918), p.p.

Brunetiere has

De nouvelles curiosit^s s'eVeillerent. Des doutes nous vinrent

sur I'universalite" de 1'ideal dont nous nous 6tions contente's

jusqu'alors. De nouveaux elements s'insinuerent dans la composition

de 1'esprit frangais,

which, as translated by Messrs Ritchie and Moore, is

New forms of curiosity awoke. Doubts occurred to us as to

the universality of the ideal which had sufficed us hitherto.

New factors stole into the composition of French thought

But Brunetiere's translator gives

A new inquiry, a new curiosity, shone in our eyes. We began

to doubt if the old ideals were the only ideals. Fresh processes

added themselves to our habits of intellection, new elements

came silently, as the dews to our spiritual soil.

The old crude perversions of ancient authors are no

longer in vogue. Translators of Juvenal no longer

affront us with such anachronisms as 'the New Lord

1 On p. 91 there is the foliowing note: 'The allegory of "Harmony"as

a sort of Kore or Earth-maiden, planted by all the Muses in the soil of

Attica, seems to be an invention of the poet.' Say rather 'of the translator.'

16 TRANSLATION

Mayor' or 'the Louvre of the Sky 1

.' But a subtler,

more elusive falsification makes the ancient classic

conform to modern tastes and minister to modern sentiments;

and the lessons of antiquity are lost. There

is nothing more characteristic of the best classical

literature than its regard for balance, proportion and

restraint. But Lord Burghclere, who has translated

the Georgics with much vigour and gust, gives us for

Vergil such exuberances as these:

Since, as it seems, the glories of thy son

Wake in thy soul but weary depths of scorn*.

tanta meae si te ceperunt taedia laudis. Georg. iv 332.

And through the pall of vasty night I stretch

These poor weak hands hands once thine own

And never never to be thine again.

feror ingenti circumdata nocte

inualidasque ttbi tendens heu non tua palmas. ib. 497 sq.

As anyone can see, this is not Vergil ; in tone and

emphasis it is not even Vergilian.

These methods may transform an original

into something which itself is an accession to

literature. We are glad to have Cory's version of a

famous epigram of Callimachus because, as Professor

Gildersleeve has observed (American Journal of

Philology, 33, p. 112), it is 'as a poem a classic' though

'as a translation a failure.' The mischief is that

under the name of 'translation 3 ' the unwary

1 Conington, Preface to his translation of Horace. The first phrase

appears in Dryden's famous 'Paraphrase in Pindaric verse' of Horace

Odes m xxix in the representation of lines 25 sq. where there is as

much warrant for it in the original as there is for ' I puff the prostitute

away' applied to Horace's Fortuna, ib. 1. 54.

2 The italics are mine.

3

Qualifications of the claim are but rarely added. So we must

TREACHERY OF SHAM ORIGINALS 17

reader is presented with a Sham Original', or,

to adopt the metaphor of FitzGerald, with a sparrow

that has been labelled '

eagle.'

The uncritical use of such ' translations ' may lead

to serious error. Professor Zielinski has recorded ('Our

Debt to Antiquity/ p. ill, English edition) how thus

the celebrated writer on law, Ihering, drew from a

passage of Sophocles a completely erroneous conclusion

as to the practice of polygamy in heroic times.

And quite recently Miss Grace H. Macurdy in an

article entitled ' The Greek Ideal or the Treachery of

Translations 1

,' has introduced us to an American

authoress who has constructed out of some loose

renderings in Chapman's Iliad the novel theory that

Homer believed the power of the spirit to depend on

the strength of the diaphragm.

A striking instance is to be found in Tytler's Essay

on the Principles of Translation, 1791 (pp. 10, 1 1 of the

reprint in 'Everyman's Library'). M. Folard, a great

master of the art of war, but with a very slender

knowledge of the Greek language, undertook a translation

of Polybius with a commentary upon ancient

warfare, for which he had to rely on a rendering by a

Benedictine monk who was entirely ignorant of the

subject; and M. Guischardt has shown that his work

contains many capital misrepresentations and that his

complicated system receives no support from the

ancient authors when properly interpreted.

The Sentimental theory of translation, as

we might call it, derives an advantage over the

commend the candour of Professor Platt's title 'The Agamemnon of

Aeschylus freely translated,' and of Dr Rogers' Thesmophoriazusae

'a free translation.'

1 Classical Philology, vol. xiv (1919), pp. 389 sqq.

P. 2

i8 TRANSLATION

Scientific from the prejudice attaching to

Literal Translation. By Literal Translation we are

to understand a translation which is tJie nearest intelligible

rendering of the words of the foreign original^

whether it would have been employed in the circumstances

by a native writer or not. If a native writer

would have used it, a literal translation is just as

idiomatic and just as appropriate as a looser one. But

the phrase is most commonly limited to such renderings

as he would have avoided. A consistently literal translation

or ' crib 1

,

1 as they nickname it, has a value of its

own; but it is as an aid to the understanding of an

original, not as a substitute therefor. A growing fashion

in translation has followed the example of Sir Richard

Jebb, in his Sophocles, and others, and interpaginates

translation and original. That this juxtaposition should

affect the character of the translation, which thus plays

a subordinate role, is very natural. That it ought to

do so is by no means so clear.

It is unfortunate that usage has not provided

distinctive names for translation which primarily

regards the Author and translation

which primarily regards the Reader. Retrospective

and Prospective would express the

difference in their Aim ; Receptive and Adaptative

the difference in their Methods. The one

translator with eyes ever turned on his original is

satisfied to play a purely passive role, to be a mere

' receiver.' If in the new medium he has given as full

and as exact an impression of the original as he can, he

must be content; all the rest he may and must leave to

1 Crib, ' A translation of a classic or other work in a foreign language

for the illegitimate use of students,' New English Dictionary.

RETROSPECTIVE TRANSLATION 19

the reader. The other with the Reader ever before him

by a touch here, a turn there and a twist somewhere else

makes it his care that this reader's prepossessions shall

not be shocked nor his sense of probability disturbed.

The aim of the Retrospective or Receptive translation

is Truth. But what is this truth? A widely

accepted definition is 'the reproduction in the

translation of the impression produced by the

original.' This is not specific enough. It speaks of

impressions produced and reproduced ; but it does

not say upon whom. The answer however is clear :

Upon those to whom the languages used are native

or have by habituation so become. For example, a

translation from French into English should produce

upon an Englishman an impression as far as possible

similar to that which the French original produces

upon a Frenchman.

Who is to be the judge whether these impressions

are similar? Here too the answer seems clear.

In our example it is the Englishman who has a complete

mastery of French or the Frenchman who has a complete

mastery of English. In a word the Expert, not

the General Reader. To an English reader ignorant

of French the English translation is an original. He

cannot get behind it, and whether the translator has

done his translating well or ill, he is quite incompetent

to decide. Hence Matthew Arnold, whom Mr Phillimore

thinks fit to call a 'prig,' speaking of translation

from a dead language said ' No one can tell him '

(the

translator) 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

2 2

20 TRANSLATION

feeling...They alone can say whether the translation

produces more or less the same effect upon them as the

original.' ('On Translating Homer,' ed. Rouse, p. 35.)

It has been held that there may be two judges

in this court of appeal the expert to judge of Correctness

and the general reader to judge of

Literary merit. But the judicial function cannot

be thus distributed nor can we allow that capacity to

produce a work disqualifies its possessors from judging

similar productions. It is true that an expert in a

foreign language may be no expert in his own 1

. But

Matthew Arnold, as his editor (p. 9) appears to have

overlooked, is speaking of scholars as critics, not as

makers of translations.

Mr Phillimore of 1919 in disagreement with Mr

Phillimore of 1908 (above p. 6) says indeed :

' A translation

should be read for pleasure, not merely for

curiosity ; and read as literature. Not scholars (least

of all self-taught scholars) but men of letters are the

authorities in this custom-house.' His adroit substitution

of 'men of letters' does not affect the question.

The 'man of letters' is either an expert in the foreign

language, that is a 'scholar,' or, if not, then for present

purposes he is no more than a '

general reader.' The

truth is that to Mr Phillimore a translation now means

a sham original.

Familiarity equally perfect with a pair of languages,

which is the first prerequisite for adequate translation,

is a comparatively rare possession. But it was nothing

unusual for Romans of the late Republic and the

Empire to be as much at home in Greek as in their

native speech ; and what Greek was to the schools of

1 On 'translators' English' see below p. 51.

BILINGUALISM 21

Rome, that has Latin been to those of the nations

that built upon her fall.

The compliment of Horace to Maecenas 'docte

sermones utriusque linguae

'

(in 8. 5) might have

been addressed to many of his contemporaries. And

for the vogue of Greek in ' to and fro translation/ so

to call it, it is enough to recall the words of the younger

Pliny in a most instructive passage on the subject

(Ep. VII 9, quoted in full below) where he gives it as

a 'particularly useful exercise, prescribed by many

teachers' 'uel ex Graeco in Latinum uel ex Latino

uertere in Graecum.'

The double use of translation to which Pliny refers

raises one of the most troublesome questions that beset

our inquiry. If bilingualism is perfect, it is indifferent

to a translator from which language he starts. Which

ever this is, the principles of translation may be applied

without qualification or restriction. Not so if one

language is in whole or in part better known to him

than the other. Englishmen who have less than a

perfect knowledge of French do not as a rule translate

English works into French. They leave this to Frenchmen

who have less than a perfect knowledge of English.

This is not because they are unversed in such translation.

Both at School and University it holds an

assured and time-honoured place in our educational

system. And with Greek and Latin, in England at

any rate, its pursuit has a fascination which few even

of the most finished scholars can entirely withstand1

.

1 This is shown by the numerous collections of translations into Greek

and Latin verse, or prose and verse, such as the 'Anthologia Oxoniensis,'

the ' Arundines Cami,' the ' Sabrinae Corolla,'

' Cambridge Compositions,'

with many by individual scholars.

22 TRANSLATION

This species of translation is generally called 'Composition,'

a title seemingly appropriated from what

is now specially designated as ' free

' or '

original

'

composition, a linguistic exercise which in Latin and

Greek has fallen into unmerited neglect.

The motives of the two species ofTranslation

are different. The sole design of the one is to impart

a knowledge of an original to those to whom it

would otherwise be unknown or, in the case of exercises,

to show the possession of that knowledge by the

translator. It is therefore in its essence Retrospective.

The other includes in its design the embodiment and

exhibition in the translation of a knowledge of the

language into which the translation is made. It is

accordingly Prospective in exact proportion as its

care is for the copy rather than the original.

For the present this distinction must serve. But it

would be better if we could turn the difference in the

Latin words which we have already noted on p. i

to further account and called renderings of the first

kind 'translations' and those of the second kind

'versions,' and, taking yet another step forward, distinguished

their makers as 'translators' and 'verters'

and their work as 'translating' and 'verting.'

In perfect bilingualism, as already said, it is indifferent

from which direction approach is made. The

aspect of a straight line is the same from either side

of it. Not so with the concave and convex aspects of

a curve. In Retrospective translation ascertainment

and comprehension come first, and expression follows in

their train. But in Prospective translation comprehension

is assumed to be already attained, and the whole

mental effort may be concentrated on Expression.

TRANSLATION AND 'COMPOSITION' 23

Nor is this all. In Retrospective translation the

translator's better knowledge of his native language

gives him a wider field of choice and enables him to

select with greater confidence the turn most appropriate

to the occasion. In Prospective translation the ' composer

' must often use an inadequate phrase, because

it is a common one, or acquiesce in a looser rendering

because his knowledge is not sure enough to attempt

a closer. Hence the pithy saying attributed to a

schoolboy :

' There are some things I may not write

but Master may and some that neither of us may

write but Horace and Vergil may.'

We can now understand why good 'translators'

are not necessarily good 'composers' nor 'good

composers' necessarily good translators, as

indeed all teachers and examiners know. There is no

paradox here. The idea that there is seems to spring