Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/booksocrates.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=6NoPabBYcgAC&dq=four+texts+on+socrates&pg=PP1&o
ts=ALym2s58-v&sig=VOse4SZV4LvvMXdmFO4JG8aNFUU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%
3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dfour%2Btexts%2Bon%2Bsocrates&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA7,M
1

More literalist nonsense:

"If the translator tries to capture the particular shade of meaning
intended on each occasion a given word appears, the reader remains
ignorant that the word recurs at all."

Why should the reader have to know that "the word recurs"? Who is
behind such nonsense? A translation destroys, and SHOUILD destroy, any
1:1 correspondence between the original and the target language. I
should like to know who is responsible for spreading such nonsense,
which seems to pervade much current academic (cough, spit) translation.

The idiocy goes even further when you read the translation itself:

"Unlearned too, by Zeus, for you've kicked the door so unponderingly
that you've made a thought I had discovered miscarry." (page 121,
translation of Aristophenes' "Clouds")

"Unponderingly"? "UNPONDERINGLY"? A word that does not even occur in
Webster's New International, Second Edition? You're shittin' me, Mr.
and Mrs. West. Go crawl into a hole, where you belong, because surely
you have no business making translations or writing or even thinking
about translation. You are fools and idiots. You have made a mockery of
the English language. You know NOTHING about translation whatsoever.

Another example is found in Gary Hatfield's translation of Kant's
Prolegomena:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521575427/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-0905488-2600126#rea
der-link

Kant writes:

"Allein das der Metaphysik von jeher ungünstige Schicksal wollte, daß
er von keinem verstanden würde. Man kann es, ohne eine gewisse Pein zu
empfinden, nicht ansehen, wie so ganz und gar seine Gegner REID,
OSWALD, BEATTlE, und zuletzt noch PRIESTLEY, den Punkt seiner Aufgabe
verfehlten, und indem sie immer das als zugestanden annahmen, was er
eben bezweifelte, dagegen aber mit Heftigkeit und mehrenteils mit
großer Unbescheidenheit dasjenige bewiesen, was ihm niemals zu
bezweifeln in den Sinn gekommen war, seinen Wink zur Verbesserung so
verkannten, daß alles in dem alten Zustande blieb, als ob nichts
geschehen wäre."

Hatfield has:

"...proving with vehemence and more often than not great insolence..."

What's wrong with:

"adduced...in sharp words and often with overweening vanity and
presumption..."*

First of all, I have never heard anyone 'prove' anything with
'vehemence'. I cannot even imagine what that could mean.

Flügel (1892) gives for "mit Heftigkeit" the translation 'sharply',
which I think may refer to motion, such as that of a hammer ("he
brought the hammer down sharply"). 'Sharp' works, of course, in this
context as well.

Secondly, Hatfield is under the delusion that 'beweisen' can mean only
'prove' or 'demonstrate', whereas a whole range of meanings is
possible, depending on the context. In any event, 'prove' is incorrect
here.

*My translation borrows from Scott's Bride of Lammermoor:

"It is not necessary we should be equally minute in describing the
sleeping apartment of the Master of Ravenswood, which was that usually
occupied by the goodman and goodwife themselves. It was comfortably
hung with a sort of warm-coloured worsted, manufactured in Scotland,
approaching in texture to what is now called shalloon. A staring
picture of John [Gibbie] Girder himself ornamented this dormitory,
painted by a starving Frenchman, who had, God knows how or why,
strolled over from Flushing or Dunkirk to Wolf's Hope in a smuggling
dogger. The features were, indeed, those of the stubborn, opinionative,
yet sensible artisan, but Monsieur had contrived to throw a French
grace into the look and manner, so utterly inconsistent with the dogged
gravity of the original, that it was impossible to look at it without
laughing. John and his family, however, piqued themselves not a little
upon this picture, and were proportionably censured by the
neighbourhood, who pronounced that the cooper, in sitting for the same,
and yet more in presuming to hang it up in his bedchamber, had exceeded
his privilege as the richest man of the village; at once stept beyond
the bounds of his own rank, and encroached upon those of the superior
orders; and, in fine, had been guilty of a very <<<overweening act of
vanity and presumption>>>. Respect for the memory of my deceased
friend, Mr. Richard Tinto, has obliged me to treat this matter at some
length; but I spare the reader his prolix though curious observations,
as well upon the character of the French school as upon the state of
painting in Scotland at the beginning of the 18th century."

http://arthurwendover.com/arthurs/scott/brlam10.html