In fact, I think this is the seminal issue. Translations cannot be criticized or lauded without first identifying what the purpose behind the translation is: to reproduce more faithfully the spirit of the story or the spirit of the language/grammar. Perhaps the best modern example are the Lattimore translations of Homer vs. others.
A fascinating, if often linguistically dense, read on this subject is George Steiner's After Babel (2nd ed: 1991, Oxford Paperbacks). Another interesting commentary on translating is Brian Friel's 1980 play Translations, available in a Norton edition of Modern Irish Drama. At 8:55 PM 10/16/98, Caroline Butler wrote: >I think an interesting issue here is the purpose of translation. (I have >recently been experiencing this with students of Catullus, which is >perhaps rather a long way from Virgil, but . . . ) > >Does one want a faithful reproduction of the Latin, almost a 'key'? - >which acts as a kind of decoding of the original? Or does one say, OK, >I'm not a Latinist; if I were I'd read the poem in the original; and what >I need is something that works as a *poem*, that makes me feel and >understand some of the emotions in the original poem, without necessarily >reproducing in an academic way metre, language, syntax? > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
