Read Every Text.

Via Laudator Temporis Acti, a poignant passage from Jaspreet Singh Boparai, “Why Read Lesser Writers? Politian on Silver Latin Literature” (Antigone [November 2024]):

The translator’s task here does not stop at the dictionary: you really do need to read all the Latin (or Greek) texts that Politian mentions, if you have not already done so, and take good notes, because this man is never lazy or vague in how he uses words. You must have a clear sense of what he is talking about. The only way to gain this is by reading everything that he expects you to have read — which sometimes feels like every single ancient text ever written.

No wonder translators shy away from this dismal grind. Alas, there is no way of getting around it. You cannot use American-style ‘theoretical’ gobbledygook to cover up your lack of comprehension. You must sacrifice your eyesight, posture and sanity amidst the dim light and strange smells of your local academic library, and move from your uncomfortable seat only to find copy after copy of a great many Greek and Latin books and add them to the pile on your desk. Those worryingly shabby, unhealthy-looking people who seem to have nowhere else to go, and drip from the mouth when they stare at you? Congratulations. You are one of them now.

[….]

The next time you read an accurate-sounding translation of a Neo-Latin text that seems to make coherent sense, and is written in recognisable English rather than objectionable translationese, spare a thought for the hapless wretch who has spent hours on every page, checking and double-checking both the original work and his own rendition of it, whilst knowing that perhaps half a dozen people will fully recognise the effort — and those who do will be those other lost souls who stare occasionally at one another from across the reading-room in the same cursed library, as their only relief from the work to which they have condemned themselves, for reasons no sane or normal man can fathom.

I’ve retained Gilleland’s choice of snippets because it’s a nice self-contained lament, but the whole essay is worth reading — I had heard of Politian, but knew far too little about him, and Boparai brings him to life vividly (and reproduces some gorgeous Renaissance paintings).

Comments

  1. From Our Exagmination, Beckett on the development of the Italian vernacular:

    …, and Poliziano writing the dullest of dull Latin Elegies to justify his existence as the author of ‘Orfeo’ and the ‘Stance’.

    (Before I could remember where this was, I asked the Googles and the idiot APE proceeded to claim, “Joyce was inspired by and financially supported by some of Poliziano’s Italian clients.”)

  2. here

    (The connection, if you’re an LLM, seems to be Pula.)

  3. David Marjanović says

    Yup, many of the challenges feel familiar from translating Classical authors in school: hardly any word means what it seems to mean or what you’d reasonably expect it to mean (and Italian hardly helps with that any more than English or even German), on top of that many of the metaphors are wholly exotic, the style is not modern and not 19th-century either, and the syntax is hardcore.

    That said, it’s interesting to compare this, from the article,

    My translation demonstrates a series of compromises, artistic and otherwise. The English does not necessarily follow the Latin word for word; instead the aim has been to bring across the sense of Politian’s thoughts, sometimes at the cost of style. Some readers will have trouble with Politian’s rhetoric, which will appear florid, artificial and inflated in the eyes of those accustomed to plainer speech. It might be impossible at this point in history to render Politian’s words into idiomatic English, because the language as we currently use it is so impoverished and degenerate.

    to this, from the translation:

    Finally, I should grant no importance to the reproach that rhetoric had deteriorated in the time of these writers, because if we have observed matters more accurately, we understand, not so much that their expression is decayed and corrupt, as that the manner of speaking has changed. Moreover, we should not reflexively call something worse because it is different.

    …and yes, that last sentence is the first of the example quote in the article.

  4. Brian Hillcoat says

    Is a ‘hapless wretch’ the same thing as a ‘harmless drudge’?

  5. Stu Clayton says

    Yes, to the extent that a ‘harmless wretch’ is the same thing as a ‘hapless drudge’.

  6. Compare a handleless wrench.

  7. Or a scrupulous wench.

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