5.0651 Rs: Translating; Memorizing (3/75)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 5 Feb 1992 23:41:13 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0651. Wednesday, 5 Feb 1992.
(1) Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1992 16:32 EDT (31 lines)
From: Karl Van Ausdal <VANAUSDALK@APPSTATE.BITNET>
Subject: Source (?) of quotation on translation
(2) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 23:53:32 EST (19 lines)
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 5.0631 Qs: (Various)
(3) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 10:08:24 CST (25 lines)
From: (James Marchand) <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: translations like women
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1992 16:32 EDT
From: Karl Van Ausdal <VANAUSDALK@APPSTATE.BITNET>
Subject: Source (?) of quotation on translation
Although this is not a French aphorism, Karl Peltzer's *Das treffende Zitat*
(Thun und Munchen: Ott Verlag, 1957) p. 684 cites a German version, and a
source.
Ubersetzungen gleichen den Frauen: sind sie treu, so sind sie nicht
schon, und sind sie schon, und sind sie schon, so sind sie nicht treu.
[Umlauts over 1st "U" in Ubersetzungen, and "o" in both schons]
The citation is to Carl Bertrand, "Vorrede zu seiner Danteubersetzung" [umlaut
over 1st U in last word] The British Library catalogue and the National Union
Catalog both list Bertrand's three-volume metrical translation of the Divine
Comedy, published in Heidelberg, 1887-94.
Several dictionaries of "modern quotations" include a similar quotation by the
South African poet Roy Campbell (1901-1957):
Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least
attractive.
*Poetry Review*, June/July 1949
J.M. and M.J. Cohen's *The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations* (1971) is
the earliest collection (among the modest library holdings I've been able to
consult) to cite that version.
Karl Van Ausdal
Appalachian State University
vanausdalk@appstate.bitnet
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------27----
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 23:53:32 EST
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 5.0631 Qs: (Various) (8/105)
I'll not be the only respondent to remind M. Hayward, whose friend
seeks examples "of people engaged in memorizing. . . in the
Middle Ages") to bring up the "litel child" of Chaucer's
Prioresse's Tale:
"This litel child, his litel book lernynge,
As he sat in the scole at his prymer,
He *Alma Redemptoris" herde synge,
As children lerned hire antiphoner;
And as he dorste, he drough hym ner and ner,
And herkned ay the wordes and the note,
Til he the firste vers koude al by rote."
But the boy's memorization was parrot-like, as the Narrator goes
on to explain: He could RECITE, but "Noght wiste he what this Latyn
was to seye...." FNRobinson's edn, lines 516 ff.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 10:08:24 CST
From: (James Marchand) <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: translations like women
I have no answer to Peter Just's question as to the origin of the aphorism:
"Translations are like women: The ones that are beautiful are not faithful,
and the ones that are faithful are not beautiful," a beautiful chiasm. The
question does, however, provoke comment. As a member of several lists,
I note that this question is one of the most common. For some reason, we
are interested in who said what first. This interest does not surprise me,
but the palimpsesting syndrome, as Merton calls it, which invariably fol-
lows does. That is, scholars frequently shoot from the hip in such mat-
ters and attribute the origin of the quotation to the first person or
source they heard it from. In the case of Peter Just's quotation, I am
positive that it is not French, but German, and that it is turn of the
century or a little later, maybe Karl Kraus. Of interest is a facile at-
tribution of it I encountered: Trevor J. Saunders, "The Penguinification
of Plato," The Translator's Art (Betty Radice Festschrift) (Penguin Books,
1987), attributes it to Roy Campbell (Poetry Review, June/July 1949), in
the form "Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the
least attractive," certainly not his invention (perhaps the "wives" for
"women" bespeaks a German origin). One expects better of scholars, but
I note from guesting on librarians' lists they are no better; facile
athetization and attribution have always been one of our shames.
Jim Marchand