More on the art of translation

[SeattleUte]

Reading a recent article on the recent translations of the Aeneid by Robert Fagles and Stanley Lombardo, I came across this marvelous passage comparing the two works and the translators' approaches:



Fagles's language is the richer and lusher, and it seeks more identifiably poetic effects; Lombardo is more austere, and sticks closer to Virgil; he is very skillful at maintaining fidelity while keeping within the bounds of natural English. Here is first Fagles's, then Lombardo's version of the introduction of the Amazon-like warrior Camilla :

Topping off the armies
rides Camilla, sprung from the Volscian people,
heading her horsemen, squadrons gleaming bronze.
This warrior girl, with her young hands untrained
for Minerva's spools and baskets filled with wool,
a virgin seasoned to bear the rough work of battle,
swift to outrace the winds with her lightning pace.
Camilla could skim the tips of the unreaped crops,
never bruising the tender ears in her swift rush....

Now Lombardo:

Last of all rode Camilla the Volscian,
Leading her mounted troops and squadrons
Flowering with bronze. This princess warrior
Had not trained her hands to women's work,
Spinning and weaving, but trained to endure
The hardships of war and to outrun the wind.
She could sprint over a field of wheat
And not even bruise the tender ears....

English necessarily expands Latin; it has definite and indefinite articles, for one thing, and Latin hasn't. Virgil's lines here run to forty-seven words; Lombardo's version, fifty-nine; Fagles's, seventy. My impression is that these figures accurately reflect the expansion rates of the two translators in general. Lombardo's greater leanness is largely owed to his fidelity to Virgil, whose imagery he tends to trust will carry over into English; "flowering with bronze," for example, is a literal translation. But this faithfulness is not slavish; where Fagles has "Minerva's spools and baskets filled with wool," Virgil has "distaff or baskets of Minerva"; Fagles clarifies the mythological reference at the price of expansion, while Lombardo, with "spinning and weaving," preserves Virgil's brevity by chucking Minerva. On the other hand, Fagles does better with "Camilla could skim the tips of the unreaped crops"; the rhythm of his line as a whole makes a meaty and Virgilian mouthful, and goes a little further toward preserving an element in the intactae segetis per summa volaret gramina of the original (intactae: untouched; Fagles's "unreaped") that is lost in Lombardo's minimalist "over a field of wheat."

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Which do you prefer? Lombardo is more to my taste, but clearly it's very subjective. The author admires both very much but here seems to lean a little toward Fagles. It's interesting that he calls Lombardo the more faithful to the original text when Lombardo's Iliad was considered less a work for purists than Fagles'. But the dinstinctions are striking.

Here is the article:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20054?email

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

English necessarily expands Latin; it has definite and indefinite articles, for one thing, and Latin hasn't.

Romance languages have definite and indefinite articles don't they?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Romance languages have definite and indefinite articles don't they?

Apparently Latin does not.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Apparently Latin does not.

Strange.

Apparently you are correct. Strange that French, Italian, Romansque and Spanish do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_grammar

In Latin there is no indefinite article or definite article, though there are demonstratives, such as hic, haec, hoc (masculine, feminine and neuter for this) and ille, illa, illud (for that). As in English, these can act as pronouns as well. There are also possessive adjectives and pronouns, cardinal and ordinal numbers, quantifiers, interrogatives, etc.

[All-American]

It's the curse and the beauty of Latin. The language flows all the more because it is not burdened by articles (which, if you think about it, really aren't all that necessary. Look at any bit of english prose, and you could probably decipher the meaning without excessive difficulty, thus eliminating the language's most common word). But we like our articles.

What's this doing in Religion, by the way?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by All-American

It's the curse and the beauty of Latin. The language flows all the more because it is not burdened by articles (which, if you think about it, really aren't all that necessary. Look at any bit of english prose, and you could probably decipher the meaning without excessive difficulty, thus eliminating the language's most common word). But we like our articles.

What's this doing in Religion, by the way?

It self-evidently belongs in the religion section. Apart from that, all history has religion as at least a subtext. For example, the Civil War.

[All-American]

Were it sufficiently self-evident, I would not have asked what it is doing in the religion section. Football certainly has religion as a subtext-- it is, in fact, the last modern remnant of the ancient combat ritual, complete with pylons marking off the sacred zone and fertility priestesses on the sidelines-- yet we don't put THAT in the religion section.

[Archaea]

Well, apart from the subtext issue, I find anything historical or philosophical related to the religious aspects of our human psyche.

[Solon]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

all history has religion as at least a subtext.

A worthy quotation.

I am dying to get my hands on a copy of Fagles' Aeneid, but I've been too poor to shell out the $30+. His translation of the Iliad is by far my favorite. I like to think his vivid imagery has a similar effect on me as hearing the Homeric Greek would have had on the ancient Greeks. I love reading Homer in Greek, but it will always be more difficult for me than reading Fagles' English.

Does it read this well throughout?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Solon

A worthy quotation.

I am dying to get my hands on a copy of Fagles' Aeneid, but I've been too poor to shell out the $30+. His translation of the Iliad is by far my favorite. I like to think his vivid imagery has a similar effect on me as hearing the Homeric Greek would have had on the ancient Greeks. I love reading Homer in Greek, but it will always be more difficult for me than reading Fagles' English.

Does it read this well throughout?

I haven't gotten either Lombardo's or Fagles' Aeneid yet. I've read Fitzgerald's which is very celebrated and I love. I have both Fagles' and Lombardo's Iliad and love them both. I re-read passages of the Iliad all the time. You know, it's most often Lombardo's Iliad that I pick up. Some people think Lombardo's is not enough the real deal, but I'm not at your level.

What I need to do is read Pope's Iliad, because even Fagles' introduction calls that the greatest Iliad ever.