Advice for prescriptivists, & translating Aurelius

[Joel S. Berson]

Good advice that I take to heart, and catchily
put.  (Whose translation, and made when, is it?)

Browsing a few on-line translations, I am amazed
by what can be made from a single original, of a
dead but apparently not ossified language.  From
a translation by John Jackson (Oxford, The
Clarendon Press, 1906) [Gooble Books]:

"... but with what tact I may, say what the
speaker ought to have said, under pretence of
corroborating his arguments or contributing
something to the question at issue, avoiding all
reference to the disputed phrase,---or at least
try to use some similarly inoffensive mode of correction."

Not "neatly" and "felicitous prompting" here, but
"with what tact I may" and "similarly
inoffensive".  And "under pretence" gives a much
different impression of Alexander's (or perhaps
Marcus's) attitude toward correcting mistakes.
-----
There is one strange edition on-line, titled
simply "Meditations / Marcus Aurelius", from Arc
Manor, Rockville, Maryland, 2008, which I looked
at simply because it was the most recent I
noticed quickly.  Its front matter includes "The
original text has been reformatted for clarity
and to fit this edition. ... This book is
presented as is, without any warranties (implied
or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the
production, text or translation. The publisher
does not take responsibility for any typesetting,
formatting, translation or other errors which may
have occurred during the production of this book."

I suppose reading between the lines
(translating?) this means that someone gave Arc
Manor the nearly camera-ready content, which
perhaps they massaged a little.  But it seems
both the translator and the author of the
15-or-so page introduction don't want to take any
responsibility also -- I didn't see the name of either!

And at the end of the introduction its writer
says "Translations: THE following is a list of
the chief English translations of Marcus
Aurelius", names 8 translators (the most recent
being the 1906 Jackson I quoted above) but gives
only the translator's name and date without title
or publisher, and concludes "Pater's 'Marius the
Epicurian' forms another outside commentary,
which is of service in the imaginative attempt to
create again the period."  What language was this sentence translated from?!

This led me to wonder, just whose "original text"
had been used?  Applying my stone age plagiarism
detection app, Googling reveals exactly the same
text in the Arc Manor publication for the
paragraph on Alexander the grammarian (with the
sole exception of one probably end-of-line
hyphenation) as in Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
/ translated by Meric Casaubon, and with
engravings on wood by Hans Alexander Mueller (New
York: The Limited Editions Club, 1956).  [Text seen via Google Books snippet.]

And what does the Arc Manor edition list as the
earliest of its 8 "chief English
translations"?  Why, "1. By Meric Casaubon,
1634."  There is a Wikipedia article on Casaubon;
it observes "Méric Casaubon’s reputation was
overshadowed by that of his father; but his
editions of numerous classical authors,
especially of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,
were especially valued, and reprinted several
times (but by modern standards, his translation
is difficult reading)."  For those really into
this, his (and Arc Manor's) translation of Paul Frank's passage is:

"From Alexander the Grammarian, to be unre-
provable myself, and not reproachfully to
reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism,
or any false pronunciation, but dextrously by way
of answer, or testimony, or confirmation of the
same matter (taking no notice of the word) to
utter it as it should have been spoken; or by
some other such close and indirect admonition,
handsomely and civilly to tell him of it. "

Not too difficult for me, but I've been reading a
fair amount of 17th and 18th century writing.

And we can deduce that at least *Casaubon* didn't
write the introduction to the Arc Manor edition, with its odd last sentence.

Joel

At 9/19/2010 03:22 AM, Paul Frank wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>Here's a piece advice for grammatical prescriptivists, from Marcus
>Aurelius (remembering what he owes his teachers):
>
>"From Alexander the grammarian: not to leap on mistakes, or captiously
>interrupt when anyone makes an error of vocabulary, syntax, or
>pronunciation, but neatly to introduce the correct form of that
>particular expression by way of answer, confirmation, or discussion of
>the matter itself rather than its phrasing -- or by some other such
>felicitous prompting."
>    -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Penguin Kindle edition 2006, 11%
>into the book.
>
>Neatly and felicitous are the operative words here. Easier said than done.
>
>Paul
>
>Paul Frank
>Translator
>German, French, Italian > English
>Neuchâtel, Switzerland
>Tel. +41 77 4096132
>paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch
>
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