Advice for prescriptivists, & translating Aurelius

Sun Sep 19 16:22:36 UTC 2010

Thanks for your take on this text, Joel. My knowledge of Greek (the
language Marcus Aurelius chose to write in) is non-existent, and of
Latin is limited to what I came across in Asterix as a kid, so I'm no
judge of the quality of this or any translation of a Greek or Latin
classic. The translator is Gregory Hays and I was remiss in not
mentioning him. But as a translator I'm aware that a writer is the
writer herself, or himself, plus his translators. Or as JosÃ© Ortega y
Gasset put it more beautifully, un escritor es Ã©l y sus traductores.
In other words, there are as many versions of a great book as there
are translations of it. And though I don't read ancient Greek, I'm
guessing that translation from that distant language into English is
very much a matter of the interpretation and biases of the translator.
Translations from Classical Chinese, I language I do read, are
notoriously dependent on the whims and preferences of the translator.
Another thing: though classics never get past their sell-by date,
translations do. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century English
translations of Russian or German literature are unreadable. But we
are still reading Jane Austen, the Russians are still reading
Dostoyevsky, and the Germans are still reading Goethe and Schiller in
the original languages. There's more than truthiness in the adage that
every generation needs its own translation of the classics.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
German, French, Italian > English
NeuchÃ¢tel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 77 4096132
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Advice for prescriptivists, & translating Aurelius
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Good advice that I take to heart, and catchily
> put. Â (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. Â 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". Â 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. Â 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. Â 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." Â What language was this sentence translated from?!
>
> This led me to wonder, just whose "original text"
> had been used? Â 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). Â [Text seen via Google Books snippet.]
>
> And what does the Arc Manor edition list as the
> earliest of its 8 "chief English
> translations"? Â Why, "1. By Meric Casaubon,
> 1634." Â There is a Wikipedia article on Casaubon;
> it observes "MÃ©ric Casaubonâ€™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)." Â 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."
>> Â  Â -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Penguin Kindle edition 2006, 11%
>>into the book.
>>
>>Neatly and felicitous are the operative words here. Easier said than done.
>>
>>Paul

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