Simon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋

Dear literary scholars, you cannot plausibly analyse translated poems as if they have been written in the language you're reading.

Alliteration? Assonance? Rhymes scheme? Metre? Do these things come from the original language, or are they merely present in the translation?

Case in point: Homer is often translated into English iambic pentametre, whereas Greek editions are rendered in heroic metre (dactylic hexametre). If something metrical appears to be significant in the English translation, you'd better check that it is as significant in the original.

If you don't read the original, then ask someone who does. (Or find something else to read.)

#AmReading #LitCrit #Translation

May 27 at 4:52amWeb
Show thread14mission18h ago
@SimonRoyHughes I once found a rhyming translation of Beowulf. Wtf!
Seamus Heaney's alliterated translation is pretty good.
I've read that people have attempted to reproduce classical quantitative meters in English, using stressed and unstressed syllables instead of long and short. I've never seen it done much. It would be cool to see translations of classical literature done this way, to try to reproduce the feeling of the original.
Show threadFelix17h ago
@SimonRoyHughes True, you mustn’t attribute characteristics present only in translation to the source text. But on the other hand, surely it’s legitimate to comment on what those characteristics do for the translation. There’s nothing wrong with lit crit of translated works being lit crit of works as translated. It just mustn’t claim to be lit crit of the works as written in the source language.
Show threadSimon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋17h ago
@strutsulf Correctamundo! Analyse Pope's work on Homer as belonging to Pope. But the result has limited application outside of studies of Pope.
Show threadFelix16h ago
@SimonRoyHughes Exactly
Show threadjamo12h ago
@SimonRoyHughes Homer and 'original' an odd one to use afaiu we've not got a clue what a dude called Homer actually wrote.
Show threadSimon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋12h ago
@jamoquanty Original (source) language, not original content.
Show threadjamo12h ago

@SimonRoyHughes Point still stands I think

4/5/6th century bce metre, rhyme, alliteration, standardization and the impact of the scribal tradition on what many say was an oral tradition gets a bit weird.

Reading into a oral tradition......that's not gonna work.

Show threadSimon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋11h ago
@jamoquanty See if you can find your way back to the oral traditions. 🤔😉
Show threadjamo11h ago

@SimonRoyHughes again kinda the point, it's lonog lost and it seems you are scrying into much, much later versions.

If original language is important surely 100's of years and dialects away form the source are too.

Seems a big issue in bible land where the origin of texts is often not known but scholars obsesses over the Greek as that's what they got a basic intro to in bible school.

Show threadSimon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋11h ago
@jamoquanty I'm not scrying into anything. You have wandered from my original point by misinterpreting my intention and refusing my self-correction.
Show threadjamo11h ago
@SimonRoyHughes I'm sure you could have made the point with any number of Greek texts which have a secure date and author instead of a mysterious story no ones knows the origin of and many claim was never intended to be to be written down in the first place.
Show threadSimon Roy Hughes 🧌 ⬋⬋⬋11h ago
@jamoquanty We'll never know...
Show threaddon10h ago
@SimonRoyHughes I'm loving Walter Kaufmann's translation of Faust. I've read bits of Pope's translation of the 'Iliad' Horrible stuff.