United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate.
See M. B., pp. 140-143, and, still better, Rhys Davids' "Birth Stories," pp. 58-63. See also Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," p. 29. This is an addition of my own, instead of "There are also topes erected at the following spots," of former translators. Fa-Hsien does not say that there were memorial topes at all these places. Asita; see Eitel, p. 15.
That was their adoption of the principle of all early translators, perhaps worded best by Purvey, who completed the Wiclif version: "The best translation is to translate after the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as open in English as in Latin." That makes for accuracy.
Furthermore, it is also, in the English version of the King James translators, a little masterpiece of style. The words are simple, homely, and direct. Most of them are of Saxon origin, and the majority are monosyllabic. Less than half a dozen words in the entire narrative contain more than two syllables.
Hence the course of science is often retrogressive. To this class of writers belong also those translators who, besides translating their author, at the same time correct and alter him, a thing that always seems to me impertinent. Write books yourself which are worth translating and leave the books of other people as they are.
The text of this sentence is perplexing; and all translators, including myself, have been puzzled by it. See what we are told of king Asoka's grant of all the Jambudvipa to the monks in chapter xxvii. There are several other instances of similar gifts in the Mahavansa. Watters calls attention to this as showing that the monks of K'eeh-ch'a had the credit of possessing weather-controlling powers.
Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding century, that the text was sacred, that his duty was to give the exact meaning of it, without epithets or ornaments, and thus the original grace is completely preserved. Of a wholly different kind, and more after Quarles's manner, is a collection of thoughts in verse, which he calls a book for boys and girls.
In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, as in fronte and braccia. As a consequence hereof, Dante's lines, although always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine letters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three. Hence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the original; its soul is more cumbered with body.
An English antiquary mistakes a tomb in a Gothic cathedral for the tomb of Hector. Pope, our great poet, and prince of translators, mistakes Dec. the 8th, Nov. the 5th, of Cinthio, for Dec. 8th, Nov. 5th; and Warburton, his learned critic, improves upon the blunder, by afterward writing the words December and November at full length.
"A translation," he says, "ought to read like an original;" and Gordon has not failed, I think, to reach this perfection. It is not commonly attained among translators: Gordon says, of one rendering of Tacitus, "'Tis not the fire of Tacitus, but his embers; quenched with English words, cold and Gothick."
Word Of The Day