What’s the story on literal translations?
Tash, asked earlier about how I can say one Plato translation is more literal than another in the absence of THE original text. The long answer takes thirteen weeks in GOVT2601. The short answer is that there are foundation texts and modern translators take many liberties with them. In the Victoria Age Benjamin Jowett of Oxford University censored out the references to homosexuality from Plato’s works. In the 20th Century Penguin Press required translators to render the classics palatable to adolescents by using contemporary terminology and words only in the common vocabulary (so no need to use a dictionary). Hence the Socrates refers at one point in the Penguin edition of the Republic to “call girls” long before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to call anyone. Anachronism was Ok to Penguin, if it communicated. During the Cold War in the 1950s Penguin censored the word “communism” from Thomas More’s Utopia. More common is the smoothing of grammar and syntax from one language to another to make it read better in the target language. Bloom’s literal translation of Plato is harder to read – it is more wordy and repetitious.
In a recently purchased copy of Nabokov’s Lolita, I got to about page 150 to find a page apparently accidentally inserted from another book. My saucy tale was suddenly interrupted by a page out of The Life of Saint Therese! Another subtle message from Penguin, perhaps?
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was also a professional lepidopterist at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, where he wrote the description card for the specimens. His descriptions are spare, elegant, and ethereal; they alone are worth the visit. And there are Shakespeare’s glass flowers. For more on Nabokov see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov
By the way, I am sure he would be amused to learn that Lolita is bound with an errant page.
There are various translation styles, each having certain advantages. However, important factors include the audience, the time of writing, and the culture of the text and maybe lastly the translator’s orientation.
So is the Penguin version something akin to Plato-Lite? If I were to re-read The Republic, or even expand into some new texts, should I be trying to get my hands on a more literal interpretation.
I guess – is close enough good enough?