CLAS 4/532: Translation as Classical Reception
January 27, 2025
Introduction

Alexander Mikhalchyk, The Tower of Babel (2019)

CLAS 4/532 website: https://christed.faculty.arizona.edu/clas432/home.html

Translation Studies: diffuse academic multi-/interdiscipline (linguistics & semiotics, philosophy, comparative literature, cultural studies) reflecting conceptual complexity of translation (cf. Holmes/Toury map & elaborations, Munday ch. 1)

• grammar-translation: Classics (language-learning tool); revival of communicative & immersive approaches ("living Greek/Latin", e.g. Paideia: https://www.paideiainstitute.org/; Oxford Latin Syntax); Feeney, D. Beyond Greek (Cambridge, MA, 2016), McElduff, S. Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source (London and New York, 2013), Lianeri, A. and Zajko, V., eds. Translation and the Classics: Identity as Change in the History of Culture (Oxford, 2008)

• TS (Munday et al., Introducing Translation Studies): "scientific" technical terms, schemata, maps & diagrams, theorization, etc. (Inclusive Access, 1/28 deadline)
  
  
• CLAS 4/532: practical orientation > informed, reflective & creative translation of Greek & Latin poetic texts
  
  course components:
  (1) broad & highly selective introduction to field of Translation Studies
  (2) diachronic study of influential writers on translation (Cicero to contemporary theorists – Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader)
  (3) analysis of Greek and Latin poetic texts against published translations
  (4) your own translation practica (Exercises 1-3)
  
  
• course structure: (mostly) weekly alternation of GRK and LAT poetic texts ca. 90-100 lines by genre (graduate students: CLAS, GRK or LAT credit, "B" or higher on 2 translation exams)
  
  
• some basic terms:
  
  ST/SL (not O(riginal)T/OL), TT/TL?
  
  intralingual, interlingual, intersemiotic translation types (Jakobson)?
  
  general strategies (e.g. source-oriented vs. target-oriented) vs. specific procedures (e.g. expansion, calque) of translation (cf. Munday pp. 20-1)
  

• influential figures of early modern translation "theory": unsystematic, non-analytical, limited accounts (prescriptivist, source-centric & emphasize translator invisibility – "fidelity", "loyalty", "spirit", etc.)
  
  
  John Dryden (1631-1700)
  
  preface to trs. of Ovid's Epistles (AKA?):
  
  metaphrase: “‘Tis much like dancing on Ropes with fetter’d Leggs: A man may shun a fall by using Caution, but the gracefulness of Motion is not to be expected”; servile copying of words over ideas
  
  imitation: “a pattern . . . to write as he supposes that author would have done, had he lived in our age”; “To state it fairly, Imitation of an Authour is the most advantagious way for a translator to shew himself, but the greatest wrong which can be done to the Memory and Reputation of the dead”
  
  advocates paraphrase: “translation with Latitude”; “. . . to conform our Genius to his [i.e. source], to give thought either the same turn if our tongue will bear it, or if not, to vary the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance”; naive assumptions about fixed meaning + role of language & culture in translation; cf. Dryden's Aeneid translation (1697)
  
  
  Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
  
  “I was desir’d to say that the Authour who is of the Fair Sex, understood not Latine . . .” (Aphra Behn, professional playwright, poet, translator)
  
  
  

• ancient roots of word-for-word vs. sense-for-sense dichotomy
  
  Cicero, De optimo genere oratorum 14 (SL/ST vs. TL/TT)
  “I did not translate them as an interpres but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or as one might say the 'figures' of thought, but in language that conforms to our usage . . . non uerbum pro uerbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne uerborum uimque seruaui”
  [cf. Horace, Ars Poetica 133-4: nec uerbo uerbum curabis reddere fidus / interpres . . .]
  
  Cicero's comments rooted in class, status, self-representation & elite identity (“. . . for I did not think I ought to count them out to the reader like coins, but to pay them by weight, as it were”); rhetorician vs. interpreter & grammarian/teacher (hierarchy)
  
  Roman emphasis on translation as practical exercise for orators tied to cultural & public functions (vs. intellectual field)
  
  Pliny, Epistulae 7.9: Greek <> Latin, “to imitate the most approved authors gives one aptitude to invent after their manner” (imitatio) + competitive aspects of translation (aemulatio; cf. aemulor as translation term) > Roman cultural project
  
  Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 10.5: Greek > Latin + Latin > Latin (poetry, oratory: “I do not want Paraphrase (conversio) to be a mere passive reproduction, but to rival and vie with the original in expressing the same thoughts”)
  
  Jerome’s letter to Pammachius (De optimo genere interpretandi): echoes Cicero in defense of his Greek > Latin translation of Pope Epiphanius' letter with examples of differences in Hebrew, Septuagint, New Testament (Acts of Apostles), Latin versions of Bible, “I not only admit, but freely proclaim that in translation from the Greek—except in the case of Sacred Scripture, where the very order of the words is a mystery—I render not word for word [uerbum e uerbo], but sense for sense [sensum exprimere de sensu]” – acknowledges differences (word order, diction) in SL & TL require changes for intelligibilty
  
  burden in translating meaning in sacred texts? (note Jerome's Christianizing of Judaic text & ideas, biblical exegesis)
  
  
  Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
  
  
• Schleiermacher (philosopher & theologian): translation part of German literary & cultural project of German Romanticism, “to give the reader, through the translation, the impression he would have received as a German reading the work in the original language”
  
  strategy: new respect for foreignness & difference, naturalizing vs. alienating translation, “Either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him; or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer toward him” – tension between domestication and foreignization central to translation strategy
  
  increased sensitivity to cultural context of language: translation as interpretation & reception of source in new cultural context (vs. unaffected translation/communication of ST’s words, ideas, etc. > hermeneutics vs. naive idea of equivalence), e.g. unique networks of signification for individual words
  
  “If we consider, however, a master’s power to shape the language in a larger context, his use of related words and their roots in great quantities of works that make reference to one another, how is the translator to find his way, given that the system of ideas and the signs for them in his language are completely different than in the original, and the roots of the words, instead of neatly corresponding to one another, rather overlap in the most curious patterns? It is therefore impossible that the language use of the translator could cohere everywhere in exactly the same way as that of his writer. Here, then, he will have to be content to achieve in particular what he cannot on the whole.”
  
  
  Odyssey, Aeneid openings
  
  dating in Munday: “first century @AC”, “fourth century AC”?