Translation and its Problems

Extract

The theory of translation is still so undeveloped that any serious study of it is bound to deserve attention. This would be so if the writer touched no more than a few familiar languages; when his experience ranges from East to West and from ancient to modern centuries, the interest is correspondingly greater. Mr. Bates’s new hook is therefore particularly welcome, though in the matter of principles he is less explicit than one could wish, his method through the greater part of the book being to present different modern versions of the same passage (sometimes two, sometimes as many as five) and to leave the reader to draw conclusions. What follows is partly a commentary on Mr. Bates’s positive statements, partly a record of personal conclusions from the material provided. His own endeavour is ‘to provoke thought without unduly provoking the reader’; mine is the same.

In his opening pages Mr. Bates stresses the value of translation as a means to international understanding; few would dispute this, but few again have ever visualised the matter practically. Hence there is aptness in the detailed account of translation in modern Italy, an account which in its knowledge and sympathy is itself an excellent preamble to the renewal of a broken friendship. It is good to find justice done to the intellectual qualities of the Italians and recognition paid to the high standards of scholarship which distinguish much ‘popularisation ‘of Greek and Latin classics. We are given, moreover, an interesting cross-section of Italian opinion (official and unofficial) on the political and cultural significance of translation—a question of particular importance in Italy since so much is translated into Italian and so little out of it. Political propaganda apart, one would welcome signs of a similar concern in this country.