Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Stoney Breyer" <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>]

[PK:] As a hypothetical example, the form we are used to as a limerick
may be very similar to the form used as a funeral elegy in another
language. Does that mean we should translate that language's funeral
elegy into 
English as a limerick?
[SB:] Well, it's worth trying.  Longfellow modeled Hiawatha on the
[German] translation of Kalevala.  The rhymed couplets of French
classical drama are impossibly jingle-y to the modern English ear, even
in comedy, like Richard Wilbur's translations of Moliere - but an entire
generation of English playwrights wrote enormously successful tragedies
in rhymed couplets under French influence.  Perhaps your hypothetical
translation would establish a canonical elegiac form in English! - just
as Tyndale's un-English translation of the Bible established a canonical
scriptural form which lasted for generations.

[PK:] But there must be a trade-off. In many cases it is simply
impossible to preserve in a translation all of the meaning of the
original, at the 
structural and literary levels as well as the local level. 
[SB:] Oh, I'd go farther and say it's impossible in *all* cases, even
the aircraft maintenance manual - I used to room with a translator of
Chinese scientific articles who wailed three or four times a week "You
can't say that in English!" ... It's a matter of choices, as actors say,
and I think there's plenty of room for translations, especially of
narrative, that allow thematic and dramatic considerations to govern
choices at the sentence level.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/