Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

My apologies to all for inadvertently submitting this over Peter Kirk's
signature!

[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.

Stoney Breyer
Writer
Touchwood, Inc.
"For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision."