Recent Trends in Classical Prose Translation

Recent Trends in Classical Prose Translation Steven J. Willett Shizuoka University of Art and Culture The prose of contemporary English translators resembles the wings of an ostrich: it enables them to run, though not to soar. They run within a very narrow stylistic range, from the briskly informal and colloquial to the dryly literal and blunt, often circling back and forth between both. This crude reduction of English to some mix of the breezy, spontaneous, and bare, a diminution that should never be confused with the plain style, enables the translator to cover a lot of complex linguistic ground in history and philosophy with the minimum of effort. Little time need be spent on reproducingthestylisticregisters,rhythmiceffects,fluctuatingtempos , or implicit metaphors of the source language. Such prose is certainly easy to read and makes minimal demands on students, who generally prefer their English to mimic the effortless, relaxing flow of banter in a situation comedy.The relative ease of producing languageuntouchedbythehigherstylisticflightsalsopermitsmore, and more frequent, translations than we would perhaps otherwise have if full attention were given to capturing the original text in a comparable style.The efflorescence of Greek prose translation that we’ve seen in the past twenty years, particularly in philosophy, may partlybeattributedtotherelaxeddemandforwell-worked,sophisticated , and complex English. But whatever advantages this medium may have in the smooth production and consumption of Classical texts, advantages one should not want to discount in the current academic climate, it cannot soar when Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, Livy, or Tacitus soars. It would be tempting to blame the lack of stylistic flair we see in so much contemporary translation on an evolutionary decline in English.Tempting, but wrong. George Orwell was much closer to the truth in his famous 1946 essay “Politics and the English 238 SYLLECTA CLASSICA Language.”1 He thought the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: slovenly thinking leads to ugly and inaccurate English, which in turn makes it easy to have slovenly thoughts. He pinpointed the problem in the tendency of writers to employ dying metaphors, padded verb phrases, pretentious diction, and meaningless words. The result is staleness of imagery and lack of precision: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing” (423). Orwell was rightaboutthepoliticalandeconomiccausesofdecline.Theprevalent failings of contemporary prose translation stem from a complex of factors that include declining standards in secondary and higher education, the absorption of publishers by conglomerates who then squeeze them for higher sales at any literary price, competition from electronic entertainment, and the cognitive passivity induced in young readers by several decades of television. These factors combine to make publishers and translators present the ancient world in as simple, undemanding, and attractive a form as possible. Thus the narrowing of public taste, with its resulting intolerance for difficulty, must bear much of the blame for the slovenly English in so much recent Classical prose translation. The following survey covers this area of translation down to about the third century CE, assessing quality and accuracy while drawing attention to neglected work or serious gaps—of which there are far too many—in coverage. Because so many older translations are still in use, particularly in history, its chronological ambit extends back some four or five decades. GREEK PROSE 1. HISTORY Herodotus The ancient world characterized Herodotus’ style in the Histories, the first great work of artistic prose in the Western tradition, by a medley of qualities that often seem contradictory . Pseudo-Longinus calls him “most Homeric” (De Sublim. 1 G. Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.” In The Complete Works, Vol. 17 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1998) 421–30. WILLETT: RECENT TRENDS 239 13.3), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus agrees in describing him as an emulator of Homer (Ad Pomp. 3.11). But Dionysius also praises the charm (cariv~) and sweetness (hJdonhv) of his style (De Thuc. 23), while Plutarch uses very similar language at the start of his essay “The Malice of Herodotus” in an attempt to counteract the historian’s beguiling and seductive language: “The style of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, my dear Alexander, is so smooth and free from...