The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1866-11-23
TRANSACTIONS.

There is no more thankless, and indeed al
together improbable task than that of trans
lating books for publication The gualiica-
tions for n thorough discharge of the work are
such as arc seldom possessed by the poor hacks
| who have to resort to this drudgery for livcli-
hood They must be perfectly convcrsant with
both languages, must ut the same time be good
scholars; and furthermore possess the faculty
of expressing themselves with ease, fuency
and elegance, both in prose and verse. These
are few of the postulates. Still, after all,
none but man of genius can translate works
of genius, SO as to make them readable. We
have few such translatons. ScHLEGEL's
Shakespeare, CoLERIDGEs Wnllcnstcin, BuL-
| wER's Schillcr's Poems, and few more Such
| work cannot in reason be expected Mt a dollur
| a page, and yet the public will carp at bad
| translations.
| Certainly, the work is very often performed
| by persons altogether incompetent. A trans
lator should rarely have to resort to diction-
ary; otherwise, he will find that dictionaries
nrc like Sam. Weller's widows-dangerous
Some years ago we read translation of Hen
RVS Life Of Calvin, in which blundcrs innu-
merablc occurred One of these we happen to
remember just now. The word Hcdcrliches
Madchen occurred in the original, which the
translator, msled by his dictionary, rendered
singing girl" 1t should have been, "a girl of
| bad character" This is of piece with the oft
quoted 'sLa dernierc chemisc dc Eamour,'' for
| "Love's Last Shift"
The translators of VIcToR HuGo's Travail
| III
them. This is hard for if translator does
| his work we'll, he receives no credit; his
name is not even mentioned. Let him fail ever
so little and he incurs the censure Of publish
ers and public. There werc so many absurd-
ties in this book of VIcToR IIUGo's, unquestion-
ably the authors own handiwork and they
were so frequently held up to rdicule, that his
friends and partisans found it necessary to at
tempt to avert some Of this censure from the
author to his translators. Some of these criti-
cisms arc just, others arc puerile. These un-
fortunates have, ut length, been taken off the
wheel, and new victim placed there in their
stead. The translator of the "Cfemenceau
Tragedy" of ALEXANDER DUMAS, Jr., now oc-
cupies this uncnyiable position; and from the
specimens we have seen we must confess that
he has taken some unwarrantable liberties with
his authors text. For instance, DUMAS hero
says: aces jeunes files me gataicnt dc la mieur" ("
[These girls did their best to spoil mc.1 1nthc
New York edition this simple sentence reads:
"Thcse young ladies treated me with candies from
their earnings" Again, the boys mother pur-
chases for him "un couuert ct tmbale d'argent;'
Ia knife, fork and silver cup,] rendered by the
translator, go small silver locket." "C'est IN,
tatalite Acecptc h!" is rendered: "Tho cards
come out so, and there is no now dea'' But
the following, VIC think, caps the climax of the
free-and-casy style of translation: al un de
nos canidradcs, Qui tu donne an 81 joi coup dc
poing;" rendered. "Onc Of our comrades, the
chalky y-chap you tapped the claret of SO prize
ringly." One moro and we arc done: Etc est
3ote, neais bien moins joc qu'Iza." "Shc is pret-
ty, but cannot hold n candle to Iza."
We strongly suspect that our friend BRIoK
P0mERoY had a hand in this travcsty of the
"Clcmenccau Tragedy
al,o,,o 4 sl.1I l;.1>