Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-10-27

along this line. I am often tempted to
say in reply to the question How can
tranlation be made effective in teaching
English. by doing something entirely
different from what we are now dom
But although the evidences Of our failure
are always with us. this answer is prob
!, ably over-impatient and hasty. Ii even
the divine Homer sometimes mods. per
haps We teachers should be forgiven an
occasional lapse from that eternal vigil
lance which is the spot cash price OF
complete success. But We ought never
to forgive ourselves as long as thu. a,iai-
! ity Of our output falls below reason
able standard of excellence.
! Can we through drill in translation i'm
prove the quality of the pupils English
] believe we can. In the first place. We
can be more constant in refusing to ac-
cept siovenly. unidiomatic renderirlgs.
| Pitfalls are many. and the beginner is
| sure to fall into many of them. In the
struggle to extract the meaning from the
text. when words, constructions and sub
| lect-matter are all strange, the pupil $
1 grip upon his mother-tongue is temporal
riy relaxed, and he perpetrates blunders
of which he would be incapable in an
original composition in English. When
he is t1oundering in the midst of difficult
| ties, the teacher must fly to the rescue
| for the habit of translation English is
soon formed. and it not only outrages the
| form and comeliness of the Englisi.
| tongue. but erects a barrier. sometimes
an insurmountable one. to the genuine
appreciation of the original text. 1t may
| be well to give few out of many avail
able examples. The neuter pleural de
monstrative which appears in almost ev-
| cry Greek sentence is inveterately trans
lated these things he did these
| things, after these things. he advised
things" and so on ad infinitum The use
I of the demonstratives in Greek where our
| idiom requires possessive or persona
pronoun is another crux Our ears are
N Cot ba,. .,,f
| that one and The land of those" and
yet we too often tolerate such awkward
liberalism. The Greek participle is dali
i ~ rock of offence. Ii sometimes seems
! as if league had been organized to
secure uniformity in its mistranslaton.
The approved style for the substitute
particinle with the article is illustrated
i by such blotches as "he being injured
and they being benefited. 1t is hard
for the teachers to drive the fact home
that participates are ten times as numer-
Gus in Greek as in English, and most plI-
pills cling with tenacity to the use of the
English participle rendering for the
Greek circumstantial. in spite of the fact
that our language demands the insertion
of the logical link, the when. if. because
etc. wherever the logical relation is UNI
doubted. Hardest of all to master are
some of the varieties of the supplements
ry participle The avoidance Of the pos
translation English. In fact it some
times seems as if pupils had never heard
of the existence of the pOSsesSive case
" ithout multiplying illustrations it sui-
fees to say that if the pupils English is
to be improved rather than injured BIZ
translation, every word and phrase that
seem strange. and unnatural must be
lowed to stand. Caricatures and mutiia-
lions of our mother tongue. and long
strings of words that convey no clear ami
definite meaning, must not be accepte,i
on the ground that they are Iransla-
tons. 1t is unfair to put the RESPONSE
bility for oar awkwardness and ugliness
upon innocent Greeks who died 300 years
ago
But how to accomplish this. aye. there's
the rub. In my judgment the essential
thing is to make the pupil realize that
the text means something. and that ne
must find out what ii means in order to
make translation possible. In this mat
/ ter misconception abounds. and ii per-
lsistS even in the college stage of train
ing. Not long ago | examined IA candi-
date for advanced standing. He was Civ
en- passage to translate This he did
in such way as to make it clear that
, while he knew the ordinary meaning of
most of the words. he had no adequate
idea of the sense of the passage. | asked
HIM 10 explain the meaning. and with Il
tinge of resentment in his tone he re-
piled: Il supposed | was only to trans
late, and did not think | would be asked
| to give the meaning. We are not don,,
our work well as teachers of the classics
/ If we do not make our pupils see that
every sentence means something in it.
self and stands in some definite relation
to what precedes and what follows. These
LOGICAL relations make more trouble than
anything else, for they involve the hand
| ling of the most perpleXing class of
| words in the Greek language-the parti-
| cles. 1t is no disgrace to confess after
years of study that one has not mastered
! Them and yet if no effort is made to do
so the study of Greek becomes IA farce
In making sure that the meaning is
| grasped, grammatical relations must be
M raj mr. discussed nd tic
/ liminary process, literal renderings that
violate English usage may be, perhaps il
/ is better to say must be. tolerated. But
| the pupil should not be allowed to think
| that this is translation. 1t is only a step
| towards translation 1t is not "A bad pia;,
to make distinction between the ad-
vance and the review lesson. to maize the
main object in the handling Of the ad-
vance the thorough understanding of the
sense. and to require translation only in
the review In this work it is well to re-
! qliire Il summary of paragr or IL
! cha pier in the pupils own words When
the teacher is satisfied that the idea has
been grasped perhaps not fully and ab-
/ solutely (ior the impossible must not h,
demanded) but with Il tolerable degree of
accuracy and completeness. the work of
| translation begins Arnold OF Rugby,
said: Every Greek sentence contains
problem in English The difficulty of
the problem varies with the length and
completely of the sentence and the ma
| ture of the subject-matter: that is. the
4 degree III winch III Is foreign to the
| knowledge and experience of the pupil
When the subject-matter is within the
pupirs range and the sentence short and
| simple. he ought to be able to solve the
problem of translation by himself. But
pupils are often blind to the fact that
I there is any problem to solve. 1t is the
| teachers duty to open their eyes They
shou.-. be shown that there is such a
| thing as choice of words. Teachers
ought to insist that the best word be
| found TO express the meaning. Such IA
search draws the pupil into closer rela-
! tions with his task. it tends perceptibly
| to illuminate his darkness. and so neces-
sarily reacts favorably upon his English
| In English have found that pupils often
| do not understand and do not know that
| they do not understand. simply because
| they have no accurate knowledge of the
meaning and proper use of words, fire.
auentIy because they fail to apprecia .e
what Il word suggests. what is technical
| " called its convotation in distinction
| from it's definition The right choice of
words depends largely upon insight into
their ccnnotation. 1t takes pupils some
time to realize that there is such a thin
as connotation in a foreign language. ana
in their TRANSACTIONS into Greek and Lat
in they unconsciously produce monstros-