One snare that translators are constantly falling into is the use of English words which are like the foreign ones, but nevertheless are not equivalent terms, and translations that have taken their place in literature often suffer from this cause; thus Cicero's Offices should have been translated Duties, and Marmontel never intended to write what we understand by Moral Tales, but rather tales of manners or of fashionable life. The translators of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible render the French ancien, ancient, and write of ``Mr. Huet, the ancient Bishop of Avranch.'' Theodore Parker, in translating a work by De Wette, makes the blunder of con<p 52>verting the German word W<a:>lsch, a foreigner (in the book an equivalent for Italian), into Welsh.
Some men translate works in order to learn a language during the process, and they necessarily make blunders. It must have been one of these ignoramuses who translated tellurische magnetismus (terrestrial magnetism) as the magnetical qualities of Tellurium, and by his blunder caused an eminent chemist to test tellurium in order to find these magnetical qualities. There was more excuse for the French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels who rendered a welsh rabbit (or rarebit, as it is sometimes spelt) into un lapin du pays de Galles. Walpole states that the Duchess of Bolton used to divert George I. by affecting to make blunders, and once when she had been to see Cibber's play of Love's Last Shift she called it La derni<e!>re chemise de l'amour. A like translation of Congreve's Mourning Bride is given in good faith in the first edition of Peignot's Manuel du Bibliophile, 1800, where it is described as L'<E'>pouse de Matin; and the translation which Walpole <p 53>attributes to the Duchess of Bolton the French say was made by a Frenchman named La Place.
The title of the old farce Hit or Miss was turned into Frapp<e'> ou Mademoiselle, and the Independent Whig into La Perruque Ind<e'>pendante.
In a late number of the Literary World the editor, after alluding to the French translator of Sir Walter Scott who turned ``a sticket minister'' into ``le ministre assassin<e'>,'' gives from the Biblioth<e!>que Universelle the extraordinary translation of the title of Mr. Barrie's comedy, Walker, London, as Londres qui se prom<e!>ne.
Old translators have played such tricks with proper names as to make them often unintelligible; thus we find La Rochefoucauld figuring as Ruchfucove; and in an old treatise on the mystery of Freemasonry by John Leland, Pythagoras is described as Peter Gower the Grecian. This of course is an Anglicisation of the French Pythagore (pronounced like Peter Gore). Our versions of Eastern names are so different from the originals that when the <p 54>two are placed together there appears to be no likeness between them, and the different positions which they take up in the alphabet cause the bibliographer an infinity of trouble. Thus the original of Xerxes is Khshayarsha (the revered king), and Averrhoes is Ibn Roshd (son of Roshd). The latter's full name is Abul Walid Mohammed ben Ahmed ben Mohammed. Artaxerxes is in old Persian Artakhshatra, or the Fire Protector, and Darius means the Possessor. Although all these names—Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Darius—have a royal significance, they were personal names, and not titles like Pharaoh.
It is often difficult to believe that translators can have taken the trouble to read their own work, or they surely would not let pass some of the blunders we meet with. In a translation of Lamartine's Girondins some courtly people are described as figuring ``under the vaults'' of the Tuileries instead of beneath the arched galleries (sous ses voutes). This, however, is nothing to a blunder to be found in the Secret Memoirs of the Court of <p 55>Louis XIV. and of the Regency (1824). The following passage from the original work, ``Deux en sont morts et on dit publiquement qu'ils ont <e'>t<e'> empoisonn<e'>s,'' is rendered in the English translation to the confusion of common sense as ``Two of them died with her, and said publicly that they had been poisoned.''
This is not unlike the bull of the young soldier who, writing home in praise of the Indian climate, said, ``But a lot of young fellows come out here, and they drink and they eat, and they eat and they drink, and they die; and then they write home to their friends saying it was the climate that did it.''
Some authors have found that there is peril in too free a translation, thus Dotet was condemned on Feb. 14th, 1543, for translating a passage in Plato's Dialogues as ``After death you will be nothing at all.'' Surely he who translated Dieu d<e'>fend l'adult<e!>re as God defends adultery more justly deserved punishment! Guthrie, the geographical writer, who translated a French book of travels, unfortunately mistook neuvi<e!>me (ninth) for neuvelle or <p 56>neuve, and therefore made an allusion to the twenty-sixth day of the new moon.
Moore quotes in his Diary (Dec. 30th, 1818) a most amusing blunder of a translator who knew nothing of the technical name for a breakwater. He translated the line in Goldsmith's Deserted Village,
``As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away,