That can the vile, malignant crowd disdain.[52]
CHAPTER XI
OF THE TRANSLATION OF IDIOMATIC PHRASES.—EXAMPLES FROM COTTON, ECHARD, STERNE.—INJUDICIOUS USE OF IDIOMS IN THE TRANSLATION, WHICH DO NOT CORRESPOND WITH THE AGE OR COUNTRY OF THE ORIGINAL.—IDIOMATIC PHRASES SOMETIMES INCAPABLE OF TRANSLATION.
While a translator endeavours to give to his work all the ease of original composition, the chief difficulty he has to encounter will be found in the translation of idioms, or those turns of expression which do not belong to universal grammar, but of which every language has its own, that are exclusively proper to it. It will be easily understood, that when I speak of the difficulty of translating idioms, I do not mean those general modes of arrangement or construction which regulate a whole language, and which may not be common to it with other tongues: As, for example, the placing the adjective always before the substantive in English, which in French and in Latin is most commonly placed after it; the use of the participle in English, where the present tense is used in other languages; as he is writing, scribit, il écrit; the use of the preposition to before the infinitive in English, where the French use the preposition de or of. These, which may be termed the general idioms of a language, are soon understood, and are exchanged for parallel idioms with the utmost ease. With regard to these a translator can never err, unless through affectation or choice.[53] For example, in translating the French phrase, Il profita d’un avis, he may choose fashionably to say, in violation of the English construction, he profited of an advice; or, under the sanction of poetical licence, he may choose to engraft the idiom of one language into another, as Mr. Macpherson has done, where he says, “Him to the strength of Hercules, the lovely Astyochea bore;” Ον τεκεν Αστυοχεια, βιη Ηρακληειη· Il. lib. 2, l. 165. But it is not with regard to such idiomatic constructions, that a translator will ever find himself under any difficulty. It is in the translation of those particular idiomatic phrases of which every language has its own collection; phrases which are generally of a familiar nature, and which occur most commonly in conversation, or in that species of writing which approaches to the ease of conversation.
The translation is perfect, when the translator finds in his own language an idiomatic phrase corresponding to that of the original. Montaigne (Ess. l. 1, c. 29) says of Gallio, “Lequel ayant été envoyé en exil en l’isle de Lesbos, on fut averti à Rome, qu’il s’y donnoit du bon temps, et que ce qu’on lui avoit enjoint pour peine, lui tournoit à commodité.” The difficulty of translating this sentence lies in the idiomatic phrase, “qu’il s’y donnoit du bon temps.” Cotton finding a parallel idiom in English, has translated the passage with becoming ease and spirit: “As it happened to one Gallio, who having been sent an exile to the isle of Lesbos, news was not long after brought to Rome, that he there lived as merry as the day was long; and that what had been enjoined him for a penance, turned out to his greatest pleasure and satisfaction.” Thus, in another passage of the same author, (Essais, l. 1, c. 29) “Si j’eusse été chef de part, j’eusse prins autre voye plus naturelle.” “Had I rul’d the roast, I should have taken another and more natural course.” So likewise, (Ess. l. 1, c. 25) “Mais d’y enfoncer plus avant, et de m’être rongé les ongles à l’étude d’Aristote, monarche de la doctrine moderne.” “But, to dive farther than that, and to have cudgell’d my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern learning.” So, in the following passages from Terence, translated by Echard: “Credo manibus pedibusque obnixè omnia facturum,” Andr. act 1. “I know he’ll be at it tooth and nail.” “Herus, quantum audio, uxore excidit,” Andr. act 2. “For aught I perceive, my poor master may go whistle for a wife.”
In like manner, the following colloquial phrases are capable of a perfect translation by corresponding idioms. Rem acu tetigisti, “You have hit the nail upon the head.” Mihi isthic nec seritur nec repitur, Plaut. “That’s no bread and butter of mine.” Omnem jecit aleam, “It was neck or nothing with him.” Τι προς τ’ αλφιτα; Aristoph. Nub. “Will that make the pot boil?”
It is not perhaps possible to produce a happier instance of translation by corresponding idioms, than Sterne has given in the translation of Slawkenbergius’s Tale. “Nihil me pœnitet hujus nasi, quoth Pamphagus; that is, My nose has been the making of me.” “Nec est cur pœniteat; that is, How the deuce should such a nose fail?” Tristram Shandy, vol. 3, ch. 7. “Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit. Dî boni, nova forma nasi! The centinel look’d up into the stranger’s face.—Never saw such a nose in his life!” Ibid.
As there is nothing which so much conduces both to the ease and spirit of composition, as a happy use of idiomatic phrases, there is nothing which a translator, who has a moderate command of his own language, is so apt to carry to a licentious extreme. Echard, whose translations of Terence and of Plautus have, upon the whole, much merit, is extremely censurable for his intemperate use of idiomatic phrases. In the first act of the Andria, Davus thus speaks to himself: