A translator will often meet with idiomatic phrases in the original author, to which no corresponding idiom can be found in the language of the translation. As a literal translation of such phrases cannot be tolerated, the only resource is, to express the sense in plain and easy language. Cicero, in one of his letters to Papirius Pætus, says, “Veni igitur, si vires, et disce jam προλεγομενας quas quæris; etsi sus Minervam,” Ep. ad Fam. 9, 18. The idiomatic phrase si vires, is capable of a perfect translation by a corresponding idiom; but that which occurs in the latter part of the sentence, etsi sus Minervam, can neither be translated by a corresponding idiom, nor yet literally. Mr. Melmoth has thus happily expressed the sense of the whole passage: “If you have any spirit then, fly hither, and learn from our elegant bills of fare how to refine your own; though, to do your talents justice, this is a sort of knowledge in which you are much superior to your instructors.”—Pliny, in one of his epistles to Calvisius, thus addresses him, Assem para, et accipe auream fabulam: fabulas immo: nam me priorum nova admonuit, lib. 2, ep. 20. To this expression, assem para, &c. which is a proverbial mode of speech, we have nothing that corresponds in English. To translate the phrase literally would have a poor effect: “Give me a penny, and take a golden story, or a story worth gold.” Mr. Melmoth has given the sense in easy language: “Are you inclined to hear a story? or, if you please, two or three? for one brings to my mind another.”
But this resource, of translating the idiomatic phrase into easy language, must fail, where the merit of the passage to be translated actually lies in that expression which is idiomatical. This will often occur in epigrams, many of which are therefore incapable of translation: Thus, in the following epigram, the point of wit lies in an idiomatic phrase, and is lost in every other language where the same precise idiom does not occur:
On the wretched imitations of the Diable Boiteux of Le Sage:
Le Diable Boiteux est aimable;
Le Sage y triomphe aujourdhui;
Tout ce qu’on a fait après lui
N’a pas valu le Diable.
We say in English, “’Tis not worth a fig,” or, “’tis not worth a farthing;” but we cannot say, as the French do, “’Tis not worth the devil;” and therefore the epigram cannot be translated into English.
Somewhat of the same nature are the following lines of Marot, in his Epitre au Roi, where the merit lies in the ludicrous naïveté of the last line, which is idiomatical, and has no strictly corresponding expression in English:
J’avois un jour un valet de Gascogne,