Gourmand, yvrogne, et assuré menteur,
Pipeur, larron, jureur, blasphémateur,
Sentant la hart de cent pas à la ronde:
Au demeurant le meilleur filz du monde.
Although we have idioms in English that are nearly similar to this, we have none which has the same naïveté, and therefore no justice can be done to this passage by any English translation.
In like manner, it appears to me impossible to convey, in any translation, the naïveté of the following remark on the fanciful labours of Etymologists: “Monsieur,—dans l’Etymologie il faut compter les voyelles pour rien, et les consonnes pour peu de chose.”
CHAPTER XII
DIFFICULTY OF TRANSLATING DON QUIXOTE, FROM ITS IDIOMATIC PHRASEOLOGY.—OF THE BEST TRANSLATIONS OF THAT ROMANCE.—COMPARISON OF THE TRANSLATION BY MOTTEUX WITH THAT BY SMOLLET.
There is perhaps no book to which it is more difficult to do perfect justice in a translation than the Don Quixote of Cervantes. This difficulty arises from the extreme frequency of its idiomatic phrases. As the Spanish language is in itself highly idiomatical, even the narrative part of the book is on that account difficult; but the colloquial part is studiously filled with idioms, as one of the principal characters continually expresses himself in proverbs. Of this work there have been many English translations, executed, as may be supposed, with various degrees of merit. The two best of these, in my opinion, are the translations of Motteux and Smollet, both of them writers eminently well qualified for the task they undertook. It will not be foreign to the purpose of this Essay, if I shall here make a short comparative estimate of the merit of these translations.[57]