Minding One’s Business
An old dial in the Temple, London, bore the curious motto, “Begone about your business.” The maker, wishing to know what motto the benchers required for the dial, sent his lad to ascertain it. The boy applied while the benchers were dining, and one of them, annoyed at the unseasonable interruption, said, shortly, “Begone about your business.” The lad, thinking that this was the desired motto, reported it to his master, and the dial accordingly bore this novel inscription as long as the building upon which it was placed remained. The United States cent, which is usually called the Franklin cent, because its maxim was suggested by the philosopher, bore another legend, “Mind your business.” This has often been misquoted and altered to “Mind your own business,” which, of course, has an entirely different sense.
Direct Information
The late Mrs. Jane W—— was equally remarkable for kindness of heart and absence of mind. One day she was accosted by a beggar, whose stout and healthy appearance startled her into a momentary doubt of the needfulness of charity in this instance. “Why,” exclaimed the good old lady, “you look well able to work.” “Yes,” replied the supplicant, “but I have been deaf and dumb these seven years.” “Poor man, what a heavy affliction!” exclaimed Mrs. W——, at the same time giving him relief with a liberal hand. On returning home she mentioned the fact, remarking, “What a dreadful thing it is to be deprived of such precious faculties!” “But how,” asked her sister, “did you know that the poor man had been deaf and dumb for seven years?” “Why,” was the quiet and unconscious answer, “he told me so.”
Mistranslation
A daughter of James Fenimore Cooper once remarked that the translator who first rendered her father’s novel, “The Spy,” into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the following: “Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton family was called ‘The Locusts.’ The translator referred to his dictionary and found the rendering of the word to be Les Sauterelles, ‘The Grasshoppers.’ But when he found one of the dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that purpose.
“Much laughter has been raised at a French littérateur who professed to be ‘doctus utriusque linguæ.’ Cibber’s play of ‘Love’s Last Shift’ was translated by a Frenchman who spoke ‘Inglees’ as ‘La Dernière Chemise de l’Amour;’ Congreve’s ‘Mourning Bride,’ by another, as ‘L’Epouse du Matin;’ and a French scholar included among his catalogue of works on natural history essays on ‘Irish Bulls’ by the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of ‘Macbeth,’ renders ‘Out, out, brief candle!’ as ‘Sortez, chandelle.’ And another, who traduced Shakespeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering Northumberland’s famous speech in ‘Henry IV.’ In the passage
“‘Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone.’
the words italicized are rendered, ‘ainsi douleur! va-t’en!’-‘so grief, be off with you!’ Voltaire did no better with his translations of several of Shakespeare’s plays; in one of which the ‘myriad-minded’ makes a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an avowed resolution to carve for himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which retranslated, reads, ‘What care I for lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat.’