[[1]] Mr. Schelling: for whom however, without any joke at all, I profess the very highest respect.
GERMAN "TRANSLATOR'S"
DEDICATION
TO
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
Sir,--Uncommon it may certainly be, but surely not a thing quite unheard of, that a translator should dedicate his translation to the author of the original work: and, the translation here offered to your notice--being, as the writer flatters himself, by no means a common one,--he is the more encouraged to take this very uncommon liberty.
Ah Sir Walter!--did you but know to what straits the poor German translator of Walter-Scottish novels is reduced, you would pardon greater liberties than this. Ecoutez. First of all, comes the bookseller and cheapens a translator in the very cheapest market of translation-jobbers that can be supposed likely to do any justice to the work. Next,--the sheets, dripping wet as they arrive by every post from the Edinburgh press, must be translated just as they stand with or without sense or connexion. Nay it happens not unfrequently that, if a sheet should chance to end with one or two syllables of an unfinished word, we are obliged to translate this first instalment of a future meaning; and, by the time the next sheet arrives with the syllables in arrear, we first learn into what confounded scrapes we have fallen by guessing and translating at hap-hazard. Nomina sunt odiosa: else--but I shall content myself with reminding the public of the well-known and sad mishap that occurred in the translation of Kenilworth. In another instance the sheet unfortunately closed thus:--"to save himself from these disasters, he became an agent of Smith-;" and we all translated--"um sich aus diesen trübseligkeiten zu erretten, wurde er Agent bei einem Schmiedemeister;" that is, "he became foreman to a blacksmith." Now sad it is to tell what followed: we had dashed at it, and waited in trembling hope for the result: next morning's post arrived, and showed that all Germany had been basely betrayed by a catch-word of Mr. Constable's. For the next sheet took up the imperfect and embryo catch-word thus:--"field matches, or marriages contracted fur the sake of money;" and the whole Gasman sentence should have been repaired and put to rights as follows: "Er negocirte, um sich aufzuhelfen, die sogenannten Smithfields heirathen oder Ehen, welche des Gewinnstes wegen geschlossen werden:" I say, it should have been: but woe is me! it was too late: the translated sheet had been already printed off with the blacksmith in it (lord confound him!); and the blacksmith is there to this day, and cannot be ejected.
You see, Sir Walter, into what "sloughs of despond" we German translators fall--with the sad necessity of dragging your honor after us. Yet this is but a part of the general woe. When you hear in every bookseller's shop throughout Germany one unanimous complaint of the non-purchasing public and of those great profit-absorbing whirlpools, the circulating libraries,--in short all possible causes of diminished sale on the one hand; and on the other hand the forestalling spirit of competition among the translation-jobbers, bidding over each other's heads as at an auction, where the translation is knocked down to him that will contract for bringing his wares soonest to market;--hearing all this, Sir Walter, you will perceive that our old German proverb "Eile mit Weile," (i.e. Festina lente, or the more haste, the less speed) must in this case, where haste happens to be the one great qualification and sine-quâ-non of a translator, be thrown altogether into the shade by that other proverb--"Wer zuerst kommt mahlt zuerst" (First come first served).
I for my part, that I might not lie so wholly at the mercy of this tyrant--Haste, struck out a fresh path--in which you, Sir, were so obliging as to assist me. But see what new troubles arise out of this to the unhappy translator. The world pretends to doubt whether the novel is really yours:[[1]] people actually begin to talk of your friend Washington Irving as the author, and God knows whom beside. As if any man, poets out of the question, could be supposed capable of an act of self-sacrifice so severe as that of writing a romance in 3 vols. under the name of a friend.
All this tends to drive us translators to utter despair. However I, in my garret, comfort myself by exclaiming "Odi profanum--," if I cannot altogether subjoin--"et arceo." From your obliging disposition, Sir Walter, I anticipate the gratification of a few lines by the next post establishing the authenticity of Walladmor. Should these lines even not be duly certified "coram notario duobusque testibus," yet if transmitted through the embassy--they will sufficiently attest their own legitimacy as well as that of your youngest child Walladmor.