Have you ever found yourself in this situation? Your teacher assigns you reading from an old book. The collective groan in class scares you. When you get back to your dorm and begin your assigned reading, you realize something. The book you are reading makes no sense! In a fit of rage, you throw the book across your dorm room.
College students often complain that their required readings for their Literature, Classics and Philosophy courses are indecipherable. However, the problem is not the text itself. Often the problem lies in the translation.
Since most people can not read Ancient Greek or Latin, students are forced to read a translated edition of the assigned text. Often translations can be, for lack of a better term, "clunky." The translator has to take into account a lot of things. Will he stay true to the language and idioms of the time it was written or should he update the language? Is one interpretation more correct than the other? Is it better to be translated literally or creatively? Each translator translates the work differently, meaning there are a ton of translations out there of a single text.
My problem with some translators is they often forget about the reality of the text. Greek Tragedies were performed for the masses that had background knowledge of the myths from which they were inspired. It is important to learn these myths, or background information, before diving into a text.
The trick to circumvent the agony of a translated text is to find a good translation. A good translation, in my opinion, has been done within the last 30 years and translates the text into something students can understand. The trick to finding this good translation is easy. Google is your best friend. Reviews on Amazon and forums on Reddit are always helpful.
To show the difference between a good and “bad” translation, I have chosen a section from The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.
- “And even as he, who, with distressful breath / Forth issued from the sea upon the shore / Turns to the water perilous and gazes”
- “Just as a swimmer, who with his last breath / flounders ashore from perilous seas, might turn / to memorize the wide water of his death”
The first translation is from 1867 and is translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The second translation is from 1954 and is translated by John Ciardi. Notice the shocking differences?
My final piece of advice is more of a warning. Some translations can be easy to read but can abridge the text, thus eliminating aspects of the story. If you follow these simple steps, you can turn a night of confusion into a night of sheer bliss. Read on my fellow students.
