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Re: Hell hath no Fury (was: war and death are in my hand)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 12, 2001, 23:01
David Peterson wrote:

>In a message dated 6/12/01 1:05:37 PM, Guy.Wade@QTIWORLD.COM writes: > ><< But Raymond has a good point. Whoever translated "Hell" may have lost
the
>original meaning that made sense to the writer & his audience, unless the> >writer used an idiom that meant 'fiery place of torment.' When I cast it
in my own conlang, I made that cultural mistake: instead of Hell I used
>Grave/place of the dead (ile mordai) which would be a no-no if it changed> >the original meaning of the words, IMHO. >> > > Well, I'm not reading it in Latin. In fact, I have a cheap Dover
edition
>(cost me two bucks! How about that?), so I make no apology for the >translation I used (from the Latin). I just liked the lines, whether true
to
>the text or not. And of course, I think everyone should've known this had >nothing to do with judeo-christianity since I said it was from the Aeneid. >Just the book before he goes down to the Elysian Fields to talk to his
father
>who fortells the (now) history of Rome.
We should take the translator (not you) to task for introducing the word, and so the concept of, "Hell", which was, clearly, not in the original. Even if the original had had "infernus" 'the nether regions???' (is that idea Roman, or a later Xn invention?) or some such-- those of us who "had trouble with Hell" were, after all, in the right. Ah well: traduttore, tradittore.

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Sally Caves <scaves@...>