Re: war and death are in my hand

At 3:30 pm -0400 14/6/01, David Peterson wrote:
>In a message dated 6/14/01 6:44:14 AM, matrix14@HOME.COM writes:
>
><< If I may make so bold as to ask, whence come these lines? >>
>
>    Vergil's Aeneid.
That's right - Book VII, lines 454 and 455:
"respice ad haec: adsum dirarum ab sede sororum,
 bella manu letumque fero."

>We've been talking about it,
Just a little  ;)

>and how the original
>translation (the one I'm currently reading; I was the one who originally
>posted this) isn't the best.  Oh well.  ~:)
'Tis the nature of translation, especially of something like the Aeneid.
It's virtually impossible to get everything across, no matter how brilliant
the translator; something gets lost.  All one can do is try to minimize the
losses and try (not easy) not to add too much extra that distorts the
original.

Who has made the best translation of the Aeneid?  I don't know.  The best
I've found is C.Day Lewis', published by Oxford University Press.  He is a
poet & translates the Aeneid as verse (which IMO one should).  But
arguments over who has translated Vergil the best and/or over the problems
of translation could make a long thread in themselves and probably belong
elsewhere than Conlang.

No need for any knitted eyebrows, David.  Your quote has got us some
interesting translations and Douglas' observation that _dirarum_ might be
_Dirarum_ was one that hadn't occurred to me and is, at least to me, very
interesting and wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started the whole
thing off.

Ray.


=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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