Are You Still Hot to Trot? Oh...Do Be. Do! by Reb MacRath
We called them trots--or sometimes cribs: word-for-word translations we used in the study of Latin. And in a moment I'll tell you why you should give a rat's arse about that. Without a trot, who could survive the horror of translating Cicero, Caesar, Horace, and the other Dead White Dudes who made our days such nightmares?
The two most basic trots were from the Loeb Classical Library and Cambridge University Press. Loeb as shown below shows the original text on the left and a more or less literal rendition on the right. The Cambridge text beside it sheds detailed light on lines and even single words.
Okay okay already! What's trotting got to do with you in 2021?
1) Learning to read at least parts
of the classics in their original language is the only way to really ‘get’ the
true power and beauty of the author's style.
2) Taken up as a hobby or just a
passing adventure you may find yourself with a new consuming passion. I began
with an attempt to translate 1 or 2 poems by a lesser-known Roman poet:
Propertius. This photo shows my reference guides now:
3) The pursuit of giving a dead text
new life is more challenging and rewarding than Sudoku, crosswords,1000-pc
puzzles, or collecting Legos.
4) As a writer I can't think of a
better warm-up exercise than wrestling with a line or two for a half-hour. The
repeated focus on finding the just-perfect word is a fine way to start a new
writing session.
One example? Certainly!
Consider the following translations
of the first lines of one poem by Propertius:
1) Cynthia first with her eyes
ensnared me poor wretch that had previously been untouched by desire.
--Loeb edition translated by G. P.
Goold..(Verdict: Oh dear...)
2) Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes--a fool/who had never before been touched by desires.
--Princeton University translation by Vincent Katz. (Verdict: better but still missing a commanding tone or the style of a living language.)
3) Cynthia's eyes ensnared me who'd never before been caught/ in desire's nets...
University of California Press
translated by David R Slavitt. (Verdict: Slavitt's a brilliant translator and
poet and his rendition is shot through with flashes of greatness. But I can't picture these lines turning many heads in the Forum when read.)
In the trots, I found a clue to what might be missing.
As shown in the Cambridge U photo
above the Latin in the second line has the word 'contactum' which has
the dual sense of being hit as with a missile and being infected. In a
half-dozen other translations, I found two infection metaphors--but nothing
capturing the violence of a missile hit. The right translarion--for me--would suggest both.
All of the translations I sampled seemed too academic, too literal, too faux-respectful. All of them could have used a little more bounce and sass. A little more awareness of a 20-year-old genius storming the Roman literary citadel and demanding his seat at the table with the established greats.
Well and good but where's the beef?
On top of all that there's
incredible joy in communing with a long-dead spirit who was once as real as we
are now. And the best trots can clue us into miracles that we might miss.
Here’s Gilbert Highet on just five words from Catullus—loved by all because he
seems so simple:
It might seem impossible to convey
the roar of the Indian Ocean in only five words, but Catullus does it. In three
vowels he evokes the long loud-mouthed bellowing of the wind, and in the
repetition of one booming syllable, the repeated thunder of the breakers:
longe resonante (E-O-A) tunditur unda
And so a poet lives again.
This is my report.
*****
Comments
First, long, long ago, I needed to pass ‘O’ level Latin to get a place at university. I failed, but an excellent teacher (whose name I’ve unforgiveably forgotten) taught me not Latin but how to pass a Latin exam so my next try worked and Quod reliquum historia est (or maybe not – I’ve no idea).
Second, not quite so long ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the University of Rhode Island as a visiting professor in the Theater Department and, being a prof in a French department here in Scotland, part of the deal was that I should translate 3 Molière plays for performance by their students. I decided to give them some variety so chose a farce, a relatively straightforward prose comedy and a play of rhyming couplets. Solving the linguistic problems and, in the process, creating equivalent English versions of the many dramatic/humorous effects proved highly enjoyable and instructive. It was also definitely more rewarding than Sudoku.
Umberto: I'm considering a return to home study of Latin again--with cribs!