Private Experiments in Translation

Abstract

My specialty is classical philology; I have therefore translated almost exclusively Greek and Latin poets and prose writers. Traditionally only philologists undertake such translations—their lack of profitability makes them unappealing to high-volume translators. The so-called great poets of our age also avoid them. There are exceptions, of course: the fanatical Golosovker forced not only Sel'vinskii but even Pasternak to translate several poems of Horace for a selected anthology. The translations were good, but did not in the least constitute a break from the traditional style already established by philologists. Curiously, in another, no less specialized, sphere—translation of classical Arabic and Persian poetry—the situation is different. Here the majority of translations are—or at least were, in the Soviet era—done by solicited poet-translators working from word-for-word glosses and lacking any philological preparation whatsoever. This system probably has its advantages, but the standards for accuracy in translations of Eastern texts have been signally lower than those applied to Greek and Latin ones. Probably the East—even of ancient times—was more relevant to Soviet culture than Greece or Rome. I have heard this from both Orientalists and S.V. Shervinskii, a great craftsman who has done many translations from both Greek and Latin original texts, and glosses of Eastern ones.