Recent Translation Research Articles

Errors in Translation: A Tool for Linguistic and Socio-cultural Competence

One of the important insights in recent translation studies research is that errors are a consequence of both linguistic and cultural misconceptions. In recent years translation studies have become increasingly involved in a quest for explanations of all phenomena associated with meaning interaction and a lot of detailed research has been attempted at most translation stages. Whole solid books have been written on specific topics but whole solid books can not include all the variations that different manifestations of language might adopt. As far as we understand, these theoretical ideas have not normally been applied to translations so far and when they have, explanations and descriptive interpretations given do sound rather artificial and unsatisfactory. We intend to propose an analytic approach to solve problems on translation based upon the principles of identity or equivalence, the main ideas of which might be suitable both for research and tuition purposes. In this paper, clear and cut distinctions between canonical and non-canonical expressions, collocations and idiomatic expressions are summed up succinctly both for language explanations and translation analyses, due to the fact that a good number of realizations belonging to the Gray Areas (GA) of language may arise from recurrent combinations of specific types of combined lexical items. The resultant lack of interaction between L1 propositions and L2 representations, identical or not, is often explainable and clarified by the Error Analysis (EA) method. Data collected and analysed here have been chosen at random.

From The Nature of Love

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsCarlos FranzCarlos Franz (1959, Geneva) is the author of four novels, including El desierto (2005; The Absent Sea, 2011), which addresses the issue of the disappeared in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. The son of a Chilean diplomat and an actress, he grew up partly in Chile; in the past decade he has been a visiting fellow at Cambridge and King's College in England, and a Chilean cultural attaché in Madrid. He recently moved back to Chile. His current novel in progress, “La naturaleza del amor” (The Nature of Love), freely based in historical facts and from which the following excerpt is drawn, reinvents the meeting in Chile of Charles Darwin and German landscape painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, in 1834–35. Adventurous and romantic, Rugendas was the most important travel painter in nascent Latin America for almost twenty years. A present day narrator imagines the encounter as a tectonic clash between two opposite attitudes toward nature and human loveLeland H. ChambersLeland H. Chambers has translated novels by Susana Fortes, Juan Tovar, Carmen Boullosa, Julieta Campos, and Sergio Ramírez. His most recent translation is Franz's The Absent Sea

"Definitive Voices of the Loved Dead": Cavafy in English

"Definitive Voices of the Loved Dead":Cavafy in English Sarah Ekdawi Alan Boegehold , translator. Cavafy: 166 Poems. Vancouver: Axios Press, 2008. Pp. 240. Hardcover $18.00. Avi Sharon , translator. C. P. Cavafy: Selected Poems. Penguin Books, 2008. Pp. 220. Paperback $15.00. Daniel Mendelsohn , translator. C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Pp. 547. Hardcover. $35.00. Daniel Mendelsohn , translator. C. P. Cavafy: The Unfinished Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Pp. 121. Hardcover $30.00. David Connolly , translator, in Dimitris Yeros's Shades of Love: Photographs Inspired by the Poems of C. P. Cavafy, Translated from the Greek by David Connolly. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2010. Pp. 168. Hardcover $75.00. In the last ten years, seven new translations of the Cavafy canon/complete works and one substantial selection of his poetry have appeared in English: Theoharis C. Theoharis (the Canon, 2001), Stratis Haviaras (the Canon, 2004), Aliki Barnstone (the Canon and 20 Unpublished poems, 2006), Evangelos Sachperoglou (the Canon, 2007), Alan Boegehold (the Canon and 11 Unpublished poems and one Unfinished poem, 2008), Avi Sharon (the Canon, 2008), Daniel Mendelsohn (the Canon and the Unpublished, Repudiated, and Unfinished poems, 2009), and David Connolly (67 of the Canon, Unpublished, Repudiated, and Unfinished poems, 2010). The two earliest selections from Cavafy's poetry in English, 63 translations by John Cavafy and 46 by George Valassopoulo, have also recently been published in full for the first time. Four "complete" Cavafys, one for each decade, and a separate selection from the Unpublished poems, had already, of course, appeared between 1950 and 1990: John Mavrogordato (the Canon, 1951), Rae Dalven (the Canon and Unpublished poems, 1961), Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (the Canon, 1975), Memas Kolaitis (the Canon, Unpublished, and Repudiated poems, 1989), and Edmund Keeley and George Savidis (21 Unpublished poems, 1972). Thus, the English-speaking reader can now choose from eleven different translations of the canon alone, and can also read and compare samples of many of these online (at www.cavafy.com). Several of the above-mentioned translators are not native speakers of English, although some could be described as functionally bilingual (to differing degrees); similarly, Cavafy's first French translators, Théodore Griva (1947) and [End Page 129] George Papoutsakis (1958), were not native speakers of French. This situation appears to be unparalleled in published translations of modern European poetry, and has clear implications for the quality of the translations. In 1957, Lawrence Durrell wrote (in Justine), "By now, the Cavafy canon has been established by the fine thoughtful translations of Mavrogordato, and in a sense the poet has been freed for other poets to experiment with" (1963 [1957]:220). Almost four decades later, David Ricks commented, "Now that we have a number of translations whose main aim and claim has been fidelity, there might be room for a freer, more ambitious response to Cavafy's poetry" (Ricks 1993:109). Since Durrell's time, there has, of course, been a huge and varied, not to say very mixed, "artistic" response to Cavafy in many different languages and media, but hardly any free translations in the sense in which Ricks seems to mean: Derek Mahon's "adaptations" of "Voices" (from which the title of this article is borrowed) and a small number of other poems probably come closest. Desmond O'Grady's dismal "versions" of thirty-three poems by Cavafy are almost certainly not what Ricks (or Durrell) had in mind. The focus of the present review article will be the three most recent translations of Cavafy, the last of which is also the most complete so far as it includes the Unfinished poems as well as the Canon, Repudiated, and Unpublished poems. Only one of these volumes (Boegehold) was received for review. I shall also comment briefly on the latest selection (Connolly). It is worth pausing to consider the early history of translations of Cavafy into English. Cavafy's first translator was his brother John (1861-1923), who worked on his translations from about 1896 (and possibly much earlier) until at least 1920. For much of this period, Cavafy appears to have taken a keen interest in the project, making copious written corrections...

Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing) (review)

Reviewed by: Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing) Erik Ekman Gil de Zamora. Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing). Richard McNabb, ed. David Kirsch, trans. New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2009. 180 pp. ISBN: 978-1-56954-133-3 In spite of the importance of manuals of letter writing to medieval rhetoric, those interested in the topic have been limited to few editions and fewer translations. The recent translation of Juan Gil de Zamora’s Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing) provides an accessible text in English for researchers as well as graduate and undergraduate students. The volume includes an introductory study by Richard McNabb and a translation by David Hirsch. The translation is the first of a work previously only available in Latin and, as McNabb indicates in an earlier article describing plans for the present volume, answers Richard Leo Eno’s call to “expand our knowledge of the history of rhetoric” (225). As such it is a welcome addition to the field and should make this text much more accessible to scholars and students alike. Juan Gil de Zamora is one of the more important intellectual figures of thirteenth-century Iberia. Although relatively little is known about many of the details of his life, what is certain is that he moved in very high royal and ecclesiastic circles. Gil was born around 1240, became a Franciscan around 1270 and studied in Paris from 1273 to 1278, as Faulhaber documents (104). Later in life he was vicar and then minister of the Franciscan province of Santiago until his death around 1318. He was likely confessor to Alfonso X and tutor to Sancho IV. He was the author of numerous devotional, historical and didactic works. The Dictaminis Ephithalamium is among his didactic works. This translation is based on Faulhaber’s edition and includes an introductory study that situates the work in the European ars dictaminis tradition. McNabb provides a short biography of Juan Gil before dealing with the Dictaminis Ephithalamium, which he classifies as a “non-narrative exempla” designed to [End Page 381] provide ready and practical models to letter writers for a variety of situations (5). McNabb’s brief overview touches on the sources of the Dictaminis Ephithalamium, which draws from both the French and Italian ars dictaminis traditions, as well as classical authors, most likely cited from florilegia (10). The introduction also includes an analysis of Gil’s treatment of each of the five traditional parts of the letter, salutation, exordium, narration, petition and conclusion (11–18). The translation reads well and contains ample notes indicting sources of references to classical and medieval texts. Gil’s text is divided into six chapters, the first four of which cover praise and blame of virtues and vices, either for specific people or as abstract concepts. Chapter 5 discusses the parts of the letter, and chapter 6 provides examples of different types of letters. The volume also has a bibliography. The Dictaminis Ephithalamium is certainly a thorough and well-executed study and translation. The introduction is a concise overview of the genre, and both it and the text of the Dictaminis Ephithalamium itself read well. However, given that this text had been previously published in Latin and much of the introductory material is drawn from previously published studies of medieval rhetoric, the real value of this volume lies most likely not in what it brings to specialists in the ars dictaminis, but in what it contributes to other areas of medieval literature and culture, and especially in its potential in the classroom. Obviously it would be useful for a class on the history of rhetoric, as well as for classes on Church history, monasticism or medieval intellectual history in general. Because of both Gil’s importance in his own time and his systematic treatment of virtues and vices, the Dictaminis Ephithalamium seems to be an obvious point of comparison for the Libro de buen amor; as a didactic text, it has a great deal to add to our understanding of many works from the vernacular and Latin. Erik Ekman Oklahoma State University Works Cited Faulhaber, Charles. Latin Rhetorical Theory in Thirteenth and Fourteenth...

An Introduction to Nicolai Hartmann’s Critical Ontology

Nicolai Hartmann contributed significantly to the revitalization of the discipline of ontology in the early twentieth century. Developing a systematic, post-Kantian critical ontology ‘this side’ of idealism and realism, he subverted the widespread impression that philosophy must either exhaust itself in foundationalist epistemology or engage in system-building metaphysical excess. This essay provides an introduction to Hartmann’s approach in light of the recent translation of his early essay ‘How is Critical Ontology Possible?’ (1923) In it Hartmann criticizes both the pretensions of epistemology as well as the principal errors of classical ontology, and he proposes a series of correctives that lead to his development of a highly original and elaborate stratified categorial ontology. This introduction explains the most important errors of the ‘old’ ontology, his correctives to them, and further fleshes out these correctives with reference to his mature ontological work.

L. Peliti: Statistical Mechanics in a Nutshell

Drawing from his considerable involvement as a researcher in the field, and from his teaching notes on the subject for over 15 years, Luca Peliti had put together a remarkably selfcontained and comprehensive, introductory textbook, Appunti di Meccanica Statistica (Bollati Boringhieri 2003). The recent English translation, “Statistical Mechanics in a Nutshell” (by Mark Epstein, from the original Italian), fits very nicely in the new In a Nutshell Princeton series, conceived to provide “concise, accessible, and up-to-date textbooks for advanced undergraduate and graduate students on key subjects in the physical sciences.” The book is in fact almost more of a reference book than a traditional textbook. Though limited to the putative syllabus for a course in statistical mechanics, it is exceptionally comprehensive in scope. Following a brief motivational introduction, utilizing the example of an ideal gas, in Chap. 1, classical thermodynamics is broadly reviewed, in Chap. 2, including the more obscure thermodynamic potentials related to particle number, and the useful Koenig-Born diagram trick for quickly deriving all pertinent Maxwell relations. The statistical mechanical approach, the partition function for different probability ensembles, and the basic application of this machinery to interaction-free systems of Bosons and Fermions is expounded upon in Chaps. 3 and 4. Chapter 5 looks at the liquid-gas transition, as described by the Van der Waals equation and the lattice gas (or Ising) model, and uses this example for the introduction of basic concepts such as critical exponents, universality, and scaling, as well as techniques, including mean-field and Landau theory, and culminating with an exact solution of the 2-dimensional Ising model. These first five chapters comprise the standard material found in many other textbooks on the subject, though none equals the present book in its thoroughness and scope. Chapter 6 discusses renormalization group theory, reviewing all the major techniques and approaches. The theory of classical fluids and the virial expansion (sometimes included in other texts) is covered in Chap. 7. Chapter 8 introduces numerical simulations, molecular dynamics and the Monte Carlo method. Brownian and Generalized Brownian motion is discussed in Chap. 9, and is used to introduce

Die italienischen Übersetzungen von Ilse Aichingers Roman Die größere Hoffnung

AbstractAichinger’s novel The greater hope was translated into Italian twice, the first time in 1963 and in a new version in 1999. The result, especially in the case of the most recent translation, is disappointing. It is absolutely insufficient, full of inaccuracies as well as mistakes and omissions, indeed to the extent that an Italian reader has difficulty gaining an adequate understanding of the original. Rather than compiling a boring list made out of all the pertinent criticism that could be made, these versions are used here as a basis for a discussion of a variety of typical translation issues such as the rendition of specific stylistic phenomena like alienation or playing with the reader’s expectations, difficulty in translating fact and elements uniquely belonging to a foreign culture, puns, etc.

Agitating the Powers of Habit: Towards a Volatile Politics of Thought

This paper capitalizes on the resurgence of interest in habit within social and political theory as a key concept of our time, following the recent translation and uptake of the work of Félix Ravaisson, to push our understandings of the irreducible vitality and vulnerability of bodies. It seeks to intervene within debates on the habit-body by challenging the way in which the transitions that habit gives rise to are conceptualized. Many theorizations of the habit-body have tended to stress its ever-evolving, adaptive, affective capacities for subtle alteration and gradual, incremental change. However I argue that this lends itself to an image of the habit-body that prioritizes coherence, calculation and proficiency over other more erratic and unpredictable transitions that habit might give rise to. In response, and drawing on Borges’ short story The Zahir as its empirical lure, rather than understanding volatility as something that habit works to quiesce, this paper seeks to enroll volatility into an image of the habit-body by articulating its agitative and destructive tendencies. It does this by proffering obsession as a specific mode of habit that exhibits these tendencies towards volatility, in order to demonstrate how habit participates in some of the more unstable, precarious and heterogeneous modulations of contemporary life. Capitalizing on the ways through which habit refocuses debates on ‘distributed agency’, drawing attention to the volatilities inherent to habit helps us not only to dismantle ideas of the sovereign self, but in doing so, pluralizes the event and performance of subjectivities. This forces us to conceptualize the relations between thought, will and responsibility in a way that rethinks a radical politics through a revolution of the body over that of the mind.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Experience and Experimentation: The Meaning of Experimentum in Aquinas

1 E.g., STh II-II, q. 95, a. 5, obj. 2: “Human knowledge begins by experimentation, according to Aristotle. But after a great deal of experimentation involving astronomical readings, men have discovered that certain future events can be predicted from the stars” (Summa Theologiae, vol. 40, trans. T. O’Meara [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968], 51). Cf. “Human science originates from experiments [ex experimentis], according to the Philosopher (Metaphysics 1.1). Now it has been discovered through many experiments [per multa experimenta] that the observation of the stars is a means whereby some future events may be known beforehand” (Summa Theologica, trans. English Dominican Fathers, 3 vols. [New York: Benziger Bros., 1947], 2:1603). Section I, below, addresses these translations’ inadequacies. 37 The Thomist 76 (2012): 37-71 EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIMENTATION: THE MEANING OF EXPERIMENTUM IN AQUINAS MARK J. BARKER Notre Dame Seminary New Orleans, Louisiana W HEN SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND a philosopher’s use of a given term, one must both engage in precise textual analysis and consider the broader historical setting. Failing to distinguish technical from ordinary language meanings effectively underspecifies the term one is attempting to define. Diachronic changes in a term’s nontechnical meaning and the tendency to retroject contemporary ideas into the past add to the interpretive challenge. Skewed translations misrepresent a philosopher’s thought, especially to scholars not conversant with the source language. A case in point is experimentum, which prominent classical and medieval dictionaries define as ‘experiment’. This definition has been adopted in recent translations of Thomas Aquinas.1 Given the controversial relationship between ordinary experience and experimentation, it is difficult properly to understand MARK J. BARKER 38 2 “The subject of [medieval] experimentation and its corollary, experimental science, is fraught with semantic difficulties” (David C. Lindberg, “Experiment and Experimental Science,” in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert E. Bjork [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], 2:604). “Some clarification can be gained regarding [the problem of the origins of experimental methodology] through a careful analysis of just how important notions such as ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have functioned in various contexts, among different schools, within various historical periods, and in different disciplines. . . . A major desideratum in this regard would be to have a comprehensive study of the changing roles which ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have played in the development of Western thought, what meanings the terms have taken on under various circumstances, and what relation ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have had to other sources of knowledge” (Charles B. Schmitt, “Experience and Experiment: A Comparison of Zabarella’s View With Galileo’s in De Motu,” Studies in the Renaissance 16 [1969]: 81). 3 There has been almost no investigation of experimentum as such to date. James Stromberg’s protracted “Essay on Experimentum,” Laval théologique et philosophique 22 (1967): 76-115 and 23 (1968): 99-138, is little more than a collection of Scholastic quotations. Cornelio Fabro focuses exclusively on the role of experimentum in the induction of speculative first principles in Percezione e pensiero (2d ed.; Brescia: Morcelliana, 1962), chap. 5, sect. 3. Fabro studies a text from Cajetan, alleging (wrongly, as I will argue) that Aquinas’s treatment of experimentum “does not contribute substantially new elements to experimentum and experientia.2 This study aims to surmount the hermeneutical difficulties inherent in Aquinas’s use of these terms by linguistic, historical, and substantive analysis. Section I first distinguishes between experience, tests, and experiments by establishing defining characteristics of each in light of a Thomistic philosophy of science. The section then argues that defining experimentum in Aquinas as ‘experiment’ is anachronistic. To prove this point requires apposite reference to medieval science, since Aquinas’s terminology did not exist in a vacuum. Section II provides accurate and exhaustive definitions of experimentum and experientia as they occur in Aquinas, together with representative textual citations for each meaning. Yet there is more at stake with experimentum than the adequacy of dictionary definitions; the semantic confusion regarding the term has contributed to the oversight of a crucial process in Thomistic epistemology. Aquinas most fully explains experimentum’s role in the acquisition of knowledge in his commentary on book 1, section 1 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (nn. 15...

CHARLESO DICKENSO KŪRYBOS RECEPCIJA LIETUVIŲ LITERATŪROS KRITIKOJE (III dalis)

Pirmojoje ir antrojoje šios studijos, skirtos lietuviškajai Charleso Dickenso recepcijai, dalyse1 apsiribojome dviem šios recepcijos aspektais: anglų rašytojo kūrinių vertimais į lietuvių kalbą, sceninėmis jų adaptacijomis ir kritikų vertinimais. Šioje dalyje pabandysime aptarti kitą labai svarbų recepcijos aspektą: Dickenso kūrybos vertinimą lietuvių literatūros kritikoje ir galimą anglų romanisto estetikos įtaką lietuvių literatūrai ir kultūrai. [...]

Introduction

This special issue ofUrban History, which brings together a set of six case-studies of Chinese cities, all with a focus on the Republican era (1912–49), has different things to offer discrete sets of scholars. For example, to specialists in urban history who have only a passing interest in Chinese themes, the three works by scholars based in the People's Republic of China (PRC) offer a rare glimpse into the way that cities are studied in what remains (though not for long, if trends in India continue) the world's most populous country. The editors ofUrban Historyare to be commended for making these articles, all of which were originally written in Chinese, available to Anglophone readers. When read beside other recent translations of pieces on cities by PRC-based authors in varied fields, such as the city-focused writings of cultural critic Xu Jilin and the journalist and oral historian Dai Qing that have appeared in the lively online journalChina Heritage Quarterly, they give a sense of some of the main contours in contemporary Chinese discussions of and debates about the country's modern urban past.

Translation of Near-Infrared Fluorescence Imaging Technologies: Emerging Clinical Applications

Technical developments in near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging and tomography have enabled recent translation into investigational human studies. Noninvasive imaging of the lymphatic vasculature for diagnosis and assessment of function has been uniquely accomplished with NIR using indocyanine green (ICG), a nonspecific dye that has comparatively poor fluorescent properties compared to emerging dyes. Adjunct use of NIRF-ICG for (a) intraoperative sentinel lymph node mapping for cancer staging, (b) video-angiography during surgery, and (c) discrimination of malignant from benign breast lesions detected by mammography and ultrasongraphy also evidences the clinical utility of NIRF. Future NIRF imaging agents that consist of bright fluorescent dyes conjugated to disease-targeting moieties promise molecular imaging and image-guided surgery. In this review, emerging NIRF imaging is described within the context of nuclear imaging technologies that remain the "gold standard" of molecular imaging.

Influencing Health Equity: Role of the Effective Consumer Scale in Measuring Skills and Abilities in a Middle Income Country

The 2008 World Health Report emphasizes the need for patient-centered primary care service delivery models in which patients are equal partners in the planning and management of their health. It is argued that this involvement will lead to improved management of disease, improved health outcomes and patient satisfaction, better informed decision-making, increased compliance with healthcare decisions, and better resource utilization. This article investigates the domains captured by the Effective Consumer Scale (EC-17) in relation to vulnerable population groups that experience health inequity. Particular focus is paid to the domain of health literacy as an area fundamental to patients' involvement in managing their condition and negotiating the healthcare system. In examining the possible influence of Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT) on health equity, we used the recent translation and validation of the EC-17 scale into Spanish and tested Argentina as an example. Future plans to use the EC-17 with vulnerable groups include formal collaboration and needs assessment with the community to tailor an intervention to meet its needs in a culturally relevant manner. Some systematic reviews have questioned whether interventions to improve effective consumer skills are appropriate in vulnerable populations. We propose that these populations may have the most to gain from such interventions since they might be expected to have relatively lower skills and health literacy than other groups.

Love poems, letters, and remedies of Ovid

Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet. The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores , he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides —through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers—he imagines how love goes for women. “You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him,” cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, “The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic.” The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: “The beginning is your best chance to resist”; “Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from.” The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love’s inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache. Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt’s translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.

How French isfrenkçin?

It is by no means unknown, in Middle-Eastern art-music traditions, to find claims that a given rhythmic cycle was invented on a particular occasion by a particular musician, the most obvious and reliable instance being provided by ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāġī (d. 1435), who tells us that he was commissioned to create a new cycle to commemorate a victory. Withfrenkçin, then, a cycle where the very name clearly suggests some form of western derivation or inflection, it was perhaps only to be expected that we should encounter a similar narrative that pinpointed its origin, associating its creation with the impulse provided by a particular cultural encounter with the West. It has to be said, though, that no such account appears as a standard feature of the contemporary theoretical discourse surrounding Turkish art music: works that deal with the rhythmic cycles tend to be expository catalogues unconcerned with origins and derivations, and it is only in one major modern reference work that we come across the notion of western inspiration, together with a tentative suggestion as to the period during whichfrenkçinemerged. The detailed narrative of origin certainly first appears in a text by an eminent Turkish scholar, but it is one written in French—the comprehensive survey article by Rauf Yekta Bey published in 1922—and possibly in consequence it has so far been relayed primarily in western languages. The discussion by Kösemihal, the one significant Turkish scholar to have accepted this account, appears to have had little impact, and it remains to be seen whether the relatively recent translation of Rauf Yekta Bey's article into Turkish will stimulate renewed interest in this version in Turkey itself.

Recent Scholarship on2 Baruch: 2000—2009

This essay presents scholarship on 2 Baruch published from 2000 to 2009 and discusses the main topics, perspectives and debates addressed in these recent contributions. The first part of the essay provides a general introduction to 2 Baruch, offering a brief overview of the literary contents and historical context of the text, as well as a short résumé of the main debates of scholarship in the period 1866—1999. The second, main, part addresses four topics: (1) recent text editions, translations and critical editions, (2) contributions addressing the composition of 2 Baruch, (3) significant thematic studies, and (4) studies dedicated to the provenance, social situation and reception of 2 Baruch. These issues are discussed with an eye for two prominent debates in recent scholarship on the Pseudepigrapha: first, the debate of the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, and second, the methodological debate of the relationship between narrative fiction and the historical situation of ancient writings.

Three Perspectives on the Treatment of Political Prisoners and Trauma Victims

This very important and timely topic deserves serious reflection. Torture is a group phenomenon even if particular individuals do the actual act to other particular individuals. We observe it in our therapy groups under the rubric of the scapegoat, as Nina Thomas notes in this issue’s special section. In ancient Israel, the role of the scapegoat during a religious rite symbolically carried the sins of the group (tribe) into the wilderness, allowing the group to atone for its sins and protect itself from the wrath of God and the punishment that would follow (Leviticus 16, 21f). This ritual has a harsher side. More recent translations see the goat as being driven over a cliff to die bearing the tribe’s sins. The appeasement began with the killing of a bull and another goat. The blood of the bull and the goat were placed on the altar and on the scapegoat to be removed (Leviticus 16, 1-20). Scapegoating in recent times is seen as ostracizing and/or destroying others to remove individual or group evil, often out of our awareness. In group therapy the scapegoat carries less grand functions, but it is often one way in which the chosen member is invited to bear discomforts, fears, or other feelings that the rest of the group wishes to avoid. In a therapy group, the scapegoat is usually a co-conspirator in this process, sometimes because being a scapegoat was a common role in his or her family of origin or

Recent Translations of Latin Poetry

Recent Translations of Latin Poetry Aven McMaster Anne and Peter Wiseman. Ovid: Times and Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xxxvii + 185. £61. ISBN 9780198149743. David R. Slavitt. The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Pp. xvii + 66. US $24.95. ISBN 9780520267657. Patricia A. Johnston. The Aeneid of Vergil. Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture 43. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. US $ 24.95. ISBN 9780806142050. There are many different approaches to translating a work from the ancient world, especially poetry. Each has its merits, but the utility of a translation for a particular purpose depends in large part on the goals of the translator, and how literal or free he or she intends the result to be. Sometimes this is not signalled clearly enough, and one of the jobs of the reviewer is to suggest how a translation can be best used. Under consideration here are three recent translations of Latin poetry, each presenting a different approach to the issue of balancing accuracy with faithfulness to metrical form and poetic merit. All are useful contributions to the field, and each basically achieves its stated purpose. Anne and Peter Wiseman’s translation of Ovid’s Fasti prioritizes a close translation of the Latin over poetic style: “The guiding principle of our work has been faithfulness to Ovid’s language and manner” (xxxiii). For this reason, they have chosen to render the elegiac metre into prose. They realize [End Page 223] that this in itself makes it hard to be completely faithful to Ovid’s manner, but write that “we have sacrificed the metre to gain precision: a prose translation allows us to focus on what Ovid says and how he says it” (xxxiii). The Wisemans have succeeded well in achieving their aim; the translation is accurate but also readable and lively, and as clear as it can be given the frequent obscurity of Ovid’s allusions and elliptical references. Ovid’s text is intentionally dense and filled with references that were meant to be obscure even to his contemporaries, and are sometimes quite simply opaque to us because of our distance from ordinary Roman life. This makes the text hard to read in places, in spite of the good translation. The authors do offer useful explanatory notes, but they are collected at the end of the text, which means that the reader spends a lot of time flipping back and forth. The prevalence of word-play and etymological aitiology in the work also makes translation difficult, and is perhaps another argument for having footnotes rather than end-notes, so that the original Latin pun or etymology would be immediately visible as one reads along. In Book 4, for example, on the 15th of April, there is an explanation of the term forda for a cow: “When the third light has dawned after Venus’s Ides, make a sacrifice, priests, with a forda cow. A forda cow is a cow that is carrying, and called fertile from that fact; they think the foetus too has its name from this” (78). The note explains: “the Latin for ‘to carry’ is ferre, whence ‘fertile’ and ‘foetus’ (fecunda, fetus)” (139). It is impossible to capture the word and sound play of the original: “forda ferens bos est fecundaque, dicta ferendo: / hinc etiam fetus nomen habere putant” (4.631–632), although the Wisemans make an effort with “cow that is carrying” and “fertile from that fact”. It would be easier to see the point of the etymology if the note about it were on the same page and could be compared to the English directly. As the Wisemans themselves note, the biggest distinction between their volume and two other fairly recent translations, by Boyle and Woodward (2000) and Nagle (1995), respectively, is that this new translation is in prose, and is the most faithful to the Latin. Their introduction is brief but gives appropriate background information; the glossary and index are useful and comparable to those of the earlier translations. The explanatory notes are more full than those of Nagle’s translation, but not as detailed as Boyle and Woodward’s, which give more cross...

Reaching Beyond the National: Recent Translations of The Tempest in Romania

This paper focuses on two 2009 translations of The Tempest in Romania. I would like to argue that they pursue an ideological and political stand shaped on the Habermasian conception of a post-national, cosmopolitan Europe.