Colin Burrow, in his essay, "Virgil in English Translation", implies that although there are many authors that translate Virgil's works, none of them can get the exact meaning of his words across. Burrow cites the works of many translators, and Virgil himself to show that no translation is ever as strong as the original text. Translators tend to add or imply their own personal emotions or ideas from their past experiences and beliefs to their work, tweaking Virgil's ideas just enough to where they are not exactly what he intended. There cannot be ONE accurate translation, because this personal insight will always occur along with many other misinterpretations. Burrow aims to target any reader of Virgil's works; however, this can apply to anyone who has ever read a translation of a text from any language.
I thought this essay was particularly interesting, because it talks all about perception, which seems to be a topic brought up a lot in my life lately. I totally agree with Burrow when he argues that all translations are at least a little bit inaccurate, because perception and interpretation will definitely influence how a person reads a text, and then translates it for others to read. This article made me want to find other translations of the Aeneid and compare them to the one we have read by Ahl (although I actually don't have the time or the motivation to do that). Nevertheless, I thought this article was really intriguing and very relevant to the class and what we've been working on (especially translating on our own).
No comments:
Post a Comment