Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/267

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THE TECHNIQUE OF TRANSLATING

reason for adopting the fallacious theory of translation laid down by Matthew Arnold in his well-known essay On Translating Homer:

No one can tell him (the would-be translator) how Homer affected the Greeks, but there are those who can tell him how Homer affects them. These are scholars, who possess, at the same time with knowledge of Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling. No translation will seem to them of much worth compared with the original; they alone can say whether the translation produces more or less the same effect upon them as the original. They are the only competent tribunals in this matter; the Greeks are dead; the unlearned Englishman has not the data for judging; and no man can safely confide in his own single judgment of his own work. Let not the translator, then, trust to his notions of what the ancient Greeks would have thought of him; he will lose himself in the vague. Let him not trust to what the ordinary English reader thinks of him; he will be taking the blind for his guide. Let him

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