Subject: Re: bad news from Yasna Polyana
From: L. Manning Vines (lmanningvines@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 06 2001 - 16:43:37 GMT
Scottie said:
<< I wonder if all Englished versions are to some extent personal &
capricious transliterations from the Cyrillic? >>
I don't know about Russian or Cyrillic, but the history of its translation
might be the cause of bizarre transliterations (and bizarre translations).
I know that Englished Greek texts are often plagued by weird
transliterations and even vocabulary that does not adequately render the
Greek because they borrow from Latinized terminology and long traditions of
translation. We get things like "Ajax" when Greek doesn't even have a
j-sound (the name ought to be "Aias") and "Oedipus Rex" when the Greek title
is "Oedipus Tyrannus." Aristotle is famously incomprehensible in large part
because he used common Greek words which were Latinized sufficiently, but
English cognates with the Latin were adopted by almost every English
translator despite the fact that these English words are plainly NOT
equivalent to Aristotle's Greek.
Dostoevsky hasn't had as many years of translation to corrode his words as
have had Sophocles and Aristotle, but a similar phenomenon might be at work,
I suppose.
-robbie
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