Do we intentionally translate ancient stuff and languages to sound old timey as an artistic choice, or is there some other reason?

Sombyr@lemmy.zip to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 96 points –

Every time I see an ancient text translated, it always sounds like it was spoken by a classy Englishman from the 1800s. Is there a reason it's translated that way instead of modern English?

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I'll focus on Latin because I don't know how much this applies to Greek, Sumerian, Sanskrit, Akkadian etc.

Lots of translators focus too much on individual words, and miss the text. So when handling Latin they

  • spam less common synonyms (specially Latin borrowings)
  • try to follow Latin syntax too closely into English
  • use large sentences full of appositions

Less common words, fancy syntax, large sentences? That makes the text sound old timey.

I'll give you a practical example with Caesar's De Bello Gallico. Granted, the translation is from the 1800s, but even for those times it's convoluted:

[Original] Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.

[Bohn and McDevitte] All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third.

There's almost a 1:1 word correspondence. With the following exceptions:

  • "the" - because not using it in English makes the text sound broken
  • "in", "of" - because English demands prepositions more frequently than Latin
  • "their own" - because English lacks a 1-word equivalent for "ipsorum"

For reference here's how I'd translate the same excerpt:

Gaul is split into three parts. One is inhabited by the Belgae; another, by the Aquitani; the third one, by those who call themselves "Celts", and that we call "Gauls".

I'm not a good translator, mind you. And I'm myself fairly pedantic. Even then, I believe that it delivers the point better - it's streamlined, using concise and clear language, like a military commentary written by a general is supposed to be. But it is not a 1:1 like those guys obsess over.

Good translation is as much an art as a science, even between modern languages. I wish more translations focused on intent rather than a literal 1:1

That's a pretty good example. If you get into Bible translation you'll find there's a massive world of stuffingy* about different translation approaches. Because as well as having what I presume is by far the largest and longest collective scholarship to study and translate, plus textual criticism over multiple ancient copies, plus emotional hand-me-downs (people liking the KJV because it's what they grew up with), it's also considered by many translators to be the holy word of God, so "I think my translation's a bit clearer than yours" becomes "therefore yours falsely represents the very Words of God and may deceive people away from following the Truth!!!!"

Fascinating stuff, though.

*I meant to write 'argument' but gboard thought 'stuffingy' is better.

Yup. And the Bible is a notorious example of that, since a lot of versions are retranslations from Koine Greek, Aramaic and Old Hebrew into Latin into modern languages. And even if the Latin Vulgata was well made*, you're bound to have the process happening twice.

*It could be worse. One of the reasons why Jerome worked on the Vulgata was because he didn't like the Greek translations of Hebrew texts. Without that, people would be translating into modern languages the Latin translation of the Greek translation of Hebrew texts. Yup.

Thanks! This is the closest thing I've seen on Lemmy to an r/AskHistorians thread, wish we had more of that