Talks on Writing English

Of course, the first thing which a translator considers is the setting over of the ideas from one tongue to another, yet it seems to me a great mistake to make first a version which is simply literal, and then to try to mould it over into forms of literary grace. Of course, this is a matter which must to a certain extent depend upon individual temperament, but it is certainly true here as in other work that a phrase or a sentence can be more readily shaped and modified while it is fresh than when it has cooled and hardened. Translation is no mechanical operation, and no mechanical excellence will suffice. It is therefore well to aim at excellence of quality from the first, instead of attempting to add it as it were by an afterthought.

The first and essential requisite in making a translation is that it be English. By this is meant not only that it shall be made up of English words. It is not even sufficient that it be made up of English words so arranged that they may be understood. It is necessary that the English shall be sound and idiomatic. The ideal translation preserves nothing in its style to indicate that it was not originally written in the tongue in which it stands. It is the aim of the translator to approximate as closely to this standard of excellence as he is able. The sentence-structure of the German is more elaborate and more extended than our own. It is necessary that the translator of German works do not model his English version after this peculiarity of the original. The paragraph structure of the French is peculiarly broken and brief; yet the writer who sets work over from French into English is not permitted to let this fact determine the manner of his paragraphing in the latter language. Still more important is it that the idiom of the alien speech shall not leave its traces upon the style of the translation. This is the point in which all mechanical training fails. A friend gave me the other day a copy of the sign which was placed above the electric-light button in the chamber that he occupied in a hotel at Geneva: “One is begged on entering the room to press the button to let the light, and on parting again to extend it.” The man who wrote this rather remarkable direction knew his vocabulary tolerably well, but he had no idea of the English idiom. You have all of you seen innumerable examples of the same sort of blunder, and it is one which can be avoided only by an intimate acquaintance with the tongue into which one is translating.

Of the three great languages with which the translator is likely to have to do, French is by far the most idiomatic, German the least, while English in this respect stands midway between the other two. The problem in dealing with idioms is to find in one tongue expressions which are rather the equivalents of the original than a literal translation. The most nearly satisfactory renderings of the plays of Aristophanes which are to be found in our literature are those of John Hookham Frere, and they are probably among the least literal. Aristophanes was one of the most idiomatic of classic authors, and he indulged in slang as well as in idiom. To give an impression at all approximating to that of the original it is necessary constantly to depart from the exact words of the Greek text, especially when an attempt is made to preserve the feeling of the metrical effects of the comedies. In “The Birds,” the literal meaning of a certain passage is this: “Come … as many as in the furrows incessantly twitter around the clods so lightly with blithesome voice.” This is rendered by Frere: —

Rioting on the furrowed plain,Pecking, hopping,Picking, popping,Among the barley newly sown.

The difference between the literal version and the other is that from the latter the reader gets something of the impression which the Greek carried to its auditors, while from the former nothing is to be obtained beyond the plain and exact meaning.

Those who have examined the translation of the “Phormio” which was furnished to the audience when that play was acted at Harvard in 1894 found there numerous illustrations of this use of equivalents in place of exact meaning. The character of the dialogue made it proper to employ modern slang to give the impression which the original conveyed to the audience for which it was written. Accordingly the Latin phrase which literally means “Gird up your loins” was translated “Brace up!” “Bring the old man” was rendered “Trot out your old man!” “Now what will be the talk of folk?” is made to read “Why, what will Mrs. Grundy say?” The whole is an amusing though perhaps somewhat extreme example of the modern idea of translating by the emotional equivalent instead of by the literal equivalent; of giving the phrase which shall make on the English-speaking reader the impression made by the original upon the reader who spoke the tongue in which the work was first written.

The method of turning foreign works into English which has until recently been the popular one is admirably illustrated by the versions of German novels which have been so successfully made by Mrs. A. L. Wister. Mrs. Wister once said to a young woman who applied to her for aid in getting translating to do, and who justified her application upon the ground that she was an excellent French and German scholar: “That is not the question. The thing is whether you are able to write English well. Anybody can find out the meaning of a French or German text; that is simply a matter of using a grammar and a dictionary. The secret of making an acceptable translation lies in the ability to express that meaning in good English.” This is admirably said, but it does not cover the whole ground. It is of the first importance that the translator write good English, but it is hardly to be supposed that the use of grammar and lexicon will give a writer that intimate and sympathetic acquaintance with foreign idioms without which it is impossible to make a version satisfactory in the modern sense.

Mrs. Wister is an excellent example of what might more correctly be called a “paraphraser” than a “translator.” It has been her custom to select some popular German novel, and from that to make a story which seemed to her likely to please the American public. She has allowed herself the widest liberty, even to the extent, if I am not misinformed, of suppressing characters and modifying situations which did not please her, or of otherwise altering the story in important particulars. The success with which her books have met has justified her practical wisdom in adopting this method of following literature as a bread-winning business. She set out to please the average story-reader, by providing for the market pleasantly exciting, clean, and entertaining books. She has done it well, and she has achieved the end she sought.

There is always in the mind of the literary man some doubt how far one author has the moral right thus to bejuggle the work of another, even in translation. One who has written cannot help being influenced by a sort of sub-consciousness of what his own feelings would be if a translator were to work such a transformation upon one of his books. Letting this pass, however, it is to be said that popular demands in regard to the quality and veracity of translations have steadily advanced. The paraphraser is now forced to appeal to a public intellectually lower than that he formerly addressed. The literary grade of the admirers of Mrs. Wister’s books is probably distinctly below what it was ten years ago. Her school may be said practically to have had its day; and the translator in the best sense has taken the place of the paraphraser.

It is not that the translator may not take liberties, as we have already seen in speaking of idiom. It is that where before liberties were taken for the pleasure or from the caprice of the paraphraser, variations are now supposed to be made by the translator for the sole purpose of imparting to the reader a better idea of the impression produced by the original on those who read it in its first form. Miss Wormeley, for instance, is publishing a version of the comedies of Molière. She has decided that she can give the American reader who is unacquainted with French a better idea of the plays by rendering them into prose than by attempting the rhymed verse of the original. To the average American of to-day the effect is undoubtedly more satisfactory than that of any metrical version could be. This is an extreme instance, and it involves the difficulty of retaining the beauties and value of poetical forms in translation, but it illustrates the length to which variations from the original may legitimately go if they are made in the line of fidelity to the impression of the original.

The two great principles in translation, then, are faithfulness to the impression produced by the work in its own language, and faithfulness to the tongue into which it is rendered, especially in idiomatic constructions. It is to be remembered that the difficulty of producing a satisfactory version is never an excuse for any failure. The fact that one undertakes to make a translation is equivalent to a profession of ability to cope with whatever obstacles the task may present.

The value of translating as a help toward literary facility is a thing which should not be overlooked by the student. Whatever increases ease in the handling of language is of worth, and especially valuable is whatever forces the writer to greater exactness in the use of words and phrases. Reading aloud in English from a book in another language is excellent practice in the line of training the mind to quickness in the use of words; and this is especially good for one going into newspaper work.

It is going a little out of our way to comment here on the translation which comes into school work, but a word may not be amiss. It is always to be remembered, both by teacher and by pupil, that translation involves two languages, and one as fully as the other. Too often work of this sort is done as if the foreign language was the one to be considered exclusively. Students are allowed to give an approximate meaning of the Latin or the French which they are reading, putting their so-called translation into a verbal jargon which uses the English vocabulary, but which is no more English than the dictionary becomes a poem from having in it the words used in poetry. This is unfair to the student in several ways. It makes him hate what he is doing; it prevents his ever having anything like a proper or true idea of the value of the literature which he is mangling out of a foreign tongue into mongrel English. It destroys his feeling for his own language, and it makes it all but impossible for him to be taught English composition. More than one teacher who agonizes in spirit over the themes of his or her pupils, wondering why it is seemingly so impossible to teach them to write even reasonably well, might find an answer to the perplexing question by considering the English into which they are allowed to render their work in the languages. If pupils are let to translate from French and German and Latin into a sort of schoolroom dialect, inexact, unidiomatic, and lifeless, it is gross stupidity to expect that they will fail to be influenced by this. A pupil’s education is a unit. As long as it is assumed that his training in the languages is one thing, in mathematics another, and in geography or history a third, there is a constant loss of energy in counteracting the effects of this mistake. Every branch must be taught with a view to every other, and learned with a view to every other; and especially evident is it that in all teaching the matter of the proper use of the language of the learner should be kept always in sight. The translation which injures the pupil’s use of his own tongue does him a harm which cannot be atoned for by any knowledge it gives him of another.

It must by this time be apparent that translation in the best sense is really so closely allied to original work as hardly to be distinguished from it. In fact no writer can hope to produce successful versions of works of imagination who has not himself a genuine literary gift, carefully trained. The pathetic idea of so many young women that because they have taken lessons in French and German they can make their living by translating from those languages is quickly and painfully crushed by any attempt to carry it into practice; but there is far from being any adequate conception even among general writers of how difficult an art really good translation is. Yet so rapidly is public taste being educated in this matter that poor versions from other tongues become every day more and more futile and ineffective.

XXI

CRITICISM

Criticism is the estimation of work by defined standards. In its application to literature it is the trying of whatever is written. It is, so to say, the balance-sheet of composition.

Criticism is a sort of Exposition, yet it is well to consider it by itself because it has so much the nature of a general survey of the whole field of composition. Indeed, since literary training depends so largely upon self-criticism, it is essential to understand its methods and principles before one can hope to progress fast or far.

There has never before been a time when there has been so much talk about the art as in the latter half of this century, and seldom a time when there has been less of the genuine article. Matthew Arnold preached the gospel of criticism, and the world went on its uncritical way very much as before. There have even been doubts expressed whether there was after all any such thing save in theory. That entertaining Philistine, Mr. Andrew Lang, has declared that criticism is nothing but the expression of personal opinion, and has strengthened his position by pretty consistently living up to the assertion. The definition has been somewhat widely accepted; and it is certainly true that much which in common speech is called criticism is nothing more or less than an expression of prejudice or opinion. Indeed, in common speech the word is pretty generally used to signify mere fault-finding. There is, however, no more propriety in using the verb “to criticise” in the sense of “to censure” than in the sense of “to praise.” It means neither. Its nearest synonym is “to estimate,” or “to measure.”

Criticism is appreciation based upon comparison of work with defined standards. To criticise is to form or to express an opinion. It is as far from blame on the one hand as from praise on the other; but it establishes the reason for either. As a branch of Exposition it is a written estimate. The principles of the art are the same whatever is the nature of the work to which judgment is applied, but we shall speak of it here chiefly as applied to literature.

The first necessity in criticism is that of a standard. Without definite standards there can be no measurement of work. There is no estimating the truth or falsity of anything unless there is first some idea of truth; the merit or the worthlessness of a thing cannot be measured unless there be some ideal by which it may be judged. Until one has personal standards by which to measure life he cannot be said to have any moral identity; until he has standards by which to estimate ideas, he has no intellectual identity; until he has definite and defined standards by which to criticise literature it is hardly possible to consider that he has literary identity or that he is entitled to lay claim to any literary opinion as his own.

I have spoken in a former lecture of that irritating class who take refuge behind the phrase, “I do not know what is good or bad, but I know what I like.” The phrase is a confession of either mental incapacity or of mental slothfulness. It means either “I am too stupid to think out the reason why this pleases me,” or “I am too lazy to think.” It is a moral duty for one to know why one likes or dislikes a thing. I do not mean that we can go to the ultimate analysis of the reasons why beauty delights and ugliness pains. I do mean that the possession of reason lays on a man a moral obligation to use it; and that so far as his individual reason can go, it is his duty to examine the grounds of his feelings. How is a man to have the courage of his dislikes if he does not know upon what they rest? It is the duty of every rational creature to have opinions. In order to have opinions it is necessary to estimate belief and feeling. In order to estimate it is needful to have standards.

All this being so, how are standards to be obtained? There is unfortunately no market where they are to be bought; and the mere mention of acquiring them fills untrained and timorous minds with a shuddering sense of horribly laborious undertaking. Yet in its plainest form the matter is simply to know what one believes; and that is the first step in any mental development which can claim to be genuine. This does not mean that criticism is to be a matter of personal opinion in the sense of its being arbitrary liking or disliking. It means that the first standard by which all work must be tried is that of its truth; and that to be able to measure its truth it is necessary to know what one regards as truth. To be able to estimate the verity of a book it is essential that one have definite opinions in regard to the truth as it concerns life and humanity, and that one be not in the least in doubt what those opinions are. Criticism by vague opinions is like weight by an uncertain balance.

For individual criticism, moreover, it is absolutely essential that judgment be made by truth as it appears to the critic, and not by his idea of what others may think to be truth. His knowledge of what others believe is to influence him in establishing a standard, not in his measurement of works by it. In other words, we all are and should be affected in our decision of what is truth by the opinion of our fellow-men. When we have made up our mind that a certain thing is true, we try work by it as a standard without reference to the belief or the disbelief of others.

This is a matter which reaches far. It seems to me that it is hardly possible to insist too strongly in education upon the need of realizing one’s opinions. What many persons call their mind is merely a sort of mental protoplasm from which a mind may with care be developed, and the most effective means of development is that of defining clearly the things which we believe and of assuring ourselves as exactly as may be what to us is and what is not truth.

Our idea of truth is the standard by which we estimate the thing that a work expresses, whether in idea or in impression. To estimate the mechanics of a book, its technical finish, and all that has to do with workmanship, it is necessary to study the masterpieces of literature. To judge of what may be done and what may therefore be fairly demanded, it is necessary to examine those works which have stood the test of time and which are pronounced good by the verdict of mankind. It is difficult to form our standards from contemporary writings because in them what is permanent is apt to be obscured by the temporary. Literature shows the relation of men to their time and the relation of man to life. In the classics of all languages, in the books which have lived from generation to generation, the temporary drops out of sight while the essential remains. A story which showed the relation of the men of the Restoration to the great struggle between Puritanism and Royalty was of poignant and even bitter interest to the readers of that time because each reader was a partisan on one side or on the other. To-day we have no personal feeling in regard to these political and religious differences, which without the aid of foot-notes we very likely do not even understand. Only the essential and human remains. We read such a tale with a perception only of the revelation which it makes of the nature of permanent human emotions. We get from it only the truths which have to do with the relation of man to life, not as it is for one party or sect, but as it is for man as a human being. When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was new, it was hardly possible to look at it from a literary standpoint, because from one side or the other of the great anti-slavery question its readers felt passionately its moral purpose. We are already far enough away from the anti-slavery struggle to be able to examine the book critically, and to decide upon its literary qualities without reference to its political or moral weight. It is only when time has practically eliminated the temporary and accidental in a work that we are able to look at it in a temper dispassionate enough to allow us to get from it an idea of the essential qualities which shall be to us a standard.

The things which we are thus to learn from the study of the masterpieces and the classics of literature, are: first, the laws of province, and second, the possibilities of literary expression. By the laws of province – which is a somewhat formidable name for a not very complicated thing – I mean what is the province of each variety of literary form. This would include, for instance, the consideration of the consistency of fairy tales, the discussion of a moral purpose in fiction, methods in writing history or biography, and all the many matters of this nature. If we are to consider how well a novelist has done his work, it is necessary that we have some clearly defined notion of what comes properly within the scope of a novel; if we are to criticise a romance, a history, an essay, it is in any case needful that we be acquainted with what the experience of permanent literature and the judgment of the masters have decided to be the proper range of each sort of writing. This is what is meant by the laws of province. It is only by the careful study of the best works of these several sorts that we become qualified to judge how far a new production holds by the laws which should govern a composition of its kind. This is the more difficult as these laws are largely unwritten, and from the nature of things must be differently applied in different cases.

One thing must be said in regard to the authority of the classics, the masterpieces of literature to which we are to go to learn our standards. The young author is apt to feel that it is a mark of weakness to confess that he is influenced by the example of those who have gone before him. He protests, often pretty vigorously, against this autocratic rule of authors long since dust strewn as far as waters flow or the wind speeds. He feels that it is for the living to make laws for the living, and this generally means in his own case a willingness to make such canons, or at least a determination to be a law unto himself. The difficulty is that he does not recognize the true state of things. The domain of literature is not a despotism, but the most absolutely free of all republics. No author, no matter how great he be, can force the public to accept his book or can impose his works upon the generations. It is by the suffrages of the readers of the world that he stands or falls, and if there was ever given in the whole world a disinterested and impartial vote, it is precisely this decision which the world makes upon the merit of works. What we call the classics are the books which the world has decided are good. It is the consensus of the opinion of mankind that dominates here. The opinion of individuals is often wrong. I doubt if the verdict of generations upon a book ever errs substantially.

Yet another thought is of importance. To write is to endeavor to communicate thought. It is manifestly inconsistent and illogical not to choose that method of communication to which the world will listen. The measure of the world’s willingness is to be found in the works which the world has permanently approved. We learn our standards from the masterpieces of literature, we say; we might say: Here are the books which show what form of composition will be attended to by the world which the writer wishes to address. To see how far successful a given author has been in doing what he attempted, it is well to compare his work with this.

The forming of standards of mechanical excellence is of course founded on the same principles as those by which we determine what I have called the laws of province. There is no hard-and-fast rule by which to define exactly the limits of one department of literature or another, and the only thing which can without qualification be said is that no one can write criticisms which are of any lasting or indeed of any transient value who is not well acquainted with the great body of good English literature.