LITERAL TRANSLATION
TRANS·LA·TION
/ˌtran(t)sˈlāSH(ə)n,ˌtranzˈlāSH(ə)n/
1. [mass noun] The process of translating words or text from one language into another.
1.1 [count noun] A written or spoken rendering of the meaning of a word or text in another language.
1.2 The conversion of something from one form or medium into another.
After looking up the definition of translation in the hopes of finding unusual definitions of the word, I instead chose to begin simply with my mental image of what "translation" is. That is, converting one language into another so that it maintains the essence of the original text. I have tried below to form translations of the same Ancient Greek passage that are literal (1) grammatically, (2) metrically, and (3) in meaning.
Ancient Greek Text | Sophocles Oedipus Rex, Lines 1187-1195
* Click on the underlined words for dictionary entry
Χορός [Chorus]
ἰὼ γενεαὶ βροτῶν,
ὡς ὑμᾶς ἴσα καὶ τὸ μη-
δὲν ζώσας ἐναριθμῶ.
τίς γάρ, τίς ἀνὴρ πλέον
τᾶς εὐδαιμονίας φέρει
ἢ τοσοῦτον ὅσον δοκεῖν
καὶ δόξαντ᾽ ἀποκλῖναι;
τὸν σόν τοι παράδειγμ᾽ ἔχων,
τὸν σὸν δαίμονα, τὸν σόν, ὦ
οὐδὲν μακαρίζω:
Glossary
* Yellow text is glossed below
βροτός, βροτοῦ, m/f | mortals (masc gen pl)
ἴσος, -η, -ον | equal (neut acc pl)
ἐναριθμέω | count (1st sg pres act ind)
πλείων, -ονος, -ον | more (neut acc sg)
εὐδαιμονία, εὐδαιμονίᾱς, f | good fortune (fem gen sg)
τοσοῦτος | so much (pronoun)
ὅσος, -η, -ον | as far as (masc acc sg)
δοκέω | seem (pres act inf)
δοκέω | seem (3rd pl aor mid ind)
ἀποκλίνω | decline (aor act inf)
παράδειγμα, πᾰρᾰδείγμᾰτος, n | example (neut acc sg)
τλήμων, ονος, m/f | wretched (masc voc sg)
μακαρίζω | deem (1st sg pres act ind)
Literal Translation
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Metrical Translation
Metrical Reading of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek Scansion
- - u u - u -
ἰὼ γενεαὶ βροτῶν,
- - - u u - u -
ὡς ὑμᾶς ἴσα καὶ τὸ μη-
- - - u u - -
δὲν ζώσας ἐναριθμῶ.
- - u u - u-
τίς γάρ, τίς ἀνὴρ πλέον
- - - u u- u -
τᾶς εὐδαιμονίας φέρει
- u - u u - u -
ἢ τοσοῦτον ὅσον δοκεῖν
- - - u u - -
καὶ δόξαντ᾽ ἀποκλῖναι;
- - - u u - u -
τὸν σόν τοι παράδειγμ᾽ ἔχων,
- - - u u - u -
τὸν σὸν δαίμονα, τὸν σόν, ὦ
- u - u u - u -
τλᾶμον Οἰδιπόδα, βροτῶν
- - u u - -
οὐδὲν μακαρίζω:
Metrical Reading of English According to Ancient Greek Stress
Final Translation
Ahimè! Children of mortals,
How equal to nothingness I
Measure the weight of your lives.
For what, what man may better
Grasp something of such good fortune,
Held so as to suggest such joy,
Though it seemed to fade away.
So you, a paradigm bearing
Such a fate, your future, yours, O
Poor Oedipus, transient, I
Ne'er count blest those to die.
ILLUSTRATION TRANSLATION
TIME Magazine | April 3 | Philip Montgomery
"It was only a matter of days between New York City recording its first known death from COVID-19 and the region’s grim ascension to a global epicenter. 'We all had been hearing how bad the numbers were and how overwhelmed the hospitals were, as well as the instructions to stay home,' says photojournalist Philip Montgomery. 'So you had all that factual information but no visual confirmation.' After entering a Queens public hospital’s emergency room, he looked over at his assistant: 'Our eyes were just huge and starting to water up and tear,' he remembers. “This was an enormous situation, and we just had no preface to prepare us for what that was.' Later, inside the Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx, he watched as Dr. Sherry Melton, center, moved a gurney after transferring a patient to the intensive care unit. Montgomery aimed to make a photograph that conveyed the urgency of the moment. 'It was just one patient after another. These men and women are there every day, and they’re exhausted,' he says. “This was the reality. This was the first peak.'”
Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 169-175 Translation Comparisons
ὦ πόποι, ἀνάριθμα γὰρ φέρω
πήματα: νοσεῖ δέ μοι πρόπας στόλος, οὐδ᾽ ἔνι φροντίδος ἔγχος
ᾧ τις ἀλέξεται. οὔτε γὰρ ἔκγονα
κλυτᾶς χθονὸς αὔξεται οὔτε τόκοισιν
ἰηίων καμάτων ἀνέχουσι γυναῖκες:
ἄλλον δ᾽ ἂν ἄλλῳ προσίδοις ἅπερ εὔπτερον ὄρνιν
κρεῖσσον ἀμαιμακέτου πυρὸς ὄρμενον
ἀκτὰν πρὸς ἑσπέρου θεοῦ.
Countless are my sufferings. The whole nation is suffering from this wound, from this murderous plague and we see no way to be rid of it. No crops on the land, no children follow the women’s birth pains. And our souls, hasten to beat one another, like fast birds, in their race to get, like a wild fire, to Dark Hades.
Ah me, what countless woes are mine!
All our host is in decline;
Weaponless my spirit lies.
Earth her gracious fruits denies;
Women wail in barren throes;
Life on life downstriken goes,
Swifter than the wind bird’s flight,
Swifter than the Fire-God’s might,
To the westerning shores of Night.
Alas, countless are the sorrows I bear. A plague is on all our people, and thought can find no weapon for defense. The fruits of the glorious earth do not grow; by no birth of offspring do women surmount the pangs in which they shriek. You can see life after life speed away, like a bird on the wing, swifter than irresistible fire, to the shore of the western god.
The miseries numberless, grief on grief, no end —
too much to bear, we are all dying
O my people …
Thebes like a great army dying
and there is no sword of thought to save us, no
and the fruits of our famous earth, they will not ripen
No and the women cannot scream their pangs to birth —
Screams for the Healer, children dead in the womb
and life on life goes down
you can watch them go
like seabirds winging west, outracing the day’s fire
down the horizon, irresistibly
streaking on to the shores of Evening
Death
Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald
Let me pray to Athene, the immortal daughter of Zeus,
And to Artemis her sister
Who keeps her famous throne in the market ring,
And to Apollo, archer from distant heaven —
O gods, descend! Like three streams leap against
The fires of our grief, the fires of darkness;
Be swift to bring us rest!
As in the old time from the brilliant house
Of air you stepped to save us, come again!
Alas! for I bear countless woes;
disease falls upon my entire crew,
and no mind’s weapon can protect me,
for the fruit of our famous land does not grow,
nor do our women emerge from their
mournful labors with offspring.
One upon another you might see each soul,
like a well-winged bird, surer than irresistible fire,
setting out for the promontory of the western god.
TELEPHONE TRANSLATION
Medea (seductively)
A woman up against a man like you?
No problem. I’ll assist you in this task:
I’ll send the children to her bearing gifts
Of irresistible beauty: a fine sheer robe
And a tiara made of beaten gold!
Final Translation
ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἔστι γυνή ἀσύμφορος εἶναι;
But, is it not a woman who is fighting against you?
* I could not determine a way to portray the exclamatory question, so I chose to negate it to get the sense of the scene
Ἐν τάξει. Σὲ ἐν τῷ τέλει συμπαραστατήσω:
No problem. I’ll stand by you in this task:
* Εντάξει = modern Greek
Derived from Ancient Greek ἐν (en, “in”) + τάξει (táxei, “order”)
“No problem” = “it’s all in order”
πρός ἕ κούρω ἀποπέμψω, ἀγλαόδωροιν δωρεάς
I will send my two sons to her bearing gifts
* κούρω = dual accusative "sons"
* φέροντε = dual accusative ptcp
τῶν ἀπροσμαχῶν καλλῶν: τὸν διαφανεῖς ἑανόν καὶ
of irresistible beauty: a fine sheer/translucent robe, and
τὴν χρυσήλατον ἄμπυκα.
a diadem of beaten gold!
* Unfortunately, there is no Ancient Greek exclamation point
STILL TRANSLATION
COMPOUND TRANSLATION
HISTORICAL TRANSLATION
Sources
Settlers in Merion: The Harrison Family and Harriton Plantation
By George Vaux
Jan 1890
Harriton Plantation and Family Cemetery
By George Vaux and Hugh Terrance
1891
Early Bryn Mawr Black History, 1719-1824
By Grace Pusey
Jun 9, 2015
Uprising
Richard Harrison of the Harriton plantation was served a lovely, possibly unsweetened, steaming cup of hot chocolate each morning by his slaves. He was a wealthy man, though not exorbitantly so, and could therefore afford the finer things society had to offer: "Chocolate, always expensive, was taken at breakfast by fashionable society" (link). Just before he began to eat, Richard heard a knock and ran to answer it, only to find no one there, tipping over the table and his mug of chocolate in the process. Their family cat seized this opportunity to drink the milk, dying within minutes. Certain it must be poison (it takes hours for chocolate to kill a cat), they immediately suspected the slaves, who, seeing the cat's death as a bad omen, confessed to having poisoned his cup. Their punishment is unmentioned, but was likely grave.
Born 1 Jan 1836
Died 12 Mar 1918
“The competition for violin [at the Conservatory] has offered a beautiful spectacle this year, being the most brilliant struggle. The first grand prize was conceded to Mr. White, pupil of Alard, and the second [prize] to Mr. [Aimé] Gros, from the same class... Mr. White showed himself [so] superior that there should have been created a grand exceptional prize in his favor. He performed with an extraordinary animation, not like a pupil but as a great artist who commands his audience. The jury itself was electrified" (Ramirez 1891, 178).
Link to article about him here
Link to hid "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra" here
Born 9 Apr 1887
Died 3 Jun 1953 (age 66)
"Unfolding over a relatively brief 14-minute span, the concerto opens with a sober orchestral introduction, pausing for a beat to let the solo violin make its honeyed, serpentine entrance. Violinist Er-Gene Kahng's tone, round and lustrous, is well-suited to the concerto's breezy melodic theme and dotted rhythm, which propels the music forward. Along with Price's harmonies – with their tasteful dabs of dissonance – the music is reminiscent of the sweeping, melody-driven American violin concertos of the 1930s by Samuel Barber and Erich Korngold."
Link to article about her 2nd Violin Concerto here
Link to her 2nd Violin Concerto here
Born 27 Feb 1897
Died 8 Apr 1993 (age 96)
It took self-awareness for her to program Negro spirituals for the 1939 recital, in spite of the white dominant culture's ridicule of programming black folk repertoires for the concert stage. That derision was based in the Eurocentrism that is prized in formal music education to this day. Price used African American folk idioms to illustrate her multiple-consciousness identity that embraced what English and Africana studies scholar Salamishah Tillet refers to, in her book Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination, as an African American "critical patriotism" championed by black women suffragist leaders such as Mary Church Terrell.
Link to article about her here
Link to her Spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" here
Born 1956
"The piece, which was inspired by the ways in which our focus and attention are constantly challenged in this era of endless notifications and non-stop communication feeds, requires the quartet to make their way through the score in the face of a series of mounting interruptions. The players are compelled to execute its three movements without pause – splitting their attention, navigating distractions and distracting one another as they “multi-task” their way through the piece."
Link to page with piece descriptions here
Link to her String Quartet "Attention" here