The surest test of one's understanding of a text in another language is translating it into one's own. One may believe that one has achieved a full understanding of the meaning of a text, only to find, in the process of translation, that one's understanding has serious gaps and even flaws.Hat tip: Ian Jackson.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Translation
Bernard Lewis (1916-), Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian (New York: Viking: 2012), p. 23: