Translations II

A few weeks ago I wrote a small piece on translations and the potential problems and / or shortcomings of translating prose or verse into another language. I found an extract that basically makes the same point but more elaborately and with a nice concrete example. It is rom G.K. Chesterton's book on Thomas Aquinas, chapter VI (The Approach To Thomism). He is talking about how St Thomas describes his basic and universal philosophic idea (it would be too complicated to go into that here, and I have to say I'm not sufficiently informed anyway) with the Latin word Ens:

“...anybody who can read Latin at all, however rudely, feels it to be the apt and fitting word (…) it ought to be a matter of logic (to understand St Thomas' concept); but it is also a matter of language.

Unfortunately there is no satisfying translation of the word Ens. The difficulty is rather verbal than logical, but it is practical. I mean that when the translator says in English 'being', we are aware of a rather different atmosphere. Atmosphere ought not to affect these absolutes of the intellect; but it does. The new psychologists, who are almost eagerly at war with reason, never tire of telling us that the very terms we use are coloured by our subconsciousness, with something we meant to exclude from our consciousness. And one need not be so idealistically irrational as a modern psychologist, in order to admit that the very shape and sound of words do make a difference, even in the baldest prose, as they do in the most beautiful poetry. We cannot prevent the imagination from remembering irrelevant associations even in the abstract sciences like mathematics (…) Now it unfortunately happens that the word 'being', as it comes to a modern Englishman, through modern associations, has a sort of hazy atmosphere that is not in the short and sharp Latin word. Perhaps it reminds him of fantastic professors in fiction, who wave their hands and say, 'Thus we mount to the ineffable heights of pure and radiant Being', or, worse still, of actual professors in real life who say, 'All Being is Becoming; and is but the evolution of Not-Being by the law of its Being' (…) Anyhow it has a wild and woolly sort of sound; as if only very vague people used it; as if it might mean all sorts of different things.

Now the Latin word Ens has a sound like the English word End. It is final and even abrupt; it is nothing except itself...“

Not everything in that passage is directly concerned with the problem of translation, but I left most of it in, because Chesterton's style is too nice to be interrupted. I have underlined what I think is the central point he is making here, and it sort of adds to the point I was making in the other post. Translating can cause problems on several levels: The sound and rhythm, but also the meaning, especially through associations as Chesterton notes. In my post, I focussed more on the form, the beauty that can get lost, but I also mentioned how translation can change the meaning of ideas or concepts, like Chesterton shows here with the Ens-Being example. And on a side note, I do agree with him that those two words do seem to describe completely different concepts, only by their sound.