Magin_Edward-thesis

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faults would bring them down in our eyes. (Houdar de la Motte 1992:29-
30)
Here Houdar de la Motte plainly states that the context for the audience in France at the
time was much different from that of Homer’s audience. He translated for a particular
audience, giving his audience something they could appreciate. However, one has to
question, can one call his work a translation if it changes the characters’ actions and
personalities? I would say it is not. If the product is one that strays too far from the
original, it is better to consider that product an adaptation of a sort rather than a
translation. Such an adaptation would fall into the category of an “imitation” on Holmes’
scale in Figure 1.
In support of this view, von Willamowitz-Moellendorff (1992:34), who argues for
translation into verse form, writes:
We are faced with a totally different matter when a creative poet takes up
an ancient work and transforms it recreatively in his own spirit. This is
quite legitimate, even great, but it is not a translation. For translation only
wants to let the ancient poet speak to us clearly and in a manner as
immediately intelligible as he did in his own time. He must be given
words, he must speak through our mouth.
Hence, while von Williamowitz-Moellendorff may have thought Houdar de la Motte’s
work of value, he would by no means call his version of Homer a translation.
Perhaps translators resort to producing something other than what has been
defined as a metapoem because the task is so difficult. Wilfrid Thorley (1920:1, 2), a
translator of French verse into English, expressed it this way:
In translation, it is a small thing to know, etymologically, the literal
equivalent of foreign words, the important thing being to understand their
intention, and to render their effect in your own way…This being so with
a simple prose statement, the matter is obviously ten times more intricate
when we come to poetry, where subtleties of sound are to be reproduced
and the sense preserved, while duly conforming to the tyrannous
exigencies of rhyme and metre.
However, while Thorley (1920:4) does concede to some sort of re-creation strategy, his
philosophy does seem to keep in step with that of the metapoet: