The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation

58 The Translator’s Invisibility
should “fit” the foreign text “naturally and easily.” Fluency is
impossible to achieve with close or “verbal” translation, which inhibits
the effect of transparency, making the translator’s language seem
foreign: “whosoever offers at Verbal Translation,” wrote Denham,
shall have the misfortune of that young Traveller, who lost his
own language abroad, and brought home no other instead of it:
for the grace of Latine will be lost by being turned into English
words; and the grace of the English, by being turned into the Latin
Phrase.
(Denham 1656:A3 r )
Denham’s privileging of fluency in his own translation practice
becomes clear when his two versions of Aeneid II are compared. The
1636 version is preserved in the commonplace book of Lucy
Hutchinson, wife of the parliamentary colonel, John Hutchinson, with
whom Denham attended Lincoln’s Inn between 1636 and 1638
(O’Hehir 1968:12–13). The book contains Denham’s translation of
Aeneid II–VI—complete versions of IV–VI, partial ones of II and III.
Book II is clearly a rough draft: not only does it omit large portions of
the Latin text, but some passages do not give full renderings, omitting
individual Latin words. There is also a tendency to follow the Latin
word order, in some cases quite closely. The example cited by Theodore
Banks is the often quoted line “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” which
Denham rendered word for word as “The Grecians most when
bringing gifts I feare” (Denham 1969:43–44). The convoluted syntax
and the pronounced metrical regularity make the line read awkwardly,
without “grace.” In the 1656 version, Denham translated this line more
freely and strove for greater fluency, following a recognizably English
word-order and using metrical variations to smooth out the rhythm:
“Their swords less danger carry than their gifts” (Denham 1656:l. 48).
Denham’s fluent strategy is most evident in his handling of the
verse form, the heroic couplet. The revision improved both the
coherence and the continuity of the couplets, avoiding metrical
irregularities and knotty constructions, placing the caesura to reinforce
syntactical connections, using enjambment and closure to subordinate
the rhyme to the meaning, sound to sense:
1636
While all intent with heedfull silence stand
Æneas spake O queene by your command