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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The history of classical scholarship bears the traces of many a violent battle over the theory and practice of translation. It is not surprising therefore that today, when translations are in more common use than ever before, not only as aids to reading the original but even as sole texts for pupils in schools and universities lacking the classical languages, their function and quality should be subjects of considerable discussion and disagreement. The demand is greater than ever, and a Penguin version of Homer can become a best-seller; but it is also harder than ever to satisfy oneself that the translation one has recommended is not misleading students nurtured in a culture and attuned to an idiom so different from those of the Graeco-Roman world. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the provision of good translations is a matter no longer of theoretical discussion but of immediate practical importance, if our students are to have the remotest possibility of reaching understanding of what classical writers were trying to say.
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page 126 note 4 I cannot trace my source for this anecdote nor am I sure that Charlesworth was not telling it of a clergyman friend of his.
page 127 note 1 The complete version of this paper was delivered as a lecture to a one-day school on Classical Literature in Translation held at the University of Birmingham in December, 1973.