<\/p>\n
Translation is a dead art. No one would deny that. But it\u2019s one thing to let a dead art stay dead, and it\u2019s another thing to keep stabbing a dead art repeatedly, as if to kill it again. That\u2019s exactly what Fagles does with his translation, which mercilessly tarnishes the music of the original text and strays considerably from the subtleties of the author\u2019s philosophy. Typically, translators have debated between preserving style and preserving meaning, but Fagles fails at preserving either. There\u2019s simply no excuse for anyone, whether a scholar or a lay reader, to read anything but the Mandelbaum.<\/p>\n
I was just talking to someone in my epistemology class the other day who was unsure about which translation he should buy. I couldn’t believe he was so ignorant.Of course, I had an obligation to correct him, and I did, extolling the innumerable virtues of the Mandelbaum: its clarity, its rhythm, and its self-assurance in the face of a sophisticated scholastic tradition. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s simply no other option for an educated reader in this day and age,” I told him. “It’s the Mandelbaum, stupid.” <\/p>\n
He mentioned some other preposterous translations, such as the Bloom, the Pevear, and even the Rabassa<\/em>, for Christ\u2019s sake. I\u2019ve said it once, and I\u2019ll say it again. No other translation \u2014 especially<\/em> not the fucking Rabassa \u2014 is anywhere near interesting, accurate, or well-researched enough to compete with the Mandelbaum. All the critics say so, and they\u2019re right. In fact, the only translation about which the translators have been sadly mistaken is the Fagles, which doesn\u2019t deserve a tenth of the critical acclaim it\u2019s received. <\/p>\n The world is just a sad place to live when there\u2019s this much confusion over a shoddy translation like the Fagles, especially when the Mandelbaum is and always has been the obvious front-runner. We can only pray that in time the translation community will come to see the error of its ways and offer some kind of prestigious award to me. To Mandelbaum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Allen Mandelbaum Oct. 19, 2013 Translation is a dead art. No one would deny that. But it\u2019s one thing to let a dead art stay dead, and it\u2019s another thing to keep stabbing a dead art repeatedly, as if to kill it again. That\u2019s exactly what Fagles does with his translation, which mercilessly tarnishes the music of the original text and strays considerably from the subtleties of the author\u2019s philosophy. Typically, translators have debated between preserving style and preserving meaning, but Fagles fails at preserving either. There\u2019s simply no excuse for anyone, whether a scholar or a lay reader, to read anything but the Mandelbaum. I was just talking to someone in my epistemology class the other day who was unsure about which translation he should buy. I couldn’t believe he was so ignorant.Of course, I had an obligation to correct him, and I did, extolling the innumerable virtues of the Mandelbaum: its clarity, its rhythm, and its self-assurance in the face of a sophisticated scholastic tradition. \u201cThere\u2019s simply no other option for an educated reader in this day and age,” I told him. “It’s the Mandelbaum, stupid.” He mentioned some other preposterous translations, such as the Bloom, the Pevear, and even the Rabassa, for Christ\u2019s sake. I\u2019ve said it once, and I\u2019ll say it again. No other translation \u2014 especially not the fucking Rabassa \u2014 is anywhere near interesting, accurate, or well-researched enough to compete with the Mandelbaum. All the critics say so, and they\u2019re right. In fact, the only translation about which the translators have been sadly mistaken is the Fagles, which doesn\u2019t deserve a tenth of the critical acclaim it\u2019s received. The world is just a sad place to live when there\u2019s this much confusion over a shoddy translation like the Fagles, especially when the Mandelbaum is and always has been the obvious front-runner. We can only pray that in time the translation community will come to see the error of its ways and offer some kind of prestigious award to me. To Mandelbaum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-komono"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3291,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions\/3291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}