Translator's Note

As a student who has been studying Latin for eight years, my primary contact with the ancient world has been through translating Latin source texts. Early on in my studies, I was taught to give strictly accurate translations of grammatical concepts to prove that I knew how the Latin grammar was working, even if the resulting English translation was clunky. But as I encountered more genres of Roman literature and practiced writing my own poetry both in English and in Latin, my curiosity for how else to translate and interpret Latin source texts grew. I came to recognize translation as a response to the translator’s faithfulness to the source text. The artistry of a translation then comes from how its source text’s cultural, stylistic, and linguistic features are communicated to an audience. 

To focus my translation practice, I employed Charles Martindale’s essay “Translation as rereading: Symphony in three movements,” in which Martindale analyzes two of the three modes in John Dryden’s taxonomy for modes of translating: metaphrase and paraphrase. Each mode produces translations that vary in their faithfulness to the source texts: a metaphrase translation is one that stays as close to the phrasing and style of the source text as possible, and a paraphrase translation grants the translator the creative liberty to follow the source text’s sense more so than its words (Martindale 1993, 77). To explore the difference between these two modes, I wrote metaphrase and paraphrase translations of Catullus 64 (sometimes called his epyllion, or “little epic”) for my undergraduate thesis. Catullus’ longest surviving poem, it combines the economy of language characteristic of neoteric short poems with the breadth of Homeric epics. The poem describes the wedding of the mortal Peleus to the nymph Thetis, with an inset story of the Cretan princess Ariadne’s abandonment by the hero Theseus. Catullus 64 is often compared to and put in context with Apollonius’ Argonautica, Euripides’ Medea, and Ennius’ Medea Exsul. An excerpt of the poem—the introduction to Ariadne’s speech—demonstrates how I approached the metaphrase and paraphrase translations. 

As I drafted my two translations, I noticed more and more how these different methods of translation are influenced by control. A metaphrase translation grants the translator some authority over the text, in that they choose which “alien qualities of the original” to preserve; however, the translator must still follow the text’s meaning and style (Martindale 1993, 83). The “alien qualities” also demonstrate the control that the source text has on the translation. The translator must acknowledge that those words, phrases, images, etc. are the products of another author’s authority. Additionally, to have the source text’s stylistic and linguistic attributes not stand out against the translator’s metaphrase in an unbecoming way, the translator must bend their words to complement or highlight the source text, further giving up control to the original author. My translation of cientem (literally, “moving”) as “coaxing” in the final line of the metaphrase illustrates these points. The “alien quality” I chose to preserve in this section is tremuli salis (“trembling salt”), a poetic image in both Latin and English. “Coaxing” matches the poetic register of “trembling salt” and is better suited to the emotional landscape of the excerpt than a nondescript “moving.” Furthermore, “coaxing” conveys the image of Ariadne persuading her body to summon enough energy to curse Theseus, which juxtaposes Ariadne’s physical exhaustion with her mental fortitude. 

Dryden’s “paraphrase” expects a translator to take control over the primary text to produce a translation that resonates more with their audience’s own culture. A translator undertaking a paraphrase translation should understand the text enough that it flows through them, allowing them to assert their own authority over the text. However, there are also moments in a paraphrase when the translator yields to the text. In these moments, the text manifests in a new way and exemplifies the intersection between translation and creative writing. These features of the paraphrase can be found in the ways I expanded on ideas and themes, and played with the form and structure of the poem. Instead of the dactylic hexameter Catullus used to align his poem with traditional epic form, I wrote the paraphrase in pseudo-Sapphic stanzas—“pseudo” because they do not strictly adhere to the traditional eleven-syllable rule for the first three lines, but the fourth lines do echo the ending of a dactylic hexameter line: a dactyl (one strong syllable followed by two weak ones) followed by a spondee (two strong syllables), as in “drips from her numb mouth.”

Additionally, the paraphrase was heavily influenced by my personal feelings for Ariadne. The different translations of carmine (“song”), from “theme” in the metaphrase to “hero’s tale” in the paraphrase, reflect the cultural change in the reception of Ariadne’s myth, particularly through a feminist lens. “Theme” plays into the speaker of the poem’s pondering but puts more emotional distance between the speaker of the poem and the story that unfolds—Ariadne’s abandonment by Theseus after helping him defeat the Minotaur—whereas, “hero’s tale” recalls the irony and subjectivity of the excerpt. While Theseus is praised as a hero in many versions of the myth, he commits an unheroic deed by abandoning Ariadne after a presumed promise of marriage. The sympathetic, but biased, tone of my paraphrase translation gives agency to Ariadne and lets her control the narrative. By leaning into Ariadne’s heartbreak, I gave her ample space to mourn and voice her frustrations. My gaze is ever on Ariadne, and my translation views the story told in Catullus 64 through her eyes. 

Further reading: 

Garrison, Daniel H. 1989. The Student’s Catullus. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Martindale, Charles. 1993. “Chapter 4: Translation as rereading: Symphony in three movements.” In Redeeming the text: Latin poetry and the hermeneutics of reception (Cambridge): 75-100.

Jia Self

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