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Re: A Glasgow bookcase

From: <mystery1881~at~verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:05:37 -0500 (CDT)
To: jvf~at~gilead.org.il

Point well taken about the somewhat "rough and ready" side of Burns.  Certainly something like The Ball at Kinnemuir (sp?) wouldn't get a G rating. Even possibly some of Tam O'Shanter - (just how "cutty" was her "sark" that nicht?), and To a Louse might be hard to explain to an eight year old.  And perhaps some of the anti-clerical tone of Holy Willie's Prayer wasn't appreciated in what might have been a Auld Kirk household. I'm reminded of a story that a strict Presbyterian Scot, when told that Jesus actually conducted his work on the Sabbath, responded with: " Aye, and we've not thought the better of him in this parish for it". 

I'd be interested in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Lallans. It would be an interesting question of how would one translate some of the neologisms and Carroll's word-play that seem to only "work" in English (and a sort of Mitfordian U-English at that). What about Through the Looking Glass'  Hunting of the Snark "frabjous", "vorpal" blade etc.? Does one keep the new or nonsense words and only translate the incidentals? That seems like gilding the lily, or perhaps more like adding Scots pepper to the English salt already there.  Even though Broad Scots is usually considered a dialect rather than a entirely different language, it would be a task to really get the flavor of the original. Even today, after a century, we've lost some of the nuances of the originals.

I'm not a translator as some are on this group, but I'd like to imagine that Verne's French, being governed by the Academy would remain as clear in another hundred years as the original, while English usage almost begs to be outmoded every few decades. Hence the need to be not only literate, but a historian or philologist, when reading anything from the Vic/Ed period on back, much less Shakespeare, King James Bible, etc. (Appertinent to the last, its become very much a case of "use it or lose it" - present day Anglicans can barely remember such things as what the word "whole" means in "...the whole state of Christ's church" from the '29 Book of Common Prayer.)  

David McCallister           


Aug 13, 2010 03:51:53 AM, jvf@Gilead.org.il wrote:

>Michael Everson wrote:
>> On 12 Aug 2010, at 19:57, mystery1881@verizon.net wrote:
>>
>>> What? No Rabbie Burns?
>>
>> If you like Scots, I can tell you that a translation of Alice's Adventures
>in Wonderland in Scots is in preparation.
>>
>> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>>
>>
> The author was only 8 in 1880 and had a younger brother and sister, so
>I imagine that Burns' writings in Scots would probably have been
>incomprehensible.There may also have been an element of parental
>control...Rabbie Burns' adventurous personal life may not have been
>appreciated in a middle class family.I should have mentioned that in
>addition to the family Bible, the bookcase contained several books of an
>"improving" nature for the children, for example The Pilgrim's
>Progress.
>A chapter on "Sundays" in "I Remember" describes the bleakness
>of the
>Sabbath in Scotland (as Verne discovered in Edinburgh in 1859). In
>Glasgow's bourgeois West End, even the magnificent fountain
>commemorating the arrival of pure water from Loch Katrine,that I
>described in a recent posting, was switched off for the day! So reading
>would have been one of the few sources of entertainment for children on
>Sundays,but Rabbie Burns would probably not have been considered
>suitable family reading. Certainly, the two Verne books in the bookcase
>would have been a welcome diversion
>Ian Thompson
>

Received on Fri 13 Aug 2010 - 21:06:00 IDT

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