Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Martial Contest - Translating from an unknown language

One day to go on the First Annual Tea and History Translation Contest. The contest ends at 11:59pm, Wednesday the 27th. I've received some great entries from diverse translators including a dentist, a public health student, and an expat teacher.

Some people have expressed interest but have been confused on how to translate Martial without knowing Latin. Lots of authors - Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and David Ferry - do this. They look at literal prose translations and make their own poetic version (in this contest's case, a rhyming poetic version).

A great resource is http://martialis.blogspot.com, a blog with literal prose translations. Google books has some good resources such as this one. Also, www.poetryintranslation.com has a selected epigrams here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Sigh No More