Er, yes but no, Rob.
There is an interesting letter by Hopkins in which he claims that the
time-values and syllabics of a sonnet in Italian make it effectively longer
than one of the same line count in English and that being the cause of the
falling short effect that the form can have in English. But I wouldn't be so
dismissive of the analytic/synthetic language distinction: cliché it might
be but English does pay for its simplified grammar by being cluttered with
prepositions and necessary pronouns. The other thing, of course, is the size
of its vocabulary, English is a sponge for words, it soaks up anything.
Translating Middle into Modern English has always puzzled me - in effect its
translating a language into itself - obviously I can see the differences
between the usages of the periods but I still see the language as a
continuous entity - I could equally say that I find it odd that sometimes
people can speak of translating a poem in Scots into English, the speech
forms are two of a kind, or a twain!
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 1:17 PM
Subject: Re: the Poets' Corner
<<
it always is the other way round
more tea?
L
>those who have translated poems know of the difficulty of matching two
languages that belong to the Latin and Anglo-Saxon group, the first is
usually verbose, the latter cuts short; <
Just a slight puzzlement here, Anny, but I always thought it was the other
way round.
Best
Dave
>>
Actually, I've never been entirely convinced by this particular cliche --
most of it turns on the analytic (AS) / synthetic (Romance languages)
distinction, synthetic languages working with more inflectional endings.
I suspect it would make more sense to count syllables rather than words. Or
do a time-interval analysis.
Has there been any work done on this above the level of pub-burble (not that
I'd *ever* accuse either Lawrence or dave of burbling <g>) ...
The real bugger is trying to translate Medieval into Contemporary English --
you need a basic level of difference even to begin translating, and in terms
of English, this seems to crash&burn across roughly 1500 ....
Am I making any sort of sense? Almost certainly not ...
Given that both Anny Ballardini and Mark Weiss are the real pros in this
area, I should keep my mouth tightly shut.
Robin the Chomsky minimalist.
(Actually, the key-date for English is 1375. Let's get this right.
R2.)
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