TRANSLATION        WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
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THE DIVINE COMEDY                           (Page 2)     MAKING SENSE The second concern of a  translator is to make sense of what is being translated so that a  modern reader will appreciate it -- but without changing the meaning in any substantial way.  In the past 100 years,  there have been more than fifty attempts to translate Dante's Inferno into English. And before 1900, there were many other translations. The most obvious reason for this is that language constantly changes, so that the vocabulary and style of a translation can begin to seem outdated within a few years.

To illustrate how and why a translation may become outdated, let's look at two translations of another section from the Inferno, Canto II, lines 121-126. You may remember that at this point in the poem, Virgil has just told Dante about the three beautiful "ladies" in Heaven who are trying to help him. Now he's saying that since Dante has such divine support, he should not be afraid to descend into the underworld.

In the following boxes you'll see two translations of these lines. One of them was created over a hundred years ago; the other was made in the 1990's. See if you can tell which is the older version. To help you, I've highlighted some of the words you should compare.

As you probably guessed, the older translation is Version A. It was written by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (author of the poem Hiawatha) more than a hundred years ago. Version B (by Robert Pinsky) was published in 1996. It's evident that Version A is much older because it uses words like thou, baseness, hast, hardihood, benedight, and doth promise thee -- not words that someone living in the present time would normally use. 

Of course you may feel that the older version sounds more like the words that Dante, who lived many centuries ago, would have used to write about a subject of great spiritual significance. In fact, however, Dante chose not to write The Divine Comedy in Latin, the language normally used in the early fourteenth century for serious religious writings. Instead, he wrote his poem in Italian -- the contemporary, "popular" spoken language of his time -- because he wanted it to be understood by ordinary people. (This is one reason why he called it his Commedia, or comedy, a term used in his day to describe  works intended for a popular audience.) So, since Dante himself was using a "modern" language, designed to appeal to his contemporary audience, translators have good justification for using current-day English when they're translating his works from the original Italian. 

Let's look at two more examples. In the boxes below you'll see two different translations of  lines 133-37 of Canto II. In these lines, Dante, now fired up with courage, tells Virgil to lead the way into Hell. One of these translations was made in the 1940's, the other in the 1990's -- not a very big time difference. Nevertheless, I think you'll be able to spot the older one. The exercise at the bottom of this page will ask you to choose the version that was written in the earlier time period and explain why.

                                                           
 EXERCISE B.   
Which of the two translations quoted in the boxes immediately above -- Trans. C by Seamus Heaney or Trans. D by Dorothy Sayers -- do you think was written in the earlier time period? Explain with reference to specific words and phrases. 
Click on their names to look again at the translated passages.

When you've finished, please go to Page 3.
  

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