On the Wizardry of Translations

Often – if at all – this is attributed to Pliny the Elder. But I searched for a long time to come up with the original, Latin version of that; with no success. In the course of preparing this post, I even grepped through the Naturalis Historiae for some possible sources. Even though I certainly might have overlooked something there, I don't think that the quote in this form actually is rightly attributed to Pliny the Elder.

But there are more possible sources, and a slightly wider search actually revealed an interesting quote from Pliny the Younger in his letter to Tacitus concerning the death of Pliny the Elder, his uncle:

Equidem beatos puto, quibus deorum munere datum est aut facere scribenda aut scribere legenda, beatissimos vero quibus utrumque.
— Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Epistulae VI, 16.3

Which I found translated as

Happy I esteem those to be to whom by provision of the gods has been granted the ability either to do such actions as are worthy of being related or to relate them in a manner worthy of being read
— The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by William Melmoth, line 3933

Or to be more in the spirit of what is to come:

Ich jedenfalls halte die für glücklich, denen es als Geschenk der Götter gegeben ist, entweder Beschreibenswertes zu tun oder Lesenswertes zu schreiben - für besonders glücklich aber die, denen beides beschieden ist.
— Vox-Latina-Gottingensis

From this I pretty much think that the attribution to Pliny the Elder is faulty, in my humble opinion it was Pliny the Younger who said it; granted, he speaks of his uncle so the mix-up is understandable. I have no clue where the 'and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it' part comes from. Anyhow, here the journey just starts!

We decided against using the Latin version, even after having it somewhat identified; who is going to understand "aut facere scribenda aut scribere legenda"? Even those among us who did an Examen Latinum have probably, like me, forgotten most of it and hence struggle with a straightforward understanding of the meaning, even though it is really not that cryptic^a. Which on the other hand might be a good thing since it could provoke some refreshing of Latin skuills. No, we decided on putting in a German version and so we started to think about an appropriate translation.

Since our starting point was "to do what deserves to be written, to write what deserves to be read", we wanted something in German that closely resembles the structure, and of course meaning. But what is the meaning of it anyways? Is it to tell the reader to do important things, in fact so important things that one ought to write them down, and also write them in such a way that it is a pleasure to read them? But maybe the first part is independent of the second, so we do important things, okay, fine, but what we write down can be anything that is a blast to read. Tricky.

Going back to the Latin at that point would reveal that either doing important thing or writing good books makes you a blessed person, the 'aut... aut' is an exclusion; though in this case not a hard absolute but rather a relative. But then the original goes on further, saying those who accomplish both things are the most blessed ones. Okay, that is good, of course the motto should be something far reaching, important, something that is worth trying to live up to. So we want an inclusion of both things, not either this, or that. At least not this explicitly. That means, we want a German translation of "to do what deserves to be written, to write what deserves to be read".

Alright, how about a first shot for the German version then?

...zu vollbringen, was wert ist, beschrieben zu werden; zu schreiben, was wert ist, gelesen zu werden;

Not that bad for a first try, but maybe a bit too descriptive and uninspiring. How about this then:

...zu vollbringen, was wüdig ist, niedergeschrieben zu werden; zu schreiben, was wert ist, gelesen zu werden.

Okay, not much of a change, but 'niedergeschrieben' and 'würdig' seem to better fit the monumental demands of the tasks waiting to be done. But still it doesn't have the nice symmetry of the English version and it is rather long. Okay, we can do something about the length:

...der Niederschrift Würdiges zu vollbringen; Lesenswertes zu schreiben.

Still not quite right. Sounds a bit awkward and 'der Niederschrift Würdiges' is quite long compared to 'Lesenswertes'. So we tweak that a bit:

...Aufzeichnungswertes zu leisten; Lesenswertes zu schreiben

I like this, but the symmetry with 'schreiben' is gone. Maybe it works with a different word for 'schreiben', lets try 'verfassen':

Verfassungswürdiges zu leisten; Lesenswertes zu verfassen

Whoops. This is a major hiccup, we don't want to bring in the constitution here. It was late when I came up with that and it got quickly corrected to

...Verfassenswertes zu leisten; Lesenswertes zu verfassen.

Short and punchy. But still not quite it, especially since 'Verfassenswertes' is such a hulking word and without knowing what we are talking about, probably also quite incomprehensible. So maybe we shouldn't try to make it as short as possible. After some more fruitless tries – including the very weird using of 'Lesung' – we came to

...zu leisten, was der Niederschrift würdig; zu schreiben, was des Lesens würdig.

This looked and sounded very good when we came up with it. But after writing the summary of how we got there intermingled with some further background searches I did after we concluded on the latter version, I am not so sure anymore; comments welcome.

This all just makes you appreciate all the wizardry translators of books have to go through, and it recalls how creative the work is. At least when the translator takes the job serious. Kudos to those who do.


^a: I do think that my Latin would not be that rusty as to not at least get the general idea of the phrase. But then I have been thinking about that for the last week and am hence not a good test subject.


PS: This article actually marks a milestone, it is my 100th article published here! Yeah! The numbering of Articles which you can guess from the URL does not reflect that though. Serendipty also counts started but then eventually deleted articles. Pff.