Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/23

Rh to understand their works, or even the criticisms upon them, a translation is necessary, on which again much depends, not only in respect of faithfulness but also of felicity of transcript, to render the beauties of the original sufficiently perceptible.

Many rules have been given by critics for the benefit of translators from the earliest times till now, to which it is not necessary here to refer further than to state the plan upon which these translations have been made. In a didactic or historical work, the more precisely the translation is made according to the letter of the original, the greater merit may it be considered to possess. But in works of imagination, especially of poetry, it may be more important to attend to the spirit of the original than to the literal construction. The main thoughts contained in each passage should be as faithfully given in the one case as in the other, though it may not be necessary, and sometimes not even becoming, to have the same regard to details. With poetry, the translator should make it his great aim to consider how his author would have expressed the same thoughts if he had been writing in English verse, and thus mould the original ideas into synonymous poetical expressions, as far as the idioms of the two languages and the requirements of metre will allow. It would be a poor vanity in a translator to think of improving on his original, so far as to make any alteration or addition merely for that purpose. But where any words admit of synonyms with different shades of meaning, it is certainly his right, if not his duty, to adopt the one he thinks most suitable. Sometimes it may seem to him accordant with good taste to make a more decided alteration, and in every language there are many expressions sufficiently poetical and appropriate, which if construed literally into another would appear otherwise. These the author, it may be supposed, would have altered himself, under the same circumstances, and the other, therefore, in so