Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/46

32 trying to write English: but it was not worse than what the English writer who comes below him does deliberately:

Our enveloping movement, which has been proceeding since several days.—Times.

Making every allowance for special circumstances, the manner in which these amateur soldiers of seven weeks' service acquitted themselves compels one 'furiously to think'.—Westminster Gazette.

A warning may be given that it is dangerous to translate if you do not know for certain what the original means. To ask what the devil some one was doing in that gallery is tempting, and fatal.

Appended are the passages illustrating the two different motives for translation:

If we could take this assurance at its face value and to the foot of the letter, we should have to conclude...—Times.

It will be observed (a) that literally gives the meaning previously; (b) that to the foot of the letter is absolutely unintelligible to any one not previously acquainted with au pied de la lettre; (c) that there is no wit or other admirable quality in the French itself. The writer is meanly admiring mean things; nothing could possibly be more fatuous than such half-hearted gallicizing.

I thought afterwards, but it was the spirit of the staircase, what a pity it was that I did not stand at the door with a hat, saying, 'Give an obol to Belisarius'.—.

The French have had the wit to pack into the words esprit d'escalier the common experience that one's happiest retorts occur to one only when the chance of uttering them is gone, the door is closed, and one's feet are on the staircase. That is well worth introducing to an English audience; the only question is whether it is of any use to translate it without explanation. No one will know what spirit of the staircase is who is not already familiar with esprit d'escalier; and even he who is may not recognize it in disguise, seeing that esprit does not mean spirit (which suggests a goblin lurking in the hall clock), but wit.