In an average page of French
or German philosophy nearly all the nouns can be translated directly
into exact equivalents in English; but in Greek that is not so.
Scarcely one in ten of the nouns on the first few pages of the
_Poetics_ has an exact English equivalent. Every proposition has to be
reduced to its lowest terms of thought and then re-built. This is a
difficulty which no translation can quite deal with; it must be left
to a teacher who knows Greek. And there is a kindred difficulty which
flows from it. Where words can be translated into equivalent words,
the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation
which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style
of Aristotle. I have sometimes played with the idea that a ruthlessly
literal translation, helped out by bold punctuation, might be the
best. For instance, premising that the words _poesis_, _poetes_ mean
originally 'making' and 'maker', one might translate the first
paragraph of the _Poetics_ thus:--
MAKING: kinds of making: function of each, and how the Myths ought to
be put together if the Making is to go right.
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