Why I Have to Watch TV Like It's My Job
How misguided I was to think I could live without TV! I see now the error of my ways. I need TV/MTV to stay young and hip - the ace up my sleeve for burrowing a scholarly niche - as it became painfully obvious to me while I was reading Sommerstein's translation of Aristophanes' Acharnians last night.
Sommerstein isn't a bad translator of Aristophanes, mostly because he isn't afraid to use the F-word. But he suffers the affliction that afflicts most academics, that of being too naturally nerdy to comment adequately on how most of the population would react to popular literature. There's a scene in the Archarnians where a Megarian (=poor) tries to sell off his daughters disguised as pigs. The joke here is that the Greek word for piglet, choilos, is also the slag for vagina. The play's hero, bartering with the Megarian, comments that the little girls may be choilos now, but they will be kusthos (grown-up vagina) later. Sommerstein renders this well: "They're piglets now, but they'll be beavers later."
Here's where Sommerstein goes wrong: after this translation he appends an elaborate endnote in which he explains that he borrows this translation of "beaver" from Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, where this term is used multiple times.
...Totally unnecessary! Beaver is just beaver.
In conclusion, I must do everything I can to keep from being foiled by my own nerdiness. And I must counteract those damn Englishmen, who keep translating dick/cock/shlong/johnson as the rather colorless "prick."
Sommerstein isn't a bad translator of Aristophanes, mostly because he isn't afraid to use the F-word. But he suffers the affliction that afflicts most academics, that of being too naturally nerdy to comment adequately on how most of the population would react to popular literature. There's a scene in the Archarnians where a Megarian (=poor) tries to sell off his daughters disguised as pigs. The joke here is that the Greek word for piglet, choilos, is also the slag for vagina. The play's hero, bartering with the Megarian, comments that the little girls may be choilos now, but they will be kusthos (grown-up vagina) later. Sommerstein renders this well: "They're piglets now, but they'll be beavers later."
Here's where Sommerstein goes wrong: after this translation he appends an elaborate endnote in which he explains that he borrows this translation of "beaver" from Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, where this term is used multiple times.
...Totally unnecessary! Beaver is just beaver.
In conclusion, I must do everything I can to keep from being foiled by my own nerdiness. And I must counteract those damn Englishmen, who keep translating dick/cock/shlong/johnson as the rather colorless "prick."
posted by Rex at 8:39 AM
5 Comments:
Schlong is definitely more whimsical :)
I don't need your sympathy, man; I need my fucking johnson!
What do you need that for, dude?
"Beavers"? Why not "pussies"? Beaver is so... I don't know, 1960s. It sounds like skinny ties and letter-sweater frat boys in cars with fins.
You think?? I think "pussy" sounds way more frat boy.
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