The term "translatorese" is used by Donald Davie in Poet as Sculptor and the
later Ezra Pound (1975), page 58. (I don't have P as S here but the
reference given in EP is to page 87.) Davie also notes John Epsey's article
in Paideuma, volume 1, number 1 (which I have not read), where Epsey traces
in Lustra Pound's discovery and mastery of the "technique of the deliberate
howler".

I don't have H to SP with me otherwise I'd go and look for some examples of
my own, but Davie gives as an example a passage including the lines:

The moon still declined to descend out of heaven,
But the black ominous owl hoot was audible.

An even better example (Davie's again) is

Sailor, of winds; a plowman, concerning his oxen;
Soldier, the enumeration of wounds; the sheep-feeder, of ewes;
We, in our narrow bed, turning aside from battles:
Each man where he can, wearing out the day in his manner.

Davie calles the curiously stilted style of these passages both
"translatorese" and "Babu English", but the two seem to me to be mutually
exclusive. Babu English is the sort of pompous and fault-ridden English
supposed to be spoken by imperfectly educated imperial subjects. (Davie
quotes Allen Upward on this subject). Using Babu English in H to SP is
supposed by Davie to imply a critique of the British Empire. I find this
interpretation altogether too ingenious.

Translatorese on the other hand is the English written by English speaking
classicists (necessarily "educated" people) when translating Latin or Greek
texts. Why Pound chooses this notoriously wooden and unpromising idiom can
only be judged by the results; the effect is often very amusing and rather
touching. Peter Russell gets a similar effect sometimes in his Odes of
Quintilius.

I wonder whether Epsey quotes Thomas in his article.

There's a great parody of part of a Greek tragedy written in translatorese
by AE Housman, referred to but not quoted in Thomas's review. I urge you to
look it up. It's in the Penguin Housman edited by Christopher Ricks. The
only line I can quote off the top of my head is the splendidly redundant "My
reason for enquiring is to know", but that is not the best.

Richard Edwards


>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Edward Thomas on Les Imagistes
>Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 09:31:23 -0400
>
>Richard,
>Can you provide a few examples from EP's Propertius of what you consider
>"translatorese" ?
>Tim Romano
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Richard Edwards" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > I've just been reading Edward Thomas's review of "Les Imagistes: An
> > Anthology", collected in "A language not to be betrayed: selected prose
>of
> > Edward Thomas", ed Edna Longley, Manchester 1981. Thomas makes the point
> > that many of the poems sound like prose "cribs", or translations of the
> > classics, giving a convincing example from Richard Aldington.
> >
> > This strikes me as a perceptive remark, anticipating perhaps Pound's
> > deliberate adoption of "translatorese" for the Homage to Sextus
>Propertius.
> > Does anyone know if Pound read Thomas?
> > [...]

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