The New Testament: A Translation by david bentley hart yale, 616 pages, $35 David Bentley Hart’s new single-handed translation of the New Testament will strike the fair-minded reader by turns as startling, incisive, audacious, smug, shrewd, and quirky to the point of exasperation: everything, in . . . . Continue Reading »
While technically excellent, Sarah Ruden’s newest translation is a little too literal. Continue Reading »
Reynard the Fox: A New Translationtranslated by james simpsonliveright, 256 pages, $24.95 A few weeks ago I found in my mailbox a brand-new, plastic-sealed, hardcover copy of Shakespeare’s complete works, sporting on its cover a close-up hellfire picture of a jester’s cap and bells, which looked . . . . Continue Reading »
As the Italians say, traduttori, tradittori: translators are traitors. But the translator who shrugs and—cheerfully or resignedly—agrees that “every translation is an interpretation, after all” has too readily embraced the way of the tradittore. The translator who strives for strict . . . . Continue Reading »
One summer years ago, I attended a conference that met at Princeton Theological Seminary; we participants stayed in the seminary dormitory. We soon discovered that the lounge on the first floor of the dorm had been converted into a kind of outsized study. A large table dominated the room; scattered . . . . Continue Reading »
Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic Books, 632 pages, $30. Connection, linkage: this is the great task of modernist aesthetics. “Only connect!” thinks a character in E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End. “The ordinary man,” reports T. S. . . . . Continue Reading »
The Psalter translated from the hebrew by the international commission on english in the liturgy. training publications, 150 pages, $18 cloth, $12 paper There is no biblical book that has affected the inner lives of readers and worshippers over the ages more profoundly than the Book of Psalms. . . . . Continue Reading »
Saint Augustine: Confessions translated by Henry Chadwick Oxford University Press, 311 pages, $24.95 Translating Augustine’s Confessions is much like playing Hamlet: many feel called to the role, but few prove equal to its blistering demands. A professional knowledge of Latin is only a start; one . . . . Continue Reading »
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