Post by LonginusNaso on Jul 13, 2023 8:36:35 GMT
The place for silly-sounding, outrageously stilted, or just plain bad translations (to & from any ol' language).
I was just now reading a (very old) book that I quite like, but the author insists on using absurd, alien words that were in vogue at the turn of the century. Here is his rendering of Rig-Veda 6.64.1.
अभूदु वस्वी दक्षिणा मघोनी
abhūd u vasvī dakṣiṇā maghōnī
'Liberal goddess, kind, she hath become baksheesh.'
Not only does this M. Bloomfield insist on this meaning of dakṣiṇā, which is simply not necessary, he's chosen "baksheesh" instead of some uninteresting bookish word like 'emolument' (which is, to begin with, closer to his earlier definition of 'fee for writing a poem'), resulting in possibly the stupidest-sounding thing I've read in the past three months.
I was just now reading a (very old) book that I quite like, but the author insists on using absurd, alien words that were in vogue at the turn of the century. Here is his rendering of Rig-Veda 6.64.1.
अभूदु वस्वी दक्षिणा मघोनी
abhūd u vasvī dakṣiṇā maghōnī
'Liberal goddess, kind, she hath become baksheesh.'
Not only does this M. Bloomfield insist on this meaning of dakṣiṇā, which is simply not necessary, he's chosen "baksheesh" instead of some uninteresting bookish word like 'emolument' (which is, to begin with, closer to his earlier definition of 'fee for writing a poem'), resulting in possibly the stupidest-sounding thing I've read in the past three months.