I was perusing a copy of Harry Potter in Ancient Greek, lamenting the time it’ll take for me to be fluent enough to read it when it dawned upon me. How much modern work is there for the Homeric and Attic dialects of greek? I’m talking stuff like horror, fiction, et al.
It might be very difficult to have modern time works due to vocabulary, but the person who translated Harry Potter invented a bunch of words that as far as I can tell entered the closed vocabulary of the language. So, what if more people tried to do that? Could that language become a living language again? (Yeah, right, but it is an interesting thought).
And, if you’re careful about the time period you write in, you probably wouldn’t need any new vocabulary…
Seeing on how I’m secretly a black metal guitarist, I probably could write some music for an Epic Poem… But still, I suppose my question stands, why aren’t there new and large works written in Homeric or Attic greek?
I think I can’t undertand your question very well… you mean, how much is still out there waiting to be translated? Or how much is there to be made that should have a sister original version in greek?
The answer is simple… why would the author be interested in translating his work onto another language, even more being an ancient unspoken language? If they saw a good market on that, they’ll do it. They could probably take some benefit from it, but not that much as if they translated it, let’s say, onto chinese, or arabic, or spanish.
Also, not so many people out there knows ancient greek, I guess. And it’s not that easy to write a good thing.
If publishing were merely a question of profitability, I guess a lot of works would never see the light of day. The UK Amazon has sold less than 4000 copies of the Greek Harry Potter. Such sales are not making Andrew Wilson, the translator, a fortune: he spent a whole year translating the book!
So, Yhevhe, I understand your skepticism about undertaking the translation of long works into what is often considered ‘dead’ languages. And yet this is what is done every now and then: Milne or Rowling, even Shakespeare. The latter’s sonnets have been translated into Latin.
But, why is it done? Well, first of all, I think the translators find it fun. Simple as that. Further, I think they hope to stimulate interest in the classical languages. Finally, I think the publishers may have an interest in publishing a work in “all the languages of the world” (I bet that Rowling’s proud that her novel has been translated into ancient Greek, too).
“(…) why aren’t there new and large works written in Homeric or Attic greek?” (Pounds per Square Inch Lord)
Modern Greek is also Homeric and Attic. You don’t write in Old English, do you? If you could read Old English, why would you want to read Harry Potter in Old English instead of Plain English?
Translators of modern works to Ancient Languages could learn from the Basques. Anything more modern than the invention of the wheel has to be adapted to Basque from other languages.
From what I understand it is the first Ancient Greek translation of its kind. They have been doing this much longer in Latin, mainly as a way to encourage Latin students. Somebody at Bloomsbury put out an ad that they were looking for a translator for Harry Potter into Ancient Greek, and Mr. Wilson, the retired Ancient Greek professor thinking it was a joke, decided for fun to translate a chapter or two into Ancient Greek and submitted. He was surprised to find that he had gotten the job.
As to the whole thing of translating long works into languages spoken no more, I say “Why bother?” For fun? Sure, if you have the time and energy. But the problem is a lack of audience. Long after the Roman empire fell Latin was still used as a communication tool across Europe, so making translations made sense (except most things worthy of the Latin audience were written originally in Latin). But now the audience is limited for classical languages, and the only way I see that changing is if they regain Lingua Franca status, which I think would be better given to a language like Esperanto. About the only reason I can see is if translating works into old languages, besides fun, is to somehow make the works better - which, in some instances, this translation of Harry Potter may have done according to the above site.
Well, that seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy now doesn’t it? Pharr himself wrote his book against the Illiad cause it was interesting to read. Obviously, if most of what a language offers is insight into a culture that lived 2500 years ago, your average kid isn’t going to even consider being interested in it. Hence, it will never be reborn. Of course, there is a lot of interesting stuff to read in homeric and attic greek, but nothing relevant to modern times. And people like the modern time.
And what about simple distribution of the work? That means that if 12 fluent people in Attic Greek wanted to translate Harry Potter, it would take 1-2 months, instead of 12 months for one person to do it. The amount of work each person does is quite reasonable and entire translation can be created thusly. The only real communication needed between the translators are arguments about vocabulary…
You are not serious are you? Some of the (if not the) greatest poetical works are written in Ancient Greek. Plato and Aristotle are as relevant as ever. Is the Lord of Rings more entertaining than Herodotus, the Odyssey or the Illiad? Is the drama of Euripides less gripping now than it was back then? Are Sappho’s emotions no longer valid?
Why would you try to learn Ancient Greek in the first place if not to read such works as they were written? If you want to read modern english childrens books, read them in english. As THEY were written. Don’t get me wrong, read what you want, I really don’t care, but don’t say there is nothing worth reading in Ancient Greek.
I want my Grandma to learn Homeric Greek. Does anyone know of any Barbara Cartland novels translated to the tongue of Homer?
Bard’s note: Homeric Greek is a poetic language. If you used Homer’s vocabulary to write prose you would not end up with Homeric Greek, and if you used it to write poetry you would end up with pretentious awful poetry (still not Homeric Greek).
If I wanted my son to learn Ancient Greek, I’d start by reading him (in translation) Aesop’s fables and curiosities out of Herodotus’ Histories. Then I’d teach him the Greek alphabet along with the Spanish alphabet. The rest I’d leave to the muses and his own inclinations. Reading the classics in translation is good enough education for most people.
If one had to learn Greek to really get Homer, and Latin to really get Virgil, and Russian to really get Tolstoi, and English to really get Shakespeare, and Spanish to really get Cervantes, and… you get my drift.
I’m not invalidating the previous works at all. In fact, those works are the reason why I’m learning in the first place. The previous works in greek have been, are, and will be, relevant for centuries to come. There are cultural and human ideas bound into those writings and I’ll be a better person for knowing them.
My point, however, is that I don’t think that is good enough.
The fact that there is no corpus of children’s books in ancient greek (that I’m aware of) makes entry into the language quite difficult. Here’s why: I think young adult books are like “4-color comics”–often uncomplicated in ideas and execution, but satisfying to read since you get the point right away. Since they’d be in a language that you’d be learning, the ease of the idea expression can be deduced a lot quicker and related to the language itself.
Do you want to learn German with a german language textbook and a copy of Immanual Kant? Where the subject matter is amazingly difficult and you have to fight it along with the language? No, you want something simpler and smaller to read and understand, so when you finish it, you feel accomplished at something.
Also, I don’t entirely mean “children’s books” as in Cat in the Hat, and things like that. I mean young adult books, like A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, etc. Those are definitely more complex than children’s books, but not as complex as War and Peace.
I know what you mean. Even children’s books, anything that encourages exposure to Greek. I suspect that there are not that many people who can write Greek well enough to write a grammatically correct story in Greek. (Those who are able may still not be willing due to the required time committment.
If you’re making a movie about Mayan speakers acted by Mayan speakers it makes sense to film it in Mayan.
My drift was that there’s many things to read written originally in many different languages, and since being well read doesn’t mean devoting your life to learning languages, most of what you read will be in translation. One can’t have it all.
If you want your son to appreciate truffles, the trick is to educate his palate, not to cook truffles so they taste like Mac&Cheese.
I think this statement of your is a bit misleading…
According to this statement, it isn’t really worth translating anything into languages noone speaks since by definition something is lost in the translation.
You appear to say that since there is already a large body of work in ancient greek, it is sufficient to use that to keep the language alive.
Truthfully, a part of me does want to agree with you. However, while there is a debate about the validity of translating existing modern works into ancient greek, I stand firm that new significant works written entirely and originally in homeric or attic greek should be created.
This is an interesting difference between Greek and Latin. Latin was, until recently, effectively Europe’s academic Esperanto. Educated people knew it and used it among themselves, with Latinity of varying qualities. Once the Renaissance hit a quite classicizing style was the norm.
But the Greek situation is different. The literary language always tracked the vernacular. Though of course there was a very strong Atticizing streak, a whole mass of the Classical language is left out of even the most literary Greek once the Second Sophistic gasped its last (avoidance of most optatives, the dative dropped or very strangely used, etc). Once Constantinople fell there was really no chance for another pure Atticist movement. Even Renaissance scholars of Greek (whether Italian or Greek) didn’t produce a great deal of original work on the Classical model.
I bet there’d have been a lot less Neo-Latin if Latin had never spread out of Italy, even with the help of the Catholic Church.
