short Greek translation

Composition and Communication Composition Board
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This is my translation of a short piece by I.A. Ireland called “Climax for a Ghost Story”. The full text (such as it is) can be found at http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/climax.html

ἀκμὴ τοῦ πε?ὶ τῶν φασμάτων λόγου

Ὥς γε καινόν - ἔφη ε?λαβῶς π?οσβαίνουσα ἡ γῠνή - καί τόση ?στὶ βα?εῖα ἡ θυ?ά. τῆσδε ?μα εἰποῦσα ἔψαυσε· ἧδε ἄφνω ἑαυτήν τῇ ὀξεῖα φωνῇ ἔκλεισε. Μὰ Δία· ἔφη ? ἀνη?, οὔ μοι δοκεῖ κώπην τινὰ ?ντὸς εῖναι. σὺ δὲ ἡμᾶς ἀμφοτέ?ους συγκέκλεκας ὦδε.
Ο?δ’ ὀτιοῦν ἀμφοτέ?ους· μόνος γε. ὥς ἔφη αὕτη καί, α?τοῦ θεωμένου, θύ?αζε ᾔει καὶ ἠφάνισεν.

Any comments/suggestions are welcome.

Some specific concerns:

  • in general, does it make sense
  • the use of pronouns and demonstratives
  • proper punctuation for direct quotations (emphasis on clarity)

There were several difficult places where I don’t think there’s any expression in Greek for it. I worked around them as well as I could, but I’d be interested in hearing if anyone has other proposals.

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I’m sorry I don’t have the time now to do an actual commentary on your translation (I will later, hopefully), but I’d just like to say that I have this in a book of mine. Black Water, I think. Anyway, it’s a cool piece to translate.

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I actually feel a bit more comfortable with verse composition (especially in the Epic manner) than I do with prose, but I thought I’d give this a shot myself. I’ll give my translation, with numbers for sentences, and then add notes below explaining how I made my decisions.

(1) Ὥς τε δεινόν, ἦ δ’ ἣ ?πιμελὴς π?οβαίνουσα, Καὶ ὡς βα?εῖα θύ?α ἥδε. (2) ταῦτα δὲ λέγουσα ?φήψατο τῆς θύ?ας, κ?ότῳ δ’ ἄ?α ?κλείσθη.

(3) Μὰ Δία, ἦ δ’ ὃς κλαίων, Ὀυκ ἔνεστιν, οἶμαι, κλῇθ?ον. (4) παπαῖ, ?ντὸς ἡμᾶς ἄμφω εἷ?ξας!

(5) Ἡμῶν ο? μὲν ἄμφω, ἀλλ’ εἷς, ἦ δ’ ἤ. (6) πά?οιθε δ’ α?τὴ ἠφανίσθη διελθοῦσα τῆς θύ?ας.

General comments: I tried to work in more participles. Also, since this is the end of a story, we already know that there’s a man and a girl. We can just use ? and ἡ instead of naming them or using “man” and “girl.”

1. You used καινός, which can mean “strange” but the fundamental meaning is “new.” I wanted something a little stronger, so went with δεινός.

In dialog it is a common idiom to use the otherwise rare-ish verb ἦμι “to say” with a form of the relative pronoun for a quick “and s/he said.” So I used ἦ δ’ ὅς and ἦ δ’ ἥ several times here. I can find one instance, in Aristophanes’ “Wasps,” where a participle is added to the bare idiom, and I use it twice here.

2. It’s a ghost story, so naturally — ἄ?α — things go awry.

3. I used a compound, ἔν-ειμι for “to be in” and made the “I don’t believe” parenthetical.

4. I’ve been reading random snippets of tragedy, so παπαῖ. I moved “us both” to the pre-verbal position, that being the sentence focus position.

5. This is a fairly common phrasing, GEN. ? μέν … ? δέ … I’ve just used the stronger μέν… ἀλλά here.

6. I didn’t think “before his eyes” would work. I first went with ἄντην but that’s only Epic. πά?οιθε seems the best choice, though ἀναφανδ?ά might be acceptable in Attic prose.


Edit: still too Homeric; changed (2) ὡς δέ … to ταῦτα …

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GlottalGreekGeek, I believe Black Water[/i] was where I first read the story as well. It’s a wonderful anthology. And the story, as you say, seemed to offer a fun exercise in translation. I’ve been slowly working through Sidgewick, which is useful, but it doesn’t offer quite the same free rein for creativity.

Annis, thanks for the comments.
I found your version quite interesting, both for the insight it offered into the Greek, and because when I compared it with what I had done I saw more clearly some of the things I had been stumbling around trying to formulate. My goal at this point is really to produce something comprehensible and grammatically correct, but it’s so helpful to be able to look at what someone else came up with and recognize, ‘yes, of course, that’s how it should be put.’
In this respect I particularly liked your use of compound verbs, which is so natural in the Greek, and the construction in the last sentence with a main verb and a participle of ἔ?χομαι. I’ve seen that I don’t know how many times, and yet it never occurred to me. I need to make a note to myself that whenever I find I’m trying to use an adverb of place, to see whether a compound verb would be better instead.

A number of my choices in in my translation were rather arbitrary. καινός was mostly an influence from Lucian’s “True Histories,” where he uses it a number of times when talking about strange and marvellous things. I almost put τε?άστιος, another Lucian word, into the title before deciding on φάντασμα.

For the dialogue, I thought about using ἦ δ’ ὅς, but avoided it mostly because I haven’t seen it often enough to be entirely comfortable with the usage.
The English here is a bit unusual also. The use of “man” and “girl” instead of the pronouns adds a certain visual concreteness, but also a vagueness and indeterminacy about their identity. ἀνή? and γυνή are much too strong in Greek to express this, now that I think about it, however. ὃς is a bit more direct than I was aiming for, but it definitely seems more natural than, say, οὖτος.

ὡς βα?εῖα is better than τόση (βα?εῖα) because “how” is qualifying a descriptive adjective, not a bare noun? Here again you confirm my first instinct which I didn’t follow up on; τόσος is something I have a sense of what it means but still struggle with exactly how it is used in Greek, so I was experimenting to try to figure out how it works.

The construction “not both of us/only one of us” draws a very forceful contrast between the two phrases. English leaves this unadorned, and I kept this in the translation because of the directness, but of course using correlatives such as ? μέν … ? δέ would have a similar effect in Greek.

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