Translations and women

 

When I was a spry boy, full of pep and curiosity, my German teacher at Duquesne University, Dr. Reinkraut, gave me Thomas Mann´s Dr Faustus to read. Try as I did, the novel was beyond me, even though it was a translation. All these years, that reading was pending and the other day I picked up my 1949 translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter intent on tackling it finally.
But I read the "Translator´s Note": "Les traductions sont comme les femme, lorsqu'elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fidèles, et lorsqu'elles sont fidèle, elles ne sont pas belles."
Not content with that, Mrs. Lowe-Porter quotes the Bible, Proverbs: 31:10 "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."
Some other day I will delve into translations... but I will not compare them to women and their "virtue" and "fidelity", whatever that may mean.
Mrs. Lowe-Porter´s remarks did not raise a brow in 1949. In 2019 she would have been kicked in the butt by employees at the Publishing House, Penguin Books, and booed out of the place. "O tempora. O Mores."
Can you imagine comparing women to translations? Ellen Tracy Lowe-Porter was no feminist, of course.