I own, and in a certain sense cherish, a facsimile edition of Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of Shakespeare's plays, which sanitized them, eliminating 'bawdry' that he judged unsuitable for maidens.
It is a disaster, and in an important sense a failure because it identifies by omission or paraphrase a good deal of antique bawdry that would otherwise have been missed by most 18th-century readers. I dislike his undertaking and others like it. (There is a bowdlerized Pushkin in Russian that is at least equally offensive and tin-eared.) A special problem does, however, arise in translating. There is, for example, a comparatively common and vulgar but not obscene German locution that suggests to someone that he would do well to get himself reconceived by his father, whose first effort leaves much to be desired. Translated literally into English it turns out to be very offensive indeed, Or again, a French phrase like 'Je me suis foutu', all but innocuous in French, is not so when translated literally into English. When something needs to be cleaned up in translating it into English the use of the verb to bowdlerize has the merit that it makes what is being done clear without offending one of those maidens. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
