EDITED BY LEON DELBOS, M.A. MÉLANGES LITTÉRAIRES BY JEAN S. ANDRIEUX EDITED BY ETHEL CECILIA JONES OF SOMERVILLE COLLEGE, OXFORD ASSISTANT MISTRESS IN THE BRIDLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS KD 60259 HARVARD Y JUL 15 1930 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO (26) GENERAL PREFACE THE position of French and German as a part of school education has latterly become one of so much importance, that it is necessary to discover the best possible way of teaching these languages which will lead to a thorough and scholarly knowledge of them. The teaching of modern languages has generally been approached from a merely practical point of view, but there is no doubt that their literary aspect is by far the more important. The one object in learning a language should be to become acquainted with the greatest thoughts which have been handed down, or are current in it, and for this a merely practical knowledge is quite inadequate. Yet many who use what is called the New Method teach exclusively on these utilitarian lines, which are supposed to give the pupil a knowledge of modern colloquial conversation such as would be useful in travelling abroad. In reality the pupil acquires nothing, and gains no real knowledge of the literary language, no true appreciation of the ideas or of the history of the country. This method of instruction is clearly a reaction from the old system which taught only by exercises in translation and paid little attention to the spoken language. In order to acquire a scholarly knowledge of any foreign tongue it is not sufficient to spend a few months in the country where it is spoken, and it would be well if we realized, at once, that nothing worth learning can be acquired by desultory study, or 'picked up.' If French and German are to take their places by the side of Latin and Greek in modern education, the excellent literary training which the study of these ancient tongues affords must be obtained in the same measure for students of modern languages. To make the student acquainted with a language at once in its literary and in its current forms, he should first be provided with selections from the best foreign literature of the nineteenth century. The literature of the last century has been preferred because the thoughts and ideas it deals with, as well as the language, are more in accordance with the thoughts and ideas of our own time, and with the manner of expressing them; nor have such ample selections from this literature been put before English pupils as from the literature of previous centuries. These selections should be read and translated carefully and thoroughly into grammatical and literary English. Translation should always serve a double purpose, namely, first, to acquaint the pupil with the best forms. of expression used in the foreign language, and, secondly, to improve his knowledge of the capabilities of his own tongue by turning the thought of the original into English. It is therefore necessary that translations should not only be accurate and grammatical, but appreciative and intelligent. The individuality of the author must necessarily suffer in translation, but the loss may partly be atoned for if the student thoroughly grasps the spirit of the original before he begins his translation, and does not allow the effort of rendering the author's expressions into equivalent English to interfere with the atmosphere of the work as a whole. In this lies the difference between a literal and a free translation. Mr. Gilbert Murray has explained his views on the subject, which seem to give the key to the secret of good translation. My aim has been,' he says, to build up something as like the original as I possibly could, in form and in what one calls "spirit." To do this, the first thing needed was a work of painstaking scholarship, a work in which there should be no neglect of the letter in an attempt to snatch at the spirit, but, on the contrary, close study of the letter and careful tracking of the spirit by means of its subtleties.' The pupil should be taught to use thoroughly idiomatic English in translation, and to observe the necessary rules of good composition. Guess-work should always be avoided, and the habit should be formed of learning vocabularies and even sentences by heart, in order to become familiar with a large number of words and with the proper construction of sentences; for without these we can never hope to obtain a mastery of a language, be it ancient or modern. The pupil should also be encouraged to discuss in the foreign language the subject-matter of the text which he has been studying, framing his sentences as far as possible on the model of the author. Translation, taught and supple |