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the more i read up on catullus and pick apart his poetry (currently struggling with number 25), the more i feel confident in my decision to work on a translation collection that removes all the namedrops.
the place names - i don& #39;t think i& #39;m right to remove those, necessarily, but it& #39;s providing a fun challenge. but the namedrops... i& #39;ve been reading scholarship speculating about who the real people are behind his characters, and realising that i don& #39;t care.
it& #39;s important historical work, but not for me, i& #39;m not studying these poems from a historical perspective. i& #39;m doing this to brush up my translation skills, and to get better at thinking about poetry. what& #39;s most important is that i capture the meaning and feel.
so when i encounter a name, it basically forces me to think, what role does this person play? do i translate this as a direct address, a pronoun, an insult? and i let the rest of the text inform my choice. it& #39;s a lot of fun, and so far i love the results!
the place names are harder; often they& #39;re used as adjectives, prompting me to search for associations and translate them as other adjectives. it& #39;s a challenge, but it doesn& #39;t feel like a noble calling the way my no-namedrop agenda does.
i could talk a lot of hot air about making his texts more universal, but i don& #39;t really think i& #39;m changing much. more accessible, maybe. whatever it is, it feels important to me that i put together a collection of these poems that stand on their own.
i would like to stress that i don& #39;t think this is a good historical approach to these texts and that an accurate translation should always exist before one which takes liberties. i am nothing but grateful for the scholarship which has allowed me to delve so deep.
btw, if no-namedrop catullus already exists, i& #39;ll withdraw any claim to originality, not that i really think i& #39;m making one - just talking through my process. but i haven& #39;t come across it, and that& #39;s definitely for the best while my work is in progress.
if you& #39;re new here and this thread piques your interest, i have a few examples of no-namedrop catullus right here on my blog: https://essivecase.dreamwidth.org/tag/catullus ">https://essivecase.dreamwidth.org/tag/catul... - the most recent one talks a bit more about my process! i won& #39;t post any more for now; saving them up for the eventual collection
