Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/192

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Chap. XII.

TRANSLATION.

177

tive part of the book is on that account difficult; but the colloquial part is studiously filled with idioms, as one of the principal characters continually expresses himself in proverbs. Of this work there have been many English translations, executed, as may be supposed, with various degrees of merit. The two best of these, in my opinion, are the translations of Motteux and Smollet, both of them writers eminently well qualified for the task they undertook. It will not be foreign to the purpose of this Essay, if I shall here make a short comparative estimate of the merit of these translations^[1].

↑ The translation published by Motteux bears, in the title-page, that it is the work of several hands; but as of these Mr Motteux was the principal, and revised and corrected the parts that were translated by others, which indeed we have no means of discriminating from his own, I shall, in the following comparison, speak of him as the author of the whole work.

Smollet

[1] The translation published by Motteux bears, in the title-page, that it is the work of several hands; but as of these Mr Motteux was the principal, and revised and corrected the parts that were translated by others, which indeed we have no means of discriminating from his own, I shall, in the following comparison, speak of him as the author of the whole work.

[1]