Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/262

phrase cadence. The present writer knows from experience how hard a task this is and what hours of labour it sometimes takes to reproduce in English a single paragraph of French or Italian or Spanish, with even an approximate retention of the original sound pattern and the original number of syllables. Of course, it is only now and then in some passage of particular lyric beauty that care like this becomes imperative; but the ordinary hack translator seldom if ever troubles himself at all about such matters. The ambitious craftsman, on the contrary, may well spend many a day and week after this fashion because he will thus learn a surprising amount of sheer linguistic gymnastics. Translation, whether from Greek, Latin, or some modern tongue, is to the literary craftsman like chest weights and Indian clubs to the college athlete: it brings his mental muscles into training.