Translation from French. By R. L. Graeme Ritchie and J.
M. Moore. (Cambridge University Press. 6s. ad. net.)— Most educated people think that translation from French into English is a very easy task. Those who read this very able and fascinating book will think differently. The authors prove by a detailed examination of many words and by specimen trans- lations of passages of modern French prose and poetry, including a characteristic excerpt from Flaubert and a poem by Leconte de Lisle, that it is really very difficult to render the exact sense of the French original in good English prose. They unkindly convict Walter Pater in Appreciatians of a very bad mistake in translating Sainte-Beuve, and pillory the Foreign Office for rendering " pretendu " as " pretended," instead of "alleged," in the Allied Note of January, 1917; their examples from care. less translations of French books might, we fear, be multiplied indefinitely. The deceptive similarity between French and English words is one great stumbling-block. Besides, " the connotation of a French word scarcely ever tallies completely with that of its nearest English rendering." The difficulty of translation from French into English is one of detail, and there- fore eludes the careless student. This excellent book should be in the hands of every teacher of French. It raises the subject Is a higher plane.
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