Purposeful Translation in the Latin Classroom

Emily Wilson, Stanley Lombardo, Jim O’Donnell, and Mike Fontaine share their best advice for making translation a deliberate part of the curriculum.

Most classicists have some memory of sitting in class dreading their turn to translate. In this scenario, in-class translation involves reading a stilted rendering of a complicated Latin text and then scrambling to write down what the text actually means. More recent generations of students who have easy access to texts on the Internet, can now sit in a circle and read someone else’s translation of the text, but the ritual still involves more English than Latin and questions like, “Can you tell me what the second line means again?”

Emily Wilson is a professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania, 2019 MacArthur Fellow, and the first woman to publish an English translation of The Odyssey. She considers the typical instrumentalist use of translation “a complete waste of everyone’s time.” She is not alone in her dissatisfaction with the typical way translation is used in the Classics courses. Jim O’Donnell, whose new translation of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico was released earlier this year, said, “Let’s not teach them to translate. Let’s teach them to read.” Common classroom uses of translation can hinder reading skills. O’Donnell suggested teachers provide students “short, vivid pieces to learn and get them talking about what it is like to process at least that much Latin directly without intermediation. Make them think what it feels like.”

The first part of this series addressed ways teachers can develop students’ comprehension and reading skills so that students spend more time doing activities that require meaningful engagement with Latin. In order for translation to be a more meaningful component of the Latin curriculum, students need to change their perspective about translation and, more generally, language study.

Reframe the purpose of the course. Communicate that the goal of the language classroom is achieving fluency, not simply putting a text into English to demonstrate understanding. Classroom activities and assessments should support this goal.

Redefine “translation.” Stanley Lombardo who has translated the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, said, “Translation is an art.” In its most popular form, classroom translation is nowhere near an art form. Wilson said, “I wish all classicists, including high school students, could get away from calling the thing they’re learning to do ‘translation,’ because it is so misleading about the practice of actual literary translation.” From the beginning, Wilson said, students should “think consciously about languages and translation as a particular mode of writing and reading, not the same thing as comprehension.”

Refocus priorities. The primary goal of translation in the secondary classroom tends to be accuracy, a priority the literal translation section on the AP Latin exam reinforces. Instead, students need to know that accuracy is not the only point of translation. “Tone is at least as important as accuracy,” said Lombardo. “You need an equivalent of emotion. It needs to affect the reader or listener directly.”

There are a variety of classroom activities that can help support these goals:

Start by reading, not deciphering. Mike Fontaine, a Classics professor at Cornell whose translation of Vincent Obsopoeus’ De Arte Bibendi is coming out in April, begins translating by reading. “I would read it and try to absorb the couplet in my head without decoding the grammar. Then, I would ask ‘How would you convey that in English?’” This approach can help students develop a more holistic impression of the text instead of focusing on word-level meaning.

Perform the text out loud. Lombardo noted, “All of this was meant to be heard since people usually had these works read to them. It has to work as a performance.” He suggests having each student give a dramatic presentation to underscore this point. This kind of performance is central to Lombardo’s approach to translation. “I read it out loud in the original language expressively. Then, I try to transfer that feeling to English.” After performing or hearing the text, students can identify the emotion and tone either in a class conversation or written reflection.

Reverse engineer a translation. O’Donnell suggests giving students a mediocre translation of an unfamiliar passage and asking them to identify both weaknesses and ways to improve it. “The virtue of this tactic,” O’Donnell explained, “is that it takes away the anxiety. On this approach, they know what it all means, they can use the translation to figure out the hard parts, but you’re making them use what they know to spot the problems.” For this activity, according to O’Donnell, students are empowered to become the authority on the text.

Rework a literal translation. Oftentimes, once students come up with an accurate literal translation of a text, they consider their mission accomplished and move on to the next section. Instead, Fontaine suggests having students improve a literal translation by reworking the English. “The more precise the grammar, the less it sounds like normal English,” he said. “It sounds like a bunch of dead people from a very remote culture, and it doesn’t make any sense.” Fontaine has a simple prompt: “What would someone walking across campus say to convey that idea?”

Look at the same passage in multiple translations. Wilson said, “There’s an infinity of possible or bad translations, but also an infinity of different possibly valid ones.” Wilson suggests having students investigate multiple ways of rendering the same phrase. And, this does not have to be done with a Greek or Latin text. “If there are bilingual students in the class to draw on their expertise about how there might be multiple ways to render a specific phrase in Spanish or Mandarin or whatever you have among your human resources,” Wilson says.

Generate multiple English to English translations. Wilson proposes “translating” English to English with a passage from a newspaper or magazine, or one that students themselves have written so that “it says ‘the same thing,’ but in totally different words.”

Once you move beyond translation as a way to show comprehension, there are endless possibilities:

Take a deep dive into a single word. Many students associate just one or two English meanings for each Latin word they learn. Assign students a Latin word, and have them create a presentation that includes the meaning, proposed updates for the dictionary entry, ways different authors use this word, student-generated translations of this word in context, and a short Latin composition featuring the word. Both Logeion and Packard Humanities Institute’s Classical Latin Texts are two excellent resources for this activity.

Render a passage “in the style of.” This exercise can help students focus on voice and tone. For example, students can translate a Catullus poem in the style of someone whose voice is familiar to them (e.g. Taylor Swift, a country music star, Drake, etc.). Then, ask students which version most closely matches the tone, voice, emotional, sound, and meaning of the original. McSweeney’s has many humorous pieces written in the voice of well-known authors and public figures that can provide a good introduction to this activity. (Check out Toto’s ‘Africa’ by Ernest Hemingway.)

Compare several texts about the same topic. Provide excerpts about the similar topics from different authors (e.g. Caesar, Eutropius, Nepos, and Livy). What do students notice about word choice, sentence length, grammatical constructions, and the author’s voice and tone?

These exercises are not a substitute for the work novice students need to do to develop fluency in Latin or ancient Greek. Wilson shared, “I think non-translation exercises need to be very prominent — talking about word order, literary effects, syntax, and comprehension exercises that don’t involve translation.” Still, many of these activities are accessible to students even as they are continuing to build their vocabulary and understanding of syntax. And, they can prevent students from viewing Latin and ancient Greek as simply a complicated puzzle to decipher.

Teaching translation intentionally can help students listen to the voices of a faraway people and convey what they have heard to their own generation.