"How can that one word mean those two, totally different things?"
This question was asked by several of my students recently. The Latin word in question, ignavus, can be translated as "cowardly" or as "lazy." To the mind of a modern English-speaker, this is troubling: laziness and cowardliness are two very different ideas. How could the Romans use the same word for both?
To the ancient Roman mind, laziness and cowardliness were essentially the same thing: unwillingness to perform some labor. What difference does it make if one is unwilling for fear of exertion or harm? (We should not be surprised at this attitude from a culture whose word vir means both "man" and "hero.")
Let's look at an example in the other direction to illuminate this point. Look at the following four perfectly ordinary sentences: "I love my wife." "I love my brother." "I love my dog." "I love Flyers Specials." We use one word, "love," to describe all four of those (hopefully) very different relationships. If we could reverse time and make the Romans learn English, they would tear their hair out trying to understand how we could possibly use the same word for all of those, instead of differentiating between diligere, amare, and caritas - different kinds of "love."
This is a good opportunity to stop and reflect upon the nature of translating an ancient language into a modern one. When you translate from Latin into English, you aren't just translating from one language into another: you are translating from one culture into another, across thousands of miles and years and changes in the world.
This is part of why translating accurately can be so difficult: how do you communicate the intention of one author from one cultural worldview to an audience in a completely different cultural worldview - without losing his meaning?
Let's look at an example in the other direction to illuminate this point. Look at the following four perfectly ordinary sentences: "I love my wife." "I love my brother." "I love my dog." "I love Flyers Specials." We use one word, "love," to describe all four of those (hopefully) very different relationships. If we could reverse time and make the Romans learn English, they would tear their hair out trying to understand how we could possibly use the same word for all of those, instead of differentiating between diligere, amare, and caritas - different kinds of "love."
This is a good opportunity to stop and reflect upon the nature of translating an ancient language into a modern one. When you translate from Latin into English, you aren't just translating from one language into another: you are translating from one culture into another, across thousands of miles and years and changes in the world.
This is part of why translating accurately can be so difficult: how do you communicate the intention of one author from one cultural worldview to an audience in a completely different cultural worldview - without losing his meaning?
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