LITERATURE: Confessions – Translation

Being aware of the language use as I read, I’m also aware that unless there’s a copy of the original around to read in the language written by Augustine, the text is subject to the choice of the translator, and therefore, not pure Augustine.  This naturally bothers me.  And why wouldn’t it?  It’s obvious that in English, a teeny comma can change meaning in a sentence.  After four semesters of Spanish, it was even more obvious how difficult it is to capture one language into a fair representation of another.

I’m using Oxford World’s Classics edition, translated by Henry Chadwick (1991), and this comes from Book 1, chapter 12:

If I was conceived in iniquity and in sins my mother nourished me in her womb’ (Ps. 50:7), I ask you, my God, I ask Lord, where and when your servant was innocent?  But of that time i say nothing more.  I feel no sense of responsibility now for a time of which I recall not a single trace.  (p. 10)

Online, I found this translation by Albert C. Outler(1955):

But if “I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my mother nourished me in her womb," where, I pray thee, O my God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent? But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a time from which I can recall no memories?

Also online, at Bartleby’s, a Harvard Classic with a translation by Edward Pusey (1909-14):

But if I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me, 28 where, I beseech Thee, O my God, where, Lord, or when, was I Thy servant guiltless? But, lo! that period I pass by; and what have I now to do with that, of which I can recall no vestige?

The first obvious difference is the missing "nourished" in Pusey’s translation.  He also uses beseech in place of ask or pray.  The innocent of Chadwick and Outler’s versions becomes guiltless in Pusey’s. A trace becomes a memory becomes a vestige.  There is an influence of the contemporary as we look at the particular time periods in which the Confessions was translated, and language choice was evidently affected by the translator’s colloquialisms and normal style as well as era.

Basically the meaning among the three remains the same, notwithstanding the tone.  But for the sensitive reader, this is part of the entire reading experience and does indeed change his own interpretation which, of course, is yet another generation of perception.