The art of translation

A review article in the Times Literary Supplement discusses the art of translating poetry with particular reference to Ted Hughes.
Two excerpts:
When [Ezra Pound] translated a passage from Homer in the first of his Cantos, he turned the Greek hexameters – by way of a Latin translation in lineated prose – into something like the metre [...]

European Qultures E-newspaper

Received today:
Every week a European Qultures E-newspaper is published, which I believe will have your interest. Qultures covers our European culture, both tangible culture such as castles, museums, festivals, and exhibitions, but also culture through ethics, identity, and values. Qultures also aims to present new research on museological and communicative issues in the general [...]

Message from the Summer School Director

Gill Fyffe was to direct this Summer School but had to drop out last month, so I have just taken over. Unfortunately this has meant we have had a short hiatus with the arrangements but I have now been to Cambridge and checked things out. Gill's first-class preparatory work means that we have [...]

Pretty Polymath

News @ Princeton introduces the graduate who is to give the Latin oration at Comencement on 5th June – with photo, which gave rise to my weakly punning headline.
Roman decay helps salutatorian to thrive
by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann · Posted May 28, 2007; 08:00 p.m.
Senior Maya Maskarinec majored in classics, but her Princeton education would have [...]

US City Mayor in the running for an OBI

Reactions to a campaign to correct a mistake in a city's Latin motto show a regrettable philistine attitude on the part of the present mayor and members of his council. From the Courant.

Lone, Latin Cause: `L' Is On His Mind
Ex-Mayor Wants Logo Fixed
May 28, 2007
By MONICA POLANCO, Courant Staff Writer
NEW BRITAIN — Sometime in the [...]

School plays prove Latin isn't dead

Good news from Grand Rapids Press that two Plautus comedies are bring performed tomorrow, but if they are being given a simultaneous translation by the actors they surely can't be performed complete. It would take far too long.
Never mind. ArLT used to have a great tradition of performing greatly shortened versions of Plautus at the [...]

Jobs on a bank holiday

A suitably light-hearted piece to reproduce on a bank holiday Monday, from Courier News. The spell-checker seems to have done damage to the nomenclator.
Some jobs stretch back to ancient Romans, Greeks

May 27, 2007
BY Jackie Farwell Associated Press
When they weren't busy founding modern civilization, the ancient Greeks and Romans spent their free time much like we [...]

Carl Linnaeus – tercentenary article

Those who argue for Latin as the universal language find support in Linnaeus and his naming of species. He was born in May 1707, so articles about him have been appearing.
One such was in the Independent this week. A useful paragraph:
Take the emblematic bird of the Tower of London, for instance. The raven: Corvus [...]

Wry comment on the Ancient History protest

From the 'Spy' column in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
Boris, an icon of protest?
When the deputy chairman of the Belarus Popular Front came to Britain this month, he wanted to see politics at work in a democracy.
But Alaksiej Janukievic – a leading opponent of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus – has returned to the troubled [...]

Round-up Sat 26 May

A couple of mentions of the influence of particular Latin teachers, and a review of Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky.

Obituary of Jill McGown, crime writer. Her Latin teacher was Colin Dexter.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Latin teacher was an accomplished cook.

With Latin making a comeback in the classroom, Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex could now conquer spheres beyond the [...]