THE blunders of translators are so
common that they have been
made to point a moral in popular
proverbs. According to an Italian saying
_translators are traitors_ (``I traduttori sono
traditori''); and books are said to be _done_
into English, _traduced_ in French, and _overset_
in Dutch. Colton, the author of _Lacon_,
mentions a half-starved German at Cambridge
named Render, who had been long
enough in England to forget German, but
not long enough to learn English. This
worthy, in spite of his deficiencies, was a
voluminous translator of his native
literature, and it became a proverbial saying
among his intimates respecting a bad
translation that it was _Rendered_ into
English.

The Comte de Tressan translated the

words ``capo basso'' (low headland) in a
passage from Ariosto by ``Cap de Capo
Basso,'' on account of which translation
the wits insisted upon calling him ``Comte
de Capo Basso.''

Robert Hall mentions a comical stumble
made by one of the translators of Plato,
who construed through the Latin and not
direct from the Greek. In the Latin