Book-bot.com - Literary Blunders by Wheatley, Henry Benjamin, 1838-1917

Literary Blunders by Henry Benjamin Wheatley
page 51 of 211 (24%)

version _hirundo_ stood as _hirdo_, and the
translator, overlooking the mark of
contraction, declared to the astonished world
on the authority of Plato that the _horse-
leech_ instead of the swallow was the harbinger
of spring. Hoole, the translator of
Tasso and Ariosto, was as confused in his
natural history when he rendered ``I
colubri Viscontei'' or _Viscontian snakes_,
the crest of the Visconti family, as ``the
Calabrian Viscounts.''

As strange as this is the Frenchman's
notion of the presence of guns in the
canons' seats: ``L'Archevque de Cantorbery
avait fait placer des _canons_ dans
les stalles de la cathdrale.'' He quite
overlooked the word _chanoines_, which he
should have used. This use of a word

similarly spelt is a constant source of
trouble to the translator: for instance,
a French translator of Scott's _Bride of
Lammermuir_ left the first word of the
title untranslated, with the result that he
made it the Bridle of Lammermuir, ``La
Bride de Lammermuir.''

Thevenot in his travels refers to the
fables of _Damn et Calilve_, meaning the
_Hitopodesa_, or Pilpay's Fables. His