Antigone - A contrast of two translations

A detailed Summary of Antigone - A contrast of two translations

In the undertaking of the translation of any literary work from one language to another, many things must be considered. The first of these things is the way in which the translator will handle the cultural differences that have no parallel in the language into which he is translating. Also, how he will attempt to retain the original meanings of words that may no longer exist, or that do not make sense in any language but their own, and how closely he can adhere to the original text without it losing comprehensiveness. This is especially true for a play as ancient and highly revered as Sophecles' Antigone.

This play was written around 441 BC. A translator must take caution in the reproduction of a play as classic as Antigone because any version of it that strays too far from the original will lose the mystique and grandeur of a play written in such a different time. The antiquity of the play may also prove beneficial to the translator, however, because it is this which enables him to have extensive creative license; no one alive today can claim to know exactly how the play is intended to be read. This opportunity for individual technique is exemplified and exercised by the two authors whose works are the basis of this essay,

Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Michael Townsend. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Robert Carlsen and Miriam Gilber, 9-36. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

The first difference I noticed between the two translations was that the one produced by Kitto was substantially more proper than Townsend's. It gives the initial impression of being more of what a Greek tragedy should be; florid, formal, and full of imagery. Through this, the translator succeeds in making his version of the play seem older. Even in the very beginning of the play, Kitto is able to make Antigone's opening line sound more dramatic. While Townsend opens his version with the simplistic, modern sentence structure of "My darling sister Ismene, we have had a fine inheritance from Oedipus" (Townsend, 3), Kitto has the heroine say "Ismene, my own sister, dear Ismene, How many miseries our father caused!" (Kitto, 9). This rough, unfamiliar sentence structure makes it seem to the reader much more foreign, and therefore more authentic as an ancient Greek play. Many examples of this occur throughout the play. One such example occurs when Ismene is recollecting the story of Oedipus, her father, in an attempt to show Antigone how foolish her idea of bestowing on Polynices a proper burial is. In Kitto's version of the play, Ismene's line is written as a huge run-on sentence; "Think of our father, dear Antigone, and how we saw him die, hated and scorned, when his own hands had blinded his own eyes because of sins which he himself disclosed; and how his mother-wife, two names in one, knotted a rope, and so destroyed herself" (Kitto, 10). In Townsend's version, the line reads as such: "Oh God. Have you forgotten how our father died, despised and hated? How he turned detective to discover his own crimes, then stabbed his own eyes out with his own hands? And then Jocasta, who was both together his mother and his wife, hanged herself with a rope?" (Townsend, 4). While admit

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Approximate Word count = 1311
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English