Various Attempts to Translate Dante's Divine Comedy

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Throughout the past two hundred years, many linguists have attempted to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy into English. While all have been successful in conveying the general meaning of various passages, diction and wordiness have varied wildly; no two translations are identical. This can be attributed to two factors: normal translational variation and the intent of the linguist. Taking both of these into account, John Ciardi's 1954 translation is far superior to the others.

Unlike previous literary works, The Comedy (divine was added to the title some two hundred years after Dante), written between 1307 and 1320, was originally published in vernacular Italian. This threatened Dante's legitimacy: all other `great' works of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and New Science were written in Latin. Even Isaac Newton published his scientific works in Latin: it was the international language of scholars and philosophers. Another linguistic aspect of Dante's epic was its peculiar rhyme scheme. Dante wrote it his own terza rima (ABABCBCDC, etc.), a pattern based, like so many other facets of The Comedy, on the number three. Relatively easy to accomplish in Italian--most words rhyme with each other, ending in vowels--terza rima is difficult to achieve in English while preserving the meaning of a passage. Ciardi's translation manages to do this, all the while using modern language and clear pronouns and verbs. The other translator to attempt this, Dorothy L. Sayers, writing in 1949, preserves terza rima but sinks into excessive cliché use and dated expressions. She also appears to have put little thought into the contextual meaning of words. For example, the Italian noun dottore can mean doctor or professor; Sayers is the onl...

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...tempting to preserve Dante's difficult rhyme scheme.

To conclude, Ciardi's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is superior the other English attempts. He uses modern, easy-to-understand diction while preserving both the original Italian word choice and the terza rima rhyme scheme. Unlike Sayers, his translation is not `ruled' by the difficult pattern. In the last stanza, following terza rima in English would have been very difficult. Instead of `forcing' his translation to be totally conformant, he instead opts to preserve readability by eliminating the need to rhyme `trembling' (tremante) and `more (further)' (avante). His result was a beautiful passage: "the tremor of his kiss/...we read no further." Ciardi's mix of the original rhyme scheme, modern language, and sonorous, passionate diction makes his translation of The Divine Comedy superior to all others.

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