A Translator Who Cut and Added

After setting out his faith, or rather his lack of knowledge, he passes on to another matter, and tries to excuse himself for having turned the books On First Principles into Latin. I will set down his words exactly: [a] “I am told that objections have been raised against me because, if you please, at the request of some of my brothers I translated certain works of Origen from Greek into Latin. I suppose everyone sees that it is only out of ill will that this is made a matter of blame. For if there is anything offensive in the author, why should this be twisted into a fault of the translator? I was asked to show in Latin what stands written in the Greek text, and I did nothing more than fit Latin words to Greek ideas. If, then, there is anything to praise in these ideas, the praise does not belong to me; and the same holds for anything that may deserve blame.”

“I hear,” he says, “that from this a dispute has arisen.” How clever, to call it a dispute, when it is really an accusation against him! “That I have, at the request of my brothers, translated certain things of Origen’s into Latin.” Yes, but what are these “certain things”? Have they no name? Are you silent? Then the written charges brought by your accusers will speak for you. “I suppose,” he says, “that everyone understands that it is only out of envy that these things are made matters of blame.” What envy? Are people envious of your eloquence? Or have you done what no one else has ever been able to do? Here am I, who have translated many works of Origen’s; and yet, apart from you, no one shows envy toward me or slanders me for it. “If there is anything offensive in the author, why should it be twisted into a fault of the translator? I was asked to show in Latin what stands written in the Greek text, and I did nothing more than fit Latin words to Greek ideas. If, then, there is anything to praise in these ideas, the praise does not belong to me; and the same holds for anything that may deserve blame.” Can you be surprised that people think badly of you, when of open blasphemies you say no more than, “If there is anything offensive in the author”? What is said in those books offends everyone. You alone are in doubt, and you complain that it is “twisted into a fault of the translator,” when you praised it in your Preface. “You were asked to turn it into Latin as it stood in the Greek text.” I wish you had done what you pretend you were asked to do! Then you would not be the object of any ill will. If you had kept faith as a translator, I would not have needed to counter your false translation with my true one. You know in your own conscience what you added, what you took away, and what you changed one way or the other at your own discretion; and after this you have the nerve to tell us that what is good or bad is to be credited not to you but to the author. You show that you feel the ill will stirred up against you by toning down your words again; and as if you were walking on air, or on the tops of the ears of grain, you say, “Whether there is praise or blame in these opinions.” You dare not defend him, but you do not choose to condemn him. Choose whichever of the two you please; the choice is yours. If what you have translated is good, praise it; if it is bad, condemn it. But he makes excuses, and weaves another trick. He says: [b] “I admit that I put something of my own into the work. As I stated in my Preface, I used my own judgment in cutting out not a few passages; but only those which I had come to suspect had not been stated so by Origen himself. In these cases the statement seemed to me to have been inserted by others, because in other places I had found the author state the same matter in a catholic sense.” [c]

What wonderful eloquence! And varied, too, with flowers of the Attic style: “Moreover also!” and “Things which came to me into suspicion!” I am amazed that he dared to send such literary monstrosities to Rome. You would think the man’s tongue was in chains, bound with cords that cannot be untangled, so that it could hardly break out into human speech. However, I will return to the matter at hand. [d]

I want to know who gave you permission to cut out a number of passages from the work you were translating. You were asked to turn a Greek book into Latin, not to correct it; to bring out another man’s words, not to write a book of your own. By pruning away so much, you confess that you did not do what you were asked. And I wish that what you cut had all been the bad parts, and that you had not put in many things of your own that support what is bad. I will take one example, from which people may judge the rest. In the first book of On First Principles, where Origen had uttered that impious blasphemy that the Son does not see the Father, you supply the reasons for it as though in the writer’s name, and you translate the note of Didymus, in which he makes a fruitless effort to defend another man’s error and tries to prove that Origen spoke rightly. But we poor simple men, like the tame creatures Ennius speaks of, can understand neither his wisdom nor his translator’s. Your Preface, which you put forward as your explanation, and in which you flatter and praise me so highly, shows you guilty of the most serious faults of translation. You say that you cut out many things from the Greek, but you say nothing of what you put in. Were the parts you cut out good or bad? Bad, I suppose. Was what you kept good or bad? Good, I presume, for you could not translate the bad. So I suppose you cut off what was bad and left what was good? Of course. But what you have translated can be shown to be almost wholly bad. So whatever in your translation I can show to be bad must be laid to your account, since you translated it as good. It would be a strange thing if you were to act like an unjust censor who is himself guilty of the crime, and were allowed at your pleasure to expel some from the Senate and keep others in it. But you say, “It was impossible to change everything. I only thought I might cut away what had been added by the heretics.” Very good. Then if you cut away everything you thought had been added by the heretics, all that you left belongs to the work you were translating. Answer me, then: are these things good or bad? You could not translate what was bad, since once for all you had cut away what had been added by the heretics; unless, that is, you thought it your duty to cut away the bad parts due to the heretics, while translating the errors of Origen himself into Latin unchanged. Tell me, then, why you turned Origen’s heresies into Latin. Was it to expose the author of the evil, or to praise him? If your aim is to expose him, why do you praise him in the Preface? If you praise him, you are convicted of being a heretic. The only remaining explanation is that you published these things as good. But if they are proved to be bad, then author and translator are caught up in the same crime, and the Psalmist’s word is fulfilled: “When you saw a thief, you agreed with him, and you have shared with adulterers.” There is no need to make a plain matter doubtful by arguing about it. As to what follows, let him answer where this suspicion of additions by heretics came from in his mind. “It was,” he says, “because I found the same things treated by this author in other places in a catholic sense.” [e]