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From: "Terrence Lockyer" <lockyert@mweb.co.za>
To: "Classics List" <classics@u.washington.edu>
Subject: How not to proof-read
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 16:28:36 +0200
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Is it merely my imagination, or are the presses growing more careless by the
year?  The following appear in the introductions to recent translations from
two major UPs:

1.  On p. xlviii of the pbk P. G. Walsh (tr.), Boethius:  The Consolation of
Philosophy (Oxford and New York : OUP 2000), W. is surveying post-Chaucerian
early English translations and gives us the following:  "The second
rendering was noteworthy more for the identity of the translator than for
the merit of the version, for it came from the pen of Elizabeth I, and is by
no mans free of errors".

The immediate context may, of course, be thought to lend this minor slip a
certain charm, entirely lacking from my second, more obviously mechanical
example:

2.  On p. xvii of Daryl Hine (tr.), Puerilities (Princeton and Oxford :
Princeton UP 2001), a version of Book 12 of the Palatine Anthology, we are
told that "Aratus, one of the light-versifiers here included, also edited
Homer, as did Callimachus and Apologies Rhodes, and wrote, besides other,
lost works, a poem on astronomy, Phaenomena".

It is perhaps worth noting that, for example, the English (UK) spell-check
in MS Word 6.0 offers 'apologias' and 'apologies', and 'rhodes', for the
phrase 'Apollonius Rhodius', while Word 2000 is rather more sophisticated
and less helpful, adding two more possibilities for 'Apollonius'
('Apollonian' and 'Polonium'), but offering only 'Rhodium' for 'Rhodius'.
But I suppose the real mystery here is how whatever tool was used upon the
text failed to mangle Callimachus or drop the 'a' from Aratos' Latinized
title.


Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa

.