153 according to John Dryden. Dryden considers paraphrase preferable to metaphrase (as literal translation) and imitation. The term "metaphrase" is first used by Philo Judaeus (20 BCE) in De vita Mosis. Quintilian draws a distinction between metaphrase and paraphrase in the pedagogical practice of imitation and reworking of classical texts; he points out that metaphrase changes a word, and paraphrase, a phrase: a distinction that is also followed by Renaissance scholars.
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Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line"Ovid's Epistles, Preface by John Dryden, London: Jacob Tonson, 1681, cited in Baker, Malmkjær, p. 153 translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.
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Metaphrase is word-for- word and line by line translation from one language into another.
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Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual of English Rhetoric, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008, , p.18 Unlike "paraphrase," which has an ordinary use in literature theory, the term "metaphrase" is only used in translation theory.Baker, Malmkjær, p. 154 Metaphrase is one of the three ways of transferring, along with paraphrase and imitation,Baker, Malmkjær, p.
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Strictly speaking, the concept of metaphrase—of "word-for-word translation"—is an imperfect concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, "metaphrase" and "paraphrase" may be useful as ideal concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.
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Paraphrase may attempt to preserve the essential meaning of the material being paraphrased. Thus, the (intentional or otherwise) reinterpretation of a source to infer a meaning that is not explicitly evident in the source itself qualifies as "original research," and not as paraphrase. Unlike a metaphrase, which represents a "formal equivalent" of the source, a paraphrase represents a "dynamic equivalent" thereof. While a metaphrase attempts to translate a text literally, a paraphrase conveys the essential thought expressed in a source text, if necessary, at the expense of literality.
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John Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller In John Dryden’s 1680 preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles, he proposed dividing translation into three parts called: metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation.Lawrence Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader. 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012.), page 38.
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"overzetting" in Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, IvdNT The Romance languages and the remaining Slavic languages have derived their words for the concept of "translation" from an alternative Latin word, traductio, itself derived from traducere ("to lead across" or "to bring across", from trans, "across" + ducere, "to lead" or "to bring"). The Ancient Greek term for "translation", (metaphrasis, "a speaking across"), has supplied English with "metaphrase" (a "literal", or "word-for- word", translation)—as contrasted with "paraphrase" ("a saying in other words", from , paraphrasis). "Metaphrase" corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "formal equivalence"; and "paraphrase", to "dynamic equivalence".Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 84.
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One of the two chief approaches to translation, "metaphrase" also referred to as "formal equivalence", "literal translation", or "word-for-word translation" must be used with great care especially in relation to idioms.Christopher Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil," The Polish Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 2, 1983, p. 87.
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In regard to style, the Victorians' aim, achieved through far-reaching metaphrase (literality) or pseudo- metaphrase, was to constantly remind readers that they were reading a foreign classic. An exception was the outstanding translation in this period, Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), which achieved its Oriental flavor largely by using Persian names and discreet Biblical echoes and actually drew little of its material from the Persian original. In advance of the 20th century, a new pattern was set in 1871 by Benjamin Jowett, who translated Plato into simple, straightforward language. Jowett's example was not followed, however, until well into the new century, when accuracy rather than style became the principal criterion.
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Some erroneous lexemic substitutions made by Polonia – members of the Polish diaspora – are attributable not to mis-metaphrase but to confusion of similar-appearing words (false cognates or "false friends") which otherwise do not share, respectively, a common etymology or a common meaning. Thus, some Poles living in Anglophone countries, when speaking of "cashing a check", will erroneously say "kasować czek" ("to cancel a check") rather than the correct "realizować czek" ("to cash a check").
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Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In translation theory, another term for "literal translation" is "metaphrase" and for phrasal ("sense") translation — "paraphrase." Literal translation leads to mistranslating of idioms, which is a serious problem for machine translation.John Hutchins, "The whisky was invisible", or Persistent myths of MT, MT News International 11 (June 1995), pp. 17-18.
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The question of fidelity vs. transparency has also been formulated in terms of, respectively, "formal equivalence" and "dynamic [or functional] equivalence" – expressions associated with the translator Eugene Nida and originally coined to describe ways of translating the Bible; but the two approaches are applicable to any translation. "Formal equivalence" corresponds to "metaphrase", and "dynamic equivalence" to "paraphrase". "Formal equivalence" (sought via "literal" translation) attempts to render the text literally, or "word for word" (the latter expression being itself a word- for-word rendering of the classical Latin ) – if necessary, at the expense of features natural to the target language.
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For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a gloss. Generally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of metaphrase to paraphrase that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words, a common etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English actual should not be confused with the cognate French ("present", "current"), the Polish ("present", "current," "topical", "timely", "feasible"),Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 85.
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John Dryden Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The ancient Greeks distinguished between metaphrase (literal translation) and paraphrase. This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator John Dryden (1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts," or equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language: Cicero Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e., of adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..." This general formulation of the central concept of translation—equivalence—is as adequate as any that has been proposed since Cicero and Horace, who, in 1st-century-BCE Rome, famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" ().
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It is included in the full facsimile of The Exeter Book by R. W. Chambers, Max Förster and Robin Flower (1933), where its folio pages are numbered 81 verso - 83 recto. The Seafarer has been translated many times by numerous scholars, poets, and other writers, with the first English translation by Benjamin Thorpe in 1842. Between 1842 and 2000 over 60 different versions, in eight languages, have been recorded. The translations fall along a scale between scholarly and poetic, best described by John Dryden as noted in The Word Exchange anthology of Old English poetry: ‘metaphrase’, or a crib; ‘paraphrase’, or ‘translation with latitude’, allowing the translator to keep the original author in view while altering words, but not sense; and ‘imitation’, which 'departs from words and sense, sometimes writing as the author would have done had she lived in the time and place of the reader’.
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The Question of genre in bylini and Beowulf by Shannon Meyerhoff, 2006 . Beowulf has been adapted a number of times in cinema, on the stage, and in books. In 2003, the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies published Marijane Osborn's annotated list of over 300 translations and adaptations. Poet John Dryden's categories of translation have influenced how scholars discuss variation between translations and adaptations. In the Preface to Ovid’s Epistles (1680) Dryden proposed three different types of translation: > metaphrase [...] or turning an author word for word, and line by line, from > one language into another’; ‘paraphrase [...] or translation with latitude, > where the author is kept in view by the translator so as never to be lost, > but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense, and that, too, is > admitted to be amplified but not altered’; and ‘imitation [...] where the > translator – if he has not lost that name – assumes the liberty not only to > vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion; > and taking only some general hints from the original, to run division on the > ground-work, as he pleases.
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