The comparison of these values leads to the practical question of
translations. The Italian saying which identifies the translator with
the traitor ought to give way to a more grateful and hopeful modern
recognition of the services done by conscientious translations. We have
undoubtedly suffered in England in the past by well-meaning but
incompetent translators, especially of spiritual books, who have given
us such impressions as to mislead us about the minds of the writers or
even turned us against them altogether, to our own great loss. But at
present more care is exercised, and conscientious critical exactitude in
translating important spiritual works has given us English versions that
are not unworthy of their originals. [1--An example of this is the late
Canon Mackey's edition of the complete works of St. Francis of Sales,
which has, unfortunately, to be completed without him.]
There is good service to be done to the Church in England by this work
of translation, and it is one in which grown-up girls, if they have been
sufficiently trained, might give valuable help. It must be borne in mind
that not every book which is beautiful or useful in its own language, is
desirable to translate. Some depend so much upon the genius of the
language and the mentality of their native country that they simply
evaporate in translation; others appeal so markedly to national points
of view that they seem anomalous in other languages, as a good deal of
our present-day English writing would appear in French.
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