A Meditation on Translation
By Cheyenne McKenzie Davis
When I began to read the Preface of Plato's Republic, I was drawn to think on how the author wrote about the act of translating itself. I know the preface wasn't particularly what we were supposed to focus on, but it's what I feel inclined to write about first. The author specifies that their intent is to create a literal translation, one that would make it so the reader, "a serious student," could come to his own understanding of the work. They detail that a different author, F. M. Cornford, created a translation that could be easily understood. They write, "There is no doubt that one can read the sentence as it appears in Cornford without being drawn up, without being puzzled. But this is only because it says nothing." Almost mockingly, the author really does state the truth. I know that I, myself, could not even begin to fathom how Plato's mind worked, and if I were to speak and read his Greek, I would be stuck thinking about a single piece of his for days. Plato, I believe, created his work to be thought about, thought about again, re-thunk, and then repeat. It's insane how a single translation could dumb it down so, as to create a simple work? The idea behind this, is that it isn't the correct work. The translation that we can read and assess so easily is not what Plato wrote, -it is one man's interpretation of his work written for others to take and believe that it's the true meaning.
This is something that happens quite often today, although admittedly not to the same degree. I've seen articles written on all sides of the political spectrum detailing on the downfalls and invalid arguments of a speech from the other side, and when I go to listen to that speech, I'm surprised to hear something completely different than what I've read. A person will take snippets of a speech, and fabricate a narrative that is complimentary to their point of view. Steering away from politics though, I also think about elementary and high school English classes. So much of what we were taught in school was along our teacher's point of view on the work. Of course we were given some freedom of interpretation, but I can't count how many times I've heard a teacher say something along the lines of, "Well, you're on the right track! But..." And go on to their interpretation of a work. Technology has also made misinterpretations much easier to make.
Moving onto another focus for this Journal, Antisocial was honestly a joy to read. Learning about the start of different social media sites was pretty cool. When learning about the beginning of reddit, I couldn't help but to laugh when Paul Graham rejected Huffman and Ohanian's idea for "a company that allowed people to order food from their phones." Because just yesterday I ordered my dinner off of DoorDash. I'm happy they were able to come up with Reddit, I often scroll through instagram pages of different Reddits, but it's amusing to see what someone once thought of as an unimportant idea has become something so widespread.
When I read how the first interaction of the first post went down, I was amused, and thought, "That's how so many of internet interactions still happen today." 'Trolls' are everywhere, and there are constantly people who's only goal is to induce chaos. I do appreciate the genuine and intelligent game every once in a while, but it's also interesting to see how some persons may disguise themselves as harmless 'trolls' when in reality their actions spark hate and negativity. Deciphering the two has become a tiresome and difficult task.