Perhaps no higher praise can be paid a translator than posterity's acceptance of his work. Laurence Echard's Terence's Comedies, first printed in 1694 in the dress and phraseology of Restoration comedy, has received this accolade through the mediation of no less a modern translator than Robert Graves. In 1963 Graves edited a translation of three of Terence's plays. His Foreword points to the extreme difficulty of translating Terence, and admits his own failure-- "It is regrettable that the very terseness of his Latin makes an accurate English rendering read drily and flatly; as I have found to my disappointment." Graves's answer was typically idiosyncratic. "A revival of Terence in English, must, I believe, be based on the translation made . . . . with fascinating vigour, by a young Cambridge student Laurence Echard . . . ."[1]
Perhaps no higher praise can be paid a translator than posterity's acceptance of his work. Laurence Echard's Terence's Comedies, first printed in 1694 in the dress and phraseology of Restoration comedy, has received this accolade through the mediation of no less a modern translator than Robert Graves. In 1963 Graves edited a translation of three of Terence's plays. His Foreword points to the extreme difficulty of translating Terence, and admits his own failure-- "It is regrettable that the very terseness of his Latin makes an accurate English rendering read drily and flatly; as I have found to my disappointment." Graves's answer was typically idiosyncratic. "A revival of Terence in English, must, I believe, be based on the translation made . . . . with fascinating vigour, by a young Cambridge student Laurence Echard . . . ."[1]
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