Sociopragmatic Translation in Latin Paperback – February 19, 2027

Sociopragmatic Translation in Latin teaches how to use the principles of sociopragmatics on canonical classical Latin texts in order to (re-)embed them in their settings and discourse(s).A common interview response to the question of why someone wants to learn an ancient language from scratch is that it is about connecting with the text and/or author more intimately. Usually, when prompting further, things get derailed. The biggest hurdle between us and the ancient author and/or text is often not so much the surface-level vocabulary, but how we approach the text as a whole, i.e. its genre, register, and style as well as its topic, focus, and relationship to the reader. This book addresses common misconceptions about the translation technique and result, and all of them come back to sociopragmatics and thus to an area of linguistics alien to many aspiring Classicists. This book revisits common grammatical and methodological troublemakers specifically from the perspective of sociopragmatics to help achieve the best translation (and commentary) result possible. It is a practical guide on how to implement theoretical concepts in order to achieve a more accurate translation and one that brings us closer to the ancient audience.Every translation is an interpretation. In the age of DeepL and co., transposing a source text into a target language may seem easier than ever. However, purposefully translating a text to reflect its social, cultural, material embedding into its original context and discourse in a way that resonates with the intended audience of the translation has never been more complicated. The book is unique: first, in its drawing linguistic research into everyday translation practice. Secondly, it offers a full range of pedagogical features that makes this more than a monograph but rather an interactive resource. It offers case studies with reflection questions/tasks; in-text bite-size translation tricks; a glossary of terminology; and an answer key for each exercise. Thirdly, the book aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the approach to translation across classical subjects, i.e. the co-text, context, and the social and material settings are drawn upon to arrive at a translation that reflects the reality the source text emerged from and that does it justice.Table of Contents1. Beyond Good and Evil: Introduction to translation(s)2. Laying foundations: Latin language(1) Three myths about Latin debunked: Latin(s), word order(s), and translation(s)(2) All the endings great and small: Ambiguities, alternatives, word histories, and hybrids(3) Form and function or do you know English: Periphrastics, redundancies, and functionalities(4) Terms and conditions: Uncertainties, relative time, and the sequence of tenses(5) Hard and fast rules: Negation, parentheticals, and modality in context3. Old friends: Usual suspects(6) Jigsaw puzzles, arrows, and colours: Basics of translation technique(7) I heard it somewhere: Indirect speech(8) Once upon a time: Participles, relative and absolute time(9) Meaning at a whole new level: Word order(10) It is written in stone: Passives (and deponents)(11) Whatever you say: Relatives(12) Verbing nouns: nd forms(13) If is good: Conditionals(14) From bubbles, clusters, and fields: Multifunctionality and relatedness4. New acquaintances: Extraordinary troublemakers(15) If only I could turn back time: Wishes(16) Who’s responsible: Subobliques, Internal dependency, and reported speech(17) Emphasis & Co.: Vivid, emphatic, marked, and attention-drawing(18) Making changes: Support-verb constructions(19) I told you I would: Asyndetic structures5. Sociopragmatics in action: Case studies(20) My language, your language, our language: Diastratic, diatopic, diachronic(21) Caesar’s reports: Caesar, Gallic War, IV (campaigns in Gaul and Britain and the Rhine crossing)(22) Cicero’s speeches: Cicero, Speeches against Catiline, IV (setting precedent in front of the senate at the Temple of Concordia)(23) Vergil’s epic: Vergil, Aeneid, XI (councils of war in Italy)(24) Ovid’s elegiac: Ovid, Letters from the Black Sea, I.10 (to Flaccus on his state of health)(25) Quintilian’s manual: Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, XII (description of the perfect orator) Read more