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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
BASIS OF PRESENT TRANSLATION
I¢I
he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his
subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.
XI V. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.
f
89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis
adopted for our English version of the Traveller's record.
Ramusio's recension was that which Marsden selected for
translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publica-
tion nothing was known of the real literary history of
Text fol-
Polo's Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar lowed by
Marsden
value and originality of the French manuscript texts, and by
nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation Pauthier
from one of those texts is a translation at first hand ; a trans-
lation from Ramusio's Italian is, as far as I can judge, the
translation of a translated compilation from two or more
translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its
matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and
style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well
in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have
classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto
been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the
original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different
in their demands.
9o. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding
pages that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of
Polo's Work, a version on which. the Geographic Text
Eclectic
did not exercise a material influence. But to adopt formation of
the English
that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and tautologies, Text of this
Translation.
as the absolute subject of translation, would have been
a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance,
to translate from Pauthier's Text. The process of abridgment
in this text, however it came about, has been on the whole
judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of
manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation,
but as a general rule preserving the matter. Having translated
this, not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself,
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