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Mistranslating Apostates

ONE OF THE historical anecdotes I enjoyed being taught at school was the death of the Emperor Julian the Apostate — as relayed by our much-esteemed teacher Dr Nathaniel Kernell. This was in the Christian era with the capital at Constantinople rather than the Eternal City itself — Julian had (as betokened by his moniker) abandoned Christianity aged 20 and sought to frustrate its spread.

He wanted to promote the old Greek gods, dabbled in vegetarianism, and even tried to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. Mysterious fires consumed the workers tasked with that final project and it is presumed many Jews didn’t want to be dragged into the Emperor’s political project the animus of which was opposition to Christianity rather than promotion of Judaism.

Anyhow, none of Julian’s projects came to much fruition and as he lay dying from an injury in battle, the apostate emperor realised the futility of his life’s work with his final words: νενίκηκάς με, Γαλιλαῖε, or ‘Thou hast defeated me, Galilean!’

At the moment I am reading a book by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and stumbled across a mistranslation from the Spanish that would have been avoided if only the translator had enjoyed the privilege of being taught by Dr Kernell.

It turns out that the Spanish word for ‘Galilean’ is ‘Galileo’. Pérez-Reverte’s translator, alas, failed to understand one of the characters reference to Julian’s final words and mistook Christ our Saviour for an Italian astronomer, mistranslating the phrase as “You have defeated me, Galileo”.

Worth a wry smile, given the solid 1,200-year gap between the death of Julian the Apostate and the birth of Galileo Galilei.

The Dumas Club is a delightfully weird and intriguing tale, though, and I look forward to reading more by Pérez-Reverte — no matter who the translator is.

Published at 4:00 pm on Friday 14 October 2022. Categories: Books Errant Thoughts Tags: , , .
Comments

That made me laugh and cry. We are in for a long winter and a glorious spring.

— Gmxaugust KM 16 Oct 2022 1:47 am

“it is presumed many Jews didn’t want to be dragged into the Emperor’s political project the animus of which was opposition to Christianity rather than promotion of Judaism”

Do you have any basis for this presumption?

— For what it's worth 29 Oct 2022 9:57 pm

Possibly just deductive logic, or maybe Wikipedia — can’t remember.

— Andrew Cusack 2 Nov 2022 2:00 pm
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