ALICE TRANSLATED.*

THERE is much complaint nowadays of the dearth of original pro- duction in this country-. Fiction and poetry seem to be in danger of becoming lost arts through the multitude of verse-writers and novel-writers. Our drama is notoriously an imported commodity. Even the more adventurous spirits at our seats of learning are said to cast off the fetters of native tradition only to deliver them- selves to a new bondage under the rule of the last German book, the more readily if it happens to contradict the last but one. For the comfort of those Englishmen whom the sight of these things tempts to despair of their country, it is well that we can point to at least one notable victory in a field which, though it may not be very wide, is among those where it is most difficult to command success, and where ignominious defeats are most common.

Alice in Wonderland is, beyond question, supreme among modern books for children. We do not forget the Water-Babies, but we exclude it from competition, as being not simply a child's book, but something more. Not that we would gainsay any one who should discover treasures of hidden wisdom in "Alice's Adventures." Indeed, we have reason to believe that nothing has prevented them from being adopted as a text-book at Cambridge, but the insuper- able jealousy of Oxford mathematics which notoriously prevails at that university, and which has discovered in the theory of Much- ness suggested by the Dormouse a connection with certain speculations on Determinants. At present, however, we cannot enter into the minute analysis which would be required for the proper treatment of this question. We find, then, that Alice, having already made all English-speaking children her subjects, is about to extend her dominion to the nurseries of France and Germany. We confess that our first hasty impulse was to exclaim, "Translate Alice ? Impossible !" But we were straightway rebuked by the philosophic rejoinder of the cater- pillar, "Why not ?" And presently reason added, when the shock of surprise had passed off, "Not only it may be, but it must be." For what are in fact the qualities which are the marks of a really good child's book ? Itnprimis, it must amuse children ;

Aventures d'Alice au Pap du Hermilles. Par Lewin Carroll. Tradait de l'Anglaie par Henri Bud.

Alices Abenteuer im Wonderland. Von Lewis Carroll. Uebersetzt von Antonio Zimmermann. London: Macmillan and Co.

item, it must have no obvious moral ; but this is not enough. The best children's tales, the tales which have really lived among the people, address themselves to all ages ; witness the treasures preserved for us by the Brothers Grimm. If any readers are too old to sympathize with the many disappointments of the youth who went out to learn to shiver, to admire the irony of fate which again and again exalts the despised Dammling above his more favoured brethren, or to shudder at the unknown crime which combined all the powers of nature against Herr Korbes, we are heartily sorry for them. But farther, not only is the true child-mind of no age in particular ; it is also cosmopolitan. There is no delight in local colouring for its own sake, and we seldom find more of it than is unavoidably imposed by the limits of the story-teller's experience. In the fairy world there are no foreign parts, and in the centre of the earth or op the other side of the moon we are as much at home as on the Thames or the Weser. It follows that a child's book of genuine worth ought to suffer less by translation than any other kind of book ; and the volumes now before us may to that extent be considered a farther test of the excellence of the original. If any person objects to any part of the foregoing argument on the score of paradox or otherwise, we are willing to refer the dispute to the Cheshire cat.

We have proceeded to verify our a priori conclusion by actual ex- amination of the two versions, and it has been most agreeably con- firmed. There were many difficulties of execution to contend with in finding equivalents for the snatches of parodied nursery rhymes, and in rendering not only puns, but the play on words which often runs through the story with a quaint subtlety much less easy to represent in translation than downright punning. It has been occasionally necessary to sacrifice a point altogether, or to recast or even omit a paragraph ; but, on the whole, the turn of the original has been followed with surprising fidelity, and it is curious to see what slight verbal alterations have often sufficed to preserve the humour of the English. We are conscious that in this matter the judgment of an English adult must be given with diffidence, and we hasten to support our opinion by laying before the reader some samples of the evidence on which we have formed it. At the very beginning of the story, when Alice is falling down the rabbit-hole, a troublesome passage occurs :—

"'Dinah, my dear! I wish you were down here with me ! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch • bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bate, I wonder ?' And hero Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to her- self, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats ?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats ?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it."

The Frenchman here translates literally "Les chats mangent-ils lea chauves-souris?" and loses the jingle. The German proceeds thus :—

" Mir ist nur bangs, es giebt keine Manse in der Lnft ; aber du konntest omen Spatzen fangen ; die wird es bier in der Luft wohl geben, glaubst du nicht ? Und Katzen frossen doch Spatzen ?' Hier wurde Alice etwas schlitfrig, und redete bulb in Traum fort, Fressen Katzen gem n Spatzen ? Fressen Katzen gem n Spatzen ? Frassen Spatzen gem n Katzen ?' Und da ihr Niemand an antworten brauchte, so kam es gar nicht darauf an, wie sie die Frage stellte."

This preserves the sound, but casts on Alice the serious im- putation of not knowing that cats eat sparrows. Such are the dilemmas that constantly beset an anxious translator. Let us turn now to the exciting events that followed the random blow of Alice's hand, for the time become gigantic, from the window of the White Rabbit's house.

We must omit the English text for want of space, the less reluctantly as we are sure that no reader who has followed us thus far will have any difficulty in referring to it. The heading of the chapter, "The Rabbit sends in a Little Bill," we observe, is one of the puns which has proved unmanageable to French and German alike. In this spirited narrative the French version excels :—

0 Elle entendit un petit oil, puis is bruit d'une chute ot de vitres cassees (ce qui lui fit penser quo la Lapin etait tomb e sur lee chassis de quelque Barre It concombre), pais une voix cetera, cello du Lapin : 'Patrice! Patrice ! ott es-tu?'—Une voix qu'elle ne connaissait pas

repondit: Me v'te., not' maitre ! bechons la terra pour trouver des pommes Pour trouver des pommes !' dit le Lapin furieux.'Visas

m'aider a me tiror d'ici.' (Nouveau bruit de vitres casettes.) Dis-moi tin pen, Patrice, qu'est-ce qu'il y a lit It is fenetre ?'—' Ca, not' maitre, c'est un bras.'—' Un bras imbecile ! Qui a jamais vu un bras de cotta dimension ? Ca beach° bras, la fenetre.'—' Bien sCtr, not' maitre, mais c'est un bras tout de meme.'—' Dana touts lee cos, il n'a rise It faire icL Enleve-moi ca bien vite.' "

The council of war of the besieging force follows, which ends in Bill being sent down the chimney :-

"Attention It cette tulle qui no tient pas. Bon! la voila qui &grin- gole. Gars Ns tetea ! (II se fit Ull grand fracas.) Qiii a fait cola?

Je erois bien qua c'est Jacques. Qui eat-ce qui vs descendre par la cheminde ? Pas moi, bien afir! Allez-y, Irons. Non pas, vraiment. Crest a vous, Jacques, a deacendre. Hoh0, Jacques, not' maitre dit quil taut que tu deacendes par is cheminde ?"

In the German, Bill becomes " Wabbel," a name which seems formed expressly to fit the picture. Mr. Tenniel must have drawn his lizard with some strange foreshadowing of the translation. Further on, it is worth noting how the brutal cynicism of the caterpillar unconsciously assumes, in the mere process of faithful transposition, a tone of stolid complacency in the one language and of airy flippancy in the other. " Frau Raupe" and "La Chenille," without losing any of the individuality of the original, have become thoroughly naturalized in their new abodes. We cannot pass on without extracting the concluding. stanzas of "Father Willis..

" Vous etes vieux, par quelle adresse Tenez-vous debout sur le nez Une anguille qui ee redresse

Droit comma un I quad vous sifiloz ?

"Cotta question eat trop sotte ! Cessez de babiller ainsi,

On je vais, du bout de ma botte, Vous envoyer bien loin d'ici."

The German is equally successful, though we confess that we rather miss the specific force of the threat "Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs :"—

"Ihr said alt," sagt dor Sohn, "mid habt nicht viol Witz.

Und doch sold ihr so geschickt ; Balancirt amen, Ml auf der Nasenspitz'! Witt let each des nur gegliickt?

" Drei Antworten bast du, und damit genug, Nun lass mich kein Wort mehr horen ; Du Guck in die Welt thust so iiberklug, Ich werde dich Mores lehren !"

It was with especial curiosity that we turned to the mad tea-party, with its complication of oddities, at first sight quite untranslatable. The March Hare, by a happy corruption of the existing word Faselhans, becomes " Faselhase " in German ; but the French children have to put up with "Le Lievre " simply, and must account for both his madness and the Hatter's as best they can ; no doubt they will invent plenty of reasons, unless they take the pictures as a sufficient explanation. The phrase " schneien Topfe und Teller" is happily employed to replace the " twinkling " of the tea-things. The story of the three little sisters in the well must have given both translators much trouble. The dormouse seems too wide awake when he talks French, the precision of that language being hardly compatible with his proper sleepiness ; and

the German alone has been able to follow his abstract speculations on things that begin with an M :—

" Sie zeichneten Allerlet—alles was mit M anfiingt—'—'Warum mit IS?' fmgte Alice. ‘Warum nicht?' eagle der Faselhase. Alice war still. Da s Murmelthier hatte mittlerweile die Augen zugemacht, und war halb eingeschlafen ; da aber der Hutmacher es zwickte, wackte es mit einem leisen Schroi auf und sprach weiter:—‘ Was mit M anfiingt, wie Mausefallen, den Mond, Mengel, nod munches Mal,—ihr wisst„ man sagt ; ich babe due mulches babe Mal gethan,—hast du je munches Hobe Mal gezeichnet gesehen?'—` Wirklich, da du mich selbst fragst,' eagle Alice ganz verwirrt ‘ich denke kaum,'—` Dann solltest du auch nicht rodeo,' eagle der Hutmacher."

Though the French translator evades the problem, we must admire the ingenuity of the evasion :-

"Alice, craignant d'offenser le Loir, reprit avec circonspection,'Male je ne comprends pus; comment auraient-elles pu s'en tirer ?'—‘ Gest tout simple,' dit he Chapelier.—‘ Quand il a y do l'ean dans un puts, vous savez bien comment on en tire, n'est-ce pas? Eh bien! d'un puts de mileage on tire de is mOlasse, at qtutnd ii y a des petitos fines dans la melasse on lea tire en memo temps; comprenez-vous, petite sotto ?' "

The humours of the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle are exceedingly well preserved. Take as specimens the first remark of the Gry- phon, "Es ist Alles Hire Einbildung„ das : Niemand wird niemals micht hingerichtet. Kornai schnell,"—and the French version of "We called him tortoise because he taught us :"—

t" La mattresse Stait nne vieille tortne ; nous rappelions Chelonde.' —' Et pourquoi l'appeliez-vous Chelonee, si CO n'etait pas son nom ?'— 'Parcequ'on no pouvait s'empeoher de s'ecrier en la voyant: Quel long nez!' dit is Fausse-Tortue d'un ton fachd; vous ales vraiment bien bora° !"

At one point, however, both our translators are fairly beaten : the reasons for the whiting being so called, from its doing the boots .and shoes, and for no wise fish going anywhere without a por- poise, are given up as untranslatable and inimitable. We pause to consider anew those mysterious lines,—

I passed by his garden and marked, with one eye, How the owl and the oyster were sharing a pie." The strange pair are retained in French as " une huitre et tut hibon qui dinaient fort k l'aise ;" the German reader will find a substituted parody, of which the hero is a Rhine salmon, and may perhaps be thankful to escape the controversy to which the original cannot fail to give rise in course of time. What pie ? what was in it? how did they share it? and why one eye? Future com- mentators will be perplexed whether to take the passage as a true contribution to British natural history, or as a warning against the deceptiveness of monocular vision. What boundless speculation, what battles of rival physiologists may we not already foresee ! For our own part, we incline to think that the oyster was in the pie and the owl ate him. The use of the word share may seem strained, but have we not heard of sharing the blessings of civilization with aborigines?

It is natural to suppose that Alice, having now become trilin- gual, may be called in to assist in teaching languages in families. We hardly know whether to recommend such a course as humane or to denounce it as barbarous. Will lessons become amusing by association with Alice, or will even Alice become hateful by being regarded as a lesson-book? The experiment is a hazardous one, and will demand no small skill and tact on the part of the opera- tor. And the moral of that is—we have forgot to mention the crowning merit of the work. Notwithstanding any remarks of the Duchess, Alice has no moral.