Michael Daugherty writes:

>         I have had the distinct honor to have been a student,
> employee (as rough copy-editor\proofreader) and friend of
> the Hongs for over 20 years.  Because my danish was then
> weak and is now almost non-existent, I really am speaking
> more on emotion than intellect.  However, I can say that
> the rigor and scholarship that has gone into the Hong
> translation is amazing.  Great effort has gone into every
> turn of a phrase; Edna, Howard's wife, is quite a poet in
> her own  mother tongue, and without her poetic assistance,
> much of the art would be lost, I suspect.  
>         In addition, Hong disagreed with Swenson and Lowrie
> in many places, and we also discovered many gross omissions
> in the Lowrie text - perhaps because the obscurity overcame
> them.  From what I can tell, there is no literary fraud afoot
> in the Hong translation, and I urge you to read them.  Some
> here on the list have called them consistent, but too dry. 
> Frankly, some of the brief passages I have read by other
> more recent translators remind me of the gender neutral
> bible translations - not policitally offensive, maybe spicy
> or juicy, but certainly closer to literary fraud, as you
> put it, than what little I know of the Hong translation. 
> Oh, well.  I wish I were bi-lingual and could speak with more
> authority.  In the absence of that, let me close by saying
> that I will never again be blessed with a closer association
> to a man and woman like Howard and Edna Hong who may embody
> Purity of Heart - to will one thing  (the translation of
> Kierkegaard to the english speaking world).  I would like to
> be objective about it, but I can't.


Dear Michael Daugherty,

     Thank you for your warm and generous description of
the Hongs and their Kierkegaard translation.

     I am embarrassed and a little bit shamed by the
tenor of of my words:

    >  One translates not only words; one translates
    >  meaning; one cannot translate meaning which one
    >  does not comprehend, and the presumption so to
    >  translate is literary fraud.

I reflect on some of the great translations that have shaped
our culture: the Septuagint, Saint Jerome's Bible, the
King James Version and Martin Luther's German Bible; and
of all the poets who have chosen to practice their craft
by translating the work of others: Schiller translating
Shakespeare, Hoelderlin translating Sophokles.
There is surely a problem about presuming to translate
what one does not understand; but perhaps the greater
problem is presuming to understand at all. The issue
of understanding and not understanding is an existential
one which has nothing to do with fraud. I wish I hadn't
used the word; but I was carried away by my own rhetoric,
and the only thing I know to say in my defense is that
it's not the first time on this list that rhetoric has
triumphed over common sense.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com