I got an interesting question from reader Aster about the Jervas translation of Don Quixote. In his version of Jervas, the opening sentence of the preface was different from what I had quoted in About to Read Don Quixote. It turned out that both sentences were correct. It is just that some editors change translations a lot. Mine was Edited by E C Riley, who is excellent; but that means the Oxford World’s Classics edition is kind of a conglomeration.
At first I thought that Aster must be mistaken, so I went searching through my collection of translations. I never found it, of course, but I did come upon an interesting translation controversy. In the introduction to his own recent translation of Don Quixote, John Rutherford opens with, “Yet another Quixote translation? Isn’t it an act of quixotry to write the thirteenth English version of the great Spanish novel?” He goes on to explain that previous translations have been too reverential, usually at the expense of Cervantes’ excellent sense of humor.
In this regard, he provides an example:
That is clever. And it is entirely in keeping with the book. Many characters make fun of Don Quixote and he is far too earnest to ever notice. So Sanson is saying, “Please tell me if things are going wrong so I can celebrate!”
Rutherford goes on to show that other translators completely dropped the joke. But he didn’t mention Putnam, so I checked my copy:
So Putnam does not translate it as a joke. But Putnam was a careful translator and I found it hard to believe that he would miss this. So that took me back to the Spanish edition:
This translates roughly, “Sanson embraced him, and he asked to be notified of any good or bad luck, to rejoice with this or be sad with that, like the laws of their friendship asked.” Do you see the reversal that Rutherford is talking about? I don’t. It seems to me that Putnam has it right (although why he moves that ending clause to the middle, I can’t say). What are we to make of this?
It could be that I am simply a lousy Spanish language translator. Well, actually I am a lousy translator. But I don’t think I’m wrong here. Not to mention that Putnam and every other translator agrees on this reading. That brings us to a second possibility: Rutherford is using a different Spanish language text. After all, they aren’t all the same. Rutherford says he used Luis Andres Murillo’s modern Spanish language edition of the book, which was published in 1978. That could explain the difference.
But I suspect that the problem is just a matter of approach. Rutherford wants to translate Don Quixote in such a way as to highlight the humor in it. And given that one could reasonably argue that the phrase was meant to be that way, Rutherford has decided that it was meant that way. I think that’s entirely valid, even if I think the comedy comes out very well in the “reverential” translations.
If you are still looking for a translation, Rutherford’s Penguin Classics edition is a fine choice.
As Professor Farnsworth would say, “Good news, everyone!” Economists have looked at the data and it turns out that economic mobility has not gotten worse over the past several decades. Of course, as usual with such “good news” claims from Professor Farnsworth, it is actually bad news. You see, the reason that economic mobility hasn’t decreased is that it’s been terrible all along. Last month at The New Yorker, James Surowiecki explained it all in, 
Yesterday, I wrote about Lynn Vavreck’s excellent book 
Most people know of the song “Hey Joe” because it was the first single released by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. But the song is like Robert Johnson’s “Crosscord”: it’s been performed by just about everyone. And to be honest, I’m not fond of most of the versions of the song. It is at base, a folk song and dressing it up really distracts from its power.
This American Life is doing a show, 
Today I had wanted to talk about Rudolf Hess. He fascinates me, because of his flight to Scotland in 1941. It strikes me as highly idiosyncratic. And it made Hitler really angry, so you’ve got to give the man credit. But his approach to bring peace made little sense. He sent a letter to Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, who he not only didn’t know, but whom he was completely ignorant about in his position in the country. MI5 intercepted the letter, and Douglas-Hamilton never responded in any case. So Hess just got in his plane and flew to meet with this man. The thinking displays a childlike simplicity. Then there is the question of why he did it. Could he really have thought he had a chance in hell of brokering peace? There is no way that the British would ever have accepted a peace treaty with the Nazis. Even in 1938 they knew the 
Michael Tomasky wrote a very funny article over at The Daily Beast, 
It is well worth reading the whole thing because it is pretty typical of how conservatives generally try to keep attention away from a very clear reality. But what it made me think of was how my arguments with libertarians (which are getting far less civil these days) so often degenerate into claims that we should move most things the federal government does down to the states. It’s a strange request because it doesn’t make much sense. Medicare and Social Security are highly successful because they are run at the federal level. Attempts to give more local control have been mixed at best.
I guess I have to talk about this new extension of “stand your ground” in George. But it isn’t because of the conservatives. That isn’t to say the law isn’t awful, because it most certainly is. My understanding is that it allows people to carry guns wherever they want. Now they can’t carry them into a church if the church doesn’t want guns there. But doing so would be equivalent to a parking ticket. So if some white supremacist wants to bring a gun into a black church, it isn’t really against the law until he starts firing at people.
Timothy B Lee is young journalist over at Vox. He mostly writes about intellectual property where his work is quite good. I noted this in an article last year, 
On this day in 1917,