Well, this is an excellent question. That first passage I pasted was translated either by a biographer or someone the biographer was quoting. I was a bit surprised to see the "he/him" myself, so I went and looked at the original. Fritz definitely uses "il", but since "le singe" is masculine, that could just as easily be grammatical gender as biological. I stuck with "he" in my translation of the subsequent passage, just to be consistent with the first and in case somebody knew something I didn't, but, yes, I did raise an eyebrow, and I did check first, before deciding to just go with it.
In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.
I mean, he hadn't met Fritz yet? If he was still making this mistake in 1753, then I'd be worried. :P But yes, the reason Fritz had Suhm (the recipient of the Mimi letters, btw) translate it was because he didn't feel his German was up to the task of reading philosophy.
Speaking of translations and going back to the Algarotti discussion: Émilie du Châtelet's 1749 translation of (and commentary on) Newton's Principia is still the definitive French translation today, because it's such a difficult text to translate. An impressive feat from an impressive woman.
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Re: Monkey see, monkey do
Date: 2019-11-02 05:55 pm (UTC)Well, this is an excellent question. That first passage I pasted was translated either by a biographer or someone the biographer was quoting. I was a bit surprised to see the "he/him" myself, so I went and looked at the original. Fritz definitely uses "il", but since "le singe" is masculine, that could just as easily be grammatical gender as biological. I stuck with "he" in my translation of the subsequent passage, just to be consistent with the first and in case somebody knew something I didn't, but, yes, I did raise an eyebrow, and I did check first, before deciding to just go with it.
In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.
I mean, he hadn't met Fritz yet? If he was still making this mistake in 1753, then I'd be worried. :P But yes, the reason Fritz had Suhm (the recipient of the Mimi letters, btw) translate it was because he didn't feel his German was up to the task of reading philosophy.
Speaking of translations and going back to the Algarotti discussion: Émilie du Châtelet's 1749 translation of (and commentary on) Newton's Principia is still the definitive French translation today, because it's such a difficult text to translate. An impressive feat from an impressive woman.