"The Carthaginians had cleared away high growth as far as the spring where they got water, a distance of about an Athenian stadion." (p. 17)
"They had a light breeze and visibility of about a dozen Athenian stadia..." (p. 22)
I spotted "stadion," intended to post about it but forgot, then found the plural, "stadia," and had to reread to find "stadion."
I will reread as far as the end of Chapter I of The Boat Of A Million Years but will then have to decide whether to stay with this book or return to the version of Jupiter in the Flying Mountains future history or instead return to Starfarers, the rereading of which was interrupted by the arrival of the third NESFA collection of Anderson's short works. It is enjoyable to wander freely among Anderson's fictitious universes. Whereas Starfarers is what I earlier called an "STL future history," Boat... is an STL past, present and future history.
Since I will shortly drive my daughter and granddaughter to their holiday location in the English Lake District, I will be out of commission as a blogger for a few hours.
5 comments:
Some years ago I read an English translation of Herodotus' Histories.
The translator seems to have consistently translated 'stadion' as 'furlong'. Since I don't follow horse racing much, I had to look up furlong to get some idea of what the distances were. It seems the current furlong is somewhere in the middle of the lengths of the various stadia used in ancient Greece.
Kaor, Jim!
And I would prefer translations of historical works to render past units of measurement into modern English as accurately as possible. "Furlong" simply does not cut it with me if it's only half as long as a Greek "stade."
Ad astra! Sean
I mean that there were several different 'stadia' in use in ancient Greece of different lengths. Some of then were longer than a furlong & some shorter, so the translation of stadia-> furlongs isn't horribly inaccurate. I think I would have just left 'stadia' untranslated with a footnote about which stadion was most likely meant by Herodotus at the first use of the term.
The multitude of different size yards feet or pounds was a major reason for many countries to go metric. The fact that the British Empire had done more to go to one standard set of measurements was one reason the English speaking world was slower to adopt metric. That still left the inconvenience of a multitude of confusing conversion factors.
At school in the 1950s, we learned:
12 inches, 1 foot;
3 feet, 1 yard;
5 1/2 yards, one pole, perch or rod -
- and I can't remember what came after that because we had to pause for breath.
Kaor, Jim!
And most Americans are stubbornly clinging to English measures. What was good enough for grandpa is good enough for us! (Wry smile)
Yes, keeping "stade" in translations of Greek historical works, with footnotes explaining how long the "stade" used in that book was is probably the best way to go.
Ad astra! Sean
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