242 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The short sojourn in Tibet, the prolonged Latin-American tours, 

 the rambles in Antipodia; the researches in greater Indasia, Korea, 

 Japan, Manchuria; then the trans- Asiatic journey to the Ural moun- 

 tains, the oft-repeated journeyings in southwestern Europe; even the 

 visit to the ancient little republic of Andorva to the fastness of the 

 Pyrenees; all these were interesting themes for the Russian Voltaire; 

 as was also the project of the coming trans- Arctic surveys. 



NOT ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH TRANSLATIONS OF HIS WORKS. 



No work was ever improved by translation. On the contrary, 

 most all works are spoilt by translation, An argument in favor of a uni- 

 versal language. Translators are mostly corruptors- spoliators. Most 

 translators have the pernicious habit of making the translation as 

 radically different as possible from the original perverting words, 

 destroying correct punctuation making a general botch, in fact, 

 Instead of translating into the most similar- sounding words, the 

 literary quill-driver strives to use the most different, although synony- 

 mous, words they can hook on to. Thus "citoyan laborieu," instead 

 of being changed into "laborious citizen" is mistranslated to "hard- 

 working subject." And so on might illustrations be quoted by the 

 thousand. Tolstoi had particularly to comment upon the work of 

 one lady translator mentioning her name, which I forget. He 

 quoted instances too abstract to go down here. He said she under- 

 stood Russian "well" I think he said, and believed she had done her 

 best; still he was not satisfied at all with some of the renderings. 

 A perfect translator of any language has never yet lived. 



HAS HIS MANUSCRIPTS TYPE-WRITTEN, 



Some Americans have introduced type-writers into Russia in 

 recent years. It is a standing illustration of a thing which is wrong 

 in theory but right in practice. At Tolstoi's a Russian brunette is 

 employed to do the work. She is treated as one of the family. Poor 

 young woman! She is more sympathetic than her work, for a 

 glance at he<r results showed she had been having trouble with the 

 ribbons or inks and the copy came out blurred. But she is probably 

 doing better now. Moreover the Russian type characters put into 

 these machines by United States makers, are faultily indistinctly 

 designed. I explained my own typewriting aparatus I had invented 

 in Bengal in the summer of '95, giving a speed of 1,000 words per 

 minute if desired, but cumbersome at forty pounds weight, I used it 

 greatly in Indasia; also on the Russia liner to print a little 8-page 

 afternoon daily during the three- weeks' voyage to Japan; nearly wore 

 it to death in Nipon; then carried it among baggage almost across 

 Asia, and finally abandoned it at Tomck, western Cibiria making a 

 present of it to the museum of the government tipografia, (Jan- 

 uary, '97.) 



