Marco Polo
translation: Henry Yule, Henri Cordier

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Volume I.
complete book, e-book

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XIV. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.

89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our English version of the Traveller's record.

[Sidenote: Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier.]

Ramusio's recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the real literary history of Polo's Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at first hand; a translation from Ramusio's Italian is, as far as I can judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands.

[Sidenote: Eclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation.]

90. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding pages that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo's Work, a version on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a material influence. But to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have been a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to translate from Pauthier's Text. The process of abridgment in this text, however it came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation, but as a general rule preserving the matter. Having translated this,—not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself, but with the exercise of my own judgment on the various readings which that Editor lays before us,—I then compared the translation with the Geographic Text, and transferred from the latter not only all items of real substance that had been omitted, but also all expressions of special interest and character, and occasionally a greater fulness of phraseology where condensation in Pauthier's text seemed to have been carried too far. And finally I introduced between brackets everything peculiar to Ramusio's version that seemed to me to have a just claim to be reckoned authentic, and that could be so introduced without harshness or mutilation. Many passages from the same source which were of interest in themselves, but failed to meet one or other of these conditions, have been given in the notes.[1]

[Sidenote: Mode of (...)

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