Intralingual Translation: Genuine and False Dilemmas

This chapter scrutinises intralingual translation in the wider context of interlingual translation, while focusing specifically on the translation of ancient Greek texts into modern Greek. In the process, it sheds light on certain problems and dilemmas that interlingual translation has bequeathed to intralingual translation, both on a theoretical and a practical level, such as: a) the degree of translatability of classical texts; b) the conventional distinctions between scholarly, word-for-word translations and freer, literary ones; and c) the dilemma between a ‘retrospectively’ linguistic and stylistic translation, and a synchronic translation. The chapter also attempts to sketch, classify, and comment upon the long history of intralingual translation from Greek antiquity to the present day, and to discuss in detail the ideologically motivated comparisons of and conflicts between ancient and modern Greek with particular reference to intralinguistic translations. It draws attention to and exemplifies certain positive and certain negative or problematic aspects of intralingual translation, as the latter has been and is still practised in the educational, academic, and public space of modern Greece.