Alexander Fraser Tytler
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Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747 - 5 January 1813) was a Scottish-born British lawyer and writer.
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[edit] Translation
Tytler wrote a treatise that is important in the history of translation theory, the Essay on the Principles of Translation (London, 1790). It has been argued in a 1975 book by Gan Kechao that Yan Fu's famous translator's dictum of fidelity, clarity and elegance came from Tytler.
Tytler said that translation should fully represent the 1) ideas and 2) style of the original and should 3) possess the ease of original composition.
Tytler was a friend of Robert Burns, and prevailed upon him to remove lines from his poem "Tam o' Shanter" which were insulting to the legal and clerical professions.
[edit] Quotation
The following unverified quotation has been attributed to Tytler, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election[1]:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage.
This passage actually comprises two quotations, which didn't begin to appear together until the 1970's.[2] The list beginning "From bondage to spiritual faith" is commonly known as the "Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence". Its first known appearance is in a 1943 speech "Industrial Management in a Republic"[3] by H. W. Prentis, president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers. The quote appears to be original to Prentis. No original author can reliably be determined for the first paragraph. It is possible that ''[[whoever first made the statement was paraphrasing or]] drawing a conclusion from the quotation given'' by Bartleby at the link listed below.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" Urban Legends Reference Pages
- ^ Loren Collins, "The Truth About Tytler."
- ^ Prentis, Jr., Henning Webb (1943). Industrial Management in a Republic. Newcomen Society in North America. p. 22. http://books.google.com/books?id=a-RCAAAAIAAJ&q=%22bondage+to+spiritual+faith%22.
[edit] External links
- Significant Scots Alexander Fraser Tytler
- Bartleby quotation
- Tytler's Essay on the principles of translation, 1907 edition at Internet Archive
- Diagram of the Tytler Cycle and musings of America's position in the cycle
- More musings of America's position in the cycle, as evidenced by 2008's economic turbulence
