John Dryden

Poet, dramatist, critic, and translator; b. 9 August, 1631, at Oldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshire,
England; d. at London, 30 April, 1700. He was the son of Erasmus Dryden (or Driden) and Mary
Pickering, daughter of the Rev. Henry Pickering. Erasmus Dryden was the son of Sir Erasmus Dryden,
and was a justice of the peace under Cromwell. On both sides Dryden's family were of the
Parliamentary party. He received his early education as a king's scholar at Westminster and while there
his first published work appeared. This was an elegy contributed in 1649 to the "Lachrymæ Musarum",
a collection of tributes in memory of Henry, Lord Hastings. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 18
May, 1650, being elected to a scholarship on 2 October. He graduated as Bachelor of Arts, January,
1653-4, and after inheriting from his father a small estate worth £60 annually, he returned to
Cambridge, living there until 1655. The "Heroic Stanzas" on the death of Oliver Cromwell, his first
important work (1658), are smooth and vigorous, and while laudatory, are not meanly so. There is no
attack on royalty and no mention of Cromwell's religion. Dryden always was in favour of authority and
of peace from civil strife, and consequently when disorders broke out upon Cromwell's death, he, with
the rest of the nation, welcomed the return of Charles II. He celebrated the king's return with his poem
of "Astræa Redux" (1660), in which he already showed his mastery of the rhymed couplet. Then
followed his poems on the "Coronation" (1661); "To Lord Clarendon" (1662); "To Dr. Charleton"
(1663); "To the Duchess of York" (1665); and "Annus Mirabilis" (1667). His great prose "Essay on
Dramatick Poesie" appeared in 1668. Meantime, in 1662, Dryden had been elected to the Royal
Society, and on 1 December, 1663, he was married to Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the
Earl of Berkshire.

With his remarkable power of adaptation Dryden now gave his attention to another literary form, that
of translation. He had before this, in 1680, made some translations of Ovid; and in the "Miscellanies"
of 1684 and 1685, and of 1693 and 1694 there are specimens of Ovid, Horace, Homer, Theocritus and
Lucretius, which, together with his more complete translations of Virgil and Juvenal, make a total of
about 30,000 lines. In July, 1697, the "Pastorals", the "Georgics", and the "Æneid" of Virgil were
published, and the edition was sold off in about six months. Meanwhile, in 1692, Dryden had
composed an elegy on Eleonora, Countess of Abingdon, for which he received 500 guineas. About this
time, also, he wrote his famous address to Congreve on the failure of the "Double Dealer". In 1699, at
the close of his life, he published his "Fables". This volume contained five paraphrases of Chaucer,
three of Boccaccio, besides the first book of the "Iliad", and "Alexander's Feast", perhaps his greatest
lyrical poem, written in 1697 for a musical society in London which celebrated St. Cecilia's day.
Dryden had also written the ode for the celebration in 1687 by the same society. Dryden did not long
survive the publication of his last book. He died of inflammation caused by gout, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.

Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 BC and was murdered on December 7, 43 BC. His
life coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, and he was an important actor in many
of the significant political events of his time (and his writings are now a valuable source of information
to us about those events). He was, among other things, an orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher.
Making sense of his writings and understanding his philosophy requires us to keep that in mind. He
placed politics above philosophical study; the latter was valuable in its own right but was even more
valuable as the means to more effective political action. The only periods of his life in which he wrote
philosophical works were the times he was forcibly prevented from taking part in politics.
The standard versions of Cicero’s writings in English are still the Loeb editions of the Harvard
University Press. They include the Latin text on the left hand pages and the English translation on the
right hand pages, which is obviously of particular use to one who knows or is learning Latin. There are
Loeb editions of all of Cicero’s speeches, letters, and philosophical writings known to exist, and they
were the main sources for this article. The Perseus Project includes Cicero’s writings in its online
archives. The series of Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought has recently added editions
of On the Commonwealth and On the Laws (in one volume, edited by James E.G. Zetzel) and On
Duties (edited by M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins). These volumes include the Cambridge series’ usual
excellent introductions and background material and were also helpful in preparing this article. The
Oxford World’s Classics series has recently released a new translation of On the Commonwealth and
On the Laws (edited by Jonathan Powell and Niall Rudd); while its supplemental material is not as
thorough as that of the Cambridge edition, it is still worth reading.

Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson was born on September 18, 1709 in Lichfield in the Midlands. His father ran an
unsuccessful bookstore, where the young Johnson spent many hours reading. He was a brilliant pupil in
his local school and continued on excelling as a student at Oxford University but because of poverty he
did not complete his degree.
As a child he as often ill, which damaged his hearing and sight. He therefore found it hard to get a job.
When he was 28 years old, he moved to London. For almost ten years he worked as a journalist,
writing essays and articles. He also found time to write poetry, biographies and translated works of
other writers and poets, in particular, the works of ancient Roman satirist Juvenal. Johnson continued to
be poor until the government provided him a pension for his services to literature. By this time, he was
53.

Dr. Johnson’s Poetry, Translations and Dictionary

Johnson’s first major published poem, London is an imitation of the Roman writer Juvenal’s Third
Satire. It came out when Johnson was 29. It was not as good or successful as his second imitation, also
a Juvenal satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes. This poem shows how people's desires can lead to
betrayal.
Samuel Johnson’s good judgment and writings are best seen in his book Lives of the English Poets.
Seven years of work went into his Dictionary of the English Language, his best work. It became a
classic, the first of its kind that defines over 40,000 words.

Martin Luther
Martin Luther (Nov 10, 1483 - Feb 18, 1546) was a German theologian, an Augustinian monk, and an
ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines
and culture of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. Luther's call to the Church to return to the
teachings of the Bible led to the formation of new traditions within Christianity and to the Counter-
Reformation, the Roman Catholic reaction to these movements.
Luther's contributions to Western civilization went beyond the life of the Christian Church. Luther's
translations of the Bible helped to develop a standard version of the German language and added
several principles to the art of translation. Luther's hymns inspired the development of congregational
singing in Christianity. His marriage on June 13, 1525, to Katharina von Bora began a movement of
clerical marriage within many Christian traditions.
uther translated the New Testament into German to make it more accessible to the commoners and to
erode the influence of priests. He used the recent critical Greek edition of Erasmus, a text which was
later called Textus Receptus. During his translation, he would make forays into the nearby towns and
markets to hear people speak, so that he could write his translation in the language of the people. It was
published in 1522.
Luther had a low view of the books of Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. He called the
epistle of James "an epistle of straw", finding little in it that pointed to Christ and His saving work-
though he later revised his opinion of James, seeing it as more compatible with Pauline teaching later in
his career than earlier. He also had harsh words for the book of Revelation, saying that he could "in no
way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it." He had reason to question the apostolicity of these books
since the early church categorized these books as antilegomena, meaning that they weren't accepted
without reservation as canonical. Luther did not, however, remove them from his edition of the
scriptures.
His first full Bible translation into German, including the Old Testament, was published in a six-part
edition in 1534. As mentioned earlier, Luther's translation work helped standardize German and are
considered landmarks in German literature.
Luther chose to omit the portions of the Old Testament found in the Greek Septuagint, but not in the
Hebrew Masoretic texts then available, on the ground that they were recognized as authoritative
Hebrew scriptures neither in Christ's time nor in his own. These were included in his earliest
translation, but were later set aside as 'good to read', but not as the inspired Word of God. The setting-
aside (or simple exclusion) of these texts in/from Bibles was eventually adopted by nearly all
Protestants.

Translations
Translation is the comprehension of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an
equivalent text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another
language. The text that is translated is called the source text, and the language that it is translated into is
called the target language. The product is sometimes called the target text.
Translation, when practiced by relatively bilingual individuals but especially when by persons with
limited proficiency in one or both languages, involves a risk of spilling-over of idioms and usages from
the source language into the target language. On the other hand, inter-linguistic spillages have also
served the useful purpose of importing calques and loanwords from a source language into a target
language that had previously lacked a concept or a convenient expression for the concept. Translators
and interpreters have thus played an important role in the evolution of languages and cultures.[1]
The art of translation is as old as written literature.[2] Parts of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, among
the oldest known literary works, have been found in translations into several Southwest Asian
languages of the second millennium BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read, in their own
languages, by early authors of the Bible and the Iliad.[3]
Developments since the Industrial Revolution have influenced the practice of translation, nurturing
schools, professional associations, and standards.[4] The Internet has helped expand the market for
translation and has facilitated product localization. Currently, some 75% of professional translators
work with technical texts.[5]
Since the 1940s,[6] attempts have been made to computerize the translation of natural-language texts
(machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).