28-May / NERD ALERT! / 0 COMMENTS

On my blog post from May 11th, I wrote about a modern everyday gesture that seemed very similar to Quintilian’s advice as to how one should physically express  the affect of “wonder”. I know, I know… I promissed you all some gifs, and they are in the making, so look out for the coming blogs!

 

Going into historical gesture, one of our biggest and most complete sources to draw from is Gilbert Austin’s book “Chironomia” with its very helpful illustrations. Naturally I wanted to see how he translated and interpreted  Quintilian’s instructions. I seem to have found it:

 

“A gesture suited to admiration is this. The hand is held nearly supine, and the fingers are collected from the smallest; In the returning sweep, they are extended, and the hand is turned into another position.”

 

Luckily Austin was cool enough to give 2 illustration demonstrating what he meant:

 

Not to diss Austin, but this interpretation seems a bit random to me. He translated  the word: “ADMIRATIONI” from Latin into the word admiration in English, which is fair enough, but if you look at the 2 illustrations, it looks as if they express rather admiration verging on adoration. I would go ahead and say it’s step too far in interpretation liberties.

 

I think we can agree that any work of translation has indeed to do in part with interpretation. Translation  from Latin does depend a lot on the time in which you live and your background. Assuming Gilbert Austin did make a mistake, I have to ask myself what might have caused it. Was this just a classic case of lost in translation? Or could we just chalk it up to difference in cultures?

Body language Chironomia Gesture Gilbert Austin Michal Bitan Quintilian