Newmanize

English

Etymology

Coined as Newman +‎ -ize by Matthew Arnold in a lecture at Oxford on November 30, 1861 (published in 1862 as On Translating Homer: Last Words) in which he criticized a translation by Francis William Newman.

Verb

Newmanize (third-person singular simple present Newmanizes, present participle Newmanizing, simple past and past participle Newmanized)

1. (derogatory) To translate in a manner that makes use of archaisms and which tends to closely follow the original rather than modernize the language in the translation.
   • 1862, Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer: Last Words:

     To grunt and sweat under a weary load does perfectly well where it comes in Shakspeare: but if the translator of Homer, who will hardly have wound up our minds to the pitch at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to employ, when he has to speak of Homer's heroes under the load of calimity, this figure of 'grunting' and 'sweating' we should say, he Newmanizes, and his diction would offend us.

   • 1886 April 10, “The Iliad of Homer”, in The Athenæum, number 3050, page 483:

     Mr. Way, in fact, is a little inclined to "Newmanize"—a fault which we hoped Mr. Matthew Arnold had long ago crushed. Pure English of the simple sort is amply sufficient for the translating of Homer, as has been abundantly proved by the "Variorum" prose translations of the Odyssey and Iliad; there is no excuse for the mongrel vocabulary into which Mr. Way sometimes falls, for it must be understood that his mistakes are by no means equally distributed, but obviously come thickest in books where the current of the poem runs least clear and strong, where a translator may most easily be excused for signs of weariness.

   • 2002, Alessandro Monti, Hindu Masculinities Across the Ages: Updating the Past, page 48:

     And he concludes, to quote the Indian newmanized translation: That association […] of man and woman when the latter, herself coveting, fails to obtain an individual of the opposite sex that does not covet her, is, instead of being a merit, only a fault that is as noxious as poison.