From the Original

Greetings,

This article is designed to address the importance of the consideration of the use of primary sources and their importance. I have already previously talked about this particular subject, this one is a little more focused than the previous articles I have written. This one focuses on the importance of knowledge of the primary language of the document and how important it is to realise that unless you are reading the original there will be some interpretation.

First of all let me give a lot of respect to those members of the fencing community who have taken the time to take manuals in foreign languages and translated and made them available for us to use. With regard to this, and in no particular order, I would like to cite the works of individuals like Ken Mondschein, Jared Kirby, Tom Leoni, Guy Windsor and Mark Rector. Your contributions to the field are most greatly appreciated and clearly benefit what western martial artists do.

The importance of the use of primary texts in an investigation into any field cannot be overstated. This is one of the reasons why I have gone back to my Saviolo and 1594 di Grassi. Even the most faithful translation of a text from another language into modern English results in some input from the translator, there is no way to avoid it. This can be as complex as the general simplification of word groups to the simple interpretation of single words to mean others. Further to this where there is translation and then interpretation there is further changes made to the original text, there is most definitely input present from the person performing it.

This does not even take into account some of the issues that can abound in this area. The first is failures in translation where the words have been misinterpreted to mean other things. Further to this which often follows is the failure in the interpretation of the person describing the skills presented in the ...

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.