The advertising of individual products, by widening the market and increasing consumption generally, carries its own economic justification. By the same token, it is probable that if all advertising ceased, there would be a calamitous shrinkage in the turnover of industry generally the most powerful stimulus to consumption would have disappeared.

What now are the most hopeful tendencies of advertising, and in what direction may developments be expected? 'The organising' of any profession or trade is always regarded with mixed feelings by the general public, who have a not unnatural suspicion that this organising has a selfish basis, and is designed to secure greater profits for those engaged in the trade. The English mind cleaves to the idea of unrestricted competition; but, in advertising at least, all the abuses against which it has had to struggle since it emerged as a business force, have resulted from lack of control and want of education. The advertising agents, by establishing themselves as an Incorporated Institute, have made a definite bid for professional status. In so far as they may be able to impose a professional code upon all their members, the quality and the sincerity of British advertising will improve. In the future these practitioners will run the risk of expulsion from their own body if they derogate from clean standards of practice. They are also proposing to develop a system of professional examination, which in time should exclude from their ranks the incompetent and the quack.

At present the control of offensive advertisements is informal, and operates only by the goodwill of the individual newspaper proprietors. The Incorporated Institute exercises no disciplinary powers over its members. It is otherwise in the United States where what is known as the 'Better Business Bureau' exists. This phrase means not more business, but cleaner business. The Bureau's activities are supported by the great departmental stores. They encourage it to employ teams of skilled shoppers who purchase advertised goods and report on the faithfulness of the claims made for them. It is, however, not clear that we in England should do well to adopt the rather inquisitorial methods prevailing in America, and each industry can be left to deal Vol. 250.-No. 495.

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with its own abuses, unhampered by grandmotherly legislation.

As to the future of advertising generally, it is likely that there will be an immense development of Co-operative Advertising; not so much at the expense of individual effort, but in general support of it. The twin commercial needs of to-day are an increase in exporting power and in home consumption. It is in the latter field that the results of judicious advertising can be most quickly felt. The aim of Co-operative Advertising is to educate the public in the direction of increased consumption. The effects of it are not spectacular, but they are sure. During the first five years of the campaign initiated by the British Commercial Gas Association, the annual increment of gas consumption was 4500 million cubic feet. During the next five years the annual accretion had increased to 7000 million cubic feet. This annual figure leapt to 10,000 million during the following three years. Throughout the whole period the competition of electric light and power was vigorous and increasing, and the Gas Industry is satisfied that, but for the persistence with which they told the public about the services which they can render, and about facilities with which people are unfamiliar, only a small increase in gas consumption would have been registered.

Co-operative Advertising has a surprising by-product. It tends markedly to increase the efficiency of an industry. When any trade joins in an effort to commend goods or services to the community, it is found that there is a sharp difference in the efficiency of the various units. The best of them desire to claim for their goods or services the high standard they have achieved; but the trade as a whole dare not do so because of the lower standard shown by weaker brethren. Any trade, however, that is sufficiently organised to agree upon an advertising campaign is powerful enough to increase the efficiency of its more backward members, and this is found to happen, obviously to the benefit of the public. This co-operative method of advertising brings into trade a note of discipline and altruism that can be productive of nothing but good. Enlightened self-interest compels the more efficient members of an industry to assist their less capable colleagues towards a higher standard of

production in the interest both of producer and consumer. The general effect tends not only in the direction of greater efficiency, but also of lower costs. In the case of the co-operative advertising of the products of a whole industry, it is desirable, but only occasionally possible, to strengthen the efficacy of the appeal by branding or marking. The British tomato growers have identified their products by packing them in boxes marked 'British and Best,' but in many cases this is not possible, and Australian dried fruit advertising has been conspicuously effective without this support.

In the advertising of individual goods, identification by branding or distinctive packing is almost universal. Once a manufacturer has identified his goods and won public favour for them by advertising, he is bound to maintain or increase his standard of quality, lest his sales drop and his overhead charges become an unmanageable charge on a decreased turnover. In individual advertising, therefore, branding educates the public, and gives it a confidence which neither manufacturer nor distributor dares to shake without disastrous results to his profits. Advertising, in effect, is the final assurance to the public of honest trading. Without its increasingly intelligent use there is no hope of developing either the export or the home market to such an extent as will finally ameliorate our tragic burden of unemployment.

LAWRENCE WEAVER.

Art. 9.-THE ART OF TRANSLATING.

LITERATURE-which is usually regarded as the most potent of the arts-suffers from an obvious handicap, which does not affect either music, painting, or sculpture. The handicap is the finiteness of the vehicle of expression. For the faculty of words is limited by international boundaries, and the most inspired works of a genius may be rendered meaningless by an insignificant river or a range of mountains. It would seem that the universality of music, painting, science, and so forth, is denied to Literature. It is, of course, possible to overcome the disadvantage of language by learning the foreign tongue, but this is only the advantage of the few. To those who do not enjoy this advantage, the translator can offer a remedy, and it is generally he who acts as a passport to the poet and the writer. Yet in spite of his invaluable service to literature, his art and his prestige are singularly obscure. Of the multitude of translators, few spring to the mind as having achieved fame by their efforts. Amongst these few, place may be assigned to the translators of the Bible, Fitzgerald, and Prof. Gilbert Murray. Usually the translator is regarded somewhat in the light of a necessary evil, and the results of his labour are not considered with much enthusiasm. His position seems to be this. If he makes a good translation his reader persists, probably justly, in believing that the original must be still more wonderful, and he involuntarily thinks of the pleasure he misses by not being able to read the actual work, instead of the advantages he enjoys from the labour of the translator. A bad translation suffers neglect or incurs opprobrium.

Granting the necessity of the translator and the importance of his efforts, what then are the fundamentals of his art? Dryden says:

'A translator that would write with any force or spirit of an original must never dwell on the words of his author. He ought to possess himself entirely, and perfectly comprehend, the genius and sense of his author; the nature of the subject and the terms of the art or subject treated of; and then he will express himself as justly and with as much life as if he wrote an original; whereas he who copies word for word, loses all the spirit in the tedious transfusion.'

This broad definition can be taken as the general basis for the art of translation. But before we come to this aspect there is a primary requisite that the translator must possess, i.e. a thorough knowledge of both languages. Practically any one can acquire a working knowledge of a foreign tongue so as to be able to translate mentally word for word and eventually arrive at the general meaning of the text. But such a little knowledge is obviously a dangerous thing if the possessor is ambitious to translate. Especially necessary is mastery over idiom, or at least an ability to recognise idiom. The blunders that have been caused by ignorance of idiom, or of the true meaning of a word, and consequently a 'plunge' at the import, are both numerous and amusing. Nor are those howlers' confined to schoolboys, but are sometimes made by competent translators. For instance, the Frenchman who was officially given Cibber's play 'Love's Last Shift' to translate for the stage, and who was presumably a competent English scholar, started off by translating the title as 'La dernière Chemise de l'Amour.' Congreve's 'Mourning Bride' became in French, L'Épouse du Matin.' A translator of Swift was certain of his accuracy when he translated a passage 'the Duke of Marlborough broke an officer,' i.e. 'ruined' him, by using the verb 'rouer,' which, unfortunately, means 'to break on a wheel.'

There has been in recent years a marked improvement in the general translations of such works as French novels and memoirs; but, even so, there are few which avoid all the pitfalls that await the careless or unskilled translator. Amongst these one of the most common is the tendency to render such words as profiter de, assister à, défendre, charger, by English words which are spelt the same way but have a different meaning. Here is one example. A traveller was describing a voyage through the Torres Straits and the large cockroaches which infested the ship, 'qu'on charge avec les charbons.' This appeared as which the sailors attack and destroy with pieces of coal.'

The careful and competent translator, however, will seldom make these elementary blunders, which are simply a matter of grammatical and technical knowledge. But supposing he has mastered the idiom and