When really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they
are justified in using as many learned words as they please—their
audience will understand them; but a man that writes a book for the
general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with
untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority
of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,
“Get the translations made yourself, if you want them; this book is not
written for the ignorant classes.” There are men who know a foreign
language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they
seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their English writings
unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time.
That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man’s readers. What is
the excuse for this? The writer would say he only uses the foreign
language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.
Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he
ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book. However, the excuse he
offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set of men who ...
know a _word_ here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly
little three-word phrases, filched from the back of the dictionary, and
these they are continually peppering into their literature, with a
pretense of knowing that language—what excuse can they offer? The
foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in
a nobler language—English; yet they think they “adorn their page” when
they say _Strasse_ for street, and _Bahnhof_ for railway station, and so
on—flaunting these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader’s face, and
imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold
riches held in reserve.