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came, by God, in droves" is rather ambiguous. The ambiguation
would be removed if 'by Cod' was moved to initial position. Close
fidelity to the verbal sequence of the original text can result in
a translation which does not reflect the ease of the target
language. Johnson-Davies's rendition of lines 61-62 of the ST as,
"Have patience, my son; in a little while there will be the noonday
breeze to lighten the agony of this pest upon your face", (lines
81-82 of the TT) is both semantically non-equivalent and
stylistically un-appealing. It would sound more English if it were
re-rendered as: 'Be patient, my son; in an hour or so the afternoon
breeze will partially blow this pest off your face'. When asked
who planted the doum tree, the narrator replied, "Most probably it
grew up by itself, though no one remembers having known it other
than as you now find it". (lines 135-137 of the TT) This
translation is not equivalent to the original, either in meaning or
in grammatical structure. In the ST the meaning of the sentence is
object-centred. This is not sufficiently evident in the TT. A
better translation would be: "Most probably it grew up by itself,
though no-one remembers having seen it look different from the way
you see it now". The neigbour's comment on the man's dream (lines
122-123 of the ST): "Rejoice at release from your troubles" (lines
165-166 of TT) could have a sounder meaning were it rendered as:
'Rejoice; for your misfortunes will turn into blessings'.
Except for lexical and structural non-equivalence, of which the
above are examples, Johnson-Davies's translation of 'The Doum Tree of
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