Samuel Putnam (October 10, 1892 – January 15, 1950) was an American translator and scholar of Romance languages.
His most famous work is his 1949 English translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. It is the first version of the work in what we would consider contemporary English; although there is still use of archaic language in the translation, it is more restricted than in earlier English versions of the work.
The language is formal when spoken by educated characters, but seldom old-fashioned, while the peasant characters speak in colloquial modern English. Putnam worked on the translation for twelve years before he published it. He also published a companion volume, The Portable Cervantes, which included an abridged version of his translation, in addition to English versions of two of the Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes.
Putnam's complete translation, originally published by Viking Press, was reprinted in the Modern Library, and has seldom been out of print since its publication more than sixty years ago. He was also a noted translator of Rabelais. He was known for his leftist leanings (he was a columnist for the Daily Worker).
Putnam is the father of noted American philosopher Hilary Putnam. Hilary Putnam made his first published appearance in his father's Don Quixote translation, in a footnote explaining a joke from the text in terms of logic.
Famous quotes containing the words samuel and/or putnam:
“Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in
their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet,
with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.”
—Bible: Hebrew Second Samuel (l. I, 23–25)
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)