https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8299-5456
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ABSTRACT
The medieval concept of translatio was qualitatively different from our contemporary understanding of “translation”. Not only was it a much broader concept, encompassing many forms of relocation or transposition far beyond the inter-linguistic, it also implied change and adaptation to local conditions. Thus, medieval texts would mutate and shapeshift in a way that is incompatible with the modern idea that, in translation, the “meaning” should remain the same. This article argues that the transition from the medieval to the modern mindset was marked by the onset of a new semiotic theory, a new understanding of the relationship between form and meaning. Following the recovery of Hellenistic science in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Platonic notion of the semantic invariant (or transcendental signified) gradually took over from the rhetorical attitude of embedded meaning. The dynamics involved in the shift are explored in both the secular and the sacred domains.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number UIDB/04097/2020, UIDP/04097/2020].
Notes
1 The term “modernity” is of course problematic and is used differently in different disciplinary fields. Here, I am following the categorization of Berman (Citation1988, 16–17) and Osborne (Citation1992, 25) in seeing “modernity” (unqualified) as encompassing the period from the late fifteenth century to the present, subdivided into Early Modernity (till 1789), Classical Modernity (1789–1900) and Late Modernity (from 1900).
2 Blumczynski (Citation2023, 43) points out that it was not just broader but also different in several respects: “The verb transfero and the noun translatio (not to mention some participles suspended somewhere between the verbal and the nominal) are governed by slightly different grammatical conventions than their English counterparts, including patterns of transitivity that have semantic implications (how often can you simply ‘translate’ in English without specifying the object?”
3 Indeed, there is some evidence that the concrete, material and embodied understandings of the term were chronologically prior, and that the concept was only extended into the more abstract textual realm at a later date through a process of metaphorical projection (Blumczynski Citation2023).
4 See, for example, the Etymologiae (10.123) of Isidore of Seville (560–636): “Interpreter [Interpres]: because one is between the parts, midway between two languages, when one translates [transferet]. But he is also called an interpreter [interpres] who is placed between God, whom he interprets [interpretatur], to whom he reveals the divine mysteries, because that which he carries over [transferet] is between”. Or the Catholicon of Joannes Balbus (1286, added emphasis): “And one who knows diverse kinds of languages is called an interpreter [interpres]. This is evident because he expounds one language through another or translates one language by means of another. And he is so called because he is a mediator between one language or speech and another … For an interpreter [interpres] is in the middle of two languages when he translates or expounds one language through another. But he who mediates between God and men, to whom he reveals the divine mysteries, is also called an interpreter [interpres]”. Both works are cited and discussed by Copeland (Citation1991, 89–90).
5 On medieval manuscript culture (in the specifically Italian context), see Aresu (Citation2023). On textual culture and its relationship to translation after the arrival of the printing press, see Coldiron (Citation2015).
6 Meier-Oeser (Citation2011, 12), writing on the development of semiotic theory during the medieval period, describes a growing “indifference of the sign function to the material instantiation of the sign” to the extent that Paul of Venice (1369–1429) in his Logica Magna, claims that, “it would be possible to form syllogisms or draw conclusions by using sticks and stones instead of words and sentences”.
7 For more on these translation movements, see Pym (Citation2000) and Montgomery (Citation2000, 138–185).
8 For more on the medieval foundations of modern science and the role of translation, see Grant (Citation1996).
9 Modern English translations of this passage usually render sentence as “meaning” (i.e. sense) and open as “plain”.
10 See Cicero’s “Treatise on the best kind of orator” (46 BCE).
11 This claim comes from Folena (Citation1994, 6–10), reproduced in Bistué (Citation2017, 34–25) and Hermans (Citation2007, 1422). However, Pym (Citation2000, 108–131) offers a more complex exploration of this issue, in which, amongst other things, he reports that the traduc- form had already been used by Aulus Gellius (in Noctes Atticae) in the second century and by Decimus Ausonius Magnus in the fourth.
12 “[I]t should be thought an inexcusable act of wickedness for a man who is not really learned or literary to attempt a translation” (Bruni Citation2002, 60).
13 The “old translator” is believed by scholars to be William of Moerbeke, who aimed to produce literal cribs for the use of Scholastics (Robinson Citation2002, 57). However, he was probably building on an earlier translation by Robert Grosseteste (Bistué Citation2017, 45).
14 For Seigel (Citation2016, 99–136), the argument between Cartagena and Bruni was about the proper relationship between rhetoric and philosophy: “Alonzo stated that eloquent speech might be used to incite men to virtue, but only after the philosophic inquiry into the nature of virtue had been completed. To allow the orator his methods at the start opened the door to imprecision and error. Bruni, on the other hand, thought that philosophy should be clothed in the language of rhetoric during the process of inquiry as well as at the moment of presentation” (150).
15 In the medieval period, these were often undertaken by different people. One of Bruni’s main aims seems to be to unify the two stages in the person of the individual translator (Bistué Citation2017, 36, 39).
16 See, for example, Bell (Citation1991, 17–21).
17 With some exceptions, as mentioned by Hermans (Citation1997).
18 For example, in the case of the belles infidèles, see Zuber (Citation1968); on the libertines, see Venuti (Citation2008, 35–53).
19 For example, Nicholas Perrot D’Ablancourt’s famous statement (Citation[1709] 1992) that “ambassadors usually dress in the fashion of the country they are sent to, for fear of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of the people they try to please” (Lefevere Citation1992, 37); or Sir John Denham’s “Speech is the apparel of our thoughts” (From Preface to The Destruction of Troy, 1656; cited in Venuti Citation2008, 49). Other examples of this metaphor are given in Hermans (Citation1985, 115, 119–120) and Rener (Citation1989, 23–25).
20 An exception was the Douai-Rheims English translation of the bible, produced between 1582 (Rheims New Testament) and 1610 (Douai Old Testament) with the intention of correcting some of the heresies propagated by the Protestant bibles. Cf. Daniell (Citation2003, 358–368 and 470–471).
21 The big exception was, of course, German Romanticism, which exalted a form of linguistic relativity (i.e. semantic embedment) so extreme that it verged on untranslatability.
22 See Bennett (Citation2022) for a more detailed development of this argument.
23 See, for example, Cronin’s (Citation2017) Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene, in which the transcendental understanding of meaning and the translation practices resulting from it are critiqued as a form of extractivism.
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Karen Bennett
Karen Bennett has an MA and PhD in translation studies, and teaches translation at Nova University, Lisbon, where she is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Master’s programme in Translation. She also coordinates the Translationality strand at the research unit CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies). As regards her editorial activities, she is general editor of the journal Translation Matters and a member of the editorial board of the Brill series Approaches to Translation Studies. Her research interests include history and theory of translation; intersemiotic translation and multimodality; and ways of construing and translating knowledge.