Early Theories of Translation | Page 2

towards the end of the eighteenth century, may
with some reason claim to be the first detailed discussion of the
questions involved, declares that, with a few exceptions, he has "met
with nothing that has been written professedly on the subject," a
statement showing a surprising disregard for the elaborate prefaces that
accompanied the translations of his own century.

This lack of consecutiveness in criticism is probably partially
accountable for the slowness with which translators attained the power
to put into words, clearly and unmistakably, their aims and methods.
Even if one were to leave aside the childishly vague comment of
medieval writers and the awkward attempts of Elizabethan translators
to describe their processes, there would still remain in the modern
period much that is careless or misleading. The very term "translation"
is long in defining itself; more difficult terms, like "faithfulness" and
"accuracy," have widely different meanings with different writers. The
various kinds of literature are often treated in the mass with little
attempt at discrimination between them, regardless of the fact that the
problems of the translator vary with the character of his original.
Tytler's book, full of interesting detail as it is, turns from prose to verse,
from lyric to epic, from ancient to modern, till the effect it leaves on the
reader is fragmentary and confusing.
Moreover, there has never been uniformity of opinion with regard to
the aims and methods of translation. Even in the age of Pope, when, if
ever, it was safe to be dogmatic and when the theory of translation
seemed safely on the way to become standardized, one still hears the
voices of a few recalcitrants, voices which become louder and more
numerous as the century advances; in the nineteenth century the most
casual survey discovers conflicting views on matters of fundamental
importance to the translator. Who are to be the readers, who the judges,
of a translation are obviously questions of primary significance to both
translator and critic, but they are questions which have never been
authoritatively settled. When, for example, Caxton in the fifteenth
century uses the "curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk
or a noble gentleman, his critics complain because the common people
cannot understand his words. A similar situation appears in modern
times when Arnold lays down the law that the judges of an English
version of Homer must be "scholars, because scholars alone have the
means of really judging him," and Newman replies that "scholars are
the tribunal of Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public
must be the only rightful judge."
Again, critics have been hesitant in defining the all-important term

"faithfulness." To one writer fidelity may imply a reproduction of his
original as nearly as possible word for word and line for line; to another
it may mean an attempt to carry over into English the spirit of the
original, at the sacrifice, where necessary, not only of the exact words
but of the exact substance of his source. The one extreme is likely to
result in an awkward, more or less unintelligible version; the other, as
illustrated, for example, by Pope's Homer, may give us a work so
modified by the personality of the translator or by the prevailing taste
of his time as to be almost a new creation. But while it is easy to point
out the defects of the two methods, few critics have had the courage to
give fair consideration to both possibilities; to treat the two aims, not as
mutually exclusive, but as complementary; to realize that the spirit and
the letter may be not two but one. In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas
North translated from the French Amyot's wise observation: "The
office of a fit translator consisteth not only in the faithful expressing of
his author's meaning, but also in a certain resembling and shadowing
forth of the form of his style and manner of his speaking"; but few
English critics, in the period under our consideration, grasped thus
firmly the essential connection between thought and style and the
consequent responsibility of the translator.
Yet it is those critics who have faced all the difficulties boldly, and who
have urged upon the translator both due regard for the original and due
regard for English literary standards who have made the most valuable
contributions to theory. It is much easier to set the standard of
translation low, to settle matters as does Mr. Chesterton in his casual
disposition of Fitzgerald's Omar: "It is quite clear that Fitzgerald's work
is much too good to be a good translation." We can, it is true, point to
few realizations of the ideal theory, but in approaching a literature
which possesses the English Bible, that marvelous union of faithfulness
to source with faithfulness to the genius of