Early Theories of Translation | Page 5

of the
Anglo-Saxon Andreas, a retelling in English of a story already existing
in another language often presents itself as if it were an original
composition. The author who puts into the vernacular of his country a
French romance may call it "my tale." At the end of Launfal, a version
of one of the lays of Marie de France, appears the declaration, "Thomas
Chestre made this tale."[19] The terms used to characterize literary
productions and literary processes often have not their modern
connotation. "Translate" and "translation" are applied very loosely even
as late as the sixteenth century. The Legend of Good Women names
Troilus and Criseyde beside The Romance of the Rose as "translated"
work.[20] Osbern Bokenam, writing in the next century, explains that

he obtained the material for his legend of St. Margaret "the last time I
was in Italy, both by scripture and eke by mouth," but he still calls the
work a "translation."[21] Henry Bradshaw, purposing in 1513 to
"translate" into English the life of St. Werburge of Chester, declares,
Unto this rude werke myne auctours these shalbe: Fyrst the true
legende and the venerable Bede, Mayster Alfrydus and Wyllyam
Malusburye, Gyrarde, Polychronicon, and other mo in deed.[22]
Lydgate is requested to translate the legend of St. Giles "after the tenor
only"; he presents his work as a kind of "brief compilation," but he
takes no exception to the word "translate."[23] That he should
designate his St. Margaret, a fairly close following of one source, a
"compilation,"[24] merely strengthens the belief that the terms
"translate" and "translation" were used synonymously with various
other words. Osbern Bokenam speaks of the "translator" who
"compiled" the legend of St. Christiana in English;[25] Chaucer, one
remembers, "translated" Boethius and "made" the life of St.
Cecilia.[26]
To select from this large body of literature, "made," "compiled,"
"translated," only such works as can claim to be called, in the modern
sense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitable
task. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider the
whole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of their
authors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondary
origin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his own
time was reckoned "grant translateur."[27] Of the books which Caxton
a century later issued from his printing press a large proportion were
English versions of Latin or French works. Our concern, indeed, is with
the larger and by no means the least valuable part of the literature
produced during the Middle English period.
The theory which accompanies this nondescript collection of
translations is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat
liable to misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before
proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain
phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar

difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to the
present-day reader. As regards the translator, existing circumstances
were not encouraging. In the early part of the period he occupied a very
lowly place. As compared with Latin, or even with French, the English
language, undeveloped and unstandardized, could make its appeal only
to the unlearned. It had, in the words of a thirteenth-century translator
of Bishop Grosseteste's Castle of Love, "no savor before a clerk."[28]
Sometimes, it is true, the English writer had the stimulus of patriotism.
The translator of Richard Coeur de Lion feels that Englishmen ought to
be able to read in their own tongue the exploits of the English hero. The
Cursor Mundi is translated
In to Inglis tong to rede For the love of Inglis lede, Inglis lede of
Ingland.[29]
But beyond this there was little to encourage the translator. His
audience, as compared with the learned and the refined, who read Latin
and French, was ignorant and undiscriminating; his crude medium was
entirely unequal to reproducing what had been written in more highly
developed languages. It is little wonder that in these early days his
English should be termed "dim and dark." Even after Chaucer had
showed that the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the
writer of less genius must often have felt that beside the more
sophisticated Latin or French, English could boast but scanty resources.
There were difficulties and limitations also in the choice of material to
be translated. Throughout most of the period literature existed only in
manuscript; there were few large collections in any one place; travel
was not easy. Priests, according to the prologue to Mirk's Festial,
written in the early fifteenth century, complained of "default of books."
To aspire, as did Chaucer's Clerk, to the possession of "twenty books"
was to aspire high. Translators occasionally give interesting details
regarding the circumstances under which they read