Early Theories of Translation | Page 7

of the confusion had often arisen before the manuscript
came into the hands of the English translator. Often he was engaged in
translating something that was already a translation. Most frequently it
was a French version of a Latin original, but sometimes its ancestry
was complicated by the existence or the tradition of Greek or Hebrew
sources. The medieval Troy story, with its list of authorities, Dictys,
Dares, Guido delle Colonne--to cite the favorite names--shows the
situation in an aggravated form. In such cases the earlier translator's
blunders and omissions in describing his source were likely to be
perpetuated in the new rendering.
Such, roughly speaking, were the circumstances under which the
translator did his work. Some of his peculiar difficulties are,
approached from another angle, the difficulties of the present-day
reader. The presence of one or more intermediary versions, a
complication especially noticeable in England as a result of the French
occupation after the Conquest, may easily mislead us. The originals of
many of our texts are either non-extant or not yet discovered, but in
cases where we do possess the actual source which the English writer
used, a disconcerting situation often becomes evident. What at first
seemed to be the English translator's comment on his own treatment of
source is frequently only a literal rendering of a comment already
present in his original. It is more convenient to discuss the details of
such cases in another context, but any general approach to the theory of
translation in Middle English literature must include this consideration.
If we are not in possession of the exact original of a translation, our
conclusions must nearly always be discounted by the possibility that
not only the subject matter but the comment on that subject matter
came from the French or Latin source. The pronoun of the first person
must be regarded with a slight suspicion. "I" may refer to the
Englishman, but it may also refer to his predecessor who made a
translation or a compilation in French or Latin. "Compilation" suggests
another difficulty. Sometimes an apparent reference to source is only an
appeal to authority for the confirmation of a single detail, an appeal
which, again, may be the work of the English translator, but may, on

the other hand, be the contribution of his predecessor. A fairly common
situation, for example, appears in John Capgrave's Life of St. Augustine,
produced, as its author says, in answer to the request of a gentlewoman
that he should "translate her truly out of Latin the life of St. Augustine,
great doctor of the church." Of the work, its editor, Mr. Munro, says, "It
looks at first sight as though Capgrave had merely translated an older
Latin text, as he did in the Life of St. Gilbert; but no Latin life
corresponding to our text has been discovered, and as Capgrave never
refers to 'myn auctour,' and always alludes to himself as handling the
material, I incline to conclude that he is himself the original composer,
and that his reference to translation signifies his use of Augustine's
books, from which he translates whole passages."[38] In a case like this
it is evidently impossible to draw dogmatic conclusions. It may be that
Capgrave is using the word "translate" with medieval looseness, but it
is also possible that some of the comment expressed in the first person
is translated comment, and the editor adds that, though the balance of
probability is against it, "it is still possible that a Latin life may have
been used." Occasionally, it is true, comment is stamped unmistakably
as belonging to the English translator. The translator of a Canticum de
Creatione declares that there were
--fro the incarnacioun of Jhesu Til this rym y telle yow Were turned in
to englisch, A thousand thre hondred & seventy And fyve yere witterly.
Thus in bok founden it is.[39]
Such unquestionably English additions are, unfortunately, rare and the
situation remains confused.
But this is not the only difficulty which confronts the reader. He
searches with disappointing results for such general and comprehensive
statements of the medieval translator's theory as may aid in the
interpretation of detail. Such statements are few, generally late in date,
and, even when not directly translated from a predecessor, are
obviously repetitions of the conventional rule associated with the name
of Jerome and adopted in Anglo-Saxon times by Alfred and Aelfric. An
early fifteenth-century translator of the Secreta Secretorum, for
example, carries over into English the preface of the Latin translator: "I

have translated with great travail into open understanding of Latin out
of the language of Araby ... sometimes expounding letter by letter, and
sometimes understanding of understanding, for other manner of
speaking is with Arabs and other with Latin."[40] Lydgate makes a
similar statement:
I wyl translate hyt sothly as