Multiple Choice

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Further Reading

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The further-reading list at the end of Chapter 2 gives a number of histories of translation and readings of key writings. An accessible collection of early Western theories is:

Robinson, D. (ed.) (1997) Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche, Manchester: St Jerome.

More on St Jerome

Rebenich, S. (1993) ‘Jerome: The “vir trilinguis” and the “hebraica veritas” ’, Vigiliaie Christianae 47.1: 50–77.

More on the Chinese tradition

Cheung, M. (ed.) (2009) ‘Chinese discourses on translation: Positions and perspectives’, The Translator 15.2, Special Issue: 223–38.

Ricci, R. and J. van der Putten (eds) (2011) Translation in Asia: Theories, Practices, Histories, Manchester: St Jerome.

More on the Arabic tradition

Selim, S. (ed.) (2009) ‘Nation and translation in the Middle East’, Special issue of The Translator 15.1: 1–13.

More on the English tradition

Steiner, T. (ed.) (1975) English Translation Theory: 1650–1800, Assen and Amsterdam: van Gorcum.

Research projects

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1. Modern translation theory tends to criticize the simplicity of the ‘literal vs free’ debate. Why, then, do you think that the vocabulary of that earlier period often continues to be used in reviews of translation, in comments by teachers and examiners, and in writings by literary translators themselves?
2. Cicero and St Jerome may be said to represent respectively the Classical tradition of creative imitation and the Christian tradition of ‘faithful’ translation of the truth. Read the full versions of their statements and summarize their arguments (e.g. in Robinson 1997, see Further Reading). What view of language and communication do they seem to hold? How far do they go beyond the free vs literal opposition with which they are generally associated?
3. Look at early writing on translation from your own languages and cultures. What are the translation contexts in which they were written? What ‘rules’ of translation are proposed? What does this tell you about their view of language?
4. Do translators’ prefaces frequently appear in translations in your own country? If they do, what function do they serve, and what kind of language do they use to describe the translation?

Exploration

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2.2 Cicero’s ‘De optimo genere oratorum’ is available in many translations. See, for example, the translation in Douglas Robinson’sWestern Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche(St Jerome 1997).

St Jerome’s ‘Letter to Pammachius’ is also readily available, for example at www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.v.LVII.html.

2.3 Krishnamurthy, R. (2009)‘The Indian tradition’,in M. Baker and G. Saldanha (eds)The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd edn, pp. 449–58.

2.4 Hermans, T. (n.d.) on Etienne Dolet

2.5 Dryden’s translations of Virgil’s works (1697)

2.6 Luo, X. and Hong Lei (2004) ‘Translation theory and practice in China’,Perspectives12.1: 20–30.

2.7 The Newman-Arnold polemic (seeIntroducing Translation Studies, third edition, pp. 47–8)

In seventeenth-century England, translation had often been about creative imitation or recreating the ‘spirit’ of the ST, while by the mid-eighteenth century the translator’s duty moved towards an approximation of the style of the author. In the nineteenth century, where translation played a key role in the importation of German, French, Russian and other literatures, the preferred translation strategy was the subject of a major polemic between Classics scholars Francis Newman (1805–1897) and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) over the translation of Homer, which laid bare some of the underlying cultural values of the time (see Robinson 1997b: 250–8, Reynolds 2006: 67–70, Venuti 2008: 99–120). Newman sought to emphasize the foreignness of the work by a deliberately archaic (or mock-archaic) translation that set itself against the prevailing translation practice of the day. This was violently opposed by Matthew Arnold in his lecture On Translating Homer (1861/1978), which criticized Newman’s poor usage and advocated a more transparent translation method that paid homage to the grand style of Homer. When it comes to evaluating the effect of the translation, Arnold, whose argument won the day, advises his audience to put their faith in scholars since they, he suggests, are the only ones qualified to do this. As Bassnett (2002: 75) points out, such an elitist attitude led both to the devaluation of translation (because it was felt that a TT could never reach the heights of a ST and it was always preferable to read the work in the original language) and to its marginalization (translations were to be produced for only a select élite capable of comparing source and target and appreciating the intellectual endeavour).

See also the Free Reading Materials tab.