Tudor Translation in Theory and Practice

164 Pages·2006·9.266 MB·English

by  Massimiliano Morini

TUDOR TRANSLATION
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Tudor Translation
in Theory and Practice
MASSIMILIANO MORINI
University 0/ Udine, ltaly
First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Copyright © Massimiliano Morini 2006
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Morini, Massimiliano
Tudor translation in theory and practice
I.Literature-Translations into English-History and criticism 2. Translating
and interpreting-England-History-16th century 3.Figures of speech
4.England-Intellectuallife-16th century
I.Title
418'.02'0942'09031
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morini, Massimiliano.
Tudor translation in theory and practice I Massimiliano Morini.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-5240-8 (alk. paper)
1. Literature-Translations into English-History and criticism. 2. Translating
and interpreting-England-History-16th century. 3. England-Intellectual
life-16th century. 4. Figures of speech. I. Title.
PR428.T7M67 2006
418'.02'094209031----dc22
2005012652
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5240-3 (hbk)
Contents
Introduction vii
Acknowledgements Xl
PART I: THEORY
2 Sixteenth-Century Translation: Between Two Worlds 3
2 The Use ofFigurative Language in the Discourse about Translation 35
PART 11: PRACTICE
3 The Translation of Pro se 65
4 The Translation of Poetry 97
Bibliography 139
Index 149

Introduction
Purpose and Scope of the Book
The author's intention in writing this book was to bridge a gap. When one studies
the secular translations produced in sixteenth-century England, and attempts to
glean some help from the secondary literature written on the subject, one cannot
help observing two things: 1) there is some quality which links translations as
different from one another as Harington's Furioso and Hoby's Cortegiano, as well
as the theoretical statements contained in their prefaces and dedications; 2) most
critics fail to put their finger on that quality, and are left grasping at surface
similarities and wondering at seemingly irreconcilable differences. It is not that
there is any lack of invaluable, perceptive studies on sixteenth-century translators
and translations: but there is no unifying historical framework to make a heap of
books look like a corpus, and enable us to name the common qualities we perceive
when we peruse translations done in Tudor times. In short, a comprehensive study
is needed in which the aims, strategies, practice, and theoretical ideas of the
sixteenth-century translator are exhaustively described.
It is, indeed, far from easy to define those qualities, aims, strategies, and
ideas. One difficulty posed by Tudor translation is the lack of a single,
authoritative theory which would allow the critic to define all translations
according to its principles. Unlike other European countries, England did not
produce any great theorist of translation before Dryden: as a consequence, the
definitions of translation to be found in the above-mentioned prefaces and
dedicatory letters (about the only documents where the nature of the process is
discussed) are extremely varied, and often discordant. The 'sixteenth-century
translator' becomes a compound ghost as soon as we try to define the stars he (and
sometimes she) steered by, and we are left without a theoretical starting point for
our survey.
Another problem, which all commentators have noticed, is the
discrepancy between the statements contained in the prefaces and the translators'
practice. Most translators dec\are their faithfulness to their originals. But when
their translations come under scrutiny, the widest difference of approaches is
revealed: some, like Thomas Hoby and Philemon Holland, strive to keep in touch
with their revered authors; others, like lohn Harington and George Pettie, add or
cut at their pleasure. The impression, in the theoretical statements as well as in the
translations themselves, is indeed one of anarchy, of everybody doing what they
please though conforming to a certain formal decorum in the prefatory writings.
These difficulties may perhaps be overcome, or at least explained, if one
sees the sixteenth century as aperiod of transition between two ages with different
ideas and methods in the field of translation. If one thinks of Tudor translation as a
mix of the old and the new, of medieval habits and 'modern' methods, many of
viii Tudor Translation in Theory and Practice
these seemingly irreconcilable contradictions can be reconciled: thus, a Babel of
ideas and methods becomes the creative diversity of aperiod of change; and a
discrepancy between theory and practice becomes a consequence of the natural gap
between the acceptance and the application of an idea.
Chapter 1 sees the sixteenth century as such an age of transition, and
translation in Tudor times as half-way between medieval ideas and methods and
new theories imported from the Continent, slowly adapted to, and accepted by,
English culture. It envisages a new, 'modern' theory in Leonardo Bruni's fifteenth
century formulae for translation, which spread in Italy and continental Europe
during the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries. England, as a
consequence of its relative marginality before the second half of the sixteenth
century, lagged behind the rest of Europe: but humanistic theory, though it had
received no clear English formulation, demonstrably influenced the great
translations of Elizabethan times, from Hoby's Cortegiano to Florio's Montaigne.
Of course, the new methods of translation are connected with, and
influenced by, new ideas about authorship and the status of the text, no longer seen
as a mere collection of pleasant and instructive stories and invaluable sayings, but
as a concrete object (the book) with definite limits (a gloss is no longer part of the
text), and, above aIl, an author. The rights of the author have now to be taken into
account. Medieval translation gradually disappears with the introduction of print
and the circulation of scholarly editions.
In Chapter 2, the figurative language used by the translators to define their
art is scrutinized, in order to verify, from a different vantage point, the spread of
new ideas and the survival of old ones. Figurative language is teIltale because it
often represents a way of grasping what is beyond the reach of logical reasoning or
has not been fully absorbed by a single writer or a whole culture; besides, it tends
to 'betray' its wielders into revealing their true ideas about translation, in spite of
their formal protestations. What these figures tell us is invaluable, both because it
confirms that the sixteenth century is aperiod of transition, and because it further
defines that transition, and puts it into a wider perspective: for it is not only ideas
about translation that change in Tudor England, but ideas about language, and
about the position of England on the political and cultural map of Europe.
Translation changes with the perceptions that the English have of themselves: the
new Humanistic methods are adapted to the needs of a country which is aiming at
becoming a new Roman empire.
It was also necessary, of course, to verify how these new methods and old
habits were put into practice by the translators, in an age in which the translators'
statements are not to be taken at face value. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated,
respectively, to pro se and poetic translation. Texts are selected according to
opposite criteria. In Chapter 3, pro se translations of various textual types produced
in different decades are examined in order to study translating methods across a
wide range of constraints and conditions. In Chapter 4, three versions of two Italian
chivalric poems (Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata) are analysed in order
to show how very similar source texts (or, indeed, the same source text) could
provoke very different reactions - which were no doubt a consequence of very
different personalities, but which also testify to the uncertainties of the age. Both
Introduction IX
for poetry and for prose, however, the similarities between different practitioners
are no less striking and significant than the differences: and if the differences tend
to stand out more prominently, it is only because they are shown to reflect the
abundance of possibilities of an age of transition.
A final word must be said on the chronological and thematic limits of this
survey, and on the extent to which those limits are occasionally stretched. As far as
chronology is concerned, the focus is on the Tudor period, with particular reference
to Elizabeth's reign - but several works which it was expedient or necessary to
discuss fall beyond this span. As for the subject, this book is specifically about
secular translation, because religious translation has already been treated by many,
and from various vantage points (one good overall study is Bruce 1970) - but
references to single Biblical translations crop up here and there; for though
different pressures and concerns influence the religious translator, there is an area
of overlapping theories and methods common to practitioners of whatever
description.
Theoretica1 Foundations
The historical survey that follows is based on the principles wh ich have been
established over three decades in the field, or the discipline, of 'Translation
Studies'. Since the term was proposed by James S. Holmes in 1972 (Holmes,
1972/1988, p.70), Translation Studies has come into its own as aseparate
discipline with definite, if ec\ectic, methods and approaches. Thanks to the efforts
of such scholars as Susan Bassnett, Andre Lefevere, Theo Hermans, Lawrence
Venuti, and Gideon Toury (Hermans 1985a; Bassnett and Lefevere 1990; Venuti
1995; Toury 1995), we now possess the analytical tools to judge translations and
translation history in themselves, and not merely for the light they cast upon
original texts and the history of non-translated literature.
Translation is viewed by this heterogeneous 'schoo\' in an empirical
manneT. According to these scholars, concepts Iike 'fidelity', 'freedom', and
'equivalence' are not universal, but historically determined. However these
concepts change in history, translation is always a rewriting, a manipulation of the
original, and therefore, Iike all rewritings, is 'never innocent' (Bassnett and
Lefevere, 1990, p.11). As Bassnett and Lefevere wrote in 1990:
Translation iso of course. a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings. whatever
their intention. reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate
literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation.
undertaken in the service of power. and its positive aspect can help in the
evolution of a literature and a society. (Bassnett and Lefevere. 1990, preface)
Translations, seen in this light, are not superfluous by-products of
literature, but playa vital role in the cultural Iife of anation and of an age. In the
terms of the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar, they work as a coherent system
within the 'literary polysystem' (Even-Zohar, 1978, pp.21-27). According to Even-