Early Theories of Translation

by Flora Ross Amos

Hyperbole in estimating the value of the translator's work is not common among Lord Morley's successors, but their very recognition of the secondary importance of translation often resulted in a modest yet dignified insistence on its real value. Richard Eden says that he has labored "not as an author but as a translator, lest I be injurious to any man in ascribing to myself the travail of other."[260] Nicholas Grimald qualifies a translation of Cicero as "my work," and immediately adds, "I call it mine as Plautus and Terence called the comedies theirs which they made out of Greek."[261] Harrington, the translator of Orlando Furioso, says of his work: "I had rather men should see and know that I borrow at all than that I steal any, and I would wish to be called rather one of the worst translators than one of the meaner makers, specially since the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wiat, that are yet called the first refiners of the English tongue, were both translators out of the Italian. Now for those that count it such a contemptible and trifling matter to translate, I will but say to them as M. Bartholomew Clarke, an excellent learned man and a right good translator, said in a manner of pretty challenge, in his Preface (as I remember) upon the Courtier, which book he translated out of Italian into Latin. 'You,' saith he, 'that think it such a toy, lay aside my book, and take my author in hand, and try a leaf or such a matter, and compare it with mine.'"[262] Philemon Holland, the "translator general" of his time, writes of his art: "As for myself, since it is neither my hap nor hope to attain to such perfection as to bring forth something of mine own which may quit the pains of a reader, and much less to perform any action that might minister matter to a writer, and yet so far bound unto my native country and the blessed state wherein I have lived, as to render an account of my years passed and studies employed, during this long time of peace and tranquillity, wherein (under the most gracious and happy government of a peerless princess, assisted with so prudent, politic, and learned Counsel) all good literature hath had free progress and flourished in no age so much: methought I owed this duty, to leave for my part also (after many others) some small memorial, that might give testimony another day what fruits generally this peaceable age of ours hath produced. Endeavored I have therefore to stand in the third rank, and bestowed those hours which might be spared from the practice of my profession and the necessary cares of life, to satisfy my countrymen now living and to gratify the age ensuing in this kind."[263] To Holland's simple acceptance of his rightful place, it is pleasant to add the lines of the poet Daniel, whose imagination was stirred in true Elizabethan fashion by the larger relations of the translator. Addressing Florio, the interpreter of Montaigne to the English people, he thanks him on behalf of both author and readers for

... his studious care
Who both of him and us doth merit much,
Having as sumptuously as he is rare
Placed him in the best lodging of our speech,
And made him now as free as if born here,
And as well ours as theirs, who may be proud
To have the franchise of his worth allowed.
It being the proportion of a happy pen,
Not to b'invassal'd to one monarchy,
But dwell with all the better world of men
Whose spirits are of one community,
Whom neither Ocean, Deserts, Rocks, nor Sands
Can keep from th' intertraffic of the mind.[264]

In a less exalted strain come suggestions that the translator's work is valuable enough to deserve some tangible recognition. Thomas Fortescue urges his reader to consider the case of workmen like himself, "assuring thyself that none in any sort do better deserve of their country, that none swink or sweat with like pain and anguish, that none in like sort hazard or adventure their credit, that none desire less stipend or salary for their travail, that none in fine are worse in this age recompensed."[265] Nicholas Udall presents detailed reasons why it is to be desired that "some able, worthy, and meet persons for doing such public benefit to the commonweal as translating of good works and writing of chronicles might by some good provision and means have some condign sustentation in the same."[266] "Besides," he argues, "that such a translator travaileth not to his own private commodity, but to the benefit and public use of his country: besides that the thing is such as must so thoroughly occupy and possess the doer, and must have him so attent to apply that same exercise only, that he may not during that season take in hand any other trade of business whereby to purchase his living: besides that the thing cannot be done without bestowing of long time, great watching, much pains, diligent study, no small charges, as well of meat, drink, books, as also of other necessaries, the labor self is of itself a more painful and more tedious thing than for a man to write or prosecute any argument of his own invention. A man hath his own invention ready at his own pleasure without lets or stops, to make such discourse as his argument requireth: but a translator must ... at every other word stay, and suspend both his cogitation and his pen to look upon his author, so that he might in equal time make thrice as much as he can be able to translate."

The belief present in the comment of both Fortescue and Udall that the work of the translator is of peculiar service to the state is expressed in connection with translations of every sort. Richard Taverner declares that he has been incited to put into English part of the Chiliades of Erasmus by "the love I bear to the furtherance and adornment of my native country."[267] William Warde translates The Secrets of Maister Alexis of Piemont in order that "as well Englishmen as Italians, Frenchmen, or Dutchmen may suck knowledge and profit hereof."[268] John Brende, in the Dedication of his History of Quintus Curtius, insists on the importance of historical knowledge, his appreciation of which has made him desire "that we Englishmen might be found as forward in that behalf as other nations, which have brought all worthy histories into their natural language."[269] Patriotic emulation of what has been done in other countries is everywhere present as a motive. Occasionally the Englishman shows that he has studied foreign translations for his own guidance. Adlington, in his preface to his rendering of The Golden Ass of Apuleius, says that he does not follow the original in certain respects, "for so the French and Spanish translators have not done";[270] Hoby says of his translation of The Courtier, "I have endeavored myself to follow the very meaning and words of the author, without being misled by fantasy or leaving out any parcel one or other, whereof I know not how some interpreters of this book into other languages can excuse themselves, and the more they be conferred, the more it will perchance appear."[271] On the whole, however, the comment confines itself to general statements like that of Grimald, who in translating Cicero is endeavoring "to do likewise for my countrymen as Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and other foreigners have liberally done for theirs."[272] In spite of the remarkable output England lagged behind other countries. Lord Morley complains that the printing of a merry jest is more profitable than the putting forth of such excellent works as those of Petrarch, of which England has "very few or none, which I do lament in my heart, considering that as well in French as in the Italian (in the which both tongues I have some little knowledge) there is no excellent work in the Latin, but that straightway they set it forth in the vulgar."[273] Morley wrote in the early days of the movement for translation, but later translators made similar complaints. Hoby says in the preface to The Courtier: "In this point (I know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of all other nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves with an honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue not only the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient to have a perfect knowledge to no other end but to profit themselves and (as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less to close it up again." To the end of the century translation is encouraged or defended on the ground that it is a public duty. Thomas Danett is urged to translate the History of Philip de Comines by certain gentlemen who think it "a great dishonor to our native land that so worthy a history being extant in all languages almost in Christendom should be suppressed in ours";[274] Chapman writes indignantly of Homer, "And if Italian, French, and Spanish have not made it dainty, nor thought it any presumption to turn him into their languages, but a fit and honorable labor and (in respect of their country's profit and their prince's credit) almost necessary, what curious, proud, and poor shamefastness should let an English muse to traduce him?"[275]

Besides all this, the translator's conception of his audience encouraged and guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend to the strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible, nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associated with them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact with the essential interests of mankind. The appeals on title pages and in prefaces to all kinds of people, from ladies and gentlemen of rank to the common and simple sort, not infrequently resemble the calculated praises of the advertiser, but admitting this, there still remains much that implies a simple confidence in the response of friendly readers. Rightly or wrongly, the translator presupposes for himself in many cases an audience far removed from academic preoccupations. Richard Eden, translating from the Spanish Martin Cortes' Arte de Navigar, says, "Now therefore this work of the Art of Navigation being published in our vulgar tongue, you may be assured to have more store of skilful pilots."[276] Golding's translations of Pomponius Mela and Julius Solinus Polyhistor are described as, "Right pleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers."[277] Hellowes, with an excess of rhetoric which takes from his convincingness, presents Guevara's Familiar Epistles as teaching "rules for kings to rule, counselors to counsel, prelates to practise, captains to execute, soldiers to perform, the married to follow, the prosperous to prosecute, and the poor in adversity to be comforted, how to write and talk with all men in all matters at large."[278] Holland's honest simplicity gives greater weight to a similarly sweeping characterization of Pliny's Natural History as "not appropriate to the learned only, but accommodate to the rude peasant of the country; fitted for the painful artisan in town or city; pertinent to the bodily health of man, woman, or child; and in one word suiting with all sorts of people living in a society and commonweal."[279] In the same preface the need for replying to those who oppose translation leads Holland to insist further on the practical applicability of his matter. Alternating his own with his critics' position, he writes: "It is a shame (quoth one) that Livy speaketh English as he doth; Latinists only owe to be acquainted with him: as who should say the soldier were to have recourse to the university for military skill and knowledge, or the scholar to put on arms and pitch a camp. What should Pliny (saith another) be read in English and the mysteries couched in his books divulged; as if the husbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, lapidary, and engraver, with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks or linguists for instructions in their several arts." Wilson's translation of Demosthenes, again, undertaken, it has been said, with a view to rousing a national resistance against Spain, is described on the title page as "most needful to be read in these dangerous days of all them that love their country's liberty."[280]

Naturally enough, however, especially in the case of translations from the Latin and Greek, the academic interest bulks largely in the audience, and sometimes makes an unexpected demand for recognition in the midst of the more practical appeal. Holland's Pliny, for example, addresses itself not only to peasants and artisans but to young students, who "by the light of the English ... shall be able more readily to go away with the dark phrase and obscure constructions of the Latin." Chapman, refusing to be burdened with a popular audience, begins a preface with the insidious compliment, "I suppose you to be no mere reader, since you intend to read Homer."[281] On the other hand, the academic reader, whether student or critic, is, if one accepts the translator's view, very much on the alert, anxious to confer the English version with the original, either that he may improve his own knowledge of the foreign language or that he may pick faults in the new rendering. Wilson attacks the critics as "drones and no bees, lubbers and no learners," but the fault he finds in these "croaking paddocks and manifest overweeners of themselves" is that they are "out of reason curious judges over the travail and painstaking of others" instead of being themselves producers.[282] Apparently there was little fear of the indifference which is more discouraging than hostile criticism, and though, as is to be expected, it is the hostile criticism that is most often reflected in prefaces, there must have been much kindly comment like that of Webbe, who, after discussing the relations of Phaer's Virgil to the Latin, concludes, "There is not one book among the twelve which will not yield you most excellent pleasure in conferring the translation with the copy and marking the gallant grace which our English speech affordeth."[283]

Such encouragements and incentives are enough to awaken the envy of the modern translator. But the sixteenth century had also its peculiar difficulties. The English language was neither so rich in resources nor so carefully standardized as it has become of later times. It was often necessary, indeed, to defend it against the charge that it was not equal to translation. Pettie is driven to reply to those who oppose the use of the vernacular because "they count it barren, they count it barbarous, they count it unworthy to be accounted of."[284] Chapman says in his preface to Achilles' Shield: "Some will convey their imperfections under his Greek shield, and from thence bestow bitter arrows against the traduction, affirming their want of admiration grows from the defect of our language, not able to express the copiousness (coppie) and elegancy of the original." Richard Greenway, who translated the Annals of Tacitus, admits cautiously that his medium is "perchance not so fit to set out a piece drawn with so curious a pencil."[285] One cannot, indeed, help recognizing that as compared with modern English Elizabethan English was weak in resources, limited in vocabulary, and somewhat uncertain in sentence structure. These disadvantages probably account in part for such explanations of the relative difficulty of translation as that of Nicholas Udall in his plea that translators should be suitably recompensed or that of John Brende in his preface to the translation of Quintus Curtius that "in translation a man cannot always use his own vein, but shall be compelled to tread in the author's steps, which is a harder and more difficult thing to do, than to walk his own pace."[286]

Of his difficulties with sentence structure the translator says little, a fact rather surprising to the modern reader, conscious as he is of the awkwardness of the Elizabethan sentence. Now and then, however, he hints at the problems which have arisen in the handling of the Latin period. Udall writes of his translation of Erasmus: "I have in some places been driven to use mine own judgment in rendering the true sense of the book, to speak nothing of a great number of sentences, which by reason of so many members, or parentheses, or digressions as have come in places, are so long that unless they had been somewhat divided, they would have been too hard for an unlearned brain to conceive, much more hard to contain and keep it still."[287] Adlington, the translator of The Golden Ass of Apuleius, says, "I have not so exactly passed through the author as to point every sentence exactly as it is in the Latin."[288] A comment of Foxe on his difficulty in translating contemporary English into Latin suggests that he at least was conscious of the weakness of the English sentence as compared with the Latin. Writing to Peter Martyr of his Latin version of the controversy between Cranmer and Gardiner, he says of the latter: "In his periods, for the most part, he is so profuse, that he seems twice to forget himself, rather than to find his end. The whole phrase hath in effect that structure that consisting for the most part of relatives, it refuses almost all the grace of translation."[289]

Though the question of sentence structure was not given prominence, the problem of rectifying deficiencies in vocabulary touched the translator very nearly. The possibility of augmenting the language was a vital issue in the reign of Elizabeth, but it had a peculiar significance where translation was concerned. Here, if anywhere, the need for a large vocabulary was felt, and in translations many new words first made their appearance. Sir Thomas Elyot early made the connection between translation and the movement for increase in vocabulary. In the Proheme to The Knowledge which maketh a wise man he explains that in The Governor he intended "to augment the English tongue, whereby men should ... interpret out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue into English."[290] Later in the century Peele praises the translator Harrington,

... well-letter'd and discreet,
That hath so purely naturalized
Strange words, and made them all free denizens,[291]