The Medieval Translator 4

This is the fourth volume in a series of studies of medieval translation theory and practice. The essays in the collection range widely across a variety of literary works of the European Middle Ages, and take in a number of different critical issues, including gender, ethnic identity and medieval authorship. The collection represents new work in the expanding field of translation studies.

Drawing on approaches from literary studies, history, linguistics, and art history, and ranging from Late Antiquity to the sixteenth century, this collection views 'translation' broadly as the adaptation and transmission of cultural inheritance. The essays explore translation in a variety of sources from manuscript to print culture and the creation of lexical databases. Several essays look at the practice of textual translation across languages, including the vernacularization of Latin literature in England, France, and Italy; the translation of Greek and Hebrew scientific terms into Arabic; and the use of Hebrew terms in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemics. Other essays examine medieval translators' views and performance of translation, looking at Lydgate's translation of Greek myths through mental images rendered through rhetorical figures or at how printing transformed the rhetoric of intervernacular translation of chivalric romances. This collection also demonstrates translation as a key element in the construction of cultural and political identity in the Fet des Romains and Chester Whitsun Plays, and in the papacy's efforts to compete with Byzantium by controlling the translation of Greek writings.

An examination of French to English translation in medieval England, through the genre of the prologue.

The interest of the writers of these essays in the intricacies and implications of translation in the Middle Ages, or of the translation of medieval texts in te modern period, has resulted in a diverse and intellectually stimulating volume. The papers in this volume, written in either English, French, or Spanish, approach translation from a wide variety of perspectives and offer a range of interpretations of the concept of translation. The volume contains essays ranging in time from the Anglo Saxon period to the present, and in topic from medieval recipe books to arguments in favour of women administering the sacrament. Languages studied include non-European languages as well as Latin and numerous European vernaculars as both source and target languages. As any translator or student of translation quickly becomes aware, it is impossible to divorce language from culture. All the contributors to this volume struggle with the complexities of translation as a cultural act, even when the focus would seem to be specifically linguistic. It is these complexities which lend the study of the theory and practice of translation in the Middle Ages its enduring fascinatio