Translation and interpretation during the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages (ca. 500 AD -1450 AD) are characterized by a general lack of progress and a constant stagnation in many spheres of mental activity including translation and interpretation, which continued to be practised, however, in the domains of ecclesiastic science and the church. Thus, interpreting from Greek into Latin is known to have been regularly employed in the 6^lh century AD by the Roman church. One of the best interpreters then was the Scythian monk Dionisius Exiguus. The last historically confirmed official inter­pretation under the auspices of the church, this time from Latin into Greek, took place during the pontificate of Pope Martin I during the Lateran Council in 649. Interpreting outside the church premises was and is widely carried on up to the present day by Christian and other

religious missionaries who continue to work in various languages and in different countries of the world. Written translation as well as oral interpretation naturally continued to be extensively employed during the Middle Ages in interstate relations, in foreign trade and in military affairs (especially in wartimes). The primary motivation (рушійною силою) for linguistic endeavours in those times remained, quite naturally, the translation of ecclesiastic literature from the «holy languages» (Hebrew, Greek and Latin). Due to the continual work of an army of qualified researching translators, practically all essential Christian literature was translated during the Middle Ages in most European countries. Moreover, in some countries translations greatly helped to initiate their national literary languages and literatures. A graphic example of this, apart from the already mentioned name of Livius Andronicus, may be found in English history when King Alfred the Great (849-901) took an active part in translating manuals, chronicles and other works from ancient languages and thus helped in the spiritual and cultural elevation of his people. His noble work was continued by the abbot and author Aelf ric (955? -1020?) who would paraphrase some parts of the work while translating and often adding bona fide stories of his own. Yet, Aelfric would consider this technique of rendering as a sense-to-sense translation. Abbot Aelfric himself admitted, that in his translation of the Latin work Cura Pastoralis under the English title The Shepherd's (i.e. Pastor's) Book, he performed it «sometimes word-by-word» and «sometimes according to the sense», i.e. in free translation.

These same two approaches to translation were also charac­teristic of other European countries of the Middle Ages. Thus, word-for-word translation was widely practised in the famous Toledo school in Central Spain (the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) where the out­standing translator of that country Gerhard of Cremonas worked. The adherence to word-for-word translation was predetermined by the subject-matter which was turned there from Arabic into Spanish. Among the works translated there were scientific or considered to be scientific (as alchemy), mathematical works (on arithmetic, algebra, geometry, physics, astronomy), philosophy, dialectics, medicine, etc. However, in Northern Spain, another school of translation functioned where the «sense-to-sense» approach was predominant and transla­tions there were mostly performed from Greek into Hebrew (usually through Arabic). These same two principles, according to Solomon

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Ibn Ajjub, one of the greatest authorities on translation in the middle of the thirteenth century, were practised in the southern Italian school (Rome), which had fallen under a strong Arabic cultural influence as well. Secular works were translated in this school with many deliberate omissions/eliminations, additions, and paraphrases of their texts, which consequently changed the original works beyond recognition. This was the logical consequence of the method initiated by Horace and his adherent Apuleius, who applied their practice to free treatment of secular works under translation. That approach, meeting little if any resistance, dominated in European translation of secular works all through the Middle Ages and up to the 18^th century. The only voice against the deliberate and unrestricted «freedom» in translation was raised by the English scientist and philosopher Roger Bacon (1214? -1294), who strongly protested against this kind of rendering of Aristotle's works into English. In his work Opus Majus he de­manded a thorough preliminary study of the source language works and a full and faithful conveyance of their content into the target language.

No less intensively practised alongside of the free sense-to-sense rendering in Europe during the Middle Ages was the strict word-for-word translation. Its domain of employment was naturally restricted to ecclesiastic and philosophic works. By this method the first ever translation of the Bible from Latin into English was accomplished in 1377-1380 by the noted religious scientist and reformer John Wycliffe/ Wycklif (1320? - 1384) who worked at the translation together with his helpers N.Hereford and J.Purvey.

Strict word-for-word translation continued to be constantly em­ployed during the Middle Ages, and even much later in most Euro­pean countries to perform translation of scientific, philosophic and juridical matter. An illustrative example of this is found in Germany of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus, the prominent translator and literary critic Nicolas von Wyle (1410-1478) openly and officially demanded that translators of Latin juridical documents alter the German target language syntactically and stylistically as much as possible to mirror some particular peculiarities of classical Latin source language, which enjoyed the position of a world language in those times.

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