Medieval translation

"Engaging and informative to read, challenging in its assertions, and provocative in the best way, inviting the reader to sift, correlate and reflect on the broader applicability of points made in reference to a specific text or exchange." Professor Carolyne P. Collette, Mount Holyoke College.

Medieval notions of translatio raise issues that have since been debated in contemporary translation studies concerning the translator's role as interpreter or author; the ability of translation to reinforce or unsettle linguistic or political dominance; and translation's capacity for establishing cultural contact, or participating in cultural appropriation or effacement. This collection puts these ethical and political issues centre stage, asking whether questions currently being posed by theorists of translation need rethinking or revising when brought into dialogue with medieval examples. Contributors explore translation - as a practice, a necessity, an impossibility and a multi-media form - through multiple perspectives on language, theory, dissemination and cultural transmission. Exploring texts, authors, languages and genres not often brought together in a single volume, individual essays focus on topics such as the politics of multilingualism, the role of translation in conflict situations, the translator's invisibility, hospitality, untranslatability and the limits of translation as a category.

Emma Campbell is Associate Professor in French at the University of Warwick; Robert Mills is Lecturer in History of Art at University College London. Contributors: William Burgwinkle, Ardis Butterfield, Emma Campbell, Marilynn Desmond, Simon Gaunt, Jane Gilbert, Miranda Griffin, Noah D. Guynn, Catherine Léglu, Robert Mills, Zrinkaahuljak, Luke Sunderland

Reviews

This wide-ranging and stimulating collection.is thoroughly informed by current work in translation studies and theory. PARERGON

Will be of obvious use to scholars in medieval studies. MEDIEVAL REVIEW

[A] sophisticated collection of essays. FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES, vol. 50, no. 1, January 2014

[Produces] fruitful new lines of inquiry into central questions of politics and ethics at the heart of the ongoing enterprise of translation. The collection will richly reward readers from many fields and challenge scholars to continue the new conversations begun here. COMITATUS 44

Details

First Published: 15 Nov 2012
13 Digit ISBN: 290
16 black and white illustrations
Pages: 304
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
BIC Class: DSBB

Contents

• 1 Introduction: Rethinking Medieval Translation
• 2 On Not Knowing Greek: Leonzio Pilatus's Rendition of the Iliad and the Translatio of Mediterranean Identities
• 3 Translation and Transformation in the Ovide moralisé
• 4 Translating Lucretia: Word, Image and 'Ethical Non-Indifference' in Simon de Hesdin's Translation of Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia
• 5 Translating Catharsis: Aristotle and Averroës, the Scholastics and the Basochiens
• 6 The Ethics of Translatio in Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile
• 7 Invisible Translation, Language Difference and the Scandal of Becket's Mother
• 8 Medieval Fixers: Politics of Interpreting in Western Historiography
• 9 The Task of the Dérimeur: Benjamin and Translation into Prose in Fifteenth-Century French Literature
• 10 The Translator as Interpretant: Passing in/on the Work of Ramon Llull
• 11 Rough Translation: Charles d'Orléans, Lydgate and Hoccleve
• 12 Bueve d'Hantone/Bovo d'Antona: Exile, Translation and the History of the Chanson de geste
• 13 Untranslatable: A Response