The Task of the Translator in the European Renaissance: Explorations in a Discursive Field

This is a purely exploratory essay, modest in its aims and scope. It does little more than explore a practical question: whether it is worth investigating in more detail what is best described, in its present state, as a hunch, hardly a hypothesis as yet. The hunch is centred on a word. The exploration circles around it, looking for connections, anchor points, telltale signs and traces in the immediate vicinity. The starting point is the word law. The law of translation, in the sixteenth century, in Western Europe. Closely connected with it are such terms as the duty and the task of the translator, terms denoting that which translators commit themselves to when translating, what presents itself to them as obligation and imperative, what they must do to discharge their office, their responsibility as translators. The hunch is this: when in the sixteenth-century discourse on translation reference is made to the law of translation or to the translator's duty, task, responsibility or 'office', what is meant is a form of literal or word for word translation. Literalism constitutes the law of translation. Even when it is not expected to be taken in any absolute, 'literal', compelling sense, the notion of literalism as the law remains powerfully present as the ideal of translation, translation's distant but appealing utopia, that which in essence translation ought to be or ought at least to aspire to. Literalism, more than any other form of interlingual processing, embodies the dream of translatability as an exact matching of component parts without loss, excess or deviation. It is a dream at once enticing and exacting, for it demands of the translator ascetic, humbling self-denial. In practice, various more or less pragmatic reasons may induce the individual translator to tone down the ideal or to retreat from it, but they cannot wholly extinguish or remove its appeal. This is not to say that even in theory, literalism reins supreme. There are those who oppose the notion of literal translation on theoretical as well as on practical grounds. They draw powerful support from the Humanist tradition, and bring rhetorical standards as well as grammatical considerations into play. Their numbers increase especially in the latter half of the sixteenth century. But in the very fact that, more often than not, they too attempt to separate translation from exegesis and consequently feel the need to make taxing demands on the translator, they …