TY - JOUR
AU - Reid, Joshua
AB - In our first forays into the complex landscape of early modern (English) mediated translation, we have come to identify a number of challenges and obstacles to research in this area, from the difficulty of accessing textual or biographical information, to deeper epistemological and critical biases that seem significantly harder to remedy. What follows is a joint reflection on the main issues that we are currently facing and working to address, and the prospects that research on early modern translations involving multiple textual, linguistic and material mediations may open up for scholars of the Renaissance and beyond. The first, obvious challenge concerns the task of identifying mediated translations. As noted by our colleagues in the Lisbon IndirecTrans research group, this is a general issue but it presents particular problems for the early modern period.1 While catalogues of early modern literary production in various languages certainly exist, and offer crucial information pertaining to the study of early modern texts, mediated or not, translations still often remain relatively invisible as such.2 This is unfortunately the case even with the most recent edition of the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC), an otherwise impressive free-access online database combining resources from a vast array of libraries in Europe to offer a bibliographical survey of early modern print culture between 1450 and 1650.3 While translations are technically tagged as such in the USTC, they still remain difficult to identify – perhaps due to the heterogeneous nature of the data and metadata compiled into the catalogue. A simple search using ‘translat*’ as a keyword returns 2176 English titles, while so far the verified number of texts translated into English for the period amounts to more than 6000, according to the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Online Catalogue of Translations in Britain 1473–1640.4 The difficulties inherent in compiling a cohesive corpus of translations, mediated or otherwise, for a given geographical area, or particular time period, was precisely what inspired the creation of the above-mentioned Renaissance Cultural Crossroads catalogue and its follow-up, Cultural Crosscurrents in Stuart and Commonwealth Britain. An Online Analytical Catalogue of Translations 1641–1660. Both specifically document cases of identified indirect translations and provide as much information as possible as to the mediating texts, languages and translators. A natural limitation of these resources, as noted in our essays, is the fact that mediated translations are not always advertised as such. When compiling entries for the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads and the Cultural Crosscurrents catalogues, our research team cataloguers mostly inferred mediation from titles and other paratextual features (which are systematically documented in the catalogue), or from information already registered in the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). In certain cases, unacknowledged mediating agents and texts were discovered through the cataloguing process itself. Both the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads and Cultural Crosscurrents catalogues include short paragraphs about the various translators in their entries; it was sometimes during the process of compiling such information that team members discovered a given English translation was in fact based on a previous, foreign-language version. Additional information was also provided by users of the catalogue, who kindly volunteered missing elements or pointed the team towards additional resources. This demonstrates the significant advantage of an online, open-access format; the data can be (and is being) updated and completed on an ongoing basis. The Cultural Crosscurrents catalogue offers the added convenience of systematically documented illustrations and other visual paratextual features. These were not part of the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads project, but they can prove useful when seeking to identify textual or material intermediaries. As noted in the essays in this Talking Point, such features were sometimes replicated from the mediating text in the ‘target’ translation and were thus able to provide an Ariadne’s thread to previous versions of the text circulating on the European book market. In fact, even when we do know that translations are mediated and can actually identify the mediating texts and translators, we rarely have information as to the particular edition that was used, if indeed it was a printed text: many translations, as noted in Marie-Alice Belle’s introductory essay, also circulated in manuscript in our period. We can only wish that all translators were as punctilious as Richard Hopkins (c. 1546–c. 1596), who notes that, given the many foreign editions out there for his source text, it would be convenient to tell the reader that ‘In my Translation I doe folowe the edition of the Spanish tongue printed at Antwerpe by Christopher Plantine, in the yeare of our Lourde 1572.’5 Most intermediary editions, of course, are not as easy to locate. Besides, some known intermediary versions have been lost, haunting the final translated text and its scholars like Ur-Hamlet haunts Hamlet and Shakespeareans. As scholars of mediated translations, we must still wander in and out of the (digital) archives, and bring together each joint and member of these networks of transmediation. In her ‘mixed-method’ model for studying indirect translation, Laura Ivaska rightly notes that genetic criticism represents a key component when seeking to trace the linguistic, textual and literary genealogies of mediated works.6 In certain cases, it is possible to identify the mediating version through intertextual or paratextual connections (say, in prefaces or commentaries). However, these lines of transmission can only be recognized via close readings (and, at times, mere serendipity). Such fine-grained analysis cannot be conducted on a large, catalogue-wide scale. Similar limitations are encountered when approaching the problem from the angle of reception and book ownership. Establishing which editions of a given foreign translation were circulating in Britain can give us some indication as to the version probably used by its translator. Inventories of private libraries are certainly helpful, and larger digital projects such as Robert Fehrenbach and Joseph Black’s Private Libraries in Renaissance England database represent invaluable resources.7 Yet, here again, the state of the archive is but fragmentary. When seeking to trace and study mediated translations in Britain from a textual and material perspective, the obvious, go-to resource is Early English Books Online (EEBO). This resource presents its own limitations. Firstly, it is a subscription-only database to which students and independent scholars do not always have access. Secondly, it represents itself as a layered, mediated resource. Of extant early modern books, which do not account for all early modern books, EEBO selects only a certain number, and the selection reflects the choices of librarians in the more than 200 contributing libraries worldwide. EEBO’s official description claims that ‘Early English Books Online now contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere between 1473 and 1700.’8 Regular users of the database know that this is not an accurate claim. While documenting the paratexts of translated works for the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads catalogue, we frequently found that certain items were missing from EEBO. The latter’s selection criteria may in fact represent an obstacle in themselves. We know, for instance, that inclusion is based on authorship – not translatorship; and that priority is given to first editions and works in English (although books in Latin and Welsh have more recently been included), which itself is a function of the long and storied material history of the resource.9 These criteria naturally tend to make translations in general, and mediated translations in particular, less well represented in the EEBO database – or at least, more difficult to locate. One may add that the choice of material to be included is mainly made by elite institutions; given the traditionally marginal status of translation in mainstream scholarship, it is possible that this bias may have been more or less consciously reproduced. A third challenge from our perspective is that the digital images on EEBO are in black and white (a visible indicator that they are in fact digitized scans of older microfilms), which often renders coloured paratexts (rubricated pages, marginal ornaments, red-letter titles) and readers’ annotations invisible or illegible. Besides, the EEBO selection process tends to favour the ‘cleanest’ copies, that is, those without annotation. Valuable information in the form of readers’ marks and traces of ownership is thus lost. Yet we have seen that such elements can be extremely helpful when researching textual and material mediations in translation. While EEBO naturally does not include foreign intermediary translations and editions, which are nevertheless essential to consult, this may in part be remedied by the new Early European Books database (EEB, pre-1701).10 It is explicitly modelled on EEBO, and some of the above-mentioned issues are thus replicated, in particular the difficulty that independent researchers, as well as scholars and students at non-subscribing institutions, will have in accessing this resource. The book images in EEB are in colour, and so far represent 2500 items. The database draws on the holdings of its current partner institutions in Copenhagen, Florence, The Hague, London and Paris. Thus, a relatively small selection of French, Danish, Dutch, Italian (or Tuscan) and English books is currently available. With more partner libraries, and in continuing collaboration with the USTC, EEB will certainly aid future translation scholars and in particular students of mediated translation; but many more partners are needed to reach anything like a full coverage. It takes a village to raise a Translation Studies scholar. And in that village there must be not only libraries and large digitization projects, but also a schoolhouse with language teachers. This leads us to a final but serious barrier to the study of mediated translations: the lack of proficiency in second and third languages among emerging scholars in the anglophone world. In the United States, for example, most state school systems begin language instruction late, at the high school (or, at best, middle school) level. Universities have steadily reduced their language requirements, and have sometimes eliminated undergraduate language requirements altogether. Many Ph.D. programs now require fewer languages and a lower level of competency than that which permits serious work in Translation Studies. Public support for language study in US schools has never been strong, and this obstacle will likely persist. The language learning situation in the UK continues to evolve, despite many challenges. Modern language study is a compulsory component of the National Curriculum in England between the ages of seven and thirteen, although many students drop it as they approach the national General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) at roughly age sixteen. A GCSE in a language (either modern or ancient) remains a performance measure for the ‘English Baccalaureate’ (a recommended combination of subjects taken at GCSE), but there has been a decline in the number of students entered for the advanced level General Certificate of Education (sat at age eighteen) in lesser-taught languages (i.e. beyond the ‘big five’ of French, German, Irish, Spanish and Welsh). In the Higher Education sector, recruitment to modern language departments remains more or less stable, after a recent decline. Advanced competency in more than one language at the postgraduate level is often limited to students who have come through the Modern Languages degree pathways, or international students who have benefited from more enlightened language policies in their own education systems. Masters and doctoral students in cognate areas (such as English, History and Art History) are encouraged to follow language acquisition courses during their doctoral studies, but there are not usually formal requirements to do so. Since Canada is a bilingual country, both official languages, French and English, are taught in all state elementary and high schools, but requirements concerning degrees of competence in French (by Anglophones) or English (by Francophones) in order to graduate vary from province to province. Other languages are seldom taught. As in the USA, universities have gradually dropped undergraduate foreign language requirements, while doctoral studies in the humanities have either shelved such requirements entirely or lowered competency levels. Canada is home to many university programmes in translation, which naturally require quasi-bilingual competency in both official languages (English and French) at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At the Université de Montréal, a French-language institution, a third language is also required for admission into the postgraduate translation programme. Postgraduate programmes in Comparative Literature, a discipline which has traditionally produced a good number of translation scholars, equally require undergraduate training in at least two languages and literatures. Of course, this situation is not mirrored by English departments, especially at anglophone institutions across Canada, in which second-language proficiency is usually not required. Translation (and ‘second-hand’ translation, even more so) may thus remain a blind spot for a good number of emerging researchers in early modern English studies. There may, however, be an unexpected advantage in this otherwise unfavourable condition. Although Translation Studies as a field may remain relatively small, studies of mediated translation in particular may come to rely more heavily on collaborative teams of researchers, each bringing one or two languages to the table, rather than on polyglot individuals, with the benefit of presenting a wider array of skills and contributions. Such a model – which, as Belén Bistué reminds us, has a long history in translation scholarship and practice11 – also helps to mitigate the effects of disciplinary compartmentalization and specialization. We have often found that while translation scholars have multiple languages, they are not necessarily attuned to the early modern context. Modern Language scholars, as well as Comparative Literature specialists, also usually have multilingual competences, but they do not always engage (at least, not as much as we would wish) with current research in Translation Studies or with the early modern period. Early modern scholars, in turn, are not always versed in ancient and foreign languages. Furthermore, apart from a few influential studies (for example, Lawrence Venuti’s 1995 monograph, The Translator’s Invisibility), and despite ongoing efforts on the part of early modern translation scholars such as ourselves, research in Translation Studies seems to be very slow to percolate through the boundaries of Early Modern Studies. A collaborative or team approach that brings together a group of specialists trained in various fields, each with a distinct set of skills and resources, thus constitutes a definite asset in conducting research into the multi-faceted phenomenon of mediated translation. The textual-material approach that we have chosen to adopt for studying early modern mediated translation represents an equally fruitful opportunity. The ‘material turn’ appears to have taken place across the Humanities, and the conceptual language of book studies represents, if not always an established common ground, at least a set of questions and concerns shared with the various (inter-)disciplinary audiences that we wish to reach. Our attention to mediated translation as a geographically, materially and historically situated process represents a powerful way to engage with scholars looking at other forms of cultural transfer in early modern Europe: the dissemination of books and manuscripts, the circulation of news and ideas, human migration and displacement and forms of exchange among transnational networks and polyglot communities. There, again, our commitment to considering mediated translation as a complex and multi-faceted process pits us against traditional conceptual models that, as was noted in Belle’s introductory essay, tend to limit translation to a linear, vertical movement from ‘source’ to ‘target’ texts, and from ancient or prestigious languages to less illustrious vernaculars. Studying mediated translations allows us to further the theoretical alternatives that we have already started to explore, either individually or as a team. These include conceptualizing translation according to a variety of (non-linear) patterns of textual transmission,12 exploring the overlapping circuits of production and reception involved in the circulation of translated texts,13 adopting a ‘multi-scalar’ approach to combine fine-grained descriptions of localized translation and print practices with wider-angle assessments of the mobility of literary works across Europe,14 or, again, examining the combined (and, at times, divergent) dynamics of textual and material production at play in multi-mediated literary productions.15 In this Talking Point we have highlighted conceptual avenues that we believe can enrich current critical discussions of the transnational lives of literary works, translated books and the agents involved in their creation and dissemination. As part of our Trajectories of Translation in Early Modern Britain international research project based at the Université de Montréal, we have also started to explore another avenue of enquiry that is particularly useful in order to study patterns and agents of early modern mediated translation, namely network studies. Network analysis and visualization tools offer a powerful way of renewing how we look at bibliographical and textual data. We have found that working with digital platforms can help us think outside received categories, such as authorship, for example, and to think laterally, rather than hierarchically. Network analysis has also helped reveal or confirm the agency of lesser studied figures (such as widows or nuns), and to highlight the importance of non-human factors (such as location or book format), in patterns of production and circulation of translated books.16 Of course, digital analysis is only as good as the data that supports it – hence the importance of the ongoing cataloguing work mentioned above. Finally, researching early modern mediated translations ultimately forces us to confront often unwritten or unacknowledged critical biases and hierarchies. We have found some mediations to be more visible and valued than others, and we are thus seeking to redress, or at least complete, the narrative. The first of these biases is linguistic. The few examples that have dominated scholarly discourse on early modern mediated translations in Britain are texts turned from Ancient Greek into English via French or Latin; or texts written in Italian passing into English via French. Yet new research on mediated translation is uncovering the importance of other perspectives and pathways for translations in the early modern period, such as Joyce Boro’s work on the mediating role of French and Italian in texts translated from Spanish in the early Stuart period.17 Consider also the presence of Dutch as an intermediary or pivot language, the significance of which may have remained unknown without the new quantitative data provided by the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads catalogue.18 Another hierarchy that we have all addressed in the past, but which is somehow brought to the fore when dealing with mediated translations, is that of text over paratext. Looking at translations from a material perspective means ‘making the liminal central’;19 this is particularly true here, given the pivotal importance of paratexts and marginalia, both in identifying mediations and in examining the multiple processes that they involve. A third and perhaps more subtle critical bias is that which favours written over oral mediation. Of course, as early modern scholars, we have the written archive as our main source of documentation and analysis. Yet this may lead us to overlook traces of oral performance that are in fact written into the narrative, or to forget those that are implied (or perhaps, and more problematically, silenced) by textual accounts in manuscript or print. It seems all the more important to attend to such traces as the early modern period precisely corresponds to the marginalization of oral mediation in theoretical writings on translation. Written, direct translation becomes identified in Humanist discourse with ‘Renaissance’ scholarship, but also with a Western, European identity – as opposed to the mediated practices that were commonplace in the Arab tradition, and were widely used through the Middle Ages in Mediterranean contact zones such as Sicily and Spain.20 At the same time as intermediary oral transmission becomes expunged from dominant Western translation discourse, the effacement of mediating voices is equally effected in narratives of colonial expansion and exploration. Linguistic difficulties and the necessity of interpreters are routinely mentioned, but more often than not travel and missionary narratives ventriloquize indigenous voices, absorbing them within the languages and perspectives of the colonizers. On the one hand, linguistic collaborations between indigenous populations and colonizers are subsumed under the name of the European, printed author. On the other, indigenous speeches reported within the framework of European narratives are subjected to a triple translation: from native language to Spanish, Portuguese, English or French, from oral to script, and from the personal and cultural context of their original performance to the over-arching genres, commonplaces and purposes of the early modern travelogue, natural history or missionary account.21 These mediations are then compounded by the passage of such narratives across Europe’s linguistic and geographical boundaries, adding yet another layer of interpretation – and potential deformation and assimilation – to indigenous speech acts already mediated by European languages and print. To come full circle, let us return to Florio’s 1603 translation of Montaigne, which – although he rendered it directly from the French – he apologized for delivering ‘at second hand’. His version of the essay ‘Des Cannibales’ [‘Of Cannibals’] should rightly be considered a multi-mediated translation, since it adapts into English print Montaigne’s French account (in manuscript and print) of the report, also in French, made by a ‘truchement’, or interpreter – whom Montaigne considers inadequate – of the various answers given by the unnamed ‘cannibals’ brought to the French court. Studies of early modern colonization in the Americas have long elided or ignored translations, and foregrounded only the dominant languages of the colonizers. Parsing the intricate layers of performance and agency in such apparently well-known texts alerts us instead to underlying processes of translation and mediation that too often remain unacknowledged in scholarly discourse. The study of mediated translation thus shows promise in promoting collaborative research among a variety of disciplines and scholars, exploring theoretical alternatives that will enlarge our prospect beyond the confines of ‘direct’ translation and applying new methodologies such as network analysis and visualization. Perhaps most importantly, it enables us to challenge long-held cultural, linguistic and epistemic biases, thereby contributing to a renewed account of translation practices and representations in the fast-expanding landscape of our ‘early modernity’. Notes 1 See discussion in the various other essays in this Talking Point. 2 Recent printed catalogues of early modern European print include French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before 1601, ed. by Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby and Alexander Wilkinson, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007), Iberian Books: Books Published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601, ed. by Alexander Wilkinson (Leiden: Brill, 2010), Netherlandish Books: Books Published in the Low Countries and Dutch Books Printed Abroad before 1601, ed. by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2011) and French Books: Books Published in France before 1601 in Latin and Languages Other than French, ed. by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 3 The USTC represents a significant extension of the above-mentioned print catalogues; see Universal Short Title Catalogue <https://www.ustc.ac.uk/> [accessed 9 August 2022]. 4 Of course, we are aware that search keywords should reflect the variety of terms employed in the period to denote translated texts (‘rendered’, ‘turned’, ‘Englished’, etc.). Still, compiling such results creates additional challenges for researchers, as we have found through our own cataloguing activities. 5 Luis de Granada, Of Prayer, and Meditation, trans. by Richard Hopkins (Paris: Thomas Brumeau, 1582), sig. b3r. 6 Laura Ivaska, ‘A Mixed-Methods Approach to Indirect Translation: A Case Study of the Finnish Translations of Modern Greek Prose’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Turku, 2020). 7 See PLRE.Folger: Private Libraries in Renaissance England <https://plre.folger.edu/> [accessed 9 August 2022]. This database complements Private Libraries in Renaissance England: A Collection and Catalogue of Tudor and Early Stuart Book Lists, ed. by Robert J. Fehrenbach and E. S. Leedham-Green (Binghampton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992–). 8 ‘Database: Early English Books Online (EEBO)’, Library Search, University of Michigan <https://search.lib.umich.edu/databases/record/47062> [accessed 24 August 2022]. See also the details of the selection process at ‘Early English Books Online (EEBO) TCP’, Text Creation Partnership <https://textcreationpartnership.org/tcp-texts/eebo-tcp-early-english-books-online> [accessed 24 August 2022]. 9 See William Proctor Williams and William Baker, ‘Caveat Lector: English Books 1475–1700 and the Electronic Age’, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, 12 (2001), 1–29 (especially pp. 13–22). 10 See description at ‘Early European Books’, ProQuest <https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/eeb> [accessed 23 August 2022]. 11 Belén Bistué, ‘On the Incorrect Way to Translate: The Absence of Collaborative Translation from Leonardo Bruni’s De Interpretatione Recta’, in Collaborative Translation from the Renaissance to the Digital Age, ed. by Anthony Cordingley and Cécile Frigau Manning (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 33–48 (pp. 36–39). 12 A. E. B. Coldiron, Printers Without Borders: Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 13 Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, ‘Translation, History, and Print: A Model for the Study of Printed Translations in Early Modern Britain’, Translation Studies, 10.1 (2017), 2–21. 14 Guyda Armstrong, ‘Towards a Spatial Early Modern Translation Studies’, in Transit and Translation in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Donatella Montini, Iolanda Plescia, Anna Maria Segala and Francesca Terrenato (= InTRAlinea: An Online Journal of Translation Studies, 21 (2019)), pp. 1–10 <http://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/towards_a_spatial_early_modern_translation_studies> [accessed 10 August 2022]. 15 Joshua Reid, ‘Serious Play: Sir John Harington’s Material-Textual Errancy in Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse (1591)’, Renaissance and Reformaion/Renaissance et Réforme, 43.2 (2020), 147–82. 16 Marie-Alice Belle and Marie-France Guénette, ‘Translation and Print Networks in Seventeenth-Century Britain: From Catalogue Entries to Digital Visualizations’, in New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies iii, ed. by Matthew Evan Davis and Colin Wilder (Toronto: Iter Press, 2022), pp. 195–233. 17 Joyce Boro, ‘Spain in Translation: Peritextual Representations of Cultural Difference, 1614–1625’, in Thresholds of Translation: Paratexts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain (1473–1660), ed. by Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 101–36. 18 According to the Renaissance Crossroads Catalogue, English translations using Dutch as an intermediary language represent about 5% of all mediated translations, certainly a limited amount, especially when compared to Latin, French or Italian, yet this new information is well worth examining further. 19 Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, ‘Introduction’, in Thresholds of Translation, ed. by Belle and Hosington, pp. 13–15. 20 See Bistué, ‘On the Incorrect Way’, pp. 37–38. 21 On the various processes of mediation (and, therefore, deformation and appropriation) of indigenous voices in early modern narratives, see for example Yvon Le Bras, ‘La parole amérindienne dans les Relations de Paul Lejeune’, in Voix autochtones dans les écrits de la Nouvelle-France, ed. by Luc Vaillancourt, Sandrine Tailleur and Émilie Urbain (Paris: Hermann, 2019), pp. 251–64. Le Bras discusses the context of missionary narratives in New France, but the process was often similar in other early colonial contexts. In his seminal study, Translation and Colonialism: From the Tempest to Tarzan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), Eric Cheyfiz addresses the effacement of indigenous oral mediation in travel narratives in terms of colonial ‘fictions of translation’ (p. 198). © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights) © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.
TI - On Researching Early Modern Mediated Translations: Challenges and Prospects
JO - Forum for Modern Language Studies
DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqac064
DA - 2022-11-12
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/on-researching-early-modern-mediated-translations-challenges-and-p5lDwsMZSr
SP - 513
EP - 521
VL - 58
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -