Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-27T18:55:42.160Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Translating Roman Republican Political Culture

from Part I - Original Essays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2025

By
Amy Russell
Edited by
Amy Russell  and
Hans Beck
Translated by
Kathrin Lüddecke
Amy Russell
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Hans Beck
Affiliation:
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
Get access

Summary

The study of Roman history has always been multilingual, and some of the most important work on the Roman Republic is in German. Today, however, fewer and fewer anglophone students and scholars read German. The result is that major work published in German can go unread and uncited. This new essay by Amy Russell surveys the problem and potential solutions, as well as exploring some of the difficulties of translation from German to English and a glossary of untranslatable terms. It is important that we balance the benefits of multilingual publishing with the need to make Roman history accessible to all. Translation and collaboration are among the methods recommended. Translation from German brings specific problems, as some concepts can be expressed more easily in one language or the other; Russell takes a case study of the term Öffentlichkeit and its similarities to and differences from English phrases such as ‘public space’. Those differences have significantly affected how scholars writing in German and English have conceptualized the public and the political in the Roman Republic. A glossary elucidates a range of other hard-to-translate concepts.

Keywords

translationRoman RepublicGermanRoman historymultilingualismhistory of scholarshippublic sphere
Type
Chapter
Information
The Roman Republic and Political Culture
German Scholarship in Translation
 , pp. 3 - 26
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alastrué, Ramón P., and Pérez-Llantada, Carmen (eds.) 2015. English as a Scientific and Research Language: Debates and Discourses. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ammon, Ulrich (ed.) 2001. The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ammon, Ulrich 2014. Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in der Welt. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ammon, Ulrich 2020. The Position of the German Language in the World. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arena, Valentina, and Prag, Jonathan (eds.) 2022. A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic. Hoboken: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assmann, Jan 1992. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assmann, Jan 2011. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, trans. David Henry Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bermann, Sandra, and Porter, Catherine (eds.) 2014. A Companion to Translation Studies. Malden: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crane, Gregory 2015. ‘Greek, Latin, and Digital Philology in Germany and the United States’, online article, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BMvclzEY2cYGuc_QUett3HqtGHw0lLqGZu2hk0MmKio, or https://tinyurl.com/5ckztcnz.Google Scholar
Crawford, Gregory A. 2013. ‘A Citation Analysis of the Classical Philology Literature: Implications for Collection Development’, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 8.2: 214–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everyday Orientalism 2021. Classics Beyond the Euro-American Gaze [video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzGrNP7dnM0.Google Scholar
Flaig, Egon 2015. ‘A Coherent Model to Understand the Roman Principate: “Acceptance” instead of “Legitimacy” and the Problem of Usurpation’, in Ferrary, Jean-Louis and Scheid, John (eds.), Il princeps romano: autocrate o magistrato? Fattori giuridici e fattori sociali del potere imperiale da Augusto a Commodo. Pavia: IUSS Press, 81–100.Google Scholar
Fransen, Sietske 2017. ‘Introduction: Translators and Translations of Early Modern Science’, in Fransen, Sietske, Hodson, Niall, and Enenkel, Karl A. E. (eds.), Translating Early Modern Science. Leiden: Brill, 1–14.Google Scholar
Goodman, Deena 1994. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen 1991 [1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim 2004. Rekonstruktionen einer Republik: Die politische Kultur des antiken Rom und die Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte. Historia Zeitschrift Beiheft 38. Munich: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim 2010. Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research, trans. Henry Heitmann-Gordon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim 2020. Roman Republican Reflections: Studies in Politics, Power, and Pageantry. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar
Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim 2022. ‘Political Culture: Career of a Concept’, in Arena and Prag 2022: 4–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurlet, Frédéric 2012. ‘Démocratie à Rome? Quelle démocratie? En relisant Millar (et Hölkeskamp)’, in Benoist, Stéphane (ed.), Rome, a City and its Empire in Perspective: The Impact of the Roman World through Fergus Millar’s Research: Rome, une cité impériale en jeu: l’impact du monde romain selon Fergus Millar. Leiden: Brill, 18–43.Google Scholar
Jehne, Martin 2000. ‘Jovialität und Freiheit: Zur Institutionalität der Beziehungen zwischen Ober- und Unterschichten in der römischen Republik’, in Linke, Bernhard and Stemmler, Michael (eds.), Mos maiorum: Untersuchungen zu den Formen der Identitätsstiftung und Stabilisierung in der römischen Republik. Historia Einzelschriften 141. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 207–235.Google Scholar
Kancewicz-Hoffman, Nina, and Pölönen, Janne 2020. ‘Does Excellence have to be in English? Language Diversity and Internationalization in SSH Research Evaluation’, in Overview of Peer Review Practices in the SSH. ENRESSH Report. ENRESSH, 32–41.Google Scholar
Kellsey, Charlene, and Knievel, Jennifer 2004. ‘Global English in the Humanities? A Longitudinal Citation Study of Foreign-Language Use by Humanities Scholars’, College and Research Libraries 65.3: 194–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kieserling, André 1999. Kommunikation unter Anwesenden: Studien über Interktionssysteme. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Konstan, David. 2020. ‘Mapping diversity in Classical Studies’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 40: 9–27.Google Scholar
Kulczycki, Emanuel et al. 2020. ‘Multilingual Publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities: A Seven-Country European Study’, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 71.11: 1371–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, Jinyu 2022. ‘Translating Ovid into Chinese: Challenges and Strategies’, in Sienkewicz, Thomas and Liu, Jinyu (eds.), Ovid in China: Reception, Translation, and Comparison. Leiden: Brill, 136–54.Google Scholar
Mah, Harold 2000. ‘Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians’, Journal of Modern History 72: 153–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Fergus 1984. ‘The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200–151 BC’, Journal of Roman Studies 74: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Fergus 1986. ‘Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 bc)’, Journal of Roman Studies 76: 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Fergus 1989. ‘Political Power in Mid-Republican Rome: Curia or Comitium?’, Journal of Roman Studies 79: 138–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Fergus 1998. The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montanari, Franco 2022. ‘Multilingualism and the Study of Ancient Greece and Rome’, Rivista di Filologia 150.1: 205–7.Google Scholar
Morstein-Marx, Robert 2004. Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rich, John W. 2015. ‘Consensus Rituals and the Origin of the Principate’, in Ferrary, Jean-Louis and Scheid, John (eds.), Il princeps romano: autocrate o magistrato? Fattori giuridici e fattori sociali del potere imperiale da Augusto a Commodo. Pavia: IUSS Press, 101–38.Google Scholar
Rubel, Alexander 2019. ‘Quo vadis Altertumswissenschaft? The Command of Foreign Languages and the Future of Classical Studies’, Classical World 112.3: 193–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rüpke, Jörg 1995. Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: Die Geschichte der Repräsentation und religiösen Qualifikation von Zeit in Rom. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Rüpke, Jörg 2011. The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History, and the Fasti, trans. David M. B. Richardson. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Amy 2016. The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Štrkalj Despot, Kristinia 2021. ‘How Language Influences Conceptualization: From Whorfianism to Neo-Whorfianism’, Collegium Antropologicum 45.4: 373–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardy, Christine 2004. ‘The Role of English in Scientific Communication: Lingua franca or tyrannosaurus rex?’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3.3: 247–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Alistair 2001. ‘International Scientific English: The Language of Research Scientists around the World’, in Flowerdew, John and Peacock, Matthew (eds.), Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×