Fidus Interpres: The Theory and Practice of Translation in Classical Antiquity

Extract

‘One of the unwritten chapters in the literary history of antiquity is that providing a comprehensive account of (ancient) translation.’ This statement still holds true after 20 years, and so this study will inevitably lack completeness; all it can aim at is to try to give an outline of what one might consider to be the most important issues concerning our theme.

To underline the vast quantity of material concerning our topic we might refer to a list entitled ‘Greek works translated into Latin before 1350’. This list is restricted to philosophical works only, omitting all other fields such as medicine, law, mathematics, theology, and liturgy. Nevertheless even this limited list gives the names of no less than 119 authors whose philosophical works in Greek were translated into Latin; the space needed for Aristotle alone runs to more than five pages. Thus it is easy to estimate what an enormous number of Latin translations there were, and what countless efforts must have been taken over more than one and a half millennia for this kind of literary work. One may add that there is a very helpful collection of some 90 testimonia covering the time of St. Augustine, in the book of Heinrich Marti, Übersetzer der Augustin-Zeit. There is also the basic study of Jiȓi Levỳ, which deals with modern theory, and outlines all the problems and all the facts of the art of translation.