History of Translation Lectures # 2 -3 1
Translation in the Ancient World 2
The ancient translation technique is attested in the Sumerian Akkadian dictionaries (XIX XVIII cent. BC) • Akkadians borrowed the cuneiform syllable idiomatic writing from Sumerians in XXIV cent. BC. • Akkadian and Sumerian languages are quite different (they do not have anything in common: Akkadian belongs to the Semitic branch of Afro Asia family, Sumerian is the isolate language), therefore correct translation demanded a very careful methodology. • These dictionaries contained translation of words (type A) and ideograms, their Sumerian pronunciation and Akkadian translation (type B). 3
The first fact of rendering of the literary text: Epos of Gilgamesh. This poem (ša nagba imuru) was written in Akkadian language (Semitic branch of Afro Asia family of languages) in 18 17 centuries BC in Mesopotamia. However, it was adapted rendering of the earlier Sumerian epos (Sumerian language is isolate). The Akkadian version of the poem was not a translation in the later meaning of this word, but rather an adapted exposition of the ancient Sumerian epos. Similar renderings of this poem were made in Hurritan (Nakh Dagestan family) and Hittite languages (Indo European family) in the ancient times. 4
What can we say about the main rendering patterns of literary text in the Ancient World? (On the base of Epos of Gilgamesh) • Sumerian names of gods were substituted with Akkadian; Sumerian names of people are preserved. • Obsolete words were replaced with their “modern” synonyms in the Nineveh version (13 12 centuries BC). • The texts of the songs were shortened in some cases, in other cases – broadened. • The parallel verse structure (parallelismus membrorum) is maintained. • In Akkadian version the leitmotif is shifted from the cosmogony to the greatness of human friendship. 5
The Story of the Assyrian Wise Man Aḥiqar or The Words of Aḥiqar This story was written in 7 th century BC in Akkadian language (Semitic) and translated into Aramaic (Semitic too, lingua franca at that time) in 6 th cent. BC. The Akkadian original has not come to us. This story was translated in different languages: Armenian, Syrian, Arabic and Slavic versions (12 th cent. ). 6
Interpreting (oral translation) in the Ancient World Meturgemanim (from Aramaic rəga m – “to speak loudly”) – interpreters and translators in the Ancient Middle East, who translated from different languages into Aramaic (lingua franca in the period between 8 cent. BC and 7 cent. AD) and vice versa. Aramaic was the official language of the Achemenidian Empire (539 – 331 BC). 7
Деякі зразки перекладу МТ: בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ Спочатку створив Бог небо і землю ТО: בקדמין ברא יוי ית שמיא וית ארעא Спочатку створив Господь небо і землю ТНеоф: מלקדמין בחכמה ברא דייי שכלל ית שמיא וית ארעא Спочатку мудрістю Син Господа завершив небо і землю ТПс. Й: מן אוולא ברא אלקים ית שמייא וית ארעא Спочатку створив Бог небо і землю
Деякі зразки перекладу МТ: כי-ילד ילד-לנו בן נתן-לנו ותהי המשרה על- שכמו ויקרא שמו פלא יועץ אל גבור אבי-עד שר- שלום Бо Дитя народилося нам, і влада буде на плечах Його; і назвуть Йому ім’я: Дивний, Порадник, Бог Могутній, Отець Вічний, Князь Миру. (Іс. 6: 9) Таргум Йонатана Бен-Уззіеля: אמר נביא לבית דויד ארי רבי אתיליד לנא בר אתיהיב לנא וקביל אוריתא עלוהי למיטרה ואתקרי שמיה מן קדם מפליא עיצא אלהא גיברא קיים עלמיא משיחא דשלמא יסגי עלנא ביומוהי׃ Сказав пророк до дому Давидового: «Бо юнак народився нам, син даний нам. І він прийняв на себе забов’язання виконувати Тору. І назвуть Йому ім’я перед Господом: Чудотворець, Порадник, Бог Могутній, Сущій споконвіку, Мессія, у дні якого примножиться нам мир» .
In the Hellenistic period (IV – I cent. BC) started a booming process of translation from other languages into Greek. 10
In 283 year BC the Hellenistic king of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus ordered to translate the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) from Hebrew into Greek for the Alexandrian Library. 11
It was a challenging task for the ancient translators because • the source language (SL) belonged to the Semitic branch of the Afro Asia family of languages, but the target language (TL) – to the Indo European family; • the biblical text contained different literary forms: prose, poetry, juridical and prophetical texts; • there were many special cultic terms in the Old Testament which had not any counterparts in Greek; • the messengers and their audiences lived some centuries before the translators. 12
The problems of grammar and syntax which had been set before the ancient translators: • Hebrew verbs do not have the grammatical category of tense. • Hebrew syntax is paratactic. • Some grammatical forms may have several meaning (for example, nouns in plural). • Archaisms in vocabulary (including borrowings from Ugaritic, Akkadian and Aramaic), grammar and syntax • Greek verbs have the complicated tense system. • Greek syntax is hypotactic. • Clear, well developed and consecutive derivation system. • Translation of the archaisms demanded from the translator encyclopedic erudition and great insight. 13
In that case the literal translation was impossible: the translators had to resolve the problem of equivalence (formal or dynamic? ). Moreover, there was a big difference between the Hebrew and the Greek literary traditions. • Hebrew narrative is • Greek narrative is based laconic and based on on the detailed the associative description of events approach. and characters. • Hebrew poetry is based • Greek poetry is on the syntactic quantitative parallelism of two (hexameter). clauses lines in apposition. 14
Alexandrian translators not only coped with this complicated task, but laid foundations for the multi aspect translation techniques in the following ages. 15
The ancient translator tried to be careful in the translation: • • They rendered each Hebrew lexeme with a corresponding Greek word consequently ( = אלהים ο θεος [the God], = יהוה ο κυριος [the Lord], = ברא ποιεω [to create], = יצר πλασσω [to form], = משכן σκηνη [the tabernacle]); They attempted to imitate the Hebrew syntax where it was possible (the paratactic syntax, the word order VSO, the syntactic parallelism in poetry); They created new words (neologisms) in the cases when they couldn’t find a Greek equivalent for a Hebrew word (for example, the cultic term ιλαστεριον for [ כפרת an atonement cover]); They used the hypotactic syntactic construction for the infinitive construction in Hebrew and asyndetic relative clauses.
In the similar manners the most famous translations of the Bible were made in the period between II and IX centuries • Syrian translation of the Old Testament (II cent. ) • Latin translation of St. Jerome (IV V cent. ) • Gothic translation of Wulfila (VIII cent. ) • Coptic translation (I IV cent. ) • Armenian (V cent. ) • Georgian (V cent. ) • Slavic (IX cent. ) 17
Translations from Greek into Latin: Cicero (106 43 BC) and Horace (65 8 BC) • The outstanding statesman, orator and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 43 ВС) translated into Latin the speeches of the most eloquent Greek orators Demosthenes (385? 322 ВС) and Aeschines (389 314 ВС). Cicero’s approach was based on the principles of «sense to sense» translation. 18
Cicero's principles of «sense for sense translation» were first accepted and employed by Horace, who translated works from Greek into Latin. Horace used Cicero's princi ples in his own, often unpredictable way: he changed the com position and content of ST; moreover, he introduced some ideas of his own, thus making the translated works unlike the originals (similar to ancient translations of the Epos of Gilgamesh). 19
Syrian Translation School (V – X cent. ) There are two centers of education (and translation) in the East Aramaic (Syriac) speaking Christian world – in Nisibis (founded by Mar Yaqub in 350 AD) and Edessa (founded by Mar Efraim in 363 after Nisibis fell to the Persians) 20
Prob, Qumi and Hibas of Edessa (5 th cent. ) • Prob of Antioch and Qumi translated Logic of Aristotle in 5 th century; Prob rendered also Isagoge (“Introduction”) of Porphyry the Philosopher. • Hinas of Edessa also participated in this translation; besides, he translated the exegetical works of Theodore of Mopsuestia. 21
Sergius of Reshaina (died 536) He translated 26 medical texts of the Greek physician Galen (129 216 AD), “The Categories” of Aristotle, “Introduction to the Categories” of Porphyry and some theological works of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite. 22
Syrian translations from Greek (V X cent. ) • Syrian (like Hebrew) belongs to the Semitic languages and has similar specificities in grammar and syntax. • Some words were borrowed from Greek: [gansā] – genus, from Greek γενος [ʔisțōks] – elements, from Greek στοιχεια • Some words were made as calque from Greek words: [kīnā] – nature, for Greek φυσις [ʔītyā] – essence, for Greek ουσια • Syrian syntax underwent some changes which were caused with Greek (hypotactic) syntax. 23
From the Syrian translations of the Greek philosophers were made the Arabian translations (following the same translation technique) 24
Translations from Greek into Arabic (through Syriac) were made in the House of Wisdom ( ﺑﻴﺖ ﺍﻟﺤﻜﻤﺔ Bayt al. Hikma), which was found in Bagdad by the Caliph Harun Al Rashid (786 809) and culminated under his son Al Mamun (reigned 813– 833). 25
The first translators into Arabic were Syrians. There were two directions in the translation technique. • Literal translation word for word with transliteration of the special Greek terms with Arabic letters: Aby Yahya (Yohana) Ibn Al Batriq (working 796 806) and Ibn Naima Al Himsi (early 9 th cent. ) • Sense for sense Translation, for the special Greek terms were created Arabic (on the Semitic roots): Hunain Ibn Ishaq (809 837) 26
Aby Yahya (Yohana) Ibn Al Batriq (8 9 th cent. ) He translated for the Caliph Al Mansur the major medical works of Galen and Hippocrates, and also translated Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. e compiled the encyclopedic Kitab sirr al-asrar, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft, which became known to the Latin speaking medieval world as Secretum Secretorum ("[The Book of] the Secret of Secrets") in a mid 12 th century translation. Al Batriq claims that it was translated from the Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. 27
Ibn Naima Al Himsi He translated Theology of Aristotle (a paraphrase of Plotinus’ Six Enneads along with Porphyry’s commentary), Sophistical Refutations and Physics of Aristotle. 28
Hunain Ibn Ishaq (809 837) – “sheikh of the translators” Unlike other translators in the Abbasid period, Hunayn opposed translating texts word for word. Instead, he would attempt to attain the meaning of the subject and the sentences, and then in a new manuscript, rewrite the piece of knowledge in Syriac or Arabic. He translated from Greek into Arabic 18 treaties of Galen, Republic of Plato, Categories of Aristotle, 7 books of Galen’s anatomy, the Old Testament (LXX). 29
Examples of word formation by Hunain Ibn Ishaq Greek terms in Arabic: • Πολιτεια – [ ﺳﻴﺎﺳﺔ siyāsat] Republic • Φυσις – [ ﻃﺒﻴﻌﺔ tabi'iyat] Nature • Κατηγοριαι – [ ﻣﻘﻮﻻﺕ maqūlat] Categories 30
Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021 1058) Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Abu Ayyūb Suleiman ibn Yahya ibn Jabirūl) was an Andalusian poet and Jewish philosopher with a Neoplatonic bent. He attested the use of two approaches to translations in Spain and South Italy: 1. Literal (word for word) translation for the sacred texts; 2. Free translation for the secular texts (with many deliberate omissions/eliminations, additions, and paraphrases of their texts). 31
Translation in the Medieval Europe 32
In the Medieval Ages the translation studies had just descriptive character; the scholars concentrated just on the translation technics: • Writing dictionaries • Adaption of terminology of SL to TL • Improvement of the literary aspect of translation • In most of cases they followed the translational patterns which had been developed in the Late Antiquity period. 33
New translations of the Bible into the national languages of Europe • John Wycllife’s Bible (1384) – translation into the Middle English (in cooperation with Nicolas Hereford and John Purvey). • William Tyndale’s Bible (1537) – translation into the Early Modern English from Hebrew and Greek (in cooperation with ). • Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek (1522 1534); its widespread circulation facilitated the emergence of a standard, modern German language for the German speaking peoples throughout the Holy Roman Empire. 34
Impact of the Tyndale’s Bible on English language Tyndale introduced new words into the English language: • Passover • scapegoat • Jesus Birth (for Christmas) He also creates new phrases which were used in the King James Bible: • lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil • knock and it shall be opened unto you • twinkling of an eye a moment in time 35
Tyndale’s phrasal neologisms: • • • fashion not yourselves to the world seek and you shall find eat, drink and be merry ask and it shall be given you judge not that you not be judged the word of God which liveth and lasteth forever let there be light the salt of the earth a law unto themselves filthy lucre it came to pass gave up the ghost 36
Biblia Complutensia (1514 1522): comparison of translations • Biblia Complutensia is the first printed polyglot of the Bible; contains the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, the Vulgata and the Targum Onqelos (Aramaic). This edition was initiated by Cardinal Francisco Jimenez Cisneros (1436– 1517). 37
Summary During the Middle Age period three main approaches were elaborated: • 1. The ancient «strict and truthful» word for word translation of ecclesiastic (the Septuagint) and philosophic works. • 2. The unrestricted free translation introduced by Horace and Apuleius, which had established an especially strong position in France and gained many supporters there. • 3. The old trend adhering to the Cicero's principle of regular sense to sense translation without the unrestricted reductions or additions to the texts/works in their final translated versions. 38
The period of Classicism and Enlightenment John Dryden (1631 1700) outstanding English author and literary critic, tried to reconcile these two historically opposite trends and sought a middle course between the «very free» , as he called the second trend, and the «very close» (i. e. word for word) approach. He demanded from translators «faithfulness to the spirit of the original» . This approach was applied in Dryden’s translation of Vergil’s poems. 39
The Epoch of Romanticism J. Campbell demanded from translators of belles lettres the following: 1) «to give a just representation of the sense of the original (the most essential); 2) to convey into his version as much as possi ble (in consistency with the genius of his language) the author's spirit and manner, the very character of his style; 3) so that the text of the version have a natural and easy flow» . 40
A. F. Tytler's requirements, as has been mentioned, were no less radical and much similar, they included the following: 1) «the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work; 2) the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original; 3) the translation should have the ease of an original composition. 41
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744 – 1803) He consequently demanded that all translators of prose and poetic works render strictly, fully and faithfully not only the richness of content, but also the stylistic peculiarities, the artistic beauty and the spirit of the source language works. His resolute criticism of the unrestricted freedom of translation and verbalism found strong support among the most outstanding German poets such as Gothe and Schiller among other prominent authors. 42
Translations in Kyiv Mohyla Academia • Translations from Greek: works of Gregory Naziazinus (by D. Nalyvaiko) • Translations from Latin: writings of L. Seneca (by K. Sakovych); “Dioptra” of Ph. Monotrop (by Vitaliy) • Translations from Italian: poems of Torquato Tasso (by P. Kokhanowsky), G. Boccaccio's short stories from his Decameron. 43
In Ukraine, free sense to sense translation in the second half of the eighteenth century was occasionally employed by H. Skovoroda (in his translations from the Latin). • Ода (Jesuitae Sidronii Hosii) • Цицерон. О старости • Книжечка Плутархова о спокойствии души Petro Hulak Artemovs’ky (1790 1865) translated into Russian works of J. Russo, J. Milton, Horace and fragments from the Bible. 44
An example of free rendering Vergil’s Aeneid into Ukrainian by Ivan Kotliarevsky (1798): he created the travesty translation from the Latin original. 45
The most famous Ukrainian translators: • Maxim Ryl’s’ky (1895 1964) – from English, French, Russian, Polish • Les’ Kurbas (1887 1937) • Borys Ten (1897 1983) – from Greek, German and English • Grygoriy Kochur (1908 1994) from English, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish • Mykola Bazhan (1904 1983) – from Georgian, Uzbekian, Polish and Russian • Andriy Sodomora (born in 1937) – from Greek and Latin 46
The Period of Translation Studies (since 1950 s) What is translation studies? • Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of theory, description and application of translation, interpreting and localization. • A new discipline concerned with “the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations” (James S. Holmes, ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, 1972). 47
As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the various fields of study that support translation: • • • Comparative literature History Linguistics Philology Philosophy Semiotics 48
Jean Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet theory During the 1950 s and 1960 s, systematic linguisticoriented studies of translation began to appear. In 1958, Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet carried out a contrastive comparison of French and English in Quebec. Vinay, Jean-Paul and J. Darbelnet. 1958/1995. Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Theory of translation has been developed by Eugen Nida (1914 2011) In 1964, Eugene Nida published Toward a Science of Translating, a manual for Bible translation influenced to some extent by Chomsky's generative grammar. 50
In 1965, John C. Catford theorized translation from a linguistic perspective. Catford, J. C. , (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation. London: Longman. In the 1960 s and early 1970 s, the Czech scholar Jiří Levý and the Slovak scholars Anton Popovič and František Miko worked on the stylists of literary translation. Levý, Jiří (1967). Translation as a Decision Process. In To Honor Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton, II, pp. 1171– 1182.
In this course the following topics will be considered: • • Equivalence in translation Different types of translation Importance of communicative context Lexical aspects of translation Grammar aspects of translation Syntactic aspects of translation Stages of translation 52