History of Translation
Translation exist almost from the begining of the humanity, according to the Bible, humanity had only one language before the Babel Tower. The story of this Tower tell us that humans were looking to be like God, and to reach this purpose they agreed to build a Tower so big that it could reache the sky and get to God. When God noticed their project, He became angry and as a punishment He decided to confuse their Language: " Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (King James Version).
Because of the different languages that exist and the necessity of human to communicate a solution called Translation, was created.
As times comes by, in the Roman period, the usual trend war the "word-for-word" translation in Greek-Latin translations, this method consisted in translate from the source text to the target text each word without taking into account the sens of the text, only the lexicon was important. When they noticed that this method laxed of coherence and cohesion, the politician and rethorician Marcus Tullius Cicero presents his ideas of translation in De optimo genere oratorum in which he introduces his "sense-for-sense" translation, he did not translate his work "as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms or as one might say, the ‘figures’ of thought, but in language which conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language". (Cicero 46 BCE/1960 CE: 364).
The lack of sens in "word-for-word" translation was noticed by a famous poet called Horace too; he underlines the goal of producing aesthetical pleasing and creative texts in the Target Language (Munday J. 2012).
Another important character of the HIstory of Translation is Saint Jerome, a Priest serving as secretary of Pope Damasus. He helped to establish an official and standardized Latin translation for use in churches. He revised and corrected earlier Latin translations of the Greek New Testament. For the Old Testament, he decided to return to the original text in Hebrew. (Munday J. 2012). A funny fact is that Saint Jerome is the patron saint of translators, so if you are a translator and you are in troubles with your translation, he will help you.
Martin Luther was another highlight in Translation Histroy, this Priest, was a precursor because he translated the Old and New Testament into East Central German, when the Bible could only be read in Latin, for that he was accussed of altering the Holy Scriptures in his translations. He defended himself of the accusations "You must ask the mother at home, the children, in the street, the ordinary man in market, and look at their mouths, how they speak, and translate that way; then they’ll understand and see what you’re speaking to them in German".
Luther, as St. Jerome, rejects literal translation because it would be unable to convey the same meaning as the ST and would sometimes be incomprehensible.
With Luther came the Humaninsm Protestant Reformation, and other characters followed this movement, as William Tyndale who was a linguist and mastered ten languages. He was a biblical translator. He started with the New Testament translation and his work was completed in July 1525. The first copies reached England in 1526. Then he began work on an Old Testament translation but was captured in Antwerp before it was completed, because during this period of transition the translation of any book which diverged from Church’s interpretation ran the risk of being deemed heretical and of being censured or banned ahd its author could be executed (Munday J. 2012).
Another important character of this period was the French humanist, scholar, and printer Etienne Dolet, who added the phrase rien du tout in his translation of one of Plato’s dialogue and this led to the charge of blasphemy, and he was condemned by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne in 1546 to be burned at the stake.
After this period of Reform the early attempts at systematic translation theory begun, the first important character for that period was an English poet called John Dryden, who came up with three categories of translation:
1. Metaphrase: Literal Translation (word by word, and line by line)
2. Paraphrase: Free Translation (words and sense are strictly followed)
3. Imitation: Adaptation (‘forsaking’ words and sense)
Nevertheless, he prefered the 'paraphrase', and recommended to avoid the other two methods of translation. His approach to translation is author-oriented which means to write as the original author would have written if he had known the Target Language (Munday J. 2012).
Then, we have Alexander Fraser Tytler, who proposed three laws to befollowed in translation:
The last character about who we can talk in this period of Translation theory before the twentieth century is Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher, who distinguishes two different types of translator working on two different types of text: the ‘Dolmetscher’, who translates commercial texts and the Übersetzer’, who works on scholarly and artistic texts. According to him there are two paths open for the ‘true’ translator “Either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him, or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer toward him", and he prefered to move the reader towards the writer (Foreignizing method). (Munday J. 2012).
We have a little preview of what the Translation have been through the years before the twentieth century, we noticed that gradually, the translation has been evolving, to become the discipline it is today, and which continues evolving constantly.
