"Translation and the Repayment of Debt"
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Abstract
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The paper discusses the nature of translation through historical and sociological lenses, focusing particularly on Cicero's metaphor of translation as a monetary transaction. It argues that translation should be understood not just as a linguistic task but as an activity embedded within socio-economic contexts that shape the way translations are created and consumed. The analysis highlights the influence of bourgeois culture on translation practices, noting how economic needs dictate the form and presentation of translations to different social classes.
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مجلة آداب البصرة, 2015
St. Jerome's major contribution to the field of translation is his introduction of the terms word-for-word and sense-for-sense. These two terms were later to be adopted by many translators, opening the heated debates in the coming centuries. Though the terms dated back to Cicero and Horace, St. Jerome is still credited for kindling the argument. The purpose of this paper is to examine how St. Jerome, through his letter to Pammachius (Letter 57) entitled "On the Best Method of Translation, approached the word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation, what difficulties the translators face when translating, and how aimed at reinforcing the reasons behind his new Latin translation of the Old and New Testaments: the Vulgate.
Perspectives, 2013
2014
In my dissertation I argue that Roman translators promote themselves and their work by programmatic statements that indicate a relationship with a source author. Whereas the traditional understanding of translations has focused on ad uerbum and ad sensum translations, I deemphasize the binary division between ad uerbum and ad sensum translations since these terms are insufficient for appreciating the roles that translation can play in a literary system. By focusing on the statements of translators rather than the form of the translations, I elevate the translator as an agent who evaluates his socio-literary conditions and develops a response that capitalizes on those conditions. I argue that there are three different styles of promotion that the Roman translator uses: the source-representative, the allusive, and the independent. The source-representative translator associates himself closely with the source, establishing his translation as the primary avenue to an accurate representation of a foreign author. The allusive translator strengthens his own position as an artist and asserts his own creative ability by encouraging comparison with established writers before distinctively embedding his own original material into the translation. Finally, the independent translator rejects the authority of the source author and endorses himself as more knowledgeable than the source. My first chapter contextualizes the statements of Roman translators by examining similar statements from post-Classical translators who promote their own form of translation as the superior way in which to access the source author. In my second chapter I analyze sourcerepresentative translation in Livius Andronicus' Odusia and Ennius' Annales. Chapter 3 reviews source-representative translation in Roman comedy with a focus on how Terence uses his translations to displace the drama of Plautus. In my fourth chapter I address allusive translation by showing how Catullus symbolically rejects translation and how Horace advertises his poetry as Roman songs played on a Greek instrument. In my final chapter, which concentrates on independent translation, I discuss how Cicero advertises his role as a judicious translator whose translation enhances and even replaces the source work. In each chapter I identify the programmatic statements that the translator uses to encourage the acceptance of his translation.
American, British and Canadian Studies Journal, 2014
Translation has been essential to the development of languages and cultures throughout the centuries, particularly in the early modern period when it became a cornerstone of the process of transition from Latin to vernacular productions, in such countries as France, Italy, England and Spain. This process was accompanied by a growing interest in defining the rules and features of the practice of translation. The present article aims to examine the principles that underlay the highly intertextual early modern translation theory by considering its classical sources and development. It focuses on subjects that were constantly reiterated in any discussion about translation: the debate concerning the best methods of translation, the sense-for-sense/ word-for-word dichotomy - a topos that can be traced to the discourse on translation initiated by Cicero and Horace and was further developed by the Church fathers, notably St. Jerome, and eventually inherited by both medieval and Renaissance ...
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Medium Ævum, 2022
A note identifying Cicero’s De natura deorum as a hidden source for part of Study's speech in William Langland’s Piers Plowman.
A detailed examination of CIcero's personal motivation to write philosophical works as a result of his bereavement. The paper argues that Cicero's translation / transformation of Greek philosophy into Latin is part of his grief-work.
Classical Philology, 2009
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