Chapter 8

In a less exalted strain come suggestions that the translator's work is valuable enough to deserve some tangible recognition. Thomas Fortescue urges his reader to consider the case of workmen like himself, "assuring thyself that none in any sort do better deserve of their country, that none swink or sweat with like pain and anguish, that none in like sort hazard or adventure their credit, that none desire less stipend or salary for their travail, that none in fine are worse in this age recompensed."[265] Nicholas Udall presents detailed reasons why it is to be desired that "some able, worthy, and meet persons for doing such public benefit to the commonweal as translating of good works and writing of chronicles might by some good provision and means have some condign sustentation in the same."[266] "Besides," he argues, "that such a translator travaileth not to his own private commodity, but to the benefit and public use of his country: besides that the thing is such as must so thoroughly occupy and possess the doer, and must have him so attent to apply that same exercise only, that he may not during that season take in hand any other trade of business whereby to purchase his living: besides that the thing cannot be done without bestowing of long time, great watching, much pains, diligent study, no small charges, as well of meat, drink, books, as also of other necessaries, the labor self is of itself a more painful and more tedious thing than for a man to write or prosecute any argument of his own invention. A man hath his own invention ready at his own pleasure without lets or stops, to make such discourse as his argument requireth: but a translator must ... at every other word stay, and suspend both his cogitation and his pen to look upon his author, so that he might in equal time make thrice as much as he can be able to translate."

The belief present in the comment of both Fortescue and Udall that the work of the translator is of peculiar service to the state is expressed in connection with translations of every sort. Richard Taverner declares that he has been incited to put into English part of the _Chiliades_ of Erasmus by "the love I bear to the furtherance and adornment of my native country."[267] William Warde translates _The Secrets of Maister Alexis of Piemont_ in order that "as well Englishmen as Italians, Frenchmen, or Dutchmen may suck knowledge and profit hereof."[268] John Brende, in the Dedication of his _History of Quintus Curtius_, insists on the importance of historical knowledge, his appreciation of which has made him desire "that we Englishmen might be found as forward in that behalf as other nations, which have brought all worthy histories into their natural language."[269] Patriotic emulation of what has been done in other countries is everywhere present as a motive. Occasionally the Englishman shows that he has studied foreign translations for his own guidance. Adlington, in his preface to his rendering of _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, says that he does not follow the original in certain respects, "for so the French and Spanish translators have not done";[270] Hoby says of his translation of _The Courtier_, "I have endeavored myself to follow the very meaning and words of the author, without being misled by fantasy or leaving out any parcel one or other, whereof I know not how some interpreters of this book into other languages can excuse themselves, and the more they be conferred, the more it will perchance appear."[271] On the whole, however, the comment confines itself to general statements like that of Grimald, who in translating Cicero is endeavoring "to do likewise for my countrymen as Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and other foreigners have liberally done for theirs."[272] In spite of the remarkable output England lagged behind other countries. Lord Morley complains that the printing of a merry jest is more profitable than the putting forth of such excellent works as those of Petrarch, of which England has "very few or none, which I do lament in my heart, considering that as well in French as in the Italian (in the which both tongues I have some little knowledge) there is no excellent work in the Latin, but that straightway they set it forth in the vulgar."[273] Morley wrote in the early days of the movement for translation, but later translators made similar complaints. Hoby says in the preface to _The Courtier_: "In this point (I know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of all other nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves with an honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue not only the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient to have a perfect knowledge to no other end but to profit themselves and (as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less to close it up again." To the end of the century translation is encouraged or defended on the ground that it is a public duty. Thomas Danett is urged to translate the _History_ of Philip de Comines by certain gentlemen who think it "a great dishonor to our native land that so worthy a history being extant in all languages almost in Christendom should be suppressed in ours";[274] Chapman writes indignantly of Homer, "And if Italian, French, and Spanish have not made it dainty, nor thought it any presumption to turn him into their languages, but a fit and honorable labor and (in respect of their country's profit and their prince's credit) almost necessary, what curious, proud, and poor shamefastness should let an English muse to traduce him?"[275]

Besides all this, the translator's conception of his audience encouraged and guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend to the strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible, nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associated with them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact with the essential interests of mankind. The appeals on title pages and in prefaces to all kinds of people, from ladies and gentlemen of rank to the common and simple sort, not infrequently resemble the calculated praises of the advertiser, but admitting this, there still remains much that implies a simple confidence in the response of friendly readers. Rightly or wrongly, the translator presupposes for himself in many cases an audience far removed from academic preoccupations. Richard Eden, translating from the Spanish Martin Cortes' _Arte de Navigar_, says, "Now therefore this work of the Art of Navigation being published in our vulgar tongue, you may be assured to have more store of skilful pilots."[276] Golding's translations of Pomponius Mela and Julius Solinus Polyhistor are described as, "Right pleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers."[277] Hellowes, with an excess of rhetoric which takes from his convincingness, presents Guevara's _Familiar Epistles_ as teaching "rules for kings to rule, counselors to counsel, prelates to practise, captains to execute, soldiers to perform, the married to follow, the prosperous to prosecute, and the poor in adversity to be comforted, how to write and talk with all men in all matters at large."[278] Holland's honest simplicity gives greater weight to a similarly sweeping characterization of Pliny's _Natural History_ as "not appropriate to the learned only, but accommodate to the rude peasant of the country; fitted for the painful artisan in town or city; pertinent to the bodily health of man, woman, or child; and in one word suiting with all sorts of people living in a society and commonweal."[279] In the same preface the need for replying to those who oppose translation leads Holland to insist further on the practical applicability of his matter. Alternating his own with his critics' position, he writes: "It is a shame (quoth one) that _Livy_ speaketh English as he doth; Latinists only owe to be acquainted with him: as who should say the soldier were to have recourse to the university for military skill and knowledge, or the scholar to put on arms and pitch a camp. What should _Pliny_ (saith another) be read in English and the mysteries couched in his books divulged; as if the husbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, lapidary, and engraver, with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks or linguists for instructions in their several arts." Wilson's translation of Demosthenes, again, undertaken, it has been said, with a view to rousing a national resistance against Spain, is described on the title page as "most needful to be read in these dangerous days of all them that love their country's liberty."[280]

Naturally enough, however, especially in the case of translations from the Latin and Greek, the academic interest bulks largely in the audience, and sometimes makes an unexpected demand for recognition in the midst of the more practical appeal. Holland's _Pliny_, for example, addresses itself not only to peasants and artisans but to young students, who "by the light of the English ... shall be able more readily to go away with the dark phrase and obscure constructions of the Latin." Chapman, refusing to be burdened with a popular audience, begins a preface with the insidious compliment, "I suppose you to be no mere reader, since you intend to read Homer."[281] On the other hand, the academic reader, whether student or critic, is, if one accepts the translator's view, very much on the alert, anxious to confer the English version with the original, either that he may improve his own knowledge of the foreign language or that he may pick faults in the new rendering. Wilson attacks the critics as "drones and no bees, lubbers and no learners," but the fault he finds in these "croaking paddocks and manifest overweeners of themselves" is that they are "out of reason curious judges over the travail and painstaking of others" instead of being themselves producers.[282] Apparently there was little fear of the indifference which is more discouraging than hostile criticism, and though, as is to be expected, it is the hostile criticism that is most often reflected in prefaces, there must have been much kindly comment like that of Webbe, who, after discussing the relations of Phaer's _Virgil_ to the Latin, concludes, "There is not one book among the twelve which will not yield you most excellent pleasure in conferring the translation with the copy and marking the gallant grace which our English speech affordeth."[283]

Such encouragements and incentives are enough to awaken the envy of the modern translator. But the sixteenth century had also its peculiar difficulties. The English language was neither so rich in resources nor so carefully standardized as it has become of later times. It was often necessary, indeed, to defend it against the charge that it was not equal to translation. Pettie is driven to reply to those who oppose the use of the vernacular because "they count it barren, they count it barbarous, they count it unworthy to be accounted of."[284] Chapman says in his preface to _Achilles' Shield_: "Some will convey their imperfections under his Greek shield, and from thence bestow bitter arrows against the traduction, affirming their want of admiration grows from the defect of our language, not able to express the copiousness (coppie) and elegancy of the original." Richard Greenway, who translated the _Annals_ of Tacitus, admits cautiously that his medium is "perchance not so fit to set out a piece drawn with so curious a pencil."[285] One cannot, indeed, help recognizing that as compared with modern English Elizabethan English was weak in resources, limited in vocabulary, and somewhat uncertain in sentence structure. These disadvantages probably account in part for such explanations of the relative difficulty of translation as that of Nicholas Udall in his plea that translators should be suitably recompensed or that of John Brende in his preface to the translation of Quintus Curtius that "in translation a man cannot always use his own vein, but shall be compelled to tread in the author's steps, which is a harder and more difficult thing to do, than to walk his own pace."[286]

Of his difficulties with sentence structure the translator says little, a fact rather surprising to the modern reader, conscious as he is of the awkwardness of the Elizabethan sentence. Now and then, however, he hints at the problems which have arisen in the handling of the Latin period. Udall writes of his translation of Erasmus: "I have in some places been driven to use mine own judgment in rendering the true sense of the book, to speak nothing of a great number of sentences, which by reason of so many members, or parentheses, or digressions as have come in places, are so long that unless they had been somewhat divided, they would have been too hard for an unlearned brain to conceive, much more hard to contain and keep it still."[287] Adlington, the translator of _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, says, "I have not so exactly passed through the author as to point every sentence exactly as it is in the Latin."[288] A comment of Foxe on his difficulty in translating contemporary English into Latin suggests that he at least was conscious of the weakness of the English sentence as compared with the Latin. Writing to Peter Martyr of his Latin version of the controversy between Cranmer and Gardiner, he says of the latter: "In his periods, for the most part, he is so profuse, that he seems twice to forget himself, rather than to find his end. The whole phrase hath in effect that structure that consisting for the most part of relatives, it refuses almost all the grace of translation."[289]

Though the question of sentence structure was not given prominence, the problem of rectifying deficiencies in vocabulary touched the translator very nearly. The possibility of augmenting the language was a vital issue in the reign of Elizabeth, but it had a peculiar significance where translation was concerned. Here, if anywhere, the need for a large vocabulary was felt, and in translations many new words first made their appearance. Sir Thomas Elyot early made the connection between translation and the movement for increase in vocabulary. In the _Proheme_ to _The Knowledge which maketh a wise man_ he explains that in _The Governor_ he intended "to augment the English tongue, whereby men should ... interpret out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue into English."[290] Later in the century Peele praises the translator Harrington,

... well-letter'd and discreet, That hath so purely naturalized Strange words, and made them all free denizens,[291]

and--to go somewhat outside the period--the fourth edition of Bullokar's _English Expositor_, originally designed to teach "the interpretation of the hardest words used in our language," is recommended on the ground that those who know no language but the mother tongue, but "are yet studiously desirous to read those learned and elegant treatises which from their native original have been rendered English (of which sort, thanks to the company of painful translators we have not a few) have here a volume fit for their purposes, as carefully designed for their assistance."[292]

Whether, however, the translator should be allowed to add to the vocabulary and what methods he should employ were questions by no means easy of settlement. As in Caxton's time, two possible means of acquiring new words were suggested, naturalization of foreign words and revival of words from older English sources. Against the first of these methods there was a good deal of prejudice. Grimald in his preface to his translation of Cicero's _De Officiis_, protests against the translation that is "uttered with inkhorn terms and not with usual words." Other critics are more specific in their condemnation of non-English words. Puttenham complains that Southern, in translating Ronsard's French rendering of Pindar's hymns and Anacreon's odes, "doth so impudently rob the French poet both of his praise and also of his French terms, that I cannot so much pity him as be angry with him for his injurious dealing, our said maker not being ashamed to use these French words, _freddon_, _egar_, _suberbous_, _filanding_, _celest_, _calabrois_, _thebanois_ and a number of others, which have no manner of conformity with our language either by custom or derivation which may make them tolerable."[293] Richard Willes, in his preface to the 1577 edition of Eden's _History of Travel in the West and East Indies_, says that though English literature owes a large debt to Eden, still "many of his English words cannot be excused in my opinion for smelling too much of the Latin."[294] The list appended is not so remote from the modern English vocabulary as that which Puttenham supplies. Willes cites "_dominators_, _ponderous_, _ditionaries_, _portentous_, _antiques_, _despicable_, _solicitate_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_, with other such like, in the stead of _lords_, _weighty_, _subjects_, _wonderful_, _ancient_, _low_, _careful_, _dutiful_, _man-slaughter_, _drunken_, _noisome_, _monstrous_, &c." Yet there were some advocates of the use of foreign words. Florio admits with mock humility that he has employed "some uncouth terms as _entraine_, _conscientious_, _endear_, _tarnish_, _comport_, _efface_, _facilitate_, _amusing_, _debauching_, _regret_, _effort_, _emotion_, and such like," and continues, "If you like them not, take others most commonly set by them to expound them, since they were set to make such likely French words familiar with our English, which may well bear them,"[295] a contention which modern usage supports. Nicholas Udall pronounces judicially in favor of both methods of enriching the language. "Some there be," he says, "which have a mind to renew terms that are now almost worn clean out of use, which I do not disallow, so it be done with judgment. Some others would ampliate and enrich their native tongue with more vocables, which also I commend, if it be aptly and wittily assayed. So that if any other do innovate and bring up to me a word afore not used or not heard, I would not dispraise it: and that I do attempt to bring it into use, another man should not cavil at."[296] George Pettie also defends the use of inkhorn terms. "Though for my part," he says, "I use those words as little as any, yet I know no reason why I should not use them, for it is indeed the ready way to enrich our tongue and make it copious."[297] On the whole, however, it was safer to advocate the formation of words from Anglo-Saxon sources. Golding says of his translation of Philip of Mornay: "Great care hath been taken by forming and deriving of fit names and terms out of the fountains of our own tongue, though not altogether most usual yet always conceivable and easy to be understood; rather than by usurping Latin terms, or by borrowing the words of any foreign language, lest the matters, which in some cases are mystical enough of themselves by reason of their own profoundness, might have been made more obscure to the unlearned by setting them down in terms utterly unknown to them."[298] Holland says in the preface to his translation of Livy: "I framed my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a mean and popular style. Wherein if I have called again into use some old words, let it be attributed to the love of my country's language." Even in this matter of vocabulary, it will be noted, there was something of the stimulus of patriotism, and the possibility of improving his native tongue must have appealed to the translator's creative power. Phaer, indeed, alleges as one of his motives for translating Virgil "defence of my country's language, which I have heard discommended of many, and esteemed of some to be more than barbarous."[299]

Convinced, then, that his undertaking, though difficult, meant much both to the individual and to the state, the translator gladly set about making some part of the great field of foreign literature, ancient and modern, accessible to English readers. Of the technicalities of his art he has a good deal to say. At a time when prefaces and dedications so frequently established personal relations between author and audience, it was natural that the translator also should take his readers into his confidence regarding his aims and methods. His comment, however, is largely incidental. Generally it is applicable only to the work in hand; it does not profess to be a statement, even on a small scale, of what translation in general ought to be. There is no discussion in English corresponding to the small, but comprehensive treatise on _La manière de bien traduire d'une langue en autre_ which Étienne Dolet published at Lyons in 1540. This casual quality is evidenced by the peculiar way in which prefaces in different editions of the same book appear and disappear for no apparent reason, possibly at the convenience of the printer. It is scarcely fair to interpret as considered, deliberate formulation of principles, utterances so unpremeditated and fragmentary. The theory which accompanies secular translation is much less clear and consecutive than that which accompanies the translation of the Bible. Though in the latter case the formulation of theories of translation was almost equally incidental, respect for the original, repeated experiment, and constant criticism and discussion united to make certain principles take very definite shape. Secular translation produced nothing so homogeneous. The existence of so many translators, working for the most part independently of each other, resulted in a confused mass of comment whose real value it is difficult to estimate. It is true that the new scholarship with its clearer estimate of literary values and its appreciation of the individual's proprietary rights in his own writings made itself strongly felt in the sphere of secular translation and introduced new standards of accuracy, new definitions of the latitude which might be accorded the translator; but much of the old freedom in handling material, with the accompanying vagueness as to the limits of the translator's function, persisted throughout the time of Elizabeth.

In many cases the standards recognized by sixteenth-century translators were little more exacting than those of the medieval period. With many writers adequate recognition of source was a matter of choice rather than of obligation. The English translator might make suitable attribution of a work to its author and he might undertake to reproduce its substance in its entirety, but he might, on the other hand, fail to acknowledge any indebtedness to a predecessor or he might add or omit material, since he was governed apparently only by the extent of his own powers or by his conception of what would be most pleasing or edifying to his readers. To the theory of his art he gave little serious consideration. He did not attempt to analyse the style of the source which he had chosen. If he praised his author, it was in the conventional language of compliment, which showed no real discrimination and which, one suspects, often disguised mere advertising. His estimate of his own capabilities was only the repetition of the medieval formula, with its profession of inadequacy for the task and its claim to have used simple speech devoid of rhetorical ornament. That it was nothing but a formula was recognized at the time and is good-naturedly pointed out in the words of Harrington: "Certainly if I should confess or rather profess that my verse is unartificial, the style rude, the phrase barbarous, the metre unpleasant, many more would believe it to be so than would imagine that I thought them so."[300]