4 - The Figure of the Translator

Summary

THE BASIC PROCEDURES of medieval translators, in England and elsewhere, are often as obscure as their names. Where did translators find their source texts? Where did they work (at desks, at writing boards, on wax, on slate?) and how did they arrange their exemplars while they worked? In the case of those translating French into English, were they native French speakers or had they acquired the language at a later date?

This chapter turns to the figure of the translator, considering how this individual was conceptualised relative to those carrying out other types of writing activity, and attempting to ascertain what more can be said about the kinds of people carrying out translation. Some of the answers to these questions may seem to be given in the prologues in the corpus, which at various points offer apparent nuggets of biographical detail, references to the practicalities of obtaining exemplars, or comments on the relationship between oral and written transmission in the composition and translation of a text. However, it is also necessary to supplement clues contained in prologues with broader manuscript, archaeological and other historical evidence. Comparing these descriptions with what is known about the historical practice of translation allows for an exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and reality, suggesting what prologues might reveal, or conceal, about the working methods of translators.

In addition to examining the verbal self-portraits provided in prologues, I will also examine the pictorial depiction of translators in illuminated manuscripts, where author portraits can function as a visual complement to a prologue, and discuss the extent to which an iconography of translation can be identified. The role played by oral transmission in medieval translation and the frequent opposition of ‘clerks’ and ‘minstrels’ in medieval descriptions of composition will also be examined for what they might reveal about the combined use of oral and written sources in translating texts, or the possibilities of a collaborative approach to translation. The Middle English translator's acquisition of French, which is a large topic in itself, is addressed in the next chapter.