WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND: TRANSLATIONS WITHOUT MEANING
“For every translation of a work at a specific point in the history of language represents, with respect to a specific
aspect of its content, translation into all other languages. Thus translation transplants the original into an—
ironically—more ultimate linguistic domain, since it cannot be displaced from it by any further translation, but only
raised into it anew and in other parts” 325 —Walter Benjamin.
“For to make þis translacion cleer and pleyn to be knowe and vnderstond, in som place Y schal sette word vor word
and actyue vor actyue and passiue vor passyue arewe ryзt as a stondeþ withoute changyng of þe ordere of wordes.
But yn som place Y mot change þe rewe and þe ordre of wordes…Bote vor al such chaungyng, þe menyng schal
stonde and noзt be ychanged” 326 —John of Trevisa.
It is commonly thought that translation is possible because, ideally, people wish to say
what they mean—that what they say could be said in some perfect setting. The basic premise, as
Walter Benjamin explains it, is that signs can be exchanged across languages because meaning
and linguistic structures are intrinsically related into an “ultimate linguistic domain.” Therefore,
it is difficult to think that I could translate a text, like John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, by not
tying its linguistic syntax to meaning—that translation would be possible when what I mean is
not what I say in the same manner that I could narrate history without meaning to represent truth
through signs. Taking a quick glance at John of Trevisa’s prefatory letter to Ranulf Higden’s
Polychronicon, we would think that Benjamin’s reflections had some basis in the medieval
understanding of translation. In his efforts to make a “cleer and pleyn” translation, Trevisa
claims that he will sometimes “sette word vor word and actyue vor actyue” from Latin to English
or, at others, “change þe rewe and þe ordre of wordes.” Trevisa’s statements suggest that an ideal
“cleer and pleyn” use of language directly ties “menyng” to syntax and “truth” to signs.
From this Prologue, Trevisa’s attitude towards translation seems governed by its
relationship to rhetoric. His description of literal translation as “word vor word” repeats the
325
Walter Benjamin, “The Translator’s Task,” TTR: traduction, terminologie, redaction, trans. Steven Rendall 10. 2
(1997): 158.
326
Qtd. in Ronald Waldron, “Trevisa’s Original Prefaces On Translation: A Critical Edition,” Medieval English
Studies Presented to George Kane, eds. Edward Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph Wittig (Suffolk: St.
Edmunsbury Press, 1988) 294.
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