WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

difficult to transliterate and then define the term. Instead, he translates “incomensurabile” into
“imeete” because this type of translation literally repeats the textual traditions surrounding the
term “incomensurabile.” This explains why Trevisa goes beyond Giles and adds the term
“quadrate” to his commentary. Like Bardwardine, Trevisa does not have a narrow conception of
numbers nor does he believe that this geometric proof needs exact terminology to be understood.
Rather, he uses the word “quadrate” to allude to the Aristotelian tradition of interpreting the
proportion of “numeri ad numerum” ‘of number to number’ although such a tradition would be
illegible to vernacular ears.
In preferring a sign’s habitat over its ability to convey an idea, Trevisa employs quotidian
English terms in non-quotidian uses. When he explains that the side of a square is not “imeete”
by its diagonal, he does not wish his readers to think that a square’s diameter “is not measured”
by its sides but, rather, that it is “incommensurable” with them. Trevisa’s English does not
translate a Latin concept into English idiom but tries to fit an English concept into a Latinate
word. His commentary, therefore, works against Copeland and Somerset’s idea that, by
translating, one can disseminate knowledge across unbridgeable linguistic traditions. Trevisa’s
translation uses signs in their lexical habitat and not in their conceptual meanings. He does not
do this to render Latinate concepts in idiomatic or palpable English but to inhabit the Aristotelian
origin of this proof with exactitude and accuracy. Through this “literal translation,” Trevisa not
only manages to give us a true geometrical axiom, but he manages to do so in a way which
makes English a suitable language for expressing it without diluting its original Latinate syntax.
Trevisa’s “literal translation” has no concern with teaching a Latinate concept to a
vernacular audience or in using signs to convey an ideal “menyng.” If Trevisa means what he
writes, he would not only provide an incorrect explanation of a concept, but also, in providing a
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