UTF-8__0415396417Translation

ISSUES IN TRANSLATION STUDIESthe source text (ST) itself. This also meant that he became aware of themany differences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint, realizing that theSeptuagint was, indeed, a highly edited version. As far as general translationstrategy was concerned, in his famous and lengthy letter to Pammachius(Jerome 395 CE, in Robinson 1997a: 23–30), Jerome defends himself againstaccusations of errors. Calling on the authority of Cicero, Horace and otherClassical authors, and providing a judicious caveat for the sensitive area ofreligious texts, the letter includes the now-famous description of its author’sstrategy:Now I not only admit but freely announce that in translating from the Greek –except of course in the case of the Holy Scripture, where even the syntax is amystery – I render, not word for word, but sense for sense.(Jerome 395/1997: 25)In Western Europe this word-for-word versus sense-for-sense debate continuedin one form or another until the twentieth century (see Chapter 2).The centrality of the Bible to translation also explains the enduring theoreticalquestions about accuracy and fidelity to a fixed source.Some 1100 years after St Jerome, in the religious Reformation of thesixteenth century, translation most clearly showed itself as a political weaponin Europe. Against the fierce opposition of the Church, the Bible was finallytranslated into vernacular languages and some of those translators set outclear translation strategies. Prominent among these was Martin Luther, in hisSendbrief vom Dolmetschen (‘Circular letter on translation’) of 1530, defendinghis Bible translation into a modern German that was clear and everydayrather than elitist (Luther 1530/1963).Any attempted summary of historical writings on translation wouldinevitably be extremely selective and, given the space constraints of the volumeand this chapter, overly brief. For this reason, the reader is directed to the following,which can be used as starting points for research: Robinson (1997a)for a compilation of extracts from prefaces and other writings of 90 majorfigures Kelly (1979) and Rener (1989), see below for a discussion on the practiceand theory from Classical to pre-modern times; Baker and Malmkjær(1998) and Baker and Saldanha (2008) for a brief overview of many traditions;Lefevere (1977) for the German tradition from Luther; Berman(1992) for the German Romantic tradition; Amos (1920/73), T. Steiner (1975),Venuti (1995/2008), Classe (2000) and France (2000) for the English tradition;Ellis (2003), Braden et al. (2004), Gillespie and Hopkins (2005), Franceand Haynes (2006) and Venuti (forthcoming) for a five-volume history of literarytranslation in English; G. Steiner (1975/98) for an attempt at a general(European) theory of translation. It is important to remark, however, on thehistorical dominance of writings by men: in Robinson’s Western TranslationTheory from Herodotus to Nietzsche (1997), only nine of the 90 extracted3