By : Lucy Mackintosh
The Role of the translator, officially and literally, is to translate texts. They are sometimes mentioned in the prologues or introductions to texts, but beyond that, they are not recognizable stylistically or otherwise. Translators who do have a prologue, though, are called “everytranslators,” a not so subtle reference to Everyman, because there is a “clearly drawn clerkly figure introducing the work to an audience, providing an accessible way into a foreign text” (Dearnley, 104). Everyman has no real narrator, but similar to the role of translators, a person is telling the whole story, knowing every detail of the workings of the person or thing. Translators are extremely educated people, and in medieval periods, they were supposed to know several languages, including Greek and Latin, and they had a system for translations so that there was consistency among many different works of the same era or multiple translations of the same text by different translators.
One of the questions we need to ask is the ethical validity of a translator; especially today, when translators translate older texts–as opposed to medieval times, when translators were editors and transcribers as well–they are essentially profiting off of the works of others, and putting in their own interpretations into the texts they translate: “The reflexive act of folding a theory back on itself through translation reflects something about the translator herself, her interpretation of the texts translated and her view of translation” (Kadiu, 148). They obviously are not taking credit for the work of others, but, especially in translating to English, translators have a wide range of words to choose from, each having a specific connotation that can change the way a person reads the text; by having this range of options, many translators are able to set in their own beliefs and interpretations subtly into a certain text.
Translations can also change due to religion in the dominant country of the language being translated to; when Paradise Lost by John Milton was translated into Russian, it was turned into essentially a prose text, and anything that contradicted with the Russian Orthodox church was snipped out: “Most of the poetic imagery has disappeared, and the work is considerably reduced in volume” (Manning, 175). This censorship in translation damages the impact of a work, especially one as critically influential as Paradise Lost.
Famous people often translate texts, giving them a seemingly second life as they are adapted because people will read works from these authors: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf were btoh translated by J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, in 1925 and ‘26 respectively; The Odyssey was translated by English poet Alexander Pope in 1725; Jorge Luis Borges, 20th century Argentine author and poet, translated texts of famous authors, ranging from Oscar Wilde to Virginia Woolfe to Edgar Allen Poe, into Spanish before establishing himself as an author in the canon of literature. If the reader sees that their favorite fantasy author has translated some medieval text from the early 15th century, they might be more inclined to read it, than if, say, they happen upon it in an anthology or in a book store without a known author.
Of course, more texts than not are translated by people not wishing for fame, but they are still making money off of the work of others, arguably for the greater good, since works become more accessible when they are translated and transcribed over time. Thankfully, in the 21st century, medievalists are working on getting the language of medieval texts as close to what the original meaning and sound would be as opposed to making them the most colloquial or changing the meanings drastically.
Further Reading
More on Jorge Luis Borges as a translator here
More on the history of translation here
Evolution of the English language here
Works Cited
“Conclusion: Towards Self-Critical Engagement in Translation.” Reflexive Translation Studies: Translation as Critical Reflection, by Silvia Kadiu, UCL Press, London, 2019, pp. 145–162. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6q5315.11.
“The Figure of the Translator.” Translators and Their Prologues in Medieval England, by Elizabeth Dearnley, NED – New edition ed., Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY, USA, 2016, pp. 97–139. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt1c3gxnt.10.
Manning, Clarence A. “A Russian Translation of Paradise Lost.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 13, no. 37, 1934, pp. 173–176. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4202967.