Early Theories of Translation Part 8

Martin accuses the English translators of interpreting such words in their "etymological" sense, and consulting profane writers, Homer, Pliny, Tully, Virgil,[226] for their meaning, instead of observing the ecclesiastical use, which he calls "the usual taking thereof in all vulgar speech and writing."[227] Fulke admits part of Martin's claim: "We have also answered before that words must not always be translated according to their original and general signification, but according to such signification as by use they are appropried to be taken. We agree also, that words taken by custom of speech into an ecclesiastical meaning are not to be altered into a strange or profane signification."[228] But ecclesiastical authority is not always a safe guide. "How the fathers of the church have used words, it is no rule for translators of the scriptures to follow; who oftentimes used words as the people did take them, and not as they signified in the apostles'

time."[229] In difficult cases there is a peculiar advantage in consulting profane writers, "who used the words most indifferently in respect of our controversies of which they were altogether ignorant."[230] Fulke refuses to be reduced to accept entirely either the "common" or the "etymological" interpretation. "A translator that hath regard to interpret for the ignorant people's instruction, may sometimes depart from the etymology or common signification or precise turning of word for word, and that for divers causes."[231] To one principle, however, he will commit himself: the translator must observe common English usage. "We are not lords of the common speech of men," he writes, "for if we were, we would teach them to use their terms more properly; but seeing we cannot change the use of speech, we follow Aristotle's counsel, which is to speak and use words as the common people useth."[232] Consequently ecclesiastical must always give way to popular usage. "Our meaning is not, that if any Greek terms, or words of any other language, have of long time been usurped in our English language, the true meaning of which is unknown at this day to the common people, but that the same terms may be either in translation or exposition set out plainly, to inform the simplicity of the ignorant, by such words as of them are better understood. Also when those terms are abused by custom of speech, to signify some other thing than they were first appointed for, or else to be taken ambiguously for divers things, we ought not to be superst.i.tious in these cases, but to avoid misunderstanding we may use words according to their original signification, as they were taken in such time as they were written by the instruments of the Holy Ghost."[233]

Fulke's support of the claims of the English language is not confined to general statements. Acquaintance with other languages has given him a definite conception of the properties of his own, even in matters of detail. He resents the importation of foreign idiom. "If you ask for the readiest and most proper English of these words, I must answer you, 'an image, a wors.h.i.+pper of images, and wors.h.i.+pping of images,' as we have sometimes translated. The other that you would have, 'idol, idolater, and idolatry,' be rather Greekish than English words; which though they be used by many Englishmen, yet are they not understood of all as the other be."[234] "You ... avoid the names of elders, calling them ancients, and the wise men sages, as though you had rather speak French than English, as we do; like as you translate _confide_, 'have a good heart,' after the French phrase, rather than you would say as we do, 'be of good comfort.'"[235] Though he admits that English as compared with older languages is defective in vocabulary, he insists that this cannot be remedied by unwarranted coinage of words. "That we have no greater change of words to answer so many of the Hebrew tongue, it is of the riches of that tongue, and the poverty of our mother language, which hath but two words, image and idol, and both of them borrowed of the Latin and Greek: as for other words equivalent, we know not any, and we are loth to make any new words of that signification, except the mult.i.tude of Hebrew words of the same sense coming together do sometimes perhaps seem to require it. Therefore as the Greek hath fewer words to express this thing than the Hebrew, so hath the Latin fewer than the Greek, and the English fewest of all, as will appear if you would undertake to give us English words for the thirteen Hebrew words: except you would coin such ridiculous inkhorn terms, as you do in the New Testament, Azymes, prepuce, neophyte, sandale, parasceve, and such like."[236] "When you say 'evangelized,' you do not translate, but feign a new word, which is not understood of mere English ears."[237]

Fulke describes himself as never having been "of counsel with any that translated the scriptures into English,"[238] but his works were regarded with respect, and probably had considerable influence on the version of 1611.[239] Ironically enough, they did much to familiarize the revisers with the Rhemish version and its merits. On the other hand, Fulke's own views had a distinct value. Though on some points he is narrowly conservative, and though some of the words which he condemns have established themselves in the language nevertheless most of his ideas regarding linguistic usage are remarkably sound, and, like those of More, commend themselves to modern opinion.

Between the translators of the Bible and the translators of other works there were few points of contact. Though similar problems confronted both groups, they presented themselves in different guises. The question of increasing the vocabulary, for example, is in the case of biblical translation so complicated by the theological connotation of words as to require a treatment peculiar to itself. Translators of the Bible were scarcely ever translators of secular works and vice versa. The chief link between the two kinds of translation is supplied by the metrical versions of the Psalms. Such verse translations were counted of sufficient importance to engage the efforts of men like Parker and Coverdale, influential in the main course of Bible translation. Men like Thomas Norton, the translator of Calvin's _Inst.i.tutes_, Richard Stanyhurst, the translator of _Virgil_, and others of greater literary fame, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Milton, Bacon, experimented, as time went on, with these metrical renderings. The list even includes the name of King James.[240]

At first there was some idea of creating for such songs a vogue in England like that which the similar productions of Marot had enjoyed at the French court. Translators felt free to choose what George Wither calls "easy and pa.s.sionate Psalms," and, if they desired, create "elegant-seeming paraphrases ... trimmed ... up with rhetorical ill.u.s.trations (suitable to their fancies, and the changeable garb of affected language)."[241] The expectations of courtly approbation were, however, largely disappointed, but the metrical Psalms came, in time, to have a wider and more democratic employment. Complete versions of the Psalms in verse came to be regarded as a suitable accompaniment to the Bible, until in the Scottish General a.s.sembly of 1601 the proposition for a new translation of the Bible was accompanied by a parallel proposition for a correction of the Psalms in metre.[242]

Besides this general realization of the practical usefulness of these versions in divine service, there was in some quarters an appreciation of the peculiar literary quality of the Psalms which tended to express itself in new attempts at translation. Arthur Golding, though not himself the author of a metrical version, makes the following comment: "For whereas the other parts of holy writ (whether they be historical, moral, judicial, ceremonial, or prophetical) do commonly set down their treatises in open and plain declaration: this part consisting of them all, wrappeth up things in types and figures, describing them under borrowed personages, and oftentimes winding in matters of prevention, speaking of things to come as if they were past or present, and of things past as if they were in doing, and every man is made a betrayer of the secrets of his own heart. And forasmuch as it consisteth chiefly of prayer and thanksgiving, or (which comprehendeth them both) of invocation, which is a communication with G.o.d, and requireth rather an earnest and devout lifting up of the mind than a loud or curious utterance of the voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many broken speeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed, was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interrupted with vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity, that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by interminding G.o.d's former promises and benefits."[243] George Wither finds that the style of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of the Muses," he declares, "in which the Psalms were originally written, is not so properly expressed in the prose dialect as in verse." "I have used some variety of verse," he explains, "because prayers, praises, lamentations, triumphs, and subjects which are pastoral, heroical, elegiacal, and mixed (all which are found in the Psalms) are not properly expressed in one sort of measure."[244]

Besides such perception of the general poetic quality of the Psalms as is found in Wither's comment, there was some realization that metrical elements were present in various books of Scripture. Jerome, in his _Preface to Job_, had called attention to this,[245] but the regular translators, whose references to Jerome, though frequent, are somewhat vague, apparently made nothing of the suggestion. Elsewhere, however, there was an attempt to justify the inclusion of translations of the Psalms among other metrical experiments. Googe, defending the having of the Psalms in metre, declares that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other parts of the Bible "were written by the first authors in perfect and pleasant hexameter verses."[246] Stanyhurst[247] and Fraunce[248] both tried putting the Psalms into English hexameters. There was, however, no accurate knowledge of the Hebrew verse system. The preface to the American _Bay Psalm Book_, published in 1640,[249] explains that "The psalms are penned in such verses as are suitable to the poetry of the Hebrew language, and not in the common style of such other books of the Old Testament as are not poetical.... Then, as all our English songs (according to the course of our English poetry) do run in metre, so ought David's psalms to be translated into metre, that we may sing the Lord's songs, as in our English tongue so in such verses as are familiar to an English ear, which are commonly metrical." It is not possible to reproduce the Hebrew metres. "As the Lord hath hid from us the Hebrew tunes, lest we should think ourselves bound to imitate them; so also the course and frame (for the most part) of their Hebrew poetry, that we might not think ourselves bound to imitate that, but that every nation without scruple might follow as the grave sort of tunes of their own country, so the graver sort of verses of their own country's poetry."

This had already become the common solution of the difficulty, so that even Wither keeps to the kinds of verse used in the old Psalm books in order that the old tunes may be used.

But though the metrical versions of the Psalms often inclined to doggerel, and though they probably had little, if any, influence on the Authorized Version, they made their own claims to accuracy, and even after the appearance of the King James Bible sometimes demanded attention as improved renderings. George Wither, for example, believes that in using verse he is being more faithful to the Hebrew than are the prose translations. "There is," he says, "a poetical emphasis in many places, which requires such an alteration in the grammatical expression, as will seem to make some difference in the judgment of the common reader; whereas it giveth best life to the author's intention; and makes that perspicuous which was made obscure by those mere grammatical interpreters, who were not acquainted with the proprieties and liberties of this kind of writing." His version is, indeed, "so easy to be understood, that some readers have confessed, it hath been instead of a comment unto them in sundry hard places." His rendering is not based merely on existing English versions; he has "the warrant of best Hebrew grammarians, the authority of the Septuagint, and Chaldean paraphrase, the example of the ancient and of the best modern prose translators, together with the general practice and allowance of all orthodox expositors." Like Wither, other translators went back to original sources and made their verse renderings real exercises in translation rather than mere variations on the accepted English text. From this point of view their work had perhaps some value; and though it seems regrettable that practically nothing of permanent literary importance should have resulted from such repeated experiments, they are interesting at least as affording some connection between the sphere of the regular translators and the literary world outside.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] _Preface to Genesis_, in Pollard, _Records of the English Bible_, p.

94.

[156] Pollard, p. 266.

[157] _Ibid._, p. 112.

[158] _Ibid._, p. 187.

[159] _Ibid._, p. 205.

[160] Coverdale, _Prologue_ to Bible of 1535.

[161] Pollard, p. 196.

[162] _Ibid._, p. 259.

[163] _Ibid._, p. 365.

[164] _Ibid._, p. 360.

[165] Pollard, p. 220.

[166] _Ibid._, p. 239.

[167] _Ibid._, p. 163.

[168] _Ibid._, p. 126.

[169] _Ibid._, p. 203.

[170] _Ibid._, p. 371.

[171] Pollard, p. 280.

[172] Pollard, p. 241.

[173] Strype, _Life of Parker_, London, 1711, p. 536.

[174] For a further account of Aelfric's theories, see Chapter I.

[175] _The Psalter translated by Richard Rolle of Hampole_, ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884.

[176] Chapter 15, in Pollard, _Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse_.

[177] _Prologue_, Chapter 15.

[178] _Prologue to the New Testament_, printed in Matthew's Bible, 1551.

[179] Strype, _Life of Parker_, p. 208.

[180] Pollard, p. 116.

[181] Preface to _The Obedience of a Christian Man_, in _Doctrinal Treatises_, Parker Society, 1848, p. 390.

[182] Pollard, p. 211.

[183] _Ibid._, p. 277.

[184] _Ibid._, p. 306.

[185] _Life of Cheke_, p. 212.

[186] Strype, _Life of Parker_, p. 404.

[187] Pollard, p. 361.

[188] Fulke, _Defence_, Parker Society, p. 552.

[189] _Defence_, p. 552.

[190] _Ibid._, p. 97.

[191] _Ibid._, p. 408.

[192] Pollard, p. 375.

[193] E.g., Fulke, _Defence_, p. 163.

[194] Pollard, p. 349.