I.

Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (1st Century BCE) may be considered
as one of the most influential thinkers in Western
civilization. He was a politician , lawyer and consul.
Moreover, he was a historian and a man of great literary
and philosophical achievements. Cicero is also considered
as one of Rome's greatest orators and prose writers.
According to Merriam-Webster (Wikipedia: Cicero) "His
influence on the Latin language was so immense that the
subsequent history of prose, not only in Latin but in
European languages up to the 19th century, was said to be
either a reaction against or a return to his style". Michael
Grant (ibid.) believes that "the influence of Cicero upon the
history of European literature and ideas greatly exceeds that
of any other prose writer in any language". It was Cicero
who introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek
philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary
distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher.

In translation studies, Cicero is often considered the

starting point to refer to in ancient writings about
translation which, though very much influential, are
considered non-academic in our modern sense of academia.
Cicero is credited for coining the term word for word
translation in his De optimo genere oratoum (The Best Kind
of Orator) through saying that in translating from Greek to
Latin "I did not think I ought to count them out to the
reader like coins, but to pay them in weight (Douglas
Robinson, ed. 2002:9).The counting of words is to be
understood as different from the weighing of words. While
the first may be taken to stand for literal translation, the
latter expresses sense-for-sense translation.

Cicero's own translation strategy is firmly expressed in

introducing his translations of the speeches of the Attic
orators Aeschines and Demosthenes saying:

And I did not translate them as an Interpreter, but

as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or
as one might say, the 'figures' of thought, but In
language which conforms to our usage. And In so
doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word for
word, but I preserved the general style and force of
the language (in Munday, 2010: 19).

Other versions of the above quotation run with slight

differences as follows:

And I have not translated them as a literal

interpreter, but as an orator giving the same ideas
in the same form and mould as it were, in words
conformable to our manners; in doing which I did
not consider it necessary to give word for word, but
I have preserved the character and energy of the
language throughout. For I did not consider that my
duty was to render to the reader the precise number
of words, but rather to give him all their weight.
And this labour of mine will have this result, that
by it our countrymen may understand what to
require of those who wish to be accounted Attic
speakers, and that they may recall them to, as it
were, an acknowledged standard of eloquence (C.D.
Young, tr. Cicero on the Best Styles of Orators).
The quotations above show very clearly Cicero's distinction
between two methods of translation though he named only
one, i.e. word for word. The interpreter in Cicero's words
implicitly means the literal translator who is tied to the very
words of the text. This interpreter does not have the
necessary prerequisites of translation and is unable to
translate oratory speeches because he is himself not trained
in oratory. The non-literal translator is more capable of
expressing the figures of thought in current usages of target
language. It is clearly demonstrated that Cicero's translation
strategy is free and sense for sense. Cicero cleverly
demonstrated the difference between the two methods of
translation, i.e. word for word and sense by sense, through
differentiating between giving back the precise number of
words and the weight of words.

This idea of the specialized translator (inevitably non-literal)

is later echoed by many critics and poets. Dryden, for
instance, claims that "No man is capable of translating
poetry besides a genius to that art". To that, the twentieth
century American poet Eghishe Charents adds that "poetry
must be translated by a poet" (Mariam Hoyhannisyan, The
Art of Poetry and Its Translation).

On a final note here, Cicero may be considered the first

translator and "translation theorist" to refer to the audience
of translation. His target-audience oriented translation line
precedes Luther's You must ask approach or Eugene Nida's
dynamic-equivalence translation. The weighted words, put
in opposition to the precise number of words, can be taken
as tailoring the message to his fellow countrymen to insure
both understanding and formulation of exact picture of the
eloquence of the attic orators. Within the same line of
thought goes his expression of his countrymen
understanding the requirements for being attic orators and
of standard eloquence.

Bibliography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

Douglas Robinson (2002). Western Translation Theory

from Herodotus to Nietzsche. Manchester. Manchester:
St. Jerome.

Jeremy Munday (2010). Introducing Translation Studies:

Theories and Applications. London: Routledge.

C. D. Young, tr. "Cicero on the Best Styles of Orators".

http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/cicero/cicero-
best-style.htm

Mariam Hoyhannisyan. "The Art of Poetry and Its

Translation".
http://www.translationdirectory.com/articles/article12
24.htm
 II. St. Jerome
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (4th Century CE), later
to become St. Jerome, was a priest, theologian, historian
and a man of extensive writing. Jerome is most renowned
for his translation of the Bible into Latin (widely known as
the Vulgate) and his commentaries on the gospels. He was
also known as a protégé of Pope Damasus I who
commissioned him to revise the Vetus Latina (Old Latin)
collection of Biblical texts used then by the church. When
the revisions were published, they became widely in use and
overshadowed the Vetus Latina and began to be known as
the Vulgate (Wikipedia).
In 390, Jerome started translating the Hebrew Bible from
the original Hebrew and in 405 he completed the work. In
producing his Vulgate translation, Jerome worked against
the advice of most other Christians, including St. Augustine,
of using the Septuagint as his point of reference for the
Latin translations of the Old Testament. He spent the next
15 years, until his death, in writing commentaries on
Scripture explaining his translation choices in preferring the
original Hebrew over other texts (Ibid.).
As it was mentioned earlier, while Cicero spoke clearly
about literal translation, the world seemed to have to wait
for four centuries and a half before the term sense for sense
could be invented by St. Jerome in one of his letters
addressed to senator Pammachius (widely known as Letter
57 or On the Best Method of Translating) in (395) (Douglas
Robinson, 1997: Translation and the Repayment of Debt).
Indeed, translations of the Bible and other philosophical
and religious manuscripts were a risky job to undertake
especially during the Reformation in the 16 th century and
translators had always to be ready to defend themselves
against accusations leading to death.
In the letter, Jerome eloquently and convincingly defends
his translation by citing and appealing to the writing
practice of classical writers (Tuly, Cicero, Horace and
others), ecclesiastical writers (Hilary the Confessor) and New
Testament writers to justify his own translation strategy of
sense for sense. And against charges of ignorance,
falsehood, incapacity and carelessness leading either to
involuntary error or deliberate offence (Item 1 of the Letter),
Jerome starts his defense by giving examples of the false
accusations saying " They tell the unlearned that I have
falsified the original, that I have not rendered word for word,
that I have put 'dear friend' in place of 'honourable sir,' and
more shameful still! That I have cut down my translation by
omitting the words αἰδεσιμῶτατε Πάππα . These and similar
trifles form the substance of the charges brought against
me". (Item 2).

While Jerome admits in Item (5) of the letter of alterations

made in the letter and the possibility of unwilful errors, he
forcefully insists that no changes had been made in the
sense, no addition was made to the text, and no doctrine
has been foisted into it. The argument reaches the peak in
Jerome's saying that:
 For I myself not only admit but freely proclaim that
in translating from the Greek (except in the case of
the holy scriptures where even the order of the
words is a mystery) I render sense for sense and not
word for word.

Of course, the "mystery" of the order of the words in the

holy scriptures is self-explanatory of a translator facing a
charge of heresy.

He goes on defending himself by referring to an earlier

accusation levelled at him while translating the Chronicle of
Eusebius of Cæsarea into Latin:

In translating the Chronicle of Eusebius of Cæsarea

into Latin, I made among others the following
prefatory observations: It is difficult in following
lines laid down by others not sometimes to diverge
from them, and it is hard to preserve in a
translation the charm of expressions which in
another language are most felicitous. Each
particular word conveys a meaning of its own, and
possibly I have no equivalent by which to render it,
and if I make a circuit to reach my goal, I have to go
many miles to cover a short distance. To these
difficulties must be added the windings of
hyperbata, differences in the use of cases,
 divergences of metaphor; and last of all the peculiar
and if I may so call it, inbred character of the
language (Item 5).

In this very same item of the letter, Jerome openly criticizes

word for word strategy because the results it offers are
unfamiliar and obscures the sense of the original (Item 5)
making reference to the function of the translator:

If I render word for word, the result will sound

uncouth, and if compelled by necessity I alter
anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to
have departed from the function of a translator.
And after a long discussion which it would be
tedious to follow out here, I added what follows:— If
any one imagines that translation does not impair
the charm of style, let him render Homer word for
word into Latin, nay I will go farther still and say,
let him render it into Latin prose, and the result will
be that the order of the words will seem ridiculous
and the most eloquent of poets scarcely articulate.

These views, in addition to those of Cicero, were to exert a

great influence on theorization about translation up until
the 20th century (Munday, 2010: 7). Jerome's translation of
the Bible and the strategy he followed were imitated by
succeeding generations of translators and one famous
translation among them is Martin Luther's. Finally, to
demonstrate the control of the TL over the sense of the SL,
Jerome uses the military image of a conqueror dragging in
the prisoner into his own land (Robinson, ed, 1997:26):
"Like a conqueror he has led away captive into his own
tongue the meaning of his originals" (Item 6).

Bibliography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate#Translation
Dough Robinson (1997). "Translation and the
Repayment of Debt"
http://home.olemiss.edu/~djr/pages/writer/articles/ht
ml/debt.html

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001057.htm
Douglas Robinson (ed.) (1997) Western Translation Theory
from Herodotus to Nietzsche, Manchester: St Jerome.
 III. Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483 –1546) was a professor of theology, a
composer and a priest who played a pivotal role in 16 th
century Reformation. His opposition to many views of the
Roman Catholic Church and his refusal to denounce all his
writings finally resulted in his excommunication by Pope
Leo X and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. Soon Luther gathered people who
believed in his ideas and came to be known as Lutherians
(Wiki).

Although Luther's translation of the Bible into a German

vernacular that was widely used by the laity had a
magnificent influence on developing the German language
and culture, it was viewed as an attempt to manipulate the
word of God and as such was seen as a weapon directed
against the Church.

As was the case in many other translation occasions, the

addition or deletion of single words was seen as a sufficient
evidence for condemning a translator into the charge of
opposing the standard interpretation of the church and of
making heretic texts. In his influential translation of the
Bible, Luther only added one word allein (only/alone) after
the word faith which he thought was making "pure and
clear German" (Munday:23). The addition was interpreted as
implying "that the individual's belief is sufficient for a good
life, making the work of the law' (i.e. religious
law)redundant" (Ibid.).

Luther defended himself very well against the accusations in

his Circular Letter on Translation. He justifies the addition
saying:

[T]he text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently

require and demand it. For in that very passage he
is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine,
namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ
without any works of the Law. ... But when works
are so completely cut away – and that must mean
that faith alone justifies – whoever would speak
plainly and clearly about this cutting away of works
will have to say, 'Faith alone justifies us, and not
works' (in Wiki).

Significantly, and inn many occasions, Luther expressed

forcefully his translation strategy of making the Bible
accessible to both northern and southern Germans through
the use of vigorous ordinary language as can be noticed in
him saying "for we are removing impediments and
difficulties so that other people may read it without
hindrance" (in Brooks Schramm and Kirsi I. Stjerna, eds,
2012:156) or in his more democratic stance necessitating
the adoption of the language of ordinary people:

You must ask the mother at home, the children in

the street, the ordinary man in the market [sic] and
look at their mouths, how they speak, and translate
that way; then they'll understand and see that
you're speaking to them in German'' (in Munday:
24).
He explains his exhausting efforts to capture the meaning of
words as follows:

“In my translation of the Bible I strove to use pure

and intelligible German. Our quest for an
expression could sometimes last four weeks without
us being happy with our work. (…) In addition, I
have not worked on my own: I recruited assistants
from everywhere. I tried to speak in German, not
Greek nor Latin. But to speak German one should
not turn to texts in Latin. (Luther, An Open Letter
on Translating) (Martin Luther, Translator of the
Bible in www).

In a very eloquent language and manner, Luther speaks of

the difficulties translators encounter and the great efforts
they exert in order to offer the reader a smooth text. He puts
his ideas in this regard as follows:

And it's often happened to us that we've searched and

asked for fourteen days—even for three or four weeks—
after a single word, and in all that time we haven't
found it.

And I don't know if one can express the word Liebe

(love) just as sincerely and fully in Latin or in other
languages, so that it sounds and pounds through all the
senses, as it does in our language.

Dear friend, now it's in German and finished; anyone

can read and study the text; you can let your eyes run
over three or four pages without ever hitting on a snag;
and you don't even notice the stones and tree stumps
 that were there, because now you pass over all that as
though on a well-polished surface; but we really had to
sweat and take great pains before we could clear that
road of stones and stumps.

Most importantly, the Luther's Bible strongly impacted

other vernacular translations, such as William Tyndale's
English Bible (1525), a precursor of the King James Bible.

Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-9389283

Brooks Schramm and Kirsi I. Stjerna, eds, (2012). Martin

Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People, A Reader.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Jeremy Munday (2010). Introducing Translation Studies:

Theories and Applications. London: Routledge.

https://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/martin-
luther-translator-of-the-bible/
 IV. Abraham Cowley
Abraham Cowley (1618 –1667). In the first half of the 17th
century, poets like Denham and Cowley advocated and
defended (in 'aristocratic circles', Venuti, 1995: 46) a new
translation strategy (or better be called imitation) to
reproduce the tone and spirit of other classists (Morini,
2006:5). Cowley in particular was responsible for flourishing
"the flag of freedom in rendering the spirit and tone of
Pindar" (Losnes, 2011:82). Cowley's main thought about
translation is set in his preface to the Pindarique Odes.

While in exile, Cowley had a meeting with the works of

Pindar and became determined to reproduce them in
English. Cowley's very free method of translation is
embodied in his attack of poetry that is translated faithfully
and word for word into French or Italian prose (Munday:
25). Cowley's measure to make up for the inevitable loss of
beauty is by adopting greater degrees of freedom in the
translation project. He expresses the essence of his ideas in
too fiery terms: "However, Cowley is too fiery to be a good
Aristotelian. As a consequence, his method of translation is
a bold one: he says he "has left out, and added what I please
(Kitagaki, 1981: 176).

For Cowley, "translation" is felt as a hindrance to his own

treatment of making the ancient author most readily
accessible by the modern reader. He claims "It does not at
all trouble me that the Grammarians perhaps will not suffer
this libertine way of rendering foreign Authors to be called
Translation; for I am not so much enamoured of the Name
Translator, as not to wish rather to be Something Better,
though it want yet a name" ( in Steiner, 1975: 21). By
proclaiming his non-enamourement of the translator, Morini
(2006:5) believes that Cowley was speaking for his age.

Bibliography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Cowley

Lawrence Venuti (1995) .The Translator's Invisibility: A

History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

Muneharu Kitagaki (1981). Principles and Problems in

Seventeenth–Century Translation England .Kyoto.

T.R. Steiner (1975). English Translation Theory 1650-1800.

Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.

Massimiliano Morini (2006). Tudor Translation in Theory and

Practice. England: Ashgate.

Arvid Losnes (2011). Arms and the Man I Sing: A Preface to

Dryden's Aeneid. Delaware: University of Delaware Press.