Bassnett 挽回死心的女人，2013四六级考试时间Translation Studies P51-58
BIBLE TRANSLATION
With the spread of Christianity, translation came to acquire another role, that of disminating the word of God. A religion as text-bad as Christianity prented the translator with a mission that encompasd both aesthetic and evangelistic criteria. The history of Bible translation is accordingly a history of western culture in microcosm. Translations of the New Testament were made very early, and St Jerome's famous contentious version that was to have such influence on succeeding generations of translators was commissioned by Pope Damasus in AD 384. Following Cicero, St Jerome declared he had translated n for n rather than word for word, but the problem of the fine line between what constituted stylistic licence and what constituted heretical interpretation was to remain a major stumbling block for centuries.
Bible translation remained a key issue well into the venteenth century, and the problems intensified with the growth of concepts of national cultures and with the coming of the Refor
mation. Translation came to be ud as a weapon in both dogmatic and political conflicts as nation states began to emerge and the centralization-of the church started to weaken, evidenced in linguistic terms by the decline of Latin as a universal language.
The first translation of the complete Bible into English was the Wycliffite Bible produced between 1380 and 1384, which marked the start of a great flowering of English Bible translations linked to changing attitudes to the role of the written text in the church that formed part of the developing Reformation. John Wycliffe (c. 1330-84), the noted Oxford theologian, put forward the theory of 'dominion by grace' according to which man was immediately responsible to God and God's law (by which Wycliffe intended not canon law but the guidance of the Bible). Since Wycliffe' s theory meant that the Bible was applicable to all human life it followed that each man should be granted access to that crucial text in a language that he could understand, ie. in the vernacular. Wycliffe's views, which attracted a circle of followers, were attacked as heretical and he and his group were denounced as 'Lollards', but the work he began continued to flourish after his death and his disciple John Purvey revid the first edition some time before 1408 (the first date
d manuscript).
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The cond Wycliffite Bible contains a general Prologue, compod between 1395-6 and the fifteenth chapter of the Prologue describes the four stages of the translation process:
(I) a collaborative effort of collecting old Bibles and gloss and establishing an authentic Latin source text; 信令
(2) a comparison of the versions;
support(3) counlling 'with old grammarians and old divines' about hard words and complex meanings; and
(4) translating as clearly as possible the 'ntence' (i.e. meaning), with the translation corrected by a group of collaborators.
Since the political function of the translation was to make the complete text of the Bible accessible, this led to a definite stance on priorities by the translator: Purvey's Preface st
ates clearly that the translator shall translate 'after the ntence' (meaning) and not only after the words, 'so that the ntence be as open [plain] or opener, in English as in Latin and go not far from the letter.' What is aimed at is an intelligible, idiomatic version: a text that could be utilized by the layman. The extent of its importance may be measured by the fact that the bulk of the 150 copies of Purvey's revid Bible were written even after the prohibition, on pain of excommunication, of translations circulated without the approval of diocesan or provincial councils in July 1408. Knyghton the Chronicler's lament that 'the Gospel pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under feet of swine' was certainly contradicted by the widespread interest in the Wycliffite versions.
孟晚舟卖给伊朗什么了In the sixteenth century the history of Bible translation acquired new dimensions with the advent of printing. After the Wycliffite versions, the next great English translation was William Tyndale's (1494-1536) New Testament printed in 1525. Tyndale's proclaimed intention in translating was also to offer as clear a version as possible to the layman, and by the time he was burned at the stake in 1536 he had translated the New Testament from the Greek and pans of the Old Testament from the Hebrew.
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The sixteenth century saw the translation of the Bible into a large number of European languages, in both Protestant and Roman Catholic versions. In 1482, the Hebrew Pencateuch had been printed at Bologna and the complete Hebrew Bible appeared in 1488, whilst Erasmus, the Dutch Humanist, published the first Greek New Testament in Basle in 1516. This version was to rve as the basis for Martin Luther's 1522 German version. Translations of the New Testament appeared in Danish in 1529 and again in 1550, in Swedish in 1526-41, and the Czech Bible appeared between 1579-93. Translations and revid versions of existing translations continued to appear in English, Dutch, German and French. Erasmus perhaps summed up the evangelizing spirit of Bible translating when he declared
I would desire that all women should reade the gospell and Paules episteles and I wold to God they were translated in to the tonges of all men so that they might not only be read and knowne ofthe scotes and yrishmen But also of the Turkes and the Sarracenes .... I wold to God the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture at his plow-beme. And that the wever at his lowme with this wold drive away the tediousnes of tyme. I wold the wayfa
mtgringeman with this pastyme wold expelle the weriness of his iorney. And to be shorte I wold that all the communication of the christen shuld be of the scripture for in a manner such are we oure lves as our daylye tales are.塔玛拉德鲁ll
William Tyndale, echoing Erasmus, attacked the hypocrisy of church authorities who forbade the laypeople to read the Bible in their native tongue for the good of their souls, but nevertheless accepted the u of the vernacular for 'histories and fables of love and wantoness and of ribaudry as filthy as heart can think, to corrupt the minds of youth.'
