§ 4. Enlightenment translation (17-18th c.)

The Enlightenment period brought new aesthetic principles to literature, the principles of classicism, which required the subordination of a work of art to particular canons - emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restrained emotions – in order to meet the requirements of an “ideal” work of art. The basic goal of classical translation was to bring the target text as close as possible to the needs and ideals of culture in that period. To attain this ideal, it was justifiable to alter, correct, reduce, ornament, and make insertions into the text, often resulting in a rather loose translation.⁷¹

Thus, one of the fathers of English classicism, John Dryden (1631-1700), severely criticized the followers of literal translation, comparing the latter with rope-walkers in chains. He claimed that it is the content that should be considered sacred and inviolable, but not the form, since words and lines cannot be constrained by the source text meter.

Dryden formulated three basic types of translations:

1. metaphase, or translating an author word by word, and line by line, from one language into another;

2. paraphrase, or translation with latitude, the Ciceronian ‘sense-for-sense’ view of translation;

3. imitation, where the translator can abandon the text of the original as he sees fit.

Of these types, Dryden chose the second as the more balanced path: “I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age.”⁷²

Another English classicist, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who translated Homer into English, was blamed for embellishing the classical Greek epic literature to fit the tastes of aristocratic salons of the time. A. Pope rhymed the source text lines that were lacking rhyme, changed the rhythm, transformed a Greek long hexameter into a short English meter. The changes were so enormous that some critics said, ‘Pope’s poem is superb but what does it have to do with Homer?’

Thus, the basic feature of classical translation was in favor of the sense or meaning, close to free translation. Translated works were adaptations - as the British scholar of translation Myriam Salama Carr put it, they “were the distorted looking-glass through which many viewed the classics in the age of Enlightenment.”⁷³ Nevertheless, in those days adaptation was seen as a means of adjusting the foreign work to suit contemporary tastes.

Intensive development of translation could be observed in the 17-18^th century in Germany, which gave the world one of the best translation schools. One of the premier translators of the time was Johann Heinrich Voss. In particular, his translations of the Odyssey (1781) and the Iliad (1793) achieved permanent importance. The Russian man of letters N. Karamzin, comparing Voss’s translations with others, said that neither the British nor the French enriched their literature with such perfect translations from Greek as the Germans who could read real Homer. In 1775-1782 the first translation of Shakespeare’s complete works was undertaken by Johann Joahim Eshenburg, owing to whom started a process of Shakespeare’s “acquiring the status of a national German poet”.⁷⁴ In the 17-18^th century continental Europe, France played a leading role in politics, the sciences and the arts. French cultural predominance was reflected in the large number of translations from French. German translators frequently used intermediate French translations as source texts, even if a copy in the original language was available.⁷⁵

During the 17-18^th centuries, translation increased the cultural autonomy of the American colonies from England. It is interesting that the first English-language book printed in North America was a translation, The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre (1640), commonly known as The Bay Psalm Book. It was translated from Hebrew by a group of Puritan ministers in a very literal fashion.⁷⁶

The 18^th century gave the British nation A Dictionary of the English Language, a prescriptive work by Samuel Johnson. The first dictionary compiled in America was A School Dictionary by Samuel Johnson, Jr. (not a pen name), printed in Connecticut in 1798.⁷⁷