French translation of the 16th

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2.4 Estienne Dolet

Estienne Dolet (1509–46) was a French humanist printer, translator, and scholar. He encouraged people to read the Bible in the vernacular and published many Calvinist works. Dolet’s fame rests on his commentary on the Latin language (1536–8). As a printer he published his own translations and editions of Classical authors, the New Testament and Psalms, as well as work by Franc¸ois Rabelais.

From Estienne Dolet, La manie`re de bien traduire d’vne langve en avltre [The Way to Translate Well from One Language to Another], introd. and trans. by James S. Holmes, Modern Poetry in Translation, 41–2 (March 1981), 53–6.

[See Sect. 5.3, below for James S. Holmes]

From Holmes’s introduction

For France, as for England, the sixteenth century was a golden age of translation. Unlike the English, though, the French also carried on a lively theoretical discussion about translating: What is it? How should it, how can it be done? Is it the best way, or a good way, to enrich the vernacular literature? The discussion, begun in translators’ prefaces in the 1520s and ’30s, was contained in the 1540s and ’50s in the major ars poeticas of the French Renaissance, those of Sebillet (1548), Du Bellay (1549), and Peletier du Mans (1555). In between, in 1540, a brief essay appeared that was, to my knowledge, the earliest independent treatise to be published in a modern European language on the principles of translation (for the epistle on translation written by Luther ten years earlier, however lively, can hardly be considered that). It also marked the Wrst attempt (later often to be repeated) to reduce the art of translating well to a series of rules.

This essay was La manie`re de bien traduire d’vne langve en avltre by the ‘native of Orle´ans’ Estienne Dolet (1509–1546), printed by the author in Lyons in 1540 (and reprinted two years later) in a small booklet also containing two other brief essays, on punctuation and accents in French. The three essays were the Wrst in a series planned by Dolet which, when completed, were to comprise a kind of writer’s handbook to bear the title L’Orateur franc¸oys. The further studies (on grammar, spelling, pronunciation, the origins of certain terms, the art of oratory, and the art of poetry) were never published, perhaps never written: L’Orateur was but one project among many in the life of a busy writer/translator/printer/publisher, and Dolet may have postponed its completion a little too long. For in 1546 he was found guilty of heresy—in his way of translating a passage of good Christian Plato!—and hanged then burnt at the stake, not only translation’s theorist but its martyr.

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La manie`re, for all its brevity, must have been a gold-mine of advice for the novice aspiring to the new art of traduction. The new art, for in France, more markedly than in England, there was a clear break with the medieval traditions of translating, that of crabbed word-for-wordness in learned glossing and that of uncurbed freedom in literary adapting alike. The break, indeed, was so sharp that it was felt necessary to create a new term for the new art: in the 1530s the verb traduir was introduced to contrast with such older activities as translater and truchmanter, and Dolet went on to form the nowstandard nouns traduction and traducteur.

[ . . . ]

The Way to Translate Well from One Language into Another

To translate well from one language into another requires in the main Wve things.

In the Wrst place, the translator must understand perfectly the sense and matter of the author he is translating, for having this understanding he will never be obscure in his translations, and if the author he is translating is diYcult in any way he will be able to render him easy and entirely understandable. And without further ado I shall give you an example of this. In the Wrst book of Cicero’s Questiones Tusculanes is the following passage: ‘Animum autem animam etiam fere` nostri declarant nominari. Nam & agere animam, & eZare dicimus; & animosos, & bene animates: & ex animi sententia. Ipse autem animus ab anima dictus est.’

Translating this work of Cicero’s,1 I remarked as follows. ‘One need not dwell at all on the diVerence,’ I said, ‘between the terms animus and anima. For the Latin expressions containing the two terms make clear to us that they mean practically the same thing. It is certain that animus is said for anima, and that the animus expresses itself through the anima, as if one would say that the vital principle and its manifestations are the source of the spirit, and that same spirit is an eVect of the said vital principle.’ Tell me, you who know Latin, whether it would have been possible to translate this passage well without a deep understanding of Cicero’s sense. Know then that it is important and necessary for every translator to fathom perfectly the sense of the author he is turning from one language into another. And without that he cannot translate reliably and faithfully.

The second thing that is required in translating is that the translator have perfect knowledge of the language of the author he is translating, and be likewise excellent in the language into which he is going to translate. In this way he will not violate or diminish the majesty of the one language or the other. Do you believe that a man can translate any of Cicero’s orations well into French if he be not perfect in the Latin and French tongues? Bethink you that every language has its own properties, turns of phrase, expressions, subtleties, and vehemences that are peculiar to it. If the translator ignores the which, he does injustice to the author he is translating, and also to the language he is turning him

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into, for he does not represent or express the dignity and richness of the two tongues which he has taken in hand.

The third point is that in translating one must not be servile to the point of rendering word for word. And if someone does that, he is proceeding from poverty and lack of wisdom. For if he has the qualities aforesaid (which he needs in order to be a good translator), he will give thought to meanings without regarding the order of words, and set to work in such a way that the author’s intention will be expressed while preserving precisely the property of the one and the other language. And it is too great a precision (or should I say stupidity, or ignorance?) to begin one’s translation at the beginning of the sentence: if by changing the order of the words you can express the intention of him you are translating, no one can reprove you for it. Here I do not want to overlook the folly of some translators who submit to servitude in lieu of liberty. That is to say, they are so foolish as to make an eVort to render line for line or verse for verse. By which mistake they often corrupt the sense of the author they are translating and do not express the grace and perfection of the one and the other language. You should diligently avoid this vice, which demonstrates nothing but the translator’s ignorance.

The fourth rule, which I shall give at this place, is more to be observed in languages not reduced to an art than in others. Not yet reduced to a Wxed and accepted art I call such languages as French, Italian, Spanish, that of Germany, of England, and other vulgar tongues. Should it therefore happen that you translate a Latin book into one or another of these (even into French), you should avoid adopting words too close to Latin and little used in the past, but be content with the common tongue without introducing any new terms foolishly or out of reprehensible curiousness. If some do so, do not follow them in this, for their arrogance is of no worth, and is not tolerable among the learned. From this do not understand me to say that the translator should entirely abstain from words that are not in common use, for it is well known that the Greek and Latin languages are much richer in terms than is French. The which often forces us to use rare words. But it should be done only out of sheer necessity. I am further well aware that some might say that most terms in the French language have been derived from the Latin, and that if our predecessors had the authority to introduce them, we moderns and our descendants may do the same. Let all that be debated by babblers, but the best thing is to follow the common tongue. I shall treat this point more amply, with further illustration, in my

Orateur franc¸oys.

Let us now move on to the Wfth rule that should be observed by a good translator. The which is of such great import that lacking it any composition is ponderous and displeasing. But what does it consist of ? Nothing other than the observation of rhetorical numbers:2 that is to say, a joining and arranging of terms with such sweetness that not alone the soul is pleased, but also the ear is delighted and never hurt by such harmony of language. I speak of these rhetorical numbers more copiously in my Orateur, hence I shall

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not discourse of them further here. But here I do advise the translator to have a care for them, for without observing numbers one cannot be admirable in any composition whatsoever, and without them thoughts cannot be serious and have their required and legitimate weight. For do you think that it is enough to have correct and elegant terms without a good joining of them? I say to you that it is just as in a confused heap of various kinds of precious stones, the which cannot display their lustre because they are not properly arranged. Or just as when various musical instruments are badly played by performers who are ignorant of the art of music and know little of its tones and measures. In Wne, there is little splendour in words if their order and pattern be not as it should be. And for that in times past the Greek orator Isocrates was esteemed above all, and likewise Demosthenes. Among the Latins Mark Tully Cicero was a great observer of numbers. But do not think that orators should observe them more than historiographers. And that being true you will Wnd that Caesar and Sallust kept their numbers no less than Cicero. The conclusion in this regard is that without closely observing numbers an author is nothing, and if he does observe them he cannot fail to become renowned for eloquence, providing he also is precise in his choice of words, serious in his thoughts, and ingenious in his arguments. These are the points of a perfect orator, one truly arrayed in all glory of eloquence.

notes

1. Dolet’s translation of the Tusculan Disputations, which appeared a few years later, in 1543. 2. Dolet’s term is ‘oratorical numbers’. Today we would probably talk about ‘style’.

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2.5 Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay (1522–60) was a French poet who, with Pierre de Ronsard led the literary group famously known as La Ple´iade. The De´Vense was, in eVect, the group’s manifesto. Du Bellay met Jacques Peletier who had translated Horace’s Ars poetica into French. He studied with Ronsard in Paris. His De´Vense, an important document in the history of translation studies in France and beyond, was published in 1549, in response to Thomas Sebillet’s Art Poe´tique (1548). Du Bellay underwrote Horace’s pronouncements, as somewhat simplistically relayed by Sebillet, that one should imitate freely, not translate slavishly. He also wrote a number of major sonnet sequences, some of which were translated by Edmund Spenser under the title of Visions of Belay, in 1569.

From La De´Vence et Illustration de la langue franc¸ayse (The Defence and Illustration of the French Language) (1549), trans. James Harry Smith and Edd WinWeld, in J. H. Smith and E. WinWeld (eds.), The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism

(1932; 3rd edn., New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 165–77

Book I, Chapter III

Why the French language is not so rich as the Greek and Latin

And if our language is not as copious and rich as the Greek or Latin, that ought not to be imputed to any fault of the language, as if it of itself could ever be other than poor and sterile: but the fault ought rather to be laid to the ignorance of our ancestors, who (as some one has said in speaking of the ancient Romans), holding in higher respect doing well than talking well, and preferring to leave to their posterity the examples, rather than the rules, of virtuous action, deprived themselves of the glory of their high deeds, and us of the fruit of the imitating of them: and in the same way have left us our language so impoverished and naked that it needs the ornaments and (if I may so speak) the pens of others. But who would say that Greek and Latin had always been of that excellence which we see in the times of Homer, of Demosthenes, of Virgil, of Cicero? And if these authors had considered that, for whatever diligence and cultivation might be expended, their languages would never bear fruit, would they have striven so hard as they have to bring them to the point where we now see them? I can say the same thing of our language, which begins now to Xower without bearing fruit, or rather, like a plant stem, has not yet Xowered, so far is it from having brought forth all the fruit that it might very well produce. This is certainly not the fault of its nature, which is as fertile as are others, but the fault of those who have had it in charge and have not cultivated it suYciently: like a wild plant, in the very desert where it had come to life, without watering or pruning,

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(or in any way protecting it from the brambles and thorns which overshadowed it), they have left it to grow old and almost die. [ . . . ]

Chapter IV

That the French language is not as poor as many think it

I do not, nevertheless, think our vernacular, even as it is now, is so vile and abject as the ambitious admirers of Greek and Latin hold it, who do not think anything good, and who reckon even Pitho, goddess of Persuasion, unable to call anything good, except it be in a foreign tongue and one not understood by the common vulgar. And whoever will look well at it will Wnd that our French language is not so poor that it cannot render faithfully what it borrows from others; so unproductive that it cannot, of itself, bear a fruit of good invention, through the industry and diligence of its cultivators [ . . . ]

Chapter V

That translations are not enough to give perfection to the French language

Nevertheless this laudable toil of translating does not seem to me alone a suYcient means of raising our vernacular to be the equal and paragon of other more famous languages. I mean to prove this so clearly that no one, I think, will contradict it, without being manifestly a calumniator of the truth. [ . . . ] The oYce then of the orator is to speak eloquently and at length of each thing proposed. But this faculty of speaking thus of all things can only be acquired by the perfect comprehension of knowledge, which has been the Wrst concern of their Roman imitators. It is necessary that these two languages be understood by those who wish to acquire that abundance and that richness of invention, the Wrst and principal piece of harness for the orator. Once arrived at that point, the faithful translators can grandly serve and assist those who have not the unique accomplishment of devoting themselves to foreign languages. [ . . . ] I will never believe that one can learn all that from translations, because it is impossible to translate it with the same grace that the author has put into it: because each language has something indeWnably individual only to itself; and if you make an eVort to render its innate character into another language, observing the law of translation, so that it is not expanded at all beyond the limits of the author, your diction will be constrained, turgid, and without charm. [ . . . ]

Chapter VII

How the Romans have enriched their language

If the Romans (some one will say), did not conquer by the labor of translation, by what means then did they so enrich their language, even almost to equality with the Greek? By imitating the better Greek authors, transforming themselves through them, devouring them; and, after having digested them well, converting them into blood and nurture; each taking to himself according to his nature and the argument which he wishes to

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choose, the best author, all of whose rarest and most exquisite virtues they observe diligently, appropriating and embodying these, like engraftments, as I have said before, to their language. That caused the Romans to build those sublime writings that we delight in and admire so greatly, counting some equal, others preferable, to the Greek. And what I say Cicero and Virgil well prove, whom gladly I always name among, the Latins, of whom the one, as he was entirely given over to the imitation of the Greeks [ . . . ]

Chapter VIII

To enlarge French literature by imitation of the ancient Greek and Latin authors

Write himself, then, must he who wishes to enrich his language, write in imitation of the best Greek and Latin authors; at all their best qualities, as at a fair target, direct the aim of his style; for it cannot be doubted that the great part of the art is contained in imitation: and as it was for the ancients most praiseworthy to invent well, so it is most proWtable well to imitate them, even for those whose language is not yet plentiful and rich. But he must understand, who wishes to imitate, that it is no easy thing to follow well the excellent qualities of a good author, as if to transform oneself with him, for nature has so wrought even those things which appeal, most similar, that by some mark or feature they can be distinguished. I say this because there are many in every literature who, without penetrating to the secret, innermost part of an author whom they have approached, adapt themselves solely to Wrst appearances, and spend themselves rather on the beauty of words than on the might of the real content. And certainly, as it is not vicious, but greatly laudable, to borrow from another language sentences and words, and to appropriate them to one’s own: so it is greatly reprehensible, and must seem odious to every reader of a liberal, cultivated nature, to see, in the same language, such an imitation, such a one as that of some of the learned, even, who think themselves better in proportion as they resemble an Heroet or a Marot. I charge you (o you who desire the enlargement of your literature and its excellence over the others) not to imitate headlong, as recently some one has said, its most famous authors, as ordinarily do the great part of our French poets, a practice certainly as faulty as it is of no worth to our vernacular: for that is not another thing but to give it (o tremendous liberality) what it already has. I would that our language were so rich in models of its own that we should have no need of recourse to others. But if Virgil and Cicero had been content to imitate the authors of their literature, what should we have had of Latin, beyond Ennius or Lucretius, beyond Crassus or Antonius?

Book II, Chapter IV

What types of poems the French poet should choose

Read then, and re-read, o future poet, handle lovingly, night and day, the exemplary Greek and Latin poets; then leave all those old French poets to the Jenix Floranx of Toulouse and to the Puy of Rouen; such as rondeaux, ballades, virelays, chants royal,

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chansons, and other such groceries, which corrupt the taste of our language and only serve to bear testimony to our ignorance. Devote yourself to pleasant epigrams, not as made today, by a mob of tellers of new tales, who, in a poem of ten lines, are content to have said nothing which gives value in the Wrst nine lines, provided in the tenth there appear a laughable thing: but to the imitation of a Martial, or of some other excellent poet; if liveliness does not satisfy you, mingle the proWtable with the pleasant. Distill with a pen Xowing and not scabrous, these plaintive elegies, after the example of an Ovid, a Tibullus, and a Propertius, mingling into it sometimes some of these ancient fables, no small ornaments of poetry. Sing to me those odes, yet unknown to the French muse, on a lute well tuned to the sound of the Greek and Roman lyre, not without a single line in which appears some trace of rare but authentic lore. Material for that the praises of the gods and of great men will furnish you, and the deathward tread of earthly things, and the disquiet of youth: love, the unrestrained rites of wine, and all good cheer. Above all, take care that the type of poetry be far away from the vulgar, enriched and made illustrious with proper words and vigorous epithets, adorned with grave sentences, and varied with all manner of colorful and poetic ornaments [ . . . ]