The Middle Ages (ca. 500 AD -1450 AD) are characterized by a general lack of progress and a constant stagnation in many spheres of mental activity including translation and interpretation, which continued to be practised, however, in the domains of ecclesiastic science and the church. Thus, interpreting from Greek into Latin is known to have been regularly employed in the 6lh century AD by the Roman church. Written translation as well as oral interpretation naturally continued to be extensively employed during the Middle Ages in interstate relations, in foreign trade and in military affairs (especially in wartimes). The primary motivation ( ) for linguistic endeavours in those times remained, quite naturally, the translation of ecclesiastic literature from the holy languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin). Due to the continual work of an army of qualified researching translators, practically all essential Christian literature was translated during the Middle Ages in most European countries.
Moreover, in some countries translations greatly helped to initiate their national literary languages and literatures. King Alfred the Great (849-901) took an active part in translating manuals, chronicles and other works from ancient languages and thus helped in the spiritual and cultural elevation of his people. His noble work was continued by the abbot and author Aelf ric (955? -1020?) who would paraphrase some parts of the work while translating and often adding bona fide stories of his own. Yet, Aelfric would consider this technique of rendering as a sense-to-sense translation. Abbot Aelfric himself admitted, that in his translation of the Latin work Cura Pastoralis under the English title The Shepherd's (i.e. Pastor's) Book, he performed it sometimes word-by-word and sometimes according to the sense, i.e. in free translation.
These same two approaches to translation were also characteristic of other European countries of the Middle Ages. Thus, word-for-word translation was widely practised in the famous Toledo school in Central Spain (the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) where the outstanding translator of that country Gerhard of Cremonas worked. The adherence to word-for-word translation was predetermined by the subject-matter which was turned there from Arabic into Spanish. Among the works translated there were scientific or considered to be scientific (as alchemy), mathematical works (on arithmetic, algebra, geometry, physics, astronomy), philosophy, dialectics, medicine, etc. However, in Northern Spain, another school of translation functioned where the sense-to-sense approach was predominant and translations there were mostly performed from Greek into Hebrew (usually through Arabic).
These same two principles, according to Solomon Ibn Ajjub, one of the greatest authorities on translation in the middle of the thirteenth century, were practised in the southern Italian school (Rome), which had fallen under a strong Arabic cultural influence as well. Secular works were translated in this school with many deliberate omissions/eliminations, additions, and paraphrases of their texts, which consequently changed the original works beyond recognition. This was the logical consequence of the method initiated by Horace and his adherent Apuleius, who applied their practice to free treatment of secular works under translation. That approach, meeting little if any resistance, dominated in European translation of secular works all through the Middle Ages and up to the 18th century. The only voice against the deliberate and unrestricted freedom in translation was raised by the English scientist and philosopher Roger Bacon (1214? -1294), who strongly protested against this kind of rendering of Aristotle's works into English. In his work Opus Majus he demanded a thorough preliminary study of the source language works and a full and faithful conveyance of their content into the target language.
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No less intensively practised alongside of the free sense-to-sense rendering in Europe during the Middle Ages was the strict word-for-word translation. Its domain of employment was naturally restricted to ecclesiastic and philosophic works. By this method the first ever translation of the Bible from Latin into English was accomplished in 1377-1380 by the noted religious scientist and reformer John Wycliffe/ Wycklif (1320? - 1384) who worked at the translation together with his helpers N.Hereford and J.Purvey.
Strict word-for-word translation continued to be constantly employed during the Middle Ages, and even much later in most European countries to perform translation of scientific, philosophic and juridical matter. An illustrative example of this is found in Germany of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus, the prominent translator and literary critic Nicolas von Wyle (1410-1478) openly and officially demanded that translators of Latin juridical documents alter the German target language syntactically and stylistically as much as possible to mirror some particular peculiarities of classical Latin source language, which enjoyed the position of a world language in those times.
School of Translators of Toledo, one of the first European institutions carrying out translations that could be considered as translations within the Public Services and examples of Community Translation.
When talking about the Medieval Age, one of the most unknown details of the period is its importance to the development of knowledge and science in Europe. The continent experienced a cultural impulse due to the labor of the School of Translators of Toledo. This historical period is characterized by a strong intellectual obscurantism, which supposed a huge restriction on the diffusion of knowledge and information. Due to this obscurantism most of the Greek and Oriental texts about Philosophy, Medicine, Mathematics and Astronomy were unknown in Europe and its universities, which mainly based their doctrines on Latin texts.
The appearance of the School of Translators between the 12th and 13th centuries meant a complete revolution for European knowledge. Several universities from Europe experienced an unprecedented impulse in literary, astronomic, medical and mathematical scopes due to the institution.
In 711 BC, the Arabs conquered Toledo and they dominated the city throughout four centuries. Back then, Arabs, Jewish and Mozarabs, which were Christians who lived under the power of an Arabian Government keeping their religion and their culture, were living together in the city in a peaceful way.
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In 1085, Alfonso VI and the Christians conquered Toledo in an episode known as the Reconquista . This historical event put an end to four centuries of Arabian domination. Nevertheless, in contrast to other historical recaptures, this one did not imply the immediate expulsion of the Arabs or the elimination of their essence. They were allowed to stay in some areas of the city, along with the Jewish people. It was in that moment when the city became the City of the Three Cultures. The libraries were still preserved, as well as the private collections, and Jewish and Arabian scholars remained in the city, carrying on with their studies, researches and their translations. The previous cultural baggage was combined with the knowledge that Christian intellectuals brought, and that situation of ethnographic symbiosis made Toledo a revolutionary city in cultural terms.
The School of Translators of Toledo was firstly established as a result of this historical period within a complete multicultural atmosphere. The institution appeared between the 12th and 13th centuries. Rather than being an organized institution as such, it was more an intellectual movement that existed within the city.
The aim of the School was to transmit Oriental and Greek knowledge to Europe, opening the cultural framework that, until then, had been confined to Latin texts. However, how and why did it appear? The main reason for the appearance of the institution dates back to the Arabian expansion that was advancing from Byzantine lands towards the Iberian Peninsula.
When the School appeared, an exodus of wise men and scholars took place: the most important intellectual figures came to the city with the aim of studying, translating and bringing back to Europe the new amount of knowledge brought by the Arabs. It brought a huge revolution for the wisdom of the period. It is important to emphasize the scholars presence, because they were the ones who translated the Arabic translations of classic Oriental and Greek works into Romance and Latin. Amongst the translators that worked in the School, there were a lot of characters who had a more remarkable role within it. Nonetheless, the hardships of the period, the lack of documentation and the multilingualism of the city, have created a lot of difficulties for identifying some of them in a reliable way.
In terms of its development, the School has three clear periods: the Periodo Raimundiano, where the joint work between Arabs and Jewish was essential while translating; the Periodo Alfonsino, and the changes made on the procedure of translating; and, finally, the Contemporary period of the School, where the institution became an educative organism.
Gundisalvo, who was one of the most important figures during the Periodo Raimundiano.
15. Translation in Kyivan Rus during the 10th-13th centuries and in Ukraine during the 14th-16th centuries. 24. The revival of translation in Ukraine in the 14th-16th centuries (translation of the Bible and other ecclesiastic works).
Ukrainian history of translation is today more than one thousand years old. It began soon after the adoption of Christianity in the tenth century (988) and continues in ever increasing measure up to the present day. The very first translations, however, are supposed to have been made several decades before that historical date, namely as early as 911, when the Kyivan Rus' Prince Oleh signed a treaty with Byzantium in two languages (Greek and the then Ukrainian). Regular and uninterrupted translation activity, which started in the late tenth - early eleventh centuries had continued almost uninterrupted for some 250 years. According to Nestor the Chronicler the Great Prince of Kyivan Rus', Yaroslav the Wise, gathered together in 1037 in the St. Sophia Cathedral many translators (nucapi as they were called) to translate books (from Greek) into the (Old) Slavonic language ( ), which was in those times the language of many ecclesiastic works and was understood in all Slavic countries.
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Initially, in the last decades of the tenth - early eleventh century, only the materials necessary for church services were translated, but soon the Bible began to appear in different cities of Kyivan Rus'. These Bibles are historically identified after the names of places where they first appeared or after the names of their owners, translators or copiers. Among the fully preserved Bibles of those times today are the Reims Bible (first half of the eleventh century), which belonged to Princess Anna, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise and later queen of France, the Ostromyr's Bible (1056-1057), the Mstyslaw's Bible (1115 1117), the Halych Bible (1144).
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there also appeared several Psalm books (Psalters) which were followed by the Apostles (1195, 1220).
It is important to note, that the Old Slavonic translations of Psalms and larger works as The Jewish Wars by Joseph us Flavius (37-after 100) contained several lexical, morphological (vocative case forms) and syntactic features of the then old Ukrainian which are used also in present-day Ukrainian. This influence of the Ukrainian language is one evident proof of it having been in common use in Kyivan Rus'. This fact completely discards the ungrounded allegations cited by official Soviet and Russian linguists who portray the Ukrainian language coming into being as a separate Slavic language only in the fourteenth or even in the fifteenth centuries, i.e., at the same time with the Russian language.
All in all, the period of the eleventh-thirteenth centuries as presented in the history of Ukraine, demonstrated a regular upheaval in translation with many ecclesiastic and secular works of different kind turned generally in Old Slavic as well as in Old Ukrainian. The ecclesiastic works included not only sermon books ( ), Psalms and Bibles (as the Buchach 13th century Bible) but also some theoretical works by prominent Byzantine church fathers (G.Naziazinus, I.Sirin and others).
The Tartar and Mongol invasion in 1240, the downfall of Ukraine-Rus' and the seizure of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, which completed the collapse of Byzantium, considerably slowed the progress of translation in Ukraine-Rus', which despite these tragic events, did not die out completely. Thus, the first to appear in the 14th century (1307) was the Bible of Polycarp. Apart from this there were some versified translations of ecclesiastic works as the Treatise on Sacred Theologyby D.Areopagitis, D.Zograf's translation of God's Six Days Creationby G.Pisida, Kiprian's translation of Ph. Kokkin's Canon of Public Prayer to Our Lord Jesus Christ, excerpts of Ph. Monotrop's Dioptra, the Cronicle of C.Manassia, the anonymous translation of the Tormenting Voyage of the Godmother and others.
The attention of Ukrainian translators during the 14th and 15lh centuries now turned to numerous apocrypha, aesthetic, philosophic and semi-philosophic works of Byzantine authors E.Sirin, D.Areopagitis, Maxim the Confessor, G.Sinaitis, G.Palama and P.Monotropos (known best for his work Dioptra). Several historical works are also known to have been translated in those times, the most outstanding of all being K.Manassia's Chronicle and The Trojan History. From the literary works which were translated in the fifteenth century are known the narratives: A Story of the Indian Kingdom, A Story of Towdal the Knight and The Passions of Christ. New translations of ecclesiastic works included The Four Bibles, The Psalm-Book, The Apostle and some sermon books.
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It must be pointed out that it was the fifteenth century which marked a noticeable change in the orientation of Ukrainian society, culture and translation towards Christian Western Europe. The first Ukrainians went to study in the universities of Krakow, Paris, Florence and Bologna, from which the Ukrainian scientist Yuriy Drohobych (Kotermak) had graduated. He was also elected rector of the latter university in 1481 -1482. Among the first translations of the fifteenth century was the King's Bible of 1401 (Transcarpathian Ukraine) and the Kamyanka-Strumyliv Bible which appeared in 1411, followed by the Book of Psalms (translated by F.Zhydovyn) and some collections of stories about the lives of saints.
Translations of belles-lettres during the sixteenth century were probably not numerous either. They include a well-known in Western Europe work The Meeting of Magister Polycarp with the Death which had already been translated once at the end of the fifteenth century, the Solomon's Song, Alexandria, Guido de Columna's History of the Trojan War, History of Attila, King of Hungary, a narrative on the Re-volt of Lucifer and the Angels, a Story about the Fierce Death which Nobody Can Escape and others.
As in Germany, France and England during the first half of the sixteenth century, Ukrainian translators were engaged in bringing mostly ecclesiastical works into our language. Thus, in 1522 the readers received the small Traveller's Booklet, in 1525 - The Apostle and in 1556-1561 - the famous Peresopnyts'ka Bible which was translated with many Ukrainian elements by Mykhailo Vasyl'evych. In 1570 one more translation of the Bible was completed by Vasyl' Tyapyns'kyi which was followed by the Books of the New Testament in 1580.
