Wednesday 15th March 17:00—18:30, Session 1

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Overview of programme

Session:

Translating Bible 2

Place:

Seminarraum 1

Moderator:

Sabrina Corbellini

Paper 1:

Old Czech Biblical Prologues within 15th Century

Andrea Svobodová
Kateřina Voleková

Paper 2:

Philosophy of Language in Oxford Debate on Biblical Translation c. 1400

Elizabeth Solopova

Paper 3:

 

Old Czech Biblical Prologues within 15th Century

Andrea Svobodová
Kateřina Voleková

Biblical prologues, prefaces to most books of the Latin Bible, have accompanied the biblical text in the European cultural space ever since the end of the 4th century. The core of the collection of these Latin texts consists of the extensive dedicational, defensive and interpretative texts by Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus (Saint Jerome) for the translation of the Vulgate. In the Late Middle Ages, the collection of prologues, prefaces to the books of the Bible, thus contained around one hundred texts varying in age, length, genre, topic, stylistic level and importance of content. At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, an unknown translator translated the entire collection of prologues from Latin into Old Czech. This independent translation has been preserved in two manuscript versions from the beginning of the 15th century.

The oldest manuscript version, the Prologues of Litoměřice, is contained in the Old Czech Bible manuscript dated with the years 1411–1414. This first Czech translation of the collection of prologues had to deal with Latin texts of a truly high linguistic and scholarly level, the translation was therefore accompanied by explanations of unfamiliar words and realities, based on Medieval Latin prologues commentaries which were intended to readers better understanding. Translator´s aim was to interpret the original text literally, several expressions are thus also accompanied by second translations. These translation additions are often omitted in the second manuscript version, the so-called Prologues of the St. Vitus Metropolitan Chapter.

In addition to these two sets, individual prologues from this translation appeared in different text variations and in an unsystematic manner in a series of biblical manuscripts and incunables which came into being during the 15th century. Czech as a vernacular language at the time of the Late Medieval period was still seeking and forming its own lexical and syntactic expressive means, with which it would be possible to translate and interpret complex content with a great amount of philosophical, theological and philological terms, and at the same time, to successfully contend with the complicated form of the patristic and exegetic writings. Due to readers´ practical usage there are both large and small textual interferences with the original text in the prologues from Bible manuscripts of the so-called second, third and fourth biblical redaction of the Old Czech Bible translation.

Philosophy of Language in Oxford Debate on Biblical Translation c. 1400

Elizabeth Solopova

The first complete translation of the Bible into English, made from the Vulgate, was produced in the last quarter of the 14th century by the followers of the Oxford theologian John Wyclif. Though accurate and entirely uncontroversial, the translation was regarded as unacceptable by the English church and eventually prohibited by the archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel. Arundel’s Constitutions of 1407 banned the making of new and the use of any recent translations, produced from the time of Wyclif and later, without episcopal approval of both version and owner.

Work on the translation appears to have been concentrated in Oxford and in Oxford there is evidence for an academic interest, beyond the central circle of translators, in the theoretical issues raised by the work. The paper will focus on the discussion of these issues by academic authors around 1400. The primary interest will be in the philosophy of language that emerges from three surviving contributions to this debate. The longest, and the most important, is the determination by Richard Ullerston delivered in Oxford in 1401 and found anonymously in MS Vienna ÖNB 4133 and another short manuscript fragment. The other two contributions are the determinations by the Dominican Thomas Palmer and the Franciscan William Butler, each surviving in a single manuscript, the last also dated to 1401. All three texts make observations about the nature and status of vernacular languages and their suitability for biblical translation. Acknowledging that the Vulgate was itself a translation, the authors ask whether modern vernaculars are inherently inferior to ancient biblical languages and whether they are sufficiently structured and cultivated to serve as adequate vehicles for ideas found in the Bible. Richard Ullerston advances a particularly sophisticated argument, debating earlier views of Aristotle, Augustine and Roger Bacon, and asking such questions as, what is the relationship between external world, language and thought, and how does it affect the process of translation? Is the perception of the world universal and do concepts have a mental representation independent of language? Is meaning external to linguistic form or are thought processes determined by categories available in language? What is the nature of differences between languages and do such differences make adequate translation difficult or impossible to achieve? The paper will demonstrate the sophistication and importance of a linguistic and philosophical defence of opposite positions in the academic discussions of biblical translation.