56 EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 57
word for word, "except," says the latter, "in the case of the Holy Scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery." This corresponds closely with Aelfric's theory expressed in the preface to the Lives of the Saints: "Nec potuimus , in ista translation semper verbum ex verbo transferre, sed tamen sensum ex sensu," and his insistance in the Preface to Genesis on a faithfulness which extends even to the endebirdnisse or orders.
The principle "word for word if possible; if not, sense for sense" is common in connection with medieval translations, but is susceptible of very different interpretations, as appears sometimes from its context. Richard Rolle's phrasing of the theory in the preface to his translation of the Psalter is: "I follow the letter as much as I may. And where I find no proper English I follow the wit of the words"; but he also makes the contradictory statement, "In this work I seek no strange English, but lightest and commonest, and such that is most like to the Latin," a peculiar conception of the translator's obligation to his own tongue! The Prologue to the second recension of the Wycliffite version, commonly attributed to Purvey, emphasizes, under cover of the same apparent theory, the claims of the vernacular. "The best translating," it runs, "is out of Latin into English, to translate after the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as open, either opener, in English as in Latin, . . . and if the letter may not be sued in the translating, let the sentence be ever whole and open, for the words owe to serve to the intent and sentence." 2 The growing distrust of the Vulgate in some quarters probably accounts in some measure for the translator's attempt to make the meaning if necessary "more true and more open than it is in the Latin." In any case these contrasted theories represent
The Psalter translated by Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884.
2' Chapter 15, in Pollard, Fifteenth,Century Prose and Verse.
roughly the position of the Roman Catholic and, to some extent, the Anglican party as compared with the more distinctly Protestant attitude throughout the period when the English Bible was taking shape, the former stressing the difficulties of translation and consequently discouraging it, or, when permitting it, insisting on extreme faithfulness to the original; the latter profiting by experiment and criticism and steadily working towards a version which would give due heed not only to the claims of the original but to the genius of the English language.
Regarded merely as theory, however, a statement like the one just quoted obviously failed to give adequate recognition to what the original might justly demand, and in that respect justified the fears of those who opposed translation. The high standard of accuracy set by such critics demanded of the translator an increasing consciousness of the difficulties involved and an increasingly clear conception of what things were and were not permissible. Purvey himself contributes to this end by a definite statement of certain changes which may be allowed the English writer.' Ablative absolute or participial constructions may be replaced by clauses of various kinds, "and this will, in many places, make the sentence open, where to English it after the word would be dark and doubtful. Also," he continues, "a relative, which, may be resolved into his antecedent with a conjunction copulative, as thus, which runneth, and he runneth. Also when a word is once set in a reason, it may be set forth as oft as it is understood, either as oft as reason and need ask; and this word autem either vero, may stand for forsooth either for but, and thus I use commonly; and sometimes it may stand for and, as old grammarians say. Also when rightful construction is letted by relation, I resolve it openly, thus, where this reason, Dominum formidabunt adversarii ejus, should be Englished thus by the letter, the Lord his adversaries shall dread, I
1 Prologue, Chapter 15.
