60 EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 61
to the Authorized Version says, "If anything be halting, or superfluous, or not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the truth set in place." 1 As time went on, certain technical means were employed to meet the situation. Coverdale incloses in brackets words not in the Latin text; the Geneva translators put added words in italics; Fulke criticizes the Rhemish translators for neglecting this device; 2 and the matter is finally settled by its employment in the Authorized Version. Fulke, however, irritated by what he considers a superstitious regard for the number of words in the original on the part of the Rhemish translators, puts the whole question on a common-sense basis. He charges his opponents with making "many imperfect sentences . . . because you will not seem to add that which in translation is no addition, but a true translation." a "For to translate out of one tongue into another," he says in another place, "is a matter of greater difficulty than is commonly taken, I mean exactly to yield as much and no more than the original containeth, when the words and phrases are so different, that few are found which in all points signify the same thing, neither more nor less, in divers tongues." 4 And again, "Must not such particles in translation be always expressed to make the sense plain, which in English without the particle hath no sense or understanding. To translate precisely out of the Hebrew is not to observe the number of words, but the perfect sense and meaning, as the phrase of our tongue will serve to be understood." 6
For the distinguishing characteristics of the Authorized Version, the beauty of its rhythm, the vigor of its native Saxon vocabulary, there is little to prepare one in the comment of its translators or their predecessors. Apparently the faithful effort to render the original truly resulted in a perfection of style of which the translator himself was largely
1 Pollard, p. 361. a Fulke, Defence, Parker Society, p. 552.
Defence, p. 552. 4 Ibid., p. 97. 6 Ibid., p. 408.
unconscious. The declaration in the preface to the version of 1611 that "niceness in words was always counted the next step to trifling," 1 and the general condemnation of Castalio's "lewd translation," point to a respect for the original which made the translator merely a mouthpiece and the English language merely a medium for a divine utterance. Possibly there is to be found in appreciation of the style of the original Hebrew, Greek, or Latin some hint of what gave the English version its peculiar beauty, though even here it is hard to distinguish the tribute paid to style from that paid to content. The characterization may be only a bit of vague comparison like that in the preface to the Authorized Version, "Hebrew the ancientest, . . . Greek the most copious, . . . Latin the finest," s or the reference in the preface to the Rhemish New Testament to the Vulgate as the translation "of greatest majesty." 4 The prefaces to the Geneva New Testament and the Geneva Bible combine fairly definite linguistic comment with less obvious references to style: "And because the Hebrew and Greek phrases, which are hard to render in other tongues, and also short, should not be so hard, I have sometimes interpreted them without any whit diminishing the grace of the sense, as our language doth use them"; 5 "Now as we have chiefly observed the sense, and labored always to restore it to all integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of the words, considering that the Apostles who spoke and wrote to the Gentiles in the Greek tongue, rather constrained them to the lively phrase of the Hebrew, than enterprised far by mollifying their language to speak as the Gentiles did. And for this and other causes we have in many places reserved the Hebrew phrases, notwithstanding that they may seem somewhat hard in their ears that are not well practised and also delight in the sweet sounding phrases of
Pollard, p. 375. 2 E.g., Fulke, Defence, p. 163.
3 Pollard, p. 349. 4 Ibid., p. 303. 5 Ibid., p. 277.
