72 EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION
THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 73
to their original signification, as they were taken in such time as they were written by the instruments of the Holy Ghost."
Fulke's support of the claims of the English language is not confined to general statements. Acquaintance with other languages has given him a definite conception of the properties of his own, even in matters of detail. He resents the importation of foreign idiom. "If you ask for the readiest and most proper English of these words, I must answer you, `an image, a worshipper of images, and worshipping of images,' as we have sometimes translated. The other that you would have, 'idol, idolater, and idolatry,' be rather Greekish than English words; which though they be used by many Englishmen, yet are they not understood of all as the other be." 2 "You .. . avoid the names of elders, calling them ancients, and the wise men sages, as though you had rather speak French than English, as we do; like as you translate confide, 'have a good heart,' after the French phrase, rather than you would say as we do, 'be of good comfort.' " 3 Though he admits that English as compared with older languages is defective in vocabulary, he insists that this cannot be remedied by unwarranted coinage of words. "That we have no greater change of words to answer so many of the Hebrew tongue, it is of the riches of that tongue, and the poverty of our mother language, which hath but two words, image and idol, and both of them borrowed of the Latin and Greek: as for other words equivalent, we know not any, and we are loth to make any new words of that signification, except the multitude of Hebrew words of the same sense coming together do sometimes perhaps seem to require it. Therefore as the Greek bath fewer words to express this thing than the Hebrew, so bath the Latin fewer than the Greek, and the English fewest of all, as will appear if you would undertake to give us 1 Defence, p. 217. 2 Ibid., p. 179. 3 Ibid., p. 90.
tion." 1 But ecclesiastical authority is not always a safe guide. "How the fathers of the church have used words, it is no rule for translators of the scriptures to follow; who oftentimes used words as the people did take them, and not as they signified in the apostles' time." 2 In difficult cases there is a peculiar advantage in consulting profane writers, "who used the words most indifferently in respect of our controversies of which they were altogether ignorant." 3 Fulke refuses to be reduced to accept entirely either the "common" or the "etymological" interpretation. "A translator that hath regard to interpret for the ignorant people's instruction, may sometimes depart from the etymology or common signification or precise turning of word for word, and that for divers causes." 4 To one principle, however, he will commit himself : the translator must observe common English usage. "We are not lords of the common speech of men," he writes, "for if we were, we would teach them to use their terms more properly; but seeing we cannot change the use of speech, we follow Aristotle's counsel, which is to speak and use words as the common people useth." 5 Consequently ecclesiastical must always give way to popular usage. "Our meaning is not, that if any Greek terms, or words of any other language, have of long time been usurped in our English language, the true meaning of which is unknown at this day to the common people, but that the same terms may be either in translation or exposition set out plainly, to inform the simplicity of the ignorant, by such words as of them are better understood. Also when those terms are abused by custom of speech, to signify some other thing than they were first appointed for, or else to he taken ambiguously for divers things, we ought not to be superstitious in these cases, but to avoid misunderstanding we may use words according
1 Defence, p. 217. 2 Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 161.
4 Ibid., p. 58. 6 Ibid., p. 267.
