medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 11/2020
Ideologies of Translation I
No.:
11
Year of the volume:
2020
medieval worlds provides a forum for comparative, interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Its aim is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, regional limits and national research traditions in Medieval Studies, to open up new spaces for discussion, and to help developing global perspectives. We focus on the period from c. 400 to 1500 CE but do not stick to rigid periodization.
medieval worlds is open to submissions of broadly comparative studies and matters of global interest, whether in single articles, companion papers, smaller clusters, or special issues on a subject of global/comparative history. We particularly invite studies of wide-ranging connectivity or comparison between different world regions.
Apart from research articles, medieval worlds publishes ongoing debates and project and conference reports on comparative medieval research.
Table of Contents
Ideologies of Translation, I
Instead of an Introduction: Medieval Europe Translated Pavlína Rychterová
Technologies of Translation
The Byzantine Imperial Chancery and its Language Policy from Justin II to Leo III
(Sixth-Eighth Centuries): From Latin to Greek
Christian Gastgeber
Translation as Interpretation: Translating Galen’s Polysemous Term Physis into Arabic
Elvira Wakelnig
Between Languages, Genres and Cultures: Diego Collado’s Linguistic Works
Jan Odstrčilík
Politics of Translation
The Latin Talmud and the Extension of Papal Jurisdiction over Jews
Alexander Fidora
»For they did not change their language« (MekhY Pischa 5):
On the Early Medieval Literary Rehebraicisation of Jewish Culture
Constanza Cordoni
Cultures of Translation
The Tibetan Translation of the Indian Buddhist Epistemological Corpus
Pascale Hugon
Translation as Commentary in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Didactic
and Religious Literature from Java and Bali
Andrea Acri and Thomas M. Hunter
Project Report
An Interim Report on the Editorial and Analytical Work of the AnonymClassic Project
Beatrice Gruendler, Jan J. van Ginkel, Rima Redwan, Khouloud Khalfallah, Isabel Toral, Johannes Stephan, Matthew L. Keegan, Theodore S. Beers, Mahmoud Kozae, Marwa M. Ahmed
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Instead of an Introduction: Medieval Europe Translated
Page 2 - 16 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s2
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The Byzantine Imperial Chancery and its Language Policy from Justin II to Leo III (Sixth-Eighth Centuries): From Latin to Greek
This article traces the development of language use in the imperial chancery of Constantinople. After Emperor Justinian I permitted Greek as the official language for documents concerning the Greek-speaking areas, his successors followed this path; Greek was increasingly preferred and started to replace Latin in documents that addressed the entire empire and, in a final stage, in imperial documents directed to Western addressees. To illustrate this process, the respective documents are discussed insofar as the preserved texts allow the drawing of safe conclusions about their original language and the stages of its development. For this reason, the texts are examined with regard to the target audience and, if Latin, to chancery or local translations.
Keywords: Byzantine chancery, Latin in Byzantium, Byzantine documents, Byzantine laws, Latin documents in Byzantium
Page 17 - 59 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s17
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Translation as Interpretation: Translating Galen’s Polysemous Term 'Physis' into Arabic
In the ninth century almost the entire corpus of the Greek physician Galen was translated into Arabic, mainly by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and his circle. A key concept of Galen’s thought is nature (physis ) and the physician uses it in many ways and with different meanings. His late antique commentators show great awareness of the polysemy of the term physis, and the same applies to his Arabic translators. So the question arises of how Ḥunayn and his circle dealt with this polysemous term – did they choose a similarly polysemous Arabic term to keep the ambiguity of the original or did they render the text more precise by employing different terms? In the latter case, they would have provided not only a translation but also a concise account of how they understood nature in a given translated passage and/or how they wanted their audience to understand it. The article studies one particular case, the translation of the term physis within the Arabic translation of On Diseases and Symptoms done by either Ḥunayn or his nephew Ḥubayš. The exhaustive comparison between the Greek passages and their corresponding Arabic translations documented in the appendix shows that the translator mainly translated physis by two different terms of the same root, i.e. ṭabīʿa, which is mostly used in phrases conveying an activity, and ṭabʿ, which is mainly employed in an adverbial sense. Particularly interesting are cases in which physis is simply not translated, as in some of them Galen may speak about demiurgic Nature, a principle that he often equates to the divine Demiurge, especially in his On the Usefulness of the Parts. These findings also allow for some tentative suggestions regarding the translation’s intended audience.
Keywords: Galen, Graeco-Arabic translations, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, Ḥubayš ibn al-Ḥasan, nature, On Diseases and Symptoms, polysemy
Page 60 - 116 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s60
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Between Languages, Genres and Cultures: Diego Collado’s Linguistic Works
Dominican Diego Collado can be rightfully counted among the most influential missionaries of the sunset of the Christian Century in Japan. Although he spent only three years there, between 1619 and 1622, and never achieved the palm of martyrdom, it transformed the rest of his life. After his return to Europe, he fought vehemently against the Jesuit monopoly in Japan at the Roman curia and the court in Madrid. While severe Christian persecution was raging in the land of the rising sun, he prepared a plan for an ambitious and highly controversial project for a new Dominican congregation devoted only to the missionary activity in Japan and China. This endeavour failed bitterly. His literary activity was similarly focused on a single goal – to promote his mission. He wrote multiple reports disputing and fighting the Jesuits, finished and published a history of the Christianisation of Japan from the Dominican perspective, and – most importantly for this article – composed three linguistic works: a grammar of the Japanese language, a Latin-Spanish-Japanese dictionary and a Japanese-Latin model confession. This study understands these three influential works as a trilogy that should be treated together as mutually complementary. It recognises them not only as examples of missionary linguistics but as part of a long European (and, in particular, Latin) tradition of language description, language learning and pastoral care.
Keywords: Diego Collado, Christianity in Japan, Japanese grammar, dictionary of Japanese, confession, early modern period
Page 117 - 151 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s117
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The Latin Talmud and the Extension of Papal Jurisdiction over Jews
This paper addresses the question of how the Latin translation of the Talmud, known as the Extractiones de Talmud (1245), is related to the changing perception of the Jews and in particular to the reassessment of their legal status during the thirteenth century. It draws particular attention to Pope Gregory IX’s description of the Talmud as another law – an alia lex, as he called it – which challenged the traditional representation of the Jews as witnesses of the Christian truth, depicting them instead as heretics. This new perception of the Jews had far-reaching consequences for their legal status, for the popes used it to subject them to direct papal jurisdiction. To conclude, the question of whether the discovery of the Jewish »Oral Law« can be considered the cause of this new representation of the Jews in the strict sense is addressed. It is argued that it may, conversely, have been the intended representation of the Jews as heretics, who could thus be subsumed under papal jurisdiction, which was instrumental in bringing to light and decrying this body of rabbinic wisdom.
Keywords: Babylonian Talmud, Hebrew-into-Latin translations, canon law, religious law, blasphemy, heresy, Nicholas Donin, Gregory IX, Innocent IV
Page 152 - 164 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s152
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»For they did not change their language« (MekhY Pischa 5): On the Early Medieval Literary Rehebraicisation of Jewish Culture
Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third century CE), a series of later rabbinic texts with other exegetical agendas praise the children of Israel for remaining loyal to their language identity during the time of the Egyptian bondage. This tradition is found both in Hebrew and in Hebrew-Aramaic rabbinic corpora of the classical period before it is taken up in early medieval works, for the most part written in Hebrew, which attest to a return to Hebrew in part of the Jewish literary production in the early Middle Ages. This paper is about tracing this evolving tradition through changing contexts.
Keywords: Language ideology, Jewish identity, rabbinic literature
Page 165 - 186 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s165
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The Tibetan Translation of the Indian Buddhist Epistemological Corpus
As Buddhism was transmitted to Tibet, a huge number of texts were translated from Sanskrit, Chinese and other Asian languages into Tibetan. Epistemological treatises composed by Indian Buddhist scholars – works focusing on the nature of »valid cognition« and exploring peripheral issues of philosophy of mind, logic, and language – were, from the very beginning, part of the translated corpus, and had a profound impact on Tibetan intellectual history. This paper looks into the progression of the translation of such works in the two phases of the diffusion of Buddhism to Tibet – the early phase in the seventh to the ninth centuries andthe later phase starting in the late tenth century – on the basis of lists of translated works invarious catalogues compiled in these two phases and the contents of the section »epistemology« of canonical collections (Tenjur). The paper inquires into the prerogatives that directed the choice of works that were translated, the broader or narrower diffusion of existing translations, and also highlights preferences regarding which works were studied in particular contexts. I consider in particular the contribution of the famous »Great translator«, Ngok Loden Shérap (rngog blo ldan shes rab, 1059-1109), who was also a pioneer exegete, and discuss some of the practicalities and methodology in the translation process, touching onthe question of terminology and translation style. The paper also reflects on the status of translated works as authentic sources by proxy, and correlatively, on the impact of mistaken translations and the strategies developed to avoid them.
Keywords: translation, Tibetan, Buddhism, epistemology, literature, canon
Page 187 - 212 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s187
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Translation as Commentary in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Didactic and Religious Literature from Java and Bali
This article discusses the dynamics of translation and exegesis documented in the body of Sanskrit-Old Javanese Śaiva and Buddhist technical literature of the tutur/tattva genre, composed in Java and Bali in the period from c. the ninth to the sixteenth century. The texts belonging to this genre, mainly preserved on palm-leaf manuscripts from Bali, are concerned with the reconfiguration of Indic metaphysics, philosophy, and soteriology along localized lines. Here we focus on the texts that are built in the form of Sanskrit verses provided with Old Javanese prose exegesis – each unit forming a »translation dyad«. The Old Javanese prose parts document cases of linguistic and cultural »localization« that could be regarded as broadly corresponding to the Western categories of translation, paraphrase, and commentary, but which often do not fit neatly into any one category. Having introduced the »vyākhyā-style« form of commentary through examples drawn from the early inscriptional and didactic literature in Old Javanese, we present key instances of »cultural translations« as attested in texts composed at different times and in different geographical and religio-cultural milieus, and describe their formal features. Our aim is to document how local agents (re-)interpreted, fractured, and restated the messages conveyed by the Sanskrit verses in the light of their contingent contexts, agendas, and prevalent exegetical practices. Our hypothesis is that local milieus of textual production underwent a progressive »drift« from the Indic-derived scholastic traditions that inspired – and entered into a conversation with – the earliest sources, composed in Central Java in the early medieval period, and progressively shifted towards a more embedded mode of production in East Java and Bali from the eleventh to the sixteenth century and beyond.
Keywords: Old Javanese, Sanskrit, tutur, tattva, commentarial literature, Śaivism, Buddhism
Page 213 - 240 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s213
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An Interim Report on the Editorial and Analytical Work of the AnonymClassic Project
In this collective article, members of the AnonymClassic project discuss various aspects of their work on the textual tradition Kalīla and Dimna. Beatrice Gruendler provides a general introduction to the questions being considered. This is followed by a number of short essays in specific areas, organized into three categories: codicology, literary history and theory, and the digital infrastructure of the project. Jan J. van Ginkel summarizes the challenges involved in editing the Syriac versions of Kalīla and Dimna; Rima Redwan explains the AnonymClassic team’s approach vis-à-vis the transcription and textual segmentation of Arabic manuscripts; Khouloud Khalfallah follows this with an overview of the types of data that are recorded for each codex that is integrated into the project; Beatrice Gruendler, in a second contribution, shares some preliminary results from the analysis of interrelationships among manuscripts; and Rima Redwan, also in a second contribution, discusses the sets of illustrations, or »image cycles«, that are found in many copies of Kalīla wa-Dimna. Moving into the realm of literary history and theory, Isabel Toral poses a range of questions relating to the status of Kalīla and Dimna, as (arguably) anonymous in authorship and as a fundamentally translated book; Johannes Stephan explores the references to Kalīla wa-Dimna found in various medieval Arabic scholarly works; and Matthew L. Keegan confronts the problem of the genre(s) to which Kalīla wa-Dimna might be assigned and the exceptional »promiscuity« of the text. The last section of the article, on digital infrastructure, contains two contributions: Theodore S. Beers describes a web application that the team has created to facilitate the consultation of published versions of Kalīla and Dimna, and, finally, Mahmoud Kozae and Marwa M. Ahmed offer a more comprehensive discussion of the digital tools and methods – specialized and in some cases developed »in-house« – on which the AnonymClassic project relies.
Keywords: Codicology, Literary History and Theory, Digital Infrastructure
Theodore S. Beers
Page 241 - 279 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020s241
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Edition:
978-3-7001-8745-5, eJournal, PDF, limited accessibility , 01.07.2020
Pages:
279 Pages
Language:
English
DOI (Link to Online Edition):