I'll be getting in a bit of practice for the seminar next week, as I'm off to Melbourne for the ANZAMEMS conference. The theme of this year's conference (always loosely interpreted) is Cultures in Translation. The paper I'm presenting will be considering language, translation, and the construction of identity in a case of treason from 1415. The trial and execution of the accused took place right before Henry V left England on a campaign that included the battle of Agincourt, and the revelation of treason makes for a pivotal scene in Shakespeare's Henry V. The case generated a series of intriguing documents, including confessional letters to the king (in English), a detailed but heavily massaged trial record and later chronicle accounts that turned the whole thing into a dirty conspiracy with the French against the English 'nation'. My paper looks at the operations of translation in the production of these texts, not only the translation of one language to another (e.g. the English of a personal letter to the Latin of the trial record and the French of the parliament roll), but also the translation of a man's story of his loyal service to the English king and realm into an account of his 'tainting' and 'corruption' by French gold.
Working on this paper and some related research over the last few months has got me thinking about translation in a wider sense. When in the past I'd perhaps only thought of it in its narrow definition - that is, taking the words of one language and converting them into another one - it has become clear to me that any act of translation is also an act of interpretation. Postcolonial scholars talk about translation as an act of power and from this perspective, there is some fascinating work being done on the politics of medieval chronicles, and on the tensions and power struggles generated by later medieval vernacularity. A lot of this research has been centred on what are broadly thought of as 'literary' texts, such as chronicles, romances, poetry etc. (although such hard distinctions as 'literature' and 'history' or 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' can be pointless, if not highly misleading, when considering medieval sources). However, I'm drawn to the much smaller body of work that is asking these kinds of questions about translation and power about 'record' sources - the official accounts of law, politics, and government. Trial records and similar texts have their origins in oral pleas before a court (or, even earlier, before a lawyer or advocate) and by the later Middle Ages court pleas were often heard in English. The act of recording such cases performed multiple translations - from one person's speech to another's written record, from English oral testimony to the French and/or Latin of the formal court documents, and then later, into the French language summaries of the year books and, sometimes (depending on the case) the rolls of Chancery (a mix of Latin, French, and English) or some other office of government.
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| One of the more practical problems in archival research...* |
* This is not the letter I'm talking about here but is from a 1414 commission of inquiry into 'treasons and other felonies'. (The National Archives KB 9/205/3, to be exact. Photo by me.)
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4 comments:
Sorry to be so late in reading this. On the subject of translation from one record format to another, you might find interesting a book (a fairly short book) by Patrick Geary, if you haven't already met it, Phantoms of Remembrance: memory and oblivion at the end of the first millennium (Princeton 1994). It's not specifically about translation but deals with the question of why various monastic archives copied their original charters into cartularies at various times and what was preserved and lost when they did so. I think it's really interesting but you know, massive charter geek so I offer the suggestion tentatively.
Thanks for the reference. I'm not dealing directly with charters (at least at this stage) but I am running into questions about monastic recording/translating practices. In my period, monastic chronicles are sometimes the best places to find surviving copies of some of the more ephemeral documents involved in various political fracas (things like the public bills of complaint/calls for reform that got posted on churches etc.), so analyses of what got preserved, how, and why are quite relevant.
How very true. I too had the same notion, at least initially, of translation. But I've come to gain an understanding of all that it actually entails, and I've also developed a much greater sense of admiration for those who do it well.
You may well fill the manuscript gap one day, when you can freely author in a variety of ways. :)
One notion that came into my orbit recently was not just about the translations and interpretations as read and written but also, the tonal delivery and how that is/was adapted into documents.
Every day simultaneous interpreters have to cross - converse from one language to another. The snippets I have heard, tend to be delivered almost monotonically. It appears that this may be a favoured style. One reason was, I was told, was because sounding cheerful, or, lively, was not delivering enough gravitas. This raises many questions for me. Some follow.
What does more or less gravitas convey? Does it change the way in which the verbal interpretation is received, even more, would it alter the manner in which the interpretation would then be summarised in written form for circulating? How would such a summary compare with, say, a formal written text prepared for outline advance notice of likely speech and discussion content?
In addition to the above questions, there is also the unknowns about the linguistic abilities of the interpreters and translators. (Nuance and colloquialisms for example)
I also ask then,about the relevance of my queries to past times.
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