What is it about?
There is a difference, I argue, between the "cenobitic" approach to translation (based on monastery discipline) of Augustine and later "systemic" or "scientific" scholars and the "eremitic" approach to translation (based on extreme ascetic solitude in the desert) of Jerome, Luther, and other irascible "I'm right, dammit, so shut up" scholars.
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Why is it important?
Historicizing current trends, tracking them back to various binary gates in history, is a useful way of denaturalizing them--showing how they came to seem normative.
Perspectives
When I first edited Western Translation Theories from Herodotus to Nietzsche, back in 1992-1993, I wrote a 250-page historical introduction--and then set about trying to convince publishers to publish both the anthology and the historical introduction, either as a fat brick or as two companion volumes. Nobody was buying the intro. Mona Baker finally took the anthology, but said "ditch the intro." I did, but published a few outtakes. This is one.
Professor Douglas J. Robinson
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Ascetic Foundations of Western Translatology: Jerome and Augustine, Translation and Literature, April 1992, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/tal.1992.1.1.3.
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