The Translator’s Invisibility

Tytler’s importance in the canonization of fluent translation is perhaps most clearly indicated by George Campbell’s adherence to the same “principles” in his two-volume version of the Gospels. Campbell’s was undoubtedly one of the most popular English translations of its time: between 1789, when it was first issued, and 1834, fifteen editions appeared in Britain and the United States. The massive first volume contained Campbell’s “Preliminary Dissertations” on such issues as “The chief Things to be attended to in translating” (“Dissertation the Tenth,” 445–519). The closeness to Tytler’s recommendations is remarkable:

{75} The first thing, without doubt, which claims [the translator’s] attention, is to give a just representation of the sense of the original. This, it must be acknowledged, is the most essential of all. The second thing is, to convey into his version, as much as possible, in a consistency with the genius of the language which he writes, the author’s spirit and manner, and, if I may so express myself, the very character of his style. The third and last thing is, to take care, that the version have at least, so far the quality of an original performance, as to appear natural and easy, such as shall give no handle to the critic to charge the translator with applying words improperly, or in a meaning not warranted by use, or combining them in a way which renders the sense obscure, and the construction ungrammatical, or even harsh.

(Campbell 1789:445–446)

To recommend transparency as the most suitable discourse for the Gospels was indeed to canonize fluent translation. Tytler, who claimed not to know of Campbell’s work before publishing his own, made use of it in later editions of the Essay, drawing on the “Preliminary Dissertations” for additional examples and joining Campbell in rejecting translations that were either too literal or too free, that deviated too far from fluency and from dominant interpretations of the sacred text. “Dr Campbell has justly remarked, that the Hebrew is a simple tongue,” observed Tytler, agreeing with the Bible translator’s rejection of Sebastianus Castalio’s version for its “elegant Latinity,” for “substituting the complex and florid composition to the simple and unadorned” (Tytler 1978:111, 112). Campbell’s description of his own discursive strategy recommended fluency: “As to the Language, particularly of the version itself, simplicity, propriety, and perspicuity, are the principal qualities at which I have aimed. I have endeavoured to keep equally clear of the frippery of Arias, and the finery of Castalio” (Campbell 1789:xx). In Campbell’s view, Arias Montanus erred because his Latin version “appears to have been servilely literal,” offering obscure etymological renderings and “preserving uniformity, rendering the same word in the original, wherever it occurs, or however it is connected, by the same word in the version” without “attending to the scope of the author, as discovered by the context” (ibid.:449, 450, 451). Fluency requires the translator’s lexicon to be varied enough not to call attention to itself as a lexicon, to the artificiality of the {76} translation, or ultimately to the fact that the translator has created a target-language “context” to support his estimation of “the scope of the author.”

Campbell’s condemnation of close translation is a sharp reminder that any advocacy of transparent discourse conceals an investment in domestic cultural values—in his case, a Christian dogmatism with anti-Semitic overtones: