Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Rethinking Medieval Translation
- 1 On Not Knowing Greek: Leonzio Pilatus's Rendition of the Iliad and the Translatio of Mediterranean Identities
- 2 Translation and Transformation in the Ovide moralisé
- 3 Translating Lucretia: Word, Image and ‘Ethical Non-Indifference’ in Simon de Hesdin's Translation of Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia
- 4 Translating Catharsis: Aristotle and Averroës, the Scholastics and the Basochiens
- 5 The Ethics of Translatio in Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile
- 6 Invisible Translation, Language Difference and the Scandal of Becket's Mother
- 7 Medieval Fixers: Politics of Interpreting in Western Historiography
- 8 The Task of the Dérimeur: Benjamin and Translation into Prose in Fifteenth-Century French Literature
- 9 The Translator as Interpretant: Passing in/on the Work of Ramon Llull
- 10 Rough Translation: Charles d'Orléans, Lydgate and Hoccleve
- 11 Bueve d'Hantone/Bovo d'Antona: Exile, Translation and the History of the Chanson de geste
- Untranslatable: A Response
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Translator as Interpretant: Passing in/on the Work of Ramon Llull
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Rethinking Medieval Translation
- 1 On Not Knowing Greek: Leonzio Pilatus's Rendition of the Iliad and the Translatio of Mediterranean Identities
- 2 Translation and Transformation in the Ovide moralisé
- 3 Translating Lucretia: Word, Image and ‘Ethical Non-Indifference’ in Simon de Hesdin's Translation of Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia
- 4 Translating Catharsis: Aristotle and Averroës, the Scholastics and the Basochiens
- 5 The Ethics of Translatio in Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile
- 6 Invisible Translation, Language Difference and the Scandal of Becket's Mother
- 7 Medieval Fixers: Politics of Interpreting in Western Historiography
- 8 The Task of the Dérimeur: Benjamin and Translation into Prose in Fifteenth-Century French Literature
- 9 The Translator as Interpretant: Passing in/on the Work of Ramon Llull
- 10 Rough Translation: Charles d'Orléans, Lydgate and Hoccleve
- 11 Bueve d'Hantone/Bovo d'Antona: Exile, Translation and the History of the Chanson de geste
- Untranslatable: A Response
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The problem of translation, which is to say, a problem of passage …
Ramon Llull (1232–1313) seems, at first, a promising figure to examine in relation to medieval translation. For a start, he was a multilingual Majorcan who wrote in Catalan, Latin and Arabic and travelled incessantly for more than forty years, supported by the Majorcan King Jaume II (1267–1327). He proselytized in Cyprus, Armenia, Tunisia, Rome, Genoa, Pisa, Paris, Lyon and Montpellier, halted only by his death at the age of eighty-one. He translated his own writings from and into these languages and, most importantly, by his own admission, transcribed (perhaps even translated as an act of xenoglossia) the word of God as he received it in a vision of 1264. Llull is in this sense an exemplary translator: one who passes on information, serves himself as a receptor and medium of the divine word, slips in and out of different cultures, places and languages – someone who ‘passes’ in other words – without calling attention to himself as an interloper or imposter.
It is within this category of passing polymath that Llull made his name and ensured his reputation: by some estimates he was the most prolific author of the High Middle Ages.
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- Rethinking Medieval TranslationEthics, Politics, Theory, pp. 184 - 203Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012