The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Volume 4: 1790-1900 (review)

Under the general editorship of Peter France and Stuart Gillespie, Oxford University Press has embarked upon the production of a comprehensive five-volume history of literary translation in English from its beginnings to the end of the last millennium. The aim announced in the Editors' Foreword is 'to present for the first time a critical and historical overview of the development of this art or craftin the English-speaking world'. Already in this succinct statement of account one is faced with a familiar hesitation, part caveat and part aporia, about the very status of translation as techne. This is a critical and historical project, though, and theoretical niceties of definition do not detain the editors and the other contributors for long. Accordingly, the vexed question of what defines a literary translation is solved with a Gordian cut: 'we use the word "literary" in the broad old sense which it has still not completely lost, to encompass something like the full range of non-technical work which has made up the reading of the literate public' (also from the General Editors' Foreword). Literary translation, then, is a techne, an art or craft as the dictionary defines it, but one that concerns itself exclusively with the 'non-technical'. There is evidence here – in the clashing senses of what constitutes technique – of linguistic process, the arc of erasure and inscription that the evolution of a living language entails: growth, but also shrinkage, 'the broad old sense … still not completely lost'. Loss is a concept that has dogged the course of translation in recent times, the more so the more 'literary' a translation has claimed itself to be, but in the reference to the 'broad old sense' one detects a defensiveness, a retrenchment, in the face of an opponent that approaches from a new direction. The name of the opposition is Translation Studies, which in the past decade or two has extended its territorial reach and hegemonic control over 'literary translation' at the expense of Comparative Literature, which had earlier assumed it owned the proprietary rights.¹ The identification of literary translation in the title of the Oxford History, then, serves as a programmatic declarationof the significance of an area of activity that warrants autonomous attention, and as a welcome reassertion of that fact for those whose interests lie in literature in its widest, and still surviving, sense.

The first volume of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English to appear in print, in 2005, was the one situated chronologically in the middle of the series, covering the period from 1660 to 1790. Volume Four, edited by Peter France and Kenneth Haynes, is the second to come out, and, in stretching from 1790 to 1900, it continues the historical account and concludes individual case-histories – Sir William Jones, the Orientalist, is one such example – which, of necessity, extend across the faultlines of the separate publications. It is, however, a critical and historical work in its own right, and the editors have endeavoured to assemble a coherent set of core articles designed to provide a selective, but representative, survey of significant events and characteristic activities in the field of literary translation during this period. The topics treated (mostly in subdivided form) are Translation in Britain and the United States (58 pages), Principles and Norms of Translation (24 pages), The Translator (48 pages), The Publicationof Literary Translation: An Overview (19 pages), Greek and Latin Literature (55 pages), Literature of Medieval and Modern Europe (111 pages), Eastern Literatures (48 pages), Popular Culture (39 pages), Texts for Music and Oral Literature (32 pages), Sacred and Religious Texts (29 pages), and Philosophy, History, and Travel Writing (34 pages). There is also, at the end, a chapter consisting of 108 biographical sketches (55 pages) and a copious index (35 pages). A two-and-a-half page preface supplies the rationale for the subject matter and the ordering of the chapters...