In the last few days it has come to light that yet another manuscript translated from Latin into English is the work of Queen Elizabeth I. Nowadays it’s quite hard to imagine our rulers, be they monarchs or presidents, as scholars or academics…. but Queen Elizabeth was already translating from French, Italian and Latin as a teenager and she didn’t stop when she ascended to the throne, quite the contrary, she leaned heavily on her intellectual capabilities as a ruler, finding inspiration and solace in documents she read and translated.
Another very interesting point from a translator’s point of view is how far she adapted or localised her texts… all translators strive to make the translated text sound spontaneous, as though it had been written in the target language, but this was critical to Queen Elizabeth too, she didn’t want her texts to sound like translations, so rather than just rendering the sense into English she tried to bring them closer to her readers both linguistically and culturally. The reason for this was also so she could use them to further her national political agenda!
This brings us to the great conundrum for translators: how far do you deviate from the source document to make the translation sound less “foreign†to the recipient? Sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly it would seem that Queen Elizabeth I was highly capable not only at transferring the words from one language to another but also at bringing her texts into the present and translating them culturally from foreign to native.
(ph. credit Lambeth Palace Library)
