Cultures

It is probably safe to say that there has never been a time when the community of translators was unaware of cultural differences and their significance for translation. Translation theorists have been cognizant of the problems attendant upon cultural knowledge and cultural difference at least since ancient Rome, and translators almost certainly knew all about those problems long before theorists articulated them. Some Renaissance proponents of sense-for-sense translation were inclined to accuse medieval literal translators of being ignorant of cultural differences; but an impressive body of historical research on medieval translation (see Copeland 1991, Ellis 1989, 1991, 1996, Ellis and Evans 1994) is beginning to show conclusively that such was not the case. Medieval literalists were not ignorant of cultural or linguistic difference; due to the hermeneutical traditions in which they worked and the audiences for whom they translated, they were simply determined to bracket that difference, set it aside, and proceed as if it did not exist.