ABSTRACT
The goal of vernacular translation is to bring something relatively fixed into something that is still extremely mobile: the nonstandardized, nonliterary target language. To use Lee Patterson's language, the author of a vernacular translation in late medieval Italy is likely to be no poet, but neither is he just a scribe. The multiple versions of the Fatti dei Romani give palpable evidence of a long and gradual process of vernacular appropriation of ancient culture. Lapo did not know Latin, or even much French, and was therefore literate only in the sense that he read and wrote in the vernacular. The transcriber of a volgarizzamento might well have a better understanding of the past or a better mastery of the language being translated than did the author of the translation whose work he is transcribing. Volgarizzamenti are often, on the one hand, anonymous, as is the Fatti dei Romani, and as was the author of the original French Fait des Romains.
