ABSTRACT
An account of one thousand years of translation thought cannot but be extremely selective. This is true of the following chapter, which organizes its material into two main sections. It opens with a discussion of terms used for translation in the medieval period, because they offer us a glimpse of how translation may have been conceptualized even in the absence of more systematic theory. It then moves on to aspects of the socio-historical and socio-cultural contexts of translation which are peculiar to the Middle Ages: the framing of translation in Western Europe as a westward movement of political and cultural dominance, with ancient Greece as its originary point; the complex multilingualism of most medieval societies; the importance of religion in promoting and shaping translation but also in setting boundaries to it; and the impact of manuscript transmission on what gets transmitted to later ages and in what form. The second part of the chapter begins with a very brief survey of important translation schools, movements, and individual figures, both in Europe and in some other cultures with well-documented translation activity. This serves to introduce and map out more detailed discussions of a handful of key questions of transhistorical importance: Is translation possible? Why and for whom are translations made? What should translators aim to achieve and how? The final section gestures briefly at translators’ reflections on some more practical aspects of their craft.
