ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages, the relationship between politics and translation was as significant as it is today, though the precise nature of this relationship needs to be appreciated in its historical and geographical contexts. The Christian Bible was one of the earliest texts to be translated into post-classical languages, a process which gave rise to new interpretations reflecting contemporary political and religious needs. The political stakes of writing or translating into French were unsurprisingly inflected by the highly variable historical and geographical contexts in which such activity took place. What is clear is that the politics of medieval European translation not only have the potential to reshape the research landscape in Medieval Studies, but also challenge those working in more contemporary branches of translation studies to consider the historical specificity of their objects of enquiry and the terms used to describe and analyse them.
