ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that it is important to acknowledge the rift that emerges between the fields of translation theory and translation practice in Renaissance Europe. It proposes to read Leonardo Bruni's definition of translation against the background of team translation, a practice that was widely used for translation of literary texts in medieval and Renaissance Europe but that has been excluded from Western theorizations on translation. The chapter claims that translation practices have critical potential for questioning not only some inherited principles of translation theory but also the conceptualizations of the text. It proposes that, while translation theory can be a repository for ideologies of unification, it can also be a site of resistance to them. If the speculative concentration of languages, roles, and versions demanded by early modern translation theory is basically a struggle to reduce translation's practical multiplicity, then speculation and practice are contradictory but also inseparable from each other.
