Translator

In early modern usage, to ‘translate’ – from the Latin translatus (the past participle of transferre, literally ‘to transfer’) – was an act of cultural mediation, facilitating the movement of an integral meaning or spirit from one context to another. ¹ Such a process was not necessarily textual. In an age preoccupied with clothing's ability to shape, mould, and fashion subjecthood and virtue, translation often referred to or was conceptualised as a process of undressing and redressing. When an apprentice became incorporated into a guild as a full member, for example, they were invested with the company livery in a ceremony referred to as ‘translation’. ² In a tailor's shop, the offcuts of a sheet of cloth used to create a new suit were then ‘translated’ into a different garment. ³ ‘Englishing’ a text was much the same process, in which the original was stripped and redressed into English language and cultural resonances. Underscoring this process was a series of complex negotiations between the primary text, the limitations, specifications, and nuances of the secondary language, and the cultural frame of reference of the intended readership. The result was not a wholly original composition, but rather an old idea dressed in new clothes.