Tracking ôl cyfieithu: Medieval Welsh translation in criticism and scholarship

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe twentieth-century editors of medieval Welsh translated texts did not have an entirely positive attitude towards their subject of study. They claimed that these texts were marred by poor style, and riddled with grammatical errors which were the result of the influence of the source language on the Welsh text. They referred to this collection of infelicities as ôl cyfieithu, the mark or track of translation. This article traces the origin of the idea of ôl cyfieithu in the work of these twentieth-century scholars, and shows how the attitude of these individuals differs from those of earlier generations of editors. The article demonstrates the problems with the idea of ôl cyfieithu, and questions the critical attitude which has let a prescribed group of texts identified as “native” dictate the stylistic norms for the entire prose corpus of the medieval period, most of which consists of translated texts.