Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley Georgina Pitt Hurley, Mary Kate, Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture), Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2021; hardcover; pp. 226; R.R.P. US$99.95 ISBN 9780814214718. ‘Translation effects’ is the term Mary Kate Hurley uses to characterize the observable traces of the translation process in medieval texts. Translation effects may lend authority to a translated work or imply cultural continuity across discrete peoples. The central premise of her argument is that the process of translation acts as a bridge between the original audience of the source text and the audience of the translated text, connecting old and new communities. The focus is not localized groups—but rather on communities anticipated within the translated text itself. The connections between these virtual or imagined communities could be deployed as powerful identity markers for the audience of the translated text. [End Page 248] Hurley argues that translation is inherently an act of interpretation. She suggests that: ‘if we approach translations as a negotiated series of interactions between humans and texts, we can better understand their temporal, textual, and community-oriented interests’ (p. 7). Hurley develops her argument in three stages. She examines literal translation in the Old English Orosius and Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, demonstrating how these texts expanded their imagined communities temporally and spatially. She traces the manuscript tradition of texts straddling the Norman Conquest (Ælfric’s homilies and the ‘Life of Constance’ in works by Nicholas Trevet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower) to show how pre-Conquest texts were used post-Conquest to shape views of the past that facilitated emerging narratives of community in Middle English. In the final section, the focus returns to Old English: Hurley uses Beowulf to illuminate the role of narrative transmission in the construction of community within a text. Hurley’s work draws upon established scholarship on the complex nature of medieval translation by scholars such as Robert Stanton, Nicole Guenther Discenza, and Rebecca Stephenson. The analysis of Beowulf expands her argument beyond the traditional conception of translation as a movement between two texts, an identified source text and a version in a different (in this period, often vernacular) language. Hurley argues that Beowulf partakes of much of the same cultural logic as traditional translations. In Beowulf, metaphorical translation is used as a self-positioning device. The way that communities coalesce and disintegrate are demonstrated and explained through the telling and retelling of stories. In making her argument, Hurley explicitly departs from the position that medieval translators conceived of translations as a narrow form of linguistic transfer, essentially a paraphrase; or that their audiences expected the translator to remain invisible and neutral, a mere conduit. Elements of refashioning within a translated text may not be aberrations, attributable to scribal ineptitude. They may be deliberate and important expressions of the cultural values and aspirations of the community in which the translated text was intended to circulate. While Hurley’s case studies are of English texts, her argument has interesting implications for scholarly research into identity formation in a variety of communities and contexts across the medieval period. This is a well-written, easily absorbed text. It does not claim to be a comprehensive survey of medieval translations, nor to articulate a universal theory of translation applicable to the period. It offers a methodology for examining translations that is apt to bring into sharp focus the wider contemporary concerns of both translator and audience, to use the translated text itself to contextualize the circumstances of its production and reception. In particular, the study of translation effects may help scholars to better understand how a particular community understood their history and signalled their identity. [End Page 249] Georgina Pitt The University of Western Australia Copyright © 2022 Georgina Pitt