Tudor Englishwomen’s Translations of Continental Protestant Texts: The Interplay of Ideology and Historical Context

Abstract

Among the theorists who, in the 1980s and 1990s, contributed to the burgeoning field of translation studies and sought to distance themselves from previous normative and prescriptive definitions were Andre Lefevere and Lawrence Venuti. They described translations as ideological constructs, rewritings emanating from new and different social, cultural, and political contexts, influenced by factors such as gender, patronage, and even the marketplace, and manipulated by a translator’s beliefs, place in time and space, and goals.2 This view recognizes that translators have opportunities to intervene and appropriate a text that they may well have chosen for ideological reasons. Moreover, changes do not necessarily constitute mistakes, but can result from the translator’s choices in determining the goals of the translation and reshaping the work for a new and different audience. Such choices are also often dictated by the historical and socio-cultural contexts in which they are created, for translations do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they constitute an integral part of a whole web of diverse activities in a given site. Thus Renaissance translations must be examined against the backdrop of contemporary social, historical, and cultural circumstances, which includes the world of early print. It is important to consider a translation as it relates to others being published at the same time or on the same subject and to place it within a movement that sought to advance knowledge in every sphere and disseminate religious, political, and cultural values and ideas.