“ The early Renaissance had already dawned in Italy: a renewed interest in the Latin classics (Greek was not yet generally cultivated by scholars) proved that there was a revival of learning in France. Livy was done into French by Bersuire, Seneca by Bauchant, Boccaccio by Laurent de Premier Fait, and a celebrated translator appeared in the person of Nicolas Oresme, who, however, rendered Aristotle from a Latin version. In England Chaucer executed translations of Boetius and part of the Roman de la rose, and succeeded equally in interpreting the philosophic treatise and the allegorical poem. ”

“ Towards the end of the century the indefatigable William of Moerbeke (near Ghent) -mentioned as “ William the Fleming” by Roger Bacon-produced, amongst numerous other Latin renderings from the Greek, versions of Aristotle's Rhetoric and Politics which have commended themselves to more exact scholars of the modern German type. The Latin renderings from the Arabic were current till a much later date; but it was henceforth accepted, at least in principle, that translations of the Greek classics should be made direct from the original text. ”

“ Circulating widely throughout western Europe, these Latin translations supplied the learned with a third- or fourth-hand knowledge of Greek philosophy. When Albertus Magnus, St Thomas Aquinas, or any other early light of the schools refers to Aristotle, it must be borne in mind that he often had no more exact acquaintance with the text which he expounds or confutes than could be gathered from an indirect Latin version of an Arabic rendering of a Syriac translation of a Greek original. ”

“ It is impossible to cope with the activity of English translators during the last half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th. To this period belongs Chapman's impressive and resounding translation (1598-1616) of Homer, which was to enrapture Keats two hundred years later. Adlington's version of Apuleius, Underdown's renderings of Heliodorus and Ovid, the translations of Livy, Pliny, Suetonius and Xenophon issued in quick succession by Philemon Holland are vivid and often extravagantly picturesque in their conveyance of classic authors into Elizabethan prose. ”

“ St Gallen became a centre of translation, and there, at the beginning of the 11th century, Notker Labeo presided over a committee of interpreters who issued German renderings of certain treatises by Aristotle, Terence's Aiidria and Virgil's Eclogites. Far greater literary importance attaches to Syrttipas, the title given by Michael Andreopulos to a collection of ancient Oriental tales which he translated from an intermediate Syriac version into Greek at the request of the Armenian duke of Melitene about the end of the 11th century. ”

“ Cassiodorus, the contemporary of Boetius, went farther afield when he ordered a Latin translation of Josephus to be prepared; but the interest in Aristotle extended to the East, and in the 6th century he was translated into Syriac by Sergius cf Resaina. The Syrians acted as interpreters of Greek learning to the Arabs, and during the 8th and 9th centuries chiefly through the staff of translators organized at Bagdad by Honein ibn Ishak-the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of Hippocrates and Galen, were translated into Arabic. ”

“ A hundred years later there are unmistakable indications that the middle ages are departing, that the French suzerainty over literature is at an end, and that the advent of the New Humanism is an accomplished fact. ”

“ Malory's inspired version, together with the numerous renderings from the French issued (and often made personally) by Caxton, stimulated the public taste for romantic narrative, raised the standard of execution, and invested the translator with a new air of dignity and importance.
Yet the 15th century has a fair claim to be regarded as the golden age of translation. The Gothic version of the Bible, made by Ulfilas during the 4th century almost simultaneously with St Jerome's Vulgate, is invaluable as the sole literary monument of a vanished language ”

“ A writer capable of attaining the standard set up by Dryden is naturally more disposed to use his powers to. express his own views than those of his foreign predecessors. No doubt at all times, and in all countries translations have usually been produced for utilitarian purposes, and not from artistic motives. ”

“ Byron’s version of a Spanish ballad and Shelley’s renderings of Calderón are interesting exhibitions of original genius voluntarily accepting a subordinate role. More importance attaches to Carlyle’s translation of Wilhelm Meister (1824) , a faithful rendering free from the intolerable mannerisms and tricks which the translator developed subsequently in his original writings. ”

“ In 1548 Nicolas de Herberay had published a French translation of Amadis de Gaule which enchanted the polite world at the court of Henry II., had its day, and is forgotten. But A1nyot's translation of Plutarch (1559) remains an acknowledged masterpiece, surviving all changes of taste and all variations of the canon of translation. Montaigne writes: “Je donne la palmeavecque raison, ce me semble, a Jacques Amyot, sur tous nos escripvains Francois.” If “e scrip vain” be understood to mean “translator,” this judgment is beyond appeal. ”