A short history of translation and translators

In the 17th century

• In the 17th century
• Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish novelist known all over Europe for his novel “Don Quixote” (1605-15), expressed his own views on the translation process. According to Cervantes, translations of his time — with the exception of those made from Greek to Latin — were like looking at a Flemish tapestry by its reverse side. While the main figures of a Flemish tapestry could be discerned, they were obscured by the loose threads, and they lacked the clarity of the front side.
• In the second half of the 17th century, English poet and translator John Dryden sought to make Virgil speak “in words such as he would probably have written if he were living as an Englishman”. Dryden also observed that “translation is a type of drawing after life”, thus comparing the translator to an artist several centuries after Cicero.
• Alexander Pope, a fellow poet and translator, was said to have reduced Homer’s “wild paradise” to “order” while translating the Greek epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” into English, but these comments had no impact on his best-selling translations.