A short history of translation and translators

In the 15th century

• In the 15th century
• The trip of Byzantine pilosopher Gemistus Pletho to Florence, Italy, pioneered the revival of Greek learning in western Europe. Pletho reintroduced Plato’s thought during the 1438-39 Council of Florence. During the Council, Pletho met Cosimo de Medici, the ruler of Florence and its patron of learning and the arts, which led to the foundation of the Platonic Academy. Under the leadership of Italian scholar and translator Marsilio Ficino, the Platonic Academy took over the translation into Latin of all Plato’s works, philosopher Plotinus’ “Enneads” and other Neoplatonist works.
• Ficino’s work — and Erasmus’ Latin edition of the New Testament — led to a new attitude to translation. For the first time, readers demanded rigour in rendering the exact words of Plato and Jesus (and Aristotle and others) as a ground for their philosophical and religious beliefs.
• A “fine” work of English prose was Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” (1485), a free translation of Arthurian romances, with legendary King Arthur and his companions Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory translated and adapted existing French and English stories while adding original material, for example the “Gareth” story as one of the stories of the Knights of the Round Table.