Lecture 2 translation history in the west and in the east. Plan: translation history in the west

TRANSLATION IN THE X CENTURY
In the X century monasteries developed translation activity. The translation activity of Notker (950-1022) was the brightest one. It’s known that he was busy with translating of Aristotle’s works («Categories», «Rhetoric»), and Vergili’s works, psalms. He also created new words that did not exist in the German language and put such terms as «science», «knowledge», «scientific research», «proof», «perfection», «intellect» and so on into German vocabulary. In the X century the dialect of the translation was Mercian.
ÆLFRIC (955-1020 (25)), a prominent writer of the X century was busy with translations too. Ælfric translated «Grammar» of the Latin language into English. In Ælfric’s opinion it could be used as «the introduction to the learning of both languages». Ælfric’s «Grammar» had been used in schools for the studying Latin for a long time. In this period the translations of belles-letters literature appeared.
Questions:

1. 
   What changes were made in the X century?
   
2. 
   What translation principles were existed in the X century?
   
3. 
   What translators contributed much to the development of translation?
   
4. 
   Why Notker oriented to a reader?
   
5. 
   Why Alfric evaluated the role of English?
   

TRANSLATION IN THE XI-XII CENTURIES
In 1167 the Oxford University was founded, and in 1209 the Cambridge one was founded too. Oxford and Cambridge Universities gave the world many famous translators. XII century was the time of Chivalrous novels. The works of such a genre were widely translated from the XIII century.
In 1130 a unique event took place in the history of translation, the Toledo Translation School was founded. It was the first school with the official status. Others, founded by Alfred, etc., were not schools, but groups of scientific translators with their leaders. The initiators of the school were archbishops - Toledo Raymond and Chastely Raymond. The Spanish Toledo Translation School translated literature in written form by the eastern scientists into western languages. That school was called «The Great School». The translators of that school also translated books of the North African scientists from Arabic into Latin. It helped to develop the European culture and science. They translated into Latin those books, which were translated from Greek into Arabic.
The Spanish Toledo Translation School played a very good role in World science, in settling friendship between countries. Besides, many books written by antique Greek scholars disappeared, but their translations remained. Translation played the main role as a bridge, which connects the East and West. The scholars made a significant contribution to the development of science, technology and culture in Europe.
The progressive development of French literature changed the system of the English language. For a space of a long period there was some kind of originality of 3 languages in England: French was the language of the royal court and aristocracy, the English language of the rest sections of population, the Latin language of science and intermediary between the French and English languages. Latin functioned not only as a language of church and handwriting, but also as a colloquial language.
From the XII century courteous literature (honouring a beautiful lady) has been rapidly developed, tale of chivalry appeared and works of these genres have been translated into English beginning from the XIII century.