Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source

Siobhán McElduff

Aug 2013 · Routledge

About this eBook

For all that Cicero is often seen as the father of translation theory, his and other Roman comments on translation are often divorced from the complicated environments that produced them. The first book-length study in English of its kind, Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source explores translation as it occurred in Rome and presents a complete, culturally integrated discourse on its theories from 240 BCE to the 2nd Century CE. Author Siobhán McElduff analyzes Roman methods of translation, connects specific events and controversies in the Roman Empire to larger cultural discussions about translation, and delves into the histories of various Roman translators, examining how their circumstances influenced their experience of translation.

This book illustrates that as a translating culture, a culture reckoning with the consequences of building its own literature upon that of a conquered nation, and one with an enormous impact upon the West, Rome's translators and their theories of translation deserve to be treated and discussed as a complex and sophisticated phenomenon. Roman Theories of Translation enables Roman writers on translation to take their rightful place in the history of translation and translation theory.

About the author

Siobhán McElduff is assistant professor of Latin at the University of British Columbia. She is the translator of Cicero: In Defense of the Republic (Penguin Classics, 2011), a selection of Cicero’s political speeches, and co-editor of Complicating the History of Western Translation: The Ancient Mediterranean in Perspective (St. Jerome, 2011).