A fascinating twitter thread by Dr Jenny Benham (blog here), on translating a 1500 word medieval treaty text. We don’t get many explanations of the process! (Paragraphing is mine)
A colleague has asked me how long it takes to do a translation from Latin into English of one of my treaties. I don’t think he quite understood what he was asking…
A simple 1500-word treaty takes about 3 days, including notes on names and dates of individuals. I usually make a literal translation first, which I then refine into something resembling modern English. However I usually refine the translation many times after this, often over several weeks or months as I come across more relevant information. If the Latin is corrupt or complex, this can take considerably longer.
I might also compare my English translation to any available translation into any other modern foreign language. Such comparisons are useful for areas where I have less knowledge of the historical context, and often also provide information for names of places and individuals. Almost every treaty has some sort of quirk that can’t easily be resolved. Sometimes relating to the Latin – don’t run off with this idea of Latin as Lingua Franca across medieval Europe. The same words and phrases can have very different meanings in different regions.
Other times the difficulties might be around particular legal meanings, or the date (is any date ever correct?!), or the names of people and places. My geography has been getting a thorough workout! The longest Time spent translating a single treaty was probably Treaty of Pavia (840). It is long but I approached it completely wrong by making rough translations of individual clauses as and when I needed them. Putting the whole together then didn’t quite come right and I had to re-do the whole from the beginning.
As a general, it is easier to do translations of treaties from regions where I have the strongest contextual knowledge and from where the documents on which my skills training was done those many years ago. I am improving but providing translations of treaties 700-1200, some 400 from across whole of Europe, has been a project of nearly 15 years. Ok, I have had breaks…
But in short, there’s no such thing as how quickly can you translate an average treaty. It depends and practice is key.
Fascinating!
Very interesting. Really makes you wonder how well the signatories of any given treaty understood all the nuances. Many, maybe most, of the participants would have required the terms to be translated into their local language. Opportunities for misunderstanding must have been common. Possible explanation of why so many treaties were broken-they weren’t completely understood.
Interesting thought. Out of my period tho.