Translation in the seventeenth centuries

Translation in the sixteenth centuries

From the sixteenth century onwards, Moscow began to emerge as the political as well as the translation centre of the country. Important translations were no longer anonymous, and their contribution to the country's language and culture gained more recognition. Thus in 1515 Basil III, the Grand Prince of Moscow, asked for a learned translator to be sent to Moscow from a Greek monastery. The man came to Moscow in 1518 with a Greek embassy and became known as MAXIM THE GREEK. During the rest of his life (he died in 1555 or 1556) he worked as a translator of religious books as well as some non-religious texts. In addition, he revised a number of existing translations and added commentaries to them. At first, he knew neither Russian nor Old Slavonic and his translations were made in two stages: he translated from Greek into Latin and then his assistants translated the Latin text into Old Slavonic. In his revisions of old translations, he often ignored long-established traditions and suffered accusations of heresy and blasphemy. Maxim the Greek was also a prolific writer, educator and philosopher. In his writings we can find numerous statements on the art of translation, and these represent the first recorded exposition on the subject in Russia. He insisted on the need for a careful analysis of the source text in order to grasp all its nuances and allegories. To carry out such an analysis, the translator had to possess not only good linguistic but also extensive philological knowledge and had to undertake a great deal of preparatory work. Maxim backed up his prescriptions with ample observations about Greek vocabulary, rhythmical organization and phonetic features, which were to be accounted for in translation. Among his contributions to Russian philology was a dictionary which covered mostly Greek proper names but also included some Latin and Hebrew names.

Although the Russian scholars of the time seem to have already formed some ideas about the need for the translator to have a perfect command of the two languages and extensive background knowledge, in practice most translators lacked proper education. Their knowledge of languages and the resulting translations often left much to be desired.

In the seventeenth century, a greater number of translations of mostly nonreligious material began to appear. Scholarly translations included topics in astronomy and astrology, arithmetic and geometry, anatomy and medicine, as well as descriptions of various animals. Some translations could be described as works of literature in their own right. Also during this century, bilingual dictionaries were compiled for the first time to help translators in their work: Latin-Greek-Slavonic, Polish-Slavonic, Russian-Latin-Swedish and other combinations.

Translators of this period fell into four groups. First, there were staff translators in various administrative departments. These were mostly foreigners (Poles, Germans, Dutchmen) or natives from the southern or western parts of the country. As often as not, they had a good command of classical languages or of Polish but their knowledge of Russian and Old Slavonic was very limited. They were probably assisted by scribes, who wrote down and corrected their translations. The second group was small and consisted of a few monks who had a scholarly background and translated only religious and didactic books from Latin and Greek. The best known among them were Epiphanius, Slavinezky, Arsenius the Greek and Dionysius the Greek. The third group was the largest and its members could be described as part-time translators who occasionally made one or two translations in their spare time. Finally, there were translators who worked on their own initiative and chose the source texts they wanted to translate. Among them were some attendants of the tsar, for example Andrei Matveev, Bogdanov and Prince Kropotkin.

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