Living at the level of the word Cicero's rejection of the interpreter as translator

Abstract

This article argues that Cicero's rejection of the interpreter as a literal translator was not just a rejection of a particular style of translation but an attempt to keep translation of Greek literature in Rome an elite activity. I discuss the social status and role of Roman interpreters and their repeated association with limited education in our sources, finally concluding that the interpreter is despised as a translator by Cicero not necessarily because he translates literally, but because he is a potential rival translator from a lower social rank who may allow the spread of inappropriate translations of Greek material to Rome.

Keywords:

• Cicero
• interpreters
• history of interpreting
• history of translation
• Roman translation

Acknowledgements

Early versions of this paper were read to audiences at Columbia and the University of British Columbia, who provided many helpful comments. I am also grateful to Aurelia Klimkiewicz and to the anonymous readers for Translation Studies for their extremely helpful suggestions. Any faults or errors which remain in the article are my own.

Notes

1. All translations from Latin are by the author.

2. Exprimi, the word I have translated as “render”, is problematic as, despite its use as a term for translation, its connotations are entirely different from our term “translate”. As Robinson (1992, 26) has pointed out, it also means to squeeze out – by force if necessary, as in the case of oil pressed out from olives. In fact, the violent connotations of the verb (it is used, for example, for extortion) are primary and its use as a verb for translation is secondary. Thus, by utilizing this verb here Cicero, like Terence before him (McElduff 2004, 122), connects his act of translation with a set of other forceful actions, enacted upon often unwilling objects.

3. In fact, the speeches were translated to win a debate over correct oratorical style; Cicero himself also says that he translated them because the case was important and the way the speeches presented the public service of each author was weighty (gravem, De optimo genere 20) even though the case was irrelevant to Roman legal practice.

4. See Morgan (1998, 165). Most references to interpreters in Latin literature are collected in Snellman (1914), while Kurz (1986) also provides an excellent overview of the literary information available, along with some inscriptional evidence. Wiotte-Franz (2001) also provides a good summary of the roles of interpreters in antiquity; the list of named interpreters in her appendix is an invaluable resource for those seeking interpreters outside the literary record.

5. Virgil calls Asilas an interpres of gods and men at Aeneid 10.175; for a similar definition of the interpreter see Isidorus of Seville Etymologica 10.123. Despite Hermann's (1956, 35) comment on the divine and inspired character of the interpres when transferring divine will or words, Cicero does not use the word interpres for inspired diviners or prophets; this usage of the word interpres seems to begin with Virgil (Linderski 1986, 2231).

6. “What does it get you to seek truth through an interpreter?” (Quamquam quid attinet veritatem per interpretem quaerere [Satyricon 107.15]).

7. For this etymology see Rochette (1997, 94) and Ernout and Meillet (1959, 321).

8. While there is no space within this article for a discussion of Roman terms for translation, it should be noted that the primary meaning of none of these words is translation; all relate primarily to either physical movement or alteration of a material object. Vertere, for example, means “to turn” or “overturn” (the latter is also the usual meaning of convertere, its compound) and “to change direction”, amongst other things. Romans used terms for translation that, unlike ours, were heavily imbued with other, often strongly physical, connotations.

9. Polybius: c. 203–120 BCE; Livy: 59 BCE–17 CE.

10. Gruen (1982) argues for trickery, see contra Dubuisson (1985, 100–5).

11. “Public material will become private property if you do not delay on the common main road, nor care to render word for word as a faithful interpreter” (publica materies privati iuris erit, si/ non circa vilem patulumque morarberis orbem,/Nec verbo verbum curabis reddere fidus/interpres [Ars poetica 131–4]).

12. Good: Cicero, in a letter to Minicius Thermus, refers to one as his friend and as an almost miraculously fidem/faithful individual to boot: “I have known Marcilius the father in his long term of service to be quite remarkably (almost incredibly) faithful, restrained, and self-effacing” (quod in longa apparitione singularum et prope incredibilem patris Marcili fidem, abstinentiam modestiamque cognovi [Letters to his Friends/Ad familiares 13.55]).

13. Bad: Ovid claims that he had the bad luck to fall in with an evil interpreter (malus interpres) amongst the Getae (Ep. ex Pont. 4.14.39–43).

14. Official interpreters: in military inscriptions see Kurz (1986, 217–8) and Hermann (1956, 42–3); in papyri from Egypt see Calderini (1953). Literary sources on interpreters in the Senate include Cicero De divinatione 2.131.6 (of Punic and Iberian languages) and On Ends/De finibus 5.89 and Valerius Maximus 2.2.2; in the late Notitia dignitatum interpreter/interpres is listed as an established office in both the Eastern and Western empires.

15. “There is in Sicily an interpreter called Aulus Valentius, whom that man [Verres] was accustomed to employ as an interpreter, not for help with Greek, but with his thefts and outrages. This insignificant and needy interpreter suddenly became a tithe-gatherer” (A. Valentius est in Sicilia interpres, quo iste interprete non ad linguam Graecam, sed ad furta et flagitia uti solebat. Fit hic interpres, homo levis atque egens, repente decumanus [Against Verres/In Verrem 2.3.84]).

16. As Robinson points out, in this verb “the translational sense of rendering is overshadowed by the pecuniary sense of repaying a debt, rendering back to the owner what one has borrowed” (1992, 25); however, who “owns” the translated text?

17. In ancient glossaries the adjective is glossed both as ineloquens (ineloquent) and as indoctus (unlearned) (Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 1204 65).

18. One did not necessarily move from one to another: some schools may have been run as dead ends which aimed at teaching a basic form of literacy (Booth 1978).

19. Approximate ages and levels were ludus litterarius: 7-11, basic education; schola grammatici: 11–15; rhetoris schola: 15 and older. This last level provided rhetorical training, though it was not necessarily a formal school in Cicero's day.

20. The grammarians concentrated on poetry rather than prose; on the grammarian's duties see Copeland (1991, 12–4).

21. The full description is “the detailed study of the poets, the study of history, the interpretation of words” (grammaticis poetarum pertractatio, historiarum cognitio, verborum interpretatio [On the Orator/De oratore 1.187]).

22. “[T]he interpreters of the poets, who are called grammatici by the Greeks” (poetarum interpretes, qui a Graecis grammatici nominatur); the context for this comment is, according to Suetonius (De grammaticis 4.1) an attempt to distinguish the lettered (litteratus) man from the erudite (eruditus) one. According to Nepos, the grammarian belonged more to the first than the second class (Fragment 61, Teubner edition).

23. There were also bilingual conversation manuals such as the Hermeneumata Dositheana (see Marrou 1956, 355–6; Biville 2002, 84).

24. Official translations appear to have been tightly controlled, probably through the use of lexicons and acceptable word lists (Sherk 1969, 13; Mason 1970, 150; Rochette 1997, 86). Evidence of direct control from as high a level as the emperor occurs at Suetonius, Tiberius 71, where the emperor demands a word be deleted from an official document because it is Greek.

25. There were other translations of Homer circulating, including one by Polybius, the emperor Claudius's freedman, which was praised by Seneca the Younger for spreading the knowledge of the original, but this was a prose version and is not described as literal (Consolation to Polybius/De consolatione ad Polybium 8.2, 11.5).

26. For evidence of this in later periods see Pliny Epistle 7 and Suetonius On the Grammarians/De grammaticis 25.4.

27. One orator and translator, Fuscus, commented that “I do not strive to taint but to conquer [the source text]” (corrumpere conor sed vincere [Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 9.1.13]).

28. On the interpreter as a distancing mechanism see Pliny Panegyricus 18.19.4 (celebration of Trajan's ability to communicate with his soldiers without the interference of intermediaries and interpreters/internuntios et interpretes); Valerius Maximus 2.2.2 (interpreters place distance between the Senate and the power of Greek rhetoric); Polybius 15.6 and Livy 30.30 (employment of interpreters at the meeting between the Roman general Scipio and the Carthaginian Hannibal before the battle of Zama in 202 BCE).