The Nineteenth Century

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Schleiermacher model can be seen reflected in Dante Gabriel Rossetti the pre-Raphaelite English poet who was of the view that the translator was subservient to the original and wasbound to translate in a way that the original form and content could be conveyed accurately to the reader. William Morris, another poet of the age, believed that translations should capture all the peculiarities and ‘foreignness’ of the original and pass them on to the reader. His translations of Homer, therefore, are difficult to read because they attempted to convey the archaic nature of the texts that he was translating. But they were very highly regarded by critics and readers of those times. These translators viewed the original works as aesthetic pieces meant for enjoyment, often catering to an elite minority. The scholar-translator was to be respected and implicitly trusted by the reader.

They believed that the purpose of translation was to bring the reader close to the original. So the translator had to be completely faithful to the original and should not allow himself to be carried away by personal interpretations. Matthew Arnold in England and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in America were of this view. Longfellow who translated Dante’s Divine Comedy and Rubaiyaat said : “The business of a translator is to report what the author says, not to explain what he means; that is the work of the commentator.” This resulted in devaluing the work of the translator, because translation was seen as a mediating act that brought a reader and a foreign language text closer. It did not matter if the translator himself/herself was a creative writer in her own right.