How Would They Transfer the Message Across? From Wendan to Translaten: on the Replacement of Native Forms with a Romance Borrowing
How Would They Transfer the Message Across? From Wendan to Translaten: on the Replacement of Native Forms with a Romance Borrowing

Summary/Abstract: At the dawn of Middle English, the language saw a number of dfferent terms referring to the process of translation. The plethora of terms and meanings seems to mirror the attitude of medieval scribes and authors towards translation, understood as presenting, explaining, and interpreting, and, finally, transferring the message from one language to another. After the Norman Conquest, however, the meaning of ‘transfer between languages’ starts to disappear with the exception of native WENDEN, which is still used in this sense in mid 13th century. Finally, the language borrows the foreign term TRANSLATEN, which at the end of the 13th century starts to function along WENDEN and TURNEN in the meaning of ‘transferring, changing, replacing’, and in the 14th century acquires the literal meaning of ‘translate’, marginalizing or eliminating older forms. The paper focuses on the loss of the meaning ‘to translate’ from the semantic domains of the native verbs and the pattern of its replacement by the foreign term to indicate ‘transfer of a message between two languages.’

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