Translations classically address themselves primarily to one of two targets: either to the source text, where the aim is to reproduce that text as accurately as possible in the language of the translation; or to the audience, where the aim is to render the source text as delightfully and intelligibly as possible for the intended new audience. These aims are not, of course, wholly exclusive, but a translator must give priority to one or the other. I have a philological translation of Caxton’s Reynard aimed at the source text in my files. The translation produced here is, however, of the second type. It’s designed to reproduce the pleasure of the text for a new audience. Of course that second kind of translation will also stay as close to the original as the interests of the new audience will permit. This translation does not, in my view, betray the original at any point, even if I have attempted to render Caxton’s prose in a more welcome idiom. - [Author]

Language: English

978-0-87140-736-8