ABSTRACT
In the field of literary translation the relationship between theory and practice has always been close because literary translators have reflected in their introductions, prefaces and essays on the theoretical issues raised by their work and this has often led to them proposing theories of translation. At the same time literary texts and their translations have proved fertile ground for the development and testing of translation theories. The kinds of theories translators produce depend largely on the circumstances – linguistic, cultural, political, economic and, indeed, personal – in which they find themselves. These circumstances are often more complex than they might first appear. For example, the first book to be printed in English (around 1473) was not published in England. Nor was it an original English text but a translation of a French book, itself a version of the Aeneid, “drawn out of diverse books from Latin into French” (Rhodes et al. 2013, 215). The translator, William Caxton (c. 1422–c.1491), was not a man of letters but had spent some thirty years in the Low Countries as a successful merchant and diplomat. He began his translation in March 1468 in Bruges and completed it in September 1471 in Cologne where he had gone to learn about printing. On his return to Bruges he set up a printing press and printed his translation. This example as well as many others in the history of translation demonstrates that translation cannot be seen as an activity circumscribed by the borders of a nation state nor is the relationship between a text and its translation(s) and translator(s) always straightforward. This chapter will attempt to capture the main theories relating to this web of complexity.
