chapter 6 Neo-Latin and Vernacular Translation Theory in the 15th and 16th Centuries: the ‘Tasks of the Translator’ According to Leonardo Bruni and Étienne Dolet

Marianne Pade

In general linguistics a vernacular is opposed to a lingua franca, a third- party language through which persons speaking different vernaculars not understood by each other may communicate. In this way, the rela- tion of Latin and the vernacular is an issue innate to Renaissance society, which used Latin as a common ground for cultural, educational, diplo- matic, and even economic interchange. At the same time, however, it seems somewhat ironic that the cultural movement that tried to restore Latin would coincide with the rise of the vernacular languages of Europe, which gradually left the linguistic muck to be appreciated grammatically, literarily, and culturally. Indeed, it was the rediscovery of Cicero’s discus- sion on Rome’s native refinement, the sapor vernaculus that led to the mother tongue being considered not as a depreciated lingua vulgaris but as a sermo vernaculus steeped in national and cultural pride.1

This is how Tom Deneire begins to define the complicated relationship be- tween Neo-latin and the vernacular in his article in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. He goes on to point out that “the coexistence of Latin and the vernacular(s) in early modern times is a situation of diglossia, in which two languages (or dialects) are used by a single community, i.e. an everyday or vernacular variety and a second, ‘high’ variety, only used in literary, educa- tional, or other specific settings.”2 The question I want to address in this essay is how humanists, especially in the Italian Quattrocento, saw this situation of

1 Deneire 2014a, p. 275. 2 Deneire 2014a, pp. 275–76. Charles A. Ferguson coined the term ‘diglossia’ in 1959. The con- cept denotes a linguistic situation where two distinct varieties of the same language are used by the same individual in a complementary fashion dependent on circumstances. Ferguson 1959. I would also like to draw attention to Deneire’s useful remarks in the concluding ar- ticle on methodology in Deneire 2014b, pp. 302–14, and Jan Bloemendal’s Introduction in Bloemendal 2015, pp. 1–14. See also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 3–5.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004386402_007 Neo-Latin and Vernacular Translation Theory 97 diglossia, and whether their understanding of it can be seen in contemporary theory of translation.3 Fifteenth-century Italy witnessed an explosion both in the production of Latin translations from the Greek and in theoretical writings on translation. Surprisingly, humanist translation theory is largely ignored by modern transla- tion studies, perhaps because it repeatedly refers to the loci classici of ancient translation—(Ps.) Cicero’s On the Best Kind of Orator (§14), Horace’s Art of Poetry (vv. 133–34) and Jerome’s letter to Pammachius—and so does not seem to add anything new. However, humanist theoreticians did in fact develop a well-articulated translation theory, subtly attuned to the exigencies of a tri- lingual translator who was a non-native speaker of the target language, and, moreover, a theory that took into account the literary and rhetorical expecta- tions of the target culture, as well as societal developments.

1 Diglossia in Ancient Rome?

Around 1435, one of the most famous debates about la questione della lingua began in Florence, among members of the papal chancery. The question was whether the Romans in classical antiquity had one language common to all, or whether they, like contemporary Italians, lived in a situation of diglossia with two ways of speaking—one for men of letters, and the other for common people. It may have been the discovery of Cicero’s Brutus some years previ- ously that inspired the discussion about the volgare and its origin.4 The main

3 Silvia Rizzo also argued that in Italy in the late Middle Ages, Latin and the vernacular were probably felt as variants of the same language. Rizzo 2004, pp. 51–52. 4 “Tum Brutus: Quid tu igitur, inquit, tribuis istis externis quasi oratoribus? Quid censes, in- quam, nisi idem quod urbanis? Praeter unum, quod non est eorum urbanitate quadam quasi colorata oratio. Et Brutus: Qui est, inquit, iste tandem urbanitatis color? Nescio, inquam; tantum esse quendam scio. Id tu, Brute, iam intelleges, cum in Galliam veneris; audies tu quidem etiam verba quaedam non trita Romae, sed haec mutari dediscique possunt; illud est maius, quod in vocibus nostrorum oratorum retinnit quiddam et resonat urbanius. Nec hoc in oratoribus modo apparet sed etiam in ceteris. Ego memini T. Tincam Placentinum homi- nem facetissimum cum familiari nostro Q. Granio praecone dicacitate certare. […] Tincam non minus multa ridicule dicentem Granius obruebat nescio quo sapore vernaculo.” Cicero, Brutus, 170–72. (“Then Brutus: ‘What status do these non-Roman orators have?’ ‘What do you think’, I say, ‘not the same as the ones from the city? Except that their speech lacks a certain tinge of urbanity.’ And Brutus: ‘What is this colour of urbanity?’ ‘I don’t know. But it does exist. You will understand this when you come to Gaul; you will hear words not used in Rome—but these you will be able to forget again. The other is more important: In the voices of our orators there is simply a more urban ring or sound, and this is recognizable not in orators only but in others, too. I recall hearing Titus Tinca of Piacenza, a very amusing man,