accompanying translations, Songs of the Hebrides (1909) edited by Marjory Kennedy Fraser and Rev. Kenneth MacLeod as well as The Gaelic Songs of Duncan Macintyre (1912) edited and translated by George Calder.
Many of the translations of the time were written in metrical format (Thomson 2000: 487) as an attempt to convey the antiquity of the original texts (Gillies 2000: 182). Some are linguistically inadequate, or their content was altered in different ways. A possible explanation for these (re-)translations during that period, not only in Scotland but also in the other English colonies in the British Isles, was that they were an attempt to rectify certain images disseminated by original texts or translations written by the hegemonic power. As Tejaswini Niranjana puts it: “By employing certain modes of representing the other – which it thereby also brings into being – translation reinforces hegemonic versions of the colonized” (Niranjana 1992: 3). (Re-)Translating texts was seen as a way to promote the self-image of the colonized people.
| Scottish Gaelic – Overview What was translated: – More common to translate out of Scottish Gaelic – Mainly anthologies: poetry, tales and legends Reasons for translation activity: – Revive Scottish Gaelic literature and culture – Disseminate Scottish Gaelic literature and culture in Scotland and internationally – Recreate the image of Celtic culture – Scholarly interest in Celticism Translation strategies: – Metrical translations – Use of archaisms to replicate antiquity and supposed mysticism of original texts Translators: – Alexander Cameron – Alexander Carmichael – Scholars – Clergymen Aims/Outcomes: – Scholarly interest in Celticism – Interest in contemporary Celtic culture |
3.3 Welsh
During the mid-nineteenth century, translations from English into Welsh, though considerably fewer than translations from Welsh into English, had evolved from mainly religious texts (e.g. Calvinist texts translated from English or German into Welsh) to more secular texts. Much of the literature on Welsh translation in the nineteenth century focuses on mid-century texts. Literary translation from Welsh into English had gained popularity a century earlier, when an interest in Celticism was prevalent among English writers. Although this initial interest eventually subsided somewhat as Welsh was not seen to be as “ancient” as other Celtic languages due to its widespread presence in Wales, a clear interest in Welsh literature remained (Gramich 2000: 1493), with a sustained period of translation into English emerging in the nineteenth century for the first time. One translation which was particularly well-received in Wales, but also internationally was Lady Charlotte Guest’s 1849 translation into English of The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh tales first written down in the fourteenth century. Guest’s approach to translation involved combining her own knowledge of the Welsh language and “antique” prose style with the work of the scholars who assisted her by producing very literal translations of the original (ibid.). Her versions of the tales are very accessible and still read today.
A number of contrasting trends in Welsh translation can be seen around the time of the Celtic Revival. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, translations of Medieval Welsh literature were quite common, with translators often adopting archaic, Romantic language in an effort to present the translations in the same antique or perceived “mystic” light as the originals. This changed in several ways with the foundation of the University of Wales in 1893. Translations were produced for scholars of Welsh literature, which was taught through English, and so, the translations tended to be quite literal (Miguélez-Carballeira et al. 2016b: 129). At the end of the century, however, there was a move towards translating contemporary Welsh-language poetry by translators such as AP Graves and Edmund O Jones. While such work indicated new interest in current Welsh culture, some translators attempted to minimise the difference between Welsh and English, producing nativised or “domesticating” translations (Venuti 2008). Constantine (2009) observes that this may partly be a result of the “cultural insecurity” that followed the 1847 Blue Books Report, citing Jones’ Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century (1896) as an example of the English-language reader receiving “a milder (and much meeker) dose of Wales”. Reynolds (2005: xiii) suggests that this inferiority complex could be traced back to the previous century: “There was no Welsh university, the bardic order had long since collapsed, and though Wales sustained a vibrant folk culture, the educated, and Anglicized, elite looked to England for instruction in all matters.”
In the early twentieth century there was “a renewed burst of translating activity”, which Gramich suggests may have been partly due to the Irish literary Renaissance (Gramich 2000: 1493), with anthologies still in the majority. Alfred Perceval Graves, an Irishman with an interest in Welsh culture, translated Welsh Poetry Old and New (1912), and a collection of George Borrow’s translation work, Welsh Poems and Ballads was published in 1915 by Ernest Rhys.
| Welsh – Overview What was translated: – More common to translate out of Welsh – Ancient and Medieval literature – Mainly anthologies: poetry, tales and legends – Contemporary literature to an extent Reasons for translation activity: – Revive Welsh literature and culture – Disseminate Welsh literature and culture in Wales and internationally – Scholarly interest in Celticism Translation strategies: – Literal translations – Use of archaisms and Romantic language to replicate antiquity and supposed mysticism of original texts – Nativising Translators: – George Borrow – AP Graves – Edmund O Jones Aim/Outcome: – Interest in contemporary Welsh culture |
3.4 Manx, Cornish and Breton
The literature on Celtic-language translation tends to focus on Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, with considerably less research available on Manx, Cornish and Breton. Reference works such as the Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English (Classe 2000) or The Oxford guide to literature in English translation (France 2000) offer dedicated sections on each of the former, with the latter three mentioned only in passing.
Although Cornish was no longer spoken as a living language, and very little written Cornish has survived, there were a handful of translations carried out in the nineteenth century, many of which Constantine (2009: 303–304) sees as “dry [and doing] little justice to the flashes of humour and beauty of the originals”. However, such literal translations served to awaken interest in the language and contributed to the small-scale revival of spoken Cornish that would take place in the following decades.
Partly due to the rapid decline of the Manx language in the nineteenth century and also due to the comparatively small corpus of literature, few translations were written at the time of the Celtic Revival. A.W. Moore is the most prominent translator of the time, publishing collections of folk songs and traditional Manx carols entitled Carvalyn Gailckagh (1891) and Manx Ballads and Music (1896).
As the only remaining Celtic language whose decline makes way for a language other than English, Breton tended to be translated into/out of French rather than English, and translations of Breton work into English were often based on French translations of the original.
