‘Tant en françois qu’en latin': Self-translation and multilingual publishing in the Renaissance

Early modern Europe was a multilingual world. While Latin was still the lingua franca of international scholarly exchanges, vernacular languages were increasingly being used for both literary and scientific endeavours. Many writers were actively bilingual, switching between languages depending on subject and intended audience; some, indeed, went so far as to translate their own works across Latin and vernacular, or multiple vernaculars.

The activities of “self-translators” are still poorly understood. Scholarship to date has largely centred around individual case-studies of canonical literary figures, such as Leon Battista Alberti, Joachim Du Bellay, or John Donne. A new project based at the Warburg Institute in London seeks to expand our understanding of Renaissance self-translation by creating the first comprehensive database of self-translated books produced in Italy and France between 1465 and 1700. This will enable us to study self-translation across a much larger spectrum of genres and disciplines, while also noticing patterns and trends that often go undetected through a case-study approach.

This paper will offer an overview of the goals, methods, and first findings of the project, providing some preliminary answers to the following questions: how common was self-translation in early modern Europe? When and where was it practised most intensely, and why? Did self-translators operate in isolation, or did they form “social networks” around specific patrons, printers, or milieus? How does the phenomenon of early modern self-translation intersect with contemporary processes such as language debates, changing notions of authorship and intellectual ownership, and the rise of the “new science”?

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