From translatio to translation: the reconceptualization of translation in the Early Modern period

The medieval concept of translatio was qualitatively different from our contemporary understanding of "translation". Not only was it a much broader concept, encompassing many forms of relocation or transposition far beyond the inter-linguistic, it also implied change and adaptation to local conditions. Thus, medieval texts would mutate and shapeshift in a way that is incompatible with the modern idea that, in translation, the "meaning" should remain the same. This article argues that the transition from the medieval to the modern mindset was marked by the onset of a new semiotic theory, a new understanding of the relationship between form and meaning. Following the recovery of Hellenistic science in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Platonic notion of the semantic invariant (or transcendental signified) gradually took over from the rhetorical attitude of embedded meaning. The dynamics involved in the shift are explored in both the secular and the sacred domains.