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Part of
A World Atlas of Translation
Edited by Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi
[Benjamins Translation Library 145] 2019
► pp. 355–374

Chapter 17
Germanic tradition

The report on the Germanic translation tradition spans a long period of time, from the Gothic beginnings and the Nt translation of bishop Wulfila in the fourth century, through the Carolingian Renaissance and the late medieval traffic of chansons de geste and romances, disseminated and read for centuries. The Reformation and its translational explosion is another important aspect and in the following centuries, it may be argued that the literary development of the Germanic speaking literatures was more or less driven by translation, through translations and imitations of the classics right into the Romantic era, which, paradoxically, led to the invention of the purely original author and ever increasing translational activity, since the mother tongues had taken over in the Germanic literary systems.
Keywords: mother tongue, translation without an original, romance, imitations, Bible translations
Article outline
  • Preamble
  • 1.Gothic beginnings
  • 2.A Germanic tradition born?
  • 3.Rise of the vernaculars
  • 4.The matter of the North
  • 5.The mother tongue movement
  • 6.Printing the biblical blow
  • 7.Imitating the classical
  • 8.A look to the North
  • 9.Back to classics
  • 10.Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 5 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.145.17kri
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