Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 32:1 (2020) ► pp.59–82

Retranslating Thucydides as a scientific historian

A corpus-based analysis

ORCID logo | University of Manchester
The nineteenth century was a period of dramatic change in Europe for the idea of history. While from antiquity through to the eighteenth century, historiography had broadly been considered an artistic and rhetorical activity, this view gradually lost ground in the nineteenth century to an understanding of history as a science. This case study aims to explore how these shifts in attitudes towards the proper aims and methods of history writing might have shaped the interpretation and translation into English of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a work first written in classical Greek in the fifth century BCE. The analysis is carried out by means of a corpus-based methodology which, I argue, can better enable researchers to engage with each (re)translator’s overall presentation of the source through the production and interrogation of concordances listing every instance of a given search item as it occurs within digitised versions of the target texts. This is demonstrated through an investigation of the use of the term ‘fact(s)’ which reveals a striking divergence in interpretation between the six translations, with Crawley’s (1874) History in particular appearing to lend a significantly more objective and empirical tone to Thucydides in English.
Keywords: retranslation, Thucydides, history, corpus-based methodologies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Thucydides’ History
  • 3.Translating Thucydides
  • 4.“Looked at by the light of facts”
  • 5.A corpus-based methodology
  • 6.Frequency analysis
  • 7.Concordance analysis
    • 7.1 Hobbes ([1629] 1843)
    • 7.2 Smith (1753)
    • 7.3 Bloomfield (1829)
    • 7.4 Dale (1848)
    • 7.5 Crawley (1874)
    • 7.6 Jowett (1881)
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 21 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.19082.jon
References (52)
References
Arnold, Thomas, ed. 1828–1835. The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides. Oxford: John Henry Parker.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, edited by Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 233–252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. “Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator.” Target 12 (2): 241–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Translation as Renarration.” In Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Juliane House, 158–177. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Studies. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bernardini, Silvia, and Dorothy Kenny. 2020. “Corpora.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. 3rd ed., edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 110–115. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blanco, Walter. 1998. The Peloponnesian War. London: Norton.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Samuel. 1829. The History of Thucydides, Newly Translated into English. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.Google Scholar
Bosseaux, Charlotte. 2007. How Does It Feel? Point of View in Translation: The Case of Virginia Woolf into French. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brownlie, Siobhan. 2006. “Narrative Theory and Retranslation Theory.” Across Languages and Cultures 7 (2): 145–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collingwood, Robin. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crawley, Richard. 1874. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. London: Longmans, Green and Co.Google Scholar
. 1900. In Memoriam: Letters and Poems of Richard Crawley. N.p.: Printed for private circulation.Google Scholar
Dale, Henry. 1848. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides: A New and Literal Version. London: George Bell and Sons.Google Scholar
Firth, John. (1957) 1968. “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930–55.” In Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952–1959, edited by Frank Palmer, 168–205. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Gabrielatos, Costas. 2018. “Keyness Analysis: Nature, Metrics and Techniques.” In Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review, edited by Charlotte Taylor and Anna Marchi, 225–258. Oxford: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greenwood, Emily. 2015. “On Translating Thucydides.” In A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides, edited by Christine Lee and Neville Morley, 91–122. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Hammond, Martin. 2009. Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harloe, Katharine, and Neville Morley. 2012. “Introduction: The Modern Reception of Thucydides.” In Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Re-interpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Katharine Harloe and Neville Morley, 1–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. (1629) 1843. “The Peloponnesian War.” In The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vols. VIII–XI1, edited by William Molesworth. London: John Bohn.Google Scholar
Hubbard, E. Hilton. 2002. “Conversation, Characterisation and Corpus Linguistics: Dialogue in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility .” Literator 23 (2): 67–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jowett, Benjamin. 1881. Thucydides, Translated into English. 21 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kempannen, Hannu. 2004. “Keywords and Ideology in Translated History Texts: A Corpus-Based Analysis.” Across Languages and Cultures 5 (1): 89–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lattimore, Stephen. 1998. Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar
Lianeri, Alexandra. 2002. “Translation and the Establishment of Liberal Democracy in Nineteenth-Century England: Constructing the Political as an Interpretative Act.” In Translation and Power, edited by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler, 1–24. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
. 2015. “On Historical Time and Method: Thucydides’ Contemporary History in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” In A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides, edited by Christine Lee and Neville Morley, 176–196. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco, and Oleg Sobchuk. 2019. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Data Visualisation in the Humanities.” New Left Review 1181: 86–115.Google Scholar
Morley, Neville. 2014. Thucydides and the Idea of History. London: I. B. Tauris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “The Anti-Thucydides: Herodotus and the Development of Modern Historiography.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Herodotus in Antiquity and Beyond, edited by Jessica Priestley and Vasiliki Zali, 143–166. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muhlack, Ulrich. 2011. “Herodotus and Thucydides in the View of Nineteenth-Century German Historians.” Translated by Neville Morley. In The Western Time of Ancient History: Historiographical Encounters with the Greek and Roman Pasts, edited by Alexandra Lianeri, 179–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nicholls, Thomas. 1550. The Hystory Writtone by Thucidides the Athenyan of the Warre, whiche was betwene the Peloponesians and the Athenyans, Translated oute of Frenche into the Englysh Language by Thomas Nicolls Citezeine and Goldesmyth of London. London: William Tylle.Google Scholar
Olohan, Maeve, and Mona Baker. 2000. “Reporting That in Translated English: Evidence for Subconscious Processes of Explicitation?” Across Languages and Cultures 1 (2): 141–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pade, Marianne. 2006. “Thucydides’ Renaissance Readers.” In Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, edited by Antonis Tsakmakis and Antonios Rengakos, 779–810. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pires, Francisco Murari. 2006. “Thucydidean Modernities: History between Science and Art.” In Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, edited by Antonis Tsakmakis and Antonios Rengakos, 811–837. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poovey, Mary. 1998. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poppo, Ernst Friedrich, ed. 1843–1851. Thucydidis De bello Peloponnesiaco libri octo. Gothae: Sumtibus Fridericae Hennings.Google Scholar
Portus, Aemilius, ed. 1594. Thucydidis Olori Filii, De Bello Peloponnesiaco Libri Octo. Frankfurt: Andrea Wecheli.Google Scholar
Ranke, Leopold. 1824. Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535. Leipzig: G. Reimer.Google Scholar
Roscher, Wilhelm. (1854) 1868. System der Volkswirthschaft, ein Hand- und Lesebuch für Geschäftsmänner und Studierende, Band 11. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Verlag der I. G. Cottaschen Buchhandlung.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1974. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. Revised ed. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Barbara. 2000. A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Charles Forster. 1919–1923. Thucydides. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, William. 1753. The History of the Peloponnesian War. 21 vols. London: John Watts.Google Scholar
Süßmann, Johannes. 2012. “Historicising the Classics: How Nineteenth-Century German Historiography Changed the Perspective on Historical Tradition.” In Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Re-interpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Katharine Harloe and Neville Morley, 77–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja. 2004. “Unique Items – Over- or Under-Represented in Translated Language?” In Translation Universals: Do They Exist?, edited by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki, 177–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Warner, Rex. 1954. Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Henry Musgrave. 1873. Speeches from Thucydides. Translated into English for the Use of Students, with an Introduction and Notes. 2nd ed. London: Longmans, Green and Co.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1973. “Interpretation in History.” New Literary History 4 (2): 281–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wootton, David. 2015. The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Erlin, Matt, Douglas Knox & Stephen Pentecost
2023. Multi-retranslation and cultural variation. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 35:2 ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Pang, Shuangzi & Kefei Wang
2023. Sketching the changing patterns in kaleidoscopes: New developments in corpus-based studies of translation features (2001–2021). Research in Corpus Linguistics 11:2 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.