Medieval Welsh translation: The case of 'Ymddiddan Selyf a Marcwlff'

This study aims to provide an examination of medieval Welsh translation through considering a single text, Disputatio Salomonis et Marcolfi , that was translated into Welsh twice. Through looking at the two translations as the products of individuals working within different canons of fidelity and literary aesthetics, it is possible to begin to define those canons. One version resembles the medieval translations in its adherence to the conventions of native prose, while the other shows evidence of a concern with fidelity that results from the operation of a new authority of correctness that characterized the sixteenth-century Welsh renaissance. The differences between the translations are not the products of the whims of the translators, but of the operation of two different literary authorities.;The medieval Welsh translations have been considered secondary to the native tales. Their editors have tended to deride them for grammatical inaccuracies and stylistic faults which they blame on the process of translation, while at the same time claiming that the translators were masters of medieval Welsh prose style. In fact the translations display a remarkable degree of stylistic continuity with the native tales and, since they make up the overwhelming majority of the prose literature of the time, should be considered central to the medieval Welsh prose tradition.;This stylistic continuity extends from surface features such as the use of elements identified as part of the storyteller's art in the native tales, to the most basic workings of the prose. It cannot be explained by recourse to the spoken language: prose is not a transcription of the spoken work, but an artful medium. It need not be the result the operation of a single school of translators associated with a single monastic order as previous critics have suggested. Instead, by locating the translations within a single textual community, this similarity can bee seen as the product of a literary authority that worked to control aesthetic values. This study aims to expose the operations of that authority within a single text, and to develop ideas for further areas of research and methods of research that might do the same.