Disminución de las pérdidas de semielaborado obtenido en las cinco

The most significant strategy in V ittels’ translations of the Scriptural passages we find in the Low German Evangelium is that his renditions closely follow N iclaes’ original; every single quotation in the English Evangelium maintains this impression. The strategy seems designed to make it obvious that the quotations in the English Evangelium are renditions of Niclaes’ phrasing of the Scriptures. On the whole, however, the ways in which Vittels translates N iclaes’ quotations from the Bible diverge little from the translation policy he follows on the general level of the text. Again, the word level of his translations shows V ittels’ likely borrowings from, mainly, Coverdale. Note that it is Coverdale’s Bible which Vittels generally comes closer to than Tyndale’s. I am, however, not claiming that Vittels merely copied whole chunks of Coverdale’s Bible text in his translations o f the original’s Biblical quotations, but that he, when confronted with the rendition o f single words or sets o f words, seems to echo the specific vocabulary em ployed in the English translations of the Bible. The result of all this is interesting, to say the least: V ittels’ renditions of N iclaes’ phrasing from the Scriptures, for which Niclaes based him self

A nother explanation is that the addition is a leftover o f a manuscript note m ade by the translator; perhaps it indicates a translation problem to be checked with N iclaes.

Chapter V

on Luther’s Bible text, include borrowings from, mainly, Coverdale’ Bible, who in his turn, also leaned on the German text and language of Luther’s translation. It is possible that Coverdale’s dependence on Luther’s text, which Niclaes used for his quotations from and marginal glosses to the Scriptures, is one of the reasons why V ittels’ quotations show certain similarities with the word level of Coverdale’s Bible.

It is important not to forget the specific context we are looking at. As previously mentioned, it is not unreasonable to assume that for the translators of the Familist writings their task resembled that of the translators of the Holy Scriptures, since N iclaes’ translators were, after all, at least in the eyes o f the Familists, translating the words of G od’s last prophet. It is not unlikely that the borrow ed lexicon Vittels employs in the quotations, and in the rest o f the text, was purposely chosen for the status those words had attained by their appearance in a Biblical context through the Bibles of Coverdale and others. By using words that had earlier appeared in the English translations of the Scriptures, Vittels could sustain a connection on the word level between these exact texts and N iclaes’ works in translation, as the ‘last chapter’ to the Bible.

I will now focus on those aspects V ittels’ quotations share with the English translations of the Scriptures. One of the characteristic elements of V ittels’ quotations we already find in W ycliff’s Bible. In the preface of W ycliff’s translation, attention is given to the importance of avoiding unidiomatic English and to the need of abandoning the strict wording o f the original should this impede the natural word order o f the English language^*’ (Ellis 1982: 30). This concem we also find in V ittels’ renditions of N iclaes’ Biblical quotations, in which the requirements of the English language seem to have prevailed over the preservation o f the strict word order of the Low German source text. Then, of course, there are the

In the traditional view o f the Scriptures every w ord, every letter, contained G od ’s mystery, and it w as thought that the word order m ight contain a m eaning hidden from the translator, perhaps to be revealed in the future (E llis 1982: 30). It is not unlikely that som e o f the m ost devoted follow ers o f N iclaes held sim ilar ideas about their prophet’s w ritings.

connections between Miles Coverdale and Vittels, some of which I have already given attention to above. Coverdale, who knew no Hebrew or Greek and was thus the least scholarly of the English Bible translators, believed in his free choice to use those words and expressions he felt best to express the meaning o f the original. His translation shows his consideration for a varied vocabulary, o f which a great deal was coined on the German sources he worked from. (Norton 2000: 29-30). In a way, this can also be said of V ittels’ quotations and o f the whole o f his translation for that matter. A good example of this we find in the first two quotations I have presented above, in which ‘W ater-strom en’ is first translated as ‘rivers of w ater’ and in the second quotation with the coinage ‘w ater-stream s’. As is the case for Coverdale, V ittels’ language features coined words, but he might have felt that the choice to use them, or not, at specific places in the text was his. If we consider the various aspects which the translation strategies of the works of Vittels and Coverdale share, one could almost think that Vittels based him self on Coverdale in as far as his method was concerned. This would then suggest that Vittels, indeed, saw N iclaes’ words as being on the same level as the Scriptures.

If we consider the context I have ju st set out above, the features shown in his translations of the original’s quotations make of Vittels a faithful translator, even within such a sensitive tradition as that of Bible translations. His quotations show no other ‘liberties’ with the source text than had already been taken earlier by the translators of the Bible in English. The same, in a way, also goes for the general level of the text in which indeed Vittels, on the whole, takes hardly more ‘liberties’ than he does with the translations o f the original’s Bible quotations'*^. It is thus possible that, for Vittels, the whole of the English Evangelium was a very faithful rendition of the source text, with the features o f the text which fitted the target culture naturally following from the requirements of both the source and target texts, and not falling outside the scope o f what was considered to be, even in a

A gain, the fact that V ittels apparently took a sim ilar stance to the translation o f N ic la e s’ original as a w h ole as he did to the sp ecific renditions o f the source text’s B iblical quotations, m ight suggest that he regarded all o f N icla es’ w ords on the sam e level. It is possible that he considered the w hole o f the text, N ic la e s’ every word, to be o f the sam e ‘sacred’ nature.

Chapter V

Biblical context, a literal translation. V ittels’ dependence on the words of Coverdale’s Bible text, which might have been well known to the specific public which would read the Familist translations, suited the rhetoric of N iclaes’

Evangelium which also expressed itself in Biblical language. V ittels’ concerns for the understanding of his translation, which might have fitted the organisation of the English Family that centred on the reading aloud of the Scriptures and N iclaes’ texts, could easily be seen within the freedom even Bible translators had when translating the source text in ways that best suited the idioms and requirements of the target language.

Like that, Vittels could indeed claim, as he supposedly did to the attackers of the movement in England, that he had merely translated N iclaes’ every word, since the particulars of his text that fitted the target culture fell into the scope of the liberties the most literal of translators could take with the source text. For the specific relationship between Niclaes and Vittels, this meant that the target-aimed aspects in the English Evangelium needed not to be interpreted as diverging from the ‘holy w ords’ o f the prophet, and so N iclaes’ ‘divine’ status remained intact. If we look at his translation in this way, V ittels’ work becomes very clever and well planned, and I doubt that the earlier students o f the Family o f Love were referring to these levels of V ittels’ renderings when they described his texts as ‘no more than direct translations of H N ’s works into English, with Vittels assuming no role but that of conveying an unchanged message to a new public’.