Michael Graves: Classical and Sacred Models for Jerome’s Discourse on Translation

Jerome was a prolific translator who commented frequently on the craft of translation. This paper focuses on Jerome’s discourse about translation, which often serves to explain or defend his work. The paper suggests that Jerome employed models from both classical literary sources and also from the tradition of biblical interpretation to describe his own approach to translating. Classical models include translation as stylistic training for an orator and technical translation for philosophical terms. Sacred models include etymological translation for conveying symbolic meaning and scrupulous translation as an expression of piety. Each of these models could be deployed by Jerome as the occasion demanded, and neither was reserved exclusively for a certain kind of text, such as the Bible. Although Jerome sometimes needed to defend himself for adopting a certain translation model, he nevertheless availed himself of values and motifs from across the spectrum throughout his career both in translating and in talking about translation. Jerome’s appropriation of different translation ideals provides one window into how he navigated the complicated space between the classical and Christian worlds.