The World Within Reach

This book traces the history of translation in the Early Modern Low Countries (roughly the modern-day Netherlands and Belgium), from around 1550 to around 1700. It focuses on the various roles played by translation in different contexts. In the latter half of the sixteenth century translation stoked religious conflict and the civil war that eventually divided the territory into two ideologically opposed political entities. After 1600, it buttressed the economic wealth and overseas expansion of the Dutch Republic and assisted in transforming the southern Netherlands into a Counter-Reformation bastion. Throughout the period, translation fostered new knowledge as well as artistic innovation, it fuelled political propaganda, stimulated personal piety and was a highly signficant factor in commercial publishing. It enabled some of the cultural monuments of the age and helped lay the groundwork for the Radical Enlightenment. This book pays attention to both interpreting and written translation, to material as well as intellectual aspects, to social and regional divisions and to the area's linguistic complexity - covering translation not just into Dutch but also into Latin, French and Spanish. It will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Early Modern Europe, multilingualism and the history of culture and translation.

Theo Hermans is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Translation Studies, University College London (UCL), and the author of, among other titles, Metatranslation (2023), Translation and History (2022), Translation in Systems (1999, reissued as a Routledge Translation Classic in 2019) and The Conference of the Tongues (2007). His edited books include Translating Others (2 vols, 2006) and A Literary History of the Low Countries (2009).

Introduction, Part I. Conflicted Modernity. 1550-1600, Chapter 1. Rifts and Ruptures, Confessional divides, Bible translation: scholarship, commerce and conviction, Partisan pictures, Snapshot: The Tupi and the man called Oyster, Chapter 2. Importing Knowledge, Trades, words, glossaries, The translator as entrepreneur: Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Medical translations from Paracelsus to Carolus Battus, The growth of botanical knowledge, Translating science: Marten Everaert, Snapshot. A physician on the perfect language, Chapter 3. The Novelty of Form, The Classics in vernacular garb, Languages and exile: Lucas d'Heere and Jan vander Noot, Literary networks: Jan van Hout and Karel van Mander, A moral philosophy network: D.V. Coornhert & Co., A pure tongue, Snapshot. Happy again?, Part II. Cosmopolitan Demands.1600-1650, Chapter 4. Language Providers, Strange encounters, The faithful interpreter, Missionary translation, Snapshot. The wondrous world of Jaques Joosten, interpreter, Chapter 5. Confession and Consolidation, Growing apart, Living the faith, The States Bible of 1637, Psalm translations and translation criticism, Snapshot. Miracles in translation, Chapter 6. Translation as Imitation, Multiple translations, Imitation in action, Translation metaphors and imitation theory, Popular fiction, Snapshot. Jeptha's untranslatable word, Chapter 7. Matters of Practice, Tools of the trade, Costs and benefits, Around the Dutch Mathematique, Snapshot. A schoolmaster's tongues, Part III. Shifting Horizons. 1650-1700, Chapter 8. Stages of Translation, Translation as self-improvement: Vondel, Translating for the Amsterdam Theatre, A translators' collective and its polemics, Snapshot. What is paraphrastic translation?, Chapter 9. The Whole World, The international news, The world within reach, Interpreters on Deshima and at the Cape, The orientalist prodigy Herbert de Jager, Snapshot. The drugger-men of the Levant, Chapter 10. Other Minds, The arch-translator Jan Hendrik Glazemaker, Radical purism, Republicanism and reason, Spinoza and after, Other tongues, Snapshot. Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek in need of translators, Conclusion, References, Bibliography, Index