Cicero and the birth of the historically second principle of translation.
Much was translated in ancient times also from Greek into Egyptian and vice versa, and partly from Hebrew into Greek. The next best known translation of the Old Testament into Greek, but performed this time meaning-to-meaning/sense-to-sense, was accomplished by Simmachus in the second century BC.Later on, with the political, economic and military strengthening of the Roman Empire, more and more translations were performed from Greek into Latin. Moreover, much of the rich literature of all genres from ancient Rome has developed exclusively on the basis of translations from old Greek. This was started by the Roman-Greek scholar Livius Andronicus who made a very successful translation of Homer's poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey in 240 BC, and thus laid the beginning and the foundation for a rich Latin belles-lettres tradition. That first successful translation was followed by no less successful translations of Greek dramas made by two Roman men of letters who were also translators, namely, Naevius (270 - 201 BC) and Annius (239 -169 BC).
A significant contribution to Roman literature in general and to the theory of translation in particular was made by the outstanding statesman, orator and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), who brought into Latin the speeches of the most eloquent Greek orators Demosthenes (385? - 322 BC) and Aeschines (389-314 BC). Cicero became famous in the history of translation not only for his literary translations but also for his principles of the so-called «sense-to-sense» translation, which he theoretically grounded for translations of secular works. These principles appeared to have been in opposition to the principle of strict word-for-word translation employed by the translators of the Septuagint. Cicero held the view, and not without grounds, that the main aim of translators was to convey first of all the sense and the style of the source language work and not the meaning of separate words and their placement in the source language work/ passage.
11. Deliberate violations of the second (sense-to-sense) way/principle of translation by Horace and Apuleius and their consequences in the Middle Ages and later periods.
Cicero's principles of «sense-for-sense translation» were first accepted and employed by the outstanding Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC), who translated works from Greek into Latin. Horace, however, had understood and used Cicero's principles in his own, often unpredictable way: he would change the composition and content of the source language works that he translated. Moreover, he would introduce some ideas of his own, thus making the translated works unlike the originals. This way of free interpretation from the source language works in translation was accepted and further «developed» in the second century AD by Horace's adherent Apuleius (124 - ?), who would still more deliberately rearrange the ancient Greek originals altering them sometimes beyond recognition. This, perhaps, was the result of an attitude of benign neglect by the Romans towards the culture of the Greeks, which began to be absorbed by the stronger empire. The Roman translators following the practice of Horace, and still more of Apuleius, began systematically to omit all «insignificant» (in their judgement) passages, and incorporate some ideas and even whole stories of their own.
Such a kind of translation made the reader doubt whether the translated works belonged to a foreign author or were in fact an original work. This practice of Roman translators, that found its expression in a free treatment of secular source language works on the part of the most prominent Roman men of letters, little by little fostered an unrestricted freedom in translation, which began to dominate in all European literatures throughout the forthcoming centuries and during the Middle Ages.
There were only a few examples of really faithful sense-to-sense translations after the afore-mentioned Greek translation of the Old Testament by Simmachus (second century BC) and its Latin translation by Hieronymus (340-420) in the fourth century AD.The latter demanded that translation should be performed not «word-for-word» but «sense-for-sense» (non verbum e verbo, sedsensum expremere de sensu). Unlike Cicero, who wanted to see in a translation the expressive means of the source language work well, Hieronymus saw the main objective of the translator first of all the faithful conveying of the content, the component parts, and the composition of the work under translation.
These same two principles, according to Solomon Ibn Ajjub, one of the greatest authorities on translation in the middle of the thirteenth century, were practised in the southern Italian school (Rome), which had fallen under a strong Arabic cultural influence as well. Secular works were translated in this school with many deliberate omissions/eliminations, additions, and paraphrases of their texts, which consequently changed the original works beyond recognition. This was the logical consequence of the method initiated by Horace and his adherent Apuleius, who applied their practice to free treatment of secular works under translation.