Table Of ContentPRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION
AMSTERDAM STUDIESI N THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
E. F. K. KOERNER, General Editor
Series I - AMSTERDAM CLASSICS IN LINGUISTICS, 1800-1925
Advisory Editorial Board
Johannes Bechert (Bremen), Dell Hymes (Philadelphia)
Winfred P. Lehmann (Austin, Tex.), J. Peter Maher (Hamburg)
W. Keith Percival (Lawrence, Ks.), Klaus Strunk (München)
Terence H. Wilbur (Los Angeles)
Volume 13
Alexander Fraser Tytler
Lord Woodhouselee
Essay on the Principles of Translation
ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER
LORD WOODHOUSELEE
ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES
OF TRANSLATION
New edition
with an introductory article
by
JEFFREY F. HUNTSMAN
Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana
AMSTERDAM / JOHN BENJAMINS B.V.
1978
ForE.D.
© Copyright 1978 - John Benjamins B.V.
ISBN 90 272 0871 9 / 90 272 0974 x
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint,
microfilm or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Edinburgh in the Late Eighteenth Century .IX
2. Bio-bibliography of Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813) and his Family .XI
3. Tytler's Literary Works and Critical Principles XVI
4. Philosophical and Psychological Foundations:
Reid, Campbell, and Karnes XXII
5. The Essay on the Principles of Translation XXX
5.1. First Edition, 1791 XXX
5.2. Third Edition, 1813 XXXIII
5.3. General Laws of Translation XXXV
5.4, The Translator's Privilege to Alter the Original XXXVIII
6. Evaluation and Conclusion LXIII
References to the Introduction LXVII
Bibliography of Alexander Fraser Tytler L
ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION (1813)
Table of Contents xi
Text 1
Appendix 405
Index 421
Annotated Index of Persons and Works cited in the Essay 437
Bibliographical Apparatus 449
PREFACE
I would like to thank the Yale University Library and The University of Michigan
Library respectively for allowing me to borrow the first and third editions of the
Essay on the Principles of Translation, and the Lilly Library of Indiana University for
allowing me to reproduce the portrait of Alexander Fraser Tytler from their copy of
the British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits (1822:2.64). I would also like to offer
general thanks to the staffs of the British Library, the Lilly Library, and the Indiana
University Library for their assistance in helping me to obtain the material that
served! to shape the Introduction and Annotated Index to this edition. Deep appreci
ation is also offered to Ellen Dwyer and the several other friends and colleagues in
Europe and North America whose criticism and comments on the material of the
Introduction were of great importance, and to my research assistant, Richard
Gawthrop, whose labors in my behalf were always timely, thorough, and accurate.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to John Benjamins, whose imprint I am
proud to have this edition bear, and especially to E.F.K. Koerner, General Editor of
the Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, for first
encouraging me in this project and for his generousity in sharing his scholarly
acumen at all stages of its progress.
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INTRODUCTION
1. Edinburgh in the Late Eighteenth Century
Edinburgh during the years of George III was a place of dynamic complexity, a
city that underwent dramatic changes in both its physical structure and its cultural
and intellectual spirit while retaining its traditions and its pride as the capitol of a
nation whose contributions to the literary, scientific, and philosophical life of the
times were unrivaled by any other country of its size. Although the Act of Union a
half-century earlier had imposed some features of English rule, Scotland had
maintained its sense of independence; the material connections represented by the
railroad lines were not yet made and the journey from London to Edinburgh by the
"fast" coach exacted a punishing sixty hours of jouncing. At the beginning of
George's reign, Edinburgh was still largely enclosed by the medieval confines of
Old Town, with houses of a dozen or more storeys providing a distinctive Celtic
mixture of classes in the same building — shopkeepers and tradesmen on the
bottom floors, professionals on the next, and the gentry on the top, paying on the
social contract for their height and light with tedious climbs up winding, narrow
staircases. By the mid-1800s, however, the extension northwards into New Town
over the drained Nor' Loch had altered the focus and hence the character of the city.
Tortuously narrow passages (one named Horse Wynd because it was the only one
safely negotiable by horses) gave way to broad avenues with right-angled corners,
sedan chairs to four-wheeled carriages (whose number more than tripled, to 1268,
between 1763 and 1783). The center of New Town was the reticulation of streets
whose names exemplify the only slightly restrained independence of the Scots, with
Charlotte Square balanced by St. Andrews, George Street by Queens and Princes,
Rose Street by Thistle.
