Is style really what gets lost in translation? From Guevara’s Dial of Princes to Thomas North’s eloquent English, the Renaissance shows us how rhetoric, copia and classical training helped translators capture not just meaning but music.
06 Aug 2025Reviewers in the Sunday papers commonly praise newly appeared translations of novels for masterfully capturing the colourful/pithy/zesty style of the Basque/Chinese/Māori original.
Counterwise, people as often say that “poetry is what gets lost in translation”. Or as the Marquis of Santillana wrote around 1452, “if we cannot have the forms, let us be content with the matter”.
Flora Ross Amos points out that early translators didn’t attempt to capture the style of their original:
While it may be that both Caxton and Lydgate were trying to reproduce in English the peculiar style of their originals, it is more probable that they beautified their own versions as best they could, without feeling it incumbent upon them to make their rhetorical devices correspond with those of their predecessors.
Translations also tended to incorporate explanatory glosses which blurred the lines of the original.
But the time came when translators became aware of what Cicero said in the De optimo genere oratorum (‘On the best sort of orators’). This was the prologue to his lost translation of the Greek orators Demosthenes and Aeschines, and there he claimed to have translated not like an interpreter but an orator, capturing the style and rhetorical figures of the original.
I’d like to point to an example of a book which (like many others) lost nothing in translation, the Reloj de príncipes (Dial of princes) of Antonio de Guevara, a fictionalised life of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Guevara was famous for his amplificatory style, was an undoubted best-seller in various languages, and used to be thought a big influence on Euphuism, a mannered English prose style which took its name from John Lyly’s romance Euphues and his England (London, 1580; C.56.d.16.).
Title page of Antonio de Guevara, Libro del emperador Marco aurelio cō relox de principe (Valladolid, 1529) C.38.h.8
The English translation by Thomas North does I think match the style of the original, and this despite the fact that he worked from the French version of Nicolas de Herberay.
North also translated Plutarch’s Lives and in the prologue himself advocated the Ciceronian style: “The office of a fit translator consisteth not only in the faithful expressing of his author’s meaning, but also in a certain resembling and shadowing out of the form of his style and the manner of his speaking”. Ironically, the prologue was translated from Jacques Amyot’s French Plutarch.
Judge the effect for yourself:
Aplicando a lo que emos dicho a lo que queremos dezir, digo que no queremos de los principes y grandes señores que se maten con los leones en la caça, ni aventuren sus personas en la guerra, ni pongan sus vidas en peligro por la republica, sino que solamente les rogamos tengan cuydado de proveer las cosas de justicia; porque mas natural oficio es de los principes andar a caça de viciosos en su republica, que no andar a caça de puercos en la montaña … No consiste la governacion de la republica en que trabajen hasta sudar las carnes, fatiguen sus personas, derramen su sangre, menosprecien sus vidas y pierdan los passatiempos, sino que toda su buena governacion esta en que con atencion miren los daños de sus republicas y conforme a ellos provean los ministros de Guerra
Appliquant ce que nous auons dit à ce que nous voulons dire, ie dy que nous ne desirons, ny voulons que les princes & grands seigneurs se tuent auec les lions à la chasse, ny aduenturent leurs personnes en guerre, ny mettent leurs vies en peril pour la Republique, ains que nous les prions seulement qu’ilz ayent aucun soucy de pouruoir aux choses de la iustice car plus naturel office des princes est aller à la chasse des vicieux en leurs republiques, que non à la chasse des sangliers es montaignes … Le gouuernement de la Republique ne consiste en ce qu’ilz trauaillent iusques à suer & molester leurs corps, espandent leur sang, mesprisent leurs vies, & perdent leurs passetemps, ains tout leur bon gouuernement consiste à ce qu’ilz soyent attentifs à regarder les dommages de leur Republique, & conformant à eux pouruoyent de bons maistres de iustice
Applying that we have spoken to that we will speak, I say, that we do not desire, nor we will not, that princes and great lords do destroy them selves with lions in the chase, neither adventure their persons in the wars, nor that they put their lives in peril for the common weal but we only require them that they take some pains and care to provide for things belonging to justice, for it is a more natural hunting for princes to hunt out the vicious of their common weals then for to hunt the wild boars, in the thick woods … The government of the common weal consisteth not in that they should travail until they sweat and molest their bodies, shed their blood, shorten their lives and lose their pastimes but all consisteth in that they should be diligent to foresee the domages of their common wealth and likewise to provide for good ministers of justice
How can we explain this accuracy? I wonder if it’s because at this period everybody followed the same classical norms in their writing, so that it was easy for the translator to recognise in his original the rhetorical figures which he had been trained at school to use.
Guevara’s style is copious. Copia (‘abundance’) is most closely associated with Erasmus, although it wasn’t his invention. His De copia (1512) might have been his most influential work. He argued that a writer’s skill derived from a rich vocabulary, which he demonstrated by saying the same thing in a variety of ways. Every schoolboy (on boys, see Ong) knew this as the smart way to write, whether he was Spanish, French or English.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
Flora Ross Amos, Early Theories of Translation, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 29 (New York, 1920) Ac.2688/16.(29.)
Walter J. Ong, ‘Latin Language study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite’, Studies in Philology, 51 (1959), 103-123 Ac.2685.k/2.
Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, Obras completas, ed. Ángel Gómez Moreno and Maximilian P. A. M. Kerkhof (Barcelona, 1988) YA.1990.a.16843
Barry Taylor, ‘Learning Style from the Spaniards in Sixteenth-Century England’, in Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473-1640, ed. S. K. Barker and Brenda M. Hosington (Leiden, 2013), pp. 63-78. YD.2013.a.758
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