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Explore the use of stylometry to analyze St. Jerome's Latin translations and compare his work with Rufinus in translating Origen of Alexandria. Discover the methodologies and results in this scholarly investigation. Contains valuable insights on the Latin Vulgate translation.
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AncientTranslational Style: What Can Stylometrytellus Matthew Munson GCDH and DARIAH Twitter: @sonofmun Email: mmunson@gcdh.de
The Questions • How much of the New Testament did St. Jerome translate into Latin? • Can Stylometry show us whether Jerome or Rufinus was a truer translator of Origen of Alexandria?
St. Jerome and the Vulgate • ~340 AD – 420 AD • Latin Vulgate translation • Pope Damasus 383 • Finished “revision” of Gospels 384 • Translated the Psalter and several other books from Greek • Translated the whole OT from Hebrew (finished 406) • But what about Acts-Revelation in the NT? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Antonio_da_Fabriano_II_-_Saint_Jerome_in_His_Study_-_Walters_37439.jpg
The Stylistic Problem • Question: • Can we determine whether Jerome translated the rest of the NT using stylometry? • Data: • Latin texts of the Vulgate including the Psalter translated both from Greek and from Hebrew • Method: • Used the stylo script for R-Statistics from Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki
The Translation of Origen of Alexandria • Origen – 184 AD – 253 AD • Most important Christian theologian before Augustine • Was anathematized in 6th century, works destroyed • Latin translations of St. Jerome and Rufinus of Aquileia very important http://sophiainstitutenyc.org/?s=origen+teaching+the+saints
The Stylistic Problem • Question: • Can we determine whether Jerome or Rufinus was a more exact translator of Origen using stylometry? • Data: • Gathered as many original and translated Origenic texts from the two authors as possible (24 from Jerome, 11 from Rufinus) • Method: • Again used the stylo script for R-Statistics from Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki
Where do I go from here? • Jerome NT: • Compare decisive words (Eder-Rybicki Zeta) • I expect it is simply genre, not translator style • Jerome vs. Rufinus • Compare Jerome’s and Rufinus’ translations to Origen’s originals • Need to compare Greek to Latin • We have very few texts that exist in both Greek and Latin, so not a comparison of translations but of style