‘If they have not the french’: translation choices in The Happy Deliverie of Women (1612)

Abstract

This paper explores the translation strategies followed in the first rendering in English of Jacques Guillemeau’s De l’heureux accouchement des femmes (1609), Paris: Nicolas Bvon. Research reveals that the style of translation and the techniques deployed arise from his attitude towards the contents, as reflected in the translator’s preface. The translator seeks to preserve female privacy and to avoid mentioning explicit sexual matters. Our framework of analysis relies on Laura Cruz García’s model of translation strategies in specialised discourse as set out in ‘Copy Adaptation or How to Translate a Source Product into a Target Market’, published in Meta: Translator’s Journal, 58 (2): 347–72. Quantitative analysis indicates a major tendency on the part of the translator to use substitution devices, but also reduction and extension devices in this order. The use of a third language, namely Latin, is particularly interesting in the translation process of proper nouns, book titles and technical terms, which indicates a marked sign of register appealing to expertise and authority.