Ancient Translational Style: What Can Stylometry tell us

Matthew MunsonGCDH and DARIAH

Twitter: @sonofmunEmail: 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 Results – Eureka?

The Results – Hmmm?

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

Background – Jan Rybicki and Translation Style

Results – hmmm?

Or, shown another way…

Jerome – Original vs. Translation

Rufinus – Original vs. Translation

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