Translating ideas v. translating words : a Breakdown of the situation in Medieval France

In this paper, I will address this issue of "faithfulness" as it pertains to the medieval French translations of the Latin classics-more specifically between the 13th and 14th centuries in France. It is my contention that the majority of the medieval translators in France tended to adopt a more "target-text" oriented approach to translation. More specifically, most of these "translateurs" did not shy away from altering the source-text in order to make the target-text as clear and as elegant as possible for the target language reader. Con-sequently, the purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to outline the many reasons which led the medieval translators to distance themselves from the Latin source texts that they translated; and 2) to discuss some of the various translational tactics used by the "trans-lateurs" in their quest for clarity and elegance. However, before addressing any of these two issues, I will provide a brief overview of the situation in medieval France with respect to the dualism which has been perpetuated throughout history: more specifically, whether one should transíate words, or the ideas behind them.