he takes no exception to the word "translate."[23] That he should
designate his _St. Margaret_, a fairly close following of one source, a
"compilation,"[24] merely strengthens the belief that the terms
"translate" and "translation" were used synonymously with various other
words. Osbern Bokenam speaks of the "translator" who "compiled" the
legend of St. Christiana in English;[25] Chaucer, one remembers,
"translated" Boethius and "made" the life of St. Cecilia.[26]

To select from this large body of literature, "made," "compiled,"
"translated," only such works as can claim to be called, in the modern
sense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitable
task. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider the
whole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of their
authors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondary
origin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his own
time was reckoned "grant translateur."[27] Of the books which Caxton a
century later issued from his printing press a large proportion were
English versions of Latin or French works. Our concern, indeed, is with
the larger and by no means the least valuable part of the literature
produced during the Middle English period.

The theory which accompanies this nondescript collection of translations
is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to
misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before
proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain
phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar
difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to
the present-day reader. As regards the translator, existing
circumstances were not encouraging. In the early part of the period he
occupied a very lowly place. As compared with Latin, or even with
French, the English language, undeveloped and unstandardized, could make
its appeal only to the unlearned. It had, in the words of a
thirteenth-century translator of Bishop Grosseteste's _Castle of Love_,
"no savor before a clerk."[28] Sometimes, it is true, the English writer
had the stimulus of patriotism. The translator of _Richard Coeur de
Lion_ feels that Englishmen ought to be able to read in their own
tongue the exploits of the English hero. The _Cursor Mundi_ is
translated

In to Inglis tong to rede
For the love of Inglis lede,
Inglis lede