Ivan Said: Mikiel Anton Vassalli: It-Traduttur. Jinkludi ‘Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru’ Meħuda mir-Rollin. Addattament mill-Franċiż ta’ Mikiel Anton Vassalli 

Mikiel Anton Vassalli: The Translator. Includes the ‘Story of King Cyrus’ from Rollin’s source. Adapted from the French by Mikiel Anton Vassalli.
Horizons, 2019 

Ivan Said’s recent addition to studies about the life and politics of Mikiel Anton Vassalli coincides excellently with studies on the translation history of the Maltese language. This study does not only provide information about Vassalli’s translations, but actually proposes the interesting theory that his translation of Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru (The Story of King Cyrus) was a deliberate political act. After analysing Vassalli’s political ideas as expounded in the introductions to Stedina and the Lexicon, Said observes that the life of Cyrus seems to epitomise or embody those policies and beliefs.

The study and discussion draw attention to the fact that Vassalli made use of two rather different translation methods and styles in the translation of the Vanġeli (The Gospels) and the Atti tal-Apostli (Acts of the Apostles), as compared to the Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru. Said suggests that this might reflect something relevant in Vassalli’s textual attitude to the different texts as well as to the various aims that these translations were intended to achieve.

Whereas the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles were translated with such extreme care that it verged on a word-for-word translation style, the Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru is described by Said (p. xxiv) as a loose and free translation method in which words were added and removed as needed. This seeming indifference compared to the strict method used for the Gospels draws attention to itself and is suggestive of a rebellious stance in the relationship between the translator and the text about King Cyrus. This is an observation that is insightful and which could bare further analysis.

At the centre of this publication is the full text of Vassalli’s translation of Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru translated directly from the French version by Charles Rollin and not from the Vulgate of St Jerome, which was the source for his translation of the Gospels. The story of King Cyrus comes to us from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah. Cyrus, the first King of Persia who ruled between 539-530 BC was a pagan king who was important in Jewish history because it was under his rule that the Jews were first allowed to return to Israel after 70 years of captivity.

Said presents us with Vassalli’s Maltese version of this story with all of its interesting orthographical aspects but which is difficult for us to read today. Vassalli attempted, as others had done, to work out a suitable alphabet for the writing of Maltese and the version he used is different to that we use today.

Vassalli’stranslation work is a fundamental part of Maltese literary history

Said’s decision to present Vassalli’s orthographic version in parallel with the modern orthography of Maltese of Storja ta’ Sultan Ċiru makes it easy for us to read the story while simultaneously allowing us to enjoy two versions of the Maltese written language. Vassalli began this translation in 1825 which means that a span of almost 200 years divides the two versions.

Bust of Mikiel Anton Vassalli

The translation of the story takes up 123 pages of this volume. But, to my mind, the main area of interest comes in the various sections that form a long and highly interesting introduction to the work. It is in this second section that Said presents his hypothesis of the translation of the story as a political act. It is also possible that Vassalli saw himself in the figure of Cyrus/Ċiru as a liberator of his native land which he opened to his people through writing and reading of their own language.

The history of Bible translation opens a window into the historical process of the establishing of standardised European languages in the period leading up to and during the Protestant Reformation. All the Protestant Reformers, including Tyndale, Luther and Dolét insisted that the Bible was to be translated into the vernacular to enable Christians to be guided by the Bible and not by Canon Law.

 Bible translation clearly played a political role as it was instrumental in shifting power away from the Church. There was also an unintentional result, which was that the dialect into which the Bible was translated eventually became the standard and most powerful variant of each language in both pronunciation and written form. This was because of the great influence of the Bible, which was read aloud at Church services, accompanied by an inevitable increase in literacy to make the Bible in the vernacular truly accessible. 

Said, in the first section of the book Mikiel Anton Vassalli: It-Traduttur provides the reader with facts and dates about Vassalli’s life after his return to Malta following his 19-year exile in France and Spain. He explains that Vassalli was very poor with barely enough money to take care of his family. Said takes us through the events in which John Hookham Frere befriends Vassalli and introduces him to Rev. Jowett in 1823.

Jowett offered Vassalli work as a Bible translator for the Christian Missionary Society, publishers whose aim was to have the Bible translated into the vernacular, printed in Malta, and sent to parts of the British Empire in the Near East. In 1825 Hookham Frere again helped Vassalli by making him the first Professor of Maltese at the University of Malta, and paid his salary from his own pocket.

Vassalli translated the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles into Maltese. It is both interesting and important, Said tells us, to note that he used the Catholic version of the Bible, the Vulgate, as his source and not the Protestant Bible. Vassalli’s translations and scholarship were acclaimed by Mgr Pietru Pawl Saydon who described his translation style as faithful, clear and elegant (Said, xviii-xix). Many scholars have discussed this work since and though they don’t all agree on the clarity of expression, they maintain that Vassalli’s translation work is a fundamental part of Maltese literary history.

Clare Vassallo is Associate Professor in Translation Studies and Semiotics at the University of Malta. She has published a number of papers and chapters in international academic journals and books on translation theory and history, and in literary translation.