Käännökset keskiössä ― valistuksen ihanteiden toteutuminen käytännössä. Jean Barbeyrac ja luonnonoikeusajattelun tunnettuus

Kirjoittajat

• Meri Päivärinne

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61200/mikael.145944

Abstrakti

18th century Europe knew a tangible progress in accessibility of knowledge and this progress was to a large extent due to an increase in translation activity. New audiences were able to reach modern thinking through vernacularized literature. For the dissemination of natural law the French translator Jean Barbeyrac played a key role. Jean Barbeyrac (1674―1744) was a central figure in early Enlightenment’s literary world. He worked as a professor of natural law and as a journalist, in addition to his celebrated translations of many central works in the field of natural law, including the main works of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Richard Cumberland. These works spread around the world as his French translations or other language versions based on the French models. Philosophers, social scientists and philosophers of law have been influenced by their thoughts since their publication, and many have been  incorporated in the curricula of universities. The present article focuses on translator’s visibility both in the 18th century society as well as in translated texts. The enlightenment ideology stressed the importance of knowledge mediation, and this influenced the translation strategies as well as the visual choices in the translations.