From the "Tractatus contra astronomos judiciarios" (1349) to the "Livre de divinacions" (1356). Nicole Oresme Lost in Translation.

As far as France is concerned, Nicole Oresme’s intellectual activity can be considered fundamental in the shaping of linguistic identities. It is well known that when Oresme began to translate Aristotle’s works for King Charles V, French was not a prestigious literary language and was not thought appropriate for philosophical and scientific discourse. This was instead the reserve of Latin, and a non-academic audience would have had great difficulty in gaining access to it. Many lay people, princes and even counsellors (with a universitylevel education in Law) had difficulty reading Latin texts. For his part, Oresme repeatedly alludes to the difficulties that kings, princes and even the ministers/ counsellors have in reading Latin. Oresme deals with the reasons and problems of vernacularization in some of his prologues. In fact he had written the Tractatus contra astronomos judiciarios intended chiefly for a scholarly readership, which he then translated himself as the Livre de divinacions for those who were less able to read Latin on their own. It is unusual for an author to translate into the vernacular a text that he had previously written in Latin: this provides us with the opportunity to observe in detail not only his linguistic selection but also the intellectual activity that underpins any translation into the vernacular. Many parts of the two texts follow each other closely, but of course the most relevant parts for our study are those containing deviations and divergences. In the case of Nicole Oresme’s Livre de divinacions, we have to confirm the traditional idea that vulgarization is simplification. It is evident that he did not use vernacular French because he was unable to use Latin; he uses it in order to adapt his text to a different audience, and not one that was completely ignorant of Latin, but one that was probably less at ease with —or less interested in, academic sophistication— without the need for precision in quotation and rigorous clarity in meaning.