When discussing the history of Christianity, one cannot but mention the issue of translation. The very text of the Bible is a text of translation, originally containing a combination of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. However, although the history of Christianity has long been associated with translation, the academic discipline of Translation Studies has been limited in its consideration of historical Christianity. Volumes such as The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, include overviews of Jerome's translation theory,Footnote ¹ and make reference to Wyclif, Luther and Tyndale,Footnote ² but there is rarely an acknowledgement that Christian translation practices might be of use to current translation theory. Similarly, although much of the field of Mission Studies recognizes that ‘for a correct evaluation of nineteenth-century missionaries, their linguistic work is crucial’,Footnote ³ scholarship is often limited to the study of translation practice amongst colonial missionaries and neglects to explore the implications of its relationship to theory. Scholars such as Derek Peterson and Jane Samson make passing references to the translation theories of Tejaswini Niranjana and Lawrence Venuti, but there is a lack of thorough engagement with Translation Studies in works on mission history.Footnote ⁴ This article will employ the disciplines of Mission History and Translation Studies together, using one to analyse the other. I will argue that missionary-translators from the past, such as the nineteenth-century French Protestant missionary François Coillard, are useful figures not only for the consideration of historical practices of translation, but also as we reflect on current discussions on translation.

François Coillard was born in 1834 at Asnières-lès-Bourges, in central France. After his personal conversion experience at seventeen, he trained under the direction of Eugène Casalis at the Protestant missionary society, Société des Missions Évangéliques de Paris (SMEvP).Footnote ⁵ In 1857, Coillard was sent to Basutoland (now Lesotho), and in 1861 he married Christina Mackintosh, daughter of a Scottish Baptist minister.Footnote ⁶ Coillard failed in an attempted mission to the Banyai people in Mashonaland (now in south-western Zimbabwe) in 1877, but in 1884 the Coillards, together with a group of indigenous missionaries from Basutoland, led a mission to Barotseland (now in western Zambia). Coillard remained in Barotseland after Christina's death in 1891 until his own death in 1904.Footnote ⁷

Coillard was an active translator. He translated for local rulers and colonial administrators.Footnote ⁸ Furthermore, as was the case for many colonial missionaries, the interlingual translation of the Christian message was part of his daily routine. He translated the books of Psalms and Proverbs into Sesuto,Footnote ⁹ edited a translation of Joshua,Footnote ¹⁰ and translated psalms and ‘hymns of his childhood’ into Sesuto songs.Footnote ¹¹ Many of his hymn translations are still in use today, found in the hymnbook Lifela tsa Sione (Hymns of Zion).Footnote ¹² But more than this, Coillard's missionary work was itself an act of translation. The American Society of Missiology's definition of mission as ‘the effort to effect passage over the boundary between faith in Jesus Christ and its absence’, indicates through the ‘passage over [a] boundary’ that mission itself is a constant process of translation. Indeed, the etymology of the word ‘translation’ indicates this same idea of passage, of transferral, of carrying over or across. Just as the purpose of translation is to make accessible something previously inaccessible, by altering the language in which it is communicated, so too the purpose of mission is the rendering of previously unknown and inaccessible ideas, values and beliefs accessible. Missionaries are found constantly translating the message of Jesus into different contexts and cultures, whether or not they are carrying out formal translation work. Therefore, whilst this article engages with Coillard as a translator, it does so not only with regard to a traditional understanding of translation between languages but also in this more metaphorical sense in which mission itself is an act of translation.

This article will not focus on the specific texts that Coillard translated, or the results of his intertextual translations. Rather, the ways in which Coillard is seen to translate will be used to reassess two of the dominant assumptions in current translation theory: firstly, that the translator is invisible, and secondly, that he works alone. The sources used include those written by Coillard, such as his letters and diary, which were edited, collated and published by Edouard Favre, and those written about him: newspapers, geographical society bulletins and biographies found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France's online archive, and a letter extract from the SMEvP archive in Paris.Footnote ¹³ Employing these texts, this article will conclude that historical missionary narratives such as that of François Coillard are useful not only for considering historical translation processes and practices but also for reconsidering the assumptions of contemporary translation theory.

Firstly, where in Translation Studies the translator is either visible or invisible in the translated text, Coillard demonstrates a translation practice whereby the translator is both visible and invisible. Lawrence Venuti, in his study The Translator's Invisibility, first published in 1995, challenges Norman Shapiro's assertion that ‘[a] good translation is like a pane of glass. You only notice that it's there when there are little imperfections . . . It should never call attention to itself’.Footnote ¹⁴ Instead of this self-effacing translation method, Venuti advocates a ‘visible’ translation practice which makes the reader aware of the translation process and the translator's presence, so as (writes Susan Bassnett) ‘to ensure that readers recognise that they are reading a work that originated somewhere else’.Footnote ¹⁵ Venuti promotes translation methods that keep foreign elements in the text, such as ‘Boulevard de Fleurs’ and ‘Monsieur Petit’, rather than always finding equivalents, such as ‘Flower Street’ and ‘Mr Small’.Footnote ¹⁶ The assumption in this debate is that translation practice promotes either visibility or invisibility, so that the translator is either visible or invisible. However, Coillard shows us that the missionary-translator is both.

Although to some degree simply an ordinary Frenchman, working for an obscure missionary society, Coillard was a very visible translator: he was visible in his secular and religious contemporary context, and in postcolonial critiques. In 1901 he was described in the bulletin of the Geographical Society of Lille as a ‘well-known French missionary-explorer’,Footnote ¹⁷ and in 1913 the Bibliothèque universelle et revue suisse asked: ‘Who has not heard the name of François Coillard?’Footnote ¹⁸ We can assume, then, that by the time of his death he was in the public eye. From the late 1870s Coillard was visible as a missionary and explorer. On numerous occasions in the French national press he was called the ‘Livingstone français’ (the ‘French Livingstone’).Footnote ¹⁹ Moreover, he appeared in the title of the second volume of the autobiography of the imperial Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto, his name being closely associated with that of the explorer-figure Pinto himself.Footnote ²⁰ Coillard was portrayed as ‘the man who saved me’, and this image of him was perpetuated in translations of the book across Europe.Footnote ²¹ Coillard was thus a nineteenth-century celebrity. Of course, he was also visible in religious publications, as a hero of faith, one of the ‘heroic pioneers of the gospel’ and an ambassador, not for France or colonial rule, but for Christ.Footnote ²² Furthermore, following decolonization Coillard continued to be visible: his name is found in twentieth-century critiques of the European impact on indigenous culture, and his role as translator in the Lochner concession is presented by some historians as manipulative and calculatingFootnote ²³ and by others as passive and naïve.Footnote ²⁴ Long after his death, he continues to be visible in studies on the Zambian Church, French colonialism and mission.Footnote ²⁵ Therefore, as he translated the Christian message into multiple contexts through his missionary work, Coillard was visible.

While in some ways this visibility was imposed on Coillard, in other instances it was something that he pursued. We know that he toured Europe twice and published his autobiography in English as On the Threshold of Central Africa (1897) and in French as Sur le Haut-Zambèze (1898), which was said to be ‘an immediate best-seller in both countries’.Footnote ²⁶ In Africa as well as in Europe, Coillard sought visibility as he translated himself into new contexts. Although he attempted to assimilate into the indigenous community to an extent, for example through acquiring the language,Footnote ²⁷ he continued to wear European clothes.Footnote ²⁸ Whilst living a significant proportion of his missionary life in a wagon or a tent, he erected a house reminiscent of those back home.Footnote ²⁹ In the mission field, Coillard maintained a structure and an order to his life similar to that in Europe. A biographer of Christina Coillard writes: ‘To both of them scrupulous attention to cleanliness and neatness in their dress and surroundings . . . were everyday requirements . . . If the missionary were not himself an example of the graciousness of Christian life, from whom would his converts learn it?’Footnote ³⁰ Here we see that the missionary's visibility acts as ‘an example’. The missionary is visible in order to instruct, and to support that which he preaches.Footnote ³¹ Coillard's visibility served as a sort of propaganda whereby missionary work in general was made visible, and through it the Christian gospel. He wrote of his own fame: ‘All this . . . did not add to our importance for ourselves. It is not us, but Africa, our Mission Society and our Protestantism that are honoured’.Footnote ³² Coillard's individual visibility served to raise awareness of Protestant missionary work more generally. This also echoes Venuti's priorities, as visibility is advocated in Translation Studies in order to inspire an awareness in the contemporary consciousness that the translation process is occurring, in order to ‘promote the cause of translation’, as Susan Bassnett writes.Footnote ³³

However, Coillard pursued invisibility in his work too. In a letter written to the executive committee of the SMEvP, one of Coillard's young colleagues, Frédéric Christol, wrote: ‘Monsieur Coillard . . . told me that he only wanted a man who is completely ordinary; not especially a theologian or a linguist’.Footnote ³⁴ In recruiting co-workers, Coillard sought ordinary, invisible people. Indeed, when writing to a young boy who wanted to be a missionary, Coillard stated that the ‘first condition’ for the vocation is ‘that he denies himself’ and ‘takes up his cross’, words echoing those of Christ himself.Footnote ³⁵ Furthermore, Coillard's own motto, from John's gospel, was one of self-abnegation: ‘“He must increase, and I must decrease.” This is what I repeat to myself every day’.Footnote ³⁶ It seems that, according to Coillard, a missionary must make himself invisible so that the God of the Christian gospel is seen. In translation theory, this pursuit of invisibility is what Lawrence Venuti calls a ‘weird self-annihilation’.Footnote ³⁷ Albert Bensoussan's invisible translator is presented as pathetic, passive and pitiful: ‘The translator suffers, submits, subjugates . . . dispossessed of his own word. [Taking on] the word of the other, the author’.Footnote ³⁸ But Coillard saw this ‘self-annihilation’ as a profoundly positive goal. Indeed, he asserted, ‘the mission must not . . . be a personal question, the mission of M. Coillard: that would be its ruin’,Footnote ³⁹ and when discussing the controversial Anglican biblical scholar and bishop, John Colenso, Coillard declared: ‘it is this gospel and not the preacher which is the power of God’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Mission and the translation occurring through it, according to Coillard, ought to involve self-effacement, not self-promotion. The translator-preacher is an invisible, anonymous mouthpiece, because it is the message and the text itself which have authority. Just as Gayatri Spivak claims that in translation ‘the translator must surrender to the text’,Footnote ⁴¹ Coillard surrendered himself to the work and to the visibility of the ‘text’, the message of his mission. Following the model of Christ's own sacrifice, self-denial was therefore voluntarily and willingly undertaken.

Thus, although Coillard pursued visibility in Europe and Africa, he also desired a translation in which the translator was invisible, humble and self-sacrificial for the sake of the text. He advocated both visibility and invisibility for the missionary, a present absence. He was the example, the charisma, the visible persona. And yet he was also a preacher in the Calvinist sense of being the ‘mouthpiece of God’,Footnote ⁴² a passive, invisible instrument of the message of salvation. This historical case study thus brings to the visibility-invisibility binary a third, present-but-absent, visible-but-invisible, spectral way.

Secondly, in contrast to the singular figure of the translator that permeates Translation Studies, Coillard's process of translation is located within a context of collaboration. With a few exceptions – such as Christiane Nord's assertion that translation is an ‘interpersonal’ processFootnote ⁴³ and discussions of the ‘fansubbing’ genreFootnote ⁴⁴ – ‘the translator’ is often discussed as an isolated being who undertakes the work of translation utterly alone. Even as Venuti writes against the ‘Translator's invisibility’, he renders the multitude invisible, obscuring any collaboration in his singular representation of the translator. In Mission Studies too, Derek Peterson writes: ‘Translation is most often conceived as a solitary activity, carried off by scholars working in private’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Admittedly, this is often for ‘convenience’ of argument,Footnote ⁴⁶ as in this present article, but this discourse, if left unchallenged, obscures the truth of the collaboration going on in much translation practice.Footnote ⁴⁷

In a similar way, Coillard is frequently represented in secular and religious contexts as a singular hero and pioneer. Of the twenty-six biographies of Coillard that I have found, only two mention his wife or other missionaries in the title.Footnote ⁴⁸ And yet Coillard's work was entirely collaborative. In the journal of the Marseilles Geographical Society, the account of Coillard's journey north into Africa includes many contributors: ‘M. Coillard is accompanied by . . . Mme Coillard, . . . Mlle Coillard, missionary M. Jeanmairet, two indigenous missionary aides and their families, MM. Waddell and Middleton, . . . two indigenous youths . . . They are therefore quite a little colony . . . M. Coillard and his collaborators’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Here, and throughout his work, Coillard is seen to work with his wife, with his niece, with other European missionaries, with indigenous missionaries, and also with supporters and the mission society ‘back home’. Each figure warrants much more attention, but I shall briefly consider Christina Coillard and the indigenous missionaries.

Christina Coillard, as well as undertaking her own mission work, was a vital collaborator whose presence enabled Coillard to fulfil his role. In one biography we read that when Coillard arrived in Basutoland as a bachelor, ‘many . . . refused to regard him as sufficiently mature to teach until he had a beard and a wife. The beard he was able to produce with reasonable promptness, but for the wife, in these first years, he could only hope.’Footnote ⁵⁰ The Basuto people did not trust Coillard without a wife, as he was still assumed to be dependent on his mother; he was a figure without authority. When Coillard secured a ‘yes’ from Christina Mackintosh after his second proposal to her, he wrote: ‘I cannot believe my own happiness . . . Molapo, now he knows I am going to be married, considers me a man, acquaints me with his affairs, and asks my advice!’Footnote ⁵¹ Christina's acceptance, and later her presence, granted François personal happiness, but also authenticated and validated his work, facilitating both his textual translation work and the translation of his self among the people.

Christina's domestic tasks, too, can be seen as enabling the mission: ‘to keep her husband and herself alive and well took up much of Christina's time’.Footnote ⁵² Her domestic work enabled the mission work of her husband, precisely because she kept him alive; she provided physical sustenance for him to function. Indeed, her attention to domestic details supported the whole missionary team: ‘Mme Coillard was the house-mother to the whole party. She always took care to have a good stock of bottles filled with cold tea, so that the axe-men and team-drivers should quench their thirst, and continue their dry work undistressed.’Footnote ⁵³ Thus Christina, as well as performing her own missionary tasks (teaching in the school, taking sewing classes, nursing the sick, and acting as dressmaker to Queen Mokwae and her ladies in Barotseland, ‘looking for opportunities of speaking to them of Christ’), enabled the mission by validating the presence of the male missionary and by sustaining the physical wellbeing of the mission team as a whole.Footnote ⁵⁴

Secondly, Coillard worked with indigenous missionaries. They were builders and teachers, active in the mission's construction and its daily life.Footnote ⁵⁵ They conducted ‘translation proper’ with Coillard: Nathanael Makotoko helped Coillard translate hymns and other religious material.Footnote ⁵⁶ They were collaborators as they facilitated dialogue and understanding, helping with the linguistic needs of the mission.Footnote ⁵⁷ But more than this, the indigenous missionaries were partners in the missionary work of the Europeans. The failed mission to the Banyai people and the successful mission to Barotseland were both initiated by a group of Basuto Christians led by ‘a very intelligent catechist’,Footnote ⁵⁸ Asser Sehahabane, who had travelled to Mashonaland in 1875 to see if a mission would be possible. The indigenous missionaries were key partners. Indeed, referring to Aaron Mayoro, another of the Basuto evangelists from these two missions, Adrian Hastings writes: ‘for ordinary Africans, encountering Christianity whether at Seleka or at Sefula, it was the Aarons not the Coillards of the Church that they encountered’.Footnote ⁵⁹ These indigenous figures, often portrayed in past and present mission literature as passive recipients of colonial Christianity,Footnote ⁶⁰ were in reality significant agents of the metaphorical and formal translation of the Christian message, fellow-workers with Coillard.

In Coillard's case, this collaboration was not without its conflicts. After travelling back to Basutoland, two SMEvP Basuto evangelists, Willie Mokalapa and Jacob, joined the Ethiopian church movement, a separatist movement with African leadership.Footnote ⁶¹ On their return to Barotseland they asked the ruler, Lewanika, for permission to establish a mission of their own, where English and practical skills would be taught.Footnote ⁶² Although Coillard was sad that his own disciples had separated from him, he was less concerned about the Ethiopian mission itself. ‘Although these Ethiopians have established themselves . . . with hostility, they are Christians and competent men. They preach Christ in a spirit of antagonism, but they preach Christ’.Footnote ⁶³ Coillard recognized that the opposition was to the European mission, not to mission in general or to the gospel being preached; his anxiety was that the Ethiopian mission would compete with the SMEvP mission, and not collaborate. He wrote that if the Ethiopian mission were located anywhere else, ‘it would have been easy for us to support them’,Footnote ⁶⁴ and ‘I would rejoice with all my heart because . . . they are working towards the realisation of a grand plan’.Footnote ⁶⁵ He was concerned that ‘they are coming to the very capital . . . to replace us’,Footnote ⁶⁶ and that he might have to ‘fight with one of our children in the faith who has turned against us’.Footnote ⁶⁷ In contrast to Coillard's desire that ‘we could work in harmony and pray for each other’,Footnote ⁶⁸ it appeared that there would be dissonance. However, even where there was division, and difference regarding how the gospel should be translated, Coillard worked to collaborate with, and not to compete against, these potential rival translators.

The singular missionary is therefore mythical. A missionary did not work alone; we have seen that the missionary's wife and the indigenous evangelists were significant collaborators. Furthermore, Coillard collaborated with other missionaries too, ‘see[ing] how diverse nationalities and different denominations understand the work of the missions, and . . . compar[ing] the results of their systems’,Footnote ⁶⁹ and he worked with the mission society in Europe, unable to do much without the approval of the SMEvP committee,Footnote ⁷⁰ and relying on their support and publications for his own livelihood.Footnote ⁷¹ Similarly, in translation, the translator is not isolated from the work of other translators. Peterson has claimed that ‘[n]o author writes in a vacuum’, and I would argue that no translator translates in a vacuum.Footnote ⁷² Although often represented in theoretical works as working alone, in practice a translator might consult other translations, other texts, experts in a field, local language-speakers, dictionaries and databases, and works alongside publishers, proof-readers and editors. The translator is not alone in the translation process. Coillard's continual use of a team exposes the utterly collaborative nature of translation, offering a useful contrast to the singular translator assumed by much of Translation Studies.

In conclusion, the work of François Coillard is useful in the re-evaluation of accepted norms of Translation Studies: those that assume the translator's visibility or invisibility, and those that assume the singularity of the translator. Where translation theory insists on a visibility-invisibility binary, Coillard is both visible and invisible, an example and a mouthpiece. Where translation theory represents the isolation of the translator, Coillard shows us that his missionary-translation work is an entirely collaborative process. The translation undertaken by historical translators – such as this missionary – not only reveals attitudes to translation in their contemporary moment, but can also impact translation theory and practice today.