News from Italy (Via France) : intermediary languages and news translation in early modern England

Although it is widely understood that early modern news pamphlets were a genre of print that travelled easily and were often translated and then retranslated into further languages, it is not always clear how that process happened. This article addresses two main concerns. Firstly, it examines the process of translating news from Italian to English via French. It considers when and why translation through one or more languages was made visible to potential readers, and when it was deliberately obscured. Secondly, it considers the materiality of news publications, and how that was affected by translation – understanding translation as much as a commercial, practical and material process as a linguistic and cultural one. Ultimately, it places news pamphlet translation and retranslation in the broader context of the communities living in linguistically diverse cities like London and Paris.