This document summarizes a translation project of a 14th century Spanish medical text by Arnau de Vilanova called Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum. The project involved translating the first section titled "Cosas que preservan" from a 1606 Spanish translation by Jeronimo de Mondragón into English. Producing the English translation presented challenges of maintaining the original message while making it accessible to modern readers. Non-linguistic factors influencing both the original Latin text and Spanish translation were considered in analyzing the text and translation decisions.

1. Translating Mondragón’s Spanish Translation of Arnau
de Vilanova’s Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum
into English
Final Translation Project for Master of Art’s Candidacy
Toyin Ola
Wake Forest University
Spring 2014
PROJECT OBJECTIVE
This project consisted of translating the first section, entitled Cosas que preservan, of the
Spanish translation of Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum into English. Regimen sanitatis
ad regem Aragonum, written in Latin in 14th century Spain by court physician, medical
educator, and translator Arnau de Vilanova, has been widely translated into Hebrew and
several Romance languages; however, no published English translations are known to exist.
An annotated version of Jeronimo de Mondragón’s 1606 Spanish translation (Title: El
maravilloso regimiento y orden de vivir) was used as the source text for this project due to
the fact that it is readily available. Producing an English translation presented a number of
challenges, including how to maintain the integrity, or essential message, of a text from the
humoral medical tradition—further complicated by Vilanova’s unique position as a
translator, medical educator, theologian, and private physician to kings—while making the
syntax more accessible for modern readers who have a background in the history of
medieval medicine. Since the Spanish translation is necessarily connected to the original
Latin text, the non-linguistic factors influencing the production of both texts were
considered in the analysis of the text and, consequently, in making translation decisions.
Hereafter, the original text is referred to as the Latin source text (ST) and Mondragón’s
translation is referred to as the Spanish ST [See Appendix C]. The English translation [See
Appendix B] produced at the conclusion of this project is referred to as the English target
text (TT).