Just after writing my last post I came across this ‘Translator’s note’ at the beginning of a 1954 edition of ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’ by St François de Sales. Fr Michael Day, an Oratorian, writes:

The present translation into simple, straightforward, contemporary English is an attempt to make this work of living devotion more widely accessible. A translation into seventeenth-century English, or in an archaic style, would give it an air of unreality; too literal a translation would be no true translation and do no service to the original: on the other hand a certain freedom in translation might be mistaken for a paraphrase. The translator is concerned primarily with the thought of the original writer and with the problem of expressing that thought as clearly as possible; not only the words and phrases, but the very thought itself must be expressed in valid terminology; he is dealing with words as signs, and must use valid signs, signs which are valid here and now; he must abandon signs which were once valid but are so no longer. In the following work every effort has been made to use such valid terminology in a faithful and clear translation of an original which is indeed “a treasure of devotion”.