[In the following preface to his English translation of De Nugis Curialium, James argues that Map lacked proficiency in Latin and that, thus, his word choice is sometimes inaccurate and his sentences are cumber-some.]

Walter Map is a very difficult author to translate. My aim, in making the English version of his book, which is here offered to the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, has been to produce something which shall be quite faithful to the sense which I think the writer is trying to convey, and at the same time shall be readable, and not over-antique in flavour. With this in view I have discarded a good many old ways of speaking, particularly the use of the second person singular, so that I write "you" and "yours" for "thou" and "thine." And I have made it a rule to split up his long periods, and his accumulations of clauses introduced by participles, into shorter sentences governed by finite verbs. But these obvious expedients have not completely succeeded, even in my own opinion, let alone that of critics, in freeing my author from cumbrousness and obscurity. The fact is that Map himself not only held that the longer a Latin sentence was, the better it must be, but also did not always know very clearly the meaning of the words he used. It is often a Baboo Latin that he writes. He would take an imposing word, such as infruniitus, out of his glossary, and adorn his page with it, not caring greatly what meaning his reader might attach to it. Besides which, he sometimes assumes that a word means something which it certainly does not; as when he uses simultas (a quarrel) in the sense of "similitude," or fatalitas (which, I suppose, is "destiny" or "fatality") to mean connection with or descent from fairies.

He is also extremely allusive; he is constantly bringing in Biblical and classical turns of phrase; indeed, one of the startling and amusing things about his book is his extraordinary knack of perverting texts and giving them an entirely fresh meaning; as when he says of the Cistercians that they are hospitable to one another, but "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us!" In rendering such passages I have naturally used, wherever I could, the language of the Authorized Version or Prayer Book Psalter, so that the reader may be aware of the quotation; but, of course, there are places where the Latin Bible has a reading totally different from that of the English. I have to refer students to the margins of my edition of the Latin text for a full set of references to the Biblical passages.

Then again there are Map's puns and alliterations, some few of which I have found it possible (too often by doing violence to the English) to represent in the translation, but by no means all. The English reader loses little by the suppression of many of these tricks, which really tend to annoy rather than to amuse.

He will, perhaps, be more justly inclined to complain at finding some passages left in the original Latin. The truth is that I found them too odious to translate. There are but two or three which I have not touched; but I must record that in an episode of the long story of Sadius and Galo (Dist. III, ii.) I have omitted several clauses; and that there and elsewhere I have disguised certain phrases. Map was not a great offender, for his age; but his public were amused at things which really do not amuse us. Again I say that the English reader loses nothing noteworthy in what is left out.

It is no part of my purpose to write an introduction dealing with Map's life and times, or his place in literature. But I must, if only from motives of gratitude, notice one or two articles which, occasioned by the publication of my edition of the text in 1914, have shed light on the composition and the text of the De Nugis.

In the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (1917) appeared a remarkable paper by Dr. James Hinton on the plan and composition of the De Nugis. In it Dr. Hinton demonstrates that the book as we have it is a series of Fragments, written by Walter Map at different times, and put together after his death in a rather random fashion. Dr. Hinton's is a very illuminating piece of work. I had tried to divine some connection between the highly disparate pieces of the book: Dr. Hinton shows clearly that any such effort is vain. Map did not publish the De Nugis himself; he did not even finish it. Nor is he responsible for the division of it into "distinctions," nor for the chapter headings (which, indeed, are no more than marginal notes made by an early reader in the archetype of our MS. and are often misleading).…