verb. (old).—To remanufacture selected parts of old boots and shoes. Also (tailors’) to turn (or cut down) a coat or other garment. Whence TRANSLATOR = (1) a cobbler; (2) in pl. = re-made boots and shoes; and (3) a renovating tailor (B. E. and GROSE).
1694. MOTTEUX, Rabelais, ‘The Pantagruelian Prognostication’ (1900), V. 214. Shoemakers and TRANSLATORS, tanners, bricklayers.
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. TRANSLATOR, Sellers of old Shoes and Boots, between Shoe-makers and Coblers.
d. 1704. T. BROWN, Works, iii. 73. The cobbler is affronted, if you don’t call him Mr. TRANSLATOR.
1757. SEWELL, Dictionary, s.v. TRANSLATOR, Schoenlappen.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, II. 40. Great quantities of second-hand boots and shoes are sent to Ireland to be ‘TRANSLATED’ there…. ‘TRANSLATION, as I understand it (said my informant), is this—to take a worn, old pair of shoes or boots, and by repairing them make them appear as if left off with hardly any wear—as if they were only soiled.’ Ibid., II. 110. Among these things are blankets … ‘TRANSLATED’ boots, mended trowsers. Ibid., I. 51. To wear a pair of second-hand ones [boots], or ‘TRANSLATORS’ (as they are called), is felt as a bitter degradation by them all.
1864. London Times, 2 Nov. The ‘clobberer,’ the ‘reviver,’ and the ‘TRANSLATOR’ lay hands upon them … to patch, to sew up and to restore, as far as possible, the garments to their pristine appearance.
1865. Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, 15 April, 181, Article, ‘Old Clo’.’ They are now past ‘clobbering,’ ‘reviving,’ or ‘TRANSLATING’; they are, in fact, at the lowest point of Fortune’s wheel, but the next turn puts them in its highest point again.
1883. GREENWOOD, Tag, Rag, & Co., ‘The Wood-chopper’s Wedding.’ I interviewed the kind-hearted old ‘TRANSLATOR’ of old boots into new ones, in his kitchen in Leather Lane.
c. 1889. The Sporting Times [A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant]. Baeker had to limp in his socks to the New Cut, and purchase a pair of TRANSLATED crab-shells to go home in.
