The Art of Translation

[nnyhav]

Translation is widely considered to be an inferior art: its product is subordinate to the original, in a way reminiscent of the ancient philosophical distinction between the written and the spoken word. Exact replication is an unachievable goal, as refraction into a different linguistic and cultural matrix distorts the nuances and allusions upon which literary character depends. Faithful reproduction is perforce an interpretation, trying to capture what's essential in the original (a matter of opinion) and to elaborate upon it in a changed context while preserving what of the original context can be transferred: translation is a derivative, highly constrained craft.

And the translator is the most self-effacing of craftsmen. The translator (unlike the critic or scholar) tries to be a version of the author, a stand-in drawing attention away from himself. Commercial and academic rewards are scant. Still, many authors (particularly poets: odd, or perhaps not, in that poetry is the most difficult to translate) devote time and effort to translating the work of others.

And so the reading of translations is similarly looked upon as debased. Not that the acquisition of non-native language is seen as much better: it remains blind to unacknowledged natural linguistic resources and to a cultural framework investing much of the meaning. For many of us, translation is as much a window on this framework as on the work itself.

An analogy I find apt is to musical transcription. It is rare for the adapter to be more recognized (though it happens: Ravel is more commonly identified with "Pictures at an Exhibition" than Mussorgsky). I think of English as the pianoforte of languages, adaptable to a broad range of orchestration. But just try to render, say, Indian melody and harmony with it. Anyway, in the same way that appreciating music is at some basic level about anticipating the notes that are to follow, I view literary reading as being in large part an exercise in reconstructing meaning in expression. Translation makes this more problematic. But also more interesting.

[Eric]

I agree with some of what is said here, but I wonder about the first sentence: "Translation is widely considered to be an inferior art..." and later on "And so the reading of translations is similarly looked upon as debased."

My reaction is: sez who? This is a rather Anglocentric view, because the translations of literary works are far less common in the English-speaking world than in the rest of Europe. The sheer normality of literary translations in most of the rest of Europe means that there isn't a dark corner in bookshops devoted to translations. They are usually mixed in with the rest of novels and poetry. One local bookshop here in the Netherlands does have separate display tables, but the books are not fetishised as exotic, if they happen to have started life in another language than Dutch. And there are two display tables for Dutch (i.e. local, untranslated) books and two for translations. No serious apartheid. Most other bookshops I've been to over here mix them all up.

One thing that many translations do require is an introduction and some notes at the back (or footnotes). We do this with 19th century English novels by, say, Dickens, because we Britons are as remote from our own 19th century, as we are from the geography, history and culture of our surrounding countries, anno 2008. The average British reader needs some help to understand all the nuances of a book set in 21st century France or Scandinavia, just as he or she will need a little help to read "Bleak House". Yet British publishers are often wary of introductions, as they think that readers want to get straight at the meat of the book.

I often use the analogy of acting, rather than musical transcription. And there the actor is sometimes as famous, if not more, than the playwright. Each translation becomes an enactment the original text. But the musical transcription analogy is a good one. Especially regarding the self-effacement. Whatever the analogy, the idea of a reconstruction meaning in expression is a good one.

English may be a pianoforte, but it's just the Bechstein or Steinway we have at present, in that it's the most widespread language. I rather like music for the cello, woodwind and other instruments, actually.

My hope, as a literary translator myself, is that translations become as normal in Britain as they are in, say, Germany, Norway, Portugal or Poland. I believe that the actual activity of translation is a craft, secondary to the original. But the translator also has to think very carefully about what he can understand and see in the original work, and make sure that he gets it across, by whatever means, to his readers. Because the readers of the language into which a work is translated are the audience of the translator's efforts, as much as of the original work.

Finally, in many other European countries some of the key authors have translated a book or two themselves, prose as well as poetry. It would be fruitful if more British authors (or publishers and reviewers!) learnt one language well and did the same. They would then get better insights into the whole process and mentality involved in translation. One major 19th century English novelist did translate theological texts. Mary Ann Evans went on to become rather famous for her novels. But for the most, British and American novelists and poets do not seem to do much translation.

[nnyhav]

Eric, thanks for elaborating on my Anglocentric (and monoglottal) perspective; I don't think we're too far apart, though, despite my handicap. Fortunately, the English language does not yet dominate literary Europe to the extent it does, say, in global business (and may it remain so); but it is also the primary conduit by which European culture is made available to the Anglosphere, and that the cultural transmission is an essential part of the picture. My argument is that translation is more than craft, more than a performing art (I see you linked to Context 21, wherein it's musical performance that's the analogy),and underappreciated in Angled circles. But also in academic circles, where the discipline of close reading must prefer the source text to its refraction, requiring a mastery of nuance not often available to the non-native speaker. As an attentive reader, it is this aspect that troubles me most.

[Eric]

Any translation is, by its very nature, subsidiary to the work of someone else. Whatever analogy is used, you can't get round the fact that the translator is doing something with words that have been put into groups by someone else. But while in the musical world performers and actors are praised, translators are ignored.

I think it is important not to get too intellectual about literary translation in a country where there are almost more books written on translation than there are translations of works of contemporary literature.

Knowing no foreign languages at all to, say, upper intermediate level is indeed a handicap. What people should do is learn one foreign language properly. This one language will provide far more insights into what language means for personal identity, social and business dealings, and for the national literature, than all those books written about languages. Brits love linguistics, where people who don't read, listen to, speak, or write any foreign language at all go into orgasms about similarities and differences of declensions and conjugations and adverbials, and... It's the difference between a flower garden and a collection of dried flowers in a glass case.

If every student of linguistics at university were required to have an upper intermediate knowledge of at least one foreign language, far more insightful things would be said about languages by linguists. Linguistics, without the knowledge of a living language, is a cop-out, an intellectual pursuit for dabblers who try to look educated without actually having to put any effort into the real thing.

I note the word 'dabblers' and pass comment on the rest of the sentence. It would seem I have touched a sore point.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Eric

Brits love linguistics, where people who don't read, listen to, speak, or write any foreign language at all go into orgasms about similarities and differences of declensions and conjugations and adverbials, and... It's the difference between a flower garden and a collection of dried flowers in a glass case.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but that sure isn't any linguistics I studied at the University. I studied Chomsky's x-bar theory, the Sapir-Whorff hypothesis, the historical development of languages, etc. What you're complaining about are those entertaining articles in magazines about language curiosities. That's not linguistics.

Originally Posted by Eric

If every student of linguistics at university were required to have an upper intermediate knowledge of at least one foreign language, far more insightful things would be said about languages by linguists.

I wouldn't know how many languages Chomsky knows, but he proposed a theory that says humans have an innate linguistic organ, which has affected every area of research. Surely that's insightful. Also don't make the mistake of thinking translation has a lot to do with linguistics, because it doesn't.

[nnyhav]

Not to put words in anybody's mouth, but I suspect linguistics was meant in a narrower sense, a philological subset, maybe etymology.

Anyway, there are plenty of native speakers who don't understand the matrix of their own language, much less the structure beneath. I have little Latin and less German, but both serve to illuminate the mongrelity of English, accreting steadily after the Norman-AngloSaxon hybridisation (which may explain the British bent for etymology), both of which were something of catch-alls anyway. So, if I'm stuck with one language, at least it's a gallimaufry. Or a smorgasbord.

There's no question that competency in multiple languages aids linguistic analysis. But to argue that it's a requirement is akin to claiming that atheists cannot properly contest the existence of God without the equivalent of a doctorate in theology (presumably comparative at that). Michael Wood put it in a nutshell in the last LRB: "[A]ll translations split their relationship in interesting ways. If we don't know the language in question, we don't know what we're talking about; and if we do know the language, the translation is not mainly meant for us. The consumer can't judge, and the linguist is not a consumer." (Terry Eagleton signed off on a rambling piece on anonymity in the same issue: translation doesn't come into it though.) Besides, translation is meant to make aspects of an unfamiliar matrix accessible to outsiders. Since there's so much else we're all inadequate in, for me a second language isn't the priority that other areas of study are.

Picked up off Crowley's blog:
"If you had no chance to study when young, then certainly you should still do so when when you are grown up -- but the things you studied as a child are as the light of the rising sun; the studies in your maturity, a candle."
-- Emperor Kang H'si

[nnyhav]

From wood_s_lot, 10Jun:

Friendship
Maurice Blanchot
translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg
download here [pdf, 42M]

Translating

The translator is a writer of singular originality, precisely where he seems to claim none. He is the secret master of the difference of languages, not in order to abolish the difference but in order to use it to awaken in his own language, through the violent or subtle changes he brings to it, a presence of what is different, originally, in the original. It is not a question here of resemblance, Benjamin rightly says: if one wants the translated work to resemble the work to be translated, there is no possible literary translation. It is much more a question of an identity on the basis of an alterity (....)

Yes, the translator is a strange man, a nostalgic man, who feels, as lacking in his own language, all of what the original work (that he cannot, moreover, fully attain, for he is not at home in it; he is the eternal guest who does not inhabit it) promises him in present affirmations.

[nnyhav]

Traduttore/traditore: Estelle Gilson's nut graf: "... while awards and grants help subsidize worthwhile translation efforts, they do not guarantee publication. Translators seeking publication of an unknown author must, in their own time and at their own expense, undertake the tedious, costly, and frustrating task of submitting their work to publishers. Letters go unanswered. Manuscripts are held for months, even years, and may be lost. 'Translators, not publishers,' says Esther Allen, director of the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia and herself a noted translator, 'are the ones who keep on pushing until a project finally comes out in English.' How long can that take? For my first published translation of a Massimo Bontempelli novel, I can attest to 20 years."

[Eric]

Dabbler, #5: Hard luck. You chose the pseudonym, not me. I've dabbled in several languages, but have also learnt a few properly.

Heteronym, #6: You show perfectly what I'm talking about. How the hell do Sapir-Whorf and Chomsky help you learn a real language, spoken by real people, so that you can read literature and the newspapers? Linguistics in Britain is a cosy intellectual parlour game for people who know no languages, but rather fancy themselves sounding off about dry-as-dust theories.

Nnyhav, #7: I mean most of linguistics. Etymology is useful, when learning a new language, related to one you already know. Grammar, something sorely neglected in schools nowadays, is handy. If, like me, you are motivated to read things in foreign languages, you don't want the endless intellectual baggage of language theory, where the terms change every decade. You want a primer, a dictionary and the odd native-speaker to consult.

Nnyhav, #8, 9: Don't people come up with a load of claptrap? They want to be praised for wit and elegance, but have probably never translated a page in their life, let alone a book. Esther Allen talks sense, because she is directly involved in real-life translation, being, for instance, on the board of the Open Letter press, at Rochester University, New York State and is connected to American PEN.

I know only too well that you have to keep pushing endlessly, to the point of unpopularity and being written off as a professional querulent, to actually get people to notice the books you want to translate.

[Eric]

Further thoughts on the art of translation:

First, two terms: source language = the language out of which you are translating; target language = the language into which you are translating (usually your mother-tongue).

It may seem a truism or platitude, but the better you have an all-round knowledge of a language, the better a translator you will make. Oh, and, of course, the target language is vital. You can always ask a native-speaker if you don't understand the original. But if you can't reproduce what you want accurately in the target language, i.e. your own, you're in shtuk.

The geographical, cultural, historical and political background of any language is important. The Russian language has overtones and undertones involving Communism, as Portuguese will have echoes of Salazar, German of the Nazis and the GDR. Language becomes warped by politics, and the translator must know what is what. Whether a nation is seafaring or landlocked, has mountains or plains, all adds to the image you form in your mind when you translate. A simple example is the title of a novel by Dutchman Cees Nooteboom: In the Dutch Mountains. Unless you know that the Netherlands is as flat as a die, the irony of the title is lost on the reader.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

Further thoughts on the art of translation:

First, two terms: source language = the language out of which you are translating; target language = the language into which you are translating (usually your mother-tongue).

It may seem a truism or platitude, but the better you have an all-round knowledge of a language, the better a translator you will make. Oh, and, of course, the target language is vital. You can always ask a native-speaker if you don't understand the original. But if you can't reproduce what you want accurately in the target language, i.e. your own, you're in shtuk.

The geographical, cultural, historical and political background of any language is important. The Russian language has overtones and undertones involving Communism, as Portuguese will have echoes of Salazar, German of the Nazis and the GDR. Language becomes warped by politics, and the translator must know what is what. Whether a nation is seafaring or landlocked, has mountains or plains, all adds to the image you form in your mind when you translate. A simple example is the title of a novel by Dutchman Cees Nooteboom: In the Dutch Mountains. Unless you know that the Netherlands is as flat as a die, the irony of the title is lost on the reader.

I agree. I also say that translation, while an art, is a crutch. I have never read a translation to/from two languages I know well without cringing. With poetry I have never read even a decent translation. Prizewinning or no. Ralph Dutli's Mandelstam translation, which won the Stuttgarter Übersetzungspreis, is awful.

I posted an old (bad) paper on translation here.

Of course, although I tend to throw that phrase around, translation is not impossible. It all depends on what you want to count as successful translation. And a good translator can convey so much of the original that I am, often, surprised, talking to readers of translations about books which I read in the original.

[nnyhav]

All necessary prerequisites, but literary competency is also needed. That is, beyond style and voice (which may themselves have to be translated into the target language/culture), maintaining the ability to support several readings where such openness to interpretation is present in the source, whether at different levels of the narrative, or as embedded ambiguities intrinsic to the story or its telling (e.g., hingeing on how an early passage is parsed, with the story seemingly developing in one direction but then resolving into a consistent alternate interpretation). It's at this level that translation rises above mere craft.

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

It all depends on what you want to count as successful translation.

See opening post. Exactness cannot be achieved between differing source and target matrices. (Also earlier, I compared it to musical transcription for different instruments. By a strictly rigorous standard, one would have to toss out, say, Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations since it's not performed on original instrumentation.)

Poetry is an acid test, to the extent that the poet is reinventing language. Some seem untranslatable (especially Russians), others more amenable to it (e.g. Pessoa, but his English was native, whether or not that's relevant, I dunno). So the translation is a reinvention of a reinvention, more markedly different from the source. Is it still poetry? More likely, if the translator is a poet.

[Mirabell]

More likely, if the translator is a poet.

Tru dat.
Found a Bly translation of Rilke recently that was really surprising in its achievement.

W/ poetry there's the old conflict, outlined in essays like benjamin's on his translations of Baudelaire (abysmal translations, IMO), between form and content. You canNOT try to be as accurate as possible in both, but both are important. I write poetry in german and english and sometimes translate my own poetry from one to the other language, and it's always a different poem afterwards.

and my mistrust of translations is responsible for my comparative lack of reading in international literatures, esp. poetry.

[Eric]

I thought I'd just reproduce here what I said about translating Rilke on another thread, as it touches upon the art of translation.

It demonstrates, I hope, that it is important to translate poetry directly from the original only. While most non-experimental prose can easily be translated via another language, rather than directly from the original, poetry involves so much in concentrated form:

The big problem when you translate or re-interpret a poem from another translation, without looking very closely at the original, is that the image can shift so far from what the author was trying to say that it is no longer the same poem, merely a kind of spin-off.

With a novel, the translator hasn't got the time to polish endlessly, but with a ten- or fifteen-line poem, you can still play around with the words for a long time, put your translation in a drawer and pull it out a month later, so that you see your own translation with new eyes.

Poetry is much more difficult to translate than prose, especially when rhyme, alliteration and a strong rhythm are much in evidence. Some languages have the word stress mostly on the first syllable, some on the penult. Translating between such languages is tricky.

The problem is that poetry is short, which means that many people are seduced by the brevity, and have a go at translating. There is a classic Goethe poem that supposedly defies translation, and it has become a bit a of a fetish to try to translate successfully: Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh... and so on.

But I have to say that translation isn't as mystical as the thoughts of religious mystics. It is a question of first being absolutely sure what you think the poet is saying, then mucking around with the words endlessly until you get as close to that in your own language, in our case, English.

When I translate a rhymed poem, I first make the most wooden, literal, unrhymed translation to make sure I understand the original.

*

For instance, in Rilke's Panther poem, you have to know all the multiple meanings and ambiguities of the word Vorübergehn in the first line. If you are already translating this from someone else's interpretation, you are not necessarily picking up what Rilke said, merely the interpretation of your intermediary.

In the second stanza, you have the word weiche which describes the panther's gait. That word can mean smooth, pliable, tender, yielding and a few other things. It even has the echo of the noun Weiche which means flank, side or groin. You have to be aware of this whole field of connotations before starting out on a translation.

In the third stanza, the poet definitely says that the curtains over the eyes lift silently (lautlos). That silence is, for me, important. "Slowly" may imply silence, but is not as explicit.

And in the original the image dissolves or evaporates once it has entered the heart.

When you add all those little things up, there is a lot to think about, if you want to get close to what Rilke meant and used as images. Translating poetry, where there is no plot or story, but pictures in the mind, requires a different approach to the translation of a 300-page novel.

[Mirabell]

it is important to translate poetry directly from the original only.

as some of my comments may have demonstrated: I couldn't agree with you more.

[nnyhav]

Overliteralness destroys the poetry, though. See for example Nabokov's Eugene Onegin: as a tract on translation, an analysis of Pushkin's use of the Russian language, brilliant; but wholly denatured and, um, artless. Once a certain degree of literalness is achieved, the literary can kick in without constant reference back to the source text. So in my case "I couldn't agree with you more" has rather a different connotation, as in insurmountable distance.

The issue of superiority of the source text has as one touchstone its closeness to the author's intent, the lack of refraction through or into another medium. Somewhat reminiscent of the Platonic/Rousseauan distinction between speech and writing. But that prism sometimes works to the author's advantage; consider Baudelaire's Poe.

Back to prose: Wyatt Mason on Adam Thirlwell's The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes (FSG, 2008).

[Mirabell]

So in my case "I couldn't agree with you more" has rather a different connotation, as in insurmountable distance.

I took eric to refer to second hand translation
for example tranlating kadare into english via french
it's a different issue
no?

[nnyhav]

Another thought, tangential to the speech/writing dichotomy: the assertion that having the language as native is irreplaceable is undermined by the examples of the foremost stylists in English literature over the past century: Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Aleksander Hemon (cf James Wood on the latter). Or in Portuguese, there's Fernando Pessoa.