Considering Foreignization

This semester my peers and I took to holding casual workshops of one another’s work between classes. As few people shared the language of the translator whose work we were looking at, the main drive in those meetings was to try and help the translator’s work sound more fluid, more readable, more like English. It seemed like the most natural way to go about things, both because it was the only help we could offer and because, well, an English translation should read as flawless English. That was the thought.

 

For me this all changed after reading some of Lawrence Venuti’s work on foreignizing and domesticating translations. In his book, The Translator’s Invisibility, Venuti talks about the state of translation and the translator’s role in the print culture, and what he has to say is not very encouraging for an aspiring translator. According to Venuti, and probably many people working in translation or translation theory, translators are overlooked. I would agree with this. In a translation of Hesse’s Steppenwolf I am currently reading, there is no biography of the translator, but there is one of the cover artist. That seems imbalanced to me, though the publisher found it reasonable. More shocking was Venuti’s comments on how translators often rewrite a text in an ethnocentric fashion, making it accessible to the new readers at the expense of its cultural heritage. This in turn erases the sense of a text as a translation and imagines it as a new, original text which makes the translator an invisible entity and elevates the original author and his or her work. This can also flatten a text, smoothing out its many potential idiosyncrasies, which is a complaint in regards to poetry which I have heard among my course mates.

 

Venuti calls for a translation that to some degree foreignizes a text. This means including some idiosyncrasies of the original (language) as well as some of the translator’s hand. By making sure a translation reads as a translation, with some of the strangeness of a foreign language and the translator’s influence, the translator will not be so invisible and the foreign culture will not be subject to the hegemony of the English language. Or so goes the idea.

 

This has all given me something to think about in relation to my dissertation project, which I intend to be a translation of German poetry. By no means do I intend to write a half German translation, one abound with foreign references and my own flights of fancy. But before reading Venuti the question of translation would have been ‘how can I make this sound like good (English-language) poetry?’ Now I think the question of how to translate is a more complicated one. The first question is still relevant, but in addition to that one I must also ask ‘what marks can I leave as a translator?’ and ‘what marks of the original German should I maintain?’ Translation has always seemed like a delicate balance, but this issue of domestication and foreignization has added more weights to be allocated to just the right spots.

 

 

Cole Konopka was born in 1988. He lived, studied, and worked in Germany in 2007 as a participant of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Vocational Program. After studying English and Anthropology at the University of Iowa, Cole began his studies in literary translation at the University of East Anglia. In addition to translation, Cole also enjoys writing original works and painting.

Translation and Resistance

Translation can be a wonderful means of resistance in all sorts of ways. One of the most recent and prominent forms of resistance through translation has resulted from the issue concerning feminist punk rock group ‘Pussy Riot’. Pussy Riot staged a provocative performance of their song ‘Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!’ in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and were venomously charged and imprisoned by the Russian government for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.

Many of their speeches and court hearings have been translated, raising their profile in the West and perhaps hopefully, with the whole world watching, ensuring a certain amount of their safety in Russia. The translation of Pussy Riot has meant that both the western and Russian governments’ actions have become more visible to the general public and thus arguably, more accountable. Recently, correspondence between the only member of Pussy Riot to remain in prison, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and the famous Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, was translated into English and featured in The Guardian. Interestingly Nadezhda states:

“Here in Russia I have a strong sense of the cynicism of so-called first-world countries towards poorer nations. In my humble opinion, "developed" countries display an exaggerated loyalty towards governments that oppress their citizens and violate their rights”.

Through translation, we have an opportunity to bring such views to the world stage, and potentially as a result to constrain our own government to take action. It is important that we continue to support these brave actions and to keep them in the spotlight. It is however necessary to try to understand why Pussy Riot has become so widely recognised and someone like Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who dedicated her life to human rights and because of her actions was assassinated in her own apartment, barely acknowledged.

In ‘The Invisibility of the Translator’ Venuti criticises the idea of Simpatico; the way in which a translator may empathise with an author s/he is translating in order to ‘improve’ the translation. Venuti posits that simpatico causes the work of literature to be centred on the ‘poetic I’, he states that: “Here it becomes clear that the translator’s feeling of simpatico is no more than a projection, that the object of the translator’s identification is ultimately himself, the “private associations” he inscribes in the foreign text in the hope of producing a similarly narcissistic experience in the English language reader.” In other words, Simpatico can lead us to impose a predominantly Anglo-American style of writing onto a foreign text and to recognize ourselves within it. Simpatico will therefore also lead us to choose to translate works of foreign literature that embody this particular style.

Perhaps, then, our overwhelming recognition of Pussy Riot stems from their mode; first of all the band name ‘Pussy Riot’ is not a translation, the name was originally in English and is therefore easily recognisable for an English-speaking audience. Secondly, as a feminist punk-rock group, Pussy Riot appeals to many young individualistic adults and teenagers in the West. We may conclude then, that through translation and the close analysis it requires, we can come to recognise how we relate to other cultures, and in turn we can learn to pay attention to narratives which do not necessarily have an initial impact on us, to recognise a plurality of outlooks and world-views, rather than ones which instantly appeal to our own.

 

Hannah Collins studied Russian and French at the University of Nottingham. She works as a freelance translator and is currently studying on the Literary Translation MA at the UEA. Her email address is Hannah.Collins@uea.ac.uk.

Fear of Theory

During the final year of my undergraduate degree I wrote a dissertation on translation. It grew from a need for more engagement with poetry in my course and a suspicion that long essays need enjoyment and interest behind them, as well the impetus of a deadline. Little did I know how far from my previous life this particular long essay would take me. I threw myself into a reading list provided by my supervisor, hoovering up whatever I could get my hands on.

 Sitting down to read, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had already translated some poetry by the French poet Pierre Alferi and it seemed to have gone well. However, what I found in books by Lawrence Venuti, Basil Hakim and Susan Bassnett, among others, was a new world opening up before me. Sometimes alarming, always exciting, this discipline of literary translation theory presented challenges I had never envisioned, much less been prepared to tackle.

Imagine this - you are standing over a chasm, toes gripping the surrounding cliff edges like a cartoon bird, desperate not to plummet into the darkness. In black clothes and holding a duffle bag in which the entire culture of a country is hidden, you creep towards a large building. A moment later you’re calmly shelling peas, separating the delicious from the inedible. These are strange metaphorical situations to find yourself (metaphorically) in. These images arose in my mind from the apprehension of how little I felt I really knew about other readers, other writers and the way others think, how essential this had suddenly become. I asked myself, what did this mean for the translation I had just done? What had I got myself into?

Translation theory and much historical thinking about translation makes liberal use of metaphor to explain the sometimes mysterious act of making one text into another one. It was the first thing which struck me about the discipline and the aspect that still interests me now, as a wiser, more experienced MA student. There are so many sites of activity in any one translation, so much happens! Anything which can bring the complications of language difference, cultural difference and historical changes in society into one neat package is very valuable. Metaphor does this.

But what about the similarities, what about the need to explore the literature of other languages from sheer curiosity, from respect? There are metaphors for that too, different from the figures I mentioned before, though no less important. My favourite comes from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Task of the Translator¹. Language, he says, shouts into the forest and waits to hear its own echo, transformed yet familiar. This is beautiful, and expresses the reason why the potential mistakes and dangers the previous metaphors entail are worth it in the end.

Here at the university, in the controlled environment of the seminar, I no longer feel the vertigo I once did when faced with the metaphors for translation. In fact, I have learned to look behind them to the many truths about the practical considerations of translating literature. Not only that, but I have learned to live with the risks of translating. I trust my languages and my instinct; I trust theory to keep my mind open. Can you think of a metaphor for that…?

¹ Benjamin, W. (2012) in L. Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader, London and New York: Routledge, p80

Anna Bryant is from County Meath, Ireland. She translates from French into English, and also occasionally from Irish. She is currently enjoying studying on the MA in Literary Translation course at the University of East Anglia and can be contacted at anna.bryant@uea.ac.uk

Sorry, What Was Your Name? Translation Theory and the Translation of Chinese Names to English.

Chinese names are problematic in English literature. They often have meanings that are easily identifyable to the Chinese reader, whereas this does not occur so much with English names. They can also be difficult to pronounce for those who are not familiar with pinyin. They then present an even larger issue for literary translation as they get repeated so much, and can be connected to other elements of narratives such as naming ceremonies or word plays. Looking at Cognitive stylistics on the MA in Literary Translation course at the UEA, has helped me see how the translation of names may work, in theory.

When aproaching the theory and practice of translating literature, one idea strikes me as particularily crucial to understanding what happens. This was put forward by Roman Jakobson, and it is the idea that 'languages differs essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.' This is a haunting idea in terms of translating languages. I work on translating Chinese literature into English, and this idea haunts the decisions which I must make about how to express exciting literary features of a Chinese text in English. Chinese does not have articles, gerunds, plural noun forms or tenses displayed through verb forms, but English does. Whilst a Chinese text may convey the meanings of such grammatical structures, it often doesn't need to, whereas in English the text must explicate these aspects. Most of the time the situation of the text, especially in prose texts,  gives an indication of what tense or article should be used. However, the translation of names presents another issue of what is explicated in the Chinese, but what is not obvious to the readers of English from the sound of the Chinese names.

《射雕英雄传》(She Diao Ying Xiong Zhuan -The Eagle Shooting Heroes/ The Legend of the Condor Heroes) Is a Kung Fu classic in Chinese literature. It is currently being translated online, and I recommend anyone take a look at it. It is an exciting novel about the interweaving and action-packed lives of kung fu masters in ancient China, and to me the online translation project of it is just as exciting. The issues of the translation of character names, though, is an interesting one in terms of Chinese-English translation. Even translating the Author is interesting; should I use the English 'Louis Cha' or pinyin 'Jin Yong'? The meaning of Chinese names is often a lot more obvious than it is in English names. Therefore linguistically, one must consider for the purpose of translation what 'must' the names say, and what 'may' the names say. Below is an example in which a key character is introduced in the novel;

这位是杨铁心杨兄弟。

Zhe wei shi Yang Tie Xin Yang xiong di.

This is Yang Tiexin, brother Yang.

The Chinese character's name is Yang Tie Xin, in Chinese, but will this do in English? The literal meaning of the name is 杨 (poplar) 铁 (Iron) 心 (heart). This meaning of these characters in this character's name is available clearly to the reader of the Chinese, so it can be argued that the names should be translated by meaning. One way of looking at this issue, and perhaps trying to solve the problem, is to consider the notions of foreignisation and domestication, as explored by Lawrence Venuti, and make a decision according to the principles of the translator. This is problematic as both translations of 'Yang Tiexin' and 'Poplar Ironheart' are perhaps so unusual as English language names, that they would be foreignising (calling attention to the foreign elements of the text within the target language). I believe, however, that the way to look at this problem, and the way which is perhaps more useful to allow communication between the two drastically different languages of Chinese and English, is to consider the cognitive effects of the style of the text, and in this instance the names.

The arguments about the cognitive effects of language on the reader, as explored by Ernst Gutt, suggests that when translating areas such as this, it is important to consider the processing cost of the target language, in this case the way that the names are written in English. Keeping the names with the pinyin would make the words clear as names, therefore the reader would not need to connect the words deeply to their understanding of their names in reference to English lexis, so this would involve a relatively low processing cost. However, if the character's name were to be translated as 'Poplar Ironheart', then the name would involve the reader in the process of associating the character with the elements and images related to the English language.So this would involve a relatively high processing cost.

Looking at such translation issues in this way allows the translator to think of what the processing cost will be to the reader of the target text; so that they can translate according to what they believe will be the processing cost of the target text in comparison to the processing cost of the source text. As the name in translation of 'Yang Tiexin' involves a relatively low processing cost, which it would to the Chinese reader as it would be taken as a name first before a series of connected meanings, and as the novel is wide spread in popular culture, so demanding a high processing cost over the reading of a name would be antagonist to the source text's popularity, it is perhaps the better choice of translation. Throughout this process the reader is then haunted with this idea; What is the name saying in Chinese, that I 'may' say in English, and what is it saying that I 'must' say? This idea is perhaps so haunting, at least to me, because maintaining the style, in cognitive terms, often means obscuring some of the interesting lexis from the target text. Translating often involves such an engagement with the source text that, as a translator, my instinct is  to celebrate its complex lexis, and even interesting functional language, and favouring one thing over another is often frustrating. However, by understanding more about these theories of translation, I can see that the translation of names, especially from Chinese to English, is no simple matter. And the pronounciation of Chinese names for non-reader or speakers of Chinese pinyin, is also not easy, but I shall leave it there. What was the man's name again...? Yang...?

Thomas Newell translates from Chinese into English, and is currently a studying for an MA in Literary Translation at the UEA as well as an interning for Arc Publications. Contact thomashenrynewell@gmail.com

Exploring New Frontiers

Before coming to UEA I was very closed minded when it came to translation. For me translating was just about reproducing what the source text said, but mainly focusing on meaning. The most important thing was to get the meaning, and if you had to leave something out, it had to be the stylistic features.

When I arrived here, I came across so many different theories of how to translate that it turned out to be a little overwhelming, but after a while, I managed to adapt and I started to explore each of the theories a little bit more. When I was studying my B.A in Translation, we talked mainly about out-dated theories and authors, but here in UEA is all about contemporary authors and theories; which makes it all more interesting. The most fascinating thing I found while going through all the new information I was receiving, was the notion of foreignization.

Foreignization is the strategy of retaining information from the source text, and involves deliberately breaking the conventions of the target language to preserve its meaning (Gile, Daniel. 2009). The thing that caught my eye when I read this definition of foreignization is the part when it says that foreignization involves deliberately breaking the conventions of the target language to preserve its meaning, but what if we break the conventions to the extreme? Normally when talking about making a text foreign, people think that you are tacking the reader to the writer, which is true, but what if we not only take the reader to the writer, but also to the writer’s culture?

When practising foreignization, translators limit themselves to just leave certain words in the source language because either they couldn't find a word in the target language that suited perfectly or because they wanted to give the text that feeling of exotic and new, but why not going a little bit further?

Sapir-Whorf stated that there is a connection between the grammatical categories of the language spoken by a person, and the way this person sees the world, and that is true, our language limits us to conceptualize the world in a certain way, but it is also true that by learning a new language, you also learn a new way to perceive the world, because you are not only receiving the linguistic knowledge, but also a part of this new culture; therefore I think it is also possible for translation to provide the reader of the target language, with extra knowledge of the culture in which the text was written, and we can do that by using foreignization.

When we translate we come across all kinds of difficulties, one of them being the translation of proverbs. Normally a translator will try to find the equivalent of the proverb in the target language, but what if we use foreignization and leave the proverb as it is? If we do so we will be providing the reader of the target language with culture of the source language. It will definitely be a challenge for the reader of the target language to understand the proverb of the source language, but with the context and a little extra analysis the reader will be capable of comprehending and learning about the culture in which the work was written.

Foreignization is a technique that can be use to help the readers of a target language learn some culture about the source language through the translation of proverbs, and it will also make the target text more challenging and interesting for the reader, not to mention that the translator will gain visibility.

Andrea González Garza translates from English to Latin American Spanish and she is currently doing a master degree in Literary Translation at UEA. You can contact her in Ahndiee@gmail.com

Where The Texts Come and Go

 If I'm honest, I had never read Walter Benjamin’s The Task of the Translator before coming to the UEA. Whilst I was an undergraduate student in Japan, I read several of Walter Benjamin’s essays such as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Critique of Violence.  During my undergraduate degree, I studied literature and creative writing, and, I think it would have been natural for a student of this subject to read a philosophical essay on translation such as The Task of the Translator; however, I didn’t. I don't know why.

After graduating from the university, I worked at an advertising firm as a copywriter. Also, I spent time translating the adverts and brochures of global companies from English to Japanese. I did this without translation theory but tried to keep the target text faithful to the source text, following requests from our clients, the guidelines of translation which the clients gave us and the advice given by my supervisors. The rules I followed could be ‘skopos’ for my translating, the ‘skopos’ depended on who the clients were. Although my background was literature, I enjoyed my responsibility for translating business material at the office. However, it was also true that I felt translating was a more or less rigid activity like those which machines do.

As a student of the MA in literary translation, I have been studying translation studies since September. For my course work, I read The Task of the translator, and I came across ‘pure language’, as termed by Benjamin. He said that the task of translator is ‘to release in his own language that pure language under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.’ Apart from his intention to describe what a translator should do, this quote inspired me to address one question – how a translator exists ontologically and phenomenologically. After reading the essay, I sometimes think about what exactly happens when ‘pure language’ is generated. I have to consider how the text will be modified (by the mind?) at the point where the texts come and go, as though they were water going through a filter. When I translate text from English into Japanese or from Japanese into English, I try to listen to the internal voice of my mind at the same time that I try to listen to an external voice – the voice of the source text. Presumably, a translator is one who can face the birth of a new text.

To be honest, I don't have the confidence to have completely construed the meaning of what Benjamin wanted to say. I may misunderstand Benjamin’s ‘pure language’; however, I can stay optimistic, because as one Japanese writer said, ‘understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings,’.  I have got new insights into translation which break through the thoughts which I used to have and I find myself enjoying translation more and more.

Hiromitsu Koiso translates from Japanese into English, and from English into Japanese. He is currently studying towards the MA in Literary Translation. His literary interests include world literature, exophony and translation as a creative form of text making. Contact: hirokoikoi@gmail.com

Words whirreds werdes

Did you have to pause to think about that title for a second or two? Did the second two words stand up, look you in the eye and demand to be noticed? If so, it’s because they were trying to get your attention. But we don’t always notice what words on a page are doing. Sometimes when we read, writes Margaret Freeman (2002), the physical words of the text ‘disappear’. It’s something we’ve probably all experienced as we greedily turn the pages of an engrossing book, the story’s universe forming itself somehow – mysteriously – in our mind. How does that happen? Where does it happen? Where do the words go? We certainly aren’t aware of every word on the page when we read quickly in this way, and yet the words and phrases we’re reading are all working, making us see and hear and feel, in ways that we sometimes don’t realise until we sit down with a metaphorical magnifying glass and have a close look at how the threads of the text are woven.

Of course, words don’t always affect us without us realising. There are some types of text in which the language makes itself a little more ‘opaque’, as Freeman puts it.  When we read poetry, words often insist on being heard. Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example, makes sure you can’t miss them. Try not listening to: “Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend/ His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score/ In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour/ And pelt music, till none’s to spill nor spend.” Punchlines do it too. Did you ever hear the one about the policeman who got called out to a nursery? A three-year old was resisting a rest. When language use is unexpected like this, it draws our attention to it; this is frequently the case with literary texts. But whatever it is we’re reading, if we’re about to translate it, we have to look closely at individual words and grammatical structures as we try to work out what the text ‘means’ (doing the MA in Literary Translation has taught me that ‘meaning’ is a slippery little word that doesn’t like to be pinned down, hence the inverted commas).

Translators have to look for some kind of meaning. They have no choice – they’ve got to produce a translation. To help them do so they might try to understand how the style of the text works on its readers to create the effects that it does – how it conjures up those mental images, those strong emotions, that (deceptive, of course) sense that there are real people speaking to us from a text, each in his or her own distinctive voice (Culpeper, 2002). An area of theory that might facilitate this is cognitive stylistics, one of the fields we have looked at as part of the Translation Theory module of the MALT. A cognitive stylistic approach to translation gives us a theoretical basis for examining how style affects us when we read, and in turn how a translator’s stylistic choices will affect his or her audience;  Jean Boase-Beier, discussing the application of cognitive theories to translation, points out that such theories might help make us more sensitive to ‘the interplay between the creativity and freedom of the translator and how this must always be affected by what the reader of the target text might do,  feel and decide’ (2006). Cognitive stylistics tries to explain how the words on the page interact with ‘the cognitive structures and processes that underlie the reception of language’ (Semino and Culpeper, 2002), linking the mysterious reading experience I described earlier to the language that generates it.

It’s exciting. It makes us think about thought. It explores why ambiguity in a text might make us uncomfortable, how we might perceive language sounds and patterns as ‘echoing’ what they represent in an iconic way, why metaphors might be central to the way we conceptualise and understand the world. Thinking about how these sorts of stylistic features work in the minds of readers of the source text, and trying to anticipate and recreate the effects of such features in the minds of readers of the translated text, has helped me as a theory and a tool in translation. I now try to analyse more carefully the techniques the source text is using and to what ends, which is useful for avoiding a ‘word-for-word’ approach to translation. In general, studying translation theory is making me more aware of the games words play – what’s with all the personification of words in this blog post, for instance? I’ll have to give it some thought. 

Romy Fursland translates from German and French into English and is currently studying for the MA in Literary Translation at UEA. She can be contacted at romy.fursland@googlemail.com.

Can We Find Equivalence in Difference? The Translator’s Paradox

When I started the MA in Literary Translation in September it was not the first brush I’d had with translation theory. I first came across translation when I was on my Year Abroad in Spain taking a class called ‘theory and practice of English translation’. We looked at linguistic theories such as those of Nida, Catford and Newmark. These ideas stemmed from a linguistic view of translation; that a text should be translated based on the concept of equivalence of form, meaning and style. We were mainly looking at the translation of advertisements, slogans, newspaper articles and tourist information. Most of the strategies we used in our translations considered whether the text had a source-language bias or a target-language bias. The former relies on such techniques as word-for-word translation and the latter on free translation. Equivalence played a big role in our translations, so for example translating a proverb with its TL equivalent and using adaptation, so if a text has a reference to cricket, perhaps in French that should be translated to the Tour de France. However, when I arrived at the department of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, I realised there was much more to translation than ‘equivalence’. We looked at the ethics behind this kind of translation, adapting cricket into the Tour de France for a French language target audience would be the worst kind of ‘domestication’ (in Venuti’s terms) because the source culture has been swallowed by the target culture. Furthermore, one has to ask if the target audience isn’t being somehow short-changed with this sort of equivalence. For example, in Spanish there is an idiom ‘mi media naranja’, whose equivalent in English would be ‘my better half’ (when referring to a partner) even though it literally translates as ‘my half orange’. The translator is faced with a dilemma: to translate literally would make no sense to an English reader, but if we use the equivalent, the image of an orange which the source-text reader gets is lost. Does the Target-text reader deserve to get a sense of the Spanish original? Of course, in translation, there is no right answer.

These questions plagued me when I came to do my first proper literary translations. The question that I couldn’t get out of my head was ‘do I want to create a translation which has domesticating or foreignizing effects?’ My natural instinct had always been to make my translation as intelligible as possible for the target audience, even if that meant being quite free with the source language or culture. However, at the beginning of the course I read Friedrich Schleiermacher’s 1813 essay ‘On the Different methods of Translating’. He advocated translations that brought the reader toward the author. Perhaps the source language and culture are, in fact, the most important things.

I decided to translate a passage from Entre Les Murs by Francois Begaudeau. It’s a book about life in a suburban Parisian school. Now, if you take Nida’s idea of dynamic equivalence or Schleiermacher’s idea of bringing the author to the reader and change the French education system into an English one so that English readers will understand and perhaps relocate the story to London, I can’t help feeling you would completely lose the point of the novel and also of translation. What is interesting about this book, and so what would encourage any translator to translate it, is its portrayal of pupils in a school in Paris, nowhere else.

However, when I translated my passage, I didn’t really have these ideas in mind. I took a scene where the teacher is pointing out, to the pupils, the kinds of mistakes they make in their writing. I decided to take each fault they made in French and change it to a roughly equivalent fault that children make in English. This works when the passage is out of context, but of course, following from what I’ve just said, why on earth would a French teacher in a French school start teaching his class about English vocabulary? For example, he points out that they constantly write en train de as two words: entrain de. In English this would be translated as ‘in the middle of’. I don’t think any child would attempt to write that in two words. So what do you, as the translator, do? In my equivalent translation I changed the mistake to ‘a lot’ which is often written as ‘alot’. But we’ve already discussed why this won’t work. We need to find a way to represent the French school and the French language in English so that the novel is not assimilated by the target language and culture, but at the same time it must be readable for the target audience. Lawrence Venuti writes extensively on strategies for ‘foreignizing’ a text and at the same time keeping the translator in sight. One can always indicate the translator’s presence using archaisms or unusual sentence structure, though this wouldn’t solve our French-language-in-English dilemma. My only solution is to keep the French children’s mistakes in French and use endnotes or footnotes to give English equivalents, even if they might take up more of the page than the actual text! I’m sure there are other solutions and the book has been translated if anyone is desperately interested in other possible solutions though I haven’t been able to get my hands on it yet so I can’t tell you here.

I have learnt that any translator carries a huge responsibility to represent not just the content of the source text but also the form, the rhythm and the style. The source culture should not be assimilated by the target culture and the translator’s art must be visible for all to appreciate. Translation is not a simple matter of transferring one language into another; ethics will always have a part to play and this makes translator’s choices even more risky, and therefore, even more worthy of our attention.

Emily Rose translates from French and Spanish into English; she is currently studying for the MA in Literary Translation at UEA and will shortly be starting an internship with the BCLT. Contact: emzrose_89@hotmail.com

Satisfied Feelin’

Strutting through with speed...

Coming down with a bump...

Highs don’t last forever...

For another glorious eight hour night shift, tapping away, out there on...

   Okay, so it wasn’t an all-night-out, Soul-beat dance affair exactly, more me locking myself in with a dead author, for a couple of days, to the sole beat of my long fingers tapping away on the old clavier – my best friends Marvin and Tammi would have to wait a good 48 hours for my renewed attention; I must have been serious!

   Still, when I say 48 hours, I don’t mean 48 consecutive hours – emphasis on the above “days”; these “days” I need my beauty sleep, as any of my so-called friends will confirm...

   Come to think of it, my translation of more than 11,000 words of Christiane Rochefort’s Les Petits Enfants du Siècle, as part of my MA dissertation, was completed in much less than half that time, and with my adviser telling me that my ‘1st draft’ will indeed suffice as my final draft.

   And I have to agree – he types with a conceited grin.

   No, but seriously, the reason I say this – and this my point – is because I could have actually translated those 11,000 words at the same pace before I began my MA course... except that the result wouldn’t have been anything like this one. I’m not at all suggesting that I’ve altered my style of translating, in terms of the physical act; I translate just as quickly, and maybe just as early, whenever I feel it time to begin “the physical act”. Nor I am suggesting that I now translate much better, and that the 11,000 words are superior to those I might have done before the MA course – that all depends on the individual reader. What has altered over time, however, while I’ve been on the MA course, is my mental act of (sub) conscious prefacing, or the thing I carry around with me for however long. Furthermore, I am now just as capable of carrying out my convictions.

   So just what do I mean by those last two lines?

   Firstly, the mental preface thing: Cluysenaar believes that a translation “[m]ust be faithful in any worthwhile way, work on the basis of prior stylistic analysis” (1976:41).  Allow me to quickly clear up the first part of this sentence, the “faithful” bit; the forbidden word – to use it around the translation fraternity is akin to an actor mentioning the ‘Scottish play’ in a theatre’s greenroom, just before a performance... Funny, why am I calling it the Scottish play? This room’s not green... Anyhow, to faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty etc – I’ve a good mind to capitalize them! For me, a translator’s duty is to endeavour to be true to his/her interpretation of the text in question, that is being faithful to the text and that is all s/he can ever do; that is the “worthwhile” way. As for the sentence’s second part, the “prior stylistic analysis”: well, believe or not, but each individual’s interpretation of a text is based on the stylistic choices of the original author, be they conscious or unconscious choices; Tabakowska states that “Stylistic choices reflect a speaker’s (subjective) choice of a given conceptualisation” (1993:7). Sufficed to say, Tabakowska is right, but I could use quotations all day, and I don’t want to. What I will say is that style is an expression of a cognitive state, and, therefore, the meaning we obtain from what is not on the page is driven by what is on the page... Stylistic analysis is thus fundamentally important to the fidelity a translator hopes to achieve, according to that ever-important interpretation.

   So what do I get from believing that? Well, firstly I’ve become better at the prefacing bit, through practice; that kind of reading on two levels, responding in both a reader and translator sense; doing two jobs at ones, it doesn’t have to be such hard work, the two levels complement each other. That’s how we find that ‘voice’. And it doesn’t all happen for me by staring at a page; it can happen while I’m walking my little girl to school, as in retrospectively of course, or even having just nipped downstairs for a bite...

   So to the physical translating, which, I believe, has improved too, in that I don’t find the work as hard as I once did. Something more important, though, is that... well, take the above-mentioned translation as an example: I’m sure that, had I translated the text previous to my MA course, I would, to use a laundry metaphor, have added far too much conditioner, smoothed out all those ‘rough spots’, and been far too keen with the old iron, on those slightly ambiguous bits, to such a point that the text would no longer have belonged to Christiane Rochefort , apart from having her name on the front of the book – there’ll always be a translator’s voice, that’s the interpretation bit, but I would’ve gone a little too far in the wrong direction. Venuti is right only partially, because I’m not talking about some political stance; I’m talking about replicating what a text does for a translator, not foreignisation versus domestication, for the sake of... With Rochefort’s text, I have gone completely against the grain of my writing – or have translated in a way that I never thought I could, rough bits, warts and all. And I think the text is better for it; it’s more it and less me, the perfect ‘blend’, and it wasn’t that difficult. What’s more, I like the feeling. I have truly found what the author’s voice says to me in my translation.

   And I have the course to thank for that. So thank you.

   Thanks more individually to Jean Boase-Beier, BJ Epstein, Valerie Henitiuk, Cecilia Rossi, Philip Wilson, Anne Cluysenaar – the quote – Elżbieta Muskat-Tabakowska – likewise – and to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell for their patience in letting me get on with my work, and for donating me the title of the blog, just one of many wonderful tunes.

   I’m Chris Rose and have a couple of blogs further down too, about Michael Caine and Tom Stoppard. If you’d like to drop me a line – whether you’re interested in translation or just a fan of Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Michael Caine films or... – my email address is chrisrose59@hotmail.com

   Thanks for reading.

Viva ,vidi, vici...

Vivas. The mix of anticipation, worry, excitement and enthusiasm serves as an adrenalin-fuelled rollercoaster. The prospect of having to explain your dissertation topic in front of a panel of three stalwarts of translation studies can seem daunting (the fact that one is ten minutes late with nobody to contact to inform said panel of one’s tardiness due to connecting buses running late also adds to the pressure–believe me!)

But after crashing into the room with my breathless apologies, and with no time for delay, the viva commenced...

Oral exams are usually nerve-wracking but on this occasion it was anything but. It actually, in my case at least, was an enjoyable experience. If you’re ever faced with having to attend a viva, I’m sure you would disagree and, of course, I cannot speak for everybody. But after some preamble about what I had written in the abstract and explaining what the ‘umbrella’ topic would be, it turned out that my blindness to what I was really trying to say was revealed to me.

It is rather a lonely experience: an abstract written and sent a month before the viva takes place can always change by the point you reach exam day, with no input from anybody but yourself. This is why the viva is a fantastic experience: it can provide a new focus on the topic from the perspective of not just one person, but three.

My topic shifted during the viva to an idea which was cursorily mentioned in my abstract. However, upon further scrutiny, it was revealed to be the new ‘umbrella’ topic which would easily encompass most things I had planned to incorporate originally. This input showed itself to be most invaluable and I walked away with a reinvigorated sense of direction with the dissertation.

I found it to be extremely informative and the panel ended up picking the relevant threads from my abstract, a sentiment expressed by one member who declared, ‘well, we’ve done the job for him.’ That is of course not strictly true but it demonstrates my point that input from external translation studies forces can provide new insights into one’s own ideas.

The viva should therefore be considered as a conversation, a debate perhaps, where ideas criss-cross and are thrashed out across the table rather than the stilted notion of an oral exam.

Now that I am in the process of writing my dissertation according to the clarification of the topic during the viva, I can honestly say that without it I would be lost! My original abstract was disorganised to say the least, with far too many ideas competing for undivided attention. That is why, in my case at least, it is not always a bad thing when someone comes along and turns everything on its head. What the viva gave me was a meatier topic to discuss i.e. the argument for the translator’s invisibility. There is one downside though: I now have to argue against Venuti and his notion that fluency in a translation always equates to a domesticated translation.

Not the easiest of tasks, I assure you, but that is the point of a dissertation. It allows one to push those extant boundaries and paradigms in translation studies...I relish the challenge!

Adam Kirkpatrick translates from French and Swedish into English and is currently studying towards the MA in Literary Translation at the UEA. He is particularly interested in Fantasy Fiction, Historical texts and the work of J.M.G Le Clézio.       

Sense and Sensibility... and Sensitivity

As students of Literary Translation, we are encouraged to grapple with both, the questions that are directly related to translation practice as well as those that concern some loftier matters. In laying claim to the title of translator and thinking over the responsibilities this title implies, one comes across the issue of identity, among others. In real-world terms, considering this issue might mean the need to take in the scope of various actuals constituting the field and the industry of translation. However, a year of academics makes for good time to consider more elusive aspects of translation and translator's identity. For example, the general concept of 'meaning' may maintain its ability to perplex, yet this perplexity does not translate into an equal amount of confusion over the meaning's place in the work of the translator. The intuitive consensus is that 'meaning', alternatively 'sense', is the translator's primary concern, and the manner it is handled in depends on his or her identity characteristics. Another couple of aspects that fall under the rubric of tricky or elusive are sensitivity and sensibility. Of the two, sensibility seems to be somewhat more ambiguous, if for no other reason than because it sometimes is used interchangeably with 'sensitivity'. Yet, when it comes to the translator's role, distinguishing between the two may have its benefits. It can be seen as part of what Maria Tymoczko refers to as 'self-reflexivity', whereby one makes an effort to become aware of just what parts of one's identity and personality go into the translation process. Lawrence Venuti brings up the issue of sensibility in 'The Translator's Invisibility'. But, rather than talk about sensibilities shared by the author of the original and translator, he employs the term 'simpatico' to designate the kind of affinity that may exist between the two and may be considered by some as most opportune for translating. In the end, he wants to impress on the reader that the notion of 'simpatico', as appealing as it may appear, is largely a mystification, and does more harm than good. To understand his view and put oneself in a position to agree or disagree with him, one would do well to acquire a clearer sense of 'sensibility' as opposed to 'sensitivity'. 'Sensibility' describes one's personality. In other words, it is made up of qualities inscribed within a personality, and ultimately they dictate just how one expresses oneself in response to his or her surroundings. In the case with the translator, this largely means how he or she expresses oneself in response to the specifics of a translation task at hand. 'Simpatico' implies an expectation that a translator's sensibility can be a copy, or at least a close representation, of that of an author, and these two individuals can parallel each other in terms of their 'how'. It is not difficult to appreciate how unrealistic this sounds. Therefore, while thinking about 'sensibility' is important as part of exercising 'self-reflexivity', the translator should be careful not to make a mistake of trying to compare it with the author's sensibility. By contrast to sensibility, practically speaking, sensitivity is outward-oriented. Another way to put it is to say that it is a quality that allows one to take notice of details. So, if sensibility is a matter of 'how', sensitivity in its turn is a matter of 'what'. For translators, this means a capacity for detecting features of the original text, arguably what makes up the initial stage of any translation. Drawing a line between the two in this manner is helpful because, as a result, the translator is brought to recognize that, to have the one and the other assist rather than impede his or her translation efforts, one can start by knowing one's sensibility but can continue by cultivating one's sensitivity. Olessia Makarenia is currently working on her MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. Captivated by the magic of English language and the wonder of Russian literature, she is determined to do her bit by introducing some of the latter into the former and pass occasional, sensitive, judgement on the work that others have done so far.

The post-colonial banyan tree

One of the most interesting things I’ve found while doing the various readings for our Theory course this term is the range of metaphors that are used to describe the process of translation and the final text produced. One such, derived from an Indian context, is that of the banyan tree. Trivedi and Bassnett in their introduction to Post-colonial translation write that the process of translation as undertaken by Sanskrit/Hindi scholars like Tulsi Das can be compared to the “process by which an ancient banyan tree sends down branches which then in turn take root all around it and comprise an intertwined family of trees” (Bassnett & Trivedi 1999:10). When I saw this the first thing I wondered was to what extent this metaphor was India-specific. A quick google search later, I found that while the banyan tree is found in other countries too, it seems to be most prevalent, or most renowned at any rate in India. I even found out – or perhaps rediscovered is a better verb – that it is the national tree of India, something that I was probably taught at some point in a history class at school. I also clicked on a link to a Government of India website which told me that “the roots ... give rise to more trunks and branches. Because of this characteristic and its longevity, this tree is considered immortal and is an integral part of the myths and legends of India. Even today, the banyan tree is the focal point of village life and the village council meets under the shade of this tree.”

One of the interesting aspects of this image is the use of the word “ancient” in the first quote and “longevity” and “immortal” in the second. In a post-colonial context I suppose these are important because they refer to a long and resilient pre-colonial past. But, in the context of translation they seem to suggest that works that are (or perhaps should?) translated are classical and canonical texts. Given the context of the specific example, in which Trivedi makes this remark, the metaphor works.

In general terms it seems to be used as a foil to the metaphor of translation as a form of cannibalism that emerges from Latin America. But, this metaphor, of a Banyan tree, becomes problematic when used as a general metaphor for translation. Should only classical texts be translated? What is the role of the translator, if it is the source text (the main tree) that produces the roots (the translations)? And despite notions of immortality, the tree does die, so how does death factor in? In the end thinking about this metaphor left me with as many questions as it did answers, and I think that is what makes it an interesting metaphor of translation.

Anandi Rao translates from Hindi and Arabic to English. She is doing her MA in Literary Translation and is interested in theatre and women’s writing. She can be reached at anandirao88@gmail.com.

Blog Post 2 or A reflection on theory and practice

As an aspiring literary translator I have struggled with the idea of having to study the theory of translation and have found myself many a time thinking ‘What’s the point of all this?’. But as the semester slowly draws to a close I think I am coming closer to answering a few of the questions that my MA requires me to decipher: Should translators know about theory? And does theory describe what translators do, or is it a practical tool that the translator can use?

In a recent workshop MALT graduate Don Bartlett, who has translated quite a few Scandinavian crime writers, spoke to us about the latest novel he translated by Jo Nesbo called ‘Phantom’. Having only being given 7 weeks to translate this book, I doubt that he was thinking about ‘Polysystem Theory’ (although one could argue that he was trying to get inside the Polysystem of literature) or ‘What would Nida do?’ Like most literary translators, Don never mentioned the word ‘Theory’ when he was talking about his translation process, he only mentioned the word ‘Strategy’, and this is because most theories are descriptive rather than prescriptive. This in turn means that we cannot apply a theory directly to our translation process but we can decide what our strategy is going to be before we start translating any kind of text.

At two ends of the scale, we have been studying Translation Theory whilst looking at experimental translation in our Process & Product class. While theory is rarely ever mentioned in P&P, we are expected to bring our knowledge of theory and demonstrate that we have grown as translators during our time on the MA in our essays. However, there seems to be a gap between practising translators and academics that theorise about translation, most of which tell us how we should translate despite ever having done any translation themselves. They remind me of the food critics who appear on popular cooking programmes, where they are brought in to analyse and nit pick at every dish they are served by the contestants, yet most of them probably don’t cook. It is very easy to analyse and criticise other people’s work but I do sometimes wish that theory was a bit easier to understand. On the other hand, there are academics that also translate as well as theorise and because they have seen both sides of the medallion they know what difficulties the translator faces. It is also interesting to see how theories from other fields can be of benefit to translation. For example Relevance Theory came to us from the world of Communication Studies and was picked up by translation theorists. This is not surprising considering that translation can be seen as an act of communication or the need to express something in a different language. This is my favourite theory (not that one should have favourites!) as, in my opinion, it sums up what I want to do as a translator and that is to get the maximum effect from the minimum effort.

So to answer the above questions: Yes! And No! (for the time being anyway).

Selin translates from French and Turkish into English. She is currently studying the MA in Literary Translation at UEA where she did her undergrad in Modern Languages. Her literary interests include magical realism and crime fiction and she occasionally translates Turkish poetry.

The Relevance of Theory

As an aspiring literary translator, it seems only natural to question the need to study translation theory. Will learning about different theories really help me to become a better practicing translator? The field of translation often seems to be divided into those that practice and those that theorise, so before beginning the ‘Translation Theory’ module I was unsure whether it would in fact directly affect my own translation practice.

During the course of this module, we have looked at a wide variety of theories including some from a number of other disciplines which have been applied to translation. One example which has particularly interested me so far is Relevance Theory, which we recently studied during a session on cognitive stylistic approaches to translation.

Relevance Theory, as developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in 1986, has been applied to translation by Ernst-August Gutt as in his comprehensive book Translation and Relevance (2000). Relevance Theory is all about communication and Gutt rightly looks at translation as an act of communication. The question really is what exactly are we trying to communicate when we translate?

As Jean Boase-Beier discusses in her 2004 article, ‘Knowing and not knowing: style, intention and the translation of a Holocaust poem’ perhaps the most significant aspect of Relevance Theory for us as translators is the notion of author intention. Sperber and Wilson (1986) stated that “the crucial mental faculty that enables human beings to communicate with one another is the ability to draw inferences from people’s behaviour.” In other words, we always have to work out what exactly the “informative intention” of the communicator is. Therefore, the recreation of the intention of the original author is arguably the most important task of the translator. We should try to convey what it is exactly that the author of the source text really meant.

The claim that it is possible to know the intention of the author has frequently been contended and it is true that we can never know this for certain. However, it is in fact possible to use clues in the text to reconstruct the original intention as far as possible. To use Sperber and Wilson’s terminology, we use a set of “implicatures” which Boase-Beier (2004) locates in the style of the text since from this we can determine the choices and attitude of the author. This can be related to the distinction made by Gutt (2000) between indirect and direct translation which can be likened to indirect and direct quotation. In this case, literary translation is seen as an instance of direct translation since the style of what has been written needs to be conveyed rather than the form.

In fact, looking back to last semester’s module ‘Stylistics for Translators’, I can’t help but think that the knowledge I now possess of translation theory would have helped considerably with my essay on the importance of the translation of style in a German text called Simultan by Ingeborg Bachmann (translated as Word for Word by Mary Fran Gilbert). During this essay I claimed that in this particular text, “the style is arguably of greater importance than the meaning and content of the narrative.” A better understanding of Relevance Theory and other concepts related to Cognitive Stylistics such as mind style would certainly have facilitated my analysis and understanding of that text and its translation, whilst simultaneously strengthening my argument!

I suppose what I am trying to say is that theory can be considered as relevant in terms of reading texts before and after translation. Knowledge of Relevance Theory, for example, can help us develop particular strategies for the translation of a text, ensuring that the assumed intention of the original author is conveyed as far as possible in the target text. On the other hand, it can also enable us to understand why a text has been translated in a particular way. I think that, although my aim is to work as a practicing translator, I fully understand the importance of gaining this grounding in translation theory and I am grateful for it. As Mary Midgley (2001) said, theories are “pairs of spectacles through which to see the world differently.” And with a bit of luck, our future translations will similarly enable others to see the world in a different way.

Fiona Hayter translates from German, French and Spanish into English. She is currently studying the MA in Literary Translation at UEA where she has also just completed an internship at the British Centre for Literary Translation. You can contact her at F.Hayter@uea.ac.uk.

Translation theory

As a practitioner of translation I have for a few years now had problems with trying to understand why translation theory (and by extension translation studies) actually exists. I came out of my undergraduate degree with a persistent and lingering thought: Does theory really aid us in translation? My initial reaction to the theories presented was one of confusion: was I being stupid or were all the theories not just saying the same thing? The answer to me was rather simplistic and there are two paths down which one may walk indicating a choice: we either translate to a paraphrase or metaphrase model. However it turned out to be a little more interesting...

Theories today tend to be descriptive observations of what has already occurred in translation; they detail how people have translated specific texts. This is a historical shift from the days of the prescriptive stance in translation and the arduous task of remaining ‘faithful’ to a text by following syntax and word order. We now know this to be a rather stilted notion, hence the move towards descriptive models which have allowed us - as translators - a more liberal approach (within reason) i.e. content over form. However, because theory now tends to be descriptive, we can only derive strategies from these observations, strategies which can aid us when looking at specific works in literary canon (which is another debate in itself) and may aid us when translating something similar in style or which perhaps alludes to texts which have preceded it; an echo of previous literary works if you will.
These may guide us to mishaps in translation and may alert us to tread with caution but they do not actually teach us how to translate. Although this would arguably be an impossible task, especially in literary translation (each text is unique even if it resembles another and therefore requires an individual approach), the problem remains that translation is a wholly individualistic task and quite simply we all work in different ways so a theory cannot be tailored to everyone and their respective needs.

Some modern theorists are now more concerned with cognitive stylistics and detecting authorial intent: in essence we must ascertain the meaning behind the lexical choice and in Alexander Pope’s words capture the fire of the text. This is common sense to translators but when one is plodding one’s way through a translation there is a tendency to lose ourselves in what is written, not what is being said. Theories, or rather notions in this case, can help us to remain permanently focused on reading between the lines. We are not only translators but also readers, and as such can easily be influenced by our own interpretations of what is going on in a literary text.

As a reader we already carry out the necessary and obvious tasks of reading, analysing and decrypting in order for us to proceed with translation. If a piece is feminist in genre or style, then it must be translated as a feminist piece: anything else would be a corruption of the source text. This is where Vermeer’s Skopos theory comes to the aid of us functionalists who have a rather pragmatic approach to translation. Our ultimate mission is to translate according to a specific aim or goal i.e. purposeful transaction; therefore, in literary terms, we are to translate and basically remain ‘faithful’ to the text’s content due to certain criteria imposed upon translator and/or commission (one notable exception is translated drama texts where more scope for adaptation is permissible). These restrictions notwithstanding, any deviation of style in reality would mean that the purpose of the target text differs from that of the source text, which has either been misunderstood or intentionally corrupted. It is that fire of which Pope speaks which requires not just attention but also retention.

Having said all this, there has been one snippet of theory which has caught my attention and it may belong more to the domain of linguistics: nevertheless it has struck a chord, the reverberations of which will not escape my mind. Walter Benjamin posited the notion of ‘pure language’, a language which is operating behind all others (think of a computer program ‘running in background’ when several other programs are simultaneously being used). We seek to decrypt, translate and (re)encrypt for the target audience, then disseminate the message, passing on the story from one person or culture to another, ensuring that the message is harmoniously and simultaneously broadcast to disparate cultures in their respective living languages and resisting the notion that certain things are untranslatable whilst embracing the fact that everything is comprehensible across cultures. I liken it to music or the look on somebody’s face: although there are innumerable instruments with which to create music and endless melodies, beats, notes, tempos and genres, the mere fact that everybody can enjoy and find pleasure in it, whether it be foreign or not, has provided me with the conclusion that we all fundamentally understand one another on some intangible yet higher and some may say telepathic level. And the look on somebody’s face? Well, a smile means the same thing in every culture, right?

Adam Kirkpatrick translates from French and Swedish into English and is currently studying towards the MA in Literary Translation at the UEA. He is particularly interested in Fantasy Fiction, Historical texts and the work of J.M.G Le Clézio.

Theory and Practice, or, How to Wear Two Hats at Once

This semester I feel as if the MALT programme is pulling me in two drastically different directions which (somewhat paradoxically) complement each other, through the modules we’re studying: ‘Process and Product’ and ‘Translation Theory’. I imagine these modules as requiring me to sport two kinds of headgear that are both present in my translator’s dressing-up box. The first is a practical translation hat, but despite the name it’s not practical at all, in fact it’s garishly coloured, many-textured and covered in pompoms, and I can redesign it whenever I choose (encouraged by the very creative seminars we’ve taken part in during the Process and Product course). The second is a translation theory hat, which is much more subdued, and doesn’t fit me quite as well: I have the feeling that I’m trying on someone else’s hand-me-down. It’s really quite heavy because although Translation Theory is a new discipline, this particular hat has been around as long as there have been languages to translate between, and as such it is imbued with a lot of weighty History. Thus my problem is as follows: I have been very much enjoying wearing my practical hat to translate poetry and short stories, and thus I am, at the moment, reluctant to take it off in favour of my theory hat.
I understand the need to possess both hats, because wearing the theory hat helps me learn about what other people do when they’ve got their practical hats on, what others think translators should do when wearing their practical hats, the decisions I myself make when wearing my practical hat and the stylistic and ethical issues faced by practical hat wearers. And vice versa, the experience of wearing my practical hat feeds into the work I do in those moments when I have removed it in favour of my theory hat. But despite this I still don’t feel entirely comfortable translating myself from practitioner to theorist through the substitution of hats.
When I finish the MALT I may decide to consign the theory hat to a dusty corner of my dressing-up box, or give it to a translators’ charity shop (a shop whose only customers are members of a thriving community of translators, rather than one raising money for a dying breed of multilingual bookworms, I hope). But while I am still on the programme I shall continue to strive to find a way to wear both hats simultaneously. As yet I have had little success in this task; the practical hat is too irregularly-shaped for the theory hat to stay on if I try and put it on top, and if I reverse this configuration and put the theory hat on first I can’t help but feel it as a barrier between me and the creativity of the practical hat. Perhaps I shall have to learn to juggle at warp-speed so as to create the illusion of wearing both hats at once, a blurring of the boundaries between practical hat and theory hat, but then of course I’ll have to figure out how to type at the same time. Unless I choose to perform my translations orally rather than writing them down (I’m sure there’s a theory about that; maybe I am getting the hang of this after all…)
Any suggestions for translation hat solutions gratefully received at this address: lucygreaves@gmail.com.

Lucy Greaves translates from Spanish, French and Portuguese into English. She is currently studying the MA in Literary Translation at UEA, and is particularly interested in Latin American literature.

Multiple Translations of One Text

One thing people who are not familiar with the field of translation often cannot understand is how people can come up with different translations of the same source text. Surely ‘table’ means ‘table’ in any language, so why is translation so hard? Surely there’s a right and a wrong answer, and how on earth could people spend time discussing translation? Just last night, my husband – and he knows more about translation than most digital analysts, by dint of being married to me! – was exasperated to hear another of my flights of translation fancy, and blurted out: ‘You should just translate what’s there!!’

How is it, then, that if you go into Amazon and type in Madame Bovary, you can choose from Geoffrey Wall’s version, Margaret Mauldon’s version, Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s version, Lydia Davis’ version, Adam Thorpe’s hot-of-the-press version etc etc …. Indeed, in researching my Translation Theory module, I came upon a website that had 23 versions of Baudelaire’s poem Le Balcon. As I grappled with the subject – often highly philosophical, and not easy for someone who still remembers re-sitting French Philosophy in the Hall of Shame back at university – I was persuaded that the notion of ‘mind style’, an idea from the field of cognitive stylistics, might be used to explain the existence of vastly different and yet equally valid translations of a single source text.

Mind style can be defined as a linguistic style that reflects a cognitive state. Clues to the mind style of a text are to be found in its implicit information, which in turn can be worked out by looking at the stylistic devices present in a text. Stylistic devices can include such things as alliteration, ambiguity, the repetition of words, complex metaphor, or the use of different registers or of specific syntactic constructions.

I find it plausible that multiple translations of a single source text can exist because translators read the mind style of an author in different ways, influenced as they are by their own individual past experiences and worldviews. In addition to this, the translation goes through a further stage when it reaches the reader, since she or he is also going to filter the translation through her or his own experiences and worldviews.

To illustrate this point: in spring 2011, I produced a (very fine!) sample of a German novel for a literature-promoting organisation. Taken out of the context of the rest of the book, I read the German text quite positively – the scene was Rome in the summer in the 1970s, and as nothing explicitly bad happens in the short section in question, my mind was instantly transported to my own (pleasant) experiences of Rome in the summer. I gave my translation to my sister to read, who said she thought the translation adequately reflected the claustrophobia of the main character … where did claustrophobia come from, I thought? Finally, when I read my sample out at a public reading event, one of the audience’s reactions was to laugh. This is a common reaction in a group setting since it releases tension and conveys approval, but it also showed the translation going through an additional stage, that of being filtered through the mind of the reader (or, in this case, the minds of the listeners).

So the next time we pick up a translated work, we might want to remember that we’re not only getting an insight into the mind of the author, but also into the mind of the translator, and indeed into the way our own minds work, as they interact with the words on the page …

Rebekah Wilson is a freelance translator working from French, German and Dutch into English: www.oxfordtranslations.net.

Translators should remain invisible

Domestication; Foreignisation; Venuti: some of the most bandied about words in translation theory. Particularly in the case of the first two, extensive usage , along with their evolving meanings over the course of Venuti’s publications, has led to their suffering from a certain erosion in their precision of meaning. It seems all too simple to identify certain features in a translation – the inclusion of ‘foreign’ words in the translation, the presence of non-standard spellings - and to jump to the conclusion that the translator was foreignising.
Much of this conjecture focuses on what lays within the body of a translated text when what lies a step away can be of equal interest. Metatextual content, for example, is barely touched upon by translation theoreticians. How it integrates with the notion of invisibility is, I feel, a fascinating subject.
At its most fundamental, invisibility is an affliction affecting a given entity’s visual existence within the space of a limited environment . Any attempts to address and alter the level of the entity’s visibility will question not only the ecology, but also the finite nature of the environment.
Most commonly, the provision for footnotes, translator’s forewords and prefaces enables the reader to be more more aware of translatorial decisions and, as a consequence, of the translator. As translators (hopefully) become more inclined to incorporate such features into their published translations, or at least clamour for their inclusion, existing literary conventions will be broken for the better.
As long as this quest for visibility is kept strictly textual, the translator will, in theory, be able to use his or her ability with the written word, the skill which comes most naturally, to address this invisibility. The problem arises when translators follow the lead of the publishing world as a whole, and seeking to appropriate the space on the cover of a dust jacket.
The dreaded photo of the author alongside that of the translator. I say ‘dreaded because I feel that the practice, in both translated and untranslated literatures, is aesthetically unfortunate. It detracts from the power of the written word by placing more emphasis on the visual image of the translator. Perhaps mimicry is understandable as the translator vies for the same rights as that of the source author. Yet it reduces the book, translated or otherwise, to little more than an item for consumption as opposed to a work of art.
While there may well be something endearing about seeing a kindly face on the front of book, it will more likely than not attract the consumer to consume, firs t and foremost, and to read as an after- thought. In the same way that a pop band’s image is arguably more important than the music it produces, the written text becomes secondary to the image of the author.
Respect must therefore be reserved for those faceless authors and translators who consciously choose the path of invisibility ( and a certain pity put aside for those, such as the dead translators, who have no control over it). Or rather, Dust jackets should be allowed to gather dust without the dust having sleepless nights about the toothy mugs, often times two, that may be gasping for attention and breath.

-- Andrew Nimmo is a translator working from Spanish, Portuguese and French into English. His areas of interest include music, journalism, fiction and film. You can contact him at this.means.nimmo@gmail.com.