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.

Further… and further… and further study

I have always been a real geek (after school Latin club: yes please!), and coming to UEA to study the MA in Literary Translation has been a way for me to indulge in further geekery, as well as to propel myself along the path to becoming a professional translator. Now that the MA is coming to an end, however, with my dissertation due in only two months, I am already starting to think about what I might like to study next.

I am writing a dissertation about the phenomenon of pseudotranslation, which is when a text is claimed to be a translation although no source text can be identified, i.e. it is original writing under the guise of translation. Although earlier examples do exist, this phenomenon can be seen as linked to the rise of the writer as original genius during the eighteenth century, because it plays on ideas of authorship and originality which were cementing at that time (there are many other interesting aspects of, and motivations for, pseudotranslation but you’ll have to read my dissertation to find out about those). To learn about this period I have had to delve into the history of English literature, and this research has been fascinating but equally hard work because although I studied languages for my BA and hence know a lot about Latin American literature in particular, I didn’t study English beyond GCSE level. This has made me feel like there are gaps in my knowledge which I will have to plug if I am to fulfil my potential as a literary translator. I know a lot about the literature of my chosen source culture, but perhaps not enough about that of my target culture. What this boils down to, I think, is that although I have read extensively in English, I have never read critically in English.

The MA has also confirmed my suspicion that to translate literature into English requires me to be a great writer in English. I have particularly enjoyed the workshops which ran during our second semester and were based on the kind of workshops that take place on a creative writing course.  In each of these sessions we discussed a piece of translation by one member of the group and suggested ways in which it could be improved as a text in English; from these sessions I learnt more about translation as a writing practice than from any other part of the MA. In the end, translations are rarely read alongside their source texts, and to be successful they must be able to stand independently from the source text as well as to read brilliantly. I imagine that it is through lots of practice and by engaging in close readings of texts (translations and otherwise) that I will move towards consistently achieving this goal.

The upshot of having become aware of all this is that I feel like I could do with a degree in English and Creative Writing so as to produce my best work as a translator. My plan once I finish the MA is to launch myself head first into the world of freelance translation, but the idea of further study is already tempting me. The thing is, I know that if I did take up another course, I would get to the end and feel the same as I do now, that there is so much more to learn. I think I shall have to accept that this is a lifelong challenge and engage in further, and further, and further study accordingly.

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. Contact: lucygreaves@gmail.com.

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.

Rorke’s Drift, Michael Caine... and Getting The Old Translator’s ‘Pen to Paper’...

“Your Great Uncle Stan was at Rorke’s Drift when the first shot was fired,” my old dad used to say, before each Boxing Day viewing of Zulu – oh, you must know the one! Written by Cy Enfield, co-produced by Stanley Baker, based on a true-ish story, starring newcomer Michael Caine! The well-to-do Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead – had me fooled at the time! Then again, I was only six when I first saw it... Just where did it all go wrong, eh, Michael? Only kidding...

Yep, Rorke’s Drift. Wednesday 22nd – Thursday 23rd January, 1879, when some 150 British soldiers, each with only one skopos in mind – to be sitting in the old Dog and Duck again on the Old Kent Road (or whichever the road might be) with a freshly pulled pint in front of him – would defend a supply station against some 4000 Zulus, each of which would also have only one skopos in mind – to do to the former what they’d done to 2,000 British soldiers that very morning, over yon mountain, at the Battle of Isandhlwana: to wipe them out and finish the job off.

Well, the good news is that many of those brave – for a stronger epithet! – young men did go on to hold another pint in the old Dock and Duck, and Victoria Crosses were handed out like Smarties to prove it...

One of the scenes in Cy Enfield’s film still gets me to this day: when the Zulus appear for the first time – these weren’t actors but the real thing; that proud and graceful people, and their Chief was played by no other than Buthelezi himself! And when they begin that first charge at the British fort. It’s nail-biting for the boys – another silly understatement. But that wait; each and every one of them sweating more in that minute or so – heck, it must have felt longer! – than they had throughout their entire military careers, before Lieutenant Chard – Baker’s character – finally gives the go-ahead to fire... and not a moment too soon.

But there was, and is, method behind the apparent madness, the one of seemingly allowing the enemy a bit of running space before putting them to the trigger: and I guess that it’s all to do with, well, if they fired too soon, the enemy might be too far away to hit; not only would that then waste bullets but the enemy might gain a decent idea of what they were up against, get their heads down, and move on to a plan B. On the other hand, were the British to fire too late, then they’d inevitably be consumed for being so few – the old Bard would have loved this one, wouldn’t he!

All that being said, whether getting stuck in too early or too late, it turned out that the old chief on yon hill had sent his first wave of sacrificial lambs unto the slaughter merely in order to count the British guns. There was method in that apparent madness, too.
But isn’t this supposed to be a blog about translation? I finally hear you think, faintly, beneath a kind of grating sound – are you scratching your forehead?

And yes, I reply, there’s method in my madness, too.

So here’s my roomy analogy: firstly, there’s the mighty army of translators, who claim – lots of emphasis on “claim” – that they don’t translate a novel until they’ve read it, like it were some four-lined lyrical poem or whatever; and then there are the few of us, yes, myself included – we few, we happy few – who begin the job much earlier than the novel’s final page, and, furthermore, don’t give a Dickens who knows it. I might call this a war between The Practitioners and The Theorists, the latter being the greater army, numerically – though which wouldn’t be the case if two thirds of them were to tell the truth and the remaining third were to do what they ought to do, which is to go away and annoy someone else, or, better still – anything for a laugh – have the courage to do a translation of their own – they certainly wouldn’t have been missed at Rorke’s Drift, would they!

That’s the first part of the analogy: the small army, big army-part.

The second bit is the waiting-to-fire-part – which you may well by now have guessed; I didn’t hear any scratching that time... When to pull that trigger? Or when to put the translator’s ‘pen to paper’?

Only a few weeks ago, I heard PhD student and part-time Lecturer Philip Wilson state that to translate a book without having read a word of it – line by line from the outset – would be no less than “disastrous”. And I do agree, up to a point; though all would depend on the individual translator’s experience, of course, and the particular book, but yes, the potential’s certainly there. You could say it’s like being fired at from a great distance: if the shooter’s not that good, you might just wait for him to run out of ammo and then present him with the sharp end of your tool. But what if he can shoot? Who knows, you might just want to give up and go home for your tea... I guess what I’m trying to say is that the potential for disaster is always there, and that that which fills Philip Wilson with horror – the idea of the translator immediately putting pen to paper – simply multiplies that potential. But it’s not written in stone.

Rather than only translate – in the conventional sense of the word – I also write – again, in the conventional sense of the word; translation is re-writing. Playing in two gardens rather than one, then, as it were, something I believe every translator ought, ideally, to do, allows for a greater perspective. Of course, in the real world, not every translator is going to have the time for both, and there is the argument for the more translation work, the more experience gained.

But the reason for putting my case forward is based on my agreement with something else that Philip said that day – I categorically agree this time. And that is that when we pick up a book and begin to read it, we search for a “way in”; he described it as “looking for a door”, which could be anywhere between the first page and the last – have you ever abandoned a book because it’s simply gotten on your nerves? Oh, don’tget me started on Henry James! Yes, I said Henry James, not James Joyce... Anyhow, my friend Philip is right: that is the process exactly. And for me, that is the moment to put pen to paper, opening the door without banging your head at either side of it for having either rushed or hesitated; not too early, not too late. I can just see the old chief on yon hill, laughing with his ancient companions at the British for having begun to fire too early – “Disastrous!” I hear him cry, holding on to his elderly belly. Or for them having done the opposite: left it too late – “They’ve forgotten which film they’re in!” he screams with delight.

Willard Trask, a prolific and erudite translator for nearly fifty years, said that “Translation is what happens while you do it.” He talked of the “helical” rather than “unilinear”. I think he was talking about the writer’s groove. He, too, never read a book end-to-end before beginning to translate.

We all, of course, know that every book contains two levels of meaning: there is determinate meaning, embedded in the linguistics of the text, which, as Professor Jean Boase-Beier tells us, “demands cultural, linguistic knowledge of the source language; and then the necessary sensitivity of weakly implied or ‘second order’ meanings”. She also asks us: “How do we read and how do we translate what goes beyond the actual words on a page, and how do we ensure literary translations preserve the mind-altering qualities of the original? Style,” she says, “conveys attitude and not just information... it is the expression of mind; and literature is a reflection of mind... we must be stylistically aware...”

Again, I agree, almost wholly. Being stylistically aware is essential, because, yes, the style of an expression “tells us something about the person who uses the expression.” But that idea is also qualified by the above quote “what goes beyond the actual words on a page.” What intrigues me most, though, in Jean’s quotations, is the first of the two questions: “How do we read and how do we translate...? The translator’s “thumbprint” will always exist in a translation, we’re not robots, and that’s the beauty of it; and why we prefer some translations to others. But in order to construct something which might reasonably have been the author’s intention, just maybe we should start to think more about the way we, indeed, read a translation.

Any translator will tell you that s/he reads a book that s/he intends to translate differently to the way s/he reads for ‘pleasure’. And I sometimes ask myself why. After all, is the reader of your translation going to read it so differently to the reader of the source text? A writer doesn’t sit down and think: “I want to fill this next paragraph with adverbs of morbidity! Does s/he? The chronicler sitting on a sand-bag at Rorke’s Drift might have done, when he was able to keep his plume still, but that’s different. Or is it? Wouldn’t those adverbs of morbidity have presented themselves quite naturally within the context? The writer is aware of the process up to a certain consciousness, but, essentially, s/he simply writes, allowing the muse to dictate.

The really interesting – and perhaps crucial – part concerning the source writer’s task, however, is the editing process. For it is here where s/he, paradoxically, goes about trying to make the text read/sound more ‘natural’ in expression – however artificial, this is what we expect as readers; the great literary paradox! In light of this knowledge, then, the question I need to ask is this: Is not our job, as translators, to replicate our experience as readers? I believe it is. And I believe that the secret to a success, or a more ‘faithful’ translation, may lie in that very first reading, in those natural, spontaneous reactions of ours: by going for the jugular once we’ve opened that door. Once we’ve travelled with the flow of the text – the way the original author hoped we might; they don’t sweat over the editing process for nothing! – we may then go about own editing process.

Those who categorically disagree with my theory will tell me that I’ve not given much thought to recurring metaphors, symbols, leitmotif and so on – and what about all those clues in detective fiction? And I say: “But I only noticed that recurring metaphor on page 74 myself! So why should I make it easier for the reader of my translation?” And just as a reader has to turn back a number of pages to confirm that the metaphor is a recurring one, why shouldn’t the translator do the same? Furthermore – scandalously for some – the writer of the source text never set out with the idea of recurring metaphors in the first place – believe me, these things just happen somewhere along the line and writers merely exploit them! We might then, finally, deal with the editing sweat as we were meant to do: in the same fashion as the source text author – if s/he had to go through it, why shouldn’t we?

Gosh, I bet I’m making a lot of translator friends with this piece! And it’s not like I’ve got that many to start with...

But, that’s me and I’m sticking with it... for a while at least...

As for my old dad’s well-worn joke at the beginning of my blog – you don’t have to go back, I’ll tell you now: the line about my great uncle Stan being at Rorke’s Drift when the first shot was fired – his punch line would be: “He was in The Queen’s Head on Stannington Street when the second one was fired...”

I bet my fictitious uncle Stan had already seen the film... Or just maybe he thought Lieutenant Chard had left it that little bit too late... before putting that translator’s pen to paper.

Thanks to Jean-Boase-Beier, BJ Epstein, Philip Wilson, Cy Enfield, Michael Caine, Stanley Baker, to my old dad and my fictitious uncle Stan... and to the Great Zulu people of the Great Buthelezi.

I’m Chris Rose and my details are given further down, just after a previous blog entitled ‘Translating a Tom Stoppard Play on Words’. But if you’d like to drop me a line – whether you’re interested in translation or just a fan of Michael Caine films – my email address is chrisrose59@hotmail.com

On Translation (Re)visions

Identified as “a new international platform for British writing and literature development”, the Norwich Showcase was taking place over the length of several days, offering a plethora of events for those willing to be guided by their literary tastes away from books and to the public celebrations of those same tastes. These celebrations took the shape of presentations, readings, panels, and everything in-between. Translated literature was accorded its share of attention. Ros Schwartz and Frank Wynne, both of them seasoned as well as acclaimed translators, were invited to recast the same literary passage from French to English and to treat an audience to a discussion of the choices comprising their finished versions.

That no translation act is ever a self-contained occurrence and that keeping sight of bigger picture is a must when translation is involved may seem self-evident, but this is something that comes to the forefront in the situations similar to the Translation Slam event with Ros and Frank. This awareness makes it that much more remarkable that little more than an hour was enough to make it possible for the audience to appreciate the difference in the approaches the translators employed. Not only was it a true pleasure to hear Frank and Ros reflect on their engagement with the text, but their voiced musings were insightful and thought-provoking.

For example, in attempt to conjure in the reader's mind the kind of image she felt was most appropriate, Ros opted for a term more precise than in the original text. In it, the author describes how a thought unwittingly turned into an utterance resembles an indeterminate kind of insect flitting pointlessly around a person's head. Ros explained that for her translation is largely about describing in words the pictures emerging in her mind in the process of reading, and it was a moth that she saw in the picture painted by the author. The use of the more precise reference suggests that the reader of the translation would be supplied with a rather specific image. By contrast, reading the original version the reader would be forced to do a mental choosing of his own and quite possibly end up with an image of mosquito or fly.

Though a rather mild case of transformative translation, it does illustrate a major issue in the study of literature. After all, this would be one of the things that literature ultimately does: it feeds imagination. The argument here could be that the form of the text conspires with its other aspects to make imagination come alive. In answering the question about the nature of the insect, Ros would seem to have challenged the reader's right to imagine freely. But what if instead she did the reader a favour: by filling in the blank, by clearing up the hazy, by taking care of a trifle of a moth, might she have released the reader's mind for performing grander flights of imagination? Is metaphorical insect entitled to the mind's creative treatment? Thanks to translation, thinking about imagination can run up some exhilaratingly peculiar routes.

In his turn, when asked about handling culture elements, Frank noted that retaining them in their more or less original form often proves optimal. In fact, certain cultural features are too well known under their proper names for new translations to try to carry out some interventionist or revisionist activity. Thus, there are no Elysian Fields in Paris and no one really would argue with that, being perfectly aware that there is, however, the Champs-Élysées. Translations insinuating the existence of such fields could appear ludicrous. The implication, then, is that if a transplant from a different language has proved itself and is now fully embraced, introducing alternatives is an idle pursuit.

For some, this may be a settled matter. Without clear reasons for doing this, multiplying ways of identifying the same referent may indeed strike one as unnecessary overloading of linguistic and cultural systems. Or, when it comes to translation, would we fare better if willing to unburden ourselves of the notion of redundancy? Since the domain of translation is so favourable to metaphors, this could be a matter of deciding which of the two metaphors should get the better of us: revering these pearls of interlingual carry-over items, or, letting novel translations sprout to see if they result in weeds or flowers. Finding middle ground is always an option, but peeking in at extremes is too gratifying to do without. Raised as a platform for literature development, the Norwich Showcase offered some nice vantage points.

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 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.

Read a Translated Book: A Challenge and a Campaign

[Note: This post was first published on Brave New Words, which is run by BJ Epstein, who teaches on the MA in Literary Translation programme at UEA and translates from the Scandinavian languages to English.]

I run an award-winning international literature book group here in Norwich. As far as we know, it’s the only book group in the UK that just reads translated literature. This is surprising because translated literature is a gift that allows us to learn about other people, other places, other perspectives, other ideas, other ways of being, other lives. Without translations, we would be so much poorer and our lives would be much narrower.

However, many people are afraid of translations; translated literature seems harder somehow or less authentic. But that needn’t be the case.

So I want to challenge you to read more translations. Start with just one book. You can pick a Nobel Prize-winner, for example, or maybe one of the books that’s up for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize this year. Pick a translated thriller, if that’s your favorite genre, or try some poetry. It doesn’t matter which book you read; the aim is just to read translated literature.

Then the next part of this campaign is to keep reading translated literature. Start with one book and then try to read one or two translations a year, or even more. Encourage your friends to do so as well.

If you live in Norwich, come to my book group. If not, you could even start a book group of your own that just focuses on translated literature. If you want some tips, here is a document I created to help people start book groups like the one I run.

Pass the word on. Tell others what books you’re reading and what you think of them. Post comments here or on other blogs and discuss your experiences.

I challenge you to read just one translated book. I think it will change you and I suspect you’ll want to keep reading translated literature. Translations aren’t scary; rather, doing without them is.

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.

The Hunting of the PhDark

And so the journey continues in the realms created by Carroll's mind, where a dream sometimes is a game of chess, but a cigar is only a cigar. This time, however, our heroes have found the Snark, hunted it, got the fruit (1), and got bored of it. So they decided to hunt the PhDark.

The PhDark is a creature of dusty corners of libraries and rotting walls of academia; it builds its nest in leather armchairs and wooden desks; it will usually capture its prey, tease it for a three-year period, then torture it for a fourth, with the illusion of it all finally being over.

The PhDark is hard to hunt, for it is guarded by the dreadful BureauCat. The BureauCat at first appears to help our heroes, but eventually reveals its true colours, and they get lost in a maze of strange forms and twists and turns of phrase, and the party gets nearly stamped on. The BureauCat strokes its whiskers, as it gleefully observes the hunting party lose itself in its web of apparent truths and white lies. But little does the BureauCat know that our heroes are being helped by external forces, in their hunt for the PhDark.

The PhDark is a multi-headed beast, of gargantuan proportions from afar, and just huge from close up. It has the Hydra's property of replacing each severed head with at least seven more, just to keep it biblical. It has eyes of ink, and hide of leather, and its spine is as sharp and lethal as a papercut.

The PhDark is a luring, seducing, tempting beast, especially for our heroes. The reward is high, the tools they have been promised are of the highest quality, the best that gold can buy... But they lack the gold. But they've been promised gold! (2) They will acquire the means to their end, one way or another. The Ring-giver told them so.

The PhDark is an elusive beast. It prefers to attack several victims at once, but from a distance. Many try to find a PhDark, some just for the fame, some for its properties, others out of boredom. In the end, the PhDark will choose its champion amongst the throng of hunters. The BureauCat aids it in its choice; appease it, and you may have a chance. The Ring-giver is also its ally, albeit reluctantly; gain its trust, and your quest will run smoothly.

The PhDark is a curious beast. If you are chosen, you will face it in its lair, and the hunting party will dissolve. Your dance will begin, just the two of you. But be warned: the road to the PhDark is still long, even if the BureauCat is satiated, and the Ring-giver has donated. Good luck.

So yeah, applied for a PhD, won't know anything until April.

1 - In Italy, Fruits of the Loom has been for a long time the major brand of t-shirts. This lead to the use of the word fruit to indicate any generic t-shirt.
2 - Until stocks last. Terms & Conditions apply.

Alex Valente translates Italian and French into English, and English into Italian. He claims he also works with Old English and Latin. In the little spare time his MA in Literary Translation leaves him, he dumps some poetic reflections onto http://angolopolveroso.wordpress.com (where the Jabberwocky now resides, too). If you really feel the urge to talk to him, you can find him at alex.valente@uea.ac.uk.

Translating a Tom Stoppard Play on Words into French – and yes, pun very much intended...

Sarah Adams: “It ain’t what you lose, but how you gain it in translation...”
Maybe contrary to popular opinion – or do I mean unpopular opinion? Either way, it’s not like I’ve carried out a survey – the pun is a challenge I always relish when faced with a new translation; in fact, I would go as far as to say: the more the merrier.
There are many reasons for this, as I see it, but mainly it is because I have very much come to believe in Sarah Addams’ above philosophy. I also take Lena Kaarbebol’s point, the Danish writer of children’s stories. She translates her own books into English: “Translation is impossible,” she states, but “Transformation is not.” She sees translation as one more re-write; or a “writer’s tool”, with which she is able to “gain new insight into what my characters might say or do” – she sees the story afresh! More importantly, she says: “Language is bound up with the way we see the world. And despite teasing similarities, even the most closely related languages do not match, word for word. A switch in language means a switch in perception.”
Indeed, it is armed with these last two sentences that I approach any play-on-words. And while I do not normally adhere to the concept of believing that the original author is sitting beside me – ‘this is what the author would have written, here, today, were s/he writing in English’ – I believe that translating the pun is where we, as translators, shouldn’t feel too guilty in allowing ourselves that romantic privilege – all translators do it in spite of themselves, I am sure.
Without resorting to a dictionary, or another quotation, I need firstly to ask just what a pun is and its intention. Actually, I prefer to think of a ‘play-on-words’, for such a title offers me at least two clues to go at: ‘play’ and ‘words’. Having fun with words, then? This, however, should not distract me from the pun’s possible intention, which could be anything from comical confusion – staged farces couldn’t live without them – to corrosive satire – extract the puns in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and we’d be left with half a book.
But I do believe that Lena Kaarbebol’s wise words offer that handy “tool” with which to approach the pun, which either works by a rare literal translation, or by creating another pun – all depending upon its satirical importance. Or it doesn’t work at all, in which case I might look to ‘compensate’ with a preceding or subsequent sentence – gain something elsewhere in translation, as Sarah Addams might put it. After all, as Phyllis Zatlin rightly points out: ‘A pun that is not translated as a pun stills yields its information content.’
Bearing in mind Laurence Venuti’s very valid concerns about the status of the translator today – which isn’t a good one – I guess what I’m trying to say is that a translator should strive to get as much fun out of translating as possible. Language is bound up with the way we see the world, and conceptual metaphor, the proverb, the pun, are all ways in which we have the possibility to delve right into the spirit of the text – why not imagine the source text author is looking on with a smile?
As for the pun, then, my strategy is a simple one: if nothing comes to mind immediately – which is rare; I tend to work quickly – then I move on, leave it to the subconscious process; something will come along in the next 24 hours, rather like the source text author might work.
For Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love, I did just that: met with my first ‘hurdle’ on page 3 and decided to move on:
AEH: ‘[...] There are places in Jebb’s Sophocles where the responsibility for reading the metre seems to have been handed over to the Gas, Light and Coke Company.’
The salient word being ‘metre’ – either poetic beat or something we might once have put a shilling in.
My response was:
« Il ya des parties dans le Sophocle de Jebb où la responsabilité concernant la scansion semble avoir été mise en place en accordance avec les mesures de sa taille. »
My gloss is:
‘It there has parts in the Sophocles of Jebb where the responsibility concerning the scansion seems to have been put in place in accordance with the measurements of his waist.’
What is the purpose here of Stoppard’s pun? Primarily to make the audience laugh. One doesn’t put money in a ‘metre’ in France exactly, so I chose to play with ‘mesure’ – ‘measurement’ in English – which can be used for poetry as well as clothes sizes. If I’ve managed to keep with the theme, yet chosen to play with a different word, then perhaps I’ve attained my goal with part compensation. I believe the translation works equally well.
A pun I was actually able to put to the test earlier this year, on a real live French boy, was my translation of a chapter from children’s author Roald Dahl’s The BFG – now here’s a writer who enjoyed his word play! And rightly so: nobody appreciates a pun more than a child; I think it’s the thrill of getting it. My daughter loves this one in particular:
‘Meanings is not important,’ said the BFG. ‘I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.’
The translation I tested on the French boy reads:
« Les signifiances n’avons pas d’importance, dit le GGG. Je ne peux pas toujours avoir des raisons. Des fois c’est plutôt des raisins. »
Here is something of a part back/part literal translation:
‘Meanings has not any importance, said the BFG. I cannot always have reasons. Sometimes it’s more like grapes.’
The ‘left’ and ‘right’ wordplay was out of the question, but again I was able to work with the same sentence, and add to the theme of food: ‘avoir raison’ – translating as ‘to be right’; literally ‘to have reason’ – and ‘avoir raisins’, literally ‘to have grapes’. Once more, if something was lost, something else was gained – Roald Dahl is one of those writers I can’t help but feel is sitting beside me! As for my little French friend, well, his mum tells me he now uses it at parties.
Very free rewriting is better than omission, I have heard said somewhere, I just can’t remember where... And as I sit here writing this blog, keeping in mind all I have said, I arbitrarily turn a page of Lewis Carroll’s The Annotated Alice and meet with:
“Why did you call him tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” Alice asked.
“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle angrily. “Really you are very dull.”
Still looks scary out of context, doesn’t it... but that’s all it is, out of context. I must have a go at translating the book one day.
Bibliography:
Sarah Addams and Lena Kaarbebol quotations taken from a copy of Outside in, Translating Children’s Literature
Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, 1997, Faber and Faber
Roald Dahl’s The BFG, 1996, A Ted smart Publication
Phylis Zatlin quotation taken from her Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation, 2005, Multilingual Matters Ltd
The Annotated Alice, Lewis Carroll – chapter provided by BJ Epstein

Biography of Chris Rose:
After graduating in French Language and Literature with subsidiary Spanish from The University of Sheffield, I have mainly taught English, in London, on the south east coast of England, and in France, where I lived for nearly eight years. It was in France where I also began to write, completing a novel as well as a number of short stories. I’ve also dabbled in children’s stories – not the easier option some might believe.
I am currently reading for a Masters in Literary Translation at The UEA, where I am able to combine just about all my language interests in the one package; it is a course I’d recommend for any budding novelist/poet/ translator...

Belay the translator!

One of the things I have enjoyed about studying Literary Translation is being given texts that I have never been faced with before or would never have thought myself capable of doing. From nonsense rhyme to a psychological thriller, we have had a wide range of texts put in front of us. But there has been one genre that I knew was going to be quite a challenge for me: Drama. Everyone who goes to school in England will have had their fair share of Shakespeare. I completed my secondary education in Turkey and we did not study English Literature. The fact that I have never studied the genre I’m translating may not be such an issue; I can read the play and get a sense of what is going on and the style it has been written in. But no, the play in question is Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. For all I know I may as well be translating Carroll’s Jabberwocky again! But at least those were made up words. This is nonsense in a language that I can actually speak. I have never really felt at a disadvantage before when translating from or into English. But this time I’m not so sure of myself. As for the references, those are a completely different matter.

I start translating the first two lines into Turkish and already there is a problem.

Charon ‘Belay the painter there, sir!’

From the introduction I already know that someone is approaching the bank of the Styx. I look up what ‘belay’ means and it turns out to be a term that means to fasten or secure. So there’s a painter approaching the bank of the Styx and Charon is ordering someone to moor the boat. After having translated about a page or more I realise that this person is not actually a painter, but a Professor with a possible personality disorder. And that the reference to ‘the painter’ is the Victorian art critic John Ruskin who appears a few lines down in the play. There are many more references to Oxford and mythology in the text which makes it especially difficult when translating for a Turkish audience. I do not want to under mind them but I doubt they would get the references at all. What do I do then? Do I try and find an equivalent, or do I just leave it as it is? The setting of the play is so particular I think I need to leave it as it is, plus there is no equivalent that I can think of. Another aspect of the text that I thought might be a problem was the use of Latin and Ancient Greek. This is where I feel at a disadvantage on behalf of my Target Culture. I am afraid of having already alienated them with my references to Oxford and now they have to struggle with dead languages. But wait, Stoppard has saved me the trouble and has provided translations in English. All is not lost after all!

Of course there are many other issues related to the translation of Drama. I have to think about the target audience of the text. Is this going to be read by an academic or am I translating for the purpose of a performance? Does the dialogue flow as well as in the original? Should I just trust my language abilities and leave the rest to the audience?

After all this complaining I am glad I got given this assignment. As translators we may not always (or never) be lucky enough to pick what we want to translate and should be willing to give different genres a go. However hard I found the translation of this play, I have not thrown the towel in yet with Drama. Although next time I might start with something a bit easier!

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 Mystery of Translating Crime Fiction

It is my view that in order to translate a literary text, it is necessary to have some understanding of its genre. Given that conventions can differ between cultures, a translator should ideally have read a number of texts from that particular genre in both the source and target culture before beginning to translate.

Crime fiction is a genre which has been hitting the top of the bestseller lists for a while now and novels of this kind from Scandinavia in particular have seen an impressive rise in popularity. Translated crime fiction, therefore, currently fills the shelves in bookshops and in libraries. So it seemed to me, as an aspiring translator, important to consider the characteristics of crime fiction and some of the challenges involved in its translation.

What did I already know about crime fiction before I began reading about it academically for the Case Studies module? As a library assistant, I know only too well that crime books are extremely popular. Not only that, people who read crime fiction do not generally pick up one book with a yellow ‘CRI’ sticker on the spine and then head for a different section of the library. They select a stack of crime books. They read an entire series from start to finish. They read every book ever written by one author then move on to the next author ‘who writes like’ the first. Crime fiction is addictive and this I have learnt from experience. I was brought up to read about and indeed watch Hercule Poirot exercising his “little grey cells” and have recently devoured twenty novels about M.C. Beaton’s middle-aged amateur detective, Agatha Raisin. And this was all before I was introduced to the unputdownable chilling thrillers by Sophie Hannah.

In fact, crime fiction has long been criticised for its formulaic nature and as a result has traditionally been classed as ‘low’ literature. However, as I have already identified, crime fiction is a popular genre and I would even argue that this could be due to its formula as readers step into the detectives’ shoes and attempt to solve the riddles, which they know will undoubtedly be solved by the end of the final chapter. It could be that readers are most attracted to the charismatic nature of the hero or the gripping plotlines with their anticipated unexpected twists and graphically violent scenes.

Or perhaps the popularity of these works of fiction stems from the honest and often brutal portrayal of real life. As B.J. Epstein discusses in the article ‘Girl with the Dragon Translation: Translating Thrillers and Thrilling Translations’, through the portrayal of crimes and the reactions to them as well as the specific language used by crime authors, the reader is given an insight into the ideology and mindset of the culture in which the novel is set as well as those of the author. The boom of Scandinavian crime fiction has previously been put down to the loss of faith in the welfare system and at a recent conference called ‘Crime across the Continent’, Dr. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen similarly mentioned its “emphasis on social realism and critique” whilst Barry Forshaw, who has written extensively on the subject, talked about the fact that Scandinavian crime writers are now regarded as “social commentators.”

As crime fiction is so deeply rooted in and reflective of a specific culture, the translator is faced with a number of difficult decisions to make such as those regarding names, places and cultural references. The language of crime fiction has been discussed at great length, for example by Epstein, because the use of slang, dialects, swearwords and jargon feature heavily in such novels and the usage of such language varies between cultures. Should the source culture be reflected as closely as possible in the translation? Surely this would enable the target audience to learn about different cultures and ideologies whilst remaining faithful to the original intentions and voice of the author. On the other hand, the translator could change aspects of the original text in order to make it more accessible to the target audience but with the risk of losing in translation elements of the source culture which are important to the text. However, in this case, what is likely to be gained instead is an insight into the ideologies of the target culture and indeed the translator. In addition to cultural and linguistic aspects, the translator must also take into account the translation of suspense whilst being careful not to provide the target audience with any additional hints which did not appear in the original.

It is safe to say that the translation of crime fiction is challenging as I have learnt from my own attempt to translate a section of The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah into German. However, it is also extremely rewarding to solve the puzzles we are faced with in such translations. In fact, I believe that translating crime fiction is of great importance because, as Porter suggested, the novels which are popular within a certain culture can tell us a lot about that culture and, as a reader of crime fiction, I hope that it could help the so-called ‘low’ literature of today become the classic literature of tomorrow.

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

The devil and the didacticism

Before coming back to university I had never really thought about how you would answer the question as to what children’s literature actually is. I (like many others presumably) would naturally assume that this most common of terms liberally bounded about would have a straightforward meaning. After all, in nearly every bookshop shelf space is dedicated to this most vague label of literary category. How wrong I was to originally assume that this was an easy question to answer.

Varying definitions spring forth from all corners within the literary, psychological and legal domains as to what a child is, which must of course be answered before one can assign any form of literature to this particular stratum of society. I wonder, what with Prof. Gillian Lathey’s talks on translating children’s literature and the prominent issue of authors, editors, publishers, parents, and teachers being those who are the key decision-makers on matters of suitability, readability and eventual consumption, whether all child-oriented literature ends up becoming a broader genre which Sandra Beckett(2009) and Rachel Falconer (2009) call crossover fiction.

Tales written by Charles Perrault originally written for the French court at Versailles eventually ended up in the children’s canon as well as literary canon in its broadest sense and this is exactly the point. Millennia old themes of tragedy, heroism, paganism, gods and demons, comedy, adventure epics, new worlds, fairies, fantasy lands were and are common in tales intended for both adults and children. These themes can be traced back through the mists of time to antiquity and its literature such as The Odyssey and the Iliad which have inspired in their wake such literary and historical epics such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s many plays, and the Icelandic sagas which have themselves spawned a new impetus in writing fantasy epics since the Victorian era. The list seems endless when one begins to count the literary classics such as Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and the twentieth century’s hefty tomes in the forms of The Lord of the Rings, The Gormenghast Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Earthsea Series, His Dark Materials Trilogy, and the king of them all when it comes to academic research and commentary, the infamous Harry Potter.

These modern novels have their roots in these recurring plots and age-old themes and could be argued to be reworks, or if one will allow the expression ‘spin-offs’. However one trait they have in common is that an element of adventure and the ‘unknown’ is present. One can easily imagine the original verse being recited around a fire with whole communities listening in, being absorbed by its moral messages and didacticism. Adults created, recited, promulgated, disseminated and passed down these tales by oral tradition for many generations as if they were sacred texts that must be remembered forevermore. They were, and indeed still are, an integral part to many cultures (perhaps in the form of nursery rhyme). They are there to teach, inform, and demonstrate the consequences of actions.

As adults we reminisce about these tales stories which I would say is an indicator of a long-lasting appeal and that these tales should all be considered crossover fiction. As my post suggests, it’s maybe time to move on from labelling genres with vague terms and perhaps start viewing the translation of children’s literature as translating the moral messages to be passed down to the next generation; messages which all of us can live by. And who doesn’t like a bit of adventure mixed in for good measure anyway...?

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. He can be contacted at adamkirkpatrick@hotmail.co.uk.