Chekhov’s Mistess

Isn’t that the Beauty of Translation?

Mr. Orthofer points out an article in the Financial Times (good to see someone outside of the financial jet set reading that paper) on translation called “Literary License.” While the article itself is not groundbreaking, it does evoke the challenges of translating and what to me is the infinite questions about reading that are awakened through being confronted with a world of literature originating outside of the borders of one’s own language.

Angel Gurria-Quintana says:

Strictly speaking, translations cannot aspire to be anything other than possible versions. After all, Briggs reminds me, the simplest sentence in War and Peace is only eight words long in Russian, yet more than 2,000 valid permutations are possible when translating it into English.

I used to find that thought numbing to the point of inaction, particularly when reading classics where there are often more than one translation to choose from. Yet even reading in your own language is a translation. If you don’t believe me re-enact a college class and have some friends read the same story and discuss it and see if anyone has the exact same response. Or even just read a handful of reviews, which can sometimes seem like the critics each read a different text; or just read Hofstadter’s Le Ton beau de Marot. One of the issues that came up on my recent discussion on Laird Hunt’s The Exquisite was that I read the book without thinking too much about the 9/11 component, yet a review I read came solely from that point.

What is translation if not an interpretation? Once we think in those terms, we’ve opened the door for the sometimes less than literal result of different translations over time.

Ultimately everything is a translation in my eyes. Many books are retelling of myths, like for example, Christopher Logue’s ”All Day Permanent Red,” among others in his series of books re-interpreting the Iliad. Besides translating from the Greek, he’s translating the story into something else – both equally valid in my eyes. And if you believe that idea that all stories come from (7?) essential plots, then everything is a translation.

If I read a book in English (the only language I can read in) and I look up a word, aren’t I then imposing Mr. Webster’s and my own meaning on that word and therefore the author’s intent?

And if you have a lot of dictionaries, try looking up the same word in several of them and you will find yourself doing a lot of interpretation of meaning and context.

The best analogy comes from music – a performance of a symphony is a translation of a composer’s music (often with the help of notes, either latin notation or annotations). At one level each conductor’s music may sound the same – ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta (can’t you tell, that’s Ode to Joy), but listening more closely, changes in timing or tone (not to mention possible reinstrumentation) can make the music sound quite different. I have a recording of Bach’s Goldberg variations that were recorded twice by the same pianist (on a piano and I think they were written for clavichord) that sound completely different from one another. Or for another example, the different versions of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”  – I think I have five or six interpretations of that song – each one is indeed a completely different interpretation. We embrace these translations, but not in books.

This all feels almost too obvious to write, but the dismal statistics on translations into English make me think otherwise. The real problem lies in the fact that with books we rarely have the time to read more than one translation (if it exists) of a book and have no choice but to accept one person’s interpretation, which is the biggest distinction between books and music. I’d be happy to read the Maude translation of War & Peace (which I have and Scott just has) and then read the Briggs or myriad other attempts, or to my own taste, the upcoming Pevear, Volokhonsky translation to get those variances, but I sure do know that adding an 1100 page book I’ve already read to the list I haven’t is just not going to happen (well, probably, because I still want to re-read The Quixote in an older translation too).

Ultimately though, in terms of public acceptance of books in translation, the problem lies in the – in my view misplaced – desire for literalness. To that, I agree with Gurria-Quintana “Even if translation is treason, it is a necessary form of treachery on which readers of world literature depend” and only hope that at some point we can take the “world” out of that sentence.

comments

Makes perfect sense to me!  I hope to add my own thoughts to the topic soon.  (And I love how reading Don Quixote has opened me up to this other world...)

    – amcorrea (10/24  at  04:27 PM)

Don Quixote is the book that made me think about translation problem in fact. I haven’t read it yet, because I’ve strates to learn spanish to read it in original. After few courses I started to wonder if that helps. I’ll know the language, but I’ll still missunderstand and interprate a lot… I think there’s no good solution.

    – Dorota (10/25  at  09:32 AM)

The Quixote is an excellent example because it itself is (fictionally) a translation from the Arabic and a re-telling of a story through that translation and here-say. Ultimately, by learning Spanish (I don’t mean to say not to) to read you are becoming the translator - inherently you’ll trust yourself more than an outside translator, but always keep in mind that you are a translator yourself.

    – Bud (10/25  at  09:53 AM)

This post is quite interesting. I am a native Spanish speaker and my problems with translation began a long long time ago when I wanted to read Chronicles of Narnia (I was a child)and seemed imposible to me. Now that Im more involved in reading matters I definitely agree that every translation is always a new possible version. And that there is not any chance to fully understand the core of a Book in a foreign language if the reader doesn’t play the role of a translator. I think this is a task (and a blessing of you like) globalization has brought, I think this is a chance for everybody to get in to the “otherness” and try to approach “the other” in means of his/her language.

Kisses

www.entrelunasylunas.blogspot.com

    – Karina Falcon (10/30  at  03:13 PM)

I translate- much less now than earlier. The more books I finished the more I realized how difficult it really is. With most crafts, it gets easier as you go, doesn’t it? The Norwegians have a special word for translating poetry or difficult literature - it means “create again”. Why don’t we say transpose in English? Or . . .

    – ren.kat (11/09  at  09:37 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: October 23, 2006
• Filed Under:
  Translation

• Comments:5
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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