Untranslatability of Translation: Adaptation Thesis

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The Untranslatability of ‘Translation’:
The Work of Translation as Adaptation
Robert Eric Shoemaker
Naropa University MFA Thesis
Prepared for Colorado Translators Association
This handout/workbook is a full outline of my presentation, provided for you to follow along and
participate. Please do not borrow or utilize this handout or any text herein without consulting the
presenter for permission. Thank you!
Description:
Western translation studies has gestured at metaphors for the act of translation, but not yet found an
adequate term for the work; the word “translation,” though a closer metaphor than some, does not
provide an accurate representation of the act. Because of various perspectives both public and
scholarly, the word “translation” occludes the pragmatics of the act it represents and devalues the
position of the translators themselves. Evaluating and negating the various terms available to us as
translators forwards a synthesis and close reading of translation studies to recommend a new path
without specific terminology. Eschewing formerly held notions of equivalence from language to
language and embracing not only the importance of the translator but of the holistic context of a
thorough translation moves translators toward a more complex theory and practice of the actuality of
literary “translation.”
Our Topic:
“What does a literary translator do? What is the word for the praxis of the art form?”
“Wishful thinking and early training in arithmetic have convinced a majority of people that there
are such things as equals in the world.”
– Gregory Rabassa, “No Two Snowflakes Are Alike”
Translation:
“Trans”, or “across”, followed by suffix, the root equivalent to “relate”
From the Latin “translatus”, to carry, across, languages.
Adaptation:
From the Latin “adaptare”, or fit to new contexts or situations
Presentation outline, following the form of the essay:
-Western translation theorists have gestured at metaphors for the act of translation, but not yet found
an adequate term for the work; the word “translation”, though a closer metaphor than some, does not
provide an accurate representation of the act.
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-Because of various perspectives both public and scholarly, the word “translation” occludes the
pragmatics of the act it represents and devalues the artistry of the translators themselves.
-Evaluating and negating the various terms available to us as translators forwards a synthesis and
close reading of translation studies to recommend a new path without specific terminology.
-Eschewing formerly held notions of equivalence from language to language and embracing not only
the importance of the translator but of the holistic context of a thorough translation moves translators
toward a more complex theory and practice of the actuality of literary “translation”.
1
Western translation theorists have gestured at metaphors for the act of translation, but
not yet found an adequate term for the work; the word “translation”, though a closer
metaphor than some, does not provide an accurate representation of the act.
Schleiermacher…
In his essay “On the Different Methods of Translating”, Friedrich Schleiermacher puts forth the idea
that translation either brings the reader closer to the writer, or brings the writer closer to the reader
(42). Schleiermacher implies that, through translation, the work can be made more like what the
reader knows (closer to the reader), or can train the reader to know what the original writer knows
(closer to the writer). The closeness Schleiermacher refers to is not lingual, but essential and implicit.
In other words, literal translation misses the mark of familiarizing reader, text, and writer.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. "On the Different Methods of Translating". Theories of Translation,
edited by Rainier Schulte, The University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 36-55.
Look at the spine or cover of a work translated from a “foreign” language into English and it is likely
that you will not see the name of the translator credited, unless they are particularly famous among
academics or readers. In literary translations, the translator has historically been less important than
the original writer; the “translator’s invisibility” has been criticized by various academics – most
famously by Lawrence Venuti – and rightly so, for the translator’s job is not to be a conduit, not
merely to “translate”, a word that implies finding equivalence in meaning (Venuti, “The Translator’s
Invisibility”). The translator is the new co-author of the work, not a machine. This misunderstanding
and mislabeling has devalued the artistry of the act of translation, and a new idiom must be entered to
balance the practice with the name. The analysis of “partial” metaphors for this art as well as the
discrepancies inherent in perspectives on “translation” recommends a new path without specific
terminology. By eschewing formerly held notions of equivalence from language to language and
embracing not only the importance of the translator but the holistic contextualization of a thorough
translation, translation studies can begin to move toward a more thorough notion of the actuality of
literary translation.
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Venuti, Lawrence. "The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation". Criticism, Volume 28,
No. 2, 1986, pp. 179-212.
Derrida …
Jacques Derrida implies that intent is only what the reader lays upon a text because of the dissonance
between sign, signifier, and signified in semiotics:
All signifiers, and first and foremost the written signifier, are derivative with regard to what
would wed the voice indissolubly to the mind or to the thought of the signified sense, indeed to
the thing itself… The written signifier is always technical and representative. It has no
constitutive meaning. This derivation is the very origin of the notion of the “signifier.” (11)
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, JHU Press, 2016.
Deconstructionism & Equivalence…
Often, so called literal translators make an attempt to be structurally or definitionally accurate
according to the grammar of the original language or the piece’s intent, but it is again a matter of
opinion what that intent is— and often what the grammar accomplishes. Intent is a long-troubled
analysis put upon creative work by readers and critics.
In this sense, the derivative nature of the signifier in the mind of the reader can create a disjunction
between meaning and sense. However, not only grammar, mechanics, or an abstract idea of intent or
sense play into translation.
Rabassa…
Rabassa problematizes the idea of literal translation with an apt analogy about sound sense between
languages:
Shakespeare says, “A drum! a drum! Macbeth doth come,” but this thunderous announcement
would bumble along in French as “Un tambour! un tambour! Macbeth vient.” It is obvious
that the translator will have to take liberties with the text in order to preserve the spirit of
what Shakespeare “wants to say.” (2-3)
Rabassa, Gregory. “No Two Snowflakes are Alike: Translation as Metaphor”. The Craft of
Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 112.
The translator makes a series of choices that affect the final (and new) piece applying sense, rhyme,
meter, affect, emotion, self-awareness, poetics, interpreted meaning, several of these, or something
else. Within any of these choices, and many more unmentioned, any number of possibilities, screwups, casualties, and strokes of genius open up, and each choice affects the piece differently. This
process cannot be literal; it is hardly “translation” in the sense of the word as it has come to be known.
This is not finding equivalence, or “carrying meaning across”. This is an intersection of multiples of
meaning— meanings similar to the original. This is an activity equal to original writing; it is creating
itself, not finding equivalence. The word “translation” as it has come to be understood is insufficient
for the activity it represents.
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2
Evaluating and negating the various terms available to us as translators forwards a
synthesis and close reading of translation studies to recommend a new path without
specific terminology.
Transcreation…
Transcreation, the act of “translation”, is, in a pragmatic sense, a series of choices the artist makes to
send the text through a “prism of translation” which can lead in any number of different directions,
shades, and hues, with rays undetectable to the naked eye (de la Rochere and Hennard 301). This
prism, through which the “white light” of the original text is sent, releases different strains for every
transcreator— different interpretations that cannot be compared “literally” to the original. This
perspective on translation invokes “translator-centeredness” over the work to some extent, but it is
necessary to see that the translator is, in some sense, re-writing the original to create their own. Hu
Gengshen writes of the “translator as central link of the translating process… balancing between the
two ‘poles’” of original and newly translated ecosystems. (Hu 4)
de la Rochere, Dutheil and Martine Hennard. Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s
Translational Poetics. Wayne State University Press, 2013.
Hu, Gengshen. "On the Chinese Cultural 'Genes' in Eco-Translatology". City University of Macao,
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/centras/.
To Literally Illustrate…
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Adaptation…
The work of adaptation is not so different from that of “translation” in that it brings meaning in new
multiples across from one work to a new work; it “transcreates”, across forms, the meaning and
essence of a piece as dictated by the adaptor. Hu writes of “Translation as Adaptation and Selection”,
meaning that the process of translation is adaptive from original to new ecosystems and involves
evolutions and “natural selections” of specific elements of the original’s DNA to be translated to the
final piece by the transcreator (5). Adaptation can be thought of as the translation of one’s
interpretation of a piece’s essence from one form to another. Changes are made, and adapting to new
forms and new climates becomes necessary. (It is the same with translation. From one language to
another, a massive change is made, and no doubt may be in the mind of the artist that the result is a
new piece. Things about the new work resemble the previous work, but they are not the same, are not
equivalent.) It is hardly necessary to call one the “original” and one the “translation” or “adaptation”,
for both are unique and related works of their own, full of choices made by the writer that lend
themselves to the whole— both are new works. Rabassa offers the term adaptation as well: “…then,
translation is really what we might call transformation. It is a form of adaptation, making the new
metaphor fit the original metaphor” (2).
3
Because of various perspectives both public and scholarly, the word “translation”
occludes the pragmatics of the act it represents and devalues the artistry of the
translators themselves.
For Example, “duende”…
The duende of Federico García Lorca and Andalucía is a good example. Lorca’s speech-turned-essay,
“La teoría y el juego del duende”, is notoriously difficult to translate, and for good reason; the Spanish
term "duende" does not have any equivalent in English. In Spanish, the word can refer to an imp, a
demonic creature, or a spirit of inspiration, sometimes embodied in performers of dance or song or
poetry (Flamenco is a prime example). Duende is the darker influence compared to the muse and the
angel (which Lorca leaves examples of), but duende is worth the fight because of its extreme power of
expression. Many English translators of this seminal essay choose to leave the word untranslated (as
the Spanish “duende”) to retain its power and mystery. However, this exoticizes and leaves foreign the
“essence of inspiration”, rather than opening the meaning of the word up to the essay’s audience.
Malinowski…
Duende is a word with magical properties. For many poets since Lorca’s tragic execution, duende has
become a buzzword for an often unattainable state of oneness with poetry and the essence of being.
Bronislaw Malinowski might say that this word is untranslatable and/or that it is “meaningless” in the
sense that this word does not involve “‘meaning’ in the ordinary sense, but a specific magical influence
which [this word is] believed to exercise” (108). This magical utterance must be continually re-created
in the “appropriate context of native belief” to see how the word is understood (Malinowski 109). “We
must show what effect [magical words] are believed to produce, and marshal all the linguistic data
available to show how and why they produce this effect” (Malinowski 111). In other words, ordinary
logic does not apply to magical words, meaning does not apply to untranslatable words; only context
and essence can illuminate them to the reader.
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Malinowski, Bronislaw. “The Meaning of Meaningless Words and the Coefficient of Weirdness”.
Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Towards an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome
Rothenberg and Diane Rothenberg, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 107-112.
Practical Application
Prompt: 10-15 minutes (depending on time)
Turn to the person next to you; this is your partner.
This exercise can be done with or without translation aids; it may be more interesting without, so be
bold.
I have included four selections from Lorca’s essay in your handouts. As a pair, pick one
to translate together. Your task is to transcreate something essential from the essay
selection, using the ideas in this presentation so far, rather than to translate the
“equivalent meaning” of the text in English. This is an experiment, a practical for you to
try, so do something crazy. Be enduendado.
If “duende” isn’t appealing to you, think of another “magical word” and translate a text that includes
or expounds on that word.
Prompts:
1) ... Estos sonidos negros son el misterio, las raíces que se clavan en el limo que todos conocemos,
que todos ignoramos, pero de donde nos llega lo que es sustancial en el arte. Sonidos negros dijo el
hombre popular de España y coincidió con Goethe, que hace la definición del duende al hablar de
Paganini, diciendo: "Poder misterioso que todos sienten y que ningún filósofo explica".
2) Así, pues, el duende es un poder y no un obrar, es un luchar y no un pensar. Yo he oído decir a un
viejo maestro guitarrista: "El duende no está en la garganta; el duende sube por dentro desde la
planta de los pies". Es decir, no es cuestión de facultad, sino de verdadero estilo vivo; es decir, de
sangre; es decir, de viejísima cultura, de creación en acto.
3) Este "poder misterioso que todos sienten y que ningún filósofo explica" es, en suma, el espíritu de
la sierra, el mismo duende que abrazó el corazón de Nietzsche, que lo buscaba en sus formas
exteriores sobre el puente Rialto o en la música de Bizet, sin encontrarlo y sin saber que el duende
que él perseguía había saltado de los misteriosos griegos a las bailarinas de Cádiz o al dionisíaco
grito degollado de la siguiriya de Silverio...
4) El duende... ¿Dónde está el duende? Por el arco vacío entra un aire mental que sopla con
insistencia sobre las cabezas de los muertos, en busca de nuevos paisajes y acentos ignorados: un
aire con olor de saliva de niño, de hierba machacada y velo de medusa que anuncia el constante
bautizo de las cosas recién creadas.
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This page is space for your translation activity:
Chosen selection from "duende: #_______
(or not) ______________
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4
Eschewing formerly held notions of equivalence from language to language and
embracing not only the importance of the translator but of the holistic context of a
thorough translation moves translators toward a more complex theory and practice of
the actuality of literary “translation”.
Rothenberg …
The more the translator can perceive of the original – not only the language but, more basically
perhaps, the living situation from which it comes &, very much so, the living voice of the singer – the
more of it he should be able to deliver. In the same process he will be presenting something – i.e.,
making something present, or making something as a present – for his own time & place. (“Total
Translation” 393)
Rothenberg verifies the adaptational element of this art form through his “present” pun – the
transcreator presents the work to the reader because of their adaptational additions and their
complex understanding of the original. Here lies the crux of Lorca’s inspiration, of duende:
inspiration lives inside the artist, it “‘climbs inside from the planting of the feet.’ It is said that it is not
a question of faculty, it is not from truth style lives; rather, from the blood; rather, from the old world
culture, from creation in action” (Shoemaker 4). In Lorca’s specificity to Andalucía, there is a
universal essence of inspiration. Faithfulness to the re-creation of Lorca’s duende is not in the recreation of exact settings and exact images, but of the multiplicity of meaning, of the essence, of
“creation in action”.
Rothenberg, Jerome.“Total Translation: An Experiment in the Presentation of American Indian
Poetry”. Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Towards an Ethnopoetics, edited by
Jerome Rothenberg and Diane Rothenberg, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 381-393.
Doctrine of the Mean…
In Rabassa’s words, the translator “invents” an artificial middle-ground for language (middle between
Spain and America for the American English translation of duende) (10-11). This middle ground
manifests as a complex mixture of similarities between two locales, essentially a place where the new
text can live in a similar way to how it lived in the former location. Hu describes this middle ground in
translation, emphasizing the Doctrine of the Mean as well as the middle, or “Zhong”: “According to
this doctrine, some notions in translation, such as the over-emphasis of ‘literal translation and free
translation’, ‘foreignization and domestication’, ‘over-representation and under-representation’, etc.,
are unacceptable” (Hu 3-4). Rather, the middle is the only path to a truly holistic and complete new
work.
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Total Translation…
Rothenberg would call this “total translation”, the translation of the experience of the piece rather
than just the verbiage (“Total Translation”). This is reminiscent of Ezra Pound’s assertion on the
Chinese character, which, however flawed, resonates still: “the purpose of poetical translation is the
poetry, not the verbal definitions in dictionaries” (6, emphasis added). Transcreators are to respond
to all of the experiences they are aware of— the feeling, the essence, the context, and the text.
Pound, Ezra and Ernest Fenollosa. The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. City
Lights Books, 1936.
Anamnesis…
A total transcreation focuses on the experience of the original work, its multiple meanings, its essence,
and attempts to craft that instead of focusing on exactitude, grammar, and rules. As Stanley
Lombardo elaborates in his notes on Inferno and Odyssey, “Insofar as it can be distinguished from
meaning, style – and the spirit that informs it – is the deepest concern of the translator, whose great
task, like Dante’s and Virgil’s before him, is to hear his author’s voice as his own” (Lombardo Inferno
xxxviii). “This is the way of translation as art, a kind of anamnesis in which we remember our own
voice as the poet’s” (Lombardo Odyssey 383). This anamnesis, this essential oneness from the Greek
“remembrance” of a “supposed previous existence”, is only accomplished by the transcreator fully
immersing in the original context and pulling out the essence by trans-creating it within an inspired
new context (OxfordDictionaries.com).
Lombardo, Stanley. Translator's Preface. Inferno, by Dante, Hackett Publishing Company, 2009,
pp. xxvii-xli.
---. Translator's Postscript. Odyssey, by Homer, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 382-385.
Spicer…
It is very difficult. We want to transfer the immediate object, the immediate emotion to the
poem—and yet the immediate always has hundreds of its own words clinging to it, shortlived and tenacious as barnacles. And it is wrong to scrape them off and substitute others. A
poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer. The words around the immediate shrivel and decay
like flesh around the body. No mummy-sheet of tradition can be used to stop the process.
Objects, words must be led across time not preserved against it. I yell “Shit” down a cliff at an
ocean. Even in my lifetime the immediacy of that word will fade. It will be as dead as “Alas”.
But if I put the real cliff and the real ocean into the poem, the word “Shit” will ride along with
them, travel the time-machine until cliffs and oceans disappear. (19, emphasis added)
Spicer, Jack. After Lorca. White Rabbit Press, 1957.
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By Way of Conclusion…
If artists are to lead texts “across time” and not preserve them within their original context, if their
works are to excite and entrance new audiences where they occur, they must not only see their own
voice in the original author’s voice, but be encompassing of the entirety of texts— of the contexts
within which they were conceived. The praxis of this translation, whether called total translation,
transcreation, adaptation, anamnesis, or a word yet to be coined, results in a fuller and more
encompassing new work, exposing the original text’s entirety to a new climate.
Thank you!
Contact Information:
Robert Eric Shoemaker,
MFA Naropa University (Spring 2018)
PhD Student University of Louisville (Fall 2018)
[email protected]
reshoemaker.com
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