Works Cited

II.

Translation Studies, then, has moved beyond the old distinctions that sought to devalue the study and practice of translation by the use of such terminological distinctions as ‘scientific v. creative’. The case for Translation Studies and for translation itself is summed up by Octavio Paz in his short work on translation named, Traduccion: literatura y literalidad (1971). All texts, he claims, being part of a literary system descended from and related to other systems, are ‘translations of translation of translations’:

"Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text" (cited in Susan Bassnett, 1980: 38).

Walter Benjamin’s significant essay "The Task of the Translator became very important for the deconstructionist theory because it so strongly questions the idea of an essential origin. A translation for Benjamin does not indicate an original text, it has nothing to do with communication, its purpose is not to carry meaning, etc. He illustrates the relationship between the supposed original and translation by using the symbol of a tangent: translation is like a straight line or curve, which touches the circle (i.e. the original) in one single point only to follow its own way thereafter.

Neither the original nor the translation, neither the language of the original nor the language of the translation are permanent and lifelong classes. They do not have essential quality and are constantly transformed in space and time. I want to further analyse the above stated symbol of tangent; at the very beginning, the translator keeps both the Source Language (S.L) and Target Language (T.L) in mind and tries to translate each and every word carefully. But, it, sometimes, becomes extremely difficult for a translator to decode the whole textbook literally; consequently, he takes the help of his own view and attempts to translate accordingly. Notably, I have, with the development of this article, presented certain examples related to this fact.

Eugene Nida says that defining a dynamic equivalent translation is to describe it as "the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message". This definition contains three essential terms, namely

(1) equivalent, which refers to the source-language message;
(2) natural, which refers to the receptor language and
(3) closest, which "binds the two orientations together on the basis of the highest degree of approximation".

Natural refers to three areas of the communication process: a natural description should fit the whole receptor language and culture, the context of the specific message, and the receptor-language audience. Therefore, the translation should bear no clear trace of a foreign origin. A diagram of the communicative relationship in the process of translation shows that the translator is both receiver and emitter, the end and the beginning of two separate but linked chains of communication:

Author – Text – Receiver - = Translator – Text - Receiver

Homi K. Bhabha, in the last chapter of his book The Location of Culture (1994), begins with an epigraph from Walter Benjamin’s classic essay on translation:

"Translation passes through continua of transformation, not abstract ideas of identity and similarity" (Bhabha, 1994: 212).

According to Bhabha, translation is the performative nature of cultural communication. He believes that translation is language in actu (enunciation, positionality) rather than language in situ (enonce, or propositionality) and the sign of translation continually tells, or ‘tolls’ the different times and spaces between cultural authority and its performative practices.

In his article, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, Roman Jakobson goes on immediately to point to the central problem in all types: that while messages may serve as adequate interpretations of code units or messages, there is ordinarily no full equivalence through translation. Because complete equivalence (in sense of synonymy or sameness) cannot take place in any of his categories, Jakobson declares that all poetic art is, therefore, technically untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition - from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition - from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition - from one system of signs into another, e.g. from verbal art into music, dance, cinema or painting. What Jakobson is saying here is taken up again by Georges Mounin, the French theorist who

"perceives translation as a series of operations of which the starting point and the end product are ‘significations’ and the function within a given culture" (cited in Susan Bassnett, 1980: 15).

So, for example, the English word pastry (выпечка), if translated into Italian without regard for its signification, will not be able to perform its function of meaning within a sentence, even though there may be a dictionary ‘equivalent’; for pasta has a completely different associative field. In this case, the translator has to resort to a combination of units in order to find an approximate equivalent. Jakobson gives the example of the Russian word syr (a food made of fermented pressed curds) which translates roughly into English as cottage cheese. In his case, Jakobson claims, the translation is only an adequate interpretation of an alien code unit and equivalence is impossible.

Nida says that no translation that attempts to bridge a wide cultural gap can hope to eliminate all traces of the foreign setting. He reckons that it is inevitable that when source and receptor languages represent very different cultures there should be many basic themes and accounts which cannot be ‘naturalized’ by the process of translating. A natural translation must also be in accordance with the context of the specific message, which could include grammatical and lexical elements but also detailed matters such as intonation and sentence rhythm. Naturalness of expression in the receptor is, according to Nida, basically a problem of co-suitability. Therefore, the translator operates criteria that transcend the purely linguistic, and a process of decoding and recoding takes place. Nida’s model of the translation process illustrates the stages involved:

As examples of some of the complexities involved in the interlingual translation of what might seem to be uncontroversial items, consider the question of translating hello into French, German and Italian. This task would seem, at first glance, to be straightforward, since all are Indo-European languages, closely related lexically and syntactically, and terms of greeting and assent are common to all three. With the translation of the word hello, the Standard English form of friendly greeting when meeting, the problems are multiplied. The dictionaries give:

French: ca va?; hallo
German: wie geht’s; hallo
Italian: ola; pronto; ciao

Whilst English does not distinguish between the word used when greeting someone face to face and that used when answering the telephone, French, German and Italian all do make that distinction. The Italian pronto can only be used as a telephonic greeting, like the German hallo. The Italian ciao, by far the most common form of greeting in all sections of Italian society, is used equally on arrival and departure, being a word of greeting linked to a moment of contact between individuals either coming or going and not to the specific context of arrival or initial encounter. So, for example, the translator faced with the task of translating hello into French must first extract from the term a core of meaning and the stages of the process, following Nida’s diagram, might look like this:

What has happened during the translation process is that the notion of greeting has been isolated and the word hello has been replaced by a phrase carrying the same notion. Jakobson would describe this as interlingual transposition, while A. Ludskanov would call it a semiotic transformation in his ‘A Semiotic Approach to the Theory of Translation’, Language Sciences (1975):

"Semiotic transformations (Ts) are the replacements of the signs encoding a message by signs of another code, preserving (so far as possible in the face of entropy) invariant information with respect to a given system of reference" (cited in Susan Bassnett, 1980:18).

The question of semiotic transformation is further extended when considering the translation of a simple noun, such as the English butter. Following Saussure, the structural relationship between the signified (signifie) or concept of butter and the signifier (significant) or the sound image made by the word butter constitutes the linguistic sign butter. And since language is perceived as a system of interdependent relations, it follows that butter operates within English as a noun in a particular structural relationship. For butter in British English carries with it a set of associations of wholesomeness, purity and high status (in comparison to margarine, once perceived only as second-rate butter though now marketed also as practical because it does not set hard under refrigeration).

When translating butter into Italian, there is a straightforward word-for-word substitution: butter-burro. Both butter and burro describe the product made from milk and marketed as a creamy-coloured slab of edible grease for human consumption. And yet within their separate cultural contexts butter and burro cannot be considered as signifying the same. In Italy, burro, normally light coloured and unsalted, is used primarily for cooking, and caries no association of high status, whilst in Britain butter, most often bright yellow and salted, is used for spreading on bread and less frequently in cooking. Because of the high status of butter, the phrase bread and butter is the accepted usage even where the product used is actually margarine. So, there is a distinction between both between the objects signified by butter and burro and between the function and value of those objects in their cultural context. The problem of equivalence here involves the utilization and perception of the object in a given context. The butter-burro translation, whilst perfectly adequate on one level, also serves as a reminder of the validity of Sapir’s statement that each language represents a separate reality. The word butter describes a specifically identifiable product, but in the case of the word with a wider range of SL meanings the problems increase. Nida’s diagrammatic sketch of the semantic structure of spirit (in Towards a Science of Translating) illustrates a more complex set of semantic relationships.

Source: Susan Bassnett (1980). Translation Studies, p. 20.

Where there is such a rich set of semantic relationships as in this case, a word can be used in punning and word-play, a form of humour that operates by confusing or mixing the various meaning (e.g. the jokes about the drunken priest who has been communing too often with the ‘holy spirit’, etc.). The translator, then, must be concerned with the particular use of spirit in the sentence itself, in the sentence in its structural relation to other sentences, and in the overall textual and cultural contexts of the sentence. So, for example,

The spirit of the dead child rose from the grave.

refers to 7 and not to any other of Nida’s categories, whereas

The spirit of the house lived on

could refer to 5 or 7 or, used metaphorically, to 6 or 8 and the meaning can only be determined by the context.

III.

Correspondingly, Edward Sapir claims that ‘language is a guide to social reality’ and that human beings are at the mercy of the language that has become the medium of expression for their society. Experience, he asserts, is largely determined by the language habits of the community, and each separate structure represents a separate reality. He further mentions in his text, Culture, Language and Personality (1956):

"No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached" (cited in Susan Bassnett, 1980: 13).

Sapir’s thesis, endorsed later by Benjamin Lee Whorf, is related to the more recent view advanced by the Soviet semiotician, Juri Lotman that language is a modelling system. Lotman describes literature and art in general as secondary modelling systems, as an indication of the fact that they are derived from the primary modelling system of language, and declares as firmly as Sapir or Whorf that no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure of natural language. Then, language is the heart within the body of culture, and it is the interaction between the two that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his peril.

According to Nico Wiersema, cultures are getting closer and closer and this is something that he believed translators need to take into account. In the end, it all depends on what the translator, or more often, the publisher wants to achieve with a certain translation. In his opinion, by entering SL cultural elements:

1. the text will be read more fluently (no stops),
2. the text remains more exotic, more foreign,
3. the translator is closer to the source culture and the reader of the target texts gets a more genuine image of the source culture.

Every literary unit from the individual sentence to the whole order of words can be seen in relation to the concept of system. In particular, we can look at individual works, literary genres, and the whole of literature as related systems, and at literature as a system within the larger system of ‘human culture’. The failure of many translators to understand that a literary text is made up of a complex set of systems existing in a dialectical relationship with other sets outside its boundaries has often led them to focus on particular aspects of a text at the expense of others. It seems to be easier for the (careless) prose translator to consider content as separable from form. As an example of what can happen when the translator stresses content at the expense of the total structure, let us take the following extract; the opening of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain:

"An unassuming young man was travelling in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of Grisons, on a three weeks’ visit.

From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey – too long, indeed, for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country; goes up hill and down dale, descends from the plateaus of Southern Germany to the shores of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across marshes once thought to be bottomless".

This fast-moving, energetic passage, consisting of three sentences with four verbs of action and movement pulls the reader straight into the narrative. The no-nonsense details of the journey and the time of the young man’s proposed stay combine with the authorial value judgment on the brevity of the visit. In short, what we have here is a strong descriptive opening, with a powerful authorial presence, and the world picture painted here has close affinities with what the reader perceives as his own rational world.

The problem with this translation comes when it is set against the original German text, and the extent of the distance between the S.L and the T.L versions is compared. Mann’s novel opens as follows:

Ein einfacher junger Mensch reiste im Hochsommer von Hamburg, seiner Vaterstadt, nach Davos-Platz im Graubundischen. Er fuhr auf Besuch fur drei Wochen.

Von Hamburg bis dorthinauf, das ist aber eine weite Reise; zu weit eigentlich im Verhaltnis zu einem so kurzen Aufenthalt. Es geht durch mehrerer Herren Lander, bergauf and bergab, von der suddeutsshen Hochebene hinunter zum Gestade des Schwabischen Meeres und zu Schiff uber seine springende Wellen hin, dahin uber Schlunde, die fruher fur unergrundlich galten.

In this opening passage, the reader is given a series of clues that key him in to some of the codes operating through the novel. It is, of course, not restricted within the boundaries imposed by the realist world and depicts the ideological struggle between such dramatic opposites as health and sickness, life and death, democracy and reaction, and is set in a sanatorium where the characters are ‘on holiday’, removed from the struggle for existence. The journey depicted in the first few sentences is therefore functioning no more than one level: there is the young man’s actual journey; the symbolic journey across a nation; the journey as a metaphor for the quest on which the reader is about to embark. Moreover, in Mann’s description of the journey there are deliberate devices (e.g. the use of the classical term Gestade for shore) recalling eighteenth-century modes, for another major line through the novel is an attempt to bring together two stylistic modes, the lyrical and the prosaic. The English translator’s compression of Mann’s sentence structures reduces the number of levels on which the reader can approach the text, for clearly the translator’s prime concern has been to create a sense of rapid movement. So, the second sentence has been integrated with the first to form a single unit and the fourth sentence has been shortened by deliberate omissions (e.g. zu Schiff – by boat). The stylized terms describing places have been replaced by straightforward, geographical names and the stately language of Mann’s text has been replaced with a series of clichés in a conversational account of an overly long journey.

There are also other variations. The introduction of the protagonist in Mann’s first sentence in such deliberately decharacterised terms is yet another key to the reader, but by translating einfacher (ordinary) as unassuming, the English translator introduces a powerful element of characterization and altars the reader’s perspective. And it is difficult not to conclude that the English translator has inadequately grasped the significance of the novel when there is even a case of mistranslation, Schlunde (abysses) rendered as marshes. In this regard, Wolfgang Iser points out in his The Implied Reader (1974) that

“The intentional correlatives disclose subtle connections which individually are less concrete than the statements, claims and observations, even though these only take on their real meaningfulness through the interaction of their correlatives” (Iser, 1974: 277).

I think the sentence does not consist solely of a statement but aims at something beyond what it actually says, since sentences within a literary text are always an indication of something that is to come, the structure of which is foreshadowed by their specific content. If the translator handles sentences for their specific content only, the result will involve a loss of dimension. In the case of the English translation of the text stated above, the sentences seem to have been translated at face value, rather than as component units in a complex overall structure. Using Popovic’s terminology, the English versions show several types of negative shift involving

1. mistranslation of information,
2. subinterpretation of the original text,
3. superficial interpretation of connections between intentional correlatives.

It might seem unfair to lay so much emphasis on cases of negative shift that emerge from the first few sentences of a vast work. But, the point that needs to be made is that although analysis of narrative has had enormous influence since Shlovsky’s early theory of prose, there are obviously many readers who still adhere to the principle that a novel consists primarily of paraphrasable material content that can be translated straightforwardly. However, there are some people who do not support the prose paraphrase of a poem. Frequently, translators of novels take pains to create readable T.L texts, avoiding the stilted effect that can follow from adhering too closely to S.L syntactical structures, but fail to consider the way in which individual sentences from part of the total structure. And in pointing out this failure, I believe that I am not so much passing judgement on the work of individuals as pointing towards a whole area of translation that needs to be looked at more closely.

Hillaire Belloc presented six general rules for the translator of prose texts Taylorian lecture, On Translation in 1931:

1. The translator should not plod on, word by word or sentence by sentence, but should always block out which means that he should consider the work as an integral unit and translate in sections.
2. The translator should render idiom by idiom ‘and idioms of their nature demand translation into another form from that of the original.
3. The translator must render ‘intention by intention’, bearing in mind that ‘the intention of a phrase in one language may be less emphatic than the form of the phrase, or it may be more emphatic’. By ‘intention’, Belloc seems to be talking about the weight a given expression may have in a particular context in the S.L that would be disproportionate if translated literally into the T.L.
4. Belloc warns against les faux amis, those words or structures that may appear to correspond in both S.L and T.L but actually do not e.g. demander - to ask, translated wrongly as to demand.
5. The translator is advised to ‘transmute boldly’ and Belloc suggests that essence to translating is ‘the resurrection of an alien thing in a native body’.
6. The translator should never embellish.

I think that his order of priorities in the above stated six rules is a little curious, but he truly emphasises on the need for the translator to consider the prose text as a structured whole whilst bearing in mind the stylistic and syntactical exigencies of the T.L. He accepts that there is a moral responsibility to the original, but feels that the translator has the right to significantly change the text in the translation process in order to provide the T.L reader with a text that matches T.L stylistic and idiomatic norms.

The first point of Belloc discusses the need for the translator to block out his work and this fact raises perhaps the central problem for the prose-translator: the difficulty of determining translation units. It must be clear at the beginning that the text is the prime unit. But, whereas the poet translator can more easily break the prime text down into translatable units, e.g. lines, verses, stanzas, the prose-translator has a more complex task. Surely, many novels are broken down into chapters or sections, but the structuring of a prose text is not at all as linear as the chapter divisions might indicate. Yet if the translator takes each sentence or paragraph as a minimum unit and translates it without relating it to the overall work, then a mistranslation may take place.

The way round this dilemma must once again be sought through considering the function both of the text and of the devices within the text itself. If the translator of Mann had considered the function of the description of both the young man and the journey, she would have understood the reasons for Mann’s choice of language. Every prime text is made up of a series of interlocking systems, each of which has a determinable function in relation to the whole, and it is the task of the translator to understand these functions.

As an example, let us consider the problem of translating proper names in Russian prose texts, a problem that has bedeviled generations of translators. Cathy Porter’s recent translation of Alexandra Kollontai’s Love of Worker Bees contains the following note:

“Russians have a first (‘Christian’) name, a patronymic and a surname. The customary mode of address is first name plus patronymic, thus, Vasilisa Dementevna, Maria Semenovna. There are more intimate abbreviations of first names which have subtly affectionate, patronizing or friendly overtones. So for instance Vasilisa becomes Vasya, Vasyuk, and Vladimir becomes Volodya, Volodka, Volodechka, Volya” (Kollontai, 1977: 226).

So the translator explains, quite properly, the Russian naming system, but this note is of little help during the actual reading process, for Cathy Porter retains the variations of name in the T.L version and the English reader sometimes faces the confusing amount of names on a single page all referring to the same character. In short, the S.L system has been transported into the T.L system, where it can only cause confusion and obstruct the process of reading. Moreover, as Boris Uspensky has shown in the valuable book A Poetics of Composition, the use of names in Russian can indicate shifts in point of view. According to Uspensky, the naming system can indicate multiple points of view, as a character is perceived both by other characters in the novel and from within the narrative. Therefore, it is essential for the translator in the translation process to consider the function of the naming system, rather than the system itself. It is almost useless to give the English reader multiple variants of a name if he does not know about the function of those variants; the English naming system is fully different and the translator must keep it in mind and follow Belloc’s saying to render idiom by idiom.

I must say that the case of Russian proper names is only one example of the problem of trying to translate an S.L system into T.L that does not have a comparable system. Other examples might be found in the use by an author of dialect forms, or of regional linguistic devices particular to a specific area or class in the S.L. As Robert M. Adams states in Proteus, His Lies, His Truth (1973):

“Paris cannot be London or New York, it must be Paris; our hero must be Pierre, not Peter; he must drink an aperitif, not a cocktail; smoke Gauloises, not Kents; and walk down the rue du Bac, not Black Street. On the other hand, when he is introduced to a lady, he’ll sound silly if he says, ‘I am enchanted, Madame” (Adams, 1973: 12).

IV.

Certainly, a sweeping statement is evident here, but there is sufficient proof in the critical literature produced on this topic to uphold the following three points: that the rhetoric of the British Empire has created a complete manuscript of cultural supremacy with steady translation into political practice and that the rhetorical structure of all these textbooks always tries to mask itself as the only objective explanation on hand, thus ideologically hiding its very favoritism. Of course, the most ample study of this dogma is, Said's Orientalism, 1978, which openly refers to concepts of rhetoric. As a remark,

"One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed…. If the world has become immediately accessible to a Western citizen living in the electronic age, the Orient too has drawn nearer to him, and is now less a myth perhaps than a place criss-crossed by Western, especially American interests" (cited in Homi K. Bhabha, 1994: 46).

However, the translator has the right to differ organically, to be independent, provided that independence is pursued for the sake of the original in order to reproduce it as a living work. Achebe’s initial work of fiction, Things Fall Apart (1958), has got another short example which should convey this point:

"Mr. Smith said to his interpreter: Tell them to go away from here. This is the house of God and I will not live to see it desecrated.
Okeke interpreted wisely to the spirits of Umuofia: The white man says he is happy you have come to him with your grievances like friends. He will be happy if you leave the matter in his hands." (Achebe, 1958: 134)

It goes without saying that this is a planned mistranslation. At this point, the translator figure has told a lie; though he lied in order to avoid quarrel, he is not only cheating himself but also has turned into a traitor or cheat in the readers’ eyes. Now, it is enough to emphasise on the need to change the idea of translation. Hillaire Belloc summed up the problem of status in his On Translation, and his words are still perfectly applicable today:

"The art of translation is a subsidiary art and derivative. On this account it has never been granted the dignity of original work and has suffered too much in the general judgment of letters. This natural underestimation of its value has had the bad practical effect of lowering the standard demanded, and in some periods has almost destroyed the art altogether. The corresponding misunderstanding of its character has added to its degradation: neither its importance nor its difficulty has been grasped" (cited in Susan Bassnett, 1980: 2).

If the text describes a situation which has elements peculiar to the natural environment, institutions and culture of its language area, there is an inevitable loss of meaning, since the transference to the translator's language can only be approximate. Nevertheless, we must value the translator's work precisely because the mediator always acts as a get-between. However, it is usually thought that something constantly gets lost in translation. Conversely, some people stick, firmly, to the concept that something can also be obtained. Certainly, these gains are traces of a transcultural space that can merely be traced, repeated and adjusted in the continuing modus operandi of cross-cultural communication. As Susan Bassnett mentions in her magnum opus, Translation Studies (1980):

"Once the principle is accepted that sameness cannot exist between two languages, it becomes possible to approach the question of loss and gain in the translation process. It is again an indication of the low status of translation that so much time should have been spent on discussing what is lost in the transfer of a text from S.L to T.L whilst ignoring what can also be gained, for the translator can at times enrich or clarify the S.L text as a direct result of the translation process. Moreover, what is often seen as ‘lost’ from the S.L context may be replaced in the T.L context" (Bassnett, 1980: 30).

V.

My remarks and my reflections on this topic arise from a very simple fact: translators, beside dealing with the difficulties inherent to translation of prose, must consider the aesthetic aspects of the text, its beauty and style, as well as its marks (lexical, grammatical, or phonological), keeping in mind that one language’s stylistic marks can be drastically different from another’s. The important idea is that the quality of the translation be the same in both languages while also maintaining the integrity of the contents at the same time. However, translation brings cultures closer; in each translation, there will be a certain distortion between cultures. The translator will have to defend the choices he/she makes, but there is currently an option for including more foreign words in certain prose. Therefore, it is now possible to keep S.L elements in target texts. As Lahiri rightly says,

"Almost all of my characters are translators, insofar as they must make sense of the foreign to survive" (Lahiri, 2000: 120).

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua (1958). Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann.

Adams, Robert M. (1973). Proteus, His Lies, His Truth (New York: W.W. Norton).

Bassnett, Susan (1980). Translation Studies. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.

Belloc, Hilaire (1931). On Translation (Oxford: The Clarendon Press).

Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Catford, J. C. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics London: Oxford University Press.

Iser, Wolfgang (1974). The Implied Reader (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press).

Kollontai, Alexandra (1977). Love of Worker Bees, tr. Cathy Porter (London: Virago).

Lahiri, Jhumpa (2000). “My Intimate Alien.” Outlook (New Delhi), special annual issue on “Stree” [Woman].

Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain, tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter with an afterword by the author, 1927, Secker and Warburg.

Venuti, Lawrence (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.