Hunting windmills
Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a nobleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. An occasional stew, beef more often than lamb, hash most nights, eggs and abstinence on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, sometimes squab as a treat on Sundays — these consumed three-fourths of his income.
– Don Quixote, translation by E. Grossman
Carlos Fuentes praises Edith Grossman’s recent translation of Cervantes whom she has rendered in a contemporary style. Others have cried foul.
There continues to be a great deal of debate within the translation community over whether the translation of an old or ancient text should be done in a contemporary or in an outmoded style.
Proponents of the contemporary believe that a work should be as accessible as possible, as accessible to today’s readers as it was to those who read it at the time of its initial publication.
Those who support the idea that a translation should sound and feel as close to the original as possible rebuke proponents of the contemporary for pandering to reader laziness, believing that a good deal of the charm and significance of a text will be lost if its original style is eradicated.
Even taking an all-English example like Shakespeare, most of us cringe at the thought of the breathtaking verbal gymnastics being reduced to prosaic modern talk (double cringe if uttered by Leonardo di Caprio). What’s the point? Well, the point for some is that the work can only continue to be widely appreciated if modernized. (Imagine what happens to it when translated.)
How many people would have read Shakespeare if it had not been part of their high school curriculum?
Works coming to us from another language add a further dimension to the conundrum. How many translators are capable of being faithful to the style of Aristotle (basing their knowledge largely on conjecture of how people spoke in those days), or even to 17th century Italian?
Should an extinct Italian word be rendered with an extinct English word? (Which would of course require a footnote.) Who but the most curious readers would appreciate the effort? Who but the most erudite can judge it? So should the effort be made for its own sake, to keep the original alive in all its aspects – as a reminder and a way to measure the distance we’ve travelled.
What are we, as translators, trying to accomplish?
On a more pedestrian level, there are a thousand considerations to deal with.
Say, for instance, we need to translate a character’s southern French dialect that includes a smattering of Occitan words. What do we choose? A dialect from the southern US, northern England or nothing at all… If you choose A, you’ve got a guy with a Mississippi accent telling us about his brush with Louis XIV’s men down by the Mediterranean. Y’all.
What to do with an allusion to a poem that is well-known in the source language, and unknown in the target? With repetition, with sentences that last three pages…
Whatever choice is made, we are channelling the reader’s experience. The greater the distance in time and culture between language A and language B, the harder the process becomes and the less likely it is to be successful.
Any work that manages to sustain its place in our collective sphere of reference will be translated repeatedly until, with luck, the right balance between past and present is struck. A balance between reading pleasure and a reliable view of the sights and sounds of the past.
Oh, who am I kidding? The debate is bound to go on ad infinitum. Irksome and pedantic as it sometimes becomes, this pleases me to no end.
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Comment
- “A balance between reading pleasure and a reliable view of the sights and sounds of the past.”
This is exactly what I look for in a translated work. I own and have tried to read the old translation of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” (as I love the story), but I fall asleep within the first chapter. Lord knows how much I’ve tried to read that book! This new translation looks promising and based on my desire to read the story all the way through for once, I’ll pick up a copy.
I’ve always wondered what goals some translators have… To faithfully reproduce the work into another language, I feel, means one would like more persons to have access to that work.
In certain exceptions (my bias is Shakespeare), isn’t it best to present the work in a modern idiom? Drawing interest from an audience that may have been put off by the intimidation of the original work? While also preserving the original work and the “true to the original” translation available for those people that wish to read the authentic work itself.
One pebble after another eventually leads you to the road, yes? It’s how I ended up reading our man Bill in his original words.
— roggey Nov 21, 11:13am # - I love my John Rutherford translation of the Quixote. It falls in between the ‘modern idiom’ and an outmoded form.
As a reader I’d prefer the outmoded form simply because I find a greater elegance in it. A translation of Plato in the the Plain Style of Robertson Davies (which, as he used it, would count as outmoded) would be infinitely preferable to the See Spot Run translations I’ve been bumping into.
But then I also believe that literature should make the reader work. If you want to be lazy, go watch television. Andrew Hurley’s translation of the Borges’ Collected Fictions is a good example here; he made such an effort to make sure that the reader knew what was going on in terms of social background and linguistic tics that he produced a flavourless, mechanical translation (and he changed the title of Funes the Memorious!). Reading the English translations by Borges and others in Laybrinths leave us with mystery and difficulty, but also they leave us with a better book.
And don’t you dare touch my Shakespeare; I couldn’t care less about lazy highschool students. Besides, he’s meant to be seen, not read.
— August Nov 21, 12:18pm # - “Well, the point for some is that the work can only continue to be widely appreciated if modernized.”
I understand the need for translations from one language to another—you just cannot make the leap from reading no Russian to reading Tolstoy, for example, without considerable effort—but Shakespeare is essentially modern English. (Technically, it’s ‘early modern’, right?) If you have grown up reading English, you should know almost all you need to know to read Shakespeare. It would be a shame if someone settled for the Classics Illustrated editions instead of using a glossary and a little effort to read the originals.
— Eeksy-Peeksy Nov 21, 12:59pm # - I love the idea (from comment 1) of someone loving a story that they’ve not yet been able to read completely though… Good illustration of all the ways that stories can come to us.
And based on the posted fragment of the Grossman translation of Don Quixote: I like it…
— Michael Hayward Nov 21, 2:54pm # - I think we have to distinguish between updating earlier works in the same language and translating foreign works; the two don’t have much in common. As for the latter, I doubt there are any generalizations that will satisfy everyone—different translators and different readers will prefer different solutions. So, as our hostess implied, the more versions the better.
— language hat Nov 21, 4:41pm # - “Besides, [Shakespeare]’s meant to be seen, not read.”
Whua?
The two camps on this issue will always coexist, so the two versions of a given work should do the same. I also submit that nobody need go out of their way to keep both around, as they will support themselves as long as opinions differ. Two versions just make sense anyway: one for accessibility and interest, one for posterity and accuracy.
— mangoduck Nov 21, 4:58pm # - I was referring to Shakespeare’s plays. They are wonderful to read, but they are never so good on the page as they are, if you’ll forgive the rhyme, on the stage.
— August Nov 21, 6:34pm # - I am not sure I buy the, “create interest” argument for Don Quixote. It almost makes more sense for Shakespeare than Don Quixote. Consider the following from the Rutherford translation to compare to Grossman above.
“In a Village in La Mancha, the name of which I cannot quite recall, there lived not long ago one of those country gentleman or hidalgos who keep a lance in a rack, an ancient leather shield, a scrawny hack and a greyhound for coursing. A midday stew with rather more shin of beef than leg of lamb, the leftovers for supper most nights, lardy eggs on Saturdays, lentil broth on Fridays and on ocassional pigeon as a Sunday treat ate up three-quarters of his income.”
If this is so much more difficult to understand than Grossman’s translation, then the state of education is very pathetic indeed.
— Chris Nov 21, 9:27pm # - It is great to have a quote. The Grossman translation reads very well and is not what I might have expected from reading a review criticizing its contemporary style (the Rutherford reads very well too, though).
I see cannylinguist mentioned the beginning recently and discusses the word hidalgo:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cannylinguist/1384.html
— MM Nov 22, 5:19am # - And I forgot to say that there are translations into German of Shakespeare’s sonnets that win prizes but seem to me to miss the mark, contemporary or non-contemporary. But I suppose translations of Shakespeare will always win prizes.
— MM Nov 22, 5:23am # - Help! I am trying for the life of me to understand this translation theory thing. Literal or not? Dialectical or standard? Period or contemporary? It seems to me that there is not one iota of enlightenment anywhere. Anywhere!
I think it fair to claim that those competent enough to translate also have the brains to avoid the pitfalls of rigidly adhering to a policy of literal translation into a period dialect, non-literal translation into a contemporary standard dialect, or anything in between.
Do translation theorists think we’re all stupid, or are they making their bucks, betting on it?
Or am I completely off-base, deserving only ostracism?
— Simon Nov 22, 1:57pm # - Simon,
I’m not too sure what you’re driving at.
First, I’ll agree that some aspects of translation do not really need to be dissected down to the last iota; they fall under the realm of common sense and only academics will get giddy putting them under a microscope (well, okay, translators might too, but not in public – it’s simply part of the daily routine).
But, literary translation involves a good many complexities and an endless series of choices that are well worth talking about – particularly since there’s still room for improvement.
I don’t know that there is an easy or obvious answer to what the best way is to translate Ovid or Goethe or…
A “good” translation requires the translator to have extensive knowledge of the time period, the culture and, of course, the language as it was spoken in the day. The weight of words changes over time (for instance, saying “Go to hell” 50 years ago carried weight; today it doesn’t mean much in our culture, but still does in others). So you have to be able to measure the weight of the words and find a suitable equivalent.
But do you choose a contemporary or a past equivalent? I you select an old equivalent, can you presume that readers will understand that, or will the weight of the words be lost? If you choose a contemporary equivalent, will it not be jarring, anachronistic?
Is it the translator’s job to help the reader’s understanding, or is it merely to render the text as faithfully as possible?
That’s just one example, of course, and I don’t see how remaining silent about a profession where communication is key achieves anything (even if the best translators are the most self-effacing).
And, uh, just for the record, I doubt that translation theorists do it for the money.
— gail Nov 23, 6:14am # - What am I driving at? I’m still driving at “theory”, and the largely erroneous belief that translation theory has anything useful to say to translators. My, admittedly limited, experience tells me that it does not.
Since most translators are Pretty Intelligent People (not to mention Pretty, Intelligent People), theory is largely telling them stuff they already implicitly or explicitly know. Setting words to things so that we may talk about them is one thing (talking is a Good Thing—it’s good that you talk about these things, for example); laying hold of the phenomenon of translation and claiming that through my theorising it is mine, and that anyone who wants to talk about it had better do so in my jargon, is something else.
Theorising of the latter kind has killed most interesting discussion of literature—and brought the field of literary studies into disrepute; I would hate to see it do the same to translation. My fear is that it will, in time.
Oh, and before we agree that translation theorists don’t think of the money, did you notice that Umberto Eco has just published a book in which he simply agrees with St. Jerome?
— Simon Nov 23, 9:34am # - I agree. I too have a severe allergy to jargon that erases the charm of any work by reducing it to formulae and theory (as futile and annoying as trying to explain why something is funny).
I’ve started the Eco book. So far, he’s managed to spend 5 pages running phrases through Babelfish and saying: look what comes out!
Some of the examples are interesting, but nothing astonishing, and far too much time is spent critiquing his own translators’ rendering of his books.
A review of it by Michael Hoffman can be found here.
— gail Nov 23, 12:57pm # - I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree that jargon and theorizing have killed literary study. Jargon certainly gets in the way quite often, but occassionally it also facilitates textual study. Complex ideas cannot always be expressed simply; complex and specific language is often necessary. I am a liberal humanist, and I hate neologisms, but even I am willing to admit that they are occassionally important.
I’m currently working on a new model of textual meaning (ultimately a new model of the text), and while I doubt I’ll need to use nelogisms, I can guarantee you that I’ll have to use some jargon.
A good book to read: Graham Good’s “Humanism Betrayed: Theory, Ideology, and Culture in the Contemporary University”.
Ok. Tangent over.
— August Nov 23, 1:22pm # - Tangent well taken.
— gail Nov 24, 5:57am # - Hi Gail,
I have a comment on this
“Say, for instance, we need to translate a character’s southern French dialect that includes a smattering of Occitan words. What do we choose? A dialect from the southern US, northern England or nothing at all… If you choose A, you’ve got a guy with a Mississippi accent telling us about his brush with Louis XIV’s men down by the Mediterranean. Y’all.”
I saw once an interesting presentation by John Milton (from USP-Letras) on the topic of translating dialects. The translation case he discussed was The Color Purple into Portuguese (Alice Walker). The dilemma the translator faced there was how to maintain the dialect richness without choosing one specific Brazilian dialect to render the Southern way of speaking used by the characters. Brazilian Portuguese is quite homogeneous in all, but we some varieties of Portuguese: for example, Minas and Bahia Portuguese are not exactly the same. In Rio Grande do Sul they say tu instead of você, and so on and so forth. It seemed wrong to chose one of these variants in detriment of the others, after all, the setting of the book is not Bahia nor Minas, but the American South. So by choosing one of them, the translator would have made sound phoney, like a soap opera. The solution was making a melange of two or three dialectal variants of Portuguese to make the translation sound “idiomatic” without necessarily tying it down to one specific geographic region in Brazil. It makes sense to me! And according to JM the resulting work was nothing short of brilliant.
ME
— Enigmatic Mermaid Nov 26, 7:47am # - Your post and comments have prompted me to throw a few “DQ” openings onto my own blog for purposes of comparison. Thanks to all for the discussion.
— Jonathan Nov 26, 7:59am # - The politics of translation is a worthy and concerning topic. I guess one can deduce from your anecdotes that the US administration in Iraq is less interested in geneuine two way conversation and more interested in guiding traffic. Back in your houses please.
— Coup de Vent Nov 30, 6:46am # - I read a piece by Laxness a while back, translated from the Icelandic by the admirable journalist and TV face, Magnus Magnusson. I was rather distracted by some folksy Glasgow expressions in his version. My other recollection of literary translation is of speed-reading an English translation of ‘Le Père Goriot’ when up against an essay deadline. No doubt the original was a coffee-conditioned pot-boiler by the author, but it persuaded me to avoid translated literature in future when I could.
If ever I broke into literary translation, I guess I’d try for some kind of well-crafted contemporary neutral style.
But since I haven’t even tried it yet, who am I to comment? A propos, if anyone has read the English translation of ‘Sansibar, oder der letzte Grund’ by Alfred Andersch and has a view on it, please e-mail me! I had planned to translate it, but then learned that it was done soon after publication. Wouldn’t mind having a crack at it if anyone felt there were room for improvement!
David
— David Dec 2, 9:43am # - The new translation is alright, but Burton Raffel’s is still the best. If you’re not familiar with his work I suggest you remedy that post-haste.
— Wendy Dec 2, 11:46am # - In an ideal world we would read authors’ works in the original language. It’s like pronouncing place names as they are done in their own countries (in Russia, Moscow is pronounced “Mosk-VAH”—where the hell do we get “Moss-caow”?). The Italian Renaissance artist Titian suffers from the same malady. Modern-day Italians call him “Titziano,” so we should go with that (what they actually said in the 16th century, I have no idea, but Titziano is probably a lot closer than “Tee-shin”).
Borges is one of my favorite poets and I try to read him in the original Spanish (having grown up in New Mexico with 6 years of Spanish in school). I then read the English translation to fill in what I don’t know. There is really no comparison, no matter how good the translation, to his work in Spanish—how his words convey and embody meanings at which English can only hint. It’s like someone giving you a butterscotch candy and saying, “In my country this tastes like tomatillos and strawberries. Use your imagination.”
However, Borges was from Argentina and spoke a Spanish somewhat different than my textbook version (which includes a year of Castilian Spanish). As has been discussed above, dialectical problems can enter into the fray, and my Spanish-English dictionary may say one thing, but in Buenos Aires it may mean something entirely different. I once used the word “verga” to mean “tree trunk,” but a friend of mine, who is from El Salvador, thought I meant “penis.” I can just imagine the hot water that foreign exchange students can get in. (“Eh… what I meant to say is, “Please pass the butter…”).
Stuart
— Stuart Vail Dec 15, 12:46pm #
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