Henry and Myrna Knepler Freshman Essay 1st Prize

Modes of Translation

Julia King

To begin an essay, we’re taught that we must establish a hook. A poetic or striking turn of phrase that captures the reader, holds them in place. The strength of the writer’s language must be enough to both hold a reader’s attention and correctly convey a message. If the reader doesn’t understand or isn’t compelled by the introduction, then the writer has failed. When they cannot articulate what is important, a writer is said to have a poor command of language. We create languages in order to communicate the abstract, to bridge the gaps between individuals. A difference in language, then, introduces a new set of challenges. A failure here is two fold; when a message isn’t properly conveyed, the reader doesn’t understand because for them, there is nothing to understand. When people use the term “lost in translation,” the meaning is not only lost to the reader but to the originator, and the message resides in the middle in between the two, unused. This literature review seeks to define translation in three separate capacities, the linguistic, the political, and the colonial, to establish the role of the translator and the concept of the reader or receiver, and ultimately analyze all of these concepts to create a framework for further research into the topic.

Part One: The Linguistic Aspects of Translation

In order for translation to exist, there first must be an establishment of understanding even from the smallest units of a language, words. It is important to define the purpose of them within the structural framework that is the conventions of their language. Words can exist as signs, meaning they both have a definition unto themselves as well as a designation away from themselves, linking them to an object or idea. The act of linking words to ideas invites interpretation. Interpretation in translation resides in three categories, either being interlingual, (concerning the actions of two separate languages), or intralingual (the language being contained unto itself). According to Roman Jakobson, an “intralingual translation is seen as rewording by means of some other language, and interlingual translation is either translation proper, an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language, or transmutation, an interpretation of verbal signs by means of non verbal sign systems” (Jakobson, 233). These three modes of interpretation implicitly establish one of the main theories of translation: the idea of equivalency between two different languages. “Equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics” (Jakobson, 233). The differences in language can only be established by first possessing the knowledge of that language, both in terms of usage as well as understanding its structure and conventions. The grammar of a language is a means by which experiences are expressed, so, by extension, there isn’t a fault in grammar that makes a translation impossible. “If there is a deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally by circumlocutions” (Jakobson, 234). The resolution of any deficiency marks a split in terms of what a translation must convey and what it may convey.

Some scholars assert that “kinship [between languages] does not necessarily involve likeness” (Benjamin, 75). What determines the likeness of languages moves past their structural similarities and moves into the intent of the texts themselves. In fact, the language of a translation must be set aside in order to properly examine the intent of the original text. Once the source material has been removed from its original language, there is want to assume that the intent then becomes exaggerated by way of ostensibly multiplying the two languages together. Whether or not the intent comes across as a didactic relation of information is a determining factor in assessing the quality of a translation. “Sometimes what rings wrong in a translation is an invitation to think otherwise… these instances in which the translator briefly transforms into an author will convey to the reader that they are reading a version; so these interventions do not damage but rather protect the original” (Taber, 248). This deliberate act of preservation still maintains the intent, though not with a deft hand. The intent of the work is ultimately what lends itself to translation, what establishes its significance in and of itself.

Part Two: The Task of the Translator and the Act of Translation

The work of the translator is to assume that the reader is knowledgeable of their own tongue while setting themselves in a simultaneous position of non-knowledge and governance over each language. This begs the question: who is a translation meant for? “[Consideration] of the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an “ideal” receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art” (Benjamin, 71). This doesn’t remove the translator’s individuality from the text. Ultimately, their own self interest may make an appearance, but it is not a conscious act, because the unconscious doesn’t require any kind of intent. This reasserts the idea that the intent resides within the text itself. The act of translating a text begins with the relation of two objects, though the second object is the result of the action. The goal is to create the truth of the original in a foreign tongue. The concept of truth within translation rests within two separate meanings: one derived from the universality of translation, and the other from the truth of translation in general, which removes the original from its material and ideological identity and reproduces it in order to make the work concrete and imbued with meaning.

Part Three: The Politics of Translation

The politics of translation resides in the concept of translatability, which is determined in this lens by historical forces, and as a result creates another version of history. “Translation is seen as an ethical, political, and ideological activity rather than as a mechanical linguistic exercise” (Tymoczko, 443). This moves the central focus of translation from intent to an emphasis on the truth. Truth acts here “as a political category, which means that every act of translation institutes a partially fixed identity on a terrain of undecidability” (Végső, 60). The task of the translator is by extension repositioned, becoming one who is “telling” the reader something. The reader then becomes an active participant within the text itself, helping the translator define the function of the translation beyond the confines of themselves as an individual and instead by how it works within the context of the world beyond them. Translation now exists as an ideological practice. The ideology of a translation consists of: “The subject of the source text and the sources representation of that subject, The various speech acts instantiated in the source text relevant to the original context, Layered together with the translators representation of the source text, Its purported relevance to the receptor audience, The various speech acts of the translation itself addressing the target audience, [and] Resonances and discrepancies between these two utterances” (Tymoczko, 448). The addition of an intended audience removes the concept of relating two texts to one another and instead becomes an act of exchange, to serve more utilitarian purposes like gathering information and intelligence.

Part Four: Translation as A Mode of Colonialism

Translation now has the option to deliberately remove anything from the original text because the texts are no longer in consistent direct relation to one another. This makes the translation more present, and further removes the author of the original from their own work, and presupposes the translator in their place (Nietzsche, 69). The replacement of the original text with this newer translation grants it a new sort of power, removing it from the context of its original language and exploiting it in order for more people to consume it, a colonialist act. Translation, when used as a mode of colonialism, “does not serve to preserve. It serves to make legible” (Siddiqi, 80). These new translations are required to make sense, there is no more freedom within the text from which one can interpret any sort of meaning. They crumble culture down in order to make it more digestible. “Words, terms, phrases can be separated from the creature of their language and used as mere labels. They then become inert and empty… And such dead “word mongering” wipes out memory and breeds a ruthless complacency” (Berger). This leeches the meaning from words, making certain that there can be no renewal without excess pushback from those who wish to use the subjugated tongue.

Part Five: Discussion

While the sources do provide an emphasis on the contradictory nature of translation, a common feature they fail to fully extrapolate on is the concept of equality and inherent superiority on all levels of translation. This concept functions best under a hypothetical “selfish state.” This concept of the state acting as a unified self stems from the text “The Ethics of Self Concern by John Cottingham.” Using a Hobbesian, or selfish approach to establish this concept fails to acknowledge the fact that “self interest has an important place in any plausible account of human nature but it does not occupy all the space.” (Cottingham, 800)

This is true for individuals, and although this state acts as an individual, its desire to consume more unto itself negates its status as one. The self concern of the state exists on a level almost impossible to comprehend, and thus its separation of ethics from reality rings all the more insidious rather than a necessary means to an end. This pursuit of power, which presides over everything, in this example, will be narrowed down to the concept of language.

The basis of language resides in understanding, seeking to prescribe meaning to words. This search then leads to the question of: who establishes meaning? The answer, as is the case with most things that have to do with translation, is split in two; meaning can be established both by those who created the language and by those who use it. Meaning, then, can both reside within the history of a language and be revised by later speakers of it by means of present day examination and analysis. To give something a definition, or to provide it a name, then gives it purpose. The purpose of naming is to establish significance, a way to distinguish an individual from the collective. To pass on names is to participate in a cultural transfer, to search for synonyms that replicate the weight and effect behind a certain word. “Synonomy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence” (Jakobson 233). There will always be an extra step required in order to reach the original meaning. In order for this synonymy to take hold in a colonial translation, there first must exist the simultaneous acknowledgment and rejection of the inherent equality of languages, a disregard for the existence of conventions, grammar, and structures that all tongues possess. Through the acknowledgment of equivalence, a colonial power then gains the ability to make revisions to any work under the guise of deficiency.

This perceived lack of translatability gives rise to foreignness, which presumes that with the extra step taken to preserve a text in a different tongue, that that same amount of labor was not done while constructing the original, thus making the original text and by extension its language, inferior. This removal of equality does not displace the original, in fact, “the original can only be raised there anew and at other points of time” (Benjamin, 77). When the text is approached a second time, how will it be approached? Under the “selfish state”, where ethics is separated from reality, a roadblock appears in the process of translation. For without ethics, a translator is bound “to give more or less permanent form to a mere travesty on the ideas and the language of his original, and to defraud, without recourse, both the foreign author and the public’’ (Nollen, 76). Without colonialism, “the event of translation is undecidable…gives rise to the subject of translation…falls within the register of truth and not that of meaning…[and] points to something unnameable” (Végső, 63).

Within the state, then, the event of translation is decided, as well as the subject, and falls into the register of meaning, which can be named and can therefore be whatever it needs to. Translators, by extension, are “in conspiratorial bind with their publishers, responsible, at times collaterally, for the selective transmission of culture, producing such bibliographic lacunae as that which may lead, for example, an anglophone audience to conflate enshrined texts taught in French grammar schools (such as, for francophiles,those written by Mallarme, Proust or Flaubert, to name but these) with the most provocative exemplars of contemporary experimentation” (Nathanaël). Here another equivalency is established, but it is manufactured and therefore not inherent to the practice, where it ultimately resides beneath the established cannon of the receiving tongue. Whatever it is that may have been lost is pushed aside in favor of understanding. The state will “do [its] best to form a class who may be interpreters between [them] and the millions whom [they] govern” (Siddiqi, 75). Those translators who sit in the middle have no choice but to be complicit, for they hold no power over the state and should have no desire to challenge it. This realization that, since all actors under the state can then be subject to its rule, combined with its authority over language, leads it to find a new way to reap the benefits of reshaping a language, which is that “cultural capital leads to actual capital” (Hur, 71). In order to introduce a culture that may be foreign, that culture must by extension, produce capital. This means that the works chosen to be translated must make waves, so much so that the work becomes so embedded in the recipient’s culture that the audience forgets that it’s been translated.

To move between two languages and transpose meaning tests the bounds of language. It requires one to get close, armed with the knowledge that even if someone can reach the other side there’ll be a hair’s breadth of distance between them. Translation exists in a paradoxical relationship with the world. It exists simultaneously both within and outside of politics, culture, and language. It contains the truth, but with something stuck to its back, nearly equal, but not the same.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Translated by Harry Zohn. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dreyden to Derrida, edited by Rainer Schute and John Biguenet, The University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 71-82.

Berger, John. “John Berger: ‘Writing Is an off-Shoot of Something Deeper’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Dec. 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/ dec/12/john-berger-writing-is-an-off-shoot-of-something-deeper.

Cottingham, John. “The Ethics of Self-Concern.” Ethics, vol. 101, no. 4, 1991, pp. 798–817. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381665. Accessed 11 Nov. 2022.

Hur, Anton. “The Mythical English Reader.” Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, edited by Dr. Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press, 2022, pp. 69-73.

Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”. On Translation, edited by Reuben Arthur Brower, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 232-239.

Nathanaël. “Hatred of Translation.” Music & Literature, Music & Literature: A Humanities Journal, 24 Jan. 2019, https://www.musicandliterature.org/features/2015/4/30/ hatred-of-translation.

Nietzsche, Freiderich. “On the Problem of Translation.” Translated by Peter Mollenhauer. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dreyden to Derrida, edited by Rainer Schute and John Biguenet, The University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 68-70.

Nollen, John S. “The Ethics of Translation.” Modern Language Notes, vol. 10, no. 2, 1895, pp. 38–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2919207. Accessed 10 Nov. 2022.

Siddiqi, Manazir, Ayesha. “Preserving the Tender Things.” Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, edited by Dr. Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press, 2022, pp. 74-90.

Taber, Elisa. “Bad Translation.” Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, edited by Dr. Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press, 2022, pp. 240-259.

Tymoczko, Maria. “Translation: Ethics, Ideology, Action.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 47, no. 3, 2006, pp. 442–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25091110. Accessed 10 Nov. 2022.

Végső, Roland. “The Parapraxis of Translation.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 12, no. 2, 2012, pp. 47–68. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41949784. Accessed 10 Nov. 2022.