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2004-04-01 8:29 PM
Translation: Its Genealogy in the
West
Translation: Its Genealogy in the West
Andr¨
?
Lefevere
From
Susan
Bassnett
and
Andr¨
?
Lefevere
(eds.)
Transaltion,
History
And
Culture.
London and New York: Pinter. 1990
The history of translation
in the West may be said to begin with the
production of the
Septuagint. Like all
early 'historical facts', this one, too, is
conveniently shrouded in
legend.
Conveniently, because the legend will allow us to
isolate the basic constraints
that have
influenced, and continue to influence the history
of translation in the West
and the
other parts of the world it came into contact
with.
The Septuagint is the first
translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into
Greek. It was
made by seventy (or
seventy-two) translators, all working in separate
cells. They all
translated
the
whole
text,
and
all
translations
turned
out
to
be
identical.
The
translators
were
sent
to
Alexandria
by
Eleazar,
High
Priest
of
Jerusalem,
at
the
request of Ptolemy II, Philadelphus,
ruler of Egypt. The translation was made for the
benefit of those Jewish communities in
Egypt who could no longer read the original.
It became the basis for later
translations into Old Latin, Coptic, Armenian,
Georgian
and Slavonic.
So
far
the
story.
Now
for
the
moral.
Translation
involves
expertise:
the
seventy
translators
all
produce
the
same
version.
They
must
know
their
trade.
Their
knowledge is guaranteed and probably
checked by some event beyond their group. A
supernatural
event
most
likely,
in
legend
-
an
all
too
natural
event
most
likely,
in
actual
fact.
Translation
also
involves
commission:
a
person
in
authority
orders
the
translation to be made.
There are, of course, many instances in which the
translator
'auto-commissions' his or
her own translation, simply because s/he 'falls'
for a text. In
this case the problem of
'commission' or at least 'acceptance' of the
translation by a
publisher is only
deferred to the next stage in the process.
Translation fills a need: the
audience
will now be able to read the text again, and the
person in authority will have
enabled
the audience to do so. Translation involves trust:
the audience, which does
not
know
the
original,
trusts
that
the
translation
is
a
fair
representation
of
it.
The
audience trusts the experts, and, by
implication, those who check on the experts. As it
happened
in
the
case
of
the
Septuagint,
this
trust
was
misplaced.
Various
versions
were
found
to
differ
greatly
among
themselves,
and
later
versions
became
so
'Christianized' that the Jewish
communities stopped using the translation
altogether.
Texts that start their
career as translations do not always remain so, in
other words,
but they can remain a
central text in the history of a culture. The King
James Bible
comes to mind. But the fact
that the Septuagint was, in reality, a 'bad'
translation did
nothing to undermine
its image - on the contrary, it still is the
translation used by the
Greek Church to
this day, and it served as the basis for
translation into many other
languages
of the Ancient Mediterranean world.
The
legend
of
the
Septuagint
has
given
us
the
basic
categories
of
the
history
of
translation. These
categories are: authority (the authority of the
person or institution
commissioning
or,
later,
publishing
the
translation:
the
patron;
the
authority
of
the
text to be translated, in this case a
central text in the source culture; the authority
of
the writer of the original, in this
case the most absolute authority one can imagine,
and
the
authority
of
the
culture
that
receives
the
translation),
expertise,
which
is
guaranteed and checked, trust, which
survives bad translations, and image, the image
a translation creates of an original,
its author, its literature, its culture.
Now take the other possibility: a case
in which translation is neither commissioned
nor encouraged, but resisted and even
forbidden. The central text in this case is the
Koran. No translations of it were
allowed to be made by the faithful. Yet, the
original
can be said to have had a
pervasive influence on world history, and not just
in the area
of
its
own
historical
dominance.
If
the
central
text
is
not
translated,
the
faithful
simply have to learn the language of
the central text. If they do not, there will
always
be experts telling them what is
in it, paraphrasing or interpreting it without
actually
translating it - but still
creating an image of it. Translations, then, are
only one type of
text
that
makes
an
'image'
of
another
text.
Other
types
would
be
criticism,
historiography, commentary and
anthologizing. They will be left out of
consideration
here. They should not be
left out of consideration in studies of
translation. The trust
readers will
have to give to those experts will have to be
greater than the trust they
will have
to give to translators, since the possibilities
for checking are more limited.
And then
there are the in-between situations. As we know
from history, the Romans
translated,
but they did not really have to. Educated Romans
could just as well have
gone
on
reading
Greek
literature
and
philosophy
in
the
original,
since
they
were
bilingual anyway. Moreover, the
percentage of educated Romans was relatively small
when compared to the total population
of the empire, or even the city of Rome.
A
similar situation
prevailed in the Middle Ages: the learned did not
need
translation,
and
they
did
relatively
little
of
it.
In
fact,
they
often
did
not
write
in
their
own
language,
but
translated
their
thoughts
directly
into
Latin,
simply
because
the
conventions of the time
demanded this 'reverse translation': one could not
be
taken
seriously as a
scholar if one did not write in Latin.
Translation, then, is encouraged and
commissioned, resisted and rejected. Obviously
the
reasons
behind
these
two
polar
attitudes
have
little
to
do
with
expertise.
There
must
have
been
Muslims
perfectly
capable
of
translating
the
Koran
into
other
langauges.
Trust
is
a
factor,
obviously:
the
central
text
of
a
culture
should
not
be
tampered
with - no graven image should be made of it
- precisely because the text
guarantees,
to
a
great
extent,
the
very
authority
of
those
in
authority.
Linguistics,
therefore,
is
by
no
means
the
overriding
consideration
in
translation
history.
Translators
do
not
get
burnt
at
the
stake
because
they
do
not
know
Greek
when
translating the Bible. They got burnt
at the stake because the way they translated the
Bible could be said to be a threat to
those in authority.
Before we go on,
let us call to mind - and firmly anchor there -
the fact that European
culture
from,
say,
AD
500
to,
say,
1800,
was
in
essence
bilingual,
or
even
multilingual. There was a generally
respected 'language of authority', first Latin,
then
French, which would be known by
all those professing to be scholars, ecclesiastics
or
literati. They would know their
mother tongues as well, of course, and, in many
cases,
one or two additional languages.
Again, as with the Romans, they would not be all
that large in number. European literate
culture between 500 and 1800 can therefore be
said to have been a bi(multi)lingual
coterie culture - a fact so brilliantly repressed
by
Romantic
historians
who
had
to
stress
the
importance
of
national
languages
and
cultures
that
it
is
only
now
beginning
to
re-establish
itself
in
the
general
consciousness of the West.
Obviously, in such a culture,
translations were not primarily read for
information or
the
mediation
of
the
foreign
text.
They
were
produced
and
read
as
exercises,
first
pedagogical
exercises,
and,
later
on,
as
exercises
in
cultural
appropriation
-
in
the
conscious
and
controlled usurpation of
authority.
That this
usurpation
was
resented
and resisted by
those in authority is obvious from remarks like
the following, found
in
the
introduction
to
a
translation
of
Hippocrates'
Aphorisms:
'even
though
he
foresees that his labour may incur the
anger and the mockery of many who seem to
be
eager
to
keep
the
sciences
hidden
from
the
people'
Jean
Br??che
de
Tours,
in
Horguelin,
1981).
Members
of
the
coteries
who
betray
the
coterie
by
making
its
knowledge available to
those outside must be prepared to take the
consequences of
their
actions.
Jean
Br
che
de
Tours'
observation
already
points
forward
to
the
break-up of the coterie
culture. That break-up occurs some time around
1800. After
the break-up writers on the
subject begin to identify different potential
audiences for
translations,
and
different
ways
of
translating
emerge
to
matchdifferent
audiences.
Those who do not
know the language of the tl original, and who are
increasingly able
to read their own
ianguage, I will read the translation for
information and mediation.
Those who t
still know the language of the original, at least
in theory, will read the
translation as
a short-cut, a crib, or, still, an intellectual
and aesthetic challenge, or
even
game.
By
1900,
with
English
increasingly
filling
the
position
of
'language
of
authority' reluctantly given up by
French, the trend towards monolingualization of
the
audience
increases,
as
does
the
corresponding
trend
towards
producing
translations
for
information.
By
1900
the
West
has
also
come
into
contact
with
languages
and
cultures
for
which
it
has
very
few
experts
available.
Trust
becomes
an
important
factor again, and
images can be produced without being subject to
rigorous checking.
Fitzgerald's
appropriation of Omar Khayyam comes to mind.
After 1800, Goethe can write in
Dichtung und Wahrheit: 'If you want to influence
the
masses,
a
simple
translation
is
always
best.
Critical
qi
translations
vying
with
the
original
really
are
of
use
only
for
conversations
the
learned
conduct
among
themselves'
(in
Lefevere,
1977:
38).
But
the
masses
do
not
always
want
to
be
influenced.
Translations
can
be,
and
are
still
seen
as
a
threat
to
the
identity
of
a
culture, as Victor Hugo
observes in his introduction to the Shakespeare
translations
made by his son, Francois-
Victor:
to translate a
foreign poet is to add to one's own poetry;
yet this addition does not
please those who profit from it. At
least not in the beginning; the first reaction is
one
of revolt. A language into which
another idiom is transfused does what it can to
resist.
(Hugo, 1865: xv)
Not always, though. It does after 1800,
and if it feels that the foreign text is a threat
to
its own authority.
Before
1800, languages were not supposed to resist, nor
was translation felt to be an
impossible task. On the contrary:
Batteux affirms that 'a translator will be
forgiven all
metamorphoses, on
condition that he makes sure that the thought
emerges with the
same body, the same
life' (Batteux, 1824: V
ol. II, 242).
Language was considered a 3
vehicle for
the exchange of thought. Or, in other words, the
same thoughts could be
conveniently
'dressed'
in
different
languages.
The
old
Latin
word
for
translating:
translatare can
be taken to mean simply: 'an exchange of
signifieds' (Berman, 1988:
25), without
overmuch regard for the connotations, cultural and
otherwise, carried by
the actual
signifiers. Translatio, then, can be seen as
epitomizing the ideal of 'faithful
translation', so dear to the heart of
those in authority, who are intent on purveying
the
'right'
image
of
the
source
text
in
a
different
language.
Translatio
is
vital
for
the
'authoritative texts' of a culture:
I insist on treating Holy Writ with
such diligence and care because I do not want the
oracles of the Holy Ghost to be
adulterated by human and earth-bound elements. For
it
is
not
without
divine
counsel
that
they
have
been
expressed
in
certain
selected
words, selected from a certain sphere
and arranged in a certain order, for there are as
many
mysteries
hidden
in
them
as
there
are
dots
in
the
text.
And
did
not
Christ
himself say that not one dot should be
erased from the Law until heaven and earth are
destroyed? (Huetius, 1683: 23)
But translation is impossible. An
exchange of signifieds in a kind of intellectual
and
emotional
vacuum,
ignoring
the
cultural,
ideological
and
poetological
overtones
of
the
actual signifiers, is doomed to failure, except in
texts in which the 'flavour' of the
signifiers is not all that important:
scholarly texts, or non-literary texts in general.
The
historical analogy to the
Septuagint in this case would be the translational
activities of
the Spanish school of
Toledo, which translated many Arabic scientific
and scholarly
works
into
Latin
after
the
city
with
its
magnificent
library
fell
to
the
Christians.
Translatio
tries
to
regularize
the
linguistic
components
of
the
translation
process,
without
giving
much
thought
to
anything
else.
If
it
does,
it
will
short-
circuit
as
a
result of the inbuilt tension between
the linguistic and the cultural components of that
process.
Its
polar
opposite
can
be
designated
by
a
Latin
word
that
never
really
existed:
traductio. As Berman pointed out:
'Leonardo Bruni is said to have translated the
past
participle
traductum
used by
a
Latin
author,
Aulus
Gellius,
by
the
Toscan
tradotto.
But for Aulus Gellius traductum did not
mean
(Berman,
1988:
30).
Traductio
is
the
more
creative
counterpart
to
the
more
conservative
translatio.
Traductio
is
prepared
and
allowed
to
give
at
least
equal
weight
to
the
linguistic
and
the
cultural/ideological
components
of
the
translation
process.
It
will
come
to
the
fore
in
a
culture
when
that
culture
considers
itself'authoritative',
central
with
regard
to
other
cultures.
But
precisely
because
it
usurps that role, that
culture will treat the cultural side of the
translation process in its
traductio
the way translatio treats the linguistic side of
the translation process: it will
try to
regularize it. As Herder puts it in the
Fragmente:the French, who are overproud
of their natural taste, adapt all
things to it, rather than try to adapt themselves
to the
taste
of
another
time.
Homer
must
enter
France
a
captive,
and
dress
according
to
fashion,
so
as
not to
offend their
eyes.
He
has to allow them
to take his venerable
beard
and his old simple clothes away from him. He has
to conform to the French
customs, and
where his peasant coarseness still shows he is
ridiculed as a barbarian.
But we, poor
Germans, who still are almost an audience without
a fatherland, who are
still without
tyrants in the field of national taste, we want to
see him the way he is. (in
Lefevere,
1977: 48)
Almost a hundred years later,
Fitzgerald writes to his friend E. B. Cowell: 'It
is an
amusement for me to take what
Liberties I like with these Persians who (as I
think)
are not Poets enough to frighten
one from such excursions, and who really do want a
little
Art
to
shape
them'
(Fitzgerald,
1972,
VI:
xvi).
Traductio
is
a
matter
of
the
relative weight two cultures carry in
the mind of the translator: obviously, Fitzgerald
would
never
have
taken
the
same
liberties
with
a
Greek
or
Roman
author,
also
because there were too many experts
around. But since Victorian England considers
itself
central,
and
since
he
happens
to
be
translating
from
a
culture
that
is
by
no
means central to it, he takes what
liberties he pleases. As we shall see later,
traductio
can
also
be
used
by
translators
as
individual
members
of
a
culture,.
who
are
dissatisfied
with
certain
features
of
it,
and
want
to
usurp
the
authority
of
texts
belonging
to
another,
'authoritative'
culture,
to
attack
those
features,
defying
both
experts and those in
authority with a certain degree of impunity. In
fact, traductio, as
described by
Nicholas Perrot d'Ablancourt in 1709, sounds
suspiciously like Eugene
A. Nida's
'equivalence of effect': 'I do not always stick to
the author's words, nor even
to
his
thoughts.
I
keep
the
effect
he
wanted
to
reach
in
mind,
and
then
I
arrange
matters according to
the fashion of our time.' (Perrot d'Ablancourt,
1709: 23).
A
view
of
language,
like
Schleiermacher's,
which
no
longer
sees
the
signifiers
as
essentially neutral vehicles for
conveying signifieds, but rather as inextricably
bound
up with different languages, will
have to raise the problem of the very possibility
of
translation. If, as Schleiermacher
holds, 'every man is in the power of the language
he
speaks and all his thinking is a
product thereof' (in Lefevere, 1977: 71),
translation
appears
to
be
an
impossible
task.
Or
rather,
what
appears
to
be
impossible
is
translatio, and all translation will
have to be transposition, traductio. In his
persona of
translator, Schleiermacher
himself shied away from the consequences of this
insight,
which
makes
the
second
part
of
his
famous
maxim,
'move
the
author
towards
the
reader'
the
only
viable
one.
But
if translation
was
to
remain
possible
after
1800,
it
would
have
to
be
traductio.
Possible
or
not,
though,
translations
continued
to
be
produced,
and their production was to keep increasing.
Both translatio and traductio involve
authority, expertise and trust. Authority draws
the ideological parameters of the
acceptable. It influences the selection of texts
for
translating,
as
well
as
the
ways
in
which
texts
are
translated.
In
John
of
Trevisa's
'Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk
upon Translation' (1903: 23) the Lord makes it
quite clear that he is paying the
piper, and therefore expects to call the tune. The
Lord
says:
'I
desire
not
translation
of
these
the
best
that
might
be,
for
that
were
an
idle
desire
for any man that is now alive, but I would have a
skillful translation, that might
be
known and understood.' In other words, something
that works - and, in later words:
something that sells. The Clerk just
wants to make sure: 'Whether is you liefer have, a
translation of these chronicles in
rhyme or in prose?' Again, the answer is
refreshingly
blunt: 'In prose, for
commonly prose is more clear than rhyme, more easy
and more
plain to know and understand.'
Translators know who pays the piper, and give
advice
to other translators
accordingly. In a little quoted passage from his
best-known work,
Du Bellay ends his
admonitions to translators with: 'what I say is
not meant for those
who, at the command
of princes and great lords, translate the most
famous Greek and
Latin writers, since
the obedience one owes to those persons admits of
no excuse in
these matters' (1948: 52).
Again about a hundred years later, the Earl of
Roscommon
refers to those in authority,
but they are now of a different kind:
I pity from my Soul unhappy Men
Compelled by Want to prostitute their
Pen
Who must, like Lawyers, either
starve or plead
And follow, right or
wrong, where Guineas lead.
(in Steiner,
1975: 82)
Around 1700, with
the increasing speed of literacy and the gradual
spread of a more
open type of society,
the authorities are no longer just 'princes and
great lords'; they
are joined by
publishers. If the role of the publisher as the
authority who decides what
is
going
to
be
translated
increases,
the
ideological
parameters
widen,
since
the
ultimate criterion for deciding is,
primarily, money. The publishers of Roscommon's
time would publish only a traductio of
Homer, which would be acceptable/saleable to
their
readers.
Roscommon
advises
translators
to
leave
out
what
they
deem
unacceptable:
For who, without a Qualm, hath ever
lookt
On Holy Garbage, tho by Homer
cookt?
(in Steiner, 1975: 78)
Similarly, the Abb Pr vost
writes in the introduction to his translation of
Richardson's
Pamela:
I have
suppressed English customs where they may appear
shocking to other nations,
or else made
them conform to customs prevalent in the rest of
Europe. It seemed to
me
that
those
remainders
of
the
old
and
uncouth
British
ways,
which
only
habit
prevents
the
British
themselves
from
noticing,
would
dishonor
a
book
in
which
manners
should
be
noble
and
virtuous.
To
give
the
reader
an
accurate
idea
of
my
work, let me just say, in
conclusion, that the seven volumes of the English
edition,
which would amount to fourteen
volumes in my own, have been reduced to four. (in
Horguelin, 1981).
It
would
appear
that
the
French
reader
will
be
given
a
rather
different
'image'
of
Pamela than his English
counterpart.
As we move closer to the
present, the excesses of traductio are more
limited. But the
case of the
translations into English of the Irish national
epic, the Ta'in, are a good
example
of
the
influence
of
authority
on
translation.
A
scholarly
translation
of
the
Ta'in
existed in German as early as 1905 (Ernst
Windisch's Die altirische Heldensage
'Tain
Bo'
Cu'ailnge',
published
in
Leipzig).
The
first
comparable
translation
in
English
was
published
only
in
1967:
Cecile
O'Rahilly's
Ta'in
Bo'
Cu'ailnge,
Recension 1, published in Dublin. The
first English traductio of the complete Ta'in,
by the poet Thomas Kinsella, was
published in Dublin in 1969. It had been preceded
by many partial traductiones, among
them Lady Gregory's 1902 version Cuchulain of
Muirthemne.
There
were
obviously
more
than
enough
qualified
translators
around,
but
the
intellectual
and,
primarily,
emotional
climate
in
Ireland
between
1905
and
1969
was
such
that
nobody
would
translate
in
its
entirety
a
national
epic
that
alternates descriptions
of noble behavior with descriptions of the
Irish
as a
merrily
barbaric bunch,
killing, looting, raping and defecating all over
the place
- precisely
the
image the intellectuals associated with the 'Irish
Renaissance' tried to counteract
with
all their might.
The experts are
employed by those in authority to check each
other's expertise. This
checking
process takes place most obviously in the
pedagogical situation. As late as
the
mid-seventeenth
century,
Gottsched
states
in
his
Ausfuhrliche
Redekunst
that
translation is
'precisely what the copying of a given model is to
a beginner in the art
of painting. We
know that the works of great masters are copied
with pleasure and
diligence by mediocre
artists or by beginners who would like to make
their way' (in
Lefevere,
1977:
44).
The
experts
also
delimit
the
poetological
parameters
of
translation: will the
finished product be acceptable as literature in
the target culture?
Will
it
confirm
to
the
poetics
currently
dominating
that
culture?
Again,
traductio
appears to be the
answer, and some translators go to great lengths
to make the source
text fit the target
culture poetics. De la Motte, for example, states
in the introduction
to his translation
of the lliad:
I have reduced the twenty
four books of the lliad to twelve, which are even
shorter
than
Homer's.
At
first
sight
you
might
think
that
this
could
only
be
done
at
the
expense of
many important features. But if you pause to
reflect that repetitions make
up more
than one sixth of the lliad, and that the
anatomical details of wounds and the
long speeches of the fighters make up a
lot more, you will be right in thinking that it
has been easy for me to shorten the
poem without losing any important features of the
plot. I flatter myself with the thought
that I have done just that, and I even think I
have
brought
together
the
essential
parts
of
the
action
in
such
a
way
that
they
are
shaped into a whole
better proportioned and more sensible in my
abbreviated version
than in the
original. (1714: 17)
Small wonder that
Perrot d'Ablancourt, faced with the twin
constraints of authority
and
expertise,
began
his
apology
for
his
translation
of
Lucian
with
the
diplomatic
statement:
Two things can be
held against me where this translation is
concerned. One has to do
with the
selection of the work, the other with the way in
which I translated it. One
group of
people will say that I should not have translated
this particular author, and
another
group that I should have translated him
differently. (1709: 24)
With
the
split
in
the
audience
after
l800,
and
the
rise
of
philology
as
a
university
discipline, the
worst excesses of traductio came to an end. The
experts could reserve a
part of the
market for themselves, and produce translations
aimed primarily at other
experts,
in
effect
recreating
the
coterie
culture,
but
this
time
in
isolation
from
the
general culture they
were part of, even if they would produce the odd
traductio for its
benefit.
The
experts
are
supposed to
guarantee that
the
trust the
audience
places
in various
translations is not misplaced. But they
are not always successful. The problem is that
the audience places less trust in the
experts' stamp of approval of a fida interpretatio
than in the reputation of a translator
as a fidus interpres. Glyn P. Norton has shown
that the well-known Horatian phrase was
used earlier by Sallust in the Iugurtha, and
that the 'qualifier fidus ...
characterizes the personal reliability of the go-
between - his
mutual trustworthiness in
the eyes of both parties - rather than a quality
inherent in