Summation of my ideas about Translation (Alex Pan)
Перевод это тоже дзен:)
У меня есть хорошие и плохие новости. Хорошие они для тех, кому интересна теория и практика перевода, а также кто лингвист, интеллигент и инглиш лэнгуэдж лавэр. Плохие они, соответственно, для всех остальных:)
Но, что поделать, раз мы взялись за такой амбиционзный проект как перевод нашей книги (а не просто написание ее) - то будем делиться всеми находками и подводными камнями.
Итак, эссе Олиного отца по поводу перевода.
Over the years, my ideas about what translation is all about have evolved from uncritical, unreflecting attitudes and approaches that those that were generally accepted to perplexed and wandering whether those traditions were in need of a major overhaul.
The more I probed into the language (English, and to a lesser extent Ukrainian and Russian), the more was I awed by the fathomless depths of the language, the more doubtful I was becoming of a possibility to render “adequately” or “faithfully” (I do not like these pseudo-terms but it would be too much of a distraction from my central purpose here to introduce new one) the works of fiction written in English into Ukrainian or Russian - or the other way round. Comparative analysis of translated poetry has clinched it for me that something was badly wrong with what is traditionally referred to as “translation”.
What follows is a sort of summation of my ideas about translation, with key points listed first, and a more elaborate treatment of them further below.
My present-day understanding of problems translation faces is based upon my own work as a professional translator into and from English, upon the opinions of other translators who were kind enough to share them with me, upon the opinions of scholars expressed in essays that accompany books of “academic” translations of classical literature (“classical” in the widest sense of the word) and upon my own comparative analysis of dozens of works of fiction and a great many poetic works, translated into and form English. Perusal of theoretical treatises on translation only confirmed my conviction that “there is something rotten in the Kingdom of Translation,” the way it is treated by scholars and most of the practicing translators.
I am not claiming that my views are God’s truth to be reverently accepted - they are rather a call to take a better look, to get rid of the dead weight of outdated and obsolete approaches and attitudes.
Some of the basic key points are as follows:
Social conditions change, literatures change, our understanding of what language is also change - only approach to translation seem to be frozen in time, with very little change occurring in the past hundred years, at least (when I encounter in “scholarly” works the information about how many verbs or nouns were used in the original and in translation, I feel totally lost, not knowing whether I should laugh or weep at the simplistic idiocy of such calculations).
· Translators’ choices are determined by too many factors, most of which are purely subjective, to sort them out and arrive at “scientific” conclusions: the level of knowledge of the SL and TL; general cultural background; being well or poorly read; diligence of lack of it; responsibility before the reader, or lack of it; the circumstances accompanying the process of translation; translators moods; editorial interference, etc. - and the most elusive of all - the talent and intuition, or lack of them.
· Any analysis of translation should be preceded by the statement that will lay down the criteria the analyzer will use in their analysis; “bad” or “good” translation are meaningless statements unless we know what the criteria are for good or bad translations.
· Translators of fiction should be “officially” given as much of “poetic license” as the translators of poetry enjoy tacitly, without this license being granted “officially.” There is one big hitch though - since most of the translators are talentless hacks, what will become of their translations, which are already atrociously bad (I can define what I mean by “bad”) of they are given a free rein?
· Translation theory should recognize the problem of losses as one of the cardinal problems of translation and devote itself to the study of the losses and possible ways of dealing with them in order to lessen the damage done to the original too in the process of translation. Losses do not occur because of the mistakes made by individual translators (of curse, there are a lot of mistakes too - and I can define what I mean by “a translator’s mistake”) but are the “objective” phenomena occurring because of the difference in the phonetic, grammar and verbal structures of the SL and TL.
(c) Alex Pan 2013
У меня есть хорошие и плохие новости. Хорошие они для тех, кому интересна теория и практика перевода, а также кто лингвист, интеллигент и инглиш лэнгуэдж лавэр. Плохие они, соответственно, для всех остальных:)
Но, что поделать, раз мы взялись за такой амбиционзный проект как перевод нашей книги (а не просто написание ее) - то будем делиться всеми находками и подводными камнями.
Итак, эссе Олиного отца по поводу перевода.
Over the years, my ideas about what translation is all about have evolved from uncritical, unreflecting attitudes and approaches that those that were generally accepted to perplexed and wandering whether those traditions were in need of a major overhaul.
The more I probed into the language (English, and to a lesser extent Ukrainian and Russian), the more was I awed by the fathomless depths of the language, the more doubtful I was becoming of a possibility to render “adequately” or “faithfully” (I do not like these pseudo-terms but it would be too much of a distraction from my central purpose here to introduce new one) the works of fiction written in English into Ukrainian or Russian - or the other way round. Comparative analysis of translated poetry has clinched it for me that something was badly wrong with what is traditionally referred to as “translation”.
What follows is a sort of summation of my ideas about translation, with key points listed first, and a more elaborate treatment of them further below.
My present-day understanding of problems translation faces is based upon my own work as a professional translator into and from English, upon the opinions of other translators who were kind enough to share them with me, upon the opinions of scholars expressed in essays that accompany books of “academic” translations of classical literature (“classical” in the widest sense of the word) and upon my own comparative analysis of dozens of works of fiction and a great many poetic works, translated into and form English. Perusal of theoretical treatises on translation only confirmed my conviction that “there is something rotten in the Kingdom of Translation,” the way it is treated by scholars and most of the practicing translators.
I am not claiming that my views are God’s truth to be reverently accepted - they are rather a call to take a better look, to get rid of the dead weight of outdated and obsolete approaches and attitudes.
Some of the basic key points are as follows:
- There are three major kinds of translation which have a common foundation but which are separate species of activities - technical translation; translation of fiction; and what is very unfortunately called translation of poetry (all the animals on earth share the same foundation as living matter and function on the same biological principles, but worms and tigers differ very much and appearance and in habits - similarly, these three basic kinds of translation share the same cognitive foundation but are very different in their functioning); translation of poetry is not translation at all, in the sense it may be applied to technical and to some extent to translation of fiction - it’s nothing more than rewriting the originals in the target language with an attempt to suggest what the originals are all about (Source Language - SL - the language from which we translate; Target Language - TL - the language into which we translate).
- In their turn, each of the principle species of translation can be further stratified and their own hierarchies can be built, with approaches to handling translation differing dependent on the position of each item in the hierarchy; in between the major species of translation, in grey zones, one finds texts which have some common features with the major species (e.g. popular science; journalistic writings; poems in prose, etc.)
- Translation is rendering of a certain piece of information written down in one language (we are dealing here only with written translation - oral interpretation is still another, different species of translation) into another language; it seems to be a proven fact that an idea expressed in one language can be retold in any other language (there are certain reservations, of course, but they do not deny the basic principle); the content may remain more or less adequately relayed but the form is irrevocably lost.
- In technical translation the form plays a very little role, if any, and the loss of the form does not affect in any serious way the content since technical texts (in the fields of technology; science; law, etc) are based on terms (and each term is supposed to have only ONE meaning within a certain field of knowledge or practical application) and on the very basic, primitive grammar which is rigidly used throughout the texts; some deviations from these rigidities do not change the basic premise (it does not matter what form the content “star” takes in various languages as long as the reference to a stellar object remains the same). No emotions, no ambiguities.
- Translation of fiction has to deal with “bad” grammar, ambiguities, intentional and purposeful, idioms (whose meaning cannot be reconsdtructed from individual aprts they are made of), colloquialisms, slang, play on words, emotions expressed in various ways; archaisms, hints, phonetic renderings of the speech of the protagonists, etc.- the list is too long to continue. All these stylistic devices are presented in a form which is peculiar and unique to every language fiction is written in. In moving from language into another we totally lose the form - the graphic and sound into which the words, and thus the meanings they carry, are molded, and the loss of this form may affect the content to a very considerable extent. Metaphors and most of the idioms translate very badly and have to be retold with different imagery used. These and other changes are losses which cannot be avoided - it would be very helpful to establish what amount of losses distorts the original in translation beyond recognition.
- Back translation may be very helpful in ascertaining how far from the original translations travel.
- Most of translations of fiction are done word for word (but not literally, and contrary to loud declarations of the necessity of sense-for-sense approach) with a persisting naïve conviction that stringing words whose meanings are picked from the top of the list of their meanings may produce in translation the same effect as they do in the original. The words form sentences, and sentences form the story. The story can be retold all right - but even here we will encounter some losses which emerge from the differences in culture, historical backgrounds, habits, mental setups, etc.
- Creative writing is a highly subjective exercise; interpretation of words f fiction is a highly subjective exercise too; each translator is also an interpreter of the texts they transmute; subjectivity is heaped upon subjectivity - no formalized analysis of such a sea of subjectivity is possible.
- Why is translation possible then? Because the absolute majority of the works of fiction tell stories, and stories can be retold with insignificant losses (though this varies too), and the loss of the form does not play a crucial role in destroying the original story. Even the greatest works of fiction (or most of them) have a story to tell, and us being human we can share the joys and sorrows of the protagonists in any language.
- The absolute majority of the readers do not care for the subtleties of the language and style of the texts they read - they are after the story (or information contained therein). That is why the loss of the original form is the least of their concerns. Most of the translators are hacks without any literary talent, and they render the SL texts with the most primitive means available to them - word for word, and never mind the context, the spirit of the work of fiction they translate, etc.
- The form of the original makes some translators attempt to imitate the original form in their translations - but imitation leather is never genuine leather, is it?
- Translation of poetry is a bad misnomer - no such things as translation of poetry is possible. The role of the form is what defines Poetry in the first place - the loss of the form is the loss of the original poem in its entirety. “Translators” of poetry should publish their opuses under their own names, not under the names of the authors of the originals. Translated poems are separate works of poesy in their own right.
- Any work of fiction allows for multiple interpretations and for unlimited number of translations, all of which will represent only one individual aspect of the original.
- Most of fiction written is “pulp fiction” and in pulp fiction it is the story that reins supreme, with the form being of very little importance. But even in the most primitive of detective stories the talks of the perps, of the vics, of the cops and of the bystanders may be highly individualized, full of colloquialisms and slang - and thus unendurable. No amount of sophistication on the part of the translators will help them “translate” - “Look, I aint done nothing”. Yes, the meaning of these words can be retold in another language; some elements of low colloquial can be introduced into translation - but the fom will still be lost.
- Translation has not developed any rules, laws or manuals similar to those of grammar that any translators can rely on in solving problems any translation poses.
Social conditions change, literatures change, our understanding of what language is also change - only approach to translation seem to be frozen in time, with very little change occurring in the past hundred years, at least (when I encounter in “scholarly” works the information about how many verbs or nouns were used in the original and in translation, I feel totally lost, not knowing whether I should laugh or weep at the simplistic idiocy of such calculations).
· Translators’ choices are determined by too many factors, most of which are purely subjective, to sort them out and arrive at “scientific” conclusions: the level of knowledge of the SL and TL; general cultural background; being well or poorly read; diligence of lack of it; responsibility before the reader, or lack of it; the circumstances accompanying the process of translation; translators moods; editorial interference, etc. - and the most elusive of all - the talent and intuition, or lack of them.
· Any analysis of translation should be preceded by the statement that will lay down the criteria the analyzer will use in their analysis; “bad” or “good” translation are meaningless statements unless we know what the criteria are for good or bad translations.
· Translators of fiction should be “officially” given as much of “poetic license” as the translators of poetry enjoy tacitly, without this license being granted “officially.” There is one big hitch though - since most of the translators are talentless hacks, what will become of their translations, which are already atrociously bad (I can define what I mean by “bad”) of they are given a free rein?
· Translation theory should recognize the problem of losses as one of the cardinal problems of translation and devote itself to the study of the losses and possible ways of dealing with them in order to lessen the damage done to the original too in the process of translation. Losses do not occur because of the mistakes made by individual translators (of curse, there are a lot of mistakes too - and I can define what I mean by “a translator’s mistake”) but are the “objective” phenomena occurring because of the difference in the phonetic, grammar and verbal structures of the SL and TL.
(c) Alex Pan 2013