'Traduttore! Traditore!': translation, an odyssey
When I was reading "At Night All Blood is Black" by David Diop and translated by Anna Moschovakis, there was a passage that struck me. It is when our protagonist essentially reflects on the multiplicity of his identity after serving at the Fronts for the French as an African during World War One, says:
"To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it's to cheat, it's to trade one sentence for other. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God's truth, which, as everyone knows or believe, is single"
This passage jump-started my past interest in the field of translation studies. Moreover, I believe this little passage contains a lot key topics within translations studies and the discourse around it. Thus, in this blog, I would like to unpack this passage with reference to other relevant passages, and its relevance to our Western view of translation and by extension how we, who think in these languages, view and interact with the world. And there are three main views evoked here, such are:
- To translate is to betray at the borders
- To translate is to lie about the details to convey the truth at large
- To translate is to risk understanding the truth of word
"To translate is to betray at the borders"
Violence - is the first word that comes to my mind when I read this part. The word subverts for me the popular view of translation and of translators in diplomatic terms: ambassadors, pacifist, considerate, empathetic. Instead, the English word 'translate' now is a disruptive and brutal force. This line of thinking has been recently voiced, for instance by French author and critic Tiphaine Samoyault in her book "Translation and violence", published right before the pandemic hit Europe in 2020. In this book, she reminds us that in nearly every violent period in our history, translation was used as a tool to eradicate the 'Other'. Translation was often the accomplice in events that for instance led our protagonist, Alfa Ndiaye, to the trenches in 1914, fighting for a country that used him as dispensable weapons to protect themselves. His own voice is eradicated too, in the trenches via translation, because the only things that got translated was the French Captain Armand.
Some might think this is an unusual way of to describe the well praised tradition, which has often been dressed in exquisite gowns of hospitality, but in recent times, there has been a slow push back. Not to demonise the practice, but to expand our understanding of it, which has been filtered by the Western education[1]. But like any other power dynamics, the direction and volume of translation can be contextualised as political. Indeed there are hierarchies in translating language-pairs, and if your language is the receiving party, and a minor language at that, it is very likely that your language will change. Although whether that is seen as good, depends on content of the translated product.
Looking at the word "betray" in relation to translation, it is likely that you have heard of expressions like "Traduttore/traditore" (Translator/traitor). This stems from the time of oral translation, where you had no means of verifying exactly the translation and you have to trust wholeheartedly the intermediary person. Back then, those people were mostly slaves, and their job was tied to being faithful to their master, and since believing in the translators means to give them power, fear of translation became prevalent. And in the context of Ndiaye, and other war context, where language is tied to national identity, translation can be indeed become an act of betrayal, of treason.
We can even take this at a metaphorical level: to translate is to betray the 'original' meaning, which can be translated as to distort the 'original' meaning. However, its aesthetic value might still be intact, which gave rise to the French saying of "Les Belles Infidele" (The Beautiful Unfaithful (female))that saw 'faithful' translation as boring and ugly, but 'unfaithful' translation as more alluring but could be lies, or distorted - a misogynistic comparison. This sense of betrayal is at times evoked in religious translation, where some people might deem a translation to be far from God, or as Ndiaye puts it: "To translate is to distance oneself from God's truth, which, as everyone knows or believe, is single"[2]
But to betray the borders, is not always a bad thing. In Mireille Gansel's memoir "Translation as Transhumance", the empathetic side of translation is reinstated. Here, she compares the act of translation, specifically in the context of war and facist regime, to that of transhumance, where the sheperd and their flock migrate to another land in search of greener grass: essentially, translation allows ideas and voices of people from exile or oppressive regime to find better place to flourish, to be heard. Another example of this can be seen historically int the tradition of Bible translation too.[3]
"To translate is to lie about the details"
It is this mistrust of translation that also gave rise to the notion of "lost in translation", and the general misconceptions about untranslatability. This is because, the notion assumes an ineffability of the original experience, yet translation does make such experience effable because in a way you are explaining it through translation. You are giving words to the ineffable. If the recipient still doesn't get it, that is a matter of comprehension, not of translation. Additionally, as famously portrayed in Coppola's classic film "Lost in Translation" where during a commercial shoot, the main character Bob Harris struggles to comprehend what he is told. The vivid contrast between the length of what the Japanese producer was saying and the short courteous translation by his translator made the experience even harder to comprehend. This leads to another assumption: that translation means to give an equivalent, and that at times does not only mean the meaning, but also the length, the tone, etc.
However, things do get left out in translation. Because with each word, the probable translations are abundant, and it all depends on the target audience. So in that sense, things can get lost. It could be some linguistic-cultural things like the specific image in idioms. But things are deliberately kept, for the purpose of experiencing the 'foreignness'. This can be seen as something positive, but of course it depends on what is kept and what is altered. As pointed out by bell hooks in their article 'Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance': “the commodification of difference promotes paradigms of consumption wherein whatever difference the Other inhabits is eradicated, via exchange, by a consumer cannibalism that not only displaces the Other but denies the significance of that Other’s history through a process of decontextualization.” Indeed, translation facilitates comprehension and understanding. Yet, understanding means we sometimes appropriate the others' words. When you understand, you often begin to substitute the words of others with your own, translating them into your own words.
This is, in a way, isn't always bad. When the filtered meaning from translation then gets broadcasted out again and even infiltrates back to the original language, it can be for the better, if the content is better. For instance with the case of "droit des hommes" from the French Revolution that was translated into "human rights" in English, which changed the meaning of "hommes" to be more inclusive, that results in the distinction of 'hommes' and 'Hommes' and now the adoption of "les droits humain" which before signified 'humanitarian' more than 'human'. This can lead to changes in language, and like any changes people will have opinions.
"To translate is to risk understanding the truth about a word"
But all of this comes from our misconception of translation as equivalence, as slightly alluded to already with the scene from 'Lost in Translation'. Through translation, you are often made aware of how ethereal meanings can be: to mean something is not fixed. To translate is thus to understand that everything is in constant negotiation. Although this can create tension, or power vacuum, it is this ability of translation that can to help reshape the world for the better, because to translate is to be in constant revision: revision about meaning which means re-evaluating our similarities, our differences, our assumptions, our association, etc.
The imperfection of translation is what also could atone it from its violence. However, its violence is to be reckoned with; because the asymmetry in the flow of translation does reflect certain inequality in the world. At the moment, English is still very high in the hierarchy of language as - it acts not only as an international but as pivot language for many translation. This could be seen as a bad thing, a residue of colonialism, or it can be seen as English loosing its borders: everyone in a way owns the language, not just those of British, American, Australian, etc. So, a better term to describe this sort of translation is also 'agonal translation' as promoted by Tiphaine Samoyault. This means that you are not fighting against your enemy, but your in negotiation with them.
[1] What I mean by this is that, because so much of research, particularly social science and art and humanities subject researches have been monopolised by Western institutions, so many of our sources come from there.
[2]Some might see it as a good thing, depending on how they view the scriptures - human interpretation or actual words from God
[3] See Chapter 'Bibles and Bananas' from Is That A Fish In Your Ear? by David Bellos
Bibliography:
Bellos, David. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? London, Penguin Books, 2012.
Bourmeau, Sylvain “Tout contre la traduction.” France Culture, 3 Oct. 2020, www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-suite-dans-les-idees/tout-contre-la-traduction.
Diop, David. At Night All Blood Is Black. London, Pushkin Press, 2020.
hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance". In Black Representation, pp 21-39. Boston: South End Press, 1992.
Jeanelle, Jean-Louis. “« Traduction et Violence », de Tiphaine Samoyault : l’âpreté de traduire.” Le Monde, 11 June 2020, www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2020/06/11/traduction-et-violence-de-tiphaine-samoyault-l-aprete-de-traduire_6042557_3260.html.
Patel, Gitanjali, and Nariman Youssef. “All the Violence It May Carry on Its Back: A Conversation about Diversity and Literary Translation - Asymptote.” Asymptote, www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/all-the-violence-it-may-carry-on-its-back-a-conversation-about-diversity-and-literary-translation-gitanjali-patal-and-nariman-youssef. Accessed 19 July. 2021.
Samoyault, Tiphaine. « La traduction agonique », Po&sie, vol. 156, no. 2, 2016, pp. 127-135.
Tiang, Jeremy. “The World Is Not Enough - Asymptote.” Asymptote, www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/jeremy-tiang-the-world-is-not-enough. Accessed 19 July. 2021.
Van Reeth, Adèle“La traduction (1/4) : Qu’est-ce que traduire ?” France Culture, 17 Mar. 2014, www.franceculture.fr/emissions/les-nouveaux-chemins-de-la-connaissance/la-traduction-14-quest-ce-que-traduire.
""La traduction est le lieu de l'altérité"" sur https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/affaire-en-cours/affaires-en-cours-du-vendredi-05-mars-2021 via @radiofrance
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