Theories of Translation

The introduction by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet to their essay collection Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (1992) ably prefaces the compilation, covering a variety of ideas in the history of translation theory and introducing prevailing historical thinkers, who are limited not only to included essayists but also to essential translators and theorists like Matthew Arnold, famous for his work on Homer.  Overall, the editors strive to create a cohesive and well-rounded presentation of their included essayists and the larger streams of translation thought.

What initially caught my eye amongst the various translation concepts was the idea that multiple translations are in fact welcome and possibly necessary to the understanding of any particular translated text.  Schulte and Biguenet present Wilhelm von Humboldt's admission that, "[R]eaders of a national language who cannot read the classics in the original will get to know them better through multiple translations rather than just one translation," by way of Arthur Schopenhauer's theories on translation equivalencies, namely that words do not always possess exact equivalents in other languages, due in part to different connotations and different patterns of usage.  Schopenhauer argues that because of this absence of true equivalents, translation of poetry is impossible: "Poems cannot be translated, they can only be rewritten."  This is later taken up again by Mexican poet Octavio Paz, when he discusses the differences between translating prose and poetry.  In prose, words are "univocal," meaning that they carry a specific meaning based on context, but in poetry, more often words intentionally retain multiple meanings.  Schulte and Biguenet paraphrase, "Words... create connotations that reflect multiple ways of looking at and interpreting the world," which seems to suggest that in addition to words retaining multiple meanings, that authors also create additional meanings for words based on their contextualization of them.  It is therefore no wonder that multiple translations are necessary for adequate understanding of a foreign text.

Pulling from Hugo Friedrich's 1965 speech, later included in the anthology, Schulte and Biguenet draw attention to the Roman practice of translating Greek texts.  Cicero claimed to translate ideas and forms while in reality doing little justice to the source work.  The goal was never to recreate the source work in a new language – Latin – but to use the material of the source work to create a wholly new text in which the interesting bits had been expropriated from the Greek.  Schulte and Biguenet point out that Saint Jerome, famous translator of the Greek bible, held a similar position to that of Cicero and other Roman translators.  In fact, "Saint Jerome saw himself in competition with the original text, and the goal was to supersede the foreign text."  While Saint Jerome may be at one end of the spectrum, Walter Benjamin falls in the center, and Vladimir Nabokov at the opposite end.  In the case of Benjamin, who believed that translations enriched the target language, the necessary twist of using words in alien ways, filling them with new meanings so they can adequately convey the source text, resulted in a richer target language.   Nabokov, on the other hand, held that the only valid way to translate was word for word.

Unable to include Matthew Arnold in the anthology due to the length of his essay, Schulte and Biguenet attempt to include his major points in the introduction, especially those regarding scholarship, audience, and faithfulness in translation. According to Arnold, the translator's target audience should consist solely of scholars in the particular language and area of study because it was only they who could correctly judge the accuracy of the translation.  Not only should the translation take into account the source language, but also the historical context of the text and the author.  Those people who were best able to relate to and understand the true nature of the source text were the scholars of that period.  "No one can tell him [the translator] how Homer affected the Greeks; but there are those who can tell him how Homer affects them.  Those are scholars, who possess, at the same time with knowledge of the Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling...  Let him ask how his work affects those who both know Greek and can appreciate poetry."  He cautions against the translator trusting his own judgement, that of readers of his target language, or even his own scholarship.

Also mentioned in the introduction are Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Roman Jakobson, who each separated translation into three different types.
Goethe defines them thus:
1.  Simple prosaic: not defined (I imagine this is some generic regurgitation of the source text in the target language)
2.  Parodistic: the translator attempts only to appropriate the foreign content
3.  Identical: the translator attempts to make the translation identical to the original
Jakobson:
1.  Intralingual translation or rewording
2.  Interlingual translation or translation proper
3.  Intersemiotic translation or transmutation – such as translating a poem into a film score
While Goethe's list is clearly hierarchical, moving from generic, possibly word-for-word translation to  identical translation as the highest and most desired form of translation, in only one of Jakobson's categories does anything resembling the standard definition of translation come up, for "intralingual" translation seems to suggest merely the process of shifting words around in a single language and intersemiotic translation, while an interesting addition, is not a typical area of focus for translation studies, especially in this particular anthology.

Towards the end of the introduction, we encounter the philosophers, or those people who, in my opinion, so deeply question what it is to translate that we are left wondering if there really is such thing as a translatable source text and if there's any chance we're actually able to discern what the author was trying to convey.  Beginning with Octavio Paz, Schulte and Biguenet include the following from Paz's essay "Translation: Literature and Letters": "When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate; the child who asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to translate the unfamiliar term into the simple words he already knows."  Thus, the translation begins in the mind.  Language is merely the translation of thought, which is comprised of visual cues, emotions, and other sensory experiences.  To Hans Erich Nossack, "writing itself is already translating."  And if writing is translation, German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer reminds us that, "Reading is already translation, and translation is translation for the second time" or fourth time if you go so far back as to include Paz's idea that language itself is translation.

Included in the introduction are more translators, theorists, and philosophers than I can begin to summarily give credit to, but I will include one last quote from Rudolf Pannwitz's Die Krise der europäischen Kultur.

Our translations, even the best, proceed from a false premise.  They want to germanize Hindi, Greek, English, instead of hindi-izing, grecizing, anglicizing German.  They have a much greater respect for the little ways of their own language than for the spirit of the foreign work.  The fundamental error of the translator is that he maintains the accidental state of his own language, instead of letting it suffer the shock of the foreign language.  He must, particularly if he translates a language very remote from his own, penetrate to the ultimate elements of language itself, where word, image, tone become one; he must widen and deepen his language through the foreign one.