ETI 305Introduction to Literary Translation

Translating Literature

Literary translation• The attempt to render into one language the meaning,

feeling and, so far as possible, style of a piece written in another language.

• “I realize that this can only be an ideal. Translation, like politics, is an art of the possible; compromise is inevitable and universal.” John Bester

• “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Robert Frost

• “The original is unfaithful to the translation.” Jorge Luis Borges

Literary translation• “Translating from one language to another, unless it is

from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”

Miguel de Cervantes

• “A good translator must enter the poet’s world without leaving his own, return to his own without leaving the poet’s world behind.” F. Fredericks

Literary translation• “Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting

function cannot transmit anything but information–hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”

Walter Benjamin

• “Translation is the art of failure.” Umberto Eco

• “Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

• “All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.” George Eliot

Why translate literature?• Lets the translator consistently share in the creative

process

• Allows the translator to be recognized as part of the literary world

• Offers many intellectual rewards

• Lets the translator expand the potential readership of a literary work

• Allows the translator gain prestige, helps develop longlasting relationships, and gives them access to different worlds

Literary translators• In addition to a thorough mastery of the source

language, the literary translator must possess a profound knowledge of the target language.

• The literary translator must – command tone, style, flexibility, inventiveness, – have knowledge of the SL culture, – have ability to glean meaning from ambiguity, – have ear for sonority and humility.

Literary Translation• It entails an unending skein of choices.

• It is marked by a heightened sensitivity to nuance (seemingly straightforward phrases/sentences may be rendered in several different ways, each with a subtle shading).

• Such sentences may convey the same information, but they differ significantly in aesthetic effect; thus the translator is constantly faced with choices to make with regards to words, fidelity, emphasis, punctuation, and register.

Translation process problems on the illocutionary* level*relating to or being the communicative effect

• Alliteration• Allusion• Foreign words• Genre• Grammatical norms• Metaphor • Names

• Neologisms• Parody• Poetic diction• Pun• Register• Rhyme and meter• Syntax

Alliteration• Repetition of the same sound at the beginning of

consecutive words

“The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph.”

From Joseph Conrad’s “Youth”

“Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our sensesSweetens the stress of surprising suspicion that sobs in the semblance of sound and a sigh...”

Charles Swinburne’s “Nephelidia”

Allusion• An explicit or implicit reference to a place, person, or

something that happened. This can be real or imaginary and may refer to anything, including paintings, opera, folk lore, mythical figures, or religious manuscripts.

• Writers often allude to well-known texts/people in their works to give a sharper edge to the point they are making.

• Four types of allusions are likely to occur regularly in literature written in English: biblical, classical, cultural, and literary

Biblical Allusions“She turned the other cheek after she was cheated out of a promotion.” (from teaching of Jesus that you should not get revenge)

“This place is like a Garden of Eden.” (the paradise God made for Adam and Eve)

“You are a Solomon when it comes to making decisions.” (King Solomon was very wise)

“When the volcano erupted, the nearby forest was swallowed up in dust and ash like Jonah.” (swallowed alive by a whale)

Classical Allusions“Of those pedestrian Paphians who abound In decent London when the daylight is o’er.”

“Chocolate was her Achilles’ heel.”

“‘I wish I had received blessings from Cupid on Valentine’s day,’ whispers Aeon to herself.”

“He was like a phoenix, rising from his ashes yet again.”

Cultural Allusions

“Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me)— Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP.”

“When Joe stepped over the puddle, Lucy hollered ‘Now, that’s one small step for men!’”

Literary Allusions“Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous)Is of a fair complexion altogether,Not like that sooty devil of Othello’sWhich smothers women in a bed of feather”

“I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.”

“When she lost her job, she acted like a Scrooge, and refused to buy anything that wasn’t necessary.”

“He was caught in a Catch-22.”

Foreign words“Il piove,” the wife said. She liked the hotelkeeper.

“Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather.”(from “Cat in the Rain” Ernest Hemingway)

For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

(from “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe)

We sat down, and my father hailed the waiter in a loud voice, ‘Kellner!’ he shouted. ‘Garçon! Cameriere! You!’

(from “Reunion” by John Cheever)

Genre

• Many non-Western genres (except haiku) have found it hard to be accepted in Western literature because there is no obvious Western analog for them – (e.g., the Arabic qasidah or Chinese rhyme-prose)

Grammatical Norms• Writers sometimes deviate from the accepted grammatical

usage of their time for different reasons.

“Says gorging Jim to guzzling Jacky We have no wittles, so we must eat we.” (children’s song)

“You kin bloody well bet it ain’t! But I knows why they done it.” (Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill)

“Well! Of all the ungratefullest and worst-disposed boys I ever see, Oliver, you are the—” (Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens)

Metaphor

• “...the animal within me licking the chops of memory.”

• “And take my tears, which are love’s wine.”

• “A smile coyly bridged the crack in the door.”

• “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players/They have their exits and their entrances.”

Names/Culture-specific words

• Rüya, Galip, Celal from Pamuk’s Kara Kitap

• Dolmuş, muhtar, töre, meyhane, redneck bar

• Raki, kismet, yoghurt

Neologisms• Sometimes writers invent new words to strengthen the

illocutionary power of their texts.

“Moreunder, which is to subtract, not add...”

“A sharp fragillycut nose...”

“Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.”

(from “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll)

Parody• Parody: A literary or musical work in which the subject,

author, style of an original work is closely imitated to mock, comment on or trivialize it by means of satire or irony.– Blazing Saddles (a Western spoof loaded with inside jokes,

anachronisms, toilet humor, etc.)– Scary Movie (Several mid- and late-90s films and TV shows

are spoofed, especially Scream, along with I Know What You Did Last Summer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, and Dawson's Creek.)

– Spaceballs (a Star Wars parody)• Translation of parody requires alertness to the work(s)

parodied, probably the most difficult for translators.

Poetic Diction• A style of writing that exhibits a fairly dense

concentration of illocutionary power in relatively few words, stanzas, or paragraphs:

“Morning dawned at last, slowly, with a pale yellow dome of light rising silently above the bluffs, which stand like a huge storm-devastated castle, just east of the city.”

Pun• A play on the sound of words to achieve a certain effect. It

can:– make you laugh– make you think– increase clarity when we’re trying to discern the

meaning of a text– introduce ambiguity

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” (from Shakespeare’s Richard III)

Mercutio as he is dying in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.”

Register• In linguistics, one of many styles or varieties of

language determined by such factors as social occasion, purpose, and audience. More generally, register is also used to indicate degrees of formality in language use.

I should be grateful if you would make less noise.Please be quiet.Shut up!

If you are introduced to the queen of England, do you say “Hi, Queen” or “Your Majesty” ?

Dialect• Dialect: A regional or social variety of a language

distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary.

• Regional dialect is spoken in one particular area of a country. (e.g. Appalachian, New Jersey and Southern English in the USA, and Cockney, Liverpool English and ‘Geordie’ in Britain. • American South: “Git up offfa dem steps, you aggravatin' limb,

'fore Ah git dem hick'ries tuh you, an' set yo' seff on a cheah.”

• Social dialect (sociolect) is a variety of a language spoken by a particular group based on social characteristics other than geography.• Gangster slang: “You dumb mug, get your mitts off the

marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush--and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma.”

Rhyme and Meter• Rhyme: identical stressed vowels and the consonants

succeeding them at the end of a word

• Meter: systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse

• Both rhyme and meter are very difficult to translate, especially into languages with a different vowel and consonant distribution.

Syntax

• Most stringent and least flexible of all the constraints translators must work under since it regulates the order of the words to be translated.

• Few liberties can be taken with the word order before the text becomes unintelligible.

Sources

• Landers, Clifford (2001) Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. UK: Cromwell Press Ltd.

• Lefevere, André (1992) Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context. New York: MLA of America.