Transcript TRANSLATING: - Roma Tre University

TRANSLATING
1. AN INVISIBLE PRACTICE
2. TRANSLATOR AS AUTHOR
3. ORIGINAL VS TRANSLATION
The invisibility of translation
• Eclipse of the translator’s work and of the
act of translation as mediation of foreign
writing;
But also
• Decisive effects of this act of mediation:
linguistic, cultural, institutional, political.
1. TRANSLATOR AS AUTHOR?
• Contemporary translator as a paradoxical
hybrid:
– He produces translations, but not translation
commentary, criticism or theory;
– He appears as aesthetically sensitive or as a talented
craftsman, but not critically self-conscious.
This does not help to make the translator’s work
more visible, and perpetuates the idea that
translation is foremost a practical activity.
2. TRANSLATOR AS AUTHOR?
• British and American law:
– Translation as:
• a second-order product
• Adaptation or derivative work
– The copyright is vested on the author
• British law considers the translator an author only because
he “originates the language used”, a fact which entitles the
translation to its own copyright, though – of course – this
cannot displace the rights of the original author.
• US law considers translation as a “work made for hire”, the
“employer or person for whom the work was prepared is
considered the author”, and “owns all of the rights comprised
in the copyright
1. ORIGINAL vs TRANSLATION
Romantic view of translation:
• The “original” is eternal, the translation dates.
– Original: result of human imagination which
transcends the linguistic, cultural, and social changes;
– Translation:
• effect of linguistic, cultural, and social changes.
• Copy of a copy, derivative, false (?)
• In Platonic terms, translation as a simulacrum that deviates
from the author of the only authorized copy.
2. ORIGINAL vs TRANSLATION
• The translator’s experience can be expressed in a
translation
but
• this doesn’t make the translation an original as the
authorized copy.
• The translator remains subordinate to the author of the
original work.
• The originality of translation lies in self-effacement. A
translated text is judged successful – by most editors,
publishers, reviewers, etc. - when
– it reads fluently and gives the appearance that it is not
translated, that it is the original, reflecting the foreign author’s
personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign
text.
But……
• What does this require?
– Laborious effort of revision
– Stylistic refinement, even when the original presents
more discontinuous discourses.
• These strategies:
– pursue linear syntax, univocal meaning or controlled
ambiguity, linguistic consistency, conversational
rhythms;
– avoid polysemy, archaism, jargon, abrupt shifts in
tone or diction, any textual effect which calls attention
to the materiality of language, to the opacity of words.
Consequence:
• A fluent strategy aims to efface the translator’s intervention in the
foreign text: he/she rewrites the text in a different language to
circulate in a different culture
BUT
• This same strategy:
– Contributes to the cultural marginality and economic exploitation of
translators
– Effaces the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, which
gets rewritten in the “transparent” discourse dominating the targetlanguage culture and is coded with other target-language values,
beliefs, and social representations.
Result:
– The foreign text is domesticated to make it intelligible and even familiar
to the target language reader, who wants to recognize his/her own
cultural values. But this is a form of imperialism which, in the name of
transparency, aims at imposing other ideological discourse over a
different culture.
?
• Can this be defined “good practice”?
• Is it always advisable?
Translation demands scrutiny:
• To become definitely and realistically visible;
• To develop a theoretical discourse by studying
the conditions of the translator’s work, his/her
strategies;
• To study the institutional structures which
determine the production, circulation and
reception of translated texts.