Translations: Diversity and Clarity

by Cliopatria

As anyone who has undertaken the task knows, translation is a fascinating and frustrating challenge."Poetry," Robert Frost famously said,"is what gets lost in translation." Languages contain implicit worldviews, in their grammar, in their idiom, in their distinctive accumulation of subtly multiple-meaning words, and of course in their usage. It is easier to translate within language/culture families, but it is uniquely challenging to translate between language families, across cultures, and across time.

It is also an underappreciated task: though we can natter all day about the importance of students and scholars studying multiple languages, the fact is that we all want to read things that are linguistically inaccessible; perhaps more to the point, we want other people to read things that are accessible to us, but not to them. Every time I teach, I realize how powerful and useful translation is. And how important it is that good translations be available: for cost/copyright reasons, far too many of the translations available in sourcebooks and readers are the oldest, creakiest, English-language versions available. Good translations are a precious thing combining knowledge, craftsmanship, sensitivity, and good writing (sometimes the poetry gets put back in, in other words).

It's important that we have good translations of widely read and discussed and important texts, particularly religious ones, and much more difficult to produce results that are satisfactory. Particularly in our age of literalism and religious diversity, word choices and other editorial decisions are most sensitive. So it has been an interesting week.

First, an improvement: A new English-language version of the Quran by Abdel Haleem which includes contextual references. Manan Ahmed's discussion of the rather sordid history of anti-Islamic European translations of the Quran is fascinating, as Ralph notes below. Brian Ulrich also highlights the issue of orality, and the Quran is one of those texts that sits on the cusp of the oral-written transition, creating great trouble for everyone who tries to treat it as just one or the other.

Next, a literary atrocity, widely noted in conservative Christian circles, and just starting to be noted more broadly: a new English-language Gospel, heavily edited and revised to be hip and liberal. In addition to leaving out eight books, and really messing with the rest, it includes the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. A Christian news service headlined its review"New Bible translation promotes fornication." It sounds more like a reinterpretation than a translation, something that will fade quickly. I'm a big believer in personal interpretation of scripture and religious evolution, but I'm also a big believer in the integrity of the texts we consider holy.

Addendum: Liberal theology has no monopoly on 'targetted' biblical publishing: separate versions of the New Testament for teenage girls and boys, from an evangelical perspective, and complete with dating and hygiene advice.... Something tells me that a complete accounting of bad biblical publishing would be an immense undertaking.

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Jonathan Dresner - 8/20/2004

Japanese historians do the same thing routinely.

Ralph E. Luker - 8/20/2004

Nathanael, I'd glad you are doing that review and that I am not doing that review.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 8/20/2004

Thanks, I'll check that out.

NTW, I am working on a review of a book on early modern cartography in Bavaria. The German author, probably not thinking an American would read it, left all the quotes in the original language--with all the archaic spellings and dialectic phrases left unmodernized. But he does not explain the meaning of them either, and he relies on them to advance his argument.

David Lion Salmanson - 8/20/2004

I know some people's eyes glaze over when the term "Frankfurt School" comes up but Walter Benjamin has a really awesome essay on The Art of the Translator (or something close to that title). It is in the same essay collection as Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I found it very useful for thinking about translating Navajo terms into English. The grammatical structures are so different that any "accurate" translation that would catch the inflection and shades of meaning is pretty much impossible. It doesn't help that Navajo language is based to a great extent on puns, so various phrases have double meanings. So I wound up with whole paragraphs that would explain one word or phrase, which were often condensations of somebody else's chapter.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/20/2004

By chance I got into a conversation yesterday with a young woman studying 16th century Spain. She said that even some native Spanish speakers she knew found it easier to read Don Quixote in an English translation.

I don't know if it's the archaic nature of the language or a comment on Cervantes' style, but apparently something gets "simplified" in translation.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/19/2004

...is a choice when you are translating. There are indeed times when the flavor of the original needs to come through, particularly in scholarly translation of primary texts: the worst translations are the ones where the translator effectively paraphrases in English the original text (Waley's Genji, or a lot of Asian/Orientalist translation, for that matter) which was very popular in the 19th and early 20th century.

Japanese has similar problems to German: clauses can modify clauses ad infinitum, and you don't really know what's happening until you get to the verb at the end, and if you're lucky the subject is stated instead of implied.... Older verb forms/punctuation didn't always distinguish between clause and sentence endings, either, so knowing what's a linguistic unit is something of a judgement call.

I don't necessarily think that 'accessible' means 'present colloquial.' Just that it is comprehensible and transmits as much as possible of the meaning and intent of the original.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/19/2004

Sometimes a literal translation can actually breath life into a thought. My favorite example: the German equivalent for "this book is unreadable" is "this book does not allow itself to be read."

Nathanael D. Robinson - 8/19/2004

On the one hand, I could not agree with you more about translations of important literary works. These need to be accessible, and need lots of extra-textual commentary to support them.

On the other hand, I am always conflicted about lesser read items. Sure, if it's a poem I translate the passages that I want to quote into smooth English. But what about an administrative report, newspaper article, or history monograph? Sometimes the eccentricities of foreign languages need to be represented.

Moreover, there is always the problem that some languages can tolerate verbosity more than others. Some German sentences, properly translated, would be run-ons in English. Should they be broken down?

Ralph E. Luker - 8/19/2004

Thanks for calling my attention to Henson's particularly atrocious book. What could have gotten into the head of the Archbishop of Canterbury to endorse it is entirely beyond me. We can the grateful that the British book reviewer did bother to read the book, lift out the howlers for our attention, and that it is likely to go nowhere in public attention. There is something about liberal open-mindedness in such matters that is just amazingly muddle-headed.