Skip to main content

Week 4 Readings, or Don't Fear the Reader

When considering the relationship between original works of literature and derivative works like translations, an interesting place to start is with Walter Benjamin’s 1923 article “The Task of the Translator.” Like his earlier compatriots Goethe and Shleiermacher, Benjamin believed that translation was far more than a mere matter of conveying information. But Benjamin had a completely different goal in mind for the ultimate aim of translation. For him, translation was a way to access something profound and metaphysical. He believed in an underlying ‘kinship of languages’, a transcendent truth to which all languages strive. He believed that the main purpose of translation was to represent a relationship between languages which points toward this underlying truth, this ‘pure language.’ To do this, he recommends a translator undertake a rigorous word-for-word translation, which “For the sake of pure language […] breaks through decayed barriers of his own language.”1 The resulting work will be a cacophonous and nearly incoherent string of words, but will have the virtue of creating a new language that blurs the boundaries of syntax and semantics, ending up with a text that is representative of a greater portion of ‘pure language’ than can be contained within a single language.

It’s a lofty goal. And frankly one that I’m not particularly interested in pursuing. Benjamin’s “Task” strikes me as unapologetically elitist, a way of producing a literature for philosophers of language and no one else. By focusing on a single genre (poetry) which, in his mind, exists for a single purpose (metaphysical transcendence), Benjamin overlooks the countless and complex varieties and purposes of literature.

André Lefevere, on the other hand, is keenly aware of this diversity of purpose and genre within literature. In his article “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature” he argues for an approach to literary theory that sees literature as a system which includes objects (original works as well as ‘refractions’ such as translations, adaptation, but also anthologies, reviews, stagings and teaching) and people (from writers and translators to critics and audiences).2 For Lefevere, the translator is necessarily bound by the code of behaviour, or poetics, of the receiving culture. This poetics, by definition, differs for that which governed the production of the source text. Translation, therefore, is “a compromise between two kinds of poetics, in which the poetics of the receiving system plays the dominant part.”3 This, he contends, is not necessarily a bad thing, and does not necessarily result in “bad” translations. For him, translations help make visible the norms and interests (or patronages) that shape the possibilities for literature within a national or subnational context, and are therefore useful tools for analyzing how literatures evolve.

Both Benjamin and Lefevere deny the traditional hierarchy between original and derivative works. Benjamin sees translations as critical for the preservation of great works of literature, and envisions both originals and translations as critical parts of the greater poetic process of uncovering ‘pure language.’ For his part, Lefevere considers both originals and ‘refractions’ (including translations) to be essential for the dissemination and canonization of works and authors. Both agree that original works owe much to their derivatives, but they disagree on the ultimate purposes of the act of translation.



Matt Robertshaw
5 October, 2017





1 Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York; London: Routledge, 2000), 22. 

2 André Lefevere, “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature,” in The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York; London: Routledge, 2000), 235. 

3 Lefevere, “Mother Courage,” 242.


Sources:

Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., edited by Lawrence Venuti, 15-25. New York; London: Routledge, 2000.

Lefevere, André. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., edited by Lawrence Venuti, 233-249. New York; London: Routledge, 2000.

Comments

  1. sehnaz tahir18 October 2017 at 07:15

    Thanks for your analytical approach to both authors and emphasizing their shared perspective on the original/translation divide. Admittedly, they come from different places altogether, so it is important to mention their divergences, as you have. I especially enjoyed reading your frankness about Benjamin's writing and the way you "quarrelled" with him.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 7 Readings, or Polysystems from Ancient Greece to Modern Haiti

While reading about Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory and the potential centrality of translated works in a national literature, I couldn’t help but think about Haiti. The author identifies three contexts in which translation can play a central role in the development of a national literature: (1) when a literature is “young”, (2) when it is “weak” or “peripheral”, or (3) when it encounters turning points, crises, or vacuums. 1 Haiti has a strong literary tradition in French, stretching back to the nineteenth century, but its national literature in Haitian Creole (the first language of the entire population, and the only language of the vast majority), only began to develop in earnest in middle of the twentieth century. In fact, the birth of Haitian Creole literature can be positively dated to 1953, and the appearance of two important works by one highly influential author. Even-Zohar would be delighted to know that one of them was a translation. The translation in quest...
3 comments
Read more

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography for “Aslan of the Antilles: A Commission and Skopos for the Translation of C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew into Haitian Creole.” Source Text and Reference Texts: Lewis, C. S. The Magician’s Nephew . 1955. Reprint, New York: HarperCollins, 2002. I will be exploring the translatability of C.S. Lewis’s 1955 children’s fantasy novel The Magician’s Nephew into Haitian Creole, developing a skopos to guide the process, and using this framework to analyze certain issues that the project will present. As a work of fantasy fiction written in England in the 1950s, the novel presents several complications that will need to be addressed in order to produce an intelligible Haitian Creole version. Lewis, C. S. Konpè Lyon, Konmè Lougawou ak Amwa majik la . Translated by Hans Michel Fortunat and Matthew Robertshaw. Pompano Beach, FL: Educa Vision, 2017. The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . I will draw ex...
1 comment
Read more

Week 3 Readings, or The Epochs of Translation

This week we looked at three ‘historical statements’ on translation: John Dryden’s “ Preface to Ovid’s Epistles ” (1680), Friedrich Schleiermacher ’s thorough investigation “On the different methods of translating” (1813) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s short essay on translation (1819). Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the latter two works were translated from early-nineteenth-century German, while the first, written in late-seventeenth-century English, presents its own challenges for the modern reader. Each of these works attempts to delineate and assess the value of different approaches to the act of translation. Dryden and Goethe both identify three kinds of translation. Dryden’s spectrum ranges from Metaphrase, or a word-for-word translation, to Paraphrase, which maintains the meaning of the text but diverges from the words themselves, to Imitation, whereby the translator assumes the freedom to diverge from the content and form of the text, to “write like one who has wr...
1 comment
Read more