Contextual elements that mediate literary translation Lecture 4

Contextual elements that mediate literary translation Lecture 4

Translation as one type of reading • • Who is reading? When? Where? With what purpose?

Translation as one type of reading • • Who is reading? When? Where? With what purpose? Translator always positioned in time, space and context

Translation as ‘rewriting’ (A. Lefevere) • Who/what governs such rewriting? • What are the factors that systematically govern the reception, acceptance or rejection of literary text? The motivations can be: Ideological: conforming or rebelling against the dominant ideology Poetological: conforming to or rebelling against the dominant/preferred poetics

Translation as ‘rewriting’ (A. Lefevere) There are different types of rewriting – criticism, anthologies are form of rewriting. However: Translations is the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting, and… it is potentially the most influential because it is able to project the image of an author and/or those works beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin. (Andre Lefevere, Trranslation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 1992: 9)

Translation as ‘rewriting’ (A. Lefevere) The literary system in which translation functions is controlled by two main factors: • Professionals operating within the system – partly determine the dominant poetics • Patronage operating outside the system – partly determine the ideology

• • • Professionals • • • Influential individuals Publishers Institutions/Academies Media Academic journals Educational establishment Patronage Critics Reviewers Academics Teachers Translators

Patronage Lefevere identifies three elements to this patronage: • Ideological component – constraints the choice of subject and the form of its presentation. • Economic component – concerns the payment of writers and rewriters (patron’s pension, fee, royalties, pubic funding, etc. ) • Status component – status of the publisher, funder, translator which can translate into power to decide.

Patronage Lefevere identifies three elements to this patronage: • Ideological component – constraints the choice of subject and the form of its presentation. • Economic component – concerns the payment of writers and rewriters (patron’s pension, fee, royalties, public funding, etc. ) • Status component – status of the publisher, funder, translator which can translate into power to decide. – Provided by the same person/group – undifferentiated – Provided by different people - differentiated

Professionals are more influential in determining the poetics Two components of dominant poetics: • Literary devices: genres, narrative plots, characters, theme, discourse, etc. • The concept of the role of literature: concerning the relation of literature to the social system in which it exists

Dominant poetics Institutions enforce or, at least, try to enforce the dominant poetics of a period by using it as a yardstick against which current production is measured. Accordingly, certain works of literature will be elevated to the level of ‘classics’ within a relatively short time after publications, while others are rejects, some to reach the exalted position of a classic later, when the dominant poetics has changed. Lefevere, 1992: 19

Target audience • Who is the target audience? • Why are they reading the translation? • A few concepts to keep in mind: 1. Horizon of expectations (Jauss) Set of cultural norms, assumptions and criteria that shape the way in which readers understand assess a literary work at a given time. 2. Interpretive community (Fish) The readings of a text are culturally constructed. The readers are inserted in a community that imposes a particular way of reading the text. The horizon of expectations is also collective.

Target audience 3. Implied reader Hypothetical figure of the reader to whom a given work is designed to address. 4. Empirical reader Actual reader who may be unable or unwilling to occupy the position of the implied reader.

Poetics

Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt (16061664) ‘I do not always stick to the author’s words, nor even to his thoughts. I keep the effect he wanted to produce in mind, and then I arrange the material after the fashion of our time. Different times do not just require different words, but also different thoughts, and ambassadors usually dress in the fashion of the country they are sent to, for fear of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of the people they try to please. ’ (Lefevere, 1992: 6)

Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt (16061664) ‘In fact, there are many passages I have translated word for word, at least to the extent to which that is possible in an elegant translation. There also passages in which I have considered what ought to be said, or what I could say, rather than what he actually said. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 8)

Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt (16061664) ‘I am the less to blame in that I have left out what was too filthy and softened what was too free, at least in some places. This is how I justify my conduct, and the translation I attempted is justified by the many advantages that will come to the public from its reading of this author. ’ (Lefevere, 1992: 6)

Abbé Prévost (1697 -1763), on translating Samuel Richardson’s Pamela ‘I have suppressed English customs where they may appear shocking to other nations, or made them conform to customs prevalent in the rest of Europe. It seemed to me that those remainders of the old and uncouth British ways, which only habit prevents the British themselves from noticing, would dishonor a book in which manners should be noble and virtuous. To give the reader an accurate idea of my work, let me just say, in conclusion, that the seven volumes of the English edition, which would amount to fourteen volumes in my own, have been reduced to four. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 8 -9)

Antoine Houdar de la Motte (16721731) ‘I consider myself a mere translator wherever I have only made slight changes. I have often had the temerity to go beyond this, however: I did cut out whole books, I did change the way matters were set forth, and I have even invented new material… have reduced the twenty-four books of the Iliad to twelve, which are even shorter than Homer’s. At first sight you might think that this could only be done at the expense of many important elements. But if you pause to reflect that repetitions make up more than one-sixth of the Iliad, and that the anatomical details of wounds and the warriors’ long speeches make up a lot more, you will be right in thinking that it has been easy for me to shorten the poem without losing any important features of the plot’. (Lefevere, 1992, 29)

Edward Fitz. Gerald (1809 -1883) ‘It is an amusement for me to take what Liberties I like with these Persians, who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 4)

Patronage

Wentworth Dillon (1633 -1685) I pity from my Soul unhappy Men Compelled by Want to prostitute their Pen, Who must, like Lawyers, either starve or plead, And follow, right or wrong, where Guineas lead.

John of Trevisa (1342 -1402), ‘Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk upon Translation’ The Lord: I would have a skilful translation, that might be known and understood. The Clerk: Whether it is you liefer have, a translation of these chronicles in rhyme or in prose? The Lord: In prose, for commonly prose is more clear than rhyme, more easy and more plain to know and understand. (Lefevere, 1992, 21)

Joachim du Bellay (1522 -1560), Défense et illustration de la langue française ‘But what shall I say about those who really deserve to be called traitors, rather than translators, since they betray the authors they try to make known, robbing them of their glory and, at the same time, seducing ignorant readers by showing them black instead of white? . . . What I say is not meant for those who, at the command of princes and other great lords, translate the most famous Greek and Latin writers, since the obedience one owes those persons admits of no excuse in these matters. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 22).

Martin Luther (1483 -1546) ‘We are aware of the scribbler in Dresden who stole my New Testament. He admitted that my German is good and sweet and he realized that he could not do better and yet he wanted to discredit it. So he took my New Testament as I wrote it, almost word for word, and he took my preface, my glosses, and my name away and wrote his name, his preface, and his glosses in their place. He is now selling my New Testament under his name. Oh, dear children, how hurt I was when his prince, in a terrible preface, forbade the reading of Luther’s New Testament but ordered the scribbler’s New Testament read, which is exactly the same as the one Luther wrote. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 7).

St. Augustine to St. Jerome ‘When one of our brothers, a bishop, had introduced the use of your translation in the church of which he is the pastor, the congregation hit upon a passage in the prophet Jonah which you translated in a very different way from the way in which it had established itself in the mind and memory of all, and the way it has been sung for such a long time. Great unrest arose among the people, especially since the Greeks protested and began to shout about falsification in a vituperative manner. As a result the bishop—it happened in the town of Onea—saw himself forced to rely on the Jews who lived in the city to clear up the matter. But they replied, either out of ignorance or out of malice, that the Hebrew manuscripts contained exactly what was also to be found in the Greek and Latin manuscripts. And then what? To escape from great danger the man was forced to correct himself, as if he had made a mistake, since he did not want to lose all the people in his church. ’ (Lefevere, 1992, 2)

Recapitulation • Translation is a form of rewriting • Translation is interpretation • Literary system controlled by – Patronage (ideology) – Professionals (poetics) • Horizon of expectations • Equivalence • Foreignization / domestication

Polysystem theory / Sociology of translation • Polysystem theory • Sociology of translation and publishing • World system of translations

The role of translated literature • Polysystem Theory, 1970 s, Itamar Even-Zohar

The role of translated literature • Polysystem Theory, 1970 s, Itamar Even-Zohar - Reaction to prescriptive models - Translated literature as a system operating in a larger social, literary and historical system

Polysystem • ‘Even-Zohar and his colleagues have posited that ‘literature’ in a given society is a collection of various systems, a system-of-systems or polysystem, in which diverse genres, schools, tendencies, and what have you are constantly jockeying for position, competing with each other for readership, but also for prestige and power. Seen in this light, ‘literature’ is no longer the stately and fairly static thing it tends to be for the canonists, but a highly kinetic situation in which things are constantly changing’. – James Holmes

The literary system Literary system: “a system of functions of the literary order which are in continual interrelationship with other orders” (Tynjanov 1927/1971: 72) - There is an ongoing dynamic of ‘mutation’ and struggle for the primary position in the literary canon - Focus no longer just on the canon

The translated literature system Even-Zohar (1978) emphasizes that translated literature operates as a system in itself: 1. In the way the TL culture selects works for translation 2. In the way translation norms, behaviour and policies are influenced by other co-systems

Polysystem theory • Translations are not ‘individual works without any relation between themselves’ • ‘Translated literature is…an integral system within any literary polysystem’

The translated literature system Polysystem: “multiple system, a system of various systems which intersect with each other and partly overlap, using concurrently different options, yet functioning as one structured whole, whose members are interdependent” (Even-Zohar, 2005: 3)

The position of translated literature Interaction and position in the system occurs in a very dynamic hierarchy, changing according to the historical moment Primary position: it participates actively in shaping the centre of the polysystem. Innovative and linked to major events of literary history Secondary position: No major influence. Often becomes a conservative element.

Primary position Three major situations: 1. When a ‘young’ literature is being established (Hebrew literature during the Hebrew Enlightenment; 19 th century Finnish literature [Munday]) 2. When a literature is ‘peripheral’ or ‘weak’ (Imports texts, genres… also an issue of identity; minority languages) 3. When there is a critical turning point or a vacuum (Importation of new models, genres for renewal of the canon; e. g. , Freud in English)

Secondary position • Most common position for translated literatures • Peripheral position in the general literary polysystem • No major influence over the system or renovation of the canon. • Often becomes a conservative element: preserves conventional norms and conforms to the literary norms of the target system

Translation literature as peripheral • ‘Translated literature’: ‘conservatism’ – Rejected or anachronistic literary norms – ‘a means to preserve traditional taste’

Central v. peripheral • Translated literature peripheral in English and French literary systems, but more central in Russian, German, and Scandinavian literary systems (Toury)

Polysystem • Translated literature often is not entirely central or entirely peripheral • ‘In the Hebrew literary polysystem between the two world wars literature translated from the Russian assumed an unmistakably central position, while works translated from English, German, Polish, and other languages assumed an obviously peripheral one’ (Even-Zohar)

Translated literature system • Also stratified: some translated literature are secondary, while others (from literatures considered central) are primary • The position it assumed conditions the translation strategy followed: – Primary position: translators feel less constrained to follow the TL models. More innovative and influential in ‘adequacy’ / ’foreignisation’. – Secondary position: translators feel less constrained to follow the TL models. More innovative and influential in ‘acceptability’ / ’domestication’

Power relations • The positioning in the centre or periphery translates relations of power between: – cultures – literary systems – languages – authors – translators – genres, etc • The practice of translation “shapes and takes shape within the asymmetrical relations of power” (Niranjana, 1992: 2)

Pierre Bourdieu • Concepts: fields, capital, habitus • Fields: where agents are located and compete • Literary field is within the field of power: – ‘the space of relations between agents or between institutions having in common the possession of the capital necessary to occupy the dominant positions in different fields (economic or cultural notably)’ • ‘The literary field is a field of forces, but it is also a field of struggles tending to transform or conserve this field of forces. ’

Fields • Fields are organised around oppositions – Dominant v. dominated (old agents v. newcomers) – Autonomy v. heteronymy (small-scale v. largescale circulation) – Principle of external hierarchization – Principle of internal hierarchization • the autonomy of a field is 'revealed to the extent that the principle of external hierarchization there is subordinated to the principle of internal hierarchization'

Four types of capital • Four types of capital – Economic capital (economic resources, wealth) – Social capital (social networks, friendships) – Cultural capital (education and knowledge) – Symbolic capital (honor, prestige, recognition) • Capital helps further agents in the field • Habitus (of a translator): ‘the elaborate result of a personalised social and cultural history’

Sociology of publishing: Sapiro • ‘To publish is to consecrate’ (Sapiro, 2008) • Large-scale production/circulation – law of the market - short-term profit (English) • Small-scale production/circulation – linguistic diversity

Pascale Casanova • ‘Age is one of the chief aspects of literary capital: the older the literature, the more substantial the country’s patrimony, the more numerous the canonical texts that constitute its literary pantheon in the form of ‘natural classics’. – Pascale Casanova, La République mondiale des Lettres

Global language system / World system of translations • Global language system (Abram de Swaan) • World System of Translations (Johan Heilbron) – Hyper-central (English) – Central (German and French) – Semi-central (Spanish, Russian, Italian) – Peripheral (Arabic, Japanese, etc. )

Most translated source languages Leading source language N. languages 1979 -1989 1990 -2000 2001 -2012 English 41 57 63 Russian 36 22 4 Chinese 4 2 6 French 2 2 2 Hungarian 2 0 0 Serbo-Croatian 2 0 0 A. Greek 1 0 0 Czech 1 0 0 Danish 1 2 1 German 1 2 4 Swedish 1 0 0 Bengali 0 1 1 Hebrew 0 1 0 Spanish 0 3 3 Latin 0 0 1

2 nd most translated source languages 2 nd most translated source language N. languages 1979 -1989 N. languages 1990 -2000 N. languages 2001 -2012 English 28 15 12 French 15 18 15 Russian 15 4 4 German 11 14 14 Swedish 4 6 5 Chinese 3 0 0 Arabic 2 2 3 Sanskrit 0 4 7 Bengali 0 1 1 Danish 0 1 1 Japanese 0 2 2 Catalan 0 0 2 Norwegian 0 0 1 Polish 0 0 1 Serbian 0 0 1

ic Ja pa ne se Ca ta la n ab sh ed i Ar Sw it kr ch en ns Sa Fr ish an Sp ss ia n Ru rm an Ge se ne Ch i sh gli En Leading source languages (2001 -2012) 80 70 60 50 40 30 2 nd 20 1 st 10 0

Non-Western languages Language L 1 and L 2 Speakers Translations from Translations into Mandarin Chinese 1090 million 0. 6% (16 th) 2. 7% (13 th) Hindi 544 million 0. 1% 0. 2% Arabic 422 million 0. 5% (17 th) 0. 6% Indonesian 281 million 0. 0% 0. 2% Bengali 261 million 0. 1% Hausa 150 million 0. 0% Japanese 129 million 1. 3% (8 th) 5. 6% (5 th) Persian 121 million 0. 1% 0. 5% Swahili 107 million 0. 0% Korean 77 million 0. 2% 1. 2% (19 th)

World literature • ‘I will borrow this initial hypothesis from the worldsystem school of economic history, for which international capitalism is a system that is simultaneously one, and unequal: with a core, and a periphery (and a semiperiphery) that are bound together in a relationship of growing inequality. One, and unequal: one literature (Weltliteratur, singular, as in Goethe and Marx), or perhaps, better, one world literary system (of inter-related literatures); but a system which is different from what Goethe and Marx had hoped for, because it’s profoundly unequal’. – Franco Moretti

Summary • Polysystem theory • Sociology of translation • World system of translations