What Are Translations?
We found that when a translated text is read as the original, a text may be tragically misunderstood, not merely by the translator, but also by its readers. An excellent presentation on translations and mistranslations of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in conjunction with Links London a guest lecture by Professor Metka Zupancic from the Department of Modern Languages, an experienced translator of French literature, fore grounded issues and problems that can arise when a male translator translates a female author.
In the case of Beauvoir, a male zoologist translated the philosopher’s seminal work, leading to a generation’s worth of misunderstandings and misplaced objections. As a class, we reviewed unnecessary omissions and incorrect translations, particularly of philosophical terms. Toril Moi speculates, “Only a tome as long as the book itself could document all the flaws in this translation”. Unfortunately, we lacked time at the end of the semester to read the more recent selections in Venuti’s reader that would surely have enhanced our discussions. However, the issue of mistranslation and misrepresentation brought us back to questions that we raised during our discussions of Garnett’s translations. Once again, we pondered how to define a good or at least acceptable translation. When is retranslation required Do certain texts require a specific kind of fidelity7 In the case of The Second Sex, what should we do with the several decades of Beauvoir criticism that made use of H. M. Parshley’s flawed translation Despite our discussions of nuance and intent, of word choice and selective omission, class evaluations of competing translations occasionally lingered too long on gut-level impressions: Which text sounds more powerful Which is more moving Our predicament here reflects an ostensible weakness of Links Of London Charms any such course; failing group familiarity with the original source text, our judgments were effectively based on the merits of the translation, not as a translation but as a literary work in its own right. Benjamin would have appreciated the truth and the irony in this predicament.
On the other hand, most of our evaluative work convinced us that reading and evaluating translations without prior knowledge of the source language or source text can be extremely productive, though it is a discipline that requires considerable structure. Venuti advocates comparative work, arguing that it is particularly effective when it focuses on Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s “remainder” which, in translations, “consists of textual effects that work only in the target language, domestic linguistic forms that are added to the foreign text in the translating process,” the historical aspect of which, he suggests, is “perhaps more dramatically revealed when several translations of a single foreign text are juxtaposed”.
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