Friday, December 15, 2006
Translate This Monsieur !!!
On Translation. . .Harry Mathews
This example of what we may call efficient translation suggests that one thing a translator should look for is a means of letting non-nominal meaning pass into the target language; and this in turn implies that fidelity in translation should apply not only to nominal meaning but to what may be provisionally called effect. A further implication is that reinvention rather than replication can best realize this aim. Let me cite some examples of my own experience in support of this view.
My first work with a French translator provided me with a basic apprenticeship in the practicalities of converting written English into French. (The work being translated was a novel appropriately called The Conversions.) At the start, whenever a difficulty arose, I would soon find a solution for it, only to be reluctantly but accurately informed that 'c'est une chose qu'on ne peut pas dire en français.''That's something you can't say in French.'2 I thus discovered that there are numerous rules of French composition not to be found in grammars, that in order to learn them it is advisable to attend twelve years in a French primary school and lycée, and that I would be well advised to restrict my own writing of French to such easily initiated forms as official letters. As for the actual rendering of the book, Claude Portail, my translator, was knowledgeable, sensitive, and talented enough; she was also, unfortunately, all too modest when confronted with a demanding author; and since I was stupidly obsessed with preserving the rhythm of my sentences and paragraphs (that is, their shape and phrasing), she did her utmost to oblige my usually unreasonable insistence, with results that were inevitably flawed.
How unreasonable my insistence was became glaringly evident on the very title page of my second novel, the first of two translated by Georges Perec. In English the book was called Tlooth, a meaningless, made-up word suggesting both a 'tooth' and the word 'truth' as a Chinaman or a Thai might pronounce it. Perec and I spent much time concocting analogous French words. Of his many ingenious inventions, I particularly remember Dentité; The invented word suggests 'toothness' as well as 'identity.' like the rest, it was discarded as being too literary, too clever. (The word tlooth, after all, sounds like nothing so much as a grunt.) One day Perec suggested as a title Les verts champs de moutarde de l'Afghanistan, words that end a chapter more or less half way through the novel; I did not approve; so he waited until I was safely on the other side of the Atlantic before announcing, after the book had been sent to the printer, that he and Geneviève Serreau had agreed that Les verts champs de moutarde de l'AfghanistanThe green mustard-fields of Afghanistan. was indeed the best possible title for the French edition.Harry Mathews from Fearful Symmetries
This example of what we may call efficient translation suggests that one thing a translator should look for is a means of letting non-nominal meaning pass into the target language; and this in turn implies that fidelity in translation should apply not only to nominal meaning but to what may be provisionally called effect. A further implication is that reinvention rather than replication can best realize this aim. Let me cite some examples of my own experience in support of this view.
My first work with a French translator provided me with a basic apprenticeship in the practicalities of converting written English into French. (The work being translated was a novel appropriately called The Conversions.) At the start, whenever a difficulty arose, I would soon find a solution for it, only to be reluctantly but accurately informed that 'c'est une chose qu'on ne peut pas dire en français.''That's something you can't say in French.'2 I thus discovered that there are numerous rules of French composition not to be found in grammars, that in order to learn them it is advisable to attend twelve years in a French primary school and lycée, and that I would be well advised to restrict my own writing of French to such easily initiated forms as official letters. As for the actual rendering of the book, Claude Portail, my translator, was knowledgeable, sensitive, and talented enough; she was also, unfortunately, all too modest when confronted with a demanding author; and since I was stupidly obsessed with preserving the rhythm of my sentences and paragraphs (that is, their shape and phrasing), she did her utmost to oblige my usually unreasonable insistence, with results that were inevitably flawed.
How unreasonable my insistence was became glaringly evident on the very title page of my second novel, the first of two translated by Georges Perec. In English the book was called Tlooth, a meaningless, made-up word suggesting both a 'tooth' and the word 'truth' as a Chinaman or a Thai might pronounce it. Perec and I spent much time concocting analogous French words. Of his many ingenious inventions, I particularly remember Dentité; The invented word suggests 'toothness' as well as 'identity.' like the rest, it was discarded as being too literary, too clever. (The word tlooth, after all, sounds like nothing so much as a grunt.) One day Perec suggested as a title Les verts champs de moutarde de l'Afghanistan, words that end a chapter more or less half way through the novel; I did not approve; so he waited until I was safely on the other side of the Atlantic before announcing, after the book had been sent to the printer, that he and Geneviève Serreau had agreed that Les verts champs de moutarde de l'AfghanistanThe green mustard-fields of Afghanistan. was indeed the best possible title for the French edition.Harry Mathews from Fearful Symmetries
# posted by Lamb Mouton @ 10:22 PM 
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Traduttore, tradittore. Não foi à toa que os irmãos Campos, operários da linguagem, batizaram um de seus esforcos de versão de "intradução". O estrangeiro, seu idioma e a cultura de onde emergiu, é como a mulher para Lacan: não existe — pois nunca saberemos, nós homens, o que é ter uma vagina, ser penetrada, ficar menstruada a cada 28 dias, dar à luz. Nunca saberemos o que é ter passado 12 anos no sistema educacional francês, redigindo diversas composições atentando ao mesmo tempo para as inflexíveis regras de estrutura (tese - antítese - síntese, com parágrafos mais ou menos do mesmo tamanho, frases de transição etc.) e as inapreensíveis regras de ortografia, aqueles acentos todos com justificativas tão diversas, desde o agudo no “é” (que na verdade marca o nosso som fechado, “ê”) até o impalpável circunflexo etimológico, que está lá apenas para assinalar o desaparecimento (por assassinato ou morte morrida de velhice ?) do “s”, como no “i” de "maître" (antigo maistre). Numa entrevista em priscas eras, João Cabral de Melo Neto me contou que conhecia muito bem quatro idiomas (inglês, francês, espanhol e catalão), mas era incapaz de falá-los bem, pois, segundo ele, para falar bem um idioma estrangeiro, era preciso interpretar a pessoa do falante nacional, e ele odiava teatro — apesar de ter escrito um auto de Natal, Morte e Vida Severina, e outro sobre os últimos dias de Frei Caneca. Não há o estrangeiro - portanto, não há globalização, porque esta pressupõe a superação de barreiras (alfandegárias, políticas, culturais etc.), e disso nunca seremos capazes, pois não há, não pode haver barreiras entre nós e o nada. Sequer podemos ouvir e ver o outro, termos compaixão para com sua diferença, senti-lo, sê-lo. O outro é o outro é o outro, tanto, e de tal modo, que nunca o atingimos, apenas intuimos sua estranheza, sua curiosa natureza de alienígena. E quando emigramos, deixamos de ser nós mesmos e jamais nos tornamos nacionais de outro país, mesmo quando nos naturalizamos — ate porque nacionalidade não é natural, é uma artificialidade, como tão bem mostrou Eric Hobsbawn em seu Nações e Nacionalismo desde 1780. Mas é um implante de alma, que permeia tão fundo nosso ser, que até cremos ser nossa Pessoa isso que fingimos ser. O idioma adentra tanto nossa sensibilidade que, mesmo no inconsciente da língua na língua, na suposta fusão do sexo, há essa separação, e o casamento entre nós e uma realidade objetiva, além da palavra, a ding an sich de Kant ou o zikr dos derviches, jamais se consuma, ficamos sempre nas preliminares, no jogo de palavras, e mesmo quando estamos lá, fazemos como os pronomes - nunca os pomos (no caso, a nós mesmos) onde estamos, ou (não) somos.
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