TTFeb: Way too many words on translation

[superborb]

nnozomi prompted: Anything to do with translation issues (cnovel or otherwise)

I think that translation requires choices, so any good translation must by nature engage with its choices. Not /defend/ exactly, but persuade that those choices are shedding light upon its source. There's two 'choices' that I'm interested in discussing (today) (lol): foreignization (wait, don't go away!) and Nachdichtung and other transformations.

Caveats:

I have many translation thoughts hahahaha. They are still developing! So I have to say, because this is a topic on which I am still actively reading theory and forming opinions, that these are especially subject to growth.

Most of these thoughts are in response to Chinese translations; through poetry club, I've been exposed to a great variety (not exhaustive in any way) of the schools of thought on Chinese poetry translation in particular. And since I am (shockingly???) somewhat literate in Chinese now, it's easier for me to think about. However, on balance, most of the words of translation that I've read in my life are not Chinese, because look, it's going to take a lot of words to beat the sheer length of Russian novels, and there's just /so much/ of the literary canon that is translated from German, French, Spanish etc etc etc.

(I've seen people saying that English doesn't have a good history of translation, and I admit to bafflement. Even if you ignore all the new stuff coming out and topping bestsellers lists, we read quite a lot of works in translation in school?)

Foreignization:

"The project of writing translations that preserve in the the way they sound some trace of the work's "authentic foreignness" is really applicable only when the original is not very foreign at all. [...] In order to even notice that this sentence from German a foreignizing translation is have you to know that in German subordinate clauses at the end their verbs put. Otherwise it is comical, clumsy, nonsensical, and so forth--not "German" at all." David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear.

The debates over foreignization and localization are... endless. So many books and articles and journals. Often it seems like it's something that people /feel/ is correct and come up with explanations to justify why their stance is correct. I will now proceed to explain to you why my stance is clearly the correct one*.

*This is a joke; I understand why people would be further towards either end of the spectrum than me.

I think that a work should clearly define its intended audience and write to that. An audience for translated webnovels not only can tolerate higher levels of 'keikaku means plan', it WANTS that. Bellos writes that 19th century translators of French into English would often do the same because educated people were expected to know some French, and so they would feel satisfied at reading something that felt like they were reading a novel in French. Similarly, Wilt Idema writes in Purpose and Form that his translations of Chinese poetry would be criticized for their lack of chinoiserie. And on and on, many examples of how this feeling of 'ah, I'm reading a foreign work' is desirable by certain audiences, once the audience has been raised to expect a certain 'authentic foreigness'. So, the same feeling that a contemporary cnovel reader feels at recognizing words in pinyin.

But tone is an essential part of the source, and using what parses as awkward phrasing in English to try and convey a sense of the original language just completely loses that aspect. Instead of words dancing on the page, they are-- well, the Bellos quote above makes me frantically rearrange, but when the source is in Chinese, my brain instinctively tries to translate it back into Chinese. In either case, you've lost the original tone, for something different. That's not necessarily bad-- this is where I diverge from my more die hard 'natural English or bust' friends, because I can enjoy a very deliberate, carefully done translation that carries over an unfamiliar cadence. But to convey that, you've made a choice to add in something new, so long as the source was not meant to feel foreign at all.

(Browulf, the Headley translation of Beowulf, remains my favorite, ambitious effort to capture the original tone of a work. Often, of course, other translations capture the tone in a more understated and quiet way, but Browulf sure does make an impression haha.)

I do feel very strongly about when it IS bad though. This comes directly from my experiences as an Asian American and so I understand that other people won't feel this quite as deeply as me! But in the US, 'bad at English' is such a common, strong racist stereotype that to present bad wording as if it were a polished, elegant, faithful interpretation of a Chinese work really disturbs me. So for instance, in the official MDZS translation, when the original source reads smoothly and like a light, casual work, turning it into something that reads very clumsily with invented classist dialect markers is way too far in that direction for my taste. Essentially, I need my foreignization to walk a tight balance of faithfulness to the original, and falling in the direction of 'too much' is way more jarring than playing it safe with idiomatic English.

Nachdichtung and other transformations:

When I was discussing how the arguments against bridge translations (by which I mean, the derogatory way that it was described as someone first rendering the text in a plainer English and someone else taking that and prettying it up, which bears little resemblance to the usual teamwork that occurs) make it sound like a transformative work, x_los  remembered a footnote from Chinese Poetry and Translation that was very relevant: "Discussions of translations of poetry in English and Dutch are hampered by the absence of the German distinction between Nachdichtung and Übersetzung (translation that follows the source text, as distinct from creative rewriting)." This was in the same Idema essay I mentioned earlier. Looking up Nachdichtung online leads to this blog post, which defines it as "a piece of poetry that tries to re-create the spirit in which another piece of poetry was written and its effect on the reader without being literal about it—what's more important is that the new piece is a successful piece of poetry in its own right while staying "true" to the original in a deeper sense."

After that conversation, there was a minor twitter storm over a translator who localized Japanese romance games to English and the sometimes extreme changes required to convey the right tone. That really made me think about how much change might be required to convey the spirit of a work. A subtly separate argument from localization, because localized translation is still carries an expectation of a literal translation, but perhaps there ought to be a space for something more /transformative/.

Of course, this conversation is going to have to engage in some rather controversial translations as a result. I was thinking of two: the Coleman Barks translations of Rumi and Ursula K. Le Guin's Tao Te Ching rendition.

The Coleman Barks translations hugely popularized Rumi, but Barks doesn't know Persian or Arabic. This might not necessarily have led to backlash, except his translations secularize and erase the Islamic context of Rumi's works. (More on that history.) So that's pretty colonialist! Not a good look! Those translations clearly emotionally affected many though, so where is its place? Is it on any level true to the original and so a Nachdichtung? Ought it be considered a transformative work, merely inspired by the previous translations? There's a spectrum that seems to look like literal faithfulness -> spiritual faithfulness -> transformative.

Taoism deeply influenced Le Guin, to the point where e.g. reviews that get all confused over the morals of Omelas and don't mention Taoism at all seem to be rather bad at reading Le Guin. Like Barks, she knew no Chinese, but she also only ever called it an interpretation, a rendition of the Tao Te Ching, explicitly not a translation. And so, having spent a lifetime thinking deeply about Taoism, writing and considering Taoist concepts, and working with experts in Classical Chinese, she produced a work that tried to capture the beauty of the Tao Te Ching. Whether or not she succeeded is beyond the scope of this post, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss attempts like this out of hand. Does a lifetime of contemplation really not add anything to the conversation around this work? That feels very culturally essentialist.

Anyway! So many good translations giving new insight to works! Also many bad translations trying to obscure parts of works that they don't like! But how else can we communicate across languages and cultures and time but translation?


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Comments

[china_shop]

This is so interesting -- and of course, makes me think about where fanfic of other-language sources falls. That liminal state of not being a translation but embodying some of the same considerations. (I don't hang out on Twitter, where I think this might be heatedly discussed/discoursed.)

I can enjoy a very deliberate, carefully done translation that carries over an unfamiliar cadence. But to convey that, you've made a choice to add in something new, so long as the source was not meant to feel foreign at all.

Oh. Yes! *goes off to chew on this some more* :-)

[superborb]

Yeah, and the additional spectrum of familiarity with the source language can have definitely shape fic! And what gets borrowed from /other/ fic of that source language. (A conversation I would most definitely NOT have on Twitter lol.)

[nnozomi]

This is fascinating, and I'm going to come back and respond properly in a day or two when I get out from under a pile of work and can take my time with it. Thank you!

[superborb]

No rush!!

[trascendenza]

"Whether or not she succeeded is beyond the scope of this post, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss attempts like this out of hand. Does a lifetime of contemplation really not add anything to the conversation around this work? That feels very culturally essentialist."

So many great thoughts here! And I especially appreciate this part as I've been contemplating buying LeGuin's interpretation. I've always loved her work but have three other translations and wasn't entirely clear how this one might differ, so that's good to know!

[superborb]

I really can't judge if she succeeds in her attempt! But she's certainly very careful in how she discusses it and thoughtful in her choices!

[chestnut_pod]

What a neat post! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

"Whether or not she succeeded is beyond the scope of this post, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss attempts like this out of hand. Does a lifetime of contemplation really not add anything to the conversation around this work? That feels very culturally essentialist."

î that.

[superborb]

<3!

[lirazel]

This is so interesting!!! Thank you for sharing!

[superborb]

<3!

[rekishi]

I did a bit of a double take at seeing so much German in your post. ^^;

Quite interesting takes!

Coming from a culture that's big on dubbing into local language (to the point where we show nothing un-dubbed unless it's a foreign language tv station) and equally huge on translation, thinking about it from this angle is quite interesting. I generally don't watch/read anything dubbed/translated if I have the choice to do differently, but translation quality also vastly differs. A very engaging original can turn completely boring and awkward in the translation (or actually vice versa, though that's rarer).

I think you hit the nail on the head when talking about audience, because the people who read manga definitely have different expectations than a mainstream audience from a bestseller list.

Good points, I need to think about some of it.

But haha, so much German, clearly we have too many untranslatable words. ^^;

[superborb]

I had to so carefully check that I spelled all the German correctly lol.

And yeah, I think people were saying English didn't have a translation culture because it doesn't do stuff like dubbing as heavily, but it felt a bit... we can talk about the different approaches to translation that different cultures have without generalizing THAT much, geez.

[dragongirlg]

Thank you for this!

[superborb]

<3!

[silveredeye]

This was very interesting. :D

Browulf feels so much like a poem that kind of needs to be declaimed while standing on a table, possibly while the audience is at least half drunk. I loved that.

[superborb]

RIGHT, like I'm not sure it always 100% worked for me, but it's really ambitiously trying to capture an aspect of the original that no other translation tried!

[sophia_sol]

This is so interesting, thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's such a complicated topic.

With regards to your thoughts about the Coleman Barks Rumi, one thing that strikes me in the context of this style of translation is that I am much more willing to accept it having a place if this kind of author is extremely clear and up-front about what kind of translation/transformation is going on. I am still so mad about a book of poetry I read years ago that, from everything presented in the book itself, made it seem like a book of faithful translations of original historic poetry, but I later discovered that it goes even further than Barks seems to -- in that it is poetry which he wrote that was ~inspired~ by the original poems. A book like that has its place, I think! As long as everyone who is exposed to such poems is aware of what it actually is and isn't. And the publisher seemed determined to not make it clear, probably because a book of poetry by famous classic writers will sell much better than a book of poetry by a modern poet inspired by those classic writers.

[superborb]

YEAH, that upfront caveat is so important! I know the summaries of the Le Guin are misleading, but within the book itself, she is clear about the scope of her work.

Gosh, I'm learning so much about people trying to pass off original work as translation. Why???

[shati]

I also found this really interesting!

As kind of a side effect, I think foreignization often keeps me aware I'm not reading the original words, as opposed to the uncanny context valley? of forgetting or never knowing I'm reading in translation at all and putting too much weight on specific English phrasing (as my understanding of the original work). (Reading manga scanlations during HS vs. reading assigned novels in translation in HS ...) There are a lot of ways to do that, though, and it's possible most people don't need/want that anyway.

[superborb]

Oh interesting! I wonder if I'm less desirous of this effect because I tend to not be very focused on specific phrasing, except if it's jarring?

[presumenothing]

As someone who doesn't consume works in translation (primarily enabled by already knowing the languages I need, for fandom purposes) this was a really fascinating read! Definitely agreed that literal-ness shouldn't be the do-or-die yardstick of translations, and of course German has a word for that too. Very pleasing!

…aaaand the resulting thoughts ate at my brain so much that I, uh, wrote a much-less-coherent bunch of words mulling over it? Thoughts are contagious, apparently.

[superborb]

I was toying with the idea of trying some sort of "books from different countries" challenge (ended up subsumed by Too Many Books on TBR Already), which is why I was thinking about the different languages-- and then of course, I remembered how many Russian novels I read in my misspent youth djfskldjf. Going to be hard to top that.

Oooooh I'll check it out!!

[genarti]

This is great, thank you! I totally agree with a lot of your thoughts, especially about the issue of capturing the feel of the original. I understand why people are further to one or the other side of various spectrums than I am, but to me it does feel wrong and weirdly contrived to make something sound awkward in a way it wouldn't to its original readership? Plus, as Bellos says, in order for something to sound like X language rather than just kinda off, you need an audience that's familiar with the patterns of X language, which means it's a strategy that really only works with some language pairs and audiences.

Like you, I'm unsure about how to categorize works where the original has deeply influenced the target language product, but it's more interpretation or inspired-by than translation -- there's a difference, but where do you draw the line? I don't know. I agree with sophia_sol that it matters a lot to me how upfront the writer is about what they are and aren't doing, though.

[superborb]

Right! And now I'm thinking about when the target language might have started incorporating bits of the source language into their 'dialect', like how jpop/anime fans use bits of Japanese as slang/loanwords...

Yeah, there's some place where it slips into transformative work-- but where exactly? And there seems to be a missing term for an 'interpretation' when it's not yet fully transformative...

[vriddy]

This was incredibly informative and great food for thought, thank you for sharing.

[superborb]

<3!

[scytale]

This is all very interesting and I am going to ponder this for a while!

I didn't actually know about the controversy around the Coleman Barks translation, though I remember enjoying them a few years back. The links you provided were very illuminating, thank you!

"a piece of poetry that tries to re-create the spirit in which another piece of poetry was written and its effect on the reader without being literal about it—what's more important is that the new piece is a successful piece of poetry in its own right while staying "true" to the original in a deeper sense."

I'm pondering this a bit, because this feels like this definition, as stated in the blog post, muddles intent and impact -- at first it talks about "tries to re-create the spirit" and then the latter half talks about whether it actually works.

I'm assuming the impact is more important -- so I can say, X was trying to create a Nachdichtung, but they're wrong?

I suspect that someone like Coleman Barks would say that he's trying to capture the effect on the reader -- I think he probably genuinely reads as some kind of meditation on transcendental general mysticism on Love (and I checked the intro to one of his books, in which he places Rumi in the context of non-Islamic mysticism) and general Truth that applies across culture. But on the other hand, I would say he's being very wrong.

literal faithfulness -> spiritual faithfulness -> transformative

I think this is a very good distinction, and I think a useful one to take into reading translations. I notice this in myself sometimes, in which I read a translation and go, "ah! this is how the work is!" but of course it is not.

I think even literal faithfulness can be very fraught, though; I'm thinking, for instance, how you actually literally translate a poetic form like haiku. So I think even a literal translator would have to deal with whether or not to preserve the syllable format or to split up the lines. Or what the distinction between literal and spiritual translation sometimes is: so for instance, if a poem relies on homophones and references to simultaneously be two things at once, how do you translate that? Or dealing with languages that are structured grammatically differently -- trying to literally translate into English from a language where, say, you don't have to attach a subject or in which a sentence can be ambiguous in tense can sometimes be Interesting -- or just dealing with words with multiple meanings.

So a literal translation requires some interpretation to pin down the meaning -- and (thinking as a fic writer), sometimes what I literally mean is both meanings, or the ambiguity in and of itself.

In general, I think what I would hope for is a lot of different translations, as well as translators being open about the decisions they make.

So many good translations giving new insight to works! Also many bad translations trying to obscure parts of works that they don't like!

Yes, or accidentally doing so! And how that can affect a fandom as well, if two translations give a very different feel for the character.

And then there are the cases in which an official translation has a different meaning...it gets possibly even more interesting. Because then, what is canon in that case?

But how else can we communicate across languages and cultures and time but translation?

Yes! <3

[superborb]

Really good point about intent vs impact wrt Nachdichtung, but unfortunately I have no idea how it's treated in German. My first assumption (based on no additional facts) is that if it's /intended/ to be true in the deeper sense but fails, it's a bad Nachdichtung, the way that a translation that misses some critical aspect of meaning would be a bad translation?

Yeah, of course preserving meanings, including ambiguity, is an important part of (what we call in English) translation, and choices have to be made there, but I guess it's pretty core to the whole premise of translation to me? Like I wouldn't consider calling it out separately because if those pieces weren't difficult, translation would be trivial.

[brownbetty]

I don't know that I have anything as smart to say as you do in this post, but I do have a lot of feelings about translation, (source: just trust me, bro)

I do like the feeling, when I am reading a text in translation, that I am encountering something made outside my culture, but I am aware that this is only half-step away from the sort of exoticizing that can easily be... hm.

I think I tend to think of translation in terms of its goal, and if you come to a text expecting it to have one goal (faithfully conveying the 'exact words') only to discover it was made with a different goal (delivering an equivalent experience) it can be quite jarring and disappointing.

But then I discovered L. Cranmer Byng and I'm not sure I can justify any of my instinctive feelings about this mode. Is it, like, a reflexive aversion to all things Victorian? (Edwardian, I guess) I am not sure why I find this so unsatisfactory when I ought to be able to say "Well, he's set out with the goal of putting this poetry into a form that is recognizable to his audience."

Maybe I ought to say "well, the risk of engaging creatively with translation/poetry is that not every creative attempt is going to be successful or to my taste."

[superborb]

I think one of the best parts of reading translations is that they inherently are trying to translate and illuminate a different culture! I guess I feel equally likely to encounter a :gritted_teeth: exoticization in non-translated works?? This is probably because I read a lot of Asian-American literature where that is probably more common than in other literary niches.

A word-for-word translation is an impossibility anyway, so IMO it kind of seems like a misunderstanding of... language to expect that??

Byng certainly is aiming for A Style.