Translation as a Creative Process
by Patrick Connolly
David Homel has been translating Dany Laferriere’s books from French to English since the late eighties. There needs to be an enourmous trust between the two writers for an author to consent to having their works translated into another language, especially when that work is so focussed on language as Laferriere’s is. But translation is more than just being able to plug in the words. Words and phrases that have a certain political or aesthetic context may not have the same weight with the word’s counterpart in a different language. Sometimes words don’t exist in the new language. Therefore, translation must be a creative process.
The Canadian translator Sheila Fischman believes that translating “is like writing but with someone else’s hand”. In a National Post article entitled “The Forgotten Mimics“, Fischman argues that “[translating is] not a technical process, it’s an aesthetic process”. They are most certainly “Forgotten Mimics” to the general reading public, but the authors sure appreciate their work. Recently on Reddit, a user named Shizo211 had a question as to whether he should read a John Green book, Looking for Alaska, in English as Green had originally published it, or in the user’s native tongue, German. John Green amazingly replied to the question and willed Shizo211 to read it in German because “[t]he translation, by Sophie Zeitz, is extraordinarily good. I know this partly because readers who’ve read both have told me, but partly because … The book got better reviews in German than in English, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sophie made it better.” It’s understandable that a writer would be glad to have his book published – for revenue’s sake – but to persuade someone to indulge in the translation instead of the original is a true appreciation of translation as an art form.
Work Cited:
Medley, Mark. “The Forgotten Mimics.” National Post Arts. National Post, 24 Sept. 2010. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
Shizo211.”Should I Read My next Book (Looking for Alaska Bz John Green) in English or My Native Language German? • /r/makemychoice.” Reddit: MakeMyChoice. Reddit, 27 Oct. 2014. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
Your post raises some very important questions about translation, a topic I myself am quite fascinated by. As you note, translation cannot be seen as a mechanical process, one that provides anything that could be rightfully called “equivalent” to an original text in a different language. Rather, translation must be seen as a creation in itself, one that hopefully runs somewhat parallel to the original. When translating one runs into several problems to which there may be no right answer, but merely different styles or philosophies with which to address them. Certain words or phrases hold cultural significance that may not exist in another culture. Additionally, as Vladimir Nabokov has stressed several times, in the context of poetry, does the ideal translator sacrifice the meter or rhyme scheme for the closest possible translation of meaning word for word? Or the other way around? Who can say that a poem– or any work of literature– can be understood as in any way “the same” without both the literal meaning of the words and their aesthetic components working together in harmony?
Hello Patrick,
I completely agree with your comment regarding translation as a creative process. Some tend to regard translation as simply taking the narrative and translating it word for word onto a page, and if the word doesn’t translate as well, to just find the closest thing to it. However, what might work well between two particular languages that are very similar to one another might not work as well between something like English and Chinese. A prime example of this would be the translation of Harry Potter from English into Chinese. Spells, names, places are sounded absolutely ridiculous and many situations lost its original tension and wonder. Although it was obvious that they did their best to try and retain the atmosphere of the scene, it had been lost. It’s possible that the process of translation just isn’t able to keep with the original atmosphere it had in its original language but that it’ll always take on a slightly different meaning and evoke a different feeling in the reader whether that’s for better or for worse.