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Our esteemed cyber-vecino, Ion, has posted an extremely
interesting note on translation in general, and specifically a translation
into Spanish
of a work by one of his favorite poets, Derek Wolcott. This got us thinking,
again, about the difficulties and delights of translations, as well as
the whole question of multilingualism as part of the human experience.
As a linguist and language teacher, the Dowbrigade has thought long
and hard about the power of words, and the primal force of The Word,
which, whispered by God into the ear of mankind at the dawn of time,
started the whole evolution of consciousness and civilization that delivered
the
human
race from
the company of beasts into the light of progress and development we are
experiencing today.
A word, any word, is much more than a sound that carries meaning. The
key to the power of a word is that it caries a different and idiosyncratic
meaning for every person that hears or uses it, depending on their history,
education,
emotive associations and mood at the moment it enters their mind. This
is the timeless problem and the promise of magic facing those who deal
in the currency of words. When a novelist or poet uses a word,
the only thing of which he can be certain is that NO ONE who reads or
hears
it
will have
exactly the same reaction, associations or response in their mind
as the author. In each case, the word will reverberate in a personal
echo chamber, the shape and flavor of the echoes determined by the intricate
overlay of every time and every context in which they have heard the
word before.
This infinite variation in temper and tonality is multiplied exponentially
when individual words are strung together in longer units to convey complex
and multidimensional messages; phrases, sentences, stories or statements.
Then, the individual words meld together, combine and collide and bounce
off of each other, suggesting and eliciting associations, streams of
thought
and
emotion,
juxtaposing
areas
of memory
and
mental activity which perhaps had never touched each other directly before.
In this sense, any writing, or speech, is a sort of translation, from
the internal linguistic landscape of one human being to another. Given
the astounding diversity of our inner lives, is it any surprise that
different interpretations and misunderstandings are the rule rather than
the exception?
When moving from one language to another, the differences in memories,
resonances and cultural cues evoked are magnified and multiplied. The
mysteries of the origins of modern languages are a source of discussion
and disagreement among linguists and anthropologists everywhere.
Almost all cultures which have been studied have some variation on the
Babel myth: that at some point in the misty dawn of civilization all
peoples spoke a single, universal language, and that a cataclysmic cultural
event resulted in the fragmentation of our linguistic heritage. Whether
this is an echo of an actual event or an allegory for the transmigration
and differential evolution of cultural groups is open to debate, but
the universality of the myth speaks to the importance of language diversification
in the lives of tribes and nations from prehistory to the present.
This diversification has both positive and negative influences and effects
on our modern linguistic heritage. On the minus side, the proliferation
of mutually unintelligible language groups makes communication, the sharing
of ideas, stories and knowledge a nightmare of misunderstanding and mutual
alienation. Not only literature and art, but science, politics and commerce
are made immeasurably more difficult due to our inability to understand
our neighbors or counterparts in other parts of the world.
On the plus side, the variety of existing languages enriches the human
experience and adds colors and tones to the pallet of human expression.
Fluency in multiple languages allows a person to examine the world in
different ways, to find an increased number of solutions to common problems,
and to view the world from a variety of perspectives. In this sense the
aggressive and chauvinistic monolingualism of most of the population
of the United States is one of the major obstacles to the emergence of
true global understanding and the search for a way out of the traps of
national prejudices and discrimination, and their bastard children,
fear, hatred and warfare against those seen as different or alien.
Returning to the theme of translations, it should be clear that the
job of a translator is much more than plugging in a distinct set of vocabulary
and grammatical rules. It involves truly understanding the underlying
meaning and mood of a piece of language, and the ability to interpret
and reformulate it in a completely different system of expression.
A really good translator needs to be as much of a creative artist as
the original author, maybe even more. A translation cannot be seen as
the informational or artistic equivalent of the original work; rather
it is an interpretation, a commentary and an original aesthetic effort.
It is a mistake to evaluate a translation as "better" or "worse" than
the original. It may have a more immediate or impactful effect on any
particular reader, due to the experiences and sensibilities
they share with the translator, and their agreement or disagreement
with the translators understanding
of the underlying message encoded in the original work.
This process of reinterpretation and idiosyncratic variation has a long
and storied history in the evolution of human culture. Many times longer
and more complex than the history of literature is the history, and pre-history,
of storytelling, which anthropologists refer to as "oral history". For
thousands of years before the development of written language, stories,
epic poems, myths and tribal histories were told and retold, around fires
and on open hearths, in anticipation of and following hunts and battles,
feasts and ceremonies, by people huddled in caves or tents or wandering over
open terrain in search of sustenance and survival.
The tellers of
these tales were honored and respected figures in their groups, often
elders, wise
men,
spiritual
leaders or mystical figures. Each time they retold their stories, and
especially as they were bequeathed from generation to generation, the pace,
focus, vocabulary and interpretation varied according to the situation, the
immediate cultural necessity, or the altered state of consciousness of the
teller. This tradition continues to this day in the isolated pockets
of vestigial human organization anthropologists love to study, for the clues
and insights they provide in how we came to be what we are today.
So lets acknowledge and appreciate the difficult and invaluable work done
every day around the world by this group of truly creative artists and champions
of intercultural communication. A good translation can not only preserve
and transmit the ideas and emotions of a respected writer into a foreign
language, it can actually find and express facets of a work that may never
have otherwise come to light, even in the minds of the original authors.
inspiration from Ion’s Blog
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