Encounter

ABC ABC ABC AB C  A  B  C A B C A B C  A B C  A B C A B C v A B C A B C v A B C A B CA B C A BC A B CA B C A BC A B C AB C A B CA B C A  B C A B C A B C A B CA B C A B C A B C A B C AB C AB C A B C v A B C A B C ABCABCABCABCABCABCABCABCABCABC ABCABCAB CABCABCAB CABCA  BCABCABC ABC ABCAB CABCA BCABC ABCAB CABCA BCABC ABCABCA BCABCAB CABC ABCA BCA BCAB CAB CA BCAB CABCA BCABC ABCAB CAB CABCAB CABCAB CABCAB CABC ABC ABC ABC ABCAB CABCAB CABC ABCA BCAB CABC ABCA BCAB CABC ABCA BCAB CABC ABC ABC ABC AB CABCA BCAB C ABCA BCA BC AB CABC ABC ABC AB CABC ABCA BC

Choose the text for translation wisely, i.e. not at random. Your text should serve to illustrate a particular argument: in other words, there must be a reason for using the text in question to say whatever you want to say in the dissertation, and that reason must be clear.

The basics

Why are you translating or re-translating this text?

The answer to this question should be informed by the answers to the following questions, and should be less subjective than “I liked it” …

Where does the text come from and where is it going? Who are you addressing?

Do you, as Spivak argues should be the case, have “a tough sense of the specific terrain of the original” (1993:188)? In other words, do you have sense of where this text slots into its source culture? Of its position in the home literature? Have you, as Venuti argues should be the case, engaged with “the cultural conditions of the translating” (2011:247)? Have you thought about what it means to transplant this text at this moment? Or what it means to re-translate this text at this particular time?  Who will its audience be? How will it shape the target culture’s perception of the source culture and its literature? When addressing the reader, please bear in mind that your readers may include people with and without knowledge of your source language. You should have a sense of how this will affect your approach.

What were your priorities when translating this text?

Fidelity to the source? In what way? The creation of a ‘successful’ target text? Considerations of audience? Creative self-expression? Experimentation? Revolution? Were you motivated humanistically and/or ideologically?

What a translation commentary (for our purposes) should NOT be

It is not a commentary in the Classicist or Nabokovian mode, i.e. it should not be comprised of notes on or annotations to a text. There is an important role for this type of commentary, but it is not appropriate for the context of your module final papers and dissertations.

It should not be a chronological/biographical narrative of translating a text, i.e. the shape of the commentary should not be determined by the order of the text but rather by your argument(s).

It should not apply translation theory, since one cannot apply a theory (a theory, whether of translation or of any other phenomenon, can be tested and can influence practice, but cannot be straightforwardly applied).

What a translation commentary (for our purposes) should be

The link between the translation and the commentary, i.e. how far the translation bears out what is said in the commentary, will be central to the success of this piece of work.

The commentary should do the following:

it should contain an argument or a set of arguments that are illustrated by the translation;

it should address relevant issues of translation theory and practice;

it should open up the process of theoretically informed reflection that lies behind the creation of a translation product.

Any piece of academic work benefits from a clear introduction that holds the reader’s hand somewhat. In your commentary, a good, basic introduction to the text, author and context will set things up nicely. This should precede the translation. Additionally, please bear the following points in mind:

Illustrate your arguments/points with specific textual examples;

Engage with the literary criticism on your text/author/the genre. This will inevitably raise issues that will influence your thinking;

There is alwayssomething (and usually quite a lot) to be said about style and its translation (cf. Boase-Beier 2006, 2011).

Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere.

To heighten further the astonishment, these adventitious Hydra’s heads can be more

concrete than the body: Schahriah, the fantastical king “of the Islands of China and

Hindustan” receives news of Tarik ibn Ziyad, governor of Tangier s and victor in

the battle of Guadalete… The threshold is confused with the mirror, the mask lies

beneath the face, no one knows any longer which is the true man and which are his

idols. And none of it matters; the disorder is as acceptable and trivial as the

inventions of a daydream.

Chance has played at symmetries, contrasts, digressions. What might a man—a

Kafka—do if he organized and intensified this play, remade it in line with the

Germanic distortion, the Unheimlichkeit of Germany?

Notes

1 I allude to Mark Anthony, invoked by Caesar’s apostrophe: “on the Alps/It

is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh/Which some did die to look on …”

In these lines, I think I glimpse some inverted reflection of the zoological

myth of the basilisk, a serpent whose gaze is fatal. Pliny (Natural History,

Book Eight, paragraph 33) tells us nothing of the posthumous aptitudes of

this ophidian, but the conjunction of the two ideas of seeing (mirar) and

dying (morir) vedi Napoli e poi mori [see Naples and die]—must have

influenced Shakespeare.

The gaze of the basilisk was poisonous; the Divinity, however, can kill

with pure splendor or pure radiation of manna. The direct sight of God is

intolerable. Moses covers his face on Mount Horeb, “for he was afraid to

look on God”; Hakim, the prophet of Khorasan, used a four-fold veil of

white silk in order not to blind men’s eyes. Cf. also Isaiah 6:5, and 1 Kings

19:13.

2 Also memorable is this variation on the themes of Abulmeca de Ronda and

Jorge Manrique: “Where is the wight who peopled in the past/Hind-land and

Sind; and there the tyrant played?”48 JORGE LUIS BORGES

References

Among the volumes consulted, I must enumerate:

Les Mille et une Nuits, contes arabes traduits par Galland. Paris, s.d.

The Thousand and One Nights, commonly called The Arabian Nights’

Entertainments. A new translation from the Arabic, by E.W.Lane. London, 1839.

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. A plain and literal translation by

Richard F.Burton. London (?) n.d. Vols. VI, VII, VIII.

The Arabian Nights. A complete (sic) and unabridged selection from the famous

literal translation of R.F. Burton. New York, 1932.

Le Livre des Mille Nuits et Une Nuit. Traduction littérale et complète du texte

arabe, par le Dr. J.C.Mardrus, Paris, 1906.

Tausend und eine Nacht. Aus dem Arabischen übertragen von Max Henning. Leipzig,

Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten. Nach dem arabischen Urtext

der Calcuttaer Ausgabe vom Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. Leipzig,

1928.Chapter 4

José Ortega y Gasset

THE MISERY AND THE SPLENDOR OF

TRANSLATION

Translated by Elizabeth Gamble Miller

1 The Misery

D

URING A COLLOQUIUM

attended by professors and students from the

Collège de France and other academic circles, someone spoke of the

impossibility of translating certain German philosophers. Carrying the proposition

further, he proposed a study that would determine the philosophers who could and

those who could not be translated.

“This would be to suppose, with excessive conviction,” I suggested, “that

there are philosophers and, more generally speaking, writers who can, in fact, be

translated. Isn’t that an illusion? Isn’t the act of translating necessarily a utopian

task? The truth is, I’ve become more and more convinced that everything Man

does is utopian. Although he is principally involved in trying to know, he never

fully succeeds in knowing anything. When deciding what is fair, he inevitably

falls into cunning. He thinks he loves and then discovers he only promised to.

Don’t misunderstand my words to be a satire on morals, as if I would criticize

my colleagues because they don’t do what they propose. My intention is,

precisely, the opposite; rather than blame them for their failure, I would suggest

that none of these things can be done, for they are impossible in their very

essence, and they will always remain mere intention, vain aspiration, an invalid

posture. Nature has simply endowed each creature with a specific program of

actions he can execute satisfactorily. That’s why it’s so unusual for an animal to

be sad. Only occasionally may something akin to sadness be observed in a few

higher species—the dog or the horse—and that’s when they seem closest to us,

seem most human. Perhaps Nature, in the mysterious depths of the jungle, offers

its most surprising spectacle—surprising because of its equivocal aspect—the

193750 JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

melancholic orangutan. Animals are normally happy. We have been endowed

with an opposite nature. Always melancholic, frantic, manic, men are ill

nurtured by all those illnesses Hippocrates called divine. And the reason for this

is that human tasks are unrealizable. The destiny of Man—his privilege and

honor—is never to achieve what he proposes, and to remain merely an intention,

a living utopia. He is always marching toward failure, and even before entering

the fray he already carries a wound in his temple.

“This is what occurs whenever we engage in that modest occupation called

translating. Among intellectual undertakings, there is no humbler one.

Nevertheless, it is an excessively demanding task.

“To write well is to make continual incursions into grammar, into established

usage, and into accepted linguistic norms. It is an act of permanent rebellion against

the social environs, a subversion. To write well is to employ a certain radical

courage. Fine, but the translator is usually a shy character. Because of his humility,

he has chosen such an insignificant occupation. He finds himself facing an enormous

controlling apparatus, composed of grammar and common usage. What will he do

with the rebellious text? Isn’t it too much to ask that he also be rebellious, particularly

since the text is someone else’s? He will be ruled by cowardice, so instead of resisting

grammatical restraints he will do just the opposite: he will place the translated

author in the prison of normal expression; that is, he will betray him. Traduttore,

traditore”

“And, nevertheless, books on the exact and natural sciences can be translated,”

my colleague responded.

“I don’t deny that the difficulty is less, but I do deny that it doesn’t exist. The

branch of mathematics most in vogue in the last quarter century was Set Theory.

Fine, but its creator, Cantor, baptized it with a term that has no possibility of being

translated into our language. What we have had to call ‘set’ he called ‘quantity’

(Menge), a word whose meaning is not encompassed in ‘set.’ So, let’s not exaggerate

the translatability of the mathematical and physical sciences. But, with that proviso,

I am disposed to recognize that a version of them may be more precise than one

from another discipline.”

“Do you, then, recognize that there are two classes of writings: those that can be

translated and those that cannot?”

“Speaking grosso modo, we must accept that distinction, but when we do so we

close the door on the real problem every translation presents. For if we ask ourselves

the reason certain scientific books are easier to translate, we will soon realize that

in these the author himself has begun by translating from the authentic tongue in

which he ‘lives, moves and has his being’ into a pseudolanguage formed by technical

terms, linguistically artificial words which he himself must define in his book. In

short, he translates himself from a language into a terminology.”

“But a terminology is a language like any other! Furthermore, according to

our Condillac, the best language, the language that is ‘well constructed,’ is

science.”

“Pardon me for differing radically from you and from the good father. A

language is a system of verbal signs through which individuals may understand

each other without a previous accord, while a terminology is only intelligible if

the one who is writing or speaking and the one who is reading or listening haveTHE MISERY AND THE SPLENDOR OF TRANSLATION 51

previously and individually come to an agreement as to the meaning of the signs.

For this reason, I call it pseudolanguage, and I say that the scientist has to begin

by translating his own thoughts into it. It is a Volapuk, an Esperanto established

by a deliberate convention between those who cultivate that discipline. That is

why these books are easier to translate from one language to another. Actually,

in every country these are written almost entirely in the same language. That

being the case, men who speak the authentic language in which they are

apparently written often find these books to be hermetic, unintelligible, or at

least very difficult to understand.”

“In all fairness, I must admit you are right and also tell you I am beginning to

perceive certain mysteries in the verbal relationships between individuals that I had

not previously noticed.”

“And I, in turn, perceive you to be the sole survivor of a vanished species, like

the last of the Abencerrajes, since when faced with another’s belief you are capable

of thinking him, rather than you, to be right. It is a fact that the discussion of

translation, to whatever extent we may pursue it, will carry us into the most

recondite secrets of that marvelous phenomenon that we call speech. Just examining

questions that our topic obviously presents will be sufficient for now. In my

comments up to this point, I have based the utopianism of translation on the fact

that an author of a book—not of mathematics, physics, or even biology—is a

writer in a positive sense of the word. This is to imply that he has used his native

tongue with prodigious skill, achieving two things that seem impossible to reconcile:

simply, to be intelligible and, at the same time, to modify the ordinary usage of

language. This dual operation is more difficult to achieve than walking a tightrope.

How can we demand it of the average translator? Moreover, beyond this first

dilemma that personal style presents to the translator, we perceive new layers of

difficulties. An author’s personal style, for example, is produced by his slight

deviation from the habitual meaning of the word. The author forces it to an

extraordinary usage so that the circle of objects it designates will not coincide

exactly with the circle of objects which that same word customarily means in its

habitual use. The general trend of these deviations in a writer is what we call his

style. But, in fact, each language compared to any other also has its own linguistic

style, what von Humboldt called its ‘internal form.’ Therefore, it is utopian to

believe that two words belonging to different languages, and which the dictionary

gives us as translations of each other, refer to exactly the same objects. Since

languages are formed in different landscapes, through different experiences, their

incongruity is natural. It is false, for example, to suppose that the thing the Spaniard

calls a bosque [forest] the German calls a Wald, yet the dictionary tells us that

Wald means bosque. If the mood were appropriate this would be an excellent time

to interpolate an aria di bravura describing the forest in Germany in contrast to the

Spanish forest. I am jesting about the singing, but I proclaim the result to be

intuitively clear, that is, that an enormous difference exists between the two realities.

It is so great that not only are they exceedingly incongruous, but almost all their

resonances, both emotive and intellectual, are equally so.

“The shapes of the meanings of the two fail to coincide as do those of a person in

a double-exposed photograph. This being the case, our perception shifts and wavers

without actually identifying with either shape or forming a third; imagine the52 JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

distressing vagueness we experience when reading thousands of words affected in

this manner. These are the same causes, then, that produce the phenomenon of flou

[blur, haziness] in a visual image and in linguistic expression. Translation is the

permanent literary flou, and since what we usually call nonsense is, on the other

hand, but the flou of thoughts, we shouldn’t be surprised that a translated author

always seems somewhat foolish to us.”

2 The two utopianisms

“When conversation is not merely an exchange of verbal mechanisms, wherein

men act like gramophones, but rather consists of a true interchange, a curious

phenomenon is produced. As the conversation evolves, the personality of each

speaker becomes progressively divided: one part listens agreeably to what is being

said, while the other, fascinated by the subject itself, like a bird with a snake, will

increasingly withdraw and begin thinking about the matter. When we converse, we

live within a society; when we think, we remain alone. But in this case, in this kind

of conversation, we do both at once, and as the discussion continues we do them

with growing intensity: we pay attention to what is being said with almost

melodramatic emotion and at the same time we become more and more immersed

in the solitary well of our meditation. This increasing disassociation cannot be

sustained in a permanent balance. For this reason, such conversations

characteristically reach a point when they suffer a paralysis and lapse into a heavy

silence. Each speaker is self-absorbed. Simply as a result of thinking, he isn’t able

to talk. Dialogue has given birth to silence, and the initial social contact has fallen

into states of solitude.

“This happened at our conference—after my last statement. Why then? The

answer is clear: this sudden tide of silence wells up over dialogue at that point when

the topic has been developed to its extreme in one direction and the conversation

must turn around and set the prow toward another quadrant.”

“This silence that has risen among us,” someone said, “has a funereal character.

You have murdered translation, and we are sullenly following along for the burial.”

“Oh, no!” I replied. ‘Not at all! It was most important that I emphasize the

miseries of translating; it was especially important that I define its difficulty, its

improbability, but not so as to remain there. On the contrary, it was important so

that this might act as a ballistic spring to impel us toward the possible splendor of

the art of translation. This is the opportunity to cry out: ‘Translation is dead! Long

live translation!’ Now we must advocate the opposite position and, as Socrates said

on similar occasions, recant.”

“I fear that will be rather difficult for you,” said Mr. X. “For we haven’t forgotten

your initial statement to us setting forth the task of translating as a utopian operation

and an impossible proposition.”

“In fact, I said that and a little more: all specific tasks that Man undertakes are

of similar character. Don’t fear that I now intend to tell you why I think so. I know

that in a French conversation one must always avoid the principal point and it’s

preferable to remain in the temperate zone of intermediate questions. You’ve beenTHE MISERY AND THE SPLENDOR OF TRANSLATION 53

more than amiable in tolerating me, and even in forcing this disguised monologue

upon me, despite the fact that the monologue is, perhaps, the most grievous crime

one can commit in Paris. For that reason I am somewhat inhibited and conscience

stricken by the impression I have now of committing something like a rape. The

only thing that comforts me is the conviction that my French stumbles along and

would never allow the contredanse of dialogue. But let’s return to our subject, the

essentially utopian condition of everything human. Instead of confirming this belief

by truly solid reasoning, I will simply invite you, for the pure pleasure of an

intellectual experiment, to accept it as a basic principle and in that light to

contemplate the endeavors of Man.”

“Nevertheless,” said my dear friend Jean Baruzi, “your quarrel with utopianism

frequently appears in your work.”

“Frequently and substantially! There is a false utopianism that is the exact

inverse of the one I am now describing, a utopianism consistent in its belief that

what man desires, projects and proposes is, obviously, possible. Nothing is more

repugnant to me, for I see this false utopianism as the major cause of all the

misfortunes taking place now on this planet. In this humble matter in which we

are now engaged, we can appreciate the opposing meanings of the two

utopianisms. Both the bad and the good utopians consider it desirable to correct

the natural reality that places men within the confines of diverse languages and

impedes communication between them. The bad utopian thinks that because it is

desirable, it is possible. Believing it to be easy is just moving one step further.

With such an attitude, he won’t give much thought to the question of how one

must translate, and without further ado he will begin the task. This is the reason

why almost all translations done until now are bad ones. The good utopian, on

the other hand, thinks that because it would be desirable to free men from the

divisions imposed by languages, there is little probability that it can be attained;

therefore, it can only be achieved to an approximate measure. But this

approximation can be greater or lesser, to an infinite degree, and the efforts at

execution are not limited, for there always exists the possibility of bettering,

refining, perfecting: ‘progress,’ in short. All human existence consists of activities

of this type. Imagine the opposite: that you should be condemned to doing only

those activities deemed possible of achievement, possible in themselves. What

profound anguish! You would feel as if your life were emptied of all substance.

Precisely because your activity had attained what it was supposed to, you would

feel as if you had done nothing. Man’s existence has a sporting character, with

pleasure residing in the effort itself, and not in the results. World history compels

us to recognize Man’s continuous, inexhaustible capacity to invent unrealizable

projects. In the effort to realize them, he achieves many things, he creates

innumerable realities that so-called Nature is incapable of producing for itself.

The only thing that Man does not achieve is, precisely, what he proposes to—let

it be said to his credit. This wedding of reality with the demon of what is

impossible supplies the universe with the only growth it is capable of. For that

reason, it is very important to emphasize that everything—that is, everything

worthwhile, everything truly human—is difficult, very difficult; so much so, that

it is impossible.

“As you see, to declare its impossibility is not an argument against the possible54 JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

splendor of the translator’s task. On the contrary, this characterization admits it to

the highest rank and lets us infer that it is meaningful.”

An art historian interrupted, “Accordingly, you would tend to think, as I do, that

Man’s true mission, what gives meaning to his undertakings, is to oppose Nature.”

“In fact, I am very close to such an opinion, as long as we don’t forget the

previous distinction between the two utopianisms—the good and the bad—which,

for me, is fundamental. I say this because the essential character of the good utopian

in radically opposing Nature is to be aware of its presence and not to be deluded.

The good utopian promises himself to be, primarily, an inexorable realist. Only

when he is certain of not having acceded to the least illusion, thus having gained

the total view of a reality stripped stark naked, may he, fully arrayed, turn against

that reality and strive to reform it, yet acknowledging the impossibility of the task,

which is the only sensible approach.

“The inverse attitude, which is the traditional one, consists of believing that

what is desirable is already there, as a spontaneous fruit of reality. This has

blinded us a limine in our understanding of human affairs. Everyone, for example,

wants Man to be good, but your Rousseau, who has caused the rest of us to

suffer, thought the desire had long since been realized, that Man was good in

himself by nature. This idea ruined a century and a half of European history

which might have been magnificent. We have required infinite anguish, enormous

catastrophes—even those yet to come—in order to rediscover the simple truth,

known throughout almost all previous centuries, that Man, in himself, is nothing

but an evil beast.

“Or, to return definitively to our subject: to emphasize its impossibility is very

far from depriving the occupation of translating of meaning, for no one would even

think of considering it absurd for us to speak to each other in our mother tongue

yet, nevertheless, that is also a utopian exercise.”

This statement produced, in turn, a sharpening of opposition and protests. “That

is an exaggeration or, rather, what grammarians call ‘an abuse,’ “said a philologist,

previously silent. “There is too much supposition and paradox in that,” exclaimed

a sociologist.

“I see that my little ship of audacious doctrine runs the risk of running aground

in this sudden storm. I understand that for French ears, even your so benevolent

ones, it is hard to hear the statement that talking is a utopian exercise. But what am

I to do if such is undeniably the truth?”

3 About talking and keeping silent

Once the storm my last remarks had elicited subsided, I continued: “I well

understand your indignation. The statement that talking is an illusory activity

and a utopian action has all the air of a paradox, and a paradox is always

irritating. It is especially so for the French. Perhaps the course of this conversation

takes us to a point where we need to clarify why the French spirit is such an

enemy of paradox. But you probably recognize that it is not always within our

power to avoid it. When we try to rectify a fundamental opinion that seems quiteTHE MISERY AND THE SPLENDOR OF TRANSLATION 55

erroneous to us, there is little probability that our words will be free of a certain

paradoxical insolence. Who is to say whether the intellectual, who has been

inexorably prescribed to be one even against his desire or will, has not been

commissioned in this world to declare paradox! If someone had bothered to clarify

for us in depth and once and for all why the intellectual exists, why he has been

here since the time that he has, and if someone would put before us some simple

data of how the oldest ones perceived their mission—for example, the ancient

thinkers of Greece, the first prophets of Israel, etc.—perhaps my suspicions would

turn out to be obvious and trivial. After all, doxa means public opinion, and it

doesn’t seem justifiable for there to be a class of men whose particular office

consists of giving an opinion if their opinion is to coincide with that of the

public. Is this not redundancy or, as is said in our Spanish language, which is

more the product of muleteers than lord chamberlains, a packsaddle over a

packsaddle? Doesn’t it seem more likely that the intellectual exists in order to

oppose public opinion, the doxa, by revealing and maintaining a front against

the commonplace with true opinion, the paradoxal More than likely the

intellectual’s mission is essentially an unpopular one.

“Consider these suggestions simply as my defense before your irritation, but let

it be said in passing that with them I believe I am touching matters of primary

importance, although they are still scandalously untouched. Let it be evident,

furthermore, that this new digression is your responsibility for having incited me.

“And the fact is that my statement, despite its paradoxical physiognomy, is

rather obvious and simple. We usually understand by the term speech the exercise

of an activity through which we succeed in making our thinking known to our

fellowman. Speech is, of course, many other things besides this, but all of them

suppose or imply this to be a primary function of speech. For example, through

speech we try to persuade another, to influence him, at times to deceive him. A lie

is speech which hides our authentic thought. But it is evident that a lie would be

impossible if normal speech were not primarily sincere. Counterfeit money circulates

sustained by sound money. In the end, deceit turns out to be a humble parasite of

innocence.

“Let us say, then, that Man, when he begins to speak, does so because he

thinks that he is going to be able to say what he thinks. Well, this is illusory.

Language doesn’t offer that much. It says, a little more or less, a portion of what

we think, while it sets an insurmountable obstacle in place, blocking a

transmission of the rest. It is rather useful for mathematical statements and proofs,

but the language of physics is already beginning to be equivocal or insufficient.

As soon as conversation begins to revolve around themes that are more important,

more human, more ‘real’ than the latter, its imprecision, its awkwardness and its

convolutedness increase. Infected by the entrenched prejudice that through speech

we understand each other, we make our remarks and listen in such good faith

that we inevitably misunderstand each other much more than if we had remained

silent and had guessed. Furthermore, since our thought is in great measure

attributable to the tongue—although I cannot help but doubt that the attribution

is absolute, as it is usually purported to be—it turns out that thinking is talking

to oneself and, consequently, misunderstanding oneself and running a great risk

of becoming completely muddled.” sinijid