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Literary
Translation: Creating World Literature Brother Anthony of Taizé
How
can a “really good translation” be identified? That is a
question that seems
unlikely ever to be finally settled to universal
satisfaction. Still, the
judges in the most prestigious award for literature in
English translation
ought to have at least something to say about the topic.
The longlist of this
year’s Man Booker International Prize, awarded for
fiction translated from
another language and published in English, listed 13
novels, 4 of them
translated from Spanish, 2 from French, 2 from German,
one from Korean, one
from Hungarian, one from Iraqi, one from Polish, and one
from Chinese. In the
end, it was the Polish title Flights which
won the prize. The chair of the judging panel reported:
“Judging this Man
Booker International Prize has been an exhilarating
adventure. We have
travelled across countries, cultures, imaginations,
somehow to arrive at what
could have been an even longer longlist. It’s one which
introduces a wealth of
talent, a variety of forms and some writers little known
in English before. It
has great writing and translating energy.” As the
quotation makes clear, the
panel’s evaluation was entirely based on the qualities
of the work as published
in English. Points were not awarded or deducted for
‘faithfulness’ or ‘inaccuracies’
in the act of translation. After all, such factors do
not really matter to the
readers of translated novels.
The enjoyment of any novel, we may
argue, depends on its ‘readability.’ Awkward,
unconvincing style in a work of
literature, translated or not, is always going to
condemn it to remain unread
and unadmired. It should be clear that a translation
which takes considerable
freedom with regard to the original and privileges a
creative approach, diverging
from, changing or omitting portions of the original, in
order to provide the
reader with as powerful a literary experience as
possible, having been found
highly readable, may well win prizes and will perhaps
sell well. No normal
reader is going to stop and worry whether or not a
translation deviates from
the original text. Why should they? What is required of
a novel is that it
should provide “a good read,” yielding entertainment,
delight, pleasure,
instruction, whatever the reader’s satisfaction
requires.
Therein lies the crux of all
debates about translations of literature. After all, the
publication of poetry,
fiction, drama or essay is, normally, a commercial
enterprise of some kind. If
a writer writes to be published and read because s/he
feels s/he has something
to say, s/he also normally writes in the hope of earning
some money. Writing
takes up a lot of time and energy, and bills have to be
paid. A publishing
company can by definition only continue to exist if the
books it produces can
be sold and make a profit. The passage of books from
printer to warehouse to
bookstore (whether physical or virtual) to buyer and
reader involves a series
of financial transactions. Nothing is more important to
all the people engaged
in these operations than sales. Why will anyone buy a
book? Either they have heard that it is worth reading or
at least they feel
that it should be, because of the reputation of the
writer if not simply the
design of the cover. When it comes to fiction, which is
by far the most popular
literary genre today, the readers of the
English-speaking world have a variety
of sources of information about new publications.
Probably the most powerful
and direct influence is “word of mouth,” by which a
close friend, a colleague
or relative whose tastes one shares and whose advice one
trusts, recommends
something they have read and enjoyed. But that will
always be a “hit or miss”
method since we mostly have few such friends and they
are all so busy that they
cannot read everything that is being published. What
strikes about the titles
in the Man Booker International shortlist is that they
are all published by
small or even very small publishers, who cannot afford
to purchase advertising
space or prominent display positions in major
bookstores. Famous international
publishing companies are today very often under intense
pressure to generate
maximum profit from every title they publish. Publishing
is a risky business
and risks cost money. Major commercial publishers prefer
caution to
risk-taking. We all know that James
Joyce’s Ulysses
was repeatedly
rejected before finally being published in a tiny
edition in Paris in 1922. T. S.
Eliot, as an editor at Faber and Faber, turned down
George Orwell’s Animal
Farm as “unconvincing.” The most
famous recent case is the first of the Harry Potter
books; J. K. Rowling’s
agent sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers
before it was accepted by
Bloomsbury. And the vital decision was made by the
8-year-old daughter of the
company’s director. Her father gave her the manuscript
to read in bed and
within an hour she came down to tell him how wonderful
it was. Even supposing that a
publisher is found, and a challenging work by an unknown
author, whose name may
in addition seem impossible to pronounce correctly is
published, what next? In
Britain, at least, the discovery of the exciting new
writing being published by
very small presses is mainly the task of professional
readers known as “literary
critics” or “book reviewers.” They are often themselves
writers or translators,
or the editors of literary magazines. For Korean
writers, whether it be Han
Kang or Kim Hyesoon, Hwang Sun-mi or Jeong You-Jeong,
Bae Su-ah or Shin
Kyung-Sook, an international reputation has only been
possible because first a
literary agent identified their work as being of
potential interest, then a
published agreed, after publication, the literary
critics have agreed with the
agent and publisher, writing positive, enthusiastic
reviews. Once a new writer
has been launched, it is this same network of serious,
professional, full-time
readers who will help arrange for them to be invited to
literary festivals to
give talks, readings, or interviews, with book signings.
The same treatment is
not always given to the translator, although we know
that without the work of
the translator there would have been nothing to publish. This is reflected in
the comments of the chairman of the Man Booker
International panel on
announcing this year’s prize: “Okarczuk is a writer of
wonderful wit,
imagination and literary panache. In Flights,
brilliantly translated by Jennifer Croft, by a series of
startling
juxtapositions she flies us through a galaxy of
departures and arrivals,
stories and digressions, all the while exploring matters
close to the
contemporary and human predicament – where only plastic
escapes mortality.” As
was the case with Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian,” the
translation is qualified as “brilliant,”
not because the jury have compared it word-by-word with
the original but
because the English text has proved to be dynamic and
convincing to a number of
discerning readers, just as any well-written English
novel would. A good
translation does not keep saying “I am a translation”
but rather “this is good
writing.” The story, the construction, the imaginative
work, the invention all
belong uniquely to the author. The translator does not
add to them, s/he only
communicates them in different words, and with
outstanding stylistic skill.
Readability is indeed all-important. The creation of
public opinion regarding newly published works of world
literature is therefore
the result of communication and collaboration between
agents, translators,
publishers and the critics who write reviews and also
form the juries for
literary awards as well as serving as the leading
program-builders and speakers
at literary festivals. The important role of the Man
Booker International Award
is that it focuses uniquely on works from outside the
domestic or English-writing
world, highlighting work by often little-known writers
from often little-known
literary cultures. The award given to Han Kang’s “The
Vegetarian” provoked an
overall rise in sales of Korean fiction in translation.
At the same time, small
publishers benefit because they alone had the courage to
publish translations
that major publishers had not been interested in. So what might be said
to be the main characteristic of a translated work
likely to be pinpointed by
these makers of opinion? I would simply say that they
are looking for writing
that they can qualify as “new,” “interesting,” “worth
reading,” indeed “exciting.”
Their influence is strong because they have each
established a reputation as a
discerning, sensitive and credible reader / critic whose
expressed opinions can
be trusted. They may differ among themselves, of course,
but the community of
literary critics / professional readers in Britain (and
no doubt also the US or
Australia etc.) is proud of its independence and intent
on identifying new
developments in what we tend to call “world literature”
published in English
translation. They play an essential role as “interface”
between the works as
they are published and the readers who will buy them.
Their standards expressed
in print, on TV or by the spoken voice play a major role
in shaping the wider
public’s approach to recent developments in fiction and
poetry worldwide. The concept of “world
literature” is still unfamiliar in Korea. “World
Literature Today” is a
well-known North American literary journal, “Words
Without Borders,” “Asymptote”
“Modern Poetry in Translation” (among others) are
familiar platforms for
English translations of literature from many languages.
One small publisher in
Britain (Arc Publications) has published translations
from over 40 languages: Arabic
Armenian Basque Bulgarian Burmese Catalan Czech Danish
Dutch Estonian Finnish
French Galician Georgian German Greek Hebrew Hindi
Hungarian Icelandic
Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Latvian Lithuanian
Macedonian Middle High
German Old High German Old Norse Persian Polish
Portuguese Punjabi Romanian
Russian Serbian Slovak Slovene Spanish Tamil Turkish.
The world is producing a
lot of literature and a small quantity of it is being
translated and read in
English. But how many Korean publishers can boast of a
similar list of
translated languages? And why not? At the same time, nobody
in the West is likely to buy a translation simply
“because” it is from Korea, for
no other reason beside the fact that it was originally
written and published in
Korea, unless the text is required reading for a course
of study in Korean literature.
Moreover, the reputation that a writer or work has
gained in Korea has almost
nothing to do with the way it will be received
elsewhere, in part because the
criteria of literary excellence adopted in Korea are not
necessarily those
promoted by critics elsewhere, in part because readers
in Glasgow have no way
of knowing what readers in Busan are enjoying. More
important still, Korean writers
have relatively little chance to produce works inspired
by exciting new work
published in other languages because so little of that
is translated into
Korean. Korean publishers are like those elsewhere, they
fear the unfamiliar
and prefer the “recognized” conventional works, that
they hope will sell well. Most
important, nobody in the outside world will be much
concerned whether Korean
critics have praised a work or not. The main question is
not whether Koreans
have liked a work and praised it but whether it has the
potential to be liked
and praised outside of Korea once it has been
translated. Then too, nobody in
the western publishing world gives a damn whether
Koreans approve of a
translation that they have decided to publish. As
already noted, the ‘accuracy’
of a translation is not even a question, compared to its
readability, its
entertainment-value. Some well-known British literary
translators were recently
asked to say what they considered a “good translation”
to be. Here are a few
quotations from their replies: “The voice of a good
translation is as distinctive in English as the author’s
voice in the original
language, also when compared to other authors translated
by the same
translator. A good translation accepts the gifts English
offers and is not an
endless procession of compromise and loss.” –David
Colmer (translates from
Dutch to English) “Where the author’s
writing is choppy, mine should also be. Where it’s harsh
or stilted or opaque,
or lyrical and flowing, or unambiguous, my writing
should be too. When the
author conforms to convention, so should I; when they
bend or break it, I need
to do the same.” –Alex
Zucker
(translates from Czech to English) “A good translation
is bold and creative, a good translation sings.” –Ros Schwartz
(translates from French to
English) “A good translation
doesn’t simply reproduce the correct meaning of the
original text. . . . It is sensitive
to the meaning, effects and intentions of the original,
but also to the best
ways to render them in the target language. In some
instances, achieving that
aim can mean moving away from the literal meaning of the
original.” –Antonia
Lloyd-Jones (translates from Polish to English) Another way of putting
these issues in perspective is to recall that the
English translation of Prabda
Yoon’s collection of short stories, “The Sad Part,”
published in London by
Tilted Axis Press in 2017, was the very first
work of modern Thai fiction ever
published in Britain. Given the hundreds of Korean works
published in multiple
languages over the decades, this is a shocking fact that
needs to be
remembered. Thailand is not devoid of literary talent, I
think, any more than
Korea, but clearly there is no well-funded “Literature
Translation Institute”
in Thailand and perhaps less of a complex desire to be
admired. There is, however,
another, specifically Korean side to the topic which
should be mentioned
although is not much appreciated by the European /
American professional
literary milieu. It is a fact that many Koreans simply
want all of their
country’s literature (poetry, fiction, drama, essays) to
be translated (into
English especially) and published so that it can be read
and admired by
non-Koreans across the world, simply because they are
proud of it. They have no
interest in how the international book-selling market
works, or in non-Koreans’
tastes in reading. Such an project is entirely
“documentary,” its sole purpose
is to make Korean works available in translation,
whether anyone might be
interested in reading them or not. The deciding factor
in choosing works for
translation in this perspective is simply their
reputation within Korea, with
no concern for their interest or commercial viability in
an overseas market. Besides,
most Koreans simply cannot begin to imagine that
literary works which they
enjoy and admire might not appeal to non-Korean readers.
They constantly blame
what they see as the outside world’s lack of enthusiasm
for Korean literature
in general on “poor translations.” At the same time, for
them, the main quality
of a translation seems always to be extreme “accuracy.”
They think the
translation must look and sound “just like” the Korean. That presumably explains
why a Korean recently wrote, “Any assessment of a
translation is bogus unless
it has gone through a rigorous comparison of the source
and the translated
texts.” The idea that a “rigorous comparison” with the
original is the only
proper way of identifying a “good translation” clearly
derives mainly from
classroom pedagogy, where points are deducted from
student’s exercises for each
“mistake” and none are given for imaginative recreations
which diverge from
strict word-for-word “accuracy.” Western literary
translators who read that
phrase were outraged by what they considered its
ignorant narrowness, its
failure to recognize the transformative, creative
aspects of a literary translator’s
task. In addition, the article in which it appeared was
solely concerned with
denouncing (once again) the “errors” in Deborah Smith’s
“The Vegetarian” and
proposing “correct” translations which, by their
awkwardness, only served to
show the author’s lack of stylistic skills in English.
In English we call such
a waste of time and energy “flogging a dead horse.” Considerable efforts
are being made in Korea to promote the translation and
publication of Korean
literature. There are several graduate schools of
interpretation and
translation where literary translation is taught, while
the Literature Translation
Institute of Korea runs an intensive, full-time
“Translation Academy” to train
young translators over several years. Considerable
efforts are made there to
help young non-Koreans gain understanding of and
familiarity with the details
of Korean culture and history, past and present, as well
as improve their Korean
language skills. However, I do not think that any time
is spent in these programs
on helping these future literary translators acquire
mastery of literary style
in their target language, so that they can produce
polished and enjoyable translations
for overseas readers. The only concern is that they get
the meaning of the
Korean right! It is as though the finished translation’s
style is expected to follow
exactly the style of the Korean original, from which to
diverge would be a
crime against Koreanness. It could be argued that the
translator of poetry into
a language should have the sensitivity and mastery of
style found in that
languages poets’ own works. To finish I would
like to stress in yet other ways, with examples I have
previously used
elsewhere, that the art of literary translation is
essentially oriented toward
and conditioned by the standards and expectations of the
new readership a work
gains on being translated. Edward Fitzgerald’s version
of the Rubaiyat
by Omar Kayyam is probably the
most famous example of free translation. His 1859
translation of a selection of
quatrains (rubāʿiyāt)
attributed to
Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), is one of the most enduring
translations of poetry
ever published, with some 20 editions currently in
print, after 120 years. Fitzgerald
himself expressed his view on our problem very well in
letters written to a friend:
“My translation will interest you from its form, and
also in many respects in
its detail: very un-literal as it is. Many quatrains are
mashed together: and
something lost, I doubt, of Omar’s simplicity, which is
so much a virtue in him”
(letter to E. B. Cowell, 9/3/58). And, “I suppose very
few People have ever
taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though
certainly not to be literal.
But at all Cost, a Thing must live: with a transfusion
of one’s own worse Life
if one can’t retain the Original’s better. Better a live
Sparrow than a stuffed
Eagle” (letter to E. B. Cowell, 4/27/59). Fitzgerald
employed the word “transmogrification”
to express the process of translation as he performed
it, in order to stress
the radical differences existing between his originals
and his versions. A more
elegant but perhaps less striking word with a similar
meaning would be “transfiguration.” A more refined
statement comes from Paul Ricoeur (in his essays: On Translation). He urges us to “give up
the ideal of the ‘perfect
translation.’” He explains that the dream of a perfect
translation is fact
equivalent to dreaming of a single, perfect, universal
language that would be capable
of expressing “a rationality fully released from
cultural constraints and
community restrictions.” This dream is equivalent to
“the wish that translation
would gain, gain without losing. It is this gain without
loss that we must
mourn until we reach an acceptance of the impassable
difference of the peculiar
and the foreign.” Ricoeur ends by proposing a new
harmony: “it is this mourning
for the absolute translation that produces the happiness
associated with
translating.” The translator must
always mourn what is “lost in translation,” but we can
in the end be happy because
by being at least adequately (though never perfectly)
translated, literary
works can be transfigured and so made new in other
lands, far from home, across
the globe, and become truly part of “world literature.” |