My reading of Edith Grossman’s Why Translation Matters offered this provocation:
“Is [a] text an inevitable betrayal of the imagination and the creative impulse? Is what they do even possible? Can the written work ever be a perfect fit with that imaginative, creative original when two different languages, two realms of experience, can only approximate each other?”
This question feels unavoidable when reading a translated text, as I am now with Walter Benjamin’s essay The Task of the Translator, included in Illuminations.
Richard Crary, at The Existence Machine, raises a related concern when he replies to the argument that if a reader cannot read Peter Handke in German, they should not bother at all, since “Handke’s main interest is the language.” Thomas Bernhard made a similar point: “[Translation] doesn’t interest me at all, because a translation is a different book. It has nothing to do with the original at all. It’s a book by the person who translated it.”
Benjamin’s argument demands time to unpick. The essential substance of a literary work is not its sentences, but the surplus they carry: the poetic, the unfathomable. A translator’s task is not fidelity to words alone but the pursuit of this residue — to find the artist’s intention, and in translation, to produce an echo of that original force. “The transfer can never be total,” Benjamin writes, “but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond the transmittal of subject matter.”
True translation, he suggests, allows “pure language” to shine more fully: transparent, not masking the original but extending its afterlife.
Alberto Manguel reminds us that “Borges cannot be read, in my opinion, in English. There is no valid translation of Borges in English today.” Yet the deprivation of never reading Borges would be greater. As Grossman writes:
“Imagine how bereft we would be if only the fictional worlds we could explore, the only vicarious literary experiences we could have, were those written in languages we read easily. The deprivation would be indescribable.”
Reading in translation remains an imperfect but essential act of attention: reaching for what cannot be perfectly conveyed, but must still be pursued.
Hmmm. I find Borges pretty straight forward – the prose at least. I never gained much from reading the spanish original, to be honest. I was actually discussing this with my husband – who can also read spanish – because I wanted to reread some Borges but I could only find english translations at a decent price (and distance). We ended up agreeing that Borges isn’t about language anyway. (also, I have a pet peeve with Manguel: I enjoy Manguel as a concept – I love the themes of his books, for instance – but I always get so annoyed at how he always squeezes in the I-read-for-Borges-when-he-was-blind or Borges-is-God or my-library-is-bigger-than-yours in no matter how long the article…)
(I need to update my rss feeds! I missed your blog migration!)
Manguel does get annoying the more you read of him, particularly the essays. I should have stopped at The History of Reading and The Library at Night. It is in his essays that his weaknesses become apparent. Mind you, had I been Borges’s reader, I probably wouldn’t shut up about it either.
Which of the translations have you read that best convey Borge’s form and meaning? Do these works also convey the essential quality of the stories? I am surprised that you say that Borges isn’t about language; I suspected there was symbolism I was missing by not reading his works in the original. You reassure me.
Thanks for visiting my migrated blog, Claudia.
I got Andrew Hurley’s translation. It’s not perfect, obviously, and unnecessarily contrived at times. Borges prose is usually so spare and simple that I feel translators try to make it look unnecessarily “stylish” by adding complicated words that are not there. What I meant is that one doesn’t read Borges for the elegant turns of phrase but for the ideas and for his capacity to dazzle with erudition. I’m so busy most of the time trying to make sense of the layers of metaphysical possibilities and intellectual references that I can’t say I delight on the writing – unlike other authors you read for aesthetic pleasure even though the premisses or plot are yawn worthy.
The best parallel I can find is Stanislaw Lem – who I suspect to be underrated because sci-fi has got a bad literary rep. If a polish person tells me I am missing out on his amazing writing and “voice” or something like that, I wouldn’t be at all worried. I’m already amazed by his stories as it is.
Yes, I see what you mean about Borges use of language, though could never be sure what made it through in a translation. I shall be less dissatisfied that I am missing something by reading Borges in translation.
I’m ambivalent about sci-fi, if only because I equate it so strongly with my teenage years. Stanislaw Lem, though, intrigues me (as does China Miéville). Are you able to recommend a good starting point with Lem?
Such interesting stuff.
Is [a] text an inevitable betrayal of the imagination and the creative impulse? Is what they do even possible?
You could ask the same thing about non-translated texts too, I suppose. Certainly no realized project matches perfectly the artist’s original vision, and there is always that gap between the intended transmission and the actual reception, a lack of understanding created by anything from a writer’s idiosyncrasies to a reader’s personal baggage or inattention or imagination, or the time or culture gap between writer and reader, and so on and so forth. There is always some degree of “translation” going on in the reading process. Sometimes it detracts but other times it makes things even more interesting.
All that said, I’ll admit that I still do prefer to read in the original language whenever possible! 😉
I don’t recall if you read Edith Grossman’s book, Emily, but the point she labours to make is that the act of translation is equivalent to that of original creation. I thought she overstated the case, but agree the role of the translator is under appreciated.
All the reasons you list can widen that gap between intended transmission and actual reception, but none more than time. Language changes constantly over the centuries, transforming the meaning, for contemporary readers, of those classic literary works we choose to read. The point Benjamin makes, that I enjoy tremendously, is that fresh translations can revivify a literary work for a contemporary audience (Grossman’s Don Quixote), whilst the work in the original language becomes more distant as time progresses.