29.3340, Review: Ling & Literature; Syntax; Translation: Woodsworth (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3340. Thu Aug 30 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3340, Review: Ling & Literature; Syntax; Translation: Woodsworth (2017)

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Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:55:11
From: Roxana Birsanu [roxanabirsanu25 at yahoo.com]
Subject: Telling the Story of Translation

 
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AUTHOR: Judith  Woodsworth
TITLE: Telling the Story of Translation
SUBTITLE: Writers who Translate
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Advances in Translation
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Roxana Birsanu, Romanian-American University, Bucharest, Romania

INTRODUCTION

Judith Woodsworth’s book, “Telling the Story of Translation. Writers Who
Translate”, focuses on three writers – George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein and
Paul Auster--whose activities in translation have not been sufficiently
researched. With this book, Woodsworth aims to pay closer attention to this
often ignored part of their literary activity. 
 
SUMMARY

 In the “Introduction”, the author explains why she chose these particular
writers: they belonged or moved to multicultural spaces, which forced them to
live in a constant linguistic and cultural in-betweenness; they all approached
multiple literary genres; they tried their hand at translation, which they
also conceptualised in various texts and paratexts.   

 Woodsworth’s study begins with George Bernard Shaw. In the author’s own
words, the objective of this chapter is to look into “his association with his
translators, his conceptualization of translation and his own achievement as a
translator” (12). The part dedicated to Shaw’s relationship with his
translators focuses largely on the collaboration with his German translator,
Siegfried Trebitsch, whose translating activity contributed significantly to
Shaw’s fame abroad. 

 The main problem with Trebitsch’s translations was that they abounded in
errors, both linguistic and cultural; this was due to the fast pace of the
translation, but also to his insufficient knowledge of colloquial English and
English customs (21). Consequently, at the time, scholars and translators
alike criticised the quality of the translations and even published lists of
errors.
 
 The French versions of Shaw’s works had basically the same fate. The
translators, Augustin Hamon and Henriette Hamon, were chosen by Shaw merely on
grounds of shared political ideas and not on account of their professionalism.
Consequently, the reception of Shaw’s works in France enjoyed little
popularity, precisely because of the poor quality of the translations. 

 The correspondence between Shaw and his translators proves that he was
actively involved in the translation process. He would proofread the German
and French versions and often assisted his collaborators by explaining various
subtleties related to language and intertextual references. 

 Woodsworth claims that the obvious question that arises is why he put up with
such inexperienced translators. Her assumption is that he was overly concerned
with the issue of control (30). In selecting these translators, he could
freely interfere with their work, correcting and recorrecting them, so as to
make sure that the works were not significantly altered. 

 Another topic of this first chapter is Shaw’s own approach to translation.
Shaw largely used paratexts in order to gloss his own writings, literary creed
and opinions. Translation was no exception. His attitude towards translation
can be extracted from his vast correspondence with his translators, but also
from the “Translator’s Note”, which accompanies Shaw’s own English translation
of Trebitsch’s play, “Frau Gittas’s Sühne”. 

 In Shaw’s opinion, translation is a secondary art as compared to original
writing. He did not think that knowledge of the source language is a must when
translating. He made this very clear by vouching for translators who were not
proficient in English, whose translations he revised with the help of
dictionaries, and by setting up to translate Trebitsch’s play although he
spoke little German (36).

 However, Shaw had one opinion on translation which reminds the reader of the
cultural turn in Translation Studies: that linguistic transfer should be
accompanied by cultural translation, or in his own words, that one should
translate “the audience, as well as the play” (Shaw quoted in Woodsworth, 37).
Thus, Shaw proved to be well-aware of the relevance of taking into account the
literary customs of the target readership in order to attain a high degree of
acceptability in the literary polysystem of the target culture. 

 According to Woodsworth, Shaw had a sophisticated, dualist perspective on
translation, which varied “depending on whether Shaw’s own work was being
translated or […] whether, on the contrary, he was the one who was doing the
translating” (idem). Although he criticised Trebitsch for the errors that
abounded in his German translation, Shaw himself took the liberty to
completely alter the ending of Trebitsch’s play when he translated it into
English. 

 Shaw’s translation of “Frau Gittas’s Sühne” is actually the focus of the last
part of this chapter. In the analysis of the text translated by Shaw,
Woodsworth provides examples which illustrate how he performed this task. The
purpose of the analysis is, according to Woodsworth, not to carry out a
critique of the translation proper, but to illustrate Shaw’s approach to
translation. Indeed, the analysed samples reveal the fact that Shaw intervened
massively in the source text, not only at linguistic and cultural levels, but
also by playing the author himself when he decided to transform the play from
a tragedy into a comedy. 

 The main reason why Shaw chose to interfere with the ending of the play was
to accommodate the expectations of the British readership. If we were to refer
to Venuti’s translating strategies of foreignisation versus domestication
(1995), Shaw imprinted a deeply domesticating orientation on his translation.
Woodsworth claims that, actually, Trebitsch’s play became famous precisely due
to the fact that it was translated by Shaw, who became thus an agent of
cultural capital transfer.

 The second chapter of “Telling the Story of Translation” focuses on the
personality of Jewish American writer Gertrude Stein. Woodsworth expands the
perspective on translation, approached here from a more philosophical angle,
since it is used to reflect the process of “transducere”, i.e. of taking one
thing from one place to another. The chapter centres on Stein’s “hybrid
identity” (68), constructed around a number of ambiguities: “her sexual and
religious identities, her audiences, her mother tongue and her homeland”
(idem). According to Woodsworth, her translation projects included an alleged
translation of Flaubert’s “Trois Contes”, several poems signed by French poet
Georges Hugnet and several speeches of Maréchal Henri Pétain, plus a few
examples of self-translation. 

 A significant part of this chapter is dedicated to the contextualisation of
Stein’s works; Woodsworth analyses the role played by Stein within the
so-called Lost Generation, and also her opinion of the relevance of foreign
languages. Multilingualism was one of the key elements of modernism, and
contacts between people and texts were mostly done through translation.
Despite the fact that Stein saw herself as one of the agents, and that she
lived in France, she did not produce any original work in French, which, in
fact, she did not master well. 

 The first translation project which Stein completed (since no evidence has
been found that she actually translated Flaubert into English), albeit in her
own creative manner, was a token of gratitude towards one of her French
translators, young poet Georges Hugnet. In 1929, Hugnet had published French
excerpts of Stein’s “The Making of Americans”; in 1930, he also translated and
published a selection of Stein’s ‘portraits’, “Dix Portraits”. Woodsworth
asserts that Stein exerted a very tight control over how her works were
rendered into French (92). But when she performed the translation of Hugnet’s
poems into English, she took the freedom to “adapt the text and subvert it for
her own purposes” (93). 

 In order to illustrate Stein’s translating style and the extent to which it
generated authorial confusion, Woodsworth draws a comparison between the
source text and the translation of three of Hugnet’s poems. The analysis
reveals that not only did Stein completely alter the form of the poems, but
she also “makes little effort to preserve Hugnet’s imagery, themes and
stylistic devices” (95). Woodsworth quotes a number of critics (such as Posman
and Will) who consider that Stein’s efforts resulted simply in a “bad
translation” (idem). One reason could be that Stein simply rejected the idea
of being “a secondary author […] and asserts her identity as Gertrude Stein,
the author of a poem” (96). According to Woodsworth, although the quality of
the translation performed by Stein constitutes the object of critical debate,
what remains clear is that the greatest advantage of her translation
endeavours was that they represented an impetus for her own originality, “a
genuine ‘exercise’ and preparation for original work” (91). 

 The last of Stein’s translation projects, highly controversial and reflecting
badly upon her image even long after her death, was the English translation of
the speeches of Maréchal Pétain, chief of state of Vichy France. The texts
were intended for an American readership and were preceded by an introduction
in which Stein spoke of Pétain in highly laudatory terms. Woodsworth says that
the selection of Stein as the translator and the highly favourable
introduction she wrote for the English version were “intended to make the
American audience more favourably disposed to the Vichy Regime” (108).
Although the actual reasons for her acceptance of this translation project are
still under debate, what we do know is that the English versions of the
speeches were never completed, nor published. 

 Woodsworth’s conclusion to the chapter dedicated to Stein is that the
American writer’s translating efforts can be deemed unsuccessful for two
reasons: one is that her endeavours failed to represent a means of “cultural
capital” transfer (Lefevere 1992, 11), while the other refers to the fact that
the historical context in which she undertook the translation of Pétain’s
speeches actually reflected badly on her own image.

 The last chapter of the book focuses on the translating activity of American
writer Paul Auster. The justification for the selection of Auster is,
according to the author, the fact that his works have been translated into
more than forty languages and that the act and process of translation is
interwoven in the fabric of his entire fiction. 

 Woodsworth follows the same investigation lines she applied in the case of
Shaw and Stein: the materials translated by Auster, how he performed his tasks
and the approach to translation expressed in various texts and paratexts. The
author of “Telling the Story of Translation” indicates that the beginnings of
Auster’s literary career were under the guise of translation. In Auster’s
youth, but also later on, translation was a means of survival, which helped
him cope with his financial difficulties. The source language was French, from
which he translated both commercial assignments and serious works such as
poetry, art books and fragments of Sartre and Foucault’s works (125). 

 His first published book of translations appeared in 1972, “A Little
Anthology of Surrealist Poems”, and included poems signed by ten surrealist
French poets. It was followed in 1982 by another anthology, “The Random House
Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry”, which Woodsworth considers “if not
Auster’s crowning achievements in the realm of translation, then certainly one
of his major accomplishments” (127). The anthology is a collection of poems
from forty-eight poets, translated by eighty-four translators. The texts are
preceded by an extensive introduction, in which Auster explains his theory of
translation, the selection of poets included in the collection, as well as
some observations on the exchanges between American and European modernism. 

 Another translation performed by Auster which is analysed in this chapter is
Pierre Clastres’ work of political anthropology, “Chronique des Indiens
Guayaki”. The English version of the French anthropologist’s work revived the
public’s interest in his work, perhaps because of  the public’s attention to
the story of the lost and found manuscript of the translation rather than to
the work itself. According to Woodsworth, the story of the lost manuscript
might suggest that Auster’s translation ensured the afterlife of this text,
which is one of the main functions and roles of translation (141).

 In 2014, Auster, together with Hoyt Rogers, published another anthology of
translations from the French poet André du Bouchet entitled “Openwork. Poetry
and Prose”. Woodsworth mentions that Roger, similar to Auster, is both a
writer and a translator, and that the two combined their creative forces in
order to acquaint the English readership with the works of the less known
French poet. 

 The anthology was revised by poetry editor Peter Riley in 2015. The main
fault he found with the two Americans poets’ translations is that they
interfered significantly with the source text, the result being “creative
translations” (Riley quoted in Woodsworth 149). In order to analyse whether
this label could truly be applied to the translations, Woodsworth makes a
comparative analysis of several fragments. Her conclusion is that, at least in
Auster’s case, “he takes an almost word-for-word approach that follows the
original text closely […] even down to the punctuation and spacing of the
words on the page” (145). Moreover, she claims that the translators
collaborated closely with du Bouchet, who had a very good command of English
(149). 

 In an extensive sub-chapter of this last part of “Telling the Story of
Translation”, Woodsworth makes an overview of Auster’s main works of fiction
where translators are the main characters and which contain topics connected
with translation: “City of Glass”, “Moon Palace”, “Leviathan”, “The Book of
Illusions”, and “Invisible”. These novels focus on themes such as translation,
writing and identity. Woodsworth states that other works of Auster’s contain
passing references to these issues, which are a red thread crossing all
Auster’s works. 

 In the epilogue entitled “What is Translation For?”, Woodsworth summarizes
the approach to translation of the three writers researched. She herself has a
double interpretation of how these writers saw translation. On the negative
side, according to Woodsworth, Shaw experienced translation in terms of loss
and anxiety; Stein’s experience with translation is materialised in “stories
of abandonment, broken friendship and forgeries” (170), while for Auster
translation is drudgery, labour similar to the one carried out by prisoners.
On the positive side, the three writers recognized the importance of
translation as a means which contributed to the international circulation of
their ideas; they also used the process of translation as a means to boost
their creative powers, while turning it into an important topic of their
original works (see Auster’s case in particular). 

 The book ends with a few observations on three recent writers (Jonathan
Safran Foer, Rachel Cantor and Idra Novey) and their respective novels in
which translators, their activities, dilemmas and struggles are the main
focus. Woodsworth concludes that, however subservient it may seem, translation
endures, which is equally proven by the increasing attention it receives in
fictional works where it holds the central position.  

EVALUATION 

 The authors investigated by Woodsworth stand next to other modernist writers
who were involved with the process of translation such as Pound, Joyce or
Eliot. The main strength of the book is that it sheds new light onto a
less-researched part of the literary career of three “literary decathletes”
(5) as she calls Shaw, Stein and Auster, i.e. their approach to and activity
in translation. Therefore, it is useful not only to students and researchers
in the field of Translation Studies, but also to those interested in literary
and cultural studies, since it also touches upon issues related to identity,
dislocation/relocation and intercultural exchanges. 

 The idea of translation applied to the three writers mentioned above reflects
the tenets of the cultural turn in Translation Studies initiated by Susan
Bassnett and André Lefevere; these include the concept of translation as
rewriting, and the importance of the translator being bicultural not only
bilingual (Bassnett and Lefevere, 1990). In her analysis of the three writers’
methods and strategies of translation, Woodsworth relies on Venuti’s idea of
the translator’s visibility and on his pair of translating strategies, i.e.
foreignisation and domestication. 

 A minor shortcoming of the book is the title, “Telling the Story of
Translation”, which is slightly misleading. Without the subtitle, “Writers Who
Translate”, potential readers might be lead into thinking that the book deals
with the history of translation. Another drawback is the small number of
fragments analysed comparatively (source text versus target text). Although
the author’s intention was not to evaluate “the skill of each translator or
the adequacy […] of the translation [so much] as to indicate the approach that
the translator has taken in each case” (6), a larger corpus of analysed texts
would have supported a more detailed analysis of the respective translators’
strategies and style. 

 The merits of the book include the comprehensive and well-documented Notes at
the end of the book, which complete the content of the chapters. The extensive
bibliographic apparatus is particularly useful since it is up-to-date and
covers both the area of translation studies and that of literary studies. 

REFERENCES

Bassnett, S. & André Lefevere. 1990. Introduction: Proust’s Grandmother and
the Thousand and One Nights: The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Translation Studies.
Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett, and Andre
Lefevere. London & New York: Pinter. 1-14.

Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary
Fame. London & New York: Routledge.

Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Roxana Bîrsanu is an Assistant Lecturer and is currently teaching ESP in
Bucharest, Romania. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies, which she obtained
at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests mainly encompass
Romanian translations from modernist Anglo-American literature, translation
norms in the Romanian literary system, and intercultural communication. She
has published numerous translations of French and English works, both fiction
and non-fiction, and has co-authored textbooks on general and business
communication in English.





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