SEELANGS Digest - 12 Sep 2013 to 13 Sep 2013 (#2013-378)

[Valentino, Russell Scott]

Just for a little variety, since these sorts of discussions often go
around in circles, translation studies offers what seems to me a more
productive way of thinking about this set of problems. For instance, the
many metaphors (and there are many) about the inadequacy, incompleteness,
etc. of a translation vis-a-vis its source proceed from a usually
unarticulated assumption about the purpose of translation in general,
namely, that it is somehow supposed to pick up a text in all its
complexity and situatedness in the source context and carry it across into
some new context intact. This is as impossible as picking up the
translation, which has in the process acquired a new set of associations
in the receiving culture, and putting it back into the source context
intact. It's fun to come up with metaphors for this impossible feat, but
once the unarticulated assumption behind it is laid bare, the observation
comes to seem rather banal, even if the metaphors might be colorful -- the
color photograph, perfect sex for all parties, and so on.

This particular assumption about the purpose or aims of translation is
just one among many. There are as many possible purposes for translations
as there are audiences for them. How translations mean different things
for different audiences in different times and places -- which includes
the new sounds, resonances, associations, and power that they gain in the
process of crossing -- is always more interesting than what they might
lose.

Russell

________________________________________

Russell Scott Valentino
Professor and Chair
Slavic Languages and Literatures <http://www.indiana.edu/~iuslavic/>
Indiana University
503 Ballantine Hall
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 855-3272




On 9/14/13 2:25 AM, "Robert Chandler" <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM> wrote:

>Dear Sasha,
>
>> Robert, as far as I understand, you are SEELANGS' favorite translator
>>(including yours truly), why would you feel so attacked by a statement
>>that seems quite reasonable?  Does it wound your translator's
>>sensibility so much to read that no translation is ever perfect?
>>Gandlevsky once said that a translation is like a black and white
>>photograph of the color original.  Is that so inaccurate?
>Thank you very much, Sasha, for the compliment.  But I do feel that this
>image of the black and white photo suggests that we are setting the bar
>too low.  It is not a bad image and it is, of course, accurate as applied
>to many translations. But there are occasions when translators do better
>than this, and I certainly hope, at least sometimes, to do better than
>that myself.
>
>To take 2 examples of translations I was able to include in my anthology
>of Russian short stories for Penguin Classics - I think that William
>Edgerton's translation of Leskov's 'Levsha' and the translation of
>Bunin's 'The Gentleman from San Francisco by Koteliansky, D.H.Lawrence
>and Leonard Woolf (!) are at least as good, if not better, than the
>originals.
>
>All the best,
>
>Robert
>
>
>
>
>
>Robert Chandler, 42 Milson Road, London, W14 OLD
>
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