Проблемы литературного перевода

Translation becomes one of the parts of the `refraction' "... the rather long term strategy, of which translation is only a part, and which has as its aim the manipulation of foreign work in the service of certain aims that are felt worthy of pursuit in the native culture..." (1988:204). This is indeed a powerful theory to study translation as it places as much significance to it as criticism and interpretation. Lefevere goes on to give some impressive analytical tools and perspectives for studying literary translation,

`The ideological and poet logical constraints under which translations are produced should be explicated, and the strategy devised by the translator to deal with those constraints should be described: does he or she make a translation in a more descriptive or in a more refractive way? What are the intentions with which he or she introduces foreign elements into the native system? Equivalence, fidelity, freedom and the like will then be seen more as functions of a strategy adopted under certain constraints, rather than absolute requirements, or norms that should or should not be imposed or respected. It will be seen that `great 'ages of translation occur whenever a given literature recognizes another as more prestigious and tries to emulate it. Literatures will be seen to have less need of translation(s) when they are convinced of their own superiority. It will also be seen that translations are often used (think of the Imagists) by adherents of an alternative poetics to challenge the dominant poetics of a certain period in a certain system, especially when that alternative poetics cannot use the work of its own adherents to do so, because that work is not yet written' (1984:98-99).

Another major theorist working on similar lines as that of Lefevere is Gideon Toury (1985). His approach is what he calls Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). He emphasizes the fact that translations are facts of one system only: the target system and it is the target or recipient culture or a certain section of it, which serves as the initiator of the decision to translate and consequently translators operate first and foremost in the interest of the culture into which they are translating. Toury very systematically charts out a step by step guide to the study of translation. He stresses that the study should begin with the empirically observed data, that is, the translated texts and proceeds from there towards the reconstruction of non-observational facts rather than the other way round as is usually done in the `corpus' based and traditional approaches to translation. The most interesting thing about Toury's approach (1984) is that it takes into consideration things like `pseudo-translation' or the texts foisted off as translated but in fact are not so. In the very beginning when the problem of distinguishing a translated text from a non-translated text arises, Toury assumes that for his procedure `translation' will be taken to be `any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on whatever grounds'. In this approach pseudo translations are `just as legitimate objects for study within DTS as genuine translations. They may prove to be highly instructive for the establishment of the general notion of translation as shared by the members of a certain target language community'. Then the next step in Toury's DTS would be to study their acceptability in their respective target language system followed by mapping these texts,

`Via their constitutive elements as TRANSLATIONAL PHENOMENA, on their counterparts in the appropriate source system and text, identified as such in the course of a comparative analysis, as SOLUTIONS to TRANSLATIONAL PROBLEMS'. Then a scholar should proceed to `identify and describe the (one-directional, irreversible) RELATIONSHIPS obtaining between the members of each pair; and finally to go on to refer these relationships- by means of the mediating functional-relational notion of TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE, established as pertinent to the corpus under study-to the overall CONCEPT OF

TRANSLATION underlying the corpus. It is these last two concepts which form the ultimate goal of systematic studies within DTS... only when the nature of the prevailing concept of translation has been established will it become possible to reconstruct the possible process of CONSIDERATION and DECISION-MAKING which was involved in the act of translating in question as well as the set of CONSTRAINTS which were actually accepted by the translator.' (1985:21)

Toury's step by step procedure is descriptive, empirical and inductive, beginning with the observed facts and then moving towards uncovering the strategies and techniques used by translator and the implicit notion and presupposition of equivalence rather than treating the notion of equivalence as given. The concept of constraint puts him in the company of Lefevere. The essential question is not of defining what is equivalence in general, whether it is possible or not, or of how to find equivalents, but of discovering what is meant by equivalence by the community or group within the target culture.

These approaches are also extremely useful in the area of comparative literary studies and comparatives like Durisin (1984:184-142) whose approach is in many ways similar to Lefevere and Toury in focusing on function and relation of literary translation in the target or the recipient culture. He is of opinion that it is impossible to speak of theories of translation without applying the comparative procedure, as the aim of analysis of a translation is to determine the extent to which it belongs to the developmental series of the native literature. He like the other two theorists discussed, considers the translation procedure as well as the selection of the text being ` primarily determined by the integral need of the recipient literature, by its capacity for absorbing the literary phenomenon of a different national literature, work, etc. and for reacting in a specific manner (internationals or differtiational) in its aesthetic features' as well as the norm of time.

This type of theorization is far from the traditional paradigm of translation theory that is obsessed with the ideas of fidelity and betrayal, and the notions of `free' vs. literal translation. Thanks to the proponents of system approach to literary translation, translation studies can boast of becoming a discipline in its own right due to the development of powerful theoretical models.

However, the problem with Leferverian system is its terminology. The words `refracted' and `rewriting' presuppose that a text can be written for the first time and that it exists in a pre-non-refracted state. These presuppositions take him dangerously close to the very `corpus' based approach he is so vigorously attacking. Perhaps Derridian philosophy can explain why one is always in danger of belonging to the very system of thought one is criticizing. Another obvious limitation of these types of theories is that they are rather reductionist in their approach. Though Lefevere maintains that the system concept holds that the refracted texts are mainly responsible for the canonized status of the corpus and the intrinsic quality alone could not have given canonized status for them he fails to point out the exact features and qualities of the literary text which solicit refractions. Then there are problematic words like` the system' which Lefevere points out `refer to a heuristic construct that does not emphatically possess any kind of ontological reality....' and `is merely used to designate a model that promises to help make sense of a very complex phenomenon, that of writing, reading and rewriting of literature...(1985: 225).

Besides types of theories are descriptive and hence have a limited use for the translator as well as translation criticism, which is a rather neglected branch of translation studies till date. Lefevere says that translation criticism hardly rises much above, `he is wrong because I'm right level...'(1984:99). He also points out that it is impossible to define once and for all, what a good translation is just as it is impossible to define once and for all what good literature is. And " critic A, "judging" on the basis of poetics A' will rule translation A "good" because it happens to be constructed on the basis of the principles laid down in A'. Critic B, on the other hand, operating on the basis of poetics B', will damn translation A" and praise translation B', for obvious reasons..."(1988:176). He believes," Translators can be taught languages and a certain awareness of how literature works. The rest is up to them. They make mistakes only on the linguistic level. The rest is strategy." (1984:99). The perspective of course is that of a value relativist and a culture relativist, which seem to be the politically correct and `in' stances today, but the stance can be seen as symptomatic in the light of deeper moral crises in the larger philosophical context.

An ambitious and insightful essay by Raymond van den Broeck, `Second Thought on Translation Criticism: A Model of its Analytic Function' (1985) attempts to go beyond the mere descriptive and uncourageous approach of Lefevere and Toury which tries to incorporate the ideas of their theories. Like Toury and Lefevere, Broeck stresses the importance of examination of the norms among all those involved in the production and reception of translations and remarks that it is the foremost task of translation criticism to create greater awareness of these norms but he also gives room for the critic's personal value judgments. The critic may or may not agree with the particular method chosen by the translator for a particular purpose. He is entitled to doubt the effectiveness of the chosen strategies, to criticize decisions taken with regard to certain details. To the extent that he is himself familiar with the functional features of the source text, he will be a trustworthy guide in telling the reader where target texts balance source textemes and where in the critic's view, they do not. But he must never confuse his own initial norms with those of the translator (p.60-61). Broeck attempts a synthesis of the target culture oriented inductive - descriptive approach and the notorious task of evaluating translation and the result is indeed very useful and commendable as translation evaluation is a neglected branch of translation studies. As opposed to this descriptive approach is Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility (1995). With a normative and extremely insightful point of view he examines historically how the norm of fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape the canon of foreign literatures in English. He makes a strong case for `foreignness' and `awkwardness' of the translated text as a positive value in the evaluation of translation.

The other approaches to the study of translation which seem to be gaining ground lay greater emphasis on the political dimension of literary translation. The more recent literary theories like New Historicism are interested in reading the contexts of power relations in a literary text. In his critical exposition of New Historicism and Cultural materialism, John Brannigan (1998) states, `New Historicism is a mode of critical interpretation which privileges power relations as the most important context for texts of all kinds. As a critical practice it treats literary texts as a space where power relations are made visible '(6). Such a perspective when applied to the texts that communicate across cultures can yield very important insights and open an exciting way of thinking about translation. TejaswiniNiranjana's book Siting Translation, History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context (1995) examines translation theories from this perspective.

"In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity. The context is one of contesting and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages." In translation, the relationship between the two languages is hardly on equal terms. Niranjana draws attention to a rather overlooked fact that translation is between languages, which are hierarchically related, and that it is a mode of representation in another culture. When the relationship between the cultures and languages is that of colonizer and colonized, "translation...produces strategies of containment. By employing certain modes of representing the other-which it thereby also brings into being--translation reinforces hegemonic versions of the colonized, helping them acquire the status of what Edward Said calls representations or objects without history '(p.3). She points out in the introduction that her concern is to probe `the absence, lack, or repression of an awareness of asymmetry and historicity in several kinds of writing on translation' (p.9). Harish Trivedi (1997) has demonstrated how translation of Anatole France's Thais by Premchand was distinctly a political act in the sense that it selected a text which was not part of the literature of the colonial power and that it attempted a sort of liberation of Indian literature from the tutelage of the imperially-inducted master literature, English. St-Pierre observes the fact that translators when faced with references to specific aspects of the source culture may use a variety of tactics, including non-translation, as part of their overall strategy and use many other complex tactics in order to reinvent their relations in a postcolonial context (1997:423). Mahasweta Sengupta has offered a rather engaging and perceptive reading of

Rabindranath Tagore's auto translation of Gitanjali. She points out giving numerous examples, of how Rabindranath took immense liberties with his own Bengali originals in order to refashion his Bengali songs to suit the English sensibility. He modified, omitted, and rewrote his poems in the manner of the Orientalists to cater to his Western audience (1996).

Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) believe that the hierarchic opposition between the original work and translation reflects the hierarchic opposition between the European colonizer culture and the colonized culture. This hierarchy, they observe, is Eurocentric, and its spread is associated with the history of colonialization, imperialism and proselytization. Because of these historical reasons, radical theories of translation have come up in the former colonies. Recalling how members of a sixteenth century Brazilian tribe called Tupinamba ate a Catholic priest, an act which could have even been an act of homage, Bassnett and Trivedi suggest that the metaphor of `cannibalism' could be used for the act of translation as it is one of the ways former colonies might find a way to assert themselves and their own culture and to reject the feeling of being derivative and appellative `copy', without at the same time rejecting everything that might be of value that comes from Europe. Else RibeiroPiresViera has considered the translation theory of Haroldo de Campos, a renowned Brazilian translator who uses very interesting metaphors for translating like, perceiving translation as blood transfusion and vampirization which actually nourishes the translator and thus subverting the hierarchic polarities of the privileged original and inauthentic translation in a post colonial context. This type of approach to translation promotes the awareness of political and historical field in which translation operates among the readers as well as the translators. [3,250-269]

Another significant statement on `The Politics of Translation' comes from GayatriChakaravortySpivak (1998:95-118) who conceives of translation as an important strategy in pursuing the larger feminist agenda of achieving women's `solidarity'. ` The task of the feminist translator is to consider language as a clue to the working of gendered agency.' Translation can give access to a larger number of feminists working in various languages and cultures. She advises that a translator must `surrender' to the text, as translation is the most intimate act of reading. It is an act of submission to the rhetorical dimension of the text. This act for Spivak is more of an erotic act than ethical. She also advises that one's first obligation in understanding solidarity is to learn other women's mother tongue rather than consider solidarity as an `a priori' given. Spivak also shows concern for the` Third World' illiterate women and the first task of the feminists is to learn their language rather than impose someone's conception of solidarity and feminism on them. ` There are countless languages in which women all over the world have grown up and been female or feminist, and yet the languages we keep learning by rote are the powerful European ones, sometimes the powerful Asian ones, least often the chief African ones' Translation for Spivak is no mere quest for verbal equivalents but an act of understanding the other as well as the self. For her it also has a political dimension, as it is a strategy that can be consciously employed. She uses the feminine metaphors of submission, intimacy, and understanding for theorizing about translation. Thus theorizing about translation itself receives a feminist slant.

Lori Chamberlain draws attention to the gender bias behind the tag `les belles infideles' attached to translation which means that translation is like a woman, unfaithful when pretty and not beautiful when faithful. She comments, `for `les bellesinfideles', fidelity is defined as an implicit contract between translation (as woman) and original (as husband, father or author). However, the infamous `double standard' operates here as it might have in traditional marriages: the `unfaithful' wife/translation is publicly tried for crimes the husband/original is by law incapable of committing. This contract, in short, makes it impossible for the original to be guilty of infidelity. Such an attitude betrays real anxiety about the problem of paternity and translation; it mimics the patrilinear kinship system where paternity-not maternity-legitimizes an offspring '(Cited by Susan Bassnett, 1993:141). Traditional notion of fidelity and beauty implicit in translation is seen to be closely associated with patriarchal establishment, which exploits women. Barbara Godard, another feminist translation scholar who makes a connection between feminist translation work and post modernist translation theory remarks, ` As feminist theory has been concerned to show, difference is a key factor in cognitive processes and in critical praxis... The feminist translator affirming her critical difference, her delight in interminable rereading and rewriting flaunts the signs of her manipulation of the text. Womanhandling the text in translation would involve the replacement of the modest, self-effacing translator (Cited by Susan Bassnett 1993:157). This position is in contrast to Spivak's position of intimate surrender to the rhetoric of the original. Godard's translator is far more assertive of the gender difference and aggressively woman handles the original text.

All these approaches are significant developments, as they throw light on the activity of translation from a fresh perspective. What they overlook is the fact that a literary text is a far more complex artifact and the relationship it bears towards what is called `cultural' and `political' field is extremely intricate. Reducing aesthetic properties of a text to its `cultural' and `political' dimension is certainly useful but such kind of reduction has its own limitations. It overlooks the seductive and magical aspect of the work of art, which in fact makes it a work of art. At the same time words like `culture', `politics', and `history', themselves are polyvalent and open to various and often conflicting postures and interpretations. Though extremely insightful, this approach is always in danger of being very simplistic and reductive. These approaches are very different from the theories with a linguistics base. However, an attempt is made recently to bridge the gap between these two types of theoretical perspectives by Hewson and Martin. They formulate a two-tier model for analyzing and explaining the translation phenomenon. While the first tier focuses on the range of linguistic possibilities available to the translator and the choices he or she makes while the second tier deals with the institutional, cultural contextual factors that influence the range of choices as well as the actual decisions made by the translator. Basil Hatim and Ian Mason (1990:3) also attempt to bridge the gap between the linguistic sciences oriented approaches and the approaches that emphasize the target culture system or the political dimension of translation as a product. They view translation as a process involving the negotiation of meaning between producers and receivers of texts and consider translating as a communicative process that takes place within a social context. However, a comprehensive General Theory of Translation is a distant dream where all the approaches agree on one infallible approach.

First, we would like to dwell upon the Literary Translation versus translation proper, for Literary Translation issues (such as style) spring from the peculiarities of its methods and techniques.

V. Comissarov suggests dichotonomous aspect of translation based on predominant communicative function of the source text. Thus, he distinguishes between Literary and Informative translation on the one hand and between Written and Oral translation on the other hand.

“The main function of Literary Translation, he continues, is to make an emotional or aesthetic impression upon the reader. Communicative value of literary texts depends first and foremost on their artistic quality and the translator’s primary task is to reproduce this quality of translation, whereas main function of informative translation is to convey a certain amount of ideas, to inform the reader. However, he adds, translations of same texts can be listed as Literary or Informative only as an approximation. A literary text may include some of purely informative character and informative translation may comprise some elements aimed at achieving an aesthetic effect” .43

Susan Basset, a British scientist, is interested in structural approach seeing translation as a semiotic transformation that deals with “invariant core of the SL”. Following A. Popovitch she affirms that “Semiotic transformations or variants are those changes which do not modify the core of meaning but influence the expressive form”44 . This statement can be interpreted as a main problem of any literary translation: how to render expressive means of the Source Text, in other words – its style. S. Basset affirms that specific problems of Literary Translation can emerge from the individual translator’s criteria. She believes that failure of many translators to understand that “a literary translation, which is made up of a complex set of systems existing in a dialectical relationship with other sets outside its boundaries, has often led translators to focus on particular aspects of a text at the expense of others.” 45 Her statements derive from principles of Structuralism which consider literary text as a set of related systems operating within a set of other systems.

After the overview of Literary Translation we think feasible to narrow and specify the problem. As to investigation of Literary Translation concerning its style, A.Feodorov 46 singles out 3 kinds of “translation material”: 

Scientific literature

Publicist and socio-political texts

Fiction

He fairly notices that fiction is art, thus the role of image here is crucially important, for art thinks by means of images. It should be taken into account when analyzing literary translation.

Needless to say that techniques mostly characteristic of informative translation cannot be applied to the literary one.

Besides Feodorov, Barhudarov, Comissarov and others I.Retzker establishes the specific techniques typical of different texts meaning their different styles and kinds of translations.

Thus, when translating a scientific text “the determinative point is the term-equivalence, the permanent correspondence that does not depend on the context. “High frequency current” is always “ток высокого напряжения”.

As to translation of socio-political or publicist texts there an analogue-finding technique can be applied. It presupposes selection of a synonym that will perfectly fit the context. E.g.: The press proprietors have taken the Tories’ point and for many years the noisy presses of Fleet Street have skillfully maintain an almost total silence on Irish affairs. It was an effective black out.

Магнаты прессы усвоили точку  зрения консерваторов и на протяжении многих лет крикливые органы печати Флит-Стрит не обмолвились ни словом о положении дел в Северной Ирландии. Это был настоящий заговор  молчания.

Though, in dictionary “blackout” is translatedas “исчезновение сигнала”, “засекречивание” the contextual synonymic expression “заговор молчания” perfectly fitsthecon text.

And at last, when translating fiction the technique of adequate substitution is largely applied. For example, translation of Ch.Dikkence`s “American Notes” made by T.Kudreavtseva. However, they booked twelve people inside and the luggage, including such trifles as a large rocking chair and a good-sized dining table being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off in great state. The translator, feeling the irony of this scene (rocking chair and dining table plus 12 people for one carriage is really a trifle), uses adequate substitution technique, expressively differentiating the meaning of the neutral word “book”. Как бы то ни было, в карету запихали двенадцать пассажиров, и когда багаж (включая такую мелочь как большая качалка и внушительных размеров обеденный стол), был, наконец, привязан на крыше, мы торжественно двинулись в путь.