A Few Preliminary Remarks

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Edward Balcerzan

A Few Preliminary Remarks

Literary Studies in Poland 15, 7-13

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Articles

Edw ard Balcerzan

A Few Prelim inary R em arks

On th e w hole there does n o t seem to be any great secret to tran slatin g . Q u ite the co n tra ry , if we were to seek the elem entary differences betw een original w riting and tran slatio n o f literary works in the p o p u la r op inion, the first p ro o f o f their difference would be th a t the b eginning o f an original w ork is always som e in tan gible secret (or subtle p aradox), while d oing a tran slatio n is ra tio nal and subject to concrete description. We should not be sur prised. In lite ra tu re sensu stricto the text is an expression o f the ineffable. B eyond th e text, unfolds a vaguely outlined, p ro ble m atically c o n stitu te d reality —an accum ulation o f events from various spheres o f public life or the private life o f the creative artist. This R eality d ay by d ay slips into the past, and each o f its successive in c a rn a tio n s deform s the m em ory o f early states. Even the confessions o f au th o rs, even the m ost detailed ones und er the sun, d o n o t com pletely satisfy the relentless scholars o f the m ystery o f creatio n . T h e a u ra o f aroused irration ality su rro un ds b oth the p re h isto ry o f a w ork and the a u th o r’s final decisions; th at final m o m en t w hen his energy exhausted, no new conceptions appear. „I have co m p leted a poem , w hat does th a t m ean ?”, T adeusz R ó żewicz w ond ers in one o f his essays in Przygotowania do wieczoru

autorskiego (Preparations fo r a Reading). H ow d o you know th at

this is th e final version o f a poem and th at one can n o t or should n o t co n tin u e to w ork on it?

In the p rocess o f tran slatio n the reverse occurs, such detective em o tio n s recede to the far periphery. (The secrets o f tran slatio n to be sure elicit th e literary p u b lic’s curiosity, b u t this fascination

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8 E d w a rd B alcerzan

is o f a com pletely different n atu re.) U ndoubtedly, the questions o f which we spoke above (from first im pulses to analysis o f the dying inspiration o f the tra n sla to r d u rin g the final editing o f the finished m anuscript) ap p ear in this field, too. In b oth cases, the solution o f the “secret” , however, is know n. B oth th e p reactio n stage and the final m om ent o f the tran slatio n are defined by the m odel in the original language. In the beginning and in the end, the word rem ains. The tra n s la to r’s d ra m a is played o u t w ithin a clearly defined space; between text and text. The private spiri tual life o f the tran slato r, with its ran d o m configurations o f events and the strangeness o f h u m an existence have no role here co m parab ly as im p o rtan t or intriguing (especially) as in the co n stru ctio n o f original works. The tra n s la to r’s private spiritual life is n o t the object presented artistically; it is not the reason we reach for Shakespeare or P roust in Polish.

T hat sounds u n fair: the tra n s la to r’s personality is m ost plainly apparent in the weaknesses o f the tran slatio n . W hen we begin to know the m echanics o f the m istakes and to d raw u np leasan t co n clu sions concerning their causes, the im age o f the tra n sla to r is outlined m ore forcefully. V arious negative “ch aracteristics” o f his ch a rac te r m ultiply in the re a d e r’s im agination —absentm indedness, nonchalance, exaggerated tim idity in exceeding the b o un daries o f the tabo o, or sim ple ignorance.

B ohdan W ydzga, the Polish tra n sla to r o f B aud elaire’s Flowers

o f Evil o f 1927, captivated by the Polish T a tra H ighlands, in

troduced the w ord gazda (hillfarm er) into his tran slatio n. H e called G od the R a jski Gazda (the H eavenly H illfarm er), an d in a special co m m entary he regarded a justification o f his m an ip u latio n essential. His surroundings h ad influenced him :

Let th e circu m sta n ces o f the tra d u tto re ex p la in his actio n s. W h en B au d elaire rem in isces ab o u t the natural b ea u ty o f the P yren ees, th e tran slator, w h o w as in Z a k o p a n e, yield ed to the su g g estio n o f the lo ca l c o lo r . Later, h ow ever, he did n o t w ant to or w as u n a b le to refash ion and give up w hat had thrust itse lf u p on him.

This instance only app aren tly resem bles the com m on practice o f the period o f Y oung P oland, frequently applied to the m aster pieces o f world literature o f gôralszczenie (the fashion o f using the m o un tain dialect and custom s). O u r tra n sla to r does n o t claim th at

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the m ountain dialect could express the ideas o f the original m ost fully. His purp ose is different and strictly personal. H e attem pted to smuggle an episode from his own b io graph y into B audelaire’s w orld, bu t the accom plishm ent o f this goal turns out to be too em barassing. T he m ain text o f the tran slatio n does n o t perm it him to com m unicate know ledge o f his experience directly to th e reader; his auto g rap h is a p p a ren t only in the footnotes, outside o f the , fram ew ork o f the w ork as such. M oreover, rescuing his private dilem m a from oblivion requires him to adm it th at he has abused the rights o f a tran slato r. He asks for lenience:

I trust that at th e Final J u d gm en t the H ea v en ly H illfarm er h im se lf will forgive m e this lib erty w ith H is title. It will be m o re difficult here on earth with the critics.

A happy coincidence o r a* series o f bad accidents or the hilarious circum stances o f an im p o rtan t discovery, at times even a prophetic vision together with the tra n s la to r’s efforts are described in histories o f translation s. Such accounts, how ever, play a peculiar function. They expose the tra n s la to r’s biography separated from the text o f the translatio n where the biography is a tran sp a ren t, invisible instrum ent, which is the m ost apt when it m ost adequately serves to reproduce som eone else’s literary achievem ent. Such a biography has a peculiar internal order. It strikes an observer prim arily as a linguistic, li terary fact. It is a cultural p roduct. R eaders o f tran slation s and tran slato rs them selves usually co n cen trate their tho ug hts in the field con tro lled by cu ltu re high above the capricious crevasses o f life, in the light o f the cu rren t know ledge o f the rules o f art and the norm s o f speech.

The tra n s la to r’s craft, as a subject for their m usings, opens one o f the longest p ath s to u n d ersta n d in g the stru ctu re o f verbal art before the read ing public. T heir craft loyal to the code o f ra tio n a l rules and suggestions, devoid o f the lure o f the m agical, organizes the reading p u b lic’s interest aro u n d itself (with varying success bu t with great stubbornness) appealing to the re a d e r’s intellectual needs. E dw ard P or^bow icz called the m om ent when a n o th e r’s w ork is transform ed into o n e ’s own, when a constellation o f sounds and m eanings now foreign, incom prehensible, pulsating with d istan t speech and exuding the life o f a different w orld is recon stitu ted am ong the m yths and beliefs o f the native culture

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w izardry. He was thinkin g o f m agic w ithout spells. T he w izardry here is the assim ilation o f a piece o f som eone else’s biog rap hy (not experienced by the tra n sla to r): the tran sfo rm atio n o f the in com prehensible into the com prehensible.

M ore than one o f th e theories o f speech and th o u g h t o f the 20th century contends th at the perception o f every verbal text m obilizes m echanism s analogous to the m echanism o f tran slatio n . (The Polish speaker will agree with this assertion readily, for

tłum aczyć ‘tra n sla te ’ is the sam e as przedkładać ‘tra n sla te ’ and objaśniać ‘ex plain’. N orw id drew an interesting co ncep tion from

the hom onym ic structure o f the term and w rote th a t in his time the Byronie Childe-Harold should have been translated using a critical com m entary.) The m eaning o f the verbal com m un ication m akes its presence felt and takes ro o t in the listener’s consciousness th ro u g h the co n stan t decoding. The com m un ication can only enter the individual language system only by generating au to p arap h ra ses in his personal language, by projecting other v arian t form u latio ns o f the given th oug ht th a t are closest to the hab its o f th e indi v id u al’s m ethod o f expressing himself. (A teacher m akes certain a pupil has understo o d the p o in t by having the pupil repeat not from m em ory bu t in his own words. T hose “his own w ords” result from intralinguistic decoding: a translatio n from Polish into Polish in various aspects —from ad u lt language into a ch ild ’s language, from the rhetoric o f a textbook into th at o f a test.) T ra n sla tion as the com prehension o f a text, the u n derstan din g o f a text as a translation, shifts the process o f com m un ication between people into the realm o f au tocom m unication w ithin an individual. A n o th e r’s statem ent is decoded w ith the sam e exactness with which we are able to decode o u r own statem ents.

These observations can be applied to the w ork o f professional tran slato rs o f belles lettres and p araliterary forms. T ra n sla to rs are, as T om asz B urek said provocatively, explainers o f the m asterpieces o f foreign literatures. Speaking o f a theoretical typology o f the roles within the fram ew ork o f literary life, practice only to o frequently reduces to the burying o f foreign w orks in the d arkness o f m isunderstanding (an equally interesting case o f special im por tance to the process o f literary history, when the literatu res o f tw o different languages cease to u n d ersta n d one ano th er).

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In the hierarchy o f the obligations o f the art o f tran slatio n the m ost essential ones are herm eneutic.

They are also the m ost essential ones for describing th e pe culiar genre o f w orks in literary history com posed o f the various an n o tatio n s, glosses, aphorism s, in tro ductions, afterw ords, reviews, and tracts o f w riters an d critics involved in the developm ent o f the art o f tran slatio n . A t the ro o t o f this genre, a t the base o f the m otivations provo k in g the tra n sla to r to speak o f the problem s involved in tran slatio n lies the eternal question aim ed n o t at the reader b ut „h ig h er” at the ab stract „ T ru th ” o f the history o f art, W hat is the justification for tran slatin g lite ratu re ? W hat is it: a collection o f substitute texts, a cru tch for those who d o not know the foreign language or an auth entic field o f literary com m u nicatio n?

Significantly, these d o u b ts ap peared forcefully d u ring the very earliest stages o f the developm ent o f aw areness o f translations. In P oland, they ap peared in docum ents o f the 16th and 17th centuries. As is usual in the case o f fundam entals (and it is difficult to im agine som ething m ore fundam ental), in relation to the “to be or not to b e” o f the art o f tran slatio n thoroughly co n trad icto ry opinions abound. An an onim o us tran slato r o f the 16th century sees an im m ediate goal in his w ork. W hoever knows the language o f the original will prefer the original. A nother, Ł ukasz G órnicki, also refers his readers th a t know Italian to the original o f his The Courtier, b u t n o t only to becom e acq uainted with the original b u t also so they could attem p t to tran slate it better. A ccording to G órnicki, know ledge o f the original does no t preclude reading the tran slatio n . The latter can inspire acquaintance with the original foreign text, and th e non-P olish text can spark a new tran slatio n . A third , Jan Januszow ski, calls for bilingual b o o k s, co n tain in g the L atin original an d a Polish tran slatio n . The read er is to co m pare the tra n sla to r w ork w ith the original. This th ird version proposes trea tin g tran slatio n as an independent, self- -contained value th a t occurs along with the original, n o t instead o f it.

Each language act becom es a value w orth respecting because it c a n n o t be m echanically reduced to any other. This applies to the prim ary as well as to the derivative language acts. T he m ore

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pow erfully crystallized the auto n o m y o f the original is, the m ore solidly fortified the autonom y o f the tra n sla to r's achievem ent be com es. T hese achievem ents are com pared , as if in a com petition for the best results, w ith the p artic u la r interp retatio n s o f the readers. T he th o u g h ts o f the 16th-century anonym ous tran slato r, the m edi tatio n s o f the P olish Courtier, Januszow sk i’s editorial decisions are no t a free collection o f arb itra ry convictions bu t an arrangem ent o f interconnected sentences determ ined by an (intuitional) sense o f the re la tio n sh ip betw een the translated tran sfo rm atio n and a th o u g h t ful reading. Sebastian Petrycy’s though ts arise within th e fram e o f an alo g o u s dilem m as. He writes th a t for som eone w ho know s L atin his effort m ight seem wasted, b u t the flavor o f foreign teachings “can easily be tasted in o n e ’s own language”. From identical views o f the sense o f tran slatio n , as closer th an th e ori ginal creatio n s to the readers, co n tra ry (even co ntradictory ) evalua tions o f tran slatio n flow.

Indeed the debate did n o t die ou t in the pioneer period. It appears in the follow ing epochs variously associated with other things. Its dialectic seems inexhaustible. W hile the p ro p o n en ts o f the inherent defectiveness o f translations have added triu m ph s in the very techniq ue o f discrim ination, in irony, in vivid satire, parody, their o p p o n en ts have been add ing substantive argum ents. It is in creasingly difficult to m aintain only negative descriptions o f tran s la to rs’ w ork (as feeding on the linguistic failures in society’s ed u cation). T h e com m on place th a t “a tran slatio n ca n n o t replace the o rigin al” is understo o d to m ean th a t a tran slatio n n o t only ca n n o t b u t does n o t intend to replace the original (its sub stitu te function is secondary and facultative). T ran slatio n particip ate in literary com m u n icatio n in a special way. N o t em b arrassing gaps in p eo p le’s linguistic know ledge b u t the co n stan t presence o f hab its o f perception and the ability to perform intralingual tran slatio n s (assim ilation and explan atio n o f the intricacies o f foreign speech) justify the existence o f the c ra ft o f tran slatio n . T ranslating w orks from foreign languages then is an equally valid form o f p articip atin g in the m etam o rp h o sis o f literary structures as reading, literary criticism , textual cri ticism, p a ra p h ra sin g them in pastiches, parodies, travesties o r other stylizations, including paintings, stagings, films, etc. T he correctness o f this assertion is ap p a ren t in the experiences o f bilingual co m m u

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nities where tran slatio n s from the tw o basic languages m astered by the m ajority (U k rainian and R ussian in the U kraine, Slovak and Czech in Slovakia) have no t only n o t disappeared but feed one o f the m ost pow erful forces shaping the styles and n ation al literary conventions.