Random thoughts on translation

It seems to me that translating from one language into another… is like viewing Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, when, although one can make out the figures, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and one cannot appreciate the smooth finish on the right side.
- Don Quixote

Cervantes loves to put pithy observations in the mouth of his pathetic hero, and as usual Quixote is right on the money, although he probably doesn’t realize it. His remark applies equally to reading works in translation. It’s such a frustrating task. You squint, trying to make out the figures. They float in front of you in outline, but the fine detail is obscured and they never quite coalesce into something graspable.

Translations never feel right, either. The poesy is buried under approximate meaning, and what must feel like silk in Russian or Spanish becomes course and rigid. You start rewriting passages in your head just to get some rhythm into the text, but you’re no better at it than the translator. That’s why translated poetry is never more than a dismal failure – you can’t get all the allusions, all the rhythms, all the sounds into the text – and it’s exactly the same for novels, especially great ones.

Every time you read a translated novel you tell yourself it will be the last. But it’s an impossible promise to keep. There’s always another must-read novel. A life with frustrating Dostoevsky is better than a life with no Dostoevsky at all.

Maybe you’re asking too much of the translation. A translation, after all, tells you more about the translator than it does the work itself. You aren’t listening to the text, of course, but to the translator, as she describes what she is hearing. The work is second hand, filtered through another pair of ears, and is only ever going to reflect how the translator hears. Hopefully she hears in a similar way to the author.

But the amazing thing is not that translations are so bad, but that they work at all. The quote at the top has itself been translated from the Spanish, but you still get the gist. How can that happen? How could Cervantes, writing all those centuries ago, have had the same frame of reference to you? Perhaps you have a common experience: of tapestries, for instance. If so, then what about texts from completely alien cultures? How can their ideas be expressed in your language? There must be some common ground of human experience that founds all cultures and languages.

The common ground is especially important for Bible translators. Separated by two thousand years and ten thousand miles, the fact that you can make sense of Paul, a first century Jewish scholar, is astonishing. Granted, reading Paul requires a little more thought and contextual understanding than does, say, Hugo, but even the least literate can make some sense of him. We have access to Paul’s gospel because we share something vital with the apostle.

The translator’s task is difficult and thankless. She is asked to speak across cultures and render a community’s thoughts intelligible to those with whom they never speak. Her project is fated to fail, because no translation can be perfect; she can never convey ever reference, nuance and allusion. At best she can only sketch rough outlines. But it is better to see vaguely, as in a mirror, than never at all, and for their service we owe translators our respect and gratitude.

Photo by Kiwanc