CLAS 532
February 9, 2023
Philosophical Approaches to Translation, Translatability

*Exercise #1 due tonight (11:59pm) in D2L Assignments*

Examination #1 Study Guide (February 16)


1. Steiner’s hermeneutic motion: the four (pyschological) “moves” of translation

(1) initiative trust (“something in the ST”; otherly, but translatable)
(2) aggression/penetration (violent incursion into/extraction of meaning from ST & culture)
(3) incorporation of new material into TL, between extremes of “complete domestication” and “permanent strangeness”; imbalance before (4)
(4) compensation/restoration of balance (harmony of “energy flow” between ST and TT altered; ST enhancement through translation > “gains” of ST in reception?)

• resistant difference and elective affinity (translator <> ST, confrontation of self/other; cf. “cultural turn”); tension between these produces great translation occupying a space between ST & TT (translator experiences text’s singularity/generality, foreignness/familiarity); cf. foreignization vs. domestication (Steiner leans toward foreignization, not fluency in translation)
  
  
  

2. Benjamin, “The Translator’s Task”

• translation should allow ST’s “pure language” to shine through (“glimmer”); potentiality released through word-for-word syntactical translation in TL > harmonizing of languages; not a quasi-Platonic, mystical search for higher linguistic truth, but a dynamic model of meaning that alters/continues ST (“translation ultimately has as its purpose the expression of the most intimate relationships among languages”, “all translation is merely a premliminary way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages to each other”, pp. 91-2 in Venuti > untranslatability?)
  
  Brot vs. pain:
  
  “It is because of the mode of meaning that the two words signify something different to a German and Frenchman, that they are not regarded as interchangeable and in fact ultimately seek to exclude one another; however, with respect to their intended object, taken absolutely, they signify one and the same thing. Thus whereas these two words’ modes of meaning are in conflict, they complement each other in the two languages from which they stem. And indeed in them the relation between the the mode of intention and what is meant is complemented. In the individual, uncomplemented languages, the intended object never occurs in relative independence, for instance in individual words or sentences, but is rather caught up in constant transformation, until it is able to emerge as pure language from the harmony of all these modes of meaning. Until then it remains hidden in the various languages. But if languages grow in this way until they reach the messianic end of their history, then it is translation that is ignited by the eternal continuing life of the works and the endless revival of languages in order to constantly test this sacred growth of languages, to determine how distant what is hidden within them is from revelation, how present it might become in the knowledge of the distance.” (p. 92 in Venuti)
  
  
• ideal translation an interlinear version of Holy Scripture (?)
  
  
  

3. Derrida & Deconstruction (“hermeneutics of suspicion”; paronomasia & polysemy, exposing a text’s contradictions & surplus meanings)

• interrogates stability of meaning (contingent in context; cf. “dictionary game”); meaning an effect of language, not present before/apart from language, always deferred, never absolute or complete in a play of differences, can't be pinned down
  
  
• meaning not transferable between languages (“intranslatable”, no “there” there to translate); no static original (ST) in translation hierarchy; absolute equivalence in translation impossible; Derrida's “double bind” of translation = both total translatability (“absolute relevance”) & total untranslatabilty (“opaque irrelevance”) impossible
  
  
• “What is a ‘relevant’ Translation?” & The Merchant of Venice: translation thematized in Shylock's pound of flesh > money; oath/fidelity, economy/debt, equivalence (quantitative equivalence matters for Derrida), conversion/convertere; “When mercy seasons justice”
  
  
• “relevant” migrating from English to French (“pertinent”, “appropriate”, “adequate”, etc.); “When mercy seasons justice” > Fr. relever suggests seasoning/elevation/replacement of justice (quand le pardon relève la justice (ou le droit) = “when mercy elevates and interiorizes, thereby preserving and negating justice (or the law)”; trs. “will not pay off its full debt”, but produces a quasi-relevant translation in exposing contradictions in Portia’s words (“a discourse of mercy” enmeshed in power, sophistry & self-interest; unresolvable oppositions between Christianity & Judaism)
  
  “In expressing all the evil that can be thought of the Christian ruse as a discourse of mercy, I am not about to praise Shylock when he raises a hue and a cry for his pound of flesh and insists on the literalness of the bond. I analyze only the historical and allegorical cards that have been dealt in this situation and all the discursive, logical, theological, political, and economic resources of the concept of mercy, the legacy (our legacy) of this semantics of mercy–precisely inasmuch as it is indissociable from a certain European interpretation of translation.” (p. 392 in Venuti)
  
  
• translation necessary for survival of ST (relever/relevant: “a word is added to the French language, a word in a word”)
  
  
• abusive fidelity, experimental translation?

Bernard Safran, Medea (1966)

CLAS 4/532 2-9