Fictional Translators

Rethinking Translation through Literature

Rosemary Arrojo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138827141
• eBook ISBN: 9781317574576
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Through close readings of select stories and novels by well-known writers from different literary traditions, Fictional Translators invites readers to rethink the main clichés associated with translations. Rosemary Arrojo shines a light on the transformative character of the translator's role and the relationships that can be established between originals and their reproductions, building her arguments on the basis of texts such as the following:

• Cortázar's "Letter to a Young Lady in Paris"
• Walsh's "Footnote"
• Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Poe's "The Oval Portrait"
• Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "Funes, His Memory," and "Death and the Compass"
• Kafka's "The Burrow" and Kosztolányi's Kornél Esti
• Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon and Babel's "Guy de Maupassant"
• Scliar's "Footnotes" and Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
• Cervantes's Don Quixote

Fictional Translators provides stimulating material for reflection not only on the processes associated with translation as an activity that inevitably transforms meaning, but, also, on the common prejudices that have underestimated its productive role in the shaping of identities. This book is key reading for students and researchers of literary translation, comparative literature and translation theory.

1 Introducing theory through fiction

Jorge Luis Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” and Julio Cortázar’s “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris”

I have assumed the mysterious obligation to reconstruct, word for word, the novel that for [Cervantes] was spontaneous. […] Composing the Quixote in the early seventeenth century was a reasonable, necessary, perhaps even inevitable undertaking; in the early twentieth, it is virtually impossible. Not for nothing have three hundred years elapsed, freighted with the most complex events. Among those events, to mention but one, is the Quixote itself.

Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” trans. Andrew Hurley

Don’t reproach me for it, Andrea, don’t blame me. Once in a while it happens that I vomit up a bunny. It’s no reason not to live in whatever house, it’s no reason for one to blush and isolate oneself and to walk around keeping one’s mouth shut.

Julio Cortázar, “Letter to a Young Woman in Paris,” trans. Paul Blackburn

A close look at the revealing scene of translation sketched in the fragment reproduced above from Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (Borges 1998, trans. Hurley), first published in Argentina in 1939, gives readers a privileged insight into the translator’s “mysterious obligation” to faithfully reconstruct someone else’s text at another time, in another context, for different reasons, and with different goals, an obligation that Pierre Menard diligently tries to fulfill even though he knows that it is impossible for sameness to be reproduced in difference. Borges’s fragment, like the story as a whole, confronts attentive readers with the undeniable fact of difference as a constitutive element of translation and invites them to ponder the transformational character of the translator’s role and, hopefully, at least some of its far-reaching consequences. The translator’s unsettling visibility is also a central theme in Cortázar’s “Letter to a Young Woman in Paris” (Cortázar 1985, trans. Blackburn), originally published in Argentina in 1951, which offers readers a stirring representation of the translator’s ambivalent relationship with his own irrepressible creativity, ingeniously conveyed by the little rabbits that at times must come out of his mouth. The translator’s bunnies, for which he secretly cares like beloved children, are also powerful agents of change as they alter and ultimately destroy the composition of the borrowed textual space that the translator is temporarily allowed to occupy, the same space that he has pledged to protect and defend mostly from himself.

While Borges’s hilarious, cerebral plot can be read as a merciless deconstruction of the most recurrent clichés associated with translation and its relationship with the writing of “originals,” Cortázar’s whimsical, poignant story invites readers to reflect on issues directly associated with prevailing conceptions and how they have taught translators to view and, most significantly, to feel about their own agency and the role it plays, or should play, in their work. When Cortázar’s story is read against the background of Borges’s and vice versa, each of these readings is likely to produce insights that enrich the other, providing multifaceted portrayals of the translator’s transformative role and a unique opportunity to critically evaluate the usual platitudes that underestimate its scope and effects. Borges’s and Cortázar’s surreal storylines and characters are particularly efficient in sensitizing non-specialists to the productive nature of translation and in stimulating them to get acquainted with fundamental theoretical issues that have redefined the translator’s task in the last few decades. As pedagogical tools, these stories are notably suitable for the introduction of scholarship on translation to undergraduate or beginning graduate students following academic programs in translation studies, comparative and world literature, classical and modern languages and literatures, philosophy, linguistics, or any other field directly or indirectly dealing with questions of language. The two stories are also appropriate for the introduction of theoretical issues to translators in training or practicing translators interested in reflecting more broadly on their work and, perhaps, in becoming acquainted with the concerns of formal theories as well.

Learning from Pierre Menard

As a quintessential fictional text about translation, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” can be uniquely helpful in raising questions and stimulating productive discussions on some of the most obvious commonplaces associated with originals and their reproductions (cf., for example, Arrojo 1986: 11–21; Waisman 2005: 93–109; and Kristal 2002: 29–31). It is a perplexing story in the format of a short review essay that is also an alleged tribute to the recently deceased Pierre Menard, an obscure French Symbolist writer who lived in Nîmes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Borges’s third-person narrator is an established critic who claims to have been a “true friend” of the deceased and catalogued all his “visible” nineteen pieces – monographs, translations, scholarly essays, drafts, sonnets – whose brief descriptions, instead of elevating the seemingly ambitious Menard, actually suggest the profile of a minor, somewhat ridiculous intellectual and writer. It is, however, Pierre Menard’s “invisible,” “subterranean,” and, yet, unfinished work, that is the focal point of the story, and which exposes the French writer’s peculiar ambition: the “composition” of “the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of Part I of Don Quixote and a fragment of Chapter XXII” (Borges 1998: 90). Even though the word “translation” is never used to describe Menard’s invisible work, which was “perhaps the most significant writing” of his time, we are told that the project was indeed the repetition “in a foreign tongue of a book that already existed” (ibid.: 95). Ultimately, it is this very project that allows Pierre Menard to see himself as a “novelist,” a definition that appears to echo his own conviction as well as the narrator’s suggestion that the work of the translator, far from being secondary, may actually be even more complex than the author’s.

As Menard plausibly explains, he “assumed the mysterious obligation to reconstruct, word for word, the novel that for [Cervantes] was spontaneous” (ibid.: 92). His “problem,” “without the shadow of a doubt,” was much more difficult than Cervantes’s: the Spanish author “did not spurn the collaboration of chance; his method of composition for the immortal book was a bit à la diable, and he was often swept along by the inertia of the language and the imagination” (ibid.: 93). According to Borges’s narrator, Menard “did not want to compose another Quixote, which surely is easy enough – he wanted to compose the Quixote.” However, he “had no intention of copying it. His admirable ambition was to produce a number of pages which coincided – word for word and line for line – with those of Miguel de Cervantes” (ibid.: 91). In order to achieve his goal, Menard devised a method that was “relatively simple”: “Learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918 – be Miguel de Cervantes” (ibid.). After “weigh[ing] that course,” and after “pretty thoroughly master[ing] seventeenth-century Castilian,” he “discarded it as too easy” (ibid.). As he reasoned, “[b]eing, somehow, Cervantes, and arriving thereby at the Quixote – that looked to Menard less challenging (and therefore less interesting) than continuing to be Pierre Menard and come to the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard” (ibid.). As we learn, Menard died with the conviction that he had indeed achieved his “astonishing” goal, that is, his translation of a few fragments from the Quixote seemed so perfectly faithful that they literally reproduced the original in its original language. It is, however, the narrator’s comparison of Menard’s Quixote to Cervantes’s, both verbally identical, that brings out a host of differences between the two, a comparison that also suggests that, while Menard had not composed the one and only Quixote, paradoxically neither had Cervantes.

Of the multiple interpretive paths that can be pursued in any close reading of “Pierre Menard,” I have chosen to concentrate on a few interrelated topics directly associated with the sharp contrast generally drawn between the creative role translators actually play and the role they are typically expected to play as they practice their profession. My goal, as mentioned, is to show how Borges’s text may help instructors guide students through an initial exploration of key notions associated with the translator’s visibility, which emerged as a central topic for theorization about thirty years ago, mostly under the sway of post-Nietzschean conceptions of language and text (for early discussions on this, see, for example, Graham 1985; Arrojo 1986 and 1993; Venuti 1992). As a starting point, instructors might invite students to express their own views on what translations and the translator’s role entail. Those new to the field, like most non-specialists, will quite probably abide by notions of translation that take for granted the stability of the original and, consequently, the possibility of faithfully reproducing it in different linguistic, cultural, and historical contexts. Hence, they are likely to believe that sameness could in fact be repeated and that translators and interpreters in general could choose whether to be neutral or partial when translating or interpreting texts. Students motivated to search for more formal statements on translation, whether associated with lay, institutional, or scholarly perspectives, will probably encounter conceptions that will not be very different from their own. Let us examine, for example, the following statement from the American Translators Association, according to which their members “accept as [their] ethical and professional duty to convey meaning between people and cultures faithfully, accurately, and impartially” (American Translators Association, “Code of Ethics and Professional Practice,” emphasis added). For them, a “faithful, accurate and impartial translation or interpretation conveys the message as the author or speaker intended with the same emotional impact on the audience,” a seemingly sensible comment according to which, in order to achieve their goals, translators or interpreters are required “to adopt a mantle of neutrality” as they make it possible for texts to be available in different languages and cultural and historical contexts (ibid.).

Students could also be encouraged to compare Menard’s approach to repeat Cervantes’s text to more formal statements on translation ethics from different times and traditions. In Alexander Fraser Tytler’s comments on “the proper task of a translator,” presented in his Essay on the Principles of Translation, of 1791, for example, students will likely identify notions that resemble Menard’s methods. Consider, for instance, Tytler’s “laws of translation”

I. That the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work. II. That the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original. III. That the translation should have all the ease of original composition.

(Tytler 1978: 16)

In the following quotation students will also find appropriate material to relate to Borges’s story:

The translator […] uses not the same colours with the original, but is required to give his picture the same force and effect. He is not allowed to copy the touches of his own, to produce a perfect resemblance. The more he studies a scrupulous imitation, the less his copy will reflect the ease and spirit of the original. How then shall a translator accomplish this difficult union of ease with fidelity? To use a bold expression, he must adopt the very soul of his author, which must speak through his own organs.

(Ibid.: 211–212; emphasis added)

In order to probe these issues and what they could imply, instructors may want to encourage students to reevaluate them in the light of the “method” devised by Menard to reach Cervantes’s original, namely his plan, mentioned above, to learn Spanish, “forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918 – [and] be Miguel de Cervantes” (Borges 1998: 91). Such a description could be read as a refined mockery of the usual, apparently reasonable recommendation that translators should hide under “a mantle of neutrality” in order to “adopt the very soul” of their authors and produce translations that faithfully reproduce the same meanings as their originals. Therefore, strictly speaking, in order to erase the differences involved and to be truly faithful to Cervantes’s original, Menard would have to stop being himself, turn into the Spanish author, and forget or erase the long history that separated them. As students are invited to examine Borges’s amusing treatment of the recurrent commonplaces involving the translator’s role and its suggestion that what mainstream conceptions prescribe, far from being reasonable, is not only impossible, but utterly nonsensical, they may be inclined to entertain a more critical perspective on the complexities of translation.

An attentive examination of Menard’s further elaboration of his method will show students that Borges’s convincing satire can be even more corrosive. As mentioned, after the French translator practically mastered seventeenth-century Castillian, he gave up on his initial plan to become Cervantes and decided to continue being Pierre Menard and come to the Quixote through his own experiences (ibid.). Hence, we may conclude, the translator’s pursuit of invisibility and sameness seems to be even more absurd than his initial plan to forget centuries of history and literally become the author of the text he plans to reproduce. And yet, if we rephrase Borges’s description of Menard’s method with the kind of seemingly reasonable language used, for instance, by the American Translators Association, that is, if we take note that his goal is to reach the exact same text produced by Cervantes and repeat it verbatim elsewhere, in completely different circumstances, we may find in Menard a model translator who, in his own peculiar way, appears to be trying to follow most of the ethical guidelines commonly prescribed by mainstream notions and institutions. I say “most” because, apparently, Menard did not intend his Quixote to produce “the same emotional impact on [his] audience” as the original had. As Menard himself recognized, what Cervantes’s book may have represented for his contemporaries in the seventeenth century was quite different from what it actually became a few centuries later: the Quixote “was first and foremost a pleasant book; it is now an occasion for patriotic toasts, grammatical arrogance, obscene de luxe editions” (Borges 1998: 94).

Students will find an unforgettable lesson on the relationship that readers can establish with texts in the story’s climactic point, which is quite probably one of the most enthralling moments of twentieth-century fiction: the narrator’s comparison of two verbally identical fragments from Don Quixote, one by Cervantes, the other by Menard. “It is a revelation,” we are told,

“to compare the Don Quixote of Pierre Menard with that of Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes, for example, wrote the following (Part I, Chapter IX):

‘… truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor’”

(ibid.).

For the narrator, “this catalog of attributes, written in the seventeenth century, and written by the ‘ingenious layman’ Miguel de Cervantes, is mere rhetorical praise of history”. (Ibid.) Menard, “on the other hand, writes: ‘… truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor’” (ibid.). According to Borges’s narrator, “Menard, a contemporary of William James, defines history not as a delving into reality but as the very fount of reality. […] Historical truth, for Menard, is not ‘what happened’; it is what we believe happened” (ibid.). Furthermore, the narrator points out that:

the contrast in styles is equally striking. The archaic style of Menard – who is, in addition, not a native speaker of the language in which he writes – is somehow affected. Not so the style of his precursor, who employs the Spanish of his time with complete naturalness.

(Ibid.)

As a reader of both excerpts, the narrator does not “forget history,” so to speak, and sees Menard as the actual writer of the fragment that supposedly coincides with Cervantes’s. For the narrator, because they were composed at different times, in different contexts and circumstances, motivated by quite different goals and, most importantly, produced by different individuals, those two apparently identical fragments could not possibly mean the same thing. There is hardly a more eloquent example, in fiction or otherwise, that could stimulate reflection on issues pertaining to the relationship between words and meaning and the nature of language, as well as the roles played by readers and authors in the composition and interpretation of texts, issues that are directly associated with the main tenets of post-Nietzschean thought and its impact on the ways in which originals and translations are viewed (for texts that address these issues in ways that are generally accessible to most students, see, for instance, Arrojo 2010 and Van Wyke 2010. See, also, Chapters Three, Four, and Five in this book).

Instructors and students working with the story could begin their examination of such issues by probing Menard’s alleged definition of history as “the very fount of reality” (Borges 1998: 94). If, like Borges’s narrator, we see in Menard’s fragment the basis of a non-essentialist conception of the relationship between truth and history, according to which it is history that produces truth and not the other way around, we will have to consider the possibility that no text could ever remain the same and be repeated as such, beyond or above history. Following this rationale, it would be impossible for Menard, even if he had indeed managed to become Cervantes, to ever reach the Quixote as an original that could have remained immune to the differences brought about by the constant, inexorable flow of history. Therefore, we may argue, from such a perspective, it would be impossible for translators to ever be invisible or neutral as they are always and inescapably reconstructing meaning within the undefinable limits of a certain historical c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Introducing theory through fiction
• 2 Fiction as theory and activism
• 3 The illusive presence of originals
• 4 The translation of philosophy into fiction
• 5 Texts as private retreats
• 6 Authorship as the affirmation of masculinity
• 7 The gendering of texts
• 8 Translation as transference
• Index