The Art of Translation

Ranjit Bolt

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840028652
• eBook ISBN: 9781849433433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

"I try to follow the rule laid down by perhaps the greatest translator of all, John Dryden, who maintained that a translator should – and I paraphrase – make the version as entertaining as possible, while at the same time remaining as faithful as possible to the spirit of the original" – Ranjit Bolt. In this book, Ranjit Bolt takes what is essentially a practitioner's view of the art of literary translation. His observations are born of a quarter of a century's experience of translating for a living, especially for the theatre. While rooted in practice, however, this survey does not shy away from theory, but is packed with allusion to great translation theorists such as Walter Benjamin and John Dryden, as well as adumbrating Bolt's own theoretical stance.

1. Vive L’Impossibilité!

IN THE PAST, when I was asked to write (for talks, programme notes, etc.) about the art of literary translation, I would employ the metaphor of a leaky pitcher. Translating, I maintained, was like taking a leaky pitcher (the target language) to a well (the original text, the host language) and trying to transport water (the original meaning, or content) in it to a bath or basin (the speakers and readers of the target language, or audiences, in my case). It was a better analogy than I at first realised, because of course the word “translation”, coming, as it does, from the Latin word “transfero” actually contains within it the idea of carrying something across from one place, language, to another.

No matter how hard you tried, so I maintained, a certain quantity of the water – the original content, in other words – would inevitably be lost. I realize now, after two decades spent at the translational coalface, that this metaphor won’t quite do. It is fundamentally misleading, because it suggests that there is an x – the “meaning” or “content” of the original – that is somehow to be transported, albeit imperfectly, but as intact as possible, in the pitcher of translation.

If you start out, as a literary translator... Let me break off for a moment... From now on – or at any rate very shortly – I shall be omitting the word “literary” to save space, but it should be assumed that it is always that branch of translation that I am discussing. Obviously it is eminently possible to translate a shopping list, a technical manual, anything of that nature, without losing any of its content or meaning at all, or, unless one makes some silly slip, adding anything of one’s own. But if you start out, as a literary translator, with the view of your function just outlined, you are doomed to failure from the outset.

My pitcher analogy is not wholly invalid. Insofar as it contains the idea of some sort of inherent inadequacy in the translation process – of something we might think can be achieved by it, but which in fact cannot – it is barking up the right tree. But the image of pitcher and water still clings to the idea of something – an x – a “meaning” or “sense” – having to be transferred from one language to another, and from foreign writer to, in my case, English audience. The sad fact is that, in a very meaningful sense, there simply is no such x – no such paraphrasable content, to use that technical expression again – that literary translation so conveys. All translators, and anyone thinking about translation, must begin by accepting this premise – they must, if you like, experience this epiphany.

To make the point a little clearer, let us consider the precepts set out by the sixteenth century translator and thinker Étienne Dolet in his seminal work on the subject, Le Maniere de Bien Traduire d’Une Langue en l’Autre. One of Dolet’s key stipulations is that the translator should have a perfect understanding, not merely of the substance of a the text he is translating, but also of its author’s intention. The trouble is that, as we all know in this post-intentionalist fallacy era, the intention of the author of a literary text is by no means necessarily the same thing as the actual meaning, or meanings (let us not forget the modern obsession with polyvalence) of that text. The meaning of a literary text is, to put it a touch flippantly, up for grabs, and up for grabs with it goes the strategy to be employed by its translator.

I would go further and argue that, never mind the original author’s intention, one can think of instances – of specific texts – where it may not even be necessary for a literary translator to have any knowledge of the language he or she is translating from. Which, for example, would you rather read: a translation of The Divine Comedy by a brilliant Italian scholar with no poetic gift, or one by a brilliant poet with no knowledge of Italian, working from a literal version? Lorca, the great Spanish translator of Shakespeare, might have agreed with this. At any rate, his famous observation about translating Shakespeare is certainly consistent with it. When asked how he coped with the Elizabethan English, he replied: “The problem isn’t my English – it’s my Spanish!” Carry that statement to its logical extreme and you arrive at the possibility of a great translation of a great work of literature being possible by someone with no knowledge of the language it was written in, and nothing but an accurate crib to go on.

But to return to the main issue: the so to speak “impossibility” of literary translation. The mistake is to view this discovery – epiphany, as I have called it – as something depressing. It can just as easily be seen as positive and liberating. According to legend, while Proust was writing A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, and Scott Moncrief was, at the same time, bringing out his famous translation, it became fashionable among certain Parisian intellectuals to await the Moncrief version of each successive volume, rather than read the original, the idea being that Moncrief had, in some sense, done Proust better than Proust did himself. This is an extreme example, and perhaps an apocryphal one to boot, but I am happy to report it here because for me, whether it actually happened or not, it conveys a kernel of truth. Granted, Moncrief’s translation will never convey to an English reader the full experience (insofar as there is something peculiarly French about it, and isolable as such – itself a moot point) that a French reader has while reading Proust in the original. (And remember, what I am maintaining here is that the reason it cannot do this is nothing to with any shortcomings on Moncrief’s part, but simply because such a feat is inherently impossible.) But that needn’t necessarily mean that Moncrief’s version is instantly and necessarily doomed to the status of a poor second best, or unhappy compromise. It is possible for a translator to achieve great things, and to render sterling service to the original author and text, even if there is no such thing as translation in some complete, or exhaustive sense.

To summarise what I have been saying so far: we start with a descriptive proposition. There is no such thing as a complete, one hundred per cent “accurate”, or “faithful” translation, or perhaps even anything close to it. The notion of absolute fidelity is a fallacy, a chimera that will never be realized if we translate from now till doomsday. From that descriptive proposition, a second, prescriptive one follows: do not strive for what can never be achie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Vive L’Impossibilité!
• 2. C’est Magnifique, Mais...
• 3. Lost in Translation
• 4. Benjamin: Above And Beyond
• Notes