Translation and Time

Migration, Culture, and Identity

James St. André

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781606354087
• eBook ISBN: 9781631014277
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Translating & Interpreting
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Essays exploring the effect of time on translation studies

This volume brings together ten essays on the relation between temporality and translation, engaging in both theoretical reflection and consideration of concrete case studies. The essays can be read independently, but three major themes run through them and facilitate a discussion about the many ways in which the theoretical and practical consideration of temporality may provide new insights and research directions for translation studies.

The first main theme is temporal metaphors for translation. Why do so few metaphors that describe translation relate to time? How have the few metaphors relating to time that have been used impacted the development of the field? What new metaphors might be useful?

The second theme is the relation between translation and modernity as a new experience of temporality. In China, as in many countries outside Europe, the passage to modernity has been inextricably bound up in the act of translation, either of European texts into Chinese as a way of "importing" modernity or the translation of Chinese texts into European languages as a gauge of quality and a sign that China has become modern.

Third is the translation of temporality and the competing temporalities of source and target texts. How are the nuances of temporality translated, and how do any shifts that occur affect the meaning of the translation? Different cultures have different concepts of time; Nida famously gave the example of a South American language where the past is seen as existing in front of a person while the future is behind them, because they know ("see") the past but cannot know the future. Several essays engage with these and related issues.

CHAPTER ONE

(Re)Translating Space into Time

Temporal Metaphors in Translation Studies

Rainer Guldin

But, it is necessary to keep in mind that the enunciation of translation is unrepresentable; the enunciation of translation (a practice that is essentially temporal) and the representation of translation (a representation of translation that is essentially spatial) are in disjunctive and mutually negative relation with one another; the practice of translation remains radically heterogeneous to the representation of translation that is facilitated through the schema of cofiguration. (Sakai 1999, 54)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on different ways in which temporal metaphors can be used to rethink the process of translation, the relationship of source and target text, and the role of the translator. In the West, time has been mainly defined in spatial terms, as an arrow that positions the past behind and the future before us. This restrictive view of time is intimately linked to the transference metaphor of translation based on the notion of a straightforward irreversible movement across an intermediate gap. There are, however, other possible ways of conceiving time. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the presence of the now, Henri Bergson’s duration, Homi Bhabha’s third space as a time lag, and Michel Serres’s topological view of time try to break away from unilateral linearity revealing the profoundly unstable and multilayered nature of time and the fundamental inappropriateness of our understanding of the temporal as a straight line rushing ahead. These fruitful theoretical insights can be applied to translation revealing, among other things, that source and target are not binary opposites but as Sarah Maitland aptly puts it, “different threads of textual possibility intertwined and inextricably linked through the subjective work of translation” (2016, 17).

In this chapter, I will discuss how temporal metaphors can be used to rethink the role of the translator, the process of translation, and the relationship of source and target text. I will focus on four interrelated points: (1) the metaphorical relationship of time and space; (2) the use of spatial metaphors within Western translation theory and their implicit temporal dimension; (3) the question of how the implicit temporality of spatial metaphors of translation can be brought to the fore by retranslating space into time (Trivedi 2006, Sakai 1999, Benshalom 2010); and, finally, (4) the many-layered heterogeneous time(s) of translation, as it has been discussed in recent research (Hjorth 2014, Batchelor 2008, Cua Lim 2009, Vaisman 2013).

Mapping Space onto Time

Time is evanescent and slippery. We cannot really grasp it. It is invisible like the wind, which can only be perceived by its effect in three-dimensional space: swaying branches and treetops, trembling leaves, clouds swiftly rushing past, or the ruffled surface of the sea. Contrary to the relatively solid world of objects, that suggests a certain, even if illusory, kind of permanence and fixity, time always implies passage, transformation, and constant change. Because of its fundamentally ungraspable nature, the conceptual domain of time has called for a series of metaphorical mappings.

In a Master Metaphor List compiled in 1991, George Lakoff, Jane Espenson, and Alan Schwarz list the most common source domains for time in the West. Time is money (“He spends his time unwisely”), a resource (“We are almost out of time”), a bounded container (“In 2016”), a pursuer (“Time will catch up with you”), and a changer (“Time heals all wounds”). However, time is conceptualized above all in terms of space. It is either something moving toward you (“The end of the symposium is approaching”) or a landscape you move through (“Christmas is looming on the horizon”). Two special cases can be associated with the first metaphorical mapping: something is moving without a specific point of reference (“Time flies”) and foreseeable future events are perceived as being up (“The upcoming event”). Along these lines, Gentner, Imai, and Boroditsky (2002) distinguish between two fundamental space-time metaphoric systems: the ego-moving metaphor and the time-moving metaphor. In the first case, it is the observer and his or her context that move along the time line from the past into the future; in the second, it is time that is moving from the future toward the observer into the past (see also Boroditsky 2000).

In the West, the horizontal time arrow positions the past behind us and the future before us. As Nuñez and Sweetser (2006) pointed out, the Aymara people, an indigenous nation in the Andes, also think of time as an arrow but position the future at the back (because it is unknown and we cannot see it) and the past in the front (because we have already seen it and have it constantly in front of our eyes). In Chinese culture, there also exists a vertical axis, pointing from the past (which is up) to the future (which is down), inverting thus the Western vision of the future as an upcoming event.

By translating time into space, the ungraspable nature of temporality can be overcome and the passage of time made visible for the senses. However, by entering the realm of spatiality, the exuberance of time is radically tamed and its contradictory and heterogeneous nature streamlined and standardized like a wild mountain river or the many ramifications of an estuary forced into a single-minded canal. There are many different contradictory forms of time coexisting together, not only the linear, irreversible time line, an arrow steadily moving ahead in one direction only, from beginning to end, and from cause to effect. As the French philosopher Michel Serres puts it in an interview with Bruno Latour, time is neither a river quietly flowing from its source to the sea, nor a stream of parallel neatly separated lines. It is a complex, turbulent, chaotic phenomenon, both irreversible and reversible. Time is an “extraordinarily complex mixture, as though it reflected stopping points, ruptures, deep wells, chimneys of thunderous acceleration, rending, gaps—all sown at random” (Serres and Latour 1995, 57).

The Transfer Metaphor of Translation

One of the predominant metaphors for translation in the West is the transfer metaphor stressing duality, separation, and a straightforward irreversible movement across an intermediate gap. The success of this particular interpretation of translation can be traced back to specific historical and cultural developments in Western culture and is linked to the etymology of the word translation itself (Guldin 2016, 18–21; 2019, 324–25). The transfer metaphor is not to be understood in strictly spatial terms. It also possesses a partially erased and hidden temporal dimension, which, however, plays a secondary role and is clearly subordinated to the spatial aspect. The exuberance of time is domesticated and reinterpreted in terms of a linear movement from the past to the present, which confirms the unilateral orientation of the transfer metaphor.

Furthermore, the transfer metaphor has to be considered in conjunction with other metaphors that endorse its binary focus: the bridge building, the imitation, and the mirror metaphor of equivalence. Theo Hermans (2002) interprets the metaphors of imitation and bringing across, which interconnect on different levels as the two sides of an integrated overall view of translation that has deep roots in Western society. Metaphors tend to operate in coherent clusters based on cross-metaphorical coherence. This is generally achieved by overlap and unity of purpose. The different metaphors organize and structure different aspects of a single concept and provide distinct but internally coherent perspectives on the same subject. When used in conjunction with the transfer and the mirror metaphor of equivalence, the acting metaphor generally emphasizes a binary vision of translation that privileges the original over the translation and operates within a spatial framework. This use of the acting metaphor of translation is part of a specific tradition of translation theory, but as I will show shortly, a different interpretation focusing on time rather than space is also possible.

I am using the transfer metaphor and the one-dimensional time conception it entails mainly as a conceptual backdrop to highlight a different multidimensional approach both to time and to translation. The transfer metaphor is still a pervasive but no longer an undisputed way of looking at translation processes. In recent years, it has been repeatedly criticized within translation studies (see, for instance, Tymoczko 2010).

The two poles that define the transfer metaphor—the source and the target text—are conceived as fixed and stable. They do not touch or overlap. The original and its translation are positioned on opposite riverbanks. Their relationship is hierarchical insofar as the original always precedes the translation and is superior to it. The conceptual pair of source and target implies a point of departure and a point of arrival, as well as a one-way motion in between. When we translate, we wade across a river, cross a bridge, or jump across an abyss. The solidity and stability of the two separate riverbanks is contrasted with the uncertainty and fluidity in between. Because of the permanent threat to go astray or to lose one’s bearing during the crossing and to spill some of the precious meaning of the original, the transfer metaphor does not focus on intermediate stages but emphasizes an efficient and swift movement across a space in-between; from the firmness of one riverbank to the other. Celia Martín de León makes use of an arrow pointing from the left to the right to illustrate the functioning of the transfer metaphor. In fact, the path from the original to the translation is also a passage from the past to the present (2010, 82–86).

The transfer metaphor is associated with and conceptually bolstered by the conduit metaphor (Reddy 1979), which proceeds on the assumption that language is a channel through which thoughts can flow freely. Words act as containers for thoughts. Thoughts are inserted into words at one end of the communication chain and extracted at the other. Form and content, language and thought are separate entities. Thoughts can be stripped of their external linguistic form without major loss (see also the body/clothes metaphor, Van Wyke 2010). In translation processes, the meaning of the original is carefully extracted from the source text, carried safely across to the other side, and poured into the container of the target language. During this movement, the transported meaning is not supposed to be changed. No intermediate stages are envisaged. As in the transfer metaphor, time is clearly subordinated to space and its destabilizing dimension is erased.

The main theoretical drawback of the transfer metaphor is not so much the fact that it projects a spatial view of time but that its spatial definition of the temporal is highly limiting. As I would like to show in my chapter, most of the recent theoretical attempts at a temporal redefinition of the translation process do also operate with a spatial dimension. It is difficult, if not impossible, to deal with time on its own terms. Conversely, as we shall see, the spatial metaphor of translation always, more or less implicitly, gestures toward a hidden or erased temporal dimension.

One of the reasons for the absence of an explicit temporal dimension in the Western tradition of translation theory is the fact that the predominant view of time is fundamentally a spatial one. Time is seen as an arrow pointing toward the future, a line made of singular concrete moments succeeding one another.¹ Explicitly reintroducing time into the metaphorical field of translation must therefore also lead to a reinterpretation of the notion of time itself, liberating it from its constricting spatial definition. These new time conceptions allow for new possibilities of interpreting the subjective role of the translator, the complexities of translation processes, and the relationship of source and target text.

In the following, I will focus on two possible theoretical strategies that attempt to crack and break open the apparent self-contained nature of the transfer metaphor of translation by reintroducing the destabilizing element of time. The first strategy does not fundamentally question the directional movement of the transfer metaphor but calls attention to the implicit dimension of time showing that translation is a journey with a certain duration that can be divided into a series of overlapping or interlocking stages. The second strategy operates with a radical redefinition of the time(s) of translation, which moves beyond the simple linearity of the time arrow associated with the transfer metaphor and looks for alternative time conceptions, for the multiple, heterogeneous times coexisting within translation processes.

Retranslating Space into Time

Time introduces an element of instability and unpredictability. It tends to disjoint and rupture the homogeneous one-directional line. By looking for the time dimension in the transfer metaphor of translation—that is, by retranslating space into time—the open-endedness of translation processes and the existence of alternative diverging paths become visible.

A particularly revealing example of such a process that introduces also a historical and a cross-cultural dimension is Harish Trivedi’s narrative of the use of the Sanskrit word anuvad, which was used to describe the new practice of translation imported by the colonial powers into the Indian subcontinent. Contrary to the West with its extensive history of translation, in the Indian subcontinent there had been little translation up to that point. Because of this, one had to find a name for it in Indian languages. Originally, the word anuvad did not carry any spatial connotation; it meant “saying after or again, repeating by way of explanation, repetition or reiteration” (Trivedi 2006, 110). However, in the late nineteenth century, the word acquired the new Western meaning of translation as a transfer between languages. The modern meaning of anuvad is a neologism “invented to cope with the English word ‘translation’, it is, so to say, a translation of ‘translation’” (Trivedi 2006, 112). A fundamental difference, however, persists. Translation is based on a spatial metaphor, whereas anuvad, in the sense of repetition, is fundamentally a temporal metaphor.

In an attempt to explain the difference between the two readings of anuvad, Trivedi points to the dissimilar language regimes predominant in India and the West. In Europe, the “chauvinistic tradition of linguistic nationalism,” originating around 1800, dominated the field of translation theory up to the second half of the twentieth century. In India, with its Sanskrit hegemony uniting the huge subcontinent, “all that was required was for everyone to say the same thing in the same language, though not necessarily at the same time.” The subtle irony of Trivedi’s comment points to the radical difference between the two historical models. It is an invitation to reconsider the Western concept of translation—“a transaction between languages … visualized spatially” and “across boundaries” (Trivedi 2006, 113)—and its claim for universal significance. Trivedi’s critique is a retranslation of a spatially conceived temporal element. Spatialized time is thereby restored to its original temporal meaning.

In Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism, Naoki Sakai makes a similar point. The new regime of translation that came about in Japan and Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was directly linked to the creation of nations and national languages conceived as homogeneous, self-contained units. The “schema of cofiguration” (Sakai 1999, 15) posits the existence of a specific (national) language always in relation to other similar linguistic entities, as one among many. In the wake of this change, translation was recast in spatial terms, as an interlingual transfer between separate units. This new “representation of translation,” as Sakai calls it (1999, 17), successfully erased the transformative, hybridizing nature of translation and its fundamental temporality. As Trivedi in his analysis of the Sanskrit word anuvad before its translation into English, Sakai defines translation as “difference in repetition” (1999, 15) stressing its temporal dimension. In his view, translation comes first as it is the very basis of any kind of communication. The schema of cofiguration, however, defines it as a derivative activity linked to the existence of separate languages. These self-contained bordered linguistic units and their specific spatial setting with respect to each other metaphorically reproduce the essential nature and relationship of the source and target text.²

Strictly speaking, it is not because two different language unities are given that we need to translate...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Translation and Time . James St. André
• Chapter One: (Re)Translating Space into Time: Temporal Metaphors in Translation Studies . Rainer Guldin
• Chapter Two: Translation, Passing, and the Passing of Time . James St. André
• Chapter Three: Exploring the Origin of the Chinese Language: Zhang Binglin’s Translation of Herbert Spencer’s Evolutionary Theory of Language . Ruoze Huang
• Chapter Four: “No Beginning, No End, and Is the Beginning and Root of Ten Thousand Things”: The Jesuit Translation of Christian Temporal Concepts into Chinese . I-Hsin Chen
• Chapter Five: Telling Chinese History: Time and Chronicles in the Jesuits’ Translations Sophie Ling-chia Wei
• Chapter Six: Time and Otherness: Paratexts of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Japanese Literature in Spain . Maialen Marin-Lacarta
• Chapter Seven: Translating the Time of Neoliberal Precarity: Some Notes on Italian Queer Transfeminist Scenarios . Michela Baldo
• Chapter Eight: Translating Trauma: Time Journey in a Memorial Museum . Min-Hsiu Liao
• Chapter Nine: Literary Syntax and Translational Temporality in the English Translations of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina . Michelle Woods
• Chapter Ten: “Had We but World Enough, and Time”: Spatiotemporal Specificity in English Translations of Chinese Ci Poetry . Leonora Min Zhou
• Contributors
• Index