Ford aims to make an aesthetic update. “I wanted to make something that could stand as a beautiful composition, but doesn’t do so at the expense of the true meaning of the words or the subtext that underlies them.” Her sentiment reiterates the tension Federman cites between interpretation and authenticity.
The greatest obstacle Ford has confronted so far lies in her efforts to translate the original Greek into verse English, especially the passages for chorus. “It is incredibly difficult to do the poetic sections. It’s hard to write poetry that sounds good in English but incorporates the meanings of the text.” Likewise, she adds, “I haven’t written poetry in a while, so it’s difficult on the personal side.” The process of translation, then, requires playing multiple roles: just as director Federman had to assume the part of translator, translator Ford must act as poet in her own project.
FREEDOM AND FIDELITY
Professor Sandra A. Naddaff ’75, Director of Studies for the literature concentration and Director of the Freshman Seminar Program, has taught Literature 109: “On Translation” for nearly two decades. The popular seminar examines translation from philosophical and theoretical perspectives, and each student is required to produce a large-scale, original translation over the course of a semester. “I am somebody who has for many years been fascinated by language and especially interested in philosophies of language, and in many ways thinking about translation ... [and] how meaning is made, how it crosses cultural boundaries,” Naddaff says.
Arthur L. Goldhammer—an affiliate at the Minda da Gunzburg Center for European Studies and English translator of more than 100 French works of history, philosophy, economics, literature, and criticism—has often visited the seminar to lend his expertise and guidance. His approach, however, is thoroughly unphilosophical. “My own approach to translation is that I don’t like to talk about it theoretically, I like to talk about it practically,” says Goldhammer. “I like to talk about the translation with the text in front of us. ... Translation is really a matter of hand-to-hand combat with the language. You really have to get up close to it,”
One trend Naddaff has observed throughout her years teaching Literature 109 is the anxiety students experience when confronted by the class’ final project. “Yes, there is always a tremendous sense of responsibility toward the author you are representing,” says Naddaff. “Young translators have an overdeveloped sense of this responsibility and concern to be as accurate and as literal as possible. ... More established, seasoned translators feel they can allow a certain interpretative dimension in their work.”
Inexperienced translators then try to serve the original text and its author by translating verbatim. This approach may lead students to get stuck in the minutiae of vocabulary rather than to consider the general effect or purpose of a particular phrase or passage. According to Naddaff, this student tendency reflects the looming fear of doing harm to a work’s legacy. “The fear is appropriate—that you are representing somebody, taking responsibility for the representation of someone’s work,” says Naddaff. “That’s a significant responsibility. The way that plays out theoretically is the tension between freedom on the one hand and fidelity on the other.”
Goldhammer does not believe there exists a distinction between interpretation and faithfulness. “I don’t like the opposition between freedom and slavish fidelity to the text,” he says. “Translating is like taking a musical composition and playing it on an instrument different from the one on which it was composed. A good player will try to get to the essence of the composition and use the resources of the instrument.” There’s no need to shy away from the advantages presented by the language of the finished product; rather, every translation is a full reconstruction.
“To me, the difference between English and French is like that,” says Goldhammer. “When I translate in English, I try to do what the author would have done if he had had the resources of English at his disposal.”
“PREEMPTIVE STRIKE”
Karla M. Cornejo Villavicencio ’11, a history and literature concentrator and semi-professional translator of modern Latin American literature, has experienced this same tension. Just last year, Cornejo published a previously untranslated interview between Jorge Luis Borges and Argentinian writer Héctor Alvarez Castillo in Harper’s Magazine.
“Touching Borges is like walking into a cathedral,” she says. For Cornejo, interpreting a legendary author like Borges imbues a translation with undeniable gravity. However, it also produces the fear that even the smallest mistake Cornejo makes will be blamed on her age, despite her years of experience as a translator. “If I fuck up, they’re going to be like, ‘She’s just a kid.’”
Cornejo observes this creative burden in the contrast between translating works of deceased writers and of those who are still living. “It’s different to translate someone who’s alive and [someone who’s] dead, because someone who’s dead can’t talk back,” says Cornejo. In other words, there’s a necessary opposition between “the canon” and “the guy you just emailed.” In that sense, the classic works of deceased authors are untouchable, and that distance elicits an elevated respect and formality that the works of living authors do not necessarily produce.
But translating a living author presents its own difficulties, both political and interpretative. “When you see a translated text, it’s another tool the writer uses when he knows he’s going to be translated,” says Cornejo. In her field of specialty, she claims that some authors plant specific scenes, paragraphs, or turns of phrase that mystify or elude the translator and the translator’s audience. Cornejo calls such a passage a “preemptive strike” or a “slightly malicious joke.”
What Cornejo terms ‘hot’ Latin American writers—those who expect to be translated for a mainstream American audience—“have moments which are inside jokes [to] intentionally leave out the cool kids,” says Cornejo. By doing so, some Latin American authors can preserve their material against translation and interpretation, thus granting special access to their local, Spanish-speaking readership. Elements of foreign work may resist translation not simply in artistic design but through roadblocks intentionally constructed by writers. The implicit argument in this obscurantism is that not all writing can be effectively translated.
For Goldhammer, translating living authors is complicated by the ongoing exchange between writer and interpreter. “Sometimes you will run across an author who has strong views of how his work should read in English that may at times conflict with your own views, and that can be a difficult kind of problem to resolve. You may wind up in a conflict with an author over his own style ... It takes some tactful negotiation,” Goldhammer says.
ACTA NON VERBA
Although a few students pursue translation within and beyond the academic program, the intellectual and creative obstacles inherent to the process of translation impede its popularity. Currently there is no centralized translation community at Harvard, and few professional translators or translation scholars work at the University. “There aren’t many people who are doing translation as a regular part of their scholarly work [because] it doesn’t leave a lot of time for teaching and publishing papers,” says Goldhammer. And, among those who do translate, there is no effective apparatus for communication. Goldhammer says that he was disappointed to find he and Literature Professor Leo Damrosch were both working on Alexis de Toqueville’s travel notes and letters at the same time without having any awareness of one another’s projects.
This absence of translation support and culture leaves Harvard without one of academia’s few opportunities for the immediate and concrete creation of cultural value. In making a foreign work accessible to a new audience, translation increases a group’s preexisting wealth of knowledge in absolute terms. It may be this responsibility that makes the substance of translation acta non verba.
—Staff writer Nicholas T. Rinehart can be reached at nrinehart@college.harvard.edu.