William Faulkner's Later Novels in German: A Study in the Theory and Practice of Translation (Linguistische Arbeiten) 3484101903, 9783484101906

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Linguistische Arbeiten

10

Herausgegeben von Herbert E. Brekle, Hans Jürgen Heringer Christian Rohrer, Heinz Vater und Otmar Werner

Eberhard Boecker

William Faulkner's later novels in German Α study in the theory and practice of translation

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1973

ISBN 3-484-10190-3 © Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1973 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es auch nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf photomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany

CONTENTS

Preface

VII

Abbreviations

XI

1

The theory of translation

1

1.1

Traditional theories of translation

2

1.1.1

Wbrd-for-word or sense-for-sense?

2

1

1.1.2

'Naturalization vs. 'Foreignization'

1.2

Linguistic theories of translation

8 22

1.2.1

The linguistic background

22

1.2.2

Vinay and Darbelnet

29

1.2.3

Georges Mounin

34

1.2.4

J.C. Catford

36

1.2.5

E.A. Nida

41

2

The practice of translation

52

2.1

Linguistic problems I: Language of the characters

53

2.1.1

Dialect — standard, social, and geographical

55

2.1.1.1 Standard literary dialect

55

2.1.1.2 Geographical and social dialect

66

2.1.2

Style — slang and vulgarisms

80

2.1.3

Register — military, hunting, gambling

97

2.1.3.1 Military terminology

98

2.1.3.2 Language of hunting

102

2.1.3.3 Gambling terms

107

2.1.4

Connected exanple of language of the characters: V.K. Ratliff

111

2.2

Linguistic problems II: Language of the author

2.2.1

Phonic substance

123

2.2.2

Wbrds

126

2.2.2.1 Abstracts

120

126

VI 'Negative ultimates1

133

2.2.2.3

'Coined carrpounds'

137

2.2.2.4

Repetitians

141

2.2.3

Word-groups: Figures of rhetoric

145

2.2.3.1

Allusion

145

2.2.2.2

2.2.3.2

Suggestive naming

152

2.2.3.3

Plays on words

154

2.2.3.4

'Reihung' and 'Häufung'

157

2.2.3.5

Parallelism

162

2.2.3.6

Antithesis

165

2.2.3.7

Oxymoron and Synaesthesia

168

2.2.4

Syntax

172

2.3

Extralinguistic problems: Cultural distance

180

2.3.1

Large-scale natural surroundings

181

2.3.2

Flora

183

2.3.3

Fauna

186

2.3.4

Man-made objects

188

2.3.4.1

Buildings

188

2.3.4.2

Clothing and food

195

2.3.4.3

Tools and implements

197

2.3.5

Vfeights and measures, currency

204

2.3.6

Political institutions

209

2.3.7

Social institutions

216

Conclusions

223

Bibliography

232

PREFACE

Hie nurrber of literary works translated from English into German has seen a trenendous increase during the last hundred-odd years. From 378 vollstes of German translations published by the "Amerikanische Bibliothek" during the twenty years between 1852 and 1871 (Skard 1958:1,213), the nunber of works of fiction translated frcm English into German has grcwn to about 20,000 during the twenty-year period 1948-1967, and the nunber of translations frcm all languages published every year in Germany has actually more than trebled during the same period (see Index Translationum). The 'translation explosion' so clearly evident from these figures has brought with it a fundamental change in attitudes to the 'problem of translation1 since the end of the Second Vforld War. Georges Mounin (1968) writes that up until 1945 even new books dealing with the subject were hardly more than collections of separate ad-hoc statements made by great translators of the past. Since then, however, a more systematic investigation of the problems of translation has started. About twenty new periodicals exclusively dedicated to problems of translation have been founded, and a number of books on translation which go beyond the collection of statements by famous translators of the past have been published. But apart frcm a few notable exceptions — in the field of literary translation Mounin lists only two: Edrrond Cary (1956) and Theodore Savory (1957) — even these new publications reflect only the more or less profound artistic experience and competence of translators "taught by thousands of years of savoir faire". It is therefore necessary to point out another important distinction regarding the books and articles published since 1945. Even the two authors whcm Mounin singled out as 'notable exceptions' among the mass of impressionistic theorists of translation derive their contents frcm their cwn practice of translating, not frcm itcdern linguistic science. Savory calls his book "The Art of Translation", and Cary also considers translating to be thoroughly and exclusively an art, a 'literary' (i.e. 'artistic') as opposed to a 'linguistic' (i.e. 'scientific') activity.

VIII Hcwever, in the past decade or so, several linguists have also addressed themselves to the problem of translation, quite independently frcm professional translators.

Mounin names as the most inportant Eugene A. Nida (especially,

though not then kncwn to Mounin, his Tcwavd. a Science

1964) ,

of Translating,

A.V. Fedoroff ("Introduction to the theory of translation", in Russian, 1953, 1958) , and J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet ( S t y l i s t i q u e comparie de I'anglais,

1958, 21967).

du frangais

Georges Mounin himself, especially with his book Lea problimes Ια traduction (1965).

et

I wish to add two further authors to this list:

(1963) , and J.C. Catford with A Linguistic

theoriques

Theory of

de

Translation

The first part of the present study examines both the older 'tradi-

tional theories' (1.1) and the modern 'linguistic theories of translation' (1.2) in order to construct a conceptual framework for the examination of actual translational practices. In spite of the inportant contribution which linguistic research has made to a more accurate understanding

of the translation process, all the authors

examined are forced to agree that, so far at any rate, their science cannot by itself solve

the problems it has defined; it does indeed furnish the trans-

lator with new insight and more delicate tools, but ultimately what matters is still the 'art' of the individual translator.

We are thus led back to a

consideration of concrete probIons in specific literary works.

But the 'art'

of the translator can itself be informed by the discipline of literary 'scholarship' . Indeed, the word 'scholarship' itself constitutes an example of the problem of translation:

the German word Literaturwissenschaft

'literary

science'

expresses its complementary nature with Sprachwissenschaft

science'

much more clearly.

'linguistic

The present study, therefore, examines the German translations of six of the later novels of William Faulkner, with the help of the understanding gained by the research of qualified linguists and with the tools developed by them, examination has three different though related, purposes.

this

First, it is hoped

that it will make a contribution to the discussion of the problem of translation by analyzing concrete exanples of the main difficulties in the translation of m o d e m American fiction into German, and by shewing how these difficulties have or have not been overcome in the published translations.

Such a study

should assist current efforts to raise the standard of literary translation at present published in Germany. The statement that an author writing in English has influenced the style of German authors —

an assertion frequently made in the case of Hemingway,

IX for exarrple —

is, to say the least, debatable.

It might be more accurate to

say that it is the style of a particular translator which has presented the influence.

The fact that different translations of the sams work are stylis-

tically so widely divergent that it may be hard to recognize them as attenpts to render one and the same vrork, substantiates the claim that the original author may well have been falsified beyond recognition.

Secondly, therefore,

the present study wishes to examine how far Faulkner has been falsified for the German reader, and to correct possible misconceptions. "Fran the tension between the original and the translation ccmes the spark of additional insight".

Rudolf Haas (1958:367) intended this statement to

refer primarily to the new insights into a poem which can be gained by comparing the original with its translation into another language. 1969:24) has expressed the same idea:

Jiry Levy (1963;

"Comparative historical poetics is the

point of departure for an analysis of translations, but, it in turn receives part of its material and its insights fran the concrete analysis and criticism of translations".

The separation of "Sprachwissenschaft" and "Literaturwis-

senschaft" linguistics and literature, appears to me artificial and possibly even detrimental to good scholarship; the extension of the borders of knowledge must not be allowed to create an enpty space at the center.

To identify and

consolidate the connection between the two 'sciences' is thus the third and perhaps irost inportant aim of this study. The decision to conduct this linguistic and, at the same time, literary investigation with six Faulkner novels as the basic source material is not as arbitrary as it may appear at first sight.

Firstly, Faulkner is probably,

next to Hemingway, the American author most read in Germany:

practically all

his works have been translated into German; at least ten of them have appeared in large-circulation paperback editions; and at least seven have been re-issued for book-clubs and literary societies.

Secondly, and more inportant for the

purposes of this study, a close comparison of the published German translations of Faulkner's vrork with the originals yields a particularly large number of very varied results useful to any philologically oriented examination of other literary translations.

The distinctive personal style of the author; his

elaborate use of dialect and slang; the fact that almost all of his fiction is so deeply rooted in the foreign cultural and physical environment of the American South:

all these Faulknerian characteristics present problems of

translation which are rarely present in a single author to such a marked degree. An examination of all of Faulkner1s novels and stories would have extended

χ the scope of the study too far and would have led to unavoidable repetitions; even a representative examination of all the fifteen different translators who have shared in the German edition of Faulkner's works would have rendered the study too diffuse and have precluded the possibility of detailed investigation. The decision to confine the examination to six of Faulkner's later novels rendered by six different translators has, on the one hand, permitted a detailed analysis of the translational practices of a number of different translators, while at the same time affording a sufficiently wide basis for ccrrparison. It renains for me to acknowledge my indebtedness to those who have helped me most directly in the writing of this book. My friends and my teachers during a three-year stay at the University of North Carolina fostered my early interest in Faulkner and helped me to a better understanding and appreciation of his art; frcm my students at North Carolina College at Durham I learned a great deal about Faulkner's language and about Southern dialects in general. Professor Rudolf Haas of the University of Harrburg suggested that I make use of ny languages to focus my literary interest in Faulkner on the problem of the translation of his works into German. Prof. F.T. Prince of the University of Southanpton, and Prof. N.E. Osselton of the University of Leiden gave valuable advice on many individual points in the study. My colleagues in Linguistics at the American University of Beirut, particularly Daniel Cock and Neil Bratton, read part of the manuscript and helped me avoid seme overhasty generalizations; any misconstructions still present are, of course, mine alone. I am particularly grateful to the American University of Beirut for having granted me a year's leave, without which this book would probably never have been written. The manuscript was typed by Miss Leila Fawwaz and Mrs. Elizabeth Digby Firth; they have all try syirpathy for struggling through the many changes of I EM 'golf-balls' in the summer heat of Beirut. My wife has helped with the proofreading and corrections and, together with rry children, has had to put up with' a good deal of ill terrper and general unavailability on my part; I am grateful for their forebearance. Finally, the credit for such scholarly perseverance as I possess, and which this study often required in large measure, must go to my late father, whose exairple will remain a major source of strength.

Beirut, July 1973

E.B.

ABBREVIATIONS

Page references to Faulkner's works and their German translations given in the text refer to the English editions published by Chatto and VtLndus, London, and to the German translations published by Goverts, Stuttgart. The few works which are not available in these uniform editions are fully identified in the text. Hie following abbreviations are used: Original works (in order of publication) The Hamlet (1940)

Η

Go Daun, Moses (1942)

GDM

Intruder in the Dust (1948)

ID

Requiem for a Nun (1951)

IN

A Fable (1954)

F

The Mansion (1959)

Μ

German translations Das Dorf, tr. by Helmut M. Braem and Elisabeth Kaiser (1957)

Dorf

Das verworfene Erbe, tr. by Hermann Stresau (1953)

Erbe

Griff in den Staub, tr. by Harry Kahn (1951)

Staub

Requiem für eine Nonne, tr. by Robert Schnorr (1956) Requiem Eine Legende, tr. by Kurt Heinrich Hansen (1955) Das Haus, tr. by Elisabeth Schnack (1960)

Legende Haus

Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages fron theoretical and critical books and articles originally published in languages other than English are my own.

1. THE THEORY OF TRANSLATION

1.1.

TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

1.1.1

Word-for-word or sense-for

sense?

In order to point out the many varied demands which in the course of time have been made on translations, Theodore Savory (1957;1968:50) lists six contrasting pairs: A translation must give the words of the original. A translation must give the ideas of the original. A translation should read like an original work. A translation should read like a translation. A translation should reflect the style of the original. A translation should possess the style of the translator. A translation should read as a contemporary of the original. A translation should read as a contemporary of the translator. A translation may add to or omit from the original. A translation may never add to or omit from the original. A translation of verse should be in prose. A translation of verse should be in verse. In antiquity it was mainly the problem expressed in Savory's first pair which troubled translators.

Even if there is little direct evidence of early

literal translation, the fact that later translators explicitly set their cwn non-literal versions apart from earlier practices, demonstrates how widespread primitive literalness must have been.

As early as half a century before

Horace attacked the practice of literal translation in his oft-quoted Neo verhum verbo curabis reddere fidus / Interpres ... 'As a faithful translator, you will also not try to render word for word' (4rs poet-ίσα: 133f), Cicero had already clearly explained his method of rendering the ideas of the original rather than the words, and had given good reasons for his decision:

The foreign

work must be rendered in a new linguistic form which has been adjusted to the usage of the target language; but since the translator must, in addition to the content, also render the style and the expressive force of the words, he cannot as in the method of primitive literalness, 'count out' (annumerare) the words to the reader, but must rather 'weigh' them out (appendere) in order to preserve as closely as possible the effect of the original.

3 This short paragraph frcm de optimo genere oratorum (5:14ff) oontains an entire theory of translation which sounds very modern and which the Reman translators of Greek tragedy (Ennius), comedy (Terence, Plautus), and lyrical poetry (Catullus) had also made their own.

In the following centuries this

becomes more and more the accepted method, particularly in secular literature, to the extent that towards the end of the 4th century St. Jercme can appeal to Cicero when he says: For I not only confess it but proclaim it in a loud voice, that in my translation of the G r e e k s — e x c e p t in the case of Holy Scripture, where even the word order is a mysterium—I translate not word for word but sense for sense. I have for this the example of Cicero... this translator's authority is enough for me (ep. LVII:5).

In its overall effect this long and detailed letter gives the inpression of a defense of 1 free' Ciceronian translation methods.

But how can one explain

the phrase "absque Scripturis Sanctis, übi et verborum ordo nysterium est"? Most oonmentators have sinply mistranslated it and turned it into its opposite, 2 apparently as being more in keeping with the rest of the letter. Kloepfer (1963:35), however, emphasizes the contradiction evident in the original and concludes, with references to numerous other passage in Jerone's theoretical writings, that the author is really just as opposed to Ciceronian freedom in translation—which he expressly claims for himself "except in the case of Holy Scripture"—as he is to the primitive literalness of Aquila, which he had ridiculed in the same epistle.^ Besides the fact that it would seem to make little sense to explain one contradiction by means of another, this interpretation can hardly be derived from the Epistle to Panmachius —

and the other

passages frcm Jerome's theory quoted by Kloepfer are not any more convincing. Jerome's practice as well would seem to indicate more that he belongs to the 1

see especially his praise of "Hilarius qui nec assedit litterae dormitandi, et putita rusticorum interpretatione se torsit: sed quasi captivos sensus in suam linguam victoris iure transposuit" (ep. LVII:6)

2

thus also the translation included in the otherwise excellent collection edited by Störig (1963:1): "...dass ich bei der Übersetzung der Heiligen Schriften aus dem Griechischen...nicht Wort für Wort sondern Sinn für Sinn ausgedrückt habe." - The 1969 edition has a different translation which is more accurate.

3

where he calls Aquila kakozelos for having tried to translate even the etymologies, the syllables, and the letters of Hebrew words into Greek and thereby arriving at something "quod Graeca et Latina lingua omnino non recipit" (ep. LVII:11).

4 'free' Ciceronian tradition than that he demands a 'higher literalness' in translation. Martin Buber enphasizes that, like the Septuagint

before and

Luther after him, "Jercrte was not particularly concerned about preserving the original character of the book as regards vrord choice, sentence structure, and rhythmic organization", but rather "transposes the 'content' of the text into the other language and, while not in advance renouncing the peculiarities of the elements, the structure, the dynamics, nevertheless sacrifices them without much regret in cases where the stubborn 'form' appears to hinder transmission of the 'content'"

(Buber 1954,-1969:325).

The qualification made by Jerome would therefore appear to be more in the line of a 'diplomatic concession', as it were, by means of which the author wants to guard himself against the reproach of lacking in the respect due to the Word of God. Both here and in the epistle concerned with 'corruptions' occurring in the Septuagint

version of the Psalms (ep. CVI), he points out

over and over again that both 'The Seventy' and the writers of the Gospels themselves in their references to the Old Testament are not concerned about the words of the Hebrew original, but rather about its meaning. All this indicates that — despite the contrary statement in ep. LVII — Jercme is really saying that he had applied Ciceronian principles throughout, even in his translation of the Bible. The demand for literal

fidelity in the translation of religious texts to

which the author of the Vulgate felt obliged to express adherence in words, even if he did not obey it in practice, did, however, in the Middle Ages lead to a certain stagnation, one might even say a regressive development in translation theory. Ciceronian principles were largely forgotten, and Jerome's diplomatic concession that in Holy Scripture even the word order is a

myeteriim

was raised to the status of a new guiding principle for translators. By translating the words of sacred texts one after the other one thought to avoid the danger of falsifying 'God's Word' or of giving it one's own interpretation. For the translation of religious texts the Middle Ages thus resurrect the old method of 'primitive literalness'; in the guise of the demand for 'higher literalness' the principle persists even in our own time: see Martin Buber's preface to his new translation of the Pentateuch (1954;1969). In the case of secular literature the question of literalness becomes a point of issue in the period of the German Enlightenment: I shall return to it in connection with Schleiermacher's antinorry of foreignization

vs.

naturalization.

But apart frcm the doubtless more prevalent concern with religious texts,

5 the translation of secular texts was not entirely neglected in the Middle Ages. In the 9th century, the beginning of the transition from Latin as the common literary language to the development of written literatures in the vernacular languages is marked by a series of translations. The oldest literary text in Old French, at this time still with a religious content, the "Eulalia sequence" of 883, is an adaptation of a Latin hymn. Documents of translations of non-literary texts into the vernacular languages go back even further: the "Strasburg Oaths" from the year 842, which have been called the 'birth certificate' of both the French and German languages, are probably translations from an official Latin document into the two spoken languages of the empire. Most significant during this time, however, is the translation activity of the Arabs in Baghdad by means of vdiich a knowledge of Greek science and literature was later transmitted to Western Europe. After the establishment in Baghdad of the great translation center Bayt Al-Hikma under the Caliph Al-Mamun (789-833), two distinct 'schools' of translation developed. Franz Rosenthal (1945) quotes the 14th century Arab thinker As-Safadi, who distinguishes between the "bad" "word-for-word" method used by Yuhanna Ibn Bitriq and his followers, and the "good" method of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, by which "the translator grasps in his mind the iteaning of the whole sentence and then renders it by a corresponding sentence in Arabic, regardless of the congruence or lack of congruence of the individual words." Richard Walzer (1962:83-85) points out how carefully Hunayn and his school collated all existing Greek manuscripts to establish a critical text before translating it into Syriac and/or Arabic. In the 12th century a regular translator's school developed in Toledo in Spain, then the meeting place of Jewish, Arab, and Christian culture, where the works of the Arabs, including their versions of the Greek philosophers, were translated into Latin. The Toledo translators, who came from all parts of the Middle East and Europe including England, made use of the professional knowledge of Arab translators and applied a theory which sets faithful rendering of meaning above the false fidelity or primitive literalness. Georges Mounin (1965;1967: 27) quotes a "Letter from Cairo to Shmuel Ibn Tibor of Lunel", in which Mainonides offers advice which is practically identical with the principles of Cicero and Jerome. With the Reformation and its "freedom of a Christian man," religious translation enjoys greater freedom as well. Luther's "Open Letter on Translating" (1530) is the next urportant documsnt in the history of translation thsory·

6 Since it represents in the first place a defense of Luther's German translation of the Bible against attacks frcrn the Catholic Church, which by this time had raised Jerome's Vulgate to the status of being the official "Word of God" in vdiich not one word4might be altered, the epistle is highly polemical and full of vituperation. Luther's first defense is that the "papist asses" have not been able to produce a better translation and are thus not qualified to criticise his. They do not deserve any other answer than the quotation from Juvenal (Satires 6:223) which Luther was fond of vising to describe the capricious pcwer of their Pope: Si ο υοΙοΛ sia iubeo, sit pro vatione voluntas, Ί will it; I cotmand it; my will is reason enough':

"

and please give

these asses no other and no further answer to their useless braying". But "for our cwn people" he advances more reasoned argunents as well. It is understandable, that he should select as his main example the phrase sola fide 'by faith alone' which his adversaries had singled out for particular criticism and which so clearly distinguishes his Protestantism frcm their doctrine of justification by deeds. But his argument is first of all simply linguistic in nature: he justifies his addition of the word allein 'alone' by appealing to the usage of the target language; the contrast inplied in the Greek original must be made explicit in the German text, for I wished to speak German, not Latin nor Greek, once I had decided to use German for my translation ... One must not ask the letters of the Latin language how one should speak German, as these asses do, but one must ask the mother in the home, the children in the street, the common man in the market place, and observe the speech coming from their mouths and translate according to this; then they will understand and notice that one is speaking German with them (Luther 1530;1969:20f). 5

Several other exaftples illustrate the same principle. But in his examination of Luke 1:28 Luther goes even further. Since the author of the Greek original must have been familiar with both the Greek and Hebrew Languages, Luther assumes that he meant the Greek word keeharitomeni — in the Vulgate rendered almost literally as gratia plena —

to represent a Hebrew formula of salutation. In

the Old'Testament the same Angel Gabriel in several instances addresses Daniel 4

an English translation is available in volume 35 of the American edition of Lather's Works 1 9 5 5 — . For an extensive English language discussion of Luther as a translator see Bluhm 1965.

5

e.g. his adjusted translations of Matthew 12:34, "Wes das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über", instead of the literal "Aus dem Überfluss des Herzens redet der Mund"; and of Mark 14:4, "Was soll doch solcher Unrat?" or "Was soll doch solcher Schade?", or "Nein, es ist schade um die Salbe", instead of the literal "Warum ist diese Verlierung der Salben geschehen?" (1530:1969:21f) .

7 by ish hamudoth. Literally translated, this formula would turn out as Du Mann der Be gierungen, but, Luther says, the German reader would misunderstand this phrase to mean something like 'man of evil lust'. He therefore suggests the translation Du lieber Daniel 'dear Daniel' and, similarly, Du liebe Maria 'dear Mary' (1530;1969:24). All these carefully thought-out and convincingly presented arguments are, in the first place, concerned with achieving equivalence of effect in the target language. But, as is to be expected, Luther is also — and especially — interested in doctrine. On the subsequent pages of his Open Letter he therefore returns to his first exaitple (sola fide) and justifies his addition of the word allein 'alone' not only by the necessity of adjusting the translation to make it conform to target-language visage, but also by reference to the wider context of the Biblical message as he understands it. He insists that his addition of the word 'alone' in Ronans 3:28 is equally forcefully dictated by St. Paul's intended meaning, as can be seen frcm the wider context where he says that the deeds of the law do not contribute to righteousness. For the same reason, if literal translation will advance the (Lutheran) message, he is also quite prepared to translate word for word: Kloepfer (1963:37) quotes frcm "Surtmarien über den Psalter und Ursachen des Doliretschens" a passage in which Luther insists that Psalm 68:18 must be translated literally as Du ... hast das Gefängnis gefangen 'thou hast led captivity captive'(KJV). The alternative translation, Du hast die Gefangenen erlöset 'you have released the captives' would have been better German, but, Luther says, "it does not render the fine, rich sense of the Hebrew ... which suggests not only that Christ has freed the captives but also that he has removed and captured captivity itself, so that it neither can nor shall ever again take us captive, and the redenpticn is thereby eternal." I have discussed Luther's theory of translation in seme detail in order to shew that the problem which later came to be expressed in the antinomy naturalization vs. foreignizaticn is clearly inplied by him. In its overall effect, his theory enphasizes the need to consider the usage of the target language, a consideration which had been largely neglected in the translation of sacred texts during the Middle Ages. But he is also clearly aware of the necessity of careful philological analysis of the source-language text (see especially his examples of Luke 1:28, Psalm 68:18, cited above), and of the advisability scnetines to "force the target language to the limits of its tolerance" (cf. Ortega 1937;1951:452) in cases where the source language expresses ideas which

8 the target language would not normally express in the sane concise form. In France, only ten years after Luther's Open Letter, Etienne Dolet published a brief treatise of only four pages, entitled "La Maniere de Bien Traduire d'Une Langue en Aultre" in which he sets φ

five basic rules which express in

systematic theoretical form what Luther had demonstrated with concrete exarrples. The translator must (1) fully understand the intention and the material of the author he wishes to translate; (2) be in complete carmand of both the source language and the target language; (3) avoid translating word for word; (4) shun Latinisms and conform to good French usage: and (5) strive to achieve a good, smooth, elegant, unpretentious, and above all unified style (cf. Cary 1955: 17-20). 1.1.2 Naturalization vs. Foveignizat-Lan Renaissance and Reformation have thus apparently broken with the medieval method and returned to the Ciceronian tradition. Adjustment of the translation to the usage of the target language became the generally accepted practice, and remained so for a long time. W. Sdun (1967) shows that, for exanple, German translations frcm Spanish literature made during the 16th and 17th centuries are clearly guided more by the personal taste of the translator and by the literary conventions of his tine than by any conscious atterrpt to reproduce the principles of the original. But the high esteem of Classical antiquity which characterized the Renaissance corrplicated the problem. On the one hand, the two Classical languages, Greek and Latin, were regarded as two perfect languages unsurpassable in their vocabulary, their grammatical structures, their rich sound, and their varied stylistic nuances. Cctrpared with than, modem languages were considered "poor" and "low", and requiring to be "enriched" and "raised" by contact with ancient languages.

In this sense translations from Classical literature thus had the

very useful and pragmatic function of serving to enrich the target language (see Mounin 1965; 1967 for the situation in France, and Sdun 1967 for Germany). On the other hand, the age also possessed a very strong feeling of self satisfaction. Especially in France, the idea was prevalent that the 17th century had attained absolute perfection in taste and social usages. The conflict between these two ideas led to the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes', Vilich in the field of translation produced the paradoxical situation that, on the one hand, Classical poets were admired and must therefore be translated, while on the other their writings contained many "shocking" things, expressions,

9 manners of speech, and even content, vtfiich were in conflict with the "perfect" modem taste and which therefore must be softened, modernized, or even omitted. The high regard for French 'good taste', under whose influence many translators felt it their duty to eliminate all traces of foreignness and to naturalize the Classical author, persists in almost all of Europe frcm the time of Louis XIV to the end of the Napoleonic era. According to Mounin (1965; 1967:38f) even Sieur de l'Estang, as early as 1661 in his Art de Traduive, took the position that translations into the French of his time might in a certain sense "inprove" on the original. In translations of Hemer particularly, the habits of life of the Ancients were adjusted to the customs of the 17th century: La Mothe-Moudar made it the aim of his translation of the Iliad "to replace the ideas which were pleasing to Hater's time by such as are pleasing today". Other translations, for exanple Madame Dacier's, soften descriptive detail unsuited to the taste of modern France in such passages as those where Hater's heroes — who, after all, are princes —

cock their own food, cut up carcasses

of mutton, and insist on talking about pots and pans and animal entrails. Rivarol improves on Dante's "unpleasant similes, horrible descriptions, and crude expressions". Mounin concludes his examination of translatianal practices in the period of French Classicism with the statement that one might well apply to all these translators frcm one and a half centuries what Voltaire had said about Perrot d'Ablancourt:

"an elegant translator, whose every

translation was called a belle infidele". But the method of belles infideles was not restricted to France. Ihe wellknewn saying, "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Hater", sums up the situation in England. Hcbbes' Thucydides and Hater; Sir Roger d'Estrange's translations frcm Cioero, Juvenal, and Seneca; Dryden's Juvenal and Virgil; Cowper's Odyssey·, and many other English translations of the period are practically just as infideles and hardly any less belles — according to contemporary standards of taste — than their French counterparts. A contemporary English theoretical statement, Francklin's poem on translation, expresses similar views: soften each blemish, and each grace improve, and treat him with the dignity of love.

Ihe period of belles infideles was terminated for England with the publication in 1790 of Alexander Fraser Tytler's Essay on the Principles of Translation, Vilich offers very modern and largely still valid guidelines for the translator. After pointing out the conflict between the demand of faithfulness to the letter

10 and faithfulness to the content, he gives his own definition of a good translation and "deduces" frcm it three "laws of translation": As these two opinions form opposite extremes, it is not improbable that the point of perfection should be found between the two. I would therefore describe a good translation to be, That, in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work. Now, supposing this description to be a just one, which 1 think it is, let us examine what are the laws of translation which may be deduced from it. It will follow, 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 1790;1907 :8f). These three principles, frcm which in the succeeding two hundred-odd pages he derives numerous "subordinate precepts" whose validity he attenpts to demonstrate by many examples, are listed in order of inportance:

the demands

of the third principle may, if necessary, be sacrificed to the greater necessity of satisfying the demands of the second, and those of the second to those of the first principle.

In making equivalence of effect the criterion of quality

in translation, the author thus arrives at a definition of faithfulness which is still largely valid today.

As recently as 1929 Val^ry Larbaud pays the

following tribute to Tytler: et certes je quitterais la vie avec moins de regret si je pouvais etre assure d1avoir, en ecrivant ce livre consacre a Saint Jerome, donne ä la litterature franjaise un ouvrage qu'on put un jour comparer a celui de A. Fraser Tytler, lord Woodhouselee (1929;1946:103). The belles infideles were thus a phenomenon of their time which has been superceded for almost two hundred years.6

As a corollary of the general reac-

tion against the donination by French dictates of taste, especially in the German period of Storm and Stress and later in the National Wars of Liberation, more importantly, however, as a consequence of the scholarly attitude created 6

It appears that in France the practice of belles infideles is still quite common in a field where it would seem to be particularly inappropriate: a notable Egyptologist has told the present writer that French translations of Ancient Egyptian texts render the originals in standard literary French, while German translations of the same texts preserve the words and structures of the originals much more closely. His surmise that this practice might reflect the fact that widely differing theories of translation are accepted in the two linguistic communities is borne out by the present examination.

11 by the new discipline of 'Germanistik', the technique of belles infideles has been quite discredited in modem translation theory. But this does not mean that the larger question, of which the belles infideles formed one aspect, the antinomy of naturalization vs. foreignization, has thereby been resolved as well. Today's translators no longer consciously strive to produce a beautiful translation at the expense of faithfulness in order to naturalize their author, but the problem as such remained unsolved for a long time. Schleiermacher's statement of the antinomy (1813;1969:47) is probably the clearest and best known:

it is the translator's aim to effect a "meeting"

between the writer of the original and the reader of the translation, and to give the reader — without compelling him to "leave his native tongue" — an understanding and enjoyment of the author which should be as accurate and as ccnplete as possible. There are only two methods to achieve this end: the translator must either "leave the author as undisturbed as possible and transport the reader to him" (foreignization), or he must "leave the reader as undisturbed as possible and transport the author to him" (naturalization). Both methods are so entirely different frcm each other, that the translator must decide unequivocally in favor of either one or the other of the two "roads" leading to the meeting place, to the utter exclusion of any middle road, because other wise "it is to be feared that author and reader may entirely miss each other". Schleiermacher himself clearly advocates foreignization, reasoning that (1) naturalization is not translation in the strict sense, but only paraphrase or adaptation, since the foreign original mast necessarily reflect a foreign world-view in its linguistic structure (note hew Schleiermacher here anticipates Humboldtian ideas); (2) a foreignizing translation will at the same time enrich the German language; and (3) the large-scale practice of foreignizing translations of the great works of world literature into German will make the ancient literatures available to many other linguistic ccmnunities who do not themselves practise this method of translating. Schleiermacher's third reason is no longer worth serious consideration at this time: to the modern mind it is surprising that he —

as also Goethe —

should have thought of it at all. His first two reasons, however, continue to be subjects for serious debate. But let us first of all consider what is the purpose of translation. Schleiermacher himself says that the true translator, "convinced of the worth of a foreign masterpiece, wishes to extend its effective range to include the members of his own linguistic canrrunity". The obvious question is then whether foreignizing translation will be able to

12 achieve this purpose.

"We owe it to Schleiermacher that vie are again able to

understand the real Plato; but is his translation readable? does anyone read it?" Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1891; 1963:145) here iitplies a thought which appears to refer back to ideas already expressed by proponents of belles infideles: it may be true that a foreignizing translation could be an aid to the understanding of the original, but only if it is indeed read; however, what is foreign is frequently felt as repugnant, and foreignizing translations frequently remain unread. This consideration leads on to the question whether a translation which is belle as well as fidele is really possible at all. Ortega y Gasset, one of the most inportant advocates of foreignization, considers all translation as a "utcpian undertaking" — which does not mean, however, that for this reason translation should not even be attenpted. On the contrary: the "good Utopian" ought to conclude: "La traduccion ha muertol Viva la traduccion:"

(1937;1951:1438)

Ortega explicitly refers to Schleiermacher's antinomy and decides in favor of "transporting the reader to the language of the author", i.e. in favor of 'foreignization', since naturalization would not yield a translation in the proper sense, but only an adaptation or imitation. He errphasizes that translation must not be regarded as "a magical manipulation by which the work written in one language suddenly appears in another":

such transubstantiatian is

inpossible. A translation is not a repetition of, or a substitute for the work itself, but merely an aid to the proper understanding of the original. By preserving its foreign form, it wishes to enable the reader to reproduce in his cwn mind the way in which the original had rreaning. Despite the fact that translations of this kind are merely "awkward tools" to a better understanding of the original and do not possess any literary beauty of their own, they still have a strong appeal of a different kind for the reader: Ortega notes that the German versions of his books ran to over 15 editions in a few years and attributes "four fifths" of this success to the fact that his translator had "forced the granmatical tolerance of the German language to its limits in order to transcribe precisely that which is not German in iry way of speaking". In concluding that the German reader appears to enjoy being forced into a Spanish way of speaking, Ortega is apparently not familiar with the expression "Das kutnuL mit Spanisch vor" — the German equivalent of "It's Greek to me". But Walter Benjamin, an advocate of the extremest form of foreignization, goes even further: Faithfulness in the translation of the individual word can almost never

13 fully render the sense which it has in the original. For this sense is, in its poetic significance for the original, not restricted to the thing meant, but achieves meaning precisely by the manner in which the thing meant is tied to the way in which it has meaning in the particular word. This is usually expressed by the formula that words carry emotive meanings. Literalness in the rendering of syntactic structures, moreover, destroys any rendering of meaning altogether and runs the risk of leading straight into incomprehensibility ... The demand for literalness is therefore not derivable from the interest in the preservation of meaning (Benjamin 1923;1969:165).

So far the passage reminds one of Jerone's criticism of Aquila's method of literalness and his consequent demand for 'freedom' in translation — but Benjamin arrives at the opposite conclusion. His recognition of the fact that word-for-word translation inhibits, frequently even entirely prevents an accurate rendering of the meaning of the original, does not lead him to reject literalness, but rather to postulate that word-for-word translation, "the justice of whose claim is obvious, whose foundation, however, is deeply hidden", must be "understood on the basis of more convincing reasons" — namely on the basis of the following analogy: individuell languages are like fragments of a broken vessel, the vessel of "pure language". To be recognizable as parts of this vessel, translations, therefore, do not have to "reserrfole" the other fragments, but must "follow their contours" down to the smallest detail. To do this, they must "to a very high degree renounce any intention to carniunicate, i.e. renounce meaning, in order to be able to reproduce the way in which the original text has meaning". this is achieved, above all, by accurately reproducing the syntactic structure of the original, and "it is precisely this literal rendering of syntax which proves the word, not the sentence, to be the proper starting point for the translator. For the sentence is the wall in front of the language of the original, literalness is the arcade". If the logic of this statemsnt appears strained, it may be because argument fron analogy is of necessity always inconsequential.

Hew little the proponents

of this extremest form of foreignization are interested in the corrprehensibility of their translations, is seen very clearly in a short paragraph by Rudolf Pannwitz, whose 'krisis der europäischen kultur', next to Goethe's statements in the Notes on the Divan, is in Benjamin's opinion "easily the best which has been published in Germany concerning the theory of translation": only words and phrases no structured sentences how happy we would be who at any rate cannot learn all languages necessary to us! on an emotive interlineary version only that the entire linkup of the words be alive must true translation rest its pride be to render strictly

14 almost every word almost all the word sequence in the highest imaginable degree to remain close to interlineary version. awkwardness is here almost always more virtue than vice.7

The final sentence of this passage may stand as an indication of the relative merits of this method of translation. In his reference to Goethe, Benjamin is apparently thinking of such passages frcm the "Notes on the Divan" as these: If we wish to participate of the products of the most magnificent spirits, we must Orientalize ourselves: the Orient is not going to come over to us.

He may also have in mind the "third period" of Goethe's three stages of translation: and thus we reach the third period, which should be called the highest and the best, where one wishes to make the translation identical to the original, to the extent that no longer shall one be valid instead of the other but shall take the place of the other. This kind originally encountered the greatest resistance; for the translator who clings firmly to his original, more or less renounces the originality of his own nation, and thus a third thing comes into existence, to which the taste of the nation must first educate itself (Hbg. Ausg. 2:255f).

Goethe here points to a difficulty connected with translations of this kind which Schleiermacher (1813;1969:57f) had noticed as well, and which constitutes the first objection which can be raised against this maxim of translation: it can be successful only if it is applied on a large scale and thereby influences the target language itself in such a way, that in the final analysis it is not merely the reader, but the language of his entire nation which is "transported toward the original author" to such an extent that a new linguistic convention develops frcm it. In Goethe's opinion the antinany foveignization vs. naturalisation is thereby resolved: the close imitation of the form of the original serves the very pragmatic purpose of enriching the language of translation, particularly its "rhetorical, rhythmical, and metrical advantages". This consideration is hardly ever mentioned by later proponents of foreignization. They are primarily interested in getting the reader to 'intuit' for himself the translated work — and here lies the second difficulty. Wilamcwitz7

It may be worth giving the original of this passage from Pannwitz, to show its syntactic ambiguities and its willful orthography and punctuation: "nur worte und Satzglieder keine gebauten sätze! wie glücklich wären wir die ja doch nicht alle uns nötigen sprachen erlernen können! auf einer gefuhlsmäszigen interlineaversion musz eine wahre Übertragung ruhn ihr stolz sein fast jedes wort fast die ganze Wortfolge streng wieder zu geben in dem denkbar höchsten grade der interlinearversion nahe zu bleiben. Ungeschicklichkeit ist hier fast immer mehr tugend als fehler, (quoted thus by Kloepfer 1963:62).

15 Moellendorff (1925;1969:146f) an advocate of the other extreme, naturalization, admits that Goethe himself may have been able to derive the hoped-for benefit frcm foreignizing translations. But vAiat is the situation of the majority of readers? Are they capable of such 'intuition'? Are they even prepared to exert the effort necessary to its achievement? The question hardly requires an answer. Should the translator then write merely for a small elite, who is interested in the foreign for its own sake? Such an elite will probably want to learn the foreign language itself and would then no longer need to depend on translations.

It is even doubtful whether Goethe himself was always

capable of carplete intuition of the original on the basis of a foreignizing translation. In the passage referred to above, he praises Johann Heinrich Voss as being the exanplary author of translations belonging to the "third", the "highest", and the "last" period. Wilancwitz, himself a notable classicist and a recognized expert on Hemer, thinks that this creator of "saumnachschleppende Weiber", of "helnumflatterter Hektor", and of the "hurtig mit Donnergepolter entrollender Felsblock" does not really reproduce the spirit of the Iliad. But he also admits that Goethe's practice in translation was often better than his theory:

"When the beauty of a poem moved him to write a re-

production of it, he created such works as 'Ach gib vcm weichen Pfühle', 'Was ist Weisses dort am grünen Walde', 'Van Olympos zum Kissavos'". Goethe himself thus employs a method of translation which on his own scale would occupy only the "second level" of development, where the translator "merely appropriates to himself the foreign sense and reproduces it by his own", a method Goethe calls "parodistic in the purest understanding of the word" (Hbg. Ausg. 2:255). In another passage, "in brotherly memory of Wieland" (Artemis Ged. Ausg. 12:705), he advocates a 'middle road' to Schleiermacher's antincny, but praises Wieland for having had the "good taste" to choose, "in cases of doubt", the method of naturalizing the foreign author. To a superficial view, Novalis has expressed similar ideas; he distinguishes between (1) "granmatical", (2) "altering", and (3) "mythic" translations. His "granmatical" translations largely correspond to Goethe's first type, the "plainly prosaic", which is only interested in the ccrmrunication of factual content; we need not consider it here. However, the distinction which Novalis introduces on his second and third levels can help us to modify Goethe to scire extent: Altering translations require, if they are to be genuine, the highest poetic spirit. They may easily degenerate into travesty, as Biirger's Homer in iambic verse, Pope's Homer, all French translations. The true

16 translator of this kind must really be the artist himself, and he must be able at will to render the idea of the entire work this way or that. He must be the poet of the poet and must be able to let him speak according to his and the poet's own idea at the same time. This relation is similar to the one between the genius of humanity and the genius of every individual man (Novalis 1789;1969:33).

On this second level Novalis thus distinguishes between two types of "altering" translations:

(a) "travesty", a translation which corresponds to the method

I have earlier called belles infideles and which he rejects; and (b) "genuine" translation, in which the translator becomes "the poet of the poet". In the last sentence of the passage he comes close to expressing the idea of "true language" or "pure language", in which all individual languages find a kind of integration, an idea which was to lead Benjamin to the extremest form of foreignization (Benjamin 1923;1969:165). Translation on the third level, "rrythic" translation, is quite different fran Goethe's "third and highest" type: Mythic translations are translations in the highest style. They represent the pure, perfect character of the individual work of art. They do not give us the actual work of art, but its ideal. To my belief no genuine model of this exists so far. But in the spirit of certain critiques and descriptions of works of art one finds clear traces of it. It requires a mind in which the poetic and the philosophic spirit have become fully fused. Greek mythology is, in part, such a translation of a national religion. The modern Madonna also is a myth of this kind.

The last two sentences indicate where we should expect to find such translations, of vdiich so far there is "no genuine model": apparently in the original work of a poet transfused with foreign forms and ideas. One is terrpted to cite Faust's visit with "The Mothers" or perhaps even the entire "Classical Walpurgis Night" as a model of the irythic translations envisaged by Novalis. But Faust's journey to the Pharsalian Fields may also be read as an allegory of a translation theory which is not dissimilar to Novalis' second level. Hie allegorical interpretation of the Wagner-Hcrnunculus episode would then lead us back to the naturalizing translation advocated by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff:

for the

purpose of fully understanding the foreign text, the translator needs the pedantic philologist Wagner — of whom his own past contains distinct aspects: "Habe nun ach ...". But the philologist cannot himself accompany the translator-poet on his quest to recreate the Classical genius within the genius of German. Philological insight, the wise but in a deeper sense lifeless and incarplete man Hanunculus, can show the way, but "genuine" translation (in Novalis' sense) can only be achieved by the poet who has first gained philological understanding but who has then left all pedantry behind: Faust. In the

17 "First Part of the Tragedy" the Bible-translator Faust — this time not as an allegorical figure — follows a very similar procedure. He begins with a word-for-^rord translation: "Im Anfang war das Wort'."; then, "Wenn ich van Geiste recht erleuchtet bin" — he is not 'correctly illumined by the genius' (of language?) — : "Im Anfang war der Sinn!" Even with the third attenpt, "Im Anfang war die Kraft'.", something warns him that he should not regard this as final ("warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe"); but then he has achieved it: "Mir hilft der Geist! auf einmal seh' ich Rat / Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat'". The progression word—sense—force—deed, with the final translation being reached by the mediation of the spirit, can be regarded, allegorically, as reflecting the development of the theory of translation: first word-for-word, then sense-for-sense; next, the realization that language is a force, energy (Hunboldt's energeia), and the understanding that the spirit, the genius (Humboldt's 'world-view' and 'inner form') of both languages needs to be considered; and finally the deed, the conversion of the energy of language into a linguistic fact, a translation not indeed valid for all time — because language remains energeia, not ergon — but merely the necessary temporary fixation of the energy of the source-language text into the corresponding energy-charged fact of the target-language text, which in turn is still only a beginning: "Im Anfang war die Tat". I am not suggesting that this fanciful allegorical reading was indeed what Goethe intended for his text, but it is nevertheless striking that a poetic passage directly concerned with translation, written by an author who was himself a notable practitioner of translation, and who in his cwn theoretical writings expressed similar views on the subject, should permit this kind of allegorical reading. Wllamcwitz, too, stresses the necessity of philology as a basis on which to build a good translation. In a criticism of Drcysen's Aischylus he says that the translation is unsuccessful in those places where the translator had failed to exert the necessary philological effort to "clarify the corrupt text", and he continues that precisely when the translator is sure of his understanding of the original he can move away fran 'sloppiness', i.e. in this case literal fidelity ... and reproduce the poet's thoughts, sensations, moods, freely from within himself, because he has taken them entirely into himself ... The new verses must have the same effect on their readers as the old verses at their own time had on their audience — and as they still do on those who have exerted the necessary philological care. The demand is as exalted as that. We know well how little we satisfy it. But in this world the possible is achieved only if the impossible is demanded, and one must recognize the goal in order to find the way (1925;1963:143).

18

Wilamowitz observes the same "Utopianism" as Ortega did later, the sane "misery and splendor of translation", but he draws the opposite conclusion. Ortega, Pannwitz, and Benjamin derive frcm the dilenma their demand for literal fidelity and foveignizing translation; Wilamowitz denands fidelity of spirit and naturalization. We must disregard the letter and follow the spirit, not translate words or sentences, but absorb and render thoughts and feelings. The dress must become new, its content remain. All true translation is 'travesty'. To express it even more pointedly: the soul remains, but it changes its body: true translation is metempsychosis ... To translate a poem, one must first understand it. Once this condition has been fulfilled, the translator is faced with the task of re-creating something which is given in one specific language, by which meter and style are also given, in another specific language, for which again meter and style are given. Only in so far as the original in its own language and its own time offered something new may the same be done in the re-creation. (1925; 1963:145 & 149).

Of the many exanples with which Wilaircwitz supports his argument concerning meter and style I cite only the following: there is nothing wrong with using alexandrines in German originals, but they should never be used for translations of classical French drama, "because they are scmething quite different frcm their French counterparts — yet aire meant to appear as being the same". When both languages possess fixed, established forms which elicit a definite response in the reader, the translator must "transpose" one established form into another: "Nothing is more telling for me than the fact that Lachmann, although he translated Shakespeare into modern German with the most horrible 'faithfulness', chose to 'transpose the style1 in his translation of the Iliad into Middle High German, since he had to take account of the existence of established forms in both languages" (Wilamowitz 1925;1963:149f - see also Levy 1963;1969:21f). To Wilamcwitz the criterion of fidelity in translation is thus the faithful reproduction of the effect the originell had on the readers of its cwn time and culture. The same consideration underlies the extended critical debate between Matthew Arnold and Newman (1906;1954:210-380) and the essay of Tytler (1790;1907). The foreignizers consider only the original and — frequently with little success for the large public — attempt to "transport the reader to the original". The natuvalizevs consider only the reader of the translation and —

frequently with more popular success, but often with a high

degree of falsification of the original — attempt to "transport the original to the reader". But is it really necessary to make such a sharp distinction as Schleiermacher thinks? Are both roads "so entirely different that one of

19 them must be adhered to at all cost and as strictly as possible, since from any mixture of the two a highly unreliable result will of necessity proceed, to the extent that it must be feared that author and reader may entirely miss each other"? Many modern translators do indeed, at any rate in their theories, exclude the possibility of a middle road and, in most cases, decide in favor of naturalization.

F.Güttinger (1963:40) considers the two roads as strictly

irreconcilable and denies the possibility of a middle road: One must decide from the beginning in favor of one or the other — 'living' translation which aims at conveying an experience, or 'scholarly' translation which aims at conveying knowledge. With this decision the method has been determined as well. In order to have the same effect as the original, the translation must read as an original; the 'scholarly' translator renounces effect and does not object to his translation being recognizable as a translation. One must avoid claiming exclusive validity for oiie method or the other, without specifying with which area it is concerned and which demands of the reader it is meant to satisfy.

Kloepfer (1963:69) correctly observes that according to this passage Güttinger regards the antinony as based on "the type of the original (whether it is a source of 'knowledge' or of 1experience') and on the requirements of the public; it is not an attribute of translation as such, but is dependent on the individual case". Further study of Güttinger's essay, however, clearly shows that while he does indeed consciously decide in favor of naturalization, i.e. ccmnunicatian of the effect of the original as an experience in the target language, he nevertheless proceeds as a 'scholar' who is interested in ccmnunicating a ο precise knowledge of the original. As is frequently the case, his practice is better than his theory. When Güttinger, even in his theory, enphasizes that translation is also "Auseinandersetzung, Auffassung, Deutung, keine blosse Wiederholung", he places himself firmly on the foundation of Karl Vossler's philosophy of language, according to which even "merely listening to and understanding the speech of a man frcm my own country and time is a translation of his meaning into mine". The difference between such unconscious and the occasional conscious activity which is usually called translation lies merely in the size of the obstacles to be overcome. As Hurrboldt, Vossler considers language as "energy" which dynamically "pushes outward frcm the psychic into the phonic or the otherwise foreign and by its infinite meanings inparts content to it". Language possesses a "supra-social aspect, a fact which is overlooked by those who acknowledge for it merely a practical and errpirical reality within society" (Vossler 1925;1969). Seen in this way, and this is contrary to See especially his chapter "Die Übersetzung".

(mehr oder weniger) dichterische

20 Kloepfer's interpretation of Güttinger's statement, Schleiermacher's antinomy is an aspect of language itself, since all language is always 'dynamic translation ' , namely the encoding into language of meaning pre-existent in the mind of the speaker and its subsequent de-coding by the receptor of the speech. Franz Rosenzweig can thus classify Schleiermacher 1 s statement as a 'merely clever' antithesis Vilich helps us to understand the ccrrplexity of the problem and can thereby serve as "a means to un-mixing mixed reality".

Taken "literal-

ly", it would lead to the untenable position that the ideal translation of Plato is either a critical edition of the text itself, or Kant's Critique

Pure Reason.

of

"Reasonably" understood, however, the antithesis leads to the

question "at which points of the work it is the reader who must be transported to the original, and at which points it is the original which must be transported to the reader"

(Rosenzweig 1926;1969:195).

Hie further development of Rosenzweig's ideas is most clearly seen in Wolfgang Schadewardt.

Like Schleiermacher he begins by distinguishing between

the "interpreter", who merely provides the possibility of "ccrtfnunication in practical life concerning things and wishes connected with things", and the "translator", who, while he must indeed also possess the linguistic and factual ccrrpetenoe required of an interpreter, must at the same time be endowed with the capacity of "becoming attuned to the environment of his author, of feeling from within himself his author's spiritual individuality and of reproducing it in a new form".

He must not do this in the way which Goethe had described as

"parodistic", because he would then translate merely the spirit of the individual author rather than the spirit of the nation from which this author has sprung:

the influence on Schadewaldt of Humboldt's theory of language as

"vrorld-view" is clearly reflected in this argument.

A "parodistic" translation

would present merely "the 'gold' of the individually determined form freed from the 'slag' of national peculiarity" and would thereby be of service merely to (1) the formal training of the translator, and (2) the material knowledge and the aesthetic pleasure of the reader.

True translation, however, "must be

the living organ by means of which the spirits of nations enter into dialogue with one another.

Fidelity, therefore, is neither fidelity to the content,

nor fidelity to the outer form, but, encompassing both form and content, fidelity now means the dutiful comprehension of the individual, sensual-spiritual totality of the original" (Schadewaldt 1927;1969:229).

The reproduction of the

original in this totality is, strictly speaking, unattainable.

But the "enpath-

etic translator" strives to approach his model precisely because it is unattain-

21 able; h e wishes to repeat i t precisely because h e has "surrendered to the m a g i c of its unrepeatability". In so far as the translator (again following Novalis) lets the poet 'speak after his and the poet's own idea at the same time', the translation is justified before the norm embodied in the original and is to this extent perfect. For it has now become the joint and lawful property of both its own author and the author of the original ... When a translation from the Greek belongs, in the principle of its being, as completely to Greek literature as it stems, in its empirical m a n i festation, from the language and literature of the translator, only then does it have a right to exist (Schadewaldt 1927;1969:239). W i t h this n e w definition of fidelity i n translation Schleiermacher 1 s antinary has b e e n finally resolved.

Vfe are n o longer concerned w i t h a divisive

"either ... or", b u t w i t h a positive "as w e l l as": cribes the two sides of one coin.

the antinomy merely d e s -

1.2

LINGUISTIC THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

1.2.1 The Linguistic background If we define "linguistics" as "the scientific study of language, ... its investigation by means of controlled and ertpirically verifiable observations and with reference to seme general theory of language structure" (Lyons 1968:1), then all the translation theories discussed in the preceding chapter, both ancient and modem, may be called 'pre-linguistic' or 'pre-scientific'. But this does not mean that these pre-linguistic translation theories have outlived their usefulness, nor that the pre-scientific ideas on language on which they may be based are no longer worth serious consideration. Even a negative view of 'traditional graitmar' carries indirectly positive implications, in that it offers the challenge of something to be refuted; and more recently, especially in post-Bloomfieldian times, a nurrber of more directly postive contributions of traditionell grarrmar are being recognized. Though this is not the place to describe the history of the subject in detail, it will be useful to call to mind scms of its more important milestones:^" the nomos—physis controversy in Plato's Cratylus, which for the area of lexis may be said to have established Saussure's fundamental teaching of the "arbitralre du signe" as early as the 5th century B.C.; the (related) analogy—anomaly debate, which the Alexandrian gramnarians had already decided in favor of "analogy" as the necessary precondition of any systematic view of language, but which, in the guise of 'analogy' vs. 'usage' (i.e. 'anoraly') is still very much with us; the erroneous equation of language and reason, which lead to the confusion of grammar and logic, and which remained deminant from the time of the Pre-Socratics to the Middle Ages; the subsequent autoncmous development of logic, frcm the 'formal logic' of Scholasticism to Descartes and Leibniz, and finally on to logistics and mathematical logic in the present time; the descriptive grammars frcm Thrax to Priscian and further to the (originally equally descriptive) granmars of the new vernaculars which, however, under the influence of 'historical' 1

For a fuller discussion see especially Arens (1955); Dinneen (1967); Lyons (1968); Hartmann and Schmidt (1972).

(1967); Robins

23

considerations on the one hand and 'logical' considerations on the other, were frequently turned into prescriptive grammars and prescriptive doctrines; 'speculative' grarmar and the search for language universale, whose line extends frcm the Modistae via Descartes and the Port Royal Gramma-ire generale et raiscnnee to Humboldt and finally Chomsky. The beginning of modem scientific linguistics is usually dated frcm the early interest in Sanscritology at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of 'historical linguistics' which developed frcm it and remained dominant throughout the 19th and the early years of the 20th centuries.

In the present

sense of the word scientific, i.e. the objective investigation of linguistic facts and their (tentative) explanation in terms of inductive hypotheses, 2 this is quite accurate. In so far as this historical linguistics is concerned with an examination of the relations existing between the various Indo-European languages, it may also be called 'comparative linguistics' (or 'ccrrparative philology') — but only in the narrower sense of the ccrrparison of historically related languages. Hunboldt, on the other hand, had considered 'conparative linguistics' as having a much wider scope. To him, the highest task of linguistics was the comparison of all languages, particularly the unrelated ones. Beyond the similarity in the 'outer sound form' (äussere Lautform) which can be observed in related languages, he sought to carpare the 'inner linguistic form' (innere Sprachform) of all languages. According to the prcminent NeoHumboldtian Leo Weisgerber (1953-54), the concept of 'inner linguistic form' follows consistently frcm Hurrboldt's concepts of the 'world view of language' (Weltansicht der Sprache) and 'language as energy'. Taken by itself, the concept of 'world view', i.e. the idea that every language reflects its speakers' interpretation of the world they live in, would appear to express sinply a kind of 1 perspectiv!sm'.

But when it is linked with Hunboldt's 'genetic

definition' of language, it achieves deeper significance: Understood in its true essence, language is constantly and at any moment transitory. Even its preservation in writing is always merely an incomplete, mummylike preservation, which requires the reader to sense the living speech behind it: it is not a finished product (Ergon), but an activity (Energeia). Its true definition, therefore, can only be a genetic one. For language is the eternally repeated spiritual work of making the articulated sound capable of expressing thought. In 2

It should be remembered, however, that 'speculative' grammar was just as scientific in the contemporary understanding of this word: 'speculative' is derived from Lat. speculum, i.e. a 'mirror' which gives a true 'reflection' of the 'reality' which lies at the basis of the observable world. 'Speculative' grammar thus constitutes 'certain knowledge' (as Descartes would understand it).

24 its immediate and strict sense, this is the definition of the individual speech act; but in its real and essential sense one can only regard the totality of these speech acts as language (1835;1949:43f).

Linguistics had thus been given a task which goes far beyond granmatical description; but apparently the time was not yet ripe for its solution. During the next one hundred years, linguistics concentrates not on a general comparison of languages and research into their 'inner form', but rather on the detailed descriptive comparison of historically related languages. In retrospect, we may be inclined to regret this development; but it was an understandable trend, if one considers that at Hurrtooldt's time research into the relations existing between Indo-European languages had just opened up such a vast and premising field, that historical linguistics was naturally terrpted to continue along these lines. The 19th century thus concentrated all its efforts on the examination of the 'outer form', the phonological structure of languages. But even if it thereby neglected the real task of linguistic science as Humboldt had conceived it, one must not underestimate the importance of this work. In laying a scientific foundation for articulatory phonetics and morphology, the 19th century prepared the material fron which the 20th century was able to fashion the delicate tools with whose help Humboldt's ingenious speculative insight could be experimentally verified. When 'Verner's Law' gave a satisfactory explanation for the apparent exceptions to 'Grium's Law' — only thereby fully justifying the term 'law' — historical linguistics even seemed to approach the demand of the Neo-Granxrarians for linguistics as an exact science. It is not demonstrable whether Saussure, whose Cours de linguistique generale (1916) introduces the new era of linguistics, had been influenced by Hurrboldtian ideas, but the renewed interest in Humboldt's philosophy of language since the publication of Chcmsky's Syntactic Structures (1957) has certainly led to a grcwing awareness in international circles of 3 the affinity between the ideas of Hunboldt and Saussure. These relations are observable in several of Saussure's most fundamental teachings:

in the

distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions of linguistic study, in the langue/parole distinction, most clearly perhaps in his insistence on viewing langue as a self-contained system of mutually interdependent lexical, 3

See for example Robins (1967:174): O n e wonders whether, if CHumboldt'sH style had. been less diffuse and his ideas more worked out and exemplified than they were, and his voluminous works were better known and more widely read, he would not be accorded a position nearer to that given to de Saussure as one of the founders of modern linguistic thought'. — See also Waterman (1963:67), who suggests a connection between Saussure and Humboldt, and Chomsky (1964:23).

25 grammatical, and phonological elements which has been inplanted into the individual speaker by his life in the corrrnunity, and by means of which he is able to speak and understand his language.

Language is thus a form,

not a

substance,

whose individual terms have value by virtue of their opposition to all the other terms in the system, described on both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of synchronic analysis. Hie structualist view of language, which Saussure was the first to express in this clear and explicit way, has come to form the basis of all modern linguistics, even if the several 'schools' which have since developed fron Saussure's teachings may differ in the precise definition they give to the term 'structuralism'.

For the purposes of the present examination, to supply

the background to the linguistic theories of translation

which form the subject

of this chapter, it will be sufficient to consider the ideas on 'meaning' developed by the various schools.

In surrmary fashion, it may be said that

particularly in America, where fran 1933 (Blocmfield's Language) (Chomsky's Syntactic

Structures)

to 1957

the field was dominated by a behaviorist and

mechanistic view of language, any consideration of 'meaning' was largely excluded frctn linguistic research.

During the period of 1Blocmfieldian linguistics'

in America, only Edward Sapir and his pupil Benjamin Whorf are in any way seriously interested in semantics and, indirectly, in problems of translation. Their thesis on the relations between language and culture, which essentially only restates Humboldtian ideas, has entered the history of American linguistics under the narre of the 'Sapir-VJiorf Hypothesis'.

Sapir regards the different

languages as so many different syirbolic systems of reference, comparable to the many different mathematical or geometrical systems which one might use to describe cue and the same situation:

"to pass from one language to another

is psychologically parallel to passing from one geometrical system of reference to another".

He observes that in the construction of their 'world views'

philosophers may well have been influenced by granmatical categories, to the extent that "innocent linguistic categories may take on the formidable appearance 'of cosmic absolutes'"(Mandelbaum, ed.1949:152 & 157).

Whorf pushes the

idea even further; he maintains that since the linguistic system of the Hopi language does not include obligatory time distinctions, such as European languages have in their verbal categories of tense, the Hcpi-Indian lives in a different, non-Newtonian world (Carroll, ed. 1956:216ff). In England, where behaviorism was never taken as seriously as in America, semantics was not excluded from linguistic science.

As in the case of Boas

26

and Sapir in America, it was again an anthropologist \Λιο was responsible for the interest in meaning. The Polish emigre Bronislaw Malincwski developed his theory of 'context of situation' (1935) in an atterrpt to solve the problems which stood in the way of translating ethnographic texts into comprehensible English. To Malinowski it is the sentence, defined as an 'utterance bounded by silence or audible pauses1, which is the primary datum, while the word is a secondary abstraction. The meaning of a sentence can be derived frcm the effect it has on the environment:

'meaning is function in context'. Since,

like Hurrboldt and Sapir, Malinowski cares to language frcm the study of anthropology, it is not surprising that his semantic theory should be closely related to Humboldt's theory of the world-view of language and the 'Sapir-Wrorf Hypothesis' . He considers language as a system of cbject-oriented syrrbols, 'lexical items', which are arranged in a system of mutual relations, 'granmar'. These relations, however, are always precisely those which a given society 'sees' depending on the possibilities of action given to it. Meaning is thus "the effect of words on human minds and bodies, and through these, on the environmental reality as created or conceived in a given culture" (1935:11,53). Since different societies thus have different world-views which shape their different linguistic systems, translation must, theoretically, be impossible. In the case of European languages in relation to one another, since they all spring frcm more or less the same cultural roots, this difficulty is not insurmountable, but the difference between European languages and, for example, the language of the Trcbrianders (which was the subject of Malinowski's investigations) sharpens the problem and leads to "the platitude that words frcm one language are never translatable into another", but, If by full translation we mean the supplying of the full range of equivalent devices, metaphoric expressions and idiomatic sayings — such a process is of course possible. But even then it must be remembered that something more than the mere juggling with words and expressions is needed (1935:11,53).

J.B.Firth makes Malinowski's definition of meaning the foundation of his entire linguistic theory by extending the formula 'meaning is function in context' to granmatical and phonological analysis. As an illustration of grairmatical (and, analogously, of phonological) meaning. Firth cites 'nonsense verse', such as 'Jabberwocky', or the German 'Finster war's, der Mond schien helle, ...'. In what way such a definition of meaning is useful for translation theory, will be shewn in a later section, in the discussion of Firth's pupil, J.C.Catford. In a world-wide perspective, it was doubtless the American 'school' which

27 was the most influential of all the different schools which contributed to the further development of linguistic science since Saussure1s great beginning. But since its work was largely determined by Bloanfield's mechanistic principles, it necessarily held a pessimistic view concerning the possibility of a scientific analysis of meaning, and thus also concerning the possibility of setting up a scientific theory of translation.

For a quarter of a century

American linguists concentrated almost exclusively on an accurate phonological and morphological description of errpirically observable utterances, i.e. on an analysis of Saussure's parole without ever really progressing to a theory of la langue. In so far as they apparently assumed that an explanatory theory would develop 'by itself*, so to speak, if only they had first assenbled a ccrrplete collection of linguistic facts, their work may be described as having been inspired by Baconian principles.

To a greater or lesser extent all the

linguistic schools mentioned so far suffer from the fact that their claim to a 'scientific attitude' is built on an empiricism which has been too narrowly conceived.

Inasmuch as their empirical investigations are not informed by a

theory to be verified, they cannot progress beyond the classification of linguistic facts to an explanatory theory of the phenomenon of language itself. Fran this perspective it becomes understandable that transformational grammar, in a similar way as forty years earlier Saussure's clear demand for a structural view of language, should be hailed as a new 'Ccpernican revolution in linguistic science'. Until this time, linguistics had analysed and described the different 'surface structures' of individual languages; by going back to their underlying 'deep structures', Chomsky again approached the old language universale to which medieval and rationalistic theories of language ('speculative' granmar), and ultimately also Humboldt in his theory of

1

inner linguistic

form', had directed their attention. Chomsky regards it as one of the main tasks of linguistic theory, to develop an account of linguistic universals, that, on the one hand, will not be falsified by the actual diversity of languages and, on the other, will be sufficiently rich and explicit to account for the rapidity and uniformity of language learning, and the remarkable complexity and range of the generative grammars that are the product of language learning (1965:28).

Hie 'granmar of rules', by means of which sentences can be generated, stands in contrast to the 'granmar of (pattern) lists', with whose help given structures can be described according to their 'immediate constituents'. The 1

immediate constituent granmar', the granmar of the Bloanfieldian school, thus

reflects a static view of language which is ultimately derived frcm the

28

Saussurean overenphasis on the separateness of the totality of la langue from the individuality of la parole. 'Generative granmar1, on the other hand, reflects a dynamic view of language which derives from the Huniboldtian view of language as energeia, cctibining individuality and totality. Hew much Chomsky is conscious of this line of development, can be seen frcm a passage in vÄiich he defends himself against the early charge that his transformational granmar had been derived frcm machine translation and ccrrputer analysis of language: In place of the terms 'deep structure' and 'surface structure' one might use the corresponding Humboldtian notions'inner form' of a sentence and 'outer form' of a sentence ... I have adopted the more neutral terminology to avoid the question, here, of textual interpretation. The terms 'depth grammar' and 'surface grammar' are familiar in modern philosophy in something like the sense here intended (cf. Wittgenstein's distinction of 'Tiefengrammatik' and 'Oberflächengrammatik') ... The distinction between deep and surface structure, in the sense in which these terms are used here, is drawn quite clearly in the Port Royal Grammar (1965:199).

In his first model (Syntactic Structures, 1957), Chomsky had still demanded a sharp division between granmar on the one hand and semantics on the other. In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), he has included elements of the semantic theory developed by Katz and Fodor (1963) on the basis of his own Syntactic Structures, so that it is now a syntactic-semantic base Vilich generates the deep structures. With this new conbination of syntax and semantics the transformational school rejoins the European tradition of linguistics (cf. Baumgartner 1967). Since its beginnings in the late twenties, German structuralism has taken little part in the international debate and has, in a rather speculative way, worked independently on the further development of Humboldtian ideas. With the establishment of transformational granmar a mutually beneficial discussion has been reopened: German linguistic research can now make use of American conceptual precision and of the logistic research of American positivism, while American linguistics can benefit frcm the 'Inhaltbezogenheit' (Weisgerber, Leisi) and the various 'field theories' (Ipsen, Trier, Porzig) of German linguistic description. With the background of this brief outline of the most recent developments in linguistic science, we can now consider the linguistic theories of translation. lb my knowledge there are only three Western book publications which deal systematically and corrprehensively with the problem of translation-in-general frcm a linguistic point of view: Georges Mounin, Les problkmes theoriques

29 de la traduction (Paris: of Translating (Leiden: of Translation (London:

Gallimard, 1963); Eugene A. Nida, Toward a Science Brill, 1964); and J.C. Catford, A Linguistic Theory 4 OUP, 1965). However, before discussing these three

theories in more detail, it will be useful to consider one further work which is also concerned with translation problems as seen from a linguistic point of view, albeit in a more restricted framework:

J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet,

Stylistique comparee du frangais et de I'anglais (Paris: enlarged edition 1967).

Didier, 1958, 2nd

By comparing the stylistics of two languages, the

book makes an irportant contribution to the linguistic theory of translation; the authors are quite aware of this fact:

the book bears the secondary title

'Methode de traduction'. 1.2.2

Vinay and Darbelnet

Hie authors have based their examination on the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the stylistics of Charles Bally, and their terminology is derived fron these sources.

However, since they are concerned with comparative styl-

istics, i.e. with the contacts between two languages, they supplement the traditional Saussurean distinctions by introducing the terms 'context' and (extralinguistic 'situation', thus making use of Firthean and Whorfian concepts as discussed above.

Their term 'nietalinguistique' is derived fron Trager, but

they emphasize its ultimate link with the Humboldtian concept of 'Weltanschauung'.^

Translating is, to Vinay and Darbelnet, both an art and a science, but

4

A.W. Fedorov's Vedenye ν teoriyu perevoda (Introduction to the theory of translation) (Moscow, 1953, 21958) has so far not been translated into a Western language and is thus not available to the present writer. A summary critique of the work by Edmond Cary, "Theories sovietiques de la traduction", has appeared in Babel III (1957), 179-190; see also P. Brang (1955) in Störig,, ed. (1969:384-401). Jiri Levy's Vmeni prekladu (Prague, 1963) has now been published in German under the title Die literarische Übersetzung (Frankfurt, 1969). This translation was not yet available to the writer when the present study was prepared, but a subsequent reading suggests that Professor Levy's treatment does not materially affect the discussion of linguistic theories of translation as developed in this chapter. It is interesting to note, however, that the Prague school of structuralism should independently and by a different route reach conclusions analogous to those reached by the linguists discussed here. Of particular interest is Professor Levy's convincing demonstration, with numerous examples, of the necessity of combining, in the process of decoding a literary work in one language and reencoding it in another, 'linguistic' and 'literary' methods, 'comparative stylistics' and ' historical poetics' — a method we have also tried to follow in those chapters of the present study which are more directly concerned with the practice of translation as observed in the German translations of Faulkner's later work.

5

CsicD apparently a faulty re-translation of the French 'vision du monde'.

30

an art tdiich has received its proper foundation frcm a science. The authors pre-suppose that the translator possesses a thorough knowledge of both the source and target languages; they can therefore restrict their examination in this way: eon but n'est pas d'exposer des faits de grannnaire ou de vocabulaire, mais d'examiner comment fonctionnent les pieces du systeme pour rendre l'idee exprimee dans 1'autre langue. Des faits de langue ainsi examines se d^gagera une theorie de la traduction reposant ä la fois sur la structure linguistique et sur la psychologie des sujets parlants (p.26).

Of the three main sections into which the book has been divided, the first two, lexique and agenaement, are of interest primarily to a carparative stylistics of the French and English languages. For the purposes of the present study it is sufficient to refer to the different distribution of semantic fields in the two languages, shown in the section entitled lexique, and to their different 'world-views' as reflected in their different morphological and syntactical structures, examined in the section agenaement. In connection with a translation theory which is not restricted to a conparison of English and French, we are here more concerned with the final section, message. The authors demonstrate that the total meaning of the text derives from three sources: (1) In sirrple cases it is sufficient to grasp the meaning resulting frcm grammar and lexis: the sentence on entering the room, he sou him sitting at the table can be translated directly, without reference to the wider context or to the situation: En entrant dans la pi&ce, il le vit assis ά la table. (2) In other cases the structure is not sufficient to elucidate the message. In such cases the wider context must be considered. The authors provide, among others, the following illustration: "Dans un texte de Duhamel, la traduction anglaise de:

'Au debut du tenps, etc.1 par 'When the house was new'

serait impossible, si on ne savait par les paragraphes precedents gu'il s'agit d'une vieille maison".

(p. 162)

(3) In seme cases the total meaning can be derived neither from the structure, nor frcm the context, but only frcm the situation. An example is the English text You're on.', which must remain untranslatable without reference to the (extralinguistic) situation. Only the recognition that vre are concerned with a situation backstage in the theatre yields the translation En scene! The first of these three sources of meaning is discussed in the sections lexique and agenaement·, we are not concerned with it here. Of the other two sources, context and situation, it is primarily the latter which is of interest

31 to a generell theory of translation. The authors thus place at the beginning of their study the following diagram: Situation S A

=

Situation S

Texte LD

=

τ Texte LA

(L1Equivalence des textes repose sur 1'Equivalence des situations)

(p.22)

In all those cases in which neither structural analysis nor consideration of the (linguistically explicit) context yield the meaning of the text, the translator must go beyond the linguistic sign in the source language (langue de depart - LD) to the extralinguistic situation to which it refers; he mist then find the extralinguistic situation in the target-language (langue d'arrivee - LA) culture which most closely corresponds to it, and fran it derive the translation. The authors give as an example the warning sign SLIPPERY WHEN WET found on roads in America and its (faulty) loan translation GLISSANT SI HUMIDE found on roads in French Canada. The one correct translation of this road sign can only be found by referring to the sign used cm French roads for equivalent situations: CHAUSSEE GLISSANTE SUR 3 KILOMETRES. The fact that in this case the French translation contains on the one hand more (sur 3 kilcmetres) and on the other hand less (when vret) information than its American originell does not alter the fact that it is indeed the äquivalent

unique.

Vinay and Darbelnet distinguish between seven different procedures (procedes

techniques)

which the translator is called on to enploy in different situations.

Arranged in ascending order of difficulty, the first three may be considered as 'direct translation', the remaining four as 'indirect translation'. (1) The use of a loan word ( I'emprunt ), the siirplest and most direct procedure, is evidence of the existence in the target language of a lacuna which, in most cases, is of metalinguistic origin. The translator frequently errploys loan words to achieve definite stylistic effects, for instance the retention of local color. Specific exanples are foreign weights and measures and currency units, but also such words as bulldozer

in a French text, or entire expressions

such as bon voyage in an English text. (2) In the method of loan translation (le aalque)

an entire syntagma is lifted

from the source language, and its canponents are then translated literally. An example is the French Compliments de la Saison for the English Season 's Greetings.

32 (3) The possibility of literal translation (la traduction litterale) exists primarily between historically closely related languages which also belong to the same cultural ocrrmunity. If the result of a literal translation, however, turns out to be 'unacceptable1, one or more of the indirect procedures must be enplpyed. Vinay and Darbelnet define a literal translation as 'unacceptable' if it (a) gives a different meaning, (b) makes no sense, (c) is structurally impossible, (d) has no equivalent in target language metalinguistics, (e) belongs to a different level of speech. (4) The authors describe as transposition (la transposition) the procedure of changing the graimiatical structure of a phrase without changing its iteaning. Exaitples are des son lever 'as soon as he gets up' {transposition obligatoire), and apres son retour 'after he comes back1 (transposition facultative, since 'after his return' is equally possible). (5) The procedure of modulation (la modulation) changes the perspective which underlies a message. Modulation is either 'free' (libre) , i.e. it may be freely chosen from one case to the next, or 'fixed' (figee), i.e. established in target-language grammar or lexicon. A second, more important distinction is the one between 'optional' and 'ccnpulsory' modulation. The first distinction is based on usage: where usage becomes established form, modulation becomes 'fixed' and 'ccnpulsory'. This does not mean, however, that 'free' modulation is necessarily also 'optional': "Elle doit, si eile est bien conyue, aboutir ä la solution idiale correspondent, pour la langue LA, a la situation proposee par LD. ... la modulation libre aboutit a une situation qui fait s'exclamer le lecteur: Oui, c'est bien catme cela que l'on s1exprimerait en franjais".

(p.51)

Free modulation, by virtue of its dependence on usage, thus also tends toward 'fixation', and as soon as this fixation has been established, any non-modulation becomes a violation of correct usage and thereby a faulty translation. Exanples: 'It is not difficult to show' : Ί 1 est facile de d&nontrer' (facultatif); 'the time when' : 'le moment ou' (obligatoire). (6) The classic example of an equivalence (I'equivalence) is the spontaneous exclamation of a man hitting his finger with a hanmer. If he is a Frenchman, he will automatically shout Ale I, while an Englishman would say Ouch. Most equivalences are fixed in the form of cliches, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, sayings, and spontaneous exclamations. The French 'equivalence' of the English

33

expression like

a bull

in a dhina

shop,

for exanple, is eorrme un ohien

dans

un

jeu de quilles. In all such cases it is particularly inportant not to translate literally. In bilingual ccranunities it may happen that literal translations of fixed expressions frort one language become accepted into the other, but they should never be introduced by a translator, because on his part such 'innovation' would always carry the suspicion of unintended retention of (e.g.) an Anglicism (p.52). (7) Adaptation (I'adaptation)

marks the utmost limits of translation. It

becomes necessary, when the situation to which an utterance in the source language refers does not exist in the target language, so that the translator must 'produce' a new reference to a different situation which may be regarded as equivalent. An exanple of adaptation is the replacement of the old ealque 'holy kiss' by 'a hearty handshake all around', in Philipps' Hew Testament in

Modern English (1958). Vinay and Darbelnet regard the fear of adaptation as the worst evil in translational practice: Le resultat est un galimatias qui n'a de nom dans aucune langue, mais que Rene Etiemble a fort justement trait£ de 'sabir atlantique'. Un texte ne doit etre un caique, ni sur le plan structurale, ni sur le plan metalinguistique. . . . Nous touchons la un probleme extremement grave.,.: celui des changements intellectuels, culturels et linguistiques que peut entrainer a la longue l'existence de documents importants, manuels scolaires, articles de journaux, dialogues de films, etc., rediges par des traducteurs qui ne peuvent pas ou n'osent pas s'aventurer dans les traductions obliques. ... on peut craindre de voir les quatre-cinqiemes du globe se nourrir exclusivement de traductions et perir intellectuellement de ce regime de bouillie pour les chats (p. 53f).

These seven procedures of translation apply to all the three plains of stylistics: lexique, agenoement, and message. Frequently, several of them must be used to translate a single expression: La traduction (sur une porte) de PRIVATE par DEFENSE D'ENTRER est a la fois une transposition, une modulation et une equivalence. C'est une transposition parce que l'adjectif 'private' se rend par une locution nominale; une modulation, parce qu'on passe d'une constation a un avertissement...; enfin, c'est une equivalence puisque la traduction est obtenue en remontant ä la situation sans passer par la structure (p. 54).

Apart frcm the obviously necessary thorough and accurate knowledge of the linguistic structures of both languages, the translator must also possess ccnplete familiarity with the social context of both language ccmnunities. It is only then that, beyond the direct procedures (No's 1-3) and the intermediary method of transposition (No. 4) he can also effect the necessary indirect operations (No's 5-7) and go on to produce a truly equivalent translation: "le fait, par exanple, de η'avoir pas ete dans un pays depuis dix ans est parfois süffisant

34

pour faire les plus grossiers contresens sur des textes en apparenoe inoffensifs"

(p. 270).

1.2.3

Georges Mounin

Georges Mounin's Les problemes theoriques de la traduction sets itself the task of providing a systematic outline of all those results of modern linguistic research which touch on problems of translation.

The study is not really

a completely developed theory of translation but it intends, as the title itself indicates, nerely to state the problem.

Similar to the later theories

proper, such as Catford's and Nida's, it starts with a critique of semantic theory. Mounin begins by examining various structural theories and discovers that they cannot really solve the problems of translation.

Only the rediscovery

1

of Humboldt's theory of language as vrorld view', and its further development by Cassirer, Whorf, Trier, Hj elms lev, Martinet, Wartburg, Mauthner, Ullmann, Benveniste, and others, can yield premising results. The fact that our world view is determined by the language we speak, ccrtplicates translational practice frcm the point of view of 'internal' linguistics; "mais la linguistique externe ... ajoute ä Celles de la linguistique interne d'autres raisons de mettre en cause la lögitimite, de meme que la validite, de l'cperation traduisante.

on admet, aujourd'hui, qu'il y a des 'cultures'

(ou des 'civilisations') profondement differentes, qui constituent non pas autant de 'visions du monde1 differentes, mais autant de 'itondes' reels differents"

(p. 59).

In Mounin's opinion the Neo-Humboldtians have so far not made

a sufficiently sharp distinction between the intra1i nguistic and the extralinguistic aspects of the problem.

However, as early as 1945, E.A. Nida had

already set up five categories of problems of Bible-translating —

(1) ecology,

(2) material culture, (3) social culture, (4) religious culture, (5) linguistic culture (Nida 1945:196) — which, with only minor rrodifications, can be enplqyed in formulating a more general theory of translation.

He cbserves that Nida's

No. 5 should be excluded frcm consideration at this point as being concerned with intralinguistic problems, and that his No. 4 should, for the purpose of a general theory of translation not restricted to problems of Bible-translating, be enlarged to include "la culture idlologique (l'enseirble de toutes les id^es que les hctrmes d'un monde donne se font sur ce monde)"

(p. 62n).

In the subsequent sections of his study Mounin considers the linguistic obstacles standing in the way of translating a message from one language into another from the point of view of 'lexis',' vrorld views', 'multiple civiliza-

35

tions', and 'syntax'· His examination of a large number of semantic theories leads him to the conclusion that caTplete structurization of the lexicon on formal linguistic grounds is irrpossible, because, he says, semantics is the one area of linguistics to which the Saussurean formula of language as a selfcontained system cannot be applied, because here one must move constantly "frcm language to the world and frcm the vrorld to language"

(p. 138).

Even logical structurization is possible only in so far as, for exanple, the normative terminology of science and technology can be described on the basis of standard definitions which have been fixed once and for all. The problem is ccnplicated by the fact that all the words belonging to the 'cannon' language, in addition to their more or less definite denotations, exhibit a wealth of connotations which vary frcm one situation to another, from one person to another, and often even for the same person fron one time to another. This leads him to the conclusion that the problem of connotations really points beyond translation frcm one language to another, i.e. beyond interlinguistie ccmnunication, and appears to inply the negation of the possibility of interpersonal communication even within one language. In order to resolve this linguistic solipsism, he goes back to the situational reference of utterances Vilich Bloamfield had already appealed to when he distinguished between "largescale processes which are much the same in different people" and "obscure and highly variable small-scale processes ... which differ from person to person". The former have "seme", the latter "no irmediate social irtportance" (Bloomfield 1933:142f). Ultimately it is thus the reference to the situation which must yield the meaning. For the translation of contemporary texts,'ethnography' therefore becomes an indispensible field of knowledge for the translator, just as 'philology' had been for the translator of older texts, for "la philologie est ... 1'ethnographie du passS"

(p. 246).

His examination of syntax leads Mounin to the conclusion that even the undeniable incomtiensurability of the syntactic structure of two languages does not lead to untranslatability.

If one extends the theory of the 'arbitrariness

of the sign' frcm the level of minimal units to the level of phrases or even entire messages, one sees that as long as oarrrron (or even similar) situations exist in both cultures there can be translation, regardless of the incormensusability of source-language and target-language syntax

(p. 265). All trans-

lation theory must first of all fully accept the fact that our language forces us to 'see' the world in one specific way, and therefore prevents us fron 'seeing' it in another way; the necessary acceptance of this fact irrplies the

36

acceptance of the further fact that translation is not always possible. It is possible only in a certain measure and within certain limits — but instead of regarding this measure as eternally fixed and absolute, one must determine these limits for each individual case. One must make a list of the translational failures for a given text and a given pair of languages. Each time, one must take account of the facts of the case, rather than extend to all languages the conclusions one has drawn from a small number of facts (p. 273f).

As we have seen, Mounin's main aim is to give a comprehensive basic outline of the (old) theoretical problems

as seen by modem linguistic science, which

all translation must take into account. Beyond the demand for reference to the situation of the utterance, he is unable to make any precise suggestions concerning the solution

of these problems. The statement quoted, that the

limits of translatability — and thus the positive possibilities of translation — must be re-examined for each particular text and for each particular pair of languages, shows that his theory does not really go beyond Vinay and Darbe1net's Stylistique

corrrparde. He enphasizes in particular, that even in the case

of one specific text and its comnunication in one specific pair of languages, it is not possible to give a solution which will be valid once and for all: each translation creates itself new contacts between two languages, two world views, two cultures, which necessarily influence each further translation between them. Mounin's study may be regarded as a sort of 'Prolegomena to a Future Theory of Translation'. The following two sections of this chapter will examine hew far the theories of Catford and Nida have advanced the debate. 1.2.4

J.C. Catford

The author cones from the English School of linguistics; since the FirthHalliday model of language distinguishes the four intralinguistic levels of phonology, graphology, grammar, and lexis, Catford examines, in separate chapters, the possibility of 'restricted translation' on each of these planes. I shall confine the discussion, here, to the category which he calls 'total translation' and which he defines as follows: replacement of SL Csource language] grammar and lexis by equivalent TL Ctarget language] grammar and lexis with consequential replacement of SL phonology/graphology by (non-equivalent) TL phonology/graphology (p. 22).

Every translation theory must base itself en a semantic theory. Catford chooses for himself the Firthean theory. According to this, meaning is "the total network of relations entered into by any linguistic form — text, itemin text, structure, element-of-structure, class, term-in-system — or whatever

37 it may be"

(p. 35). In this sense, meaning is always peculiar to a particular

language, so that one must not say that a translation has 'the same meaning' as the original: The view ... that 'transference of meaning' occurs in translation is untenable. ... An SL text has an SL meaning, and a TL text has a TL meaning — a Russian text, for instance, has a Russian meaning (as well as Russian phonology/graphology, grammar and lexis), and an equivalent English text has an English meaning (p. 35).

The implications for translation theory which derive frcm such a definition of meaning, are best explained by means of sane exanples: Catford first points out that, for example, nouns in a language whose nunber system contains three units (singular, dual, and plural) such as Arabic, cannot have the same formal meaning as nouns in a language, whose nurtber system is restricted to singular and plural, such as modem English or German. A target language dual may in certain circumstances be the translation equivalent of a source language plural (e.g. Arabic 'kitaabeen' the equivalent of English 'books'), but it cannot have tiie same formal meaning: a term in a three-dimensional system has a different 'value' (valeur, in Saussure's sense) from a term in a two-dimensional system. Formal meaning can thus not be transferred fron one language to another. Ihe same is true of contextual meaning. By means of a detailed oonparison of the English sentence I have arrived with its Russian translation equivalent ja-priSla,Catford demonstrates that formal as well as contextual relations between linguistic forms differ frcm one language to another, so that, in a strict sense, one cannot speak of transference of the meaning of an utterance frctn one language into another. I quote only the conclusion to be drawn from Catford's examination: Clearly, though the Russian text is a perfectly good translationequivalent of the English text, it does not 'mean the same' — since it selects as linguistically (contextually) relevant a different set of elements in the situation. We can tabulate thus: I

speaker femalev arrival*. on foothave a r r i v e d ^ — — p r i o r event \^~~linked to present completed·'

ja

'^priiSla

Only the situational features italicized in the list are contextually relevant to both the SL and the TL text (p. 38f).

Frcm a given situation English and Russian thus select different elements as

38 linguistically relevant. One can imagine that a third language might make other details, such as the speaker's age, his profession, or his relation to the audience linguistically relevant.

If, for exaitple, the speaker in the

above sentence were the grandmother of the receptor, translation into modem colloquial Arabic should indicate this relationship by adding the word teta to this utterance. Thus, a translation is the equivalent of the original, if the two texts correspond in those linguistically relevant aspects of their total meaning viiich are also relevant to the contextual situation. If vre consider English as the source language, we must assume that the translator has learned from the wider context that the speaker is a female person who has arrived on foot: otherwise he would have had to choose a different verb-form and a different verb.

If, conversely, we consider English as the target language, we must

assure that even for the further course of the story the sex of the speaker and the means of his/her arrival are either not relevant to the situation, or that these details are, at a later place, expressed by other means. Even in those procedures which Vinay and Darbelnet had described as the sinplest and the most direct methods, i.e. empmnt and oalque, there is at best a•partialtransference of meaning: We might, for example, imagine the translator of a Finnish novel rendering the sentence Menen saunaan into English as I'm going to the sauna. Here, the lexical item sauna appears to have been transferred bodily into the TL. Has it, however, taken with it the meaning which it has in Finnish? Certainly not its formal grammatical meaning: probably not its formal lexical meaning nor all of its contextual meaning. For the translator himself, knowing Finnish, it may be that it has its full Finnish meaning; for an English reader it carries a contextual meaning something like 'foreign — specifically Finnish — cultural object or institution somewhat comparable, as the contextual meanings of the co-text show, with Turkish bath' — and it is immediately formalized as a (foreign) member of lexical sets containing items like bath, steambath, Turkish Bath, Public Baths...etc. (p. 47). At this point it is necessary to introduce a further term in Catford's theory of translation:

formal correspondence. Vfe have already demanded equivalence

for original and translation, and we have explained this equivalence functionally by reference to the situation:

"SL and TL texts or items are translation

equivalents when they are interchangeable in a given situation"

(p. 49).

In

the case of translation between genetically and culturally closely related languages textual equivalence can, in rare cases, go hand in hand with formal correspondence. In the sentences J'ai laissd mes lunettes sur la table and I've left my glasses on the table, both textual equivalence and formal correspondence

39 are observable down to morpheme level. In this particular case, we may thus speak of successful literal translation.

In by far the larger nunber of cases,

however, textual (translation) equivalence can only be attained by means of so-called translation shifts, i.e. "departures fran formal correspondence in the process of going fron SL to TL"

(p. 73). Catford distinguishes between

"level shifts (grairmar to lexis and vice versa)" and "category shifts (structure shifts, class shifts, unit shifts (i.e. rank changes) and intra-system shifts)". As an exanple of a level shift, he quotes a Russian text in which the functionally relevant contrast between an inperfective and a perfective verbal aspect (delal —

sdelal) must be rendered in English by the use of different lexical

units (I cite only the relevant parts of the passage):

"What did he do? Every-

thing. ... What did he achieve? Nothing" (p. 75). A similar shift is very cannon in translating frcm English into French: I arrive' —

'This may reach you before

Ί 1 se peut que oe mot vous parvienne avant mon arrivfe'. Here

the translation ce mot for this represents "a more or less carrplete shift frcm grairmar to lexis". The exanple also contains category shifts: the modal auxiliary may has been rendered by the inpersonal expression il se peut que plus subjunctive; the adverbial clause 'before I arrive' has been turned into the adverbial phrase 'avant mon arriv^e'. The exairples make clear that Catford's translation shifts correspond to la transposition in Vinay and Darbelnet. In their division of translational practice into seven procddis, transposition occupies a middle position as the first of the four 'indirect' methods following the three 'direct' methods. Catford reaches a very similar conclusion by a different road: Up to a certain point it is possible to attain formal correspondence between SL and TL texts along with textual equivalence. Beyond this point it is necessary to aim at textual equivalence by means of translation shifts which, by definition, sacrifice formal correspondence. Catford does not directly concern himself with Vinay and Darbelnet's remaining three procedures. However, we have already seen that — in contrast with the first four methods, in which the SL meaning is derived largely from the linguistic context — modulation, equivalence, and adaptation must be enployed in all those cases where the meaning of both SL and TL texts can only be derived by reference to the extralinguistic situation.

It is significant

that Vinay and Darbelnet discuss la transposition in that section of their study which is entitled agenaement (which, as also the section lexique concerned with the three direct methods, considers intralinguistic meaning) while la mod-

40

ulatian, I'dquzvalence, and I'adaptation are examined in the section message, which considers the situational referents of the utterances. Catford's chapter on "The Limits of Translatability' offers sere further insight into aspects of the translation problem which we have not hitherto considered.

In the corrparison of the sentences I've arrived and ja priSla,

the simplified diagram listed eight different situational aspects of meaning, only three of which were contextually relevant to both texts. Textual equivalence was thus based on only these three situational references. However, for the Russian text, the situational oorrponent 'female' is, among others, also relevant:

the Russian granmatical system forces the speaker to make her sex

linguistically relevant by selecting the form priSla as opposed to priSel, despite the fact that this is apparently irrelevant to the message. We can therefore distinguish between situational aspects which are linguistically relevant, and others which are functionally relevant. Translation and original are equivalent, when they correspond in their functionally relevant situational features. A text is thus untranslatable, when functionally relevant aspects of its situational features cannot be 'built into' the contextual meaning of the target-language text. We can further distinguish between linguistic and cultural untranslatability.

In the case of linguistic untranslatability, the

text contains functionally relevant situational features which result frtm the formal system of the target language. If in such a case the formal system of the target language precludes the possibility of achieving formal correspondence, the text is to that extent untranslatable. Linguistic untranslatability occurs particularly in texts where potential source-language ambiguity has been made functionally relevant, i.e. primarily in puns. In English, for exanple, potential ambiguity can result frcm the fact that a relatively large nunber of morpherres can be identified by means of the graphological sign -s either as third person singular present tense verbs, or as plural nouns. In a normal conversation the context would determine whether the utterance time flies is to be understood as 'Hew quickly time passes', or as 'Make observations on the speed of flies', or even as Ά certain American newsmagazine is shipped by air'. If however, as in this passage, the utterance has been especially constructed as an exanple of grammatically occasioned potential ambiguity, an equivalent translation is absolutely iirpossible. In the case of linguistic untranslatability, the inpossibility of finding an equivalent translation is thus based entirely on formal differences between the two languages·, the situational reference of the text is equally present in

41 both languages.

In cultural untranslatability, hcwever, it is a functionally

relevant situational corrpanent of the source-language text which is not available to the target-language culture. I have already mentioned the Finnish word 'sauna' which refers to a situation given in Finnish culture, but for which no precise equivalent exists in other cultures.

The translation 'bath', which

nay be indicated in certain texts, produces at best partial equivalence, for the concept 'sauna' includes neither the function of 'washing' nor the means of 'hot water', which are both semantic ocrrponents of the word 'bath'. However, a language is more than an inventory of grairroatical, lexical, and graphological/phonological forms. A theory of translation, particularly literary translation, must subdivide the language of the camtunity into different varieties. Catford defines as follows: A language variety, then, is a sub-set of formal and/or substantial features which correlate with a particular type of socio-situational feature. For a general classification of varieties we confine ourselves to a consideration of situational features which are constants in language-situations. These constants are (i) the performer (speaker or writer), (ii) the addressee (hearer or reader), and (iii) the medium (phonology or graphology) in which the text is presented (p. 84).

On the basis of these 'constants in language-situations' he distinguishes five different varieties:

Idiolect, dialect, register, style, and mode, with

three further subdivisions of dialects:

geographical, temporal, and social.

We may assume that varieties exist in all languages; for a general theory of translation it is irrportant to point out that the type and number of these varieties may differ from one language to the other, but for the purpose of the present study Catford's categories would seem to apply to both texts, the English originals as well as the German translations. 1.2.5

E.A. Nida

E.A. Nida's Toward a Science of Translating6 is the most systematic and coup rehens ive general theory of translation based on principles of linguistics which 6

note the bibliography of approximately 2,000 books and articles on translation tion, pp. 265-321. Nida's latest book (with Charles R. Taber as joint author), The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden, 1969), adds over 200 items to the bibliography of the first. For translation theory, the later book is much less useful than the earlier one: the authors appear to have 'simplified' Nida's earlier theoretical treatment in an effort to adapt it for use as a kind of 'textbook' for Bible-translators, a fact which the very negative review in TLS chooses to overlook. (No. 3,551, 19.3.70, pp. 299-301). Note also the two special issues of TLS devoted to translation, No.s 3,577 & 3,578 (18. & 25.9.70).

42

has been published so far. It rests essentially on Chomsky's model of 'generative granmar': For the translator, the view of language as a generative device is important, since it provides him first with a technique for analysing the process of decoding the source text, and secondly with a procedure for describing the generation of the appropriate corresponding expressions in the receptor language (p. 60).

meaning on the In his semantic theory, Nida distinguishes between linguistic one hand, and referential and emotive meanings ("which may be said to 'begin where linguistic meanings leave off") on the other. First, linguistic meaning: on the lexical level of generative granmar he finds "that the principal function classes consist of the following four principal types, with various sub-classes: (1) 'objects' (2) 'events' ...; (3) 'abstracts' ...; and (4) 'relationale', vixich serve to relate various objects, events, and abstracts" (p. 63). Groups (1) and (2) ccrrprise the parts of speech which in traditional granmar are called 'nouns' and 'verbs', respectively; group (3) consists of adjectives, adverbs, numerals, and similar words; and group (4) includes prepositions and 7 conjunctions. Referential meaning can be discovered frcm an examination of the extralinguistic field of reference covered by the word, and frcm the linguistic context in which it is placed. To Nida, the semantic theory of Katz and Foder (1963;1964; see also Katz and Postal 1964). A semantic theory of this kind, in which linguistic context and semantic field are considered as ccnponents of the total meaning which influence each other, is both more 'elegant' and more 'correct' philosophically than a theory in which semantic field and linguistic context are kept strictly separate. We have seen in Catford's study that in the Firthean analysis of meaning as well, the reference of a message to its extra 1 inguistic situation must be considered as 'functionally relevant' to the total meaning. Vinay and Darbelnet, as wall as Mounin, also consider the reference of the text to the situation on the level of le message and regard it as essential to the discovery of le sens 7

It is worth pointing out that in an earlier publication (1959) , Nida had already reached a similar conclusion — without reference to generative grammar, merely from his experience as head of the "Translations Department of the American Bible Society": "Whether as major or minor classes, languages do tend to have four principal groups: object words (roughly equivalent to nouns), event words (roughly equivalent to verbs), abstracts (modifiers of object and event words), and relationale (roughly equivalent to prepositions and conjunctions in the Indo-European languages)". — An examination of the relations of these word-groups with the onomata, rhemata, and syndesmoi of Aristotle's description of language, with the categories of the 'modistae' and with various rationalistic grammars, goes beyond the scope of this study.

43 global. A linguistics which is restricted to the examination of 'inmediate constituents' and refuses to make the referential meaning of these constituents a co-determining factor in the linguistic model, will thus be unable to develop a translation theory —

because in translation it is the total meaning

of the message, linguistic as well as referential (and emotive) which must be considered.

It is therefore not surprising that the Blocmfieldian school of

linguistics has never produced a theory of translation. In the same way that Nida considers language as sanething 'dynamic' (cf. Humboldt's energeia), in which a semantic-syntactic base generates an infinite number of (abstract) deep structures which may be further transformed into (actual) usable sentences, he also regards the ccmrnunication which is made possible by means of language as a 'cfynamic' process: We must analyse the transmission of a message in terms of a dynamic dimension. This analysis is especially important for translating, since the production of equivalent messages is a process, not merely of matching utterances, but of reproducing the total dynamic character of the communication. Without both elements the results can scarcely be regarded, in any real sense as equivalent (p. 120).

The translator must consider five iriportant 'phases' in any cannunication process: (1) the subject matter, i.e. the referents which are talked about; (2) the participants who engage in communication...; (3) the speech act or the process of writing; (4) the code used, i.e. the language in question, with all its resources as a code, including symbols and arrangements; and (5) the message, i.e. the particular way in which the subject matter is encoded into specific symbols and arrangements (p. 120).

In the case of written texts, it is generally only phase number five of the cannunication which is directly 'given' to the translator, and he must deduce the other four phases from it, in order to be able to consider them in his production of the message in the target language.

In this connection it is

worthwhile to take a look at information theory, in which information is quantified by counting the number of binary decisions necessary for the ccmrnunication of the message.

For the purpose of translation theory, this yields two import-

ant results: (1) The 'information' which is communicated by any message is a measure of the unpredictability of the signals which are given. In fact, information in this technical sense is largely equated with unpredictability. This implies, of course, that the more unpredictable the message the greater the channel which is required for the transmission and decoding of the message. In ordinary language this means that one can readily understand a message which is common-place, but it takes much greater decoding effort to comprehend a message which is unusual, unpredictable, and strange.

44 (2) In order to combine efficiency of communication with an effective guarantee against distortion ... languages tend to be about 50 per cent redundant. That is to say, they seem to reflect a kind of equilibrium between the unexpected and the predictable. ... Any message can be communicated through any channel, but it may be necessary to 'lengthen' the message, that is to take more time to communicate it if the channel is too restricted. If the channel is very wide, the message can always be compressed, but if the channel is narrow, the message needs to be drawn out (p. 126).

Every normal message contains both linguistic Spanish phrase, una persona buena y capaoitada,

and cultural

redundancy. In the

for exarrple, the grammatical

gender of a word is given four different times, when, theoretically, one single indication ought to be sufficient. Lexical redundancy is particularly apparent in such formulaic expressions as He is dam. and ... , where the word 'out' is highly predictable and thus redundant; even in 'free' messages of a non-formulaic character, the lexical items appearing towards the end of the utterance are more or less redundant. For the translator, it is particularly important to renenber that, besides linguistic a measure of cultural

redundancy, every message also contains

redundancy which may no longer be available to the

receptors, i.e. the listeners or the readers, of a text translated into a different linguistic and cultural ccrrntunity. Nida represents this situation graphically and explains that in an original message prepared for a specific audience there is a considerable amount of 'fit' between the form of the message and the 'decoder's channel'. If, however, such a message is translated 'literally' for use by an audience belonging to a linguistically and culturally different ccntnunity, it is clear that its linguistic awkwardness will increase its 'communication load' or 'information', while the 'decoder's channel' will inevitably be narrower, because the new receptor lacks many of the cultural data available to the audience of the original. If the translator wants to produce an 'equivalent' message for the new audience, he should therefore 'draw out' the message to build into it the necessary 'cultural redundance' and to smooth out is linguistic awkwardness as much as possible to make it fit the narrower 'decoder's channel'. Nida's linguistic approach to translation thus leads to a resolution of the old antinomy of 'foreignization vs. naturalization' , which appears to be unequivocally in favor of 'naturalization': Without proper adjustments to the form of the receptor language an overloading of the message, in terms of the decoder's capacities, is almost inevitable. This does not mean, of course, that a decoder may not be able to figure out the message after long and arduous study, but a really satisfactory translation should not impose that sort of burden on the receptor. The message should not be appreciably harder for him to comprehend than it was to the original receptor. If it is too hard,

45 he is likely to give up from discouragement or to feel that the results of his efforts are not proportionate to the investment of time and trouble. Of course, one can to some extent compensate for an inferior translation by placing great pressures upon the receptors to read and understand, but there is no real justification for this type of cultural bigotry and paternalism (p.l31f).

A further important distinction to be considered is that between the formal communication load and the semantic content of a text. Essentially identical semantic content can be corrntunicated with high redundancy, i.e. lew catinunication load, or with low redundancy, i.e. high ccnrnunicaticn load. Weizsäcker (1959) cites the following exanple: the text, e.g. on a post-card, Iah freue mich, dass ich am Montag, den 19. Januar, nachmittags fünf Uhr in München eintreffen kann, has no more semantic content than the telegram which might replace it: eintreffe montag 17 uhr — provided, of course, that both writer and addressee are familiar with their respective situations. Nida cites, as an exanple of an extended text with low catmunicatian load and high semantic content, the Kingsley-Williams version of The New Testament in Plain English as "a translation which purposely eitploys a limited vocabulary and sirrple grammatical constructions, but in which the semantic content is not watered down or artificially restricted". Within one language Nida represents the canmmicatian process in such a way that a message is transmitted fratt a source to a receptor by means of the code of language into which the message is encoded by the source, and frctti which it is subsequently decoded by the receptor. But in the case of a bilingual ocmnunicatian with the mediation of a translator, the model becanes considerably more ccnplicated. Hie translator in his capacity of receptor must then first decode the message as expressed in language A, in order to understand it; through a 'transfer mechanism' he must then, in his capacity of source, re-encode the message into language Β to make it available for decoding by the ultimate receptor of the message in translation. At its present level of development, science is not yet able to say exactly how the 'transfer mechanism' operates. Nida assumes, however, that it operates on the level of 'kernel structures' as described in generative granmar:

"Basically, we may describe translating

as a process in which the concept is transmitted in essentially 'kernel' form, and then the corresponding utterance in language Β is generated"

(p. 146).

These considerations indicate that a translator must possess the following fundamental qualities:

(1) He must know the source language sufficiently

well to be able to understand, beyond the apparent content of the message, the fine nuances of meaning, the emotive value of the words, and the stylistic

46 aspects which determine the 'flavor and feel' of the message.

(2) He must

be familiar with the subject matter of the message; in the case of literary translation, this includes, in particular, complete familiarity with the cultural context of the source language.

(3) He must — somewhat like a good

ο

actor — possess the ability of emotive enpathy with the text and its author. (4) He must have full ccumand of the target language with all its nuances, i.e. he must possess the stylistic capability to transfer, as completely as possible, into the target-language code the content derived fran the sourcelanguage code. Since the human translator is not a machine, he will in practice never be entirely successful in excluding all his own feelings from the translation process:

"A translation remains perhaps the most direct form of cantentary".

But precisely because the translator knows this, he must eitploy supreme care "to reduce to a minumum any intrusion of himself which is not in harmony with the intent of the original author and message". Another inportant consideration in the examination of translations is the 'linguistic' and 'cultural distance' between source and target languages. In cases where both the linguistic and the cultural distance between source 'code' and target 'code' is relatively small, one would expect that the difficulties of translation will be correspondingly small. Generally speaking, this expectation is justified, but the translator must in these cases pay particular attention to avoiding the danger of so-called faux amis (e.g. English 'demand' and 'ignore' as opposed to French 'demander' and 'ignorer'). Similarities in grammatical structure and phonology as well frequently lead to solecisms: the Dutch maintain, for exanple, that especially Germans almost never learn to speak good Dutch, precisely because the languages are closely related. Wien the cultures are related and the languages very different from each other, the translator must make many formal changes, for exanple in translations from German into Finnish. But in such cases the similarity of the two cultures usual ly makes available a nunber of parallel expressions which can be used by the translator. The most difficult problem is the overcoming of cultural differences between source and target languages reflected in the message. Nida distinguishes two kinds of translation equivalence:

'formal' and

'dynamic' (F-E and D-E). An P-E translation looks exclusively to the original 8

In the final section of his book Kühe in Halbtrauer (Karlsruhe, 1964), the German translator of Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches, Arno Schmidt, gives an imaginative satirical account of the implications of this demand; see especially pp. 345-347.

47 and attenpts to reproduce as fully as possible its forral peculiarities. A typical exanple would be the 'literal' translation into English of a text written in Old French, intended for students who, without having a conmand of Old French, wish to investigate certain aspects of early French literature. A translation made for such a purpose would have to approach the original in both form (syntax and idiomatic expression) and content (themes and concepts) as closely as possible. In order to make the text fully comprehensible, the translator would have to have recourse to nunerous footnotes. A D-Ε translation, on the other hand, looks not so much to the original as to the expected reaction of the readers of the translation:

"A dynamic-equi-

valence (or D-Ε) translation may be described as one concerning which a bilingual and bicultural person can justifiably say, 'That is just the way we would say it'. It is inportant to realize, hcwsver, that a D-Ε translation is not merely a message vdiich is more or less similar to that of the source. It is a translation, and as such must clearly reflect the meaning and intent of the source"

(p. 166). A particularly clear exanple of a translation thus

based on the 'principle of equivalent effect' is J.B. Phillips' New Testament g

τη Modern English

(1958).

Nida's definition of a D-Ε translation, similarly formulated for the first tine in an article published in 1959, may by now be regarded as the classic definition of modern translation: One way of defining a D-Ε translation is to describe it as 'the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message'. This type of definition contains three essential terms: (1) equivalent, which points toward the source-language message, (2) natural, which points toward the receptor language, and (3) closest, which binds the two orientations together on the basis of the highest degree of approximation (p. 166).

Since a D-Ε translation is meant to attain, above all, equivalence of response (in contrast with equivalence of form), the implications of the word 'natural' in the above definition can be made explicit in this way: "a natural rendering must fit (1) the receptor language and culture as a whole, (2) the context of the particular message, and (3) the receptor-language audience"

(p. 167).

Although it is true that modem translational practice tends to move increasingly away frcm formal equivalence and toward dynamic equivalence (cf. Cary 1959), the translator will, in most cases, have to select an intermediate form. In this case he is often faced with difficult decisions which derive from the 9

Cf. Katharina Reiss, (1968). The author distinguishes between 'contentcentered', 'form-centered', and 'effect-centered' texts. It is interesting to note that — like Nida — she considers especially sacred texts as being primarily 'effect-centered'.

48

tension existing between the two poles of F-E and D-Ε. Nida identifies three principal areas of tension:

"(1) formal and functional equivalents, (2)

optional and obligatory equivalents, and (3) rate of deoodability" (p. 171). In the first area the translator basically has a choice between four different decisions:

(a) he can (in an F-E translation) use a formal equivalent in the

text of the translation and explain its function in a note (e.g. the literal translation of the word heart into a language in which the seat of the emotions is the liver·, (b) he can (in a D-Ε translation) vise the functional equivalent in the text of the translation and then make the further decision whether or not the originell form should be explained in a note; (c) he can use a loan word, with or without an explaining epithet (e.g. seat of Pharisees); (d) he can render concepts not existing in the target language culture by means of descriptive expressions (e.g. 'philacteries' as 'small leather bundles with holy words in them'). In the second area of tension the difficulty derives fron the fact that source language and target language may have different obligatory categories: (a) the target language must express features which are not even inplied in the source language. Nida's exanple from Bible translating shows how the translator of Mark 1:21, into a language which makes an obligatory distinction between single and repeated action is forced to specify whether Jesus had ever before visited the town of Capernaum: probably it was not the first time, but this is the first mention in the Bible; (b) the target language must express features which are unclear, or at best inplied, in the source language. Here can be classed, for exanple, the many cases where the target language uses an elaborate system of many graded forms of address, while the source language uses only one form; (c) the target language cannot express, or does not normally express, features which are made explicit in the source language. An exanple would be the translation of a dual into a language which uses formal distinctions only for singular and plural. In the third area of tension the translator must consider the demands of the readers concerning ready intelligibility of a translation.

In generell,

an F-E translation is more difficult to understand than a D-Ε translation, and the translator will often be faced with the necessity of making a compromise. Since translations are thus oriented on different points of view, it is difficult to find a unified scale on vrtiich to orient criticism. Nida proposes to evaluate translations on the basis of the following criteria:

"(1) general

efficiency of the communication process, (2) oonprehension of intent, and

49 (3) equivalence of response".

In comparing differences between translations,

three phases of translation should be considered:

(1) literal transfer, by

means of which a text is 'transliterated' practically word-for-word into the corresponding lexical items of the target language lexicon; a translation of this kind is hardly comprehensible, but it nay serve as a basis of comparison for the second phase:

(2) minimal transfer, where only such transpositions

are introduced as are absolutely necessary to make the text conform to the obligatory categories of the target language. It is only in the third phase that we have (3) literary transfer. In this phase, where more or less 'free' transformations are introduced, we find many differing translations which may new be corpared with each other and with the second phase as the basis for ccrrparison. In this way Nida considers it possible to calculate numerically, on an exponential scale, the effect of the various transpositions, which are, in ascending order, changes in word order, emissions, structural changes, additions. However, one must not frcm this comparison draw direct conclusions about the relative quality of the different translations. To do that, one would have to take into account a number of other factors, which in part operate in opposite directions, such as the type of readership, the type of message, and other general socio-linguistic considerations. Nida concludes that both an extreme F-E translation and an extreme D-Ε translation distort the meaning and effect of the original. On the other hand, this does not mean that a translation

should occupy a position as close as possible to the middle between

F-E and D-Ε: "Actually, there is a relatively wide band in F-E and D-Ε translations in which the formal differences in and of themselves do not necessarily distort the message.

It is when one reaches the extremes that serious damage

is done to the messagefcythe formal features"

(p. 192). The tendency of

modern translational practices toward dynamic equivalence is, however, a salutory development: F-E translations which fall below standard are generally more common than correspondingly inadequate D-Ε translations, for the gross errors in F-E translating arise primarily out of ignorance, oversight, and failure to comprehend the true nature of translating. On the other hand, mistakes in D-Ε translations are generally less numerous, for they are usually made with the translator's eyes wide open. In a sense renderings which err in being too far in the direction of a D-Ε translation may be more dangerous, particularly if a translator is clever in concealing his 'slanting'. But the mistakes resulting from filling a translation with renderings which are too much in the direction of F-E translating are more ruinous, for the translation is usually so overloaded that it is unlikely to be used with any great effectiveness,

50 except where there is an unusual amount of incentive and cultural pressure (p. 184).

*

*

*

We have seen that both traditional and linguistic theories of translation enphasize the necessity of a dynamic as opposed to a static view of language; Schleiermacher's theory already anticipates Hurrfooldtian lines of thought. Later advocates of either side of the antinomy —

from Ortega, Benjamin and

Pannwitz on the side of 'foreignization'; and Wilamowitz, Vossler, and Rosenzweig on the side of 'naturalization', to Schadewaldt's ultimate resolution of the antincny —

all point out the need of proceeding beyond 'the thing

meant' (das Gemeinte) to 'the way in which it means' (die Art des Meinens). The linguistic theories of translation as veil, consciously or unconsciously, draw on Hunboldt and his 'dynamic' view: Vinay and Darbelnet explicitly refer to the Humboldtian concept of 'Weltanschauung' [sic] as the basic element of their semantics; Mounin stresses that it was only the rediscovery of Humboldt's theory of language as 'vision du ironde' (die Sprache als Vfeltansicht) which gave translation theory its proper semantic foundation; Catford ncwhere explicitly refers to Humboldt, but inasmuch as his entire linguistic system is ultimately derived from Malinowski's ethnographic view of language, he also sees language as enevgeia as opposed to ergon and recognizes the importance of the extralinguistic situation for the total meaning of a text; Nida, finally, bases his translation theory on Chomsky's model of generative granmar and enphasizes that the translator, 'perhaps more than anyone else must take language in its dynamic aspect'. This fundamental conception of language as a world view leads to the methodological division of the problem of translation into two large areas. Vinay and Darbelnet distinguish between 'proo^dis directes', by vÄiich meaning is determined from the intralinguistic context, and 'proc4d^s indirectes', where only reference to the extralinguistic situation can establish the meaning of the text: Mounin divides even more sharply:

'on admet, aujourd'hui, qu'il

y a des 'cultures' (ou des 'civilisations') profond^ment differentes, qui constituent non pas autant de 'visions du monde' diffdrentes, mais autant de 'mondes1 r^els diff^rents1.

He enphasizes that 'tout traducteur qui, de mille

51 iranieres errpiriques, ne s'est pas fait aussi 11 ethnographe de la ccirrnunaute dont il traduit la langue, est un traducteur inocnplet'

(p. 239).

Catford distinguishes between 'Linguistic' and 'Cultural Untranslatability1 and shows in what way, and to what extent, both problems are soluble. More than 15 years before Chcmsky's Syntactic Structures, the generative model on which his present theory is based, Nida had already pointed to the importance of clearly recognizing the cultural situation of both the source and the target languages. In 1945 he writes:

"The person who is engaged in translating

frcm one language into another ought to be constantly aware of the contrast in the entire range of culture represented by the two

languages"

(p.

194).

In his present theory in its more fully developed form, he new draws the logical conclusion from the dynamic view of language expressed in Chomsky's generative grammar which underlies his cwn theory, to demand 'dynamic equivalence' in translation, which takes account of both the 'linguistic' and the 'cultural distance' existing between the two languages. Nida thus, by a different route, arrives at the same distinction Vilich the other theorists of translation had also set up, and which Mounin had perhaps expressed most clearly when he distinguished between"different world views" and "different actual worlds", between "intralinguistic" and "extralinguistic" problems, between linguistics prcper and ethnography. I shall adopt this division of the problem of translation into tvro large areas. In the tvro subsequent chapters, I shall examine the 'intralinguistic difficulties' which arise in the translation into German of William Faulkner's later novels; the 'extralinguistic' or 'ethnographic' problems of translation and their relative solution will be examined in the fifth chapter.

2. THE PRACTICE O F TRANSLATION

2.1 INTPÄLINGUISriC PROBLEMS, Is THE LANGUAGE OF THE CHARACTERS

As vre have seen above, Nida (1964:146) assumes that the 'transfer rrechanism' by means of which the translator reenoodes in the target language a message decoded from the source language, operates on the level of 'kernels' . In more conventional literary terminology, we can identify the optional variants in the transformations which can be performed on these kernels as 'elements of style' . The translator of literary texts, therefore, much more than the translator (in Schleiermacher's distinction: the interpreter) of purely or primarily factually informative texts, has to use great care to select fncm the multitude of transformations which can be performed on the kernels, precisely the one which is the most closely equivalent to the surface structure originally given in the source-language text. Frederic Will (1960;1966:25f) distinguishes between "prosaic" and "poetic aspects of every work of literature". The prosaic aspect is exclusively concerned with the denotative meaning of the text; poetic language, on the other hand, "denotes and connotes simultaneously, with its connotation being the stranger element". Will concludes that the analysis of the translation of a literary work must ultimately resort to taste: We can determine, fairly well, whether the translator was acquainted with the prosaic meanings — which are themselves sufficiently varied — of the language from which he translated. After that, we are forced to rely on taste, like migrating birds relying on an intangible sense of orientation.

But is the style of a literary work — and consequently the stylistic ccrrparisan of original and translation — really as 'intangible' as the instinct of a migratory bird? Nida has shown that the semantic theory of Katz and Fodor, together with the generative model of Chansky, can to a large extent describe the oonnotative meanings of a text as well as its denotations. It is true that an examination which merely considers stylistic elements and stylistic features in isolation does not thereby describe the overall style of the whole work. Cicero had already enphasized that, in order to preserve the total effect of the original, the translator should not 'count out' words to the reader but rather 'weigh' them out to him. The style of a given text cannot be described

54 in terms of the sum of the separate stylistic elements and features distinguishable in it; it is rather the characteristic relation in which the various elements stand to one another which determines style. Just as the elements of language itself possess 'value1 (in Saussure's sense) only on the basis of their position in the total system and not as independent units of a mere aggregate, so stylistic elements must be examined in relation to the characteristic qualities of their frequency, distribution, and combination if they are to achieve stylistic 'value' and become true 'features' of style. As a first step on the road to the ultimate aim of 'synthesis' of the style of a specific work, the 'analysis' of stylistic elements is, however, methodologically correct and even necessary. Wolfgang Kayser's fundamental work on literary style, Das spraahliahe Kunstwerk, is organized on the basis of these principles. Only after the stylistic elements of a literary work have been examined separately and in isolation (analysis), can the examination proceed to the description of its overall style (synthesis). The style of a literary work ('Werkstil') may be described as the pervading determination of its form by something internal, the identity of the outer and inner, of form and content ... Every fictional work is thus a uniformly shaped fictional world. To comprehend the style of a work, therefore, means to comprehend the shaping forces of this world and their uniform, individual structure. We might also express the same idea thus: the style of a work is the uniform perception which shapes a fictional world; the shaping forces are the categories or forms of this perception (1948;1967:289f). Vfe recognize the relationship of Kayser's definition of literary style with Schadewaldt's (Hvnboldtian) dynamic view of translation, whereby, "catprising both material and form", the translator attempts to render the "individual sensual-spiritual totality" of the original (1927;1969:255). But Kayser also, before proceeding to a consideration of 'Werkstil' in its totality, lays the necessary foundation by examining separately the individual elements of style. Georg Michel (1968:79f) suggests that these elements should be examined on the basis of the following "aspects": I. Lexical elements (subdivided into 9 aspects); II. Grarrniatical elements (with 5 subdivisions); and III. Phonetic elements (5 subdivisions). I shall make use of seme of these categories later on in the fourth chapter. However, for a comprehensive discussion of the intralinguistic difficulties of translation, J.C. Catford's division of language into five major "varieties" appears more appropriate. In the present examination of the German translation of William Faulkner's novels, Catford's "mode", viiich distinguishes language varieties on the basis of the medium — sound or writing — used for canmunicating the message, does not apply directly, inas-

55

much as we are dealing exclusively with written texts. Indirectly, hcwever, I shall be concerned with the differences between spoken and written language in connection with the other categories: Catford's "dialect", "style", and "register", vÄiich I intend to discuss in the present chapter under the larger heading of "Language of the Characters", to a large extent represent the graphological fixation of spoken language; while the variety of "idiolect", which I will deal with in the next chapter under the heading of "Language of the Author", derives more directly from writing used as the medium of ccnniunication. 2.1.1 "Dialect" - Standard, Social and Geographical The language variety of "dialect" in Catford's definition includes standard language: "For most major languages there is a 'standard' or 'literary' dialect which nay be regarded as unmarked. Texts in the unmarked dialect of the SL can usually be translated in an equivalent unmarked TL dialect" (1965:87). 2.1.1.1 Standard Literary Dialect Most of the difficulties arising in the translation of texts written in standard literary dialect have been adequately dealt with in the preceding chapter. I refer in particular to the seven "procedures" examined by Vinay and Darbelnet and the corresponding discussion in Catford's theory. Nida states, further,that the process of "adjustment" of the translation to the usage of the target language requires "additions, subtractions and alterations" and explains (1964:226): Such terms to some degree distort the picture of the translation process, making it appear that the translator himself performs these operations on the material in question. In point of fact, what he really does, or should do, is to select in each instance the closest natural equivalent. But if the corresponding forms in the source and receptor languages are compared after such equivalents have been selected, it will be found that they conveniently fall into such classes of modification as can be described by these terms: additions, subtractions, and alterations.

Since additions, subtractions, and alterations thus derive automatically, without the aid of the translator, as it were, directly from the necessity of using the "closest natural equivalent", the semantic content of the message is not changed by these operations. In the case of "additions", for exairple, it is sirrply the lexical and/or syntactic system of the target language which forces the translator to raise to explicit status information which is merely inplied in the source-language text; the operation of "subtraction" is the reverse process, i.e. information stated explicitly in the source language is merely inplied in the natural usage of the target language; and "alteration" is the

56 transposition of idiomatic expressions of the source language into formally disparate yet functionally equivalent turns of phrase in the target language. The fact that the translation aims at the "closest natural equivalent" makes it further necessary, e.g. in the case of additions, to consider in the translation not only the obligatory but also the optional categories of the target language: W h e n a r e c e p t o r l a n g u a g e h a s c e r t a i n c a t e g o r i e s , o b l i g a t o r y or o p t i o n a l , w h i c h do n o t exist in the s o u r c e - l a n g u a g e t e x t , it is o b v i o u s l y n e c e s s a r y to add the o b l i g a t o r y c a t e g o r i e s and to w e i g h the d e s i r a b i lity of adding the o p t i o n a l c a t e g o r i e s ... In l a n g u a g e s h a v i n g m a n y o p t i o n a l c a t e g o r i e s the t r a n s l a t o r m u s t j u d g e w h e r e their a b s e n c e w i l l be s t y l i s t i c a l l y n o t i c e a b l e (Nida 1 9 6 4 : 2 3 0 ) .

In this section I shall examine more closely the problem of rendering in German the English, particularly the Faulknerian, forms of address; the examination may serve as a typical example of the necessity of adjusting the translation to both the obligatory and the optional categories of the target language. The fact that the second person pronoun is not further differentiated in modern English, makes it necessary for the German translator to use explicit categories for information which is merely implied in the English text: II. Sing du Ihr^ man

III.

Plur ihr Sie

personal address

familiar formal

inpersonal statement

The diagram shows hew the Weltansioht reflected in the German language considers the (formally speaking) "one-dimensional" English word you as being at least "three-dimensional". In most cases the decision in the first dimension, between singular and plural, is not difficult: the inmediate linguistic context (Catford's 'co-text') makes clear whether one or more persons are being addressed. One would expect that in the second dimension, personal address as opposed to impersonal statement, the decision should be just as simple. looking at concrete cases one finds, however, that this distinction is often entirely overlooked: Giittinger (1963:138-141) cites numerous exanples frcm the Büchergilde-translation of Melville's Moby Diok in which the translator addresses the reader by using the

57 word du,

and thus "becomes personal' , as it were, when the author had intended

merely an inoffensive inpersonal statement. One might feel tenpted to remind such a translator that "you don't do that", but if one were speaking German with him, one would probably even for such personal advice prefer the inpersonal expression, "Das tut man nicht". Of the Faulkner translators examined here, both Hermann Stresau and Harry Kahn occasionally make the same mistake. In his version of "The Bear", Stresau translates the irrpersonal you appearing in a passage of authorial Garment by

du·. and himself looking at her as peacefully as he had looked at McCaslin that first night in this same room, no kin to him at all yet more than kin as those who serve even for pay are your kin and those who injure you are more than brother or wife. (GDM.221) und er sah sie ebenso sanftmütig an, wie er damals an dem ersten Abend in diesem Zimmer McCaslin angesehen hatte, die Frau die mit ihm in keiner Weise verwandt war und doch mehr als verwandt, wie eben diejenigen, die dir für Geld dienen, dir nahestehen und die dich kränken, dir näher stehen als Bruder oder Gattin (Erbe, 289) Of the long passage in which Harry Kahn shifts even within one and the same sentence frcm the appropriate iitpersonal man to the inappropriate personal du, I cite only the relevant sections: ... he thought again how you could never really beat them ...; you didn't have to marshal your forces because you already had them ... and you made your attack ..., swept all before you — or so you thought until you discovered that the enemy had usurped your very battlecry in the process; you believed you had captured a citadel and instead found you had merely entered an untenable position ... (ID,105-106) ...es ging ihm wieder durch den Kopf, dass man niemals den Sieg über sie davontragen könne ...; man brauchte seine Streitkräfte nicht aufzubieten, weil man schon darüber verfügte ... man ging zum Angriff über ..., fegte alles vor sich her, oder man meinte das, bis man merkte, dass der Feind sich deines eigenen Schlachtrufs in dem Prozess bemächtigt hatte; du meintest, du habest eine Zitadelle erobert, und merktest statt dessen, dass du nur in eine unhaltbare Stellung eingedrungen warst ... (Staub, 131) It is possible that Harry Kahn was tenpted into using du because of the difficulty of specifying the correct logical referent of an inpersonal pronoun in translating the phrase "the enemy had usurped your very battlecry" —

but to

a German reader the shift, in one sentence, from iitpersonal man to personal du appears unmotivated and is clearly not a good solution for this translation difficulty which derives from formal differences in the granmatical system of the two languages. The shift makes the passage inmediately recognizable as an exanple of 'translator's German' — Anglicisms (oder

man me-inte das,

even if we disregard the retention of two

and -in dem Prozess)which does not concern us

58

at this tine. Instead of the irrpersonal you which corresponds to the German man, Faulkner's characters frequently use the even more colloquial a man or a feller — and the translator of the majority of the Yoknapatawpha novels, Elisabeth Schnack, usually translates this quite literally into the very un-German ein Mann or ein Bursche, instead of using the canton word man (einem or einen in inflected forms). The most difficult decision, however, is undoubtedly the choice of the suitable pronoun in the third dimension shown in the diagram, the decision between familiar or formal address. Some translators appear to use as their guiding principle the rule that two characters in a novel who address each other by their first names should use du in German, but the situation is rarely so sinple. In England and America the use of first names is much more carrion than the use of du in Germany. German students, for exaitple, may well attend the same lectures for five years and still call each other Sie and Herr Sahmidt and Fräulein Maller, while American students would from the first day never think of using anything but first names; at social gatherings (in America perhaps even more carmonly than in England) one is almost invariably introduoed with one's full nams, rather than as Herr Müller as in Germany, and one would in most cases use the first name to address even a recent acquaintance. Hie members of an American University faculty will 'normally' address each other by their first names — although in formal faculty meetings they may just as 'normally' call each other Professor Jones and Professor Smith. It is clear that the translator cannot make the same persons use the familiar du in one situation and the formal Sie in the other: the German reader would conclude that they are double-faced or hypocritical, a feature not inplied in the original. The guideline that the use of first names by characters in novels written in English corresponds to the familiar form of address in German fiction, is thus a very unreliable rule at best. The translator should be conscious of the fact that, in America at any rate, such titles as Mr. and Professor are used almost exclusively in official coitniunication, and that addressing a person by his first name is merely the 'normal' way of addressing him in everyday social life. In deciding whether you should be rendered by the familiar du or the formal Sie, the translator can thus not be guided by fixed rules based on mechanically applied linguistic markings. This does not mean, however, that English is therefore unable to express fine gradations in interpersonal relations. Gtlttinger

59 (1963:151) thinks that, on the contrary, sirrple categorization of people into two groups, those addressed by du and those addressed by Sie, has an element of crudity about it: It is precisely the way in which in English the various degrees of familiarity are contained in what is said but are not made formally conspicuous, which creates difficulties for the translator — the sliding scale as opposed to the ready-made stamp. If it were the mark of a highly developed language that it gives formal expression to the relation existing between the speaker and the addressee, Japanese would be superior to all European languages.

The reference to Japanese may suggest that languages which use a highly differentiated formal system of address are media of tradition-centered societies, rather than particularly developed languages; Humboldt's theory of language as a view of the world allows the same supposition. Roger Brown and Albert Gilman (1960) trace the developments of pronominal differentiation of address in several languages and suggest a general tendency tcwards greater levelling in modem times. Vfe may then expect in the language of the traditional rural society of the American South a number of formal markings which are no longer found, at any rate not to the sams extent, in modem standard English. Closer examination reveals that this is indeed the case. First the words air and madam. In modem standard English sir is used mainly when differences of rank are to be particularly enphasized, most typically

perhaps in the military service. It also occurs on formal occasions

between pupils and their teacher, and, irore rarely, between office staff and manager, but in these last two situations it is beccming more and more rare, probably owing to an originally intentional, new mostly unconscious 'democratization'.

Similarly the word madam. Apart frcm the very formal address in

letters (and even then, in Anerica at any rate, only when the writer has been unable to discover the name of the person addressed) and between sales clerk and customer (in England even here more carmonly the very informal dear), the word has practically ceased to exist as a form of address in the standard language. 1 In the Southern United States, however, both words are still in ccnrnon use as forms of address. Gflttinger (1963:149) quotes Karl Philipp Moritz's observations on his English journey in 1972: 1

It is possible that the modern lexical meaning of the word madam in America, when pronounced with two syllables as in England, is partly responsible for the obsolescence of the word as a form of address and its now standard American pronunciation ma'm.

60 The word Sir 'Herr' is used in many different ways in English. By the word Sir the Englishman addresses his King, his friend, his enemy, and his dog; he uses it to ask a polite question; and the orator in Parliament to make a transition when he does not know how to continue. Thus Sir? in a questioning tone means: 'what is your command?' - Sirl in a humble tone: 'most gracious King!' - Sirl in a defiant tone: 'you deserve a slap in the face!' - spoken to a dog, it means a beating and accompanied by a pause in Parliamentary speeches it m e a n s : Ί can't remember at the moment.' In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County it still has very similar functions today. Vfe may even add another: a well-bred son still addresses his father with the word sir. Southern negroes usually pronounce the word suh, in I.P.A. transliteration /sa:/; yassuh /j36:sa/ means 'yes, sir' and name in Faulkner-dialogues stands for 'no, ma'm'. Hie word ma'm, in Faulkner almost invariably in this phonetic approximation, has a similar function as the word sir but, contrary to standard American usage, it is even more coinnon in the South than sir. The traditional respect offered to Southern Vfcnanhood demands that practically every female person above the age of ten, even good friends and relatives, should be titled in this way. The word may be used alone, but also in conjunction with Miss and first name ('Miss Lena, ma'm 1 ), with Mrs. and family name (Miz Coldfield, ma'm') or, more canmonly, with Mrs. and first name (Miz Rosa, ma'm'). A further Southern peculiarity in the gradation of polite forms of address is the fact that persons close to the family, particularly negroes, would address its female members by Miz and the first name, while more distant acquaintances would use Miz and the

family name. A final Southern custom observed by Faulkner' s

characters is that well-bred white people should address elderly 'decent' negroes by Unole or

Aunt and their first names: the titles Mr., Mrs., and

Miss are reserved for whites, but it would be impolite not to give an old negro any title at all —

quite apart from the fact that he may well actually be the

uncle of a white nephew. The average American reader (not only the Southerner), and probably the average English reader as well, is, of course, familiar with these varied forms of address and the social gradations they express. The German reader, however, —

frequently even the German translator —

does not automatically

understand them, and the "crude German method of sinply dividing people into classes of du and Sie ", as Gtlttinger expressed it, cannot discriminate sufficiently. In the case of the socially equal meirbers of a rural comnunity (Frenchman's Bend) or the inhabitants of a small tcwn (Jefferson), the translator will probably choose the pronoun du for persons addressing each other

61 directly, since this is the way they would address each other in rural Germany. The fact that the wives of the men who call each other du are nevertheless addressed by the word ma'm or Miz Tubbs would, hcwever,appear strange to the German reader. The translator may thus have to use first names and du for the wives as well, or avoid any direct address altogether. But even a third-person reference to Miz Tubbs will appear strange to the German reader, who in such situations mi^t rather expect sane other colloquial expression, as for exairple 'dem Tubbs seine Frau'. There is the further risk that the German reader, even if he is quite familiar with the standard titles Mr., Mrs. ,and Miss, which at the present time are commonly, and correctly, left untranslated, may well understand Miz as a first name rather than the Southern dialect way of pronouncing Mrs.

Most translators, however, also transfer this title

bodily into their German versions, possibly because they are themselves not quite sure exactly vtfiat it means. It seans to be general practice, today, to leave the words sir and ma'm untranslated; this is doubtless better than the old translations mein Herr and meine Dame which have practically disappeared from current German usage. In certain situations, hcwever, retention of the English word appears unnecessary and even odd. Kurt Hainrich Hansen, for example, even though he has carefully translated the military ranks of all the characters in A Fable, consistently uses Ja, sir as the standard military reply. In such cases it would certainly have been better to use such a typically military German formula as Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant.' Only Hermann Stresau makes use of this possibility — even in dialogues where the military title is oontextually irrelevant: in his version of "The Bear," Ike's answer of yes,sir, when addressed to the former Confederate officers De Spain or Ccupson, is rendered by Ja, Herr Major,and Ja, Herr General (GDM, 173 & 179, Erbe, 221 & 229y et passim). Cass Edmond's yes, sir addressed to his Uncle Buddy is convincingly translated as Ja, Onkel (GDM, 22, Erbe 32). Elisabeth Schnack in The Mansion retains not only the word sir, but the entire phrase yes, sir, probably in the interest of 'preserving the atmosphere* of the original. But even if this was indeed her intention, the choice must still be considered unfortunate. The aspect of the 'atmosphere' which might deserve special errphasis is the military one, not the foreign: the reader is quite aware of the fact that the action takes place in America without being reminded of it. In this particular exanple (M, 262) the preacher and ex-Marine Goodyhay even mentions that God looked "like any other shavetail just out of a foxhole"; and the translator might reasonably be expected to infer God's

62

military rank from this remark and go on to produce the reply Jauohl, Herr Leutnant! as more accurately re-producing the military "atmosphere" of the original. Other typically Southern forms of address, with which the German reader might not be as familiar as with the words

sir

and

ma'm,

such as

Unole

and

Aunt3 should probably be translated literally into their German equivalents. For a

critical

translation, one might even consider explaining in a glossary

hew social gradations can be given expression in Southern speech by means of various catbinations of titles, first names, and family names. It is true that an attentive reader should be able to recognize the gradations frcm other evidence in the text, but a "dynamic-equivalent" translation should also attempt to reproduce the "cultural redundancy" which is present in the original in order to approximate the original "ocratiunication load" as clearly as possible (cf. Nida 1964:131f). In "The Fire and the Hearth" Faulkner reports how the negro Lucas Beaucharrp refuses to address the white man Zack Edmonds: He listened as Lucas referred to his father as Mr. Edmonds, never as Mister Zack; Cobserve the distinction drawn between 'Mr.-plus-family name', i.e. the standard form,and'Mister-plus-first name', i.e. typical of negroes^ he watched him avoid having to address the white man directly by any name at all with a calculation so coldly and constantly alert,a finesse so deliberate and unflagging, that for a time he could not tell if even his father knew that the negro was refusing to call him mister (GDM, 85 - italics mine).

In his relations with Zack's son Carothers Edmonds, Lucas ... did not even bother to remember not to call him mister, who called him Mr. Edmonds and Mister Carothers or Carothers or Roth or son or spoke to him in a group of younger negroes, lumping them all together, as "you boys" (GDM, 87) .

If the translator had properly understood this passage in which Faulkner himself explains the significance of forms of address, he might have produced a better translation. Hermann Stresau translates as follows: Er hörte es, wenn Lucas von seinem Vater als Mister Zack; er beobachtete ihn, wie überhaupt mit Namen anzureden, mit einer Durchtriebenheit, dass er eine Zeit lang ob sein Vater überhaupt wusste, dass der zu nennen. (Erbe, 121f)

als Mr. Edmonds sprach, niemals er es vermied den weissen Mann so kalten und ständig wachsamen nicht einmal hätte sagen können Neger es ablehnte ihn Mister

Disregarding for the moment the generally very 'wooden' tone of the translation (er hörte es, wenn ...; er beobachtete ihn, wie...·, es ablehnte ihn Mister zu nennen ...; den weissen Mann) and the failure to understand correctly the gramnatical reference of the word even — simply the translation 'nie zu

63 fassende Durchtriebenheit1 for unflagging finesse demonstrates to what extent Stresau has misunderstood his text. The translation of the second quotation makes this even more apparent: ... mit dem alten Neger, der in seinem Fall gar nicht erst daran dachte ihn "Mister" zu nennen ... (Erbe, 124)

Here the translation even says the opposite of what the original says — in this case almost certainly not the result of Stresau's merely overlooking the word not, but a clear failure to understand the meaning of the entire passage and the point the author is making by his explanation of conventional forms of address. A little further we learn that Lucas neglects to call the judge sir, presumably to make the point that as Old Lucius McCaslin's grandson in the male line he is just as good as any white man and has actually more right to the inheritance than Edmonds who is the grandson of Old Lucius' white daughter. It is significant that Stresau translates the passage concerned: "Sagen Sie gefälligst 'Herr' zum Herrn RichterJ" (Erbe, 136). In this same translation Edmonds does indeed address the judge as Herr — not as Herr Richter, vÄiich would be normal German! —

and the negro Lucas is addressed by Sie by the

bailiff although this man very obviously regards him as an ' uppity nigger'. In the same story a travelling salesman also uses the polite form of address in speaking to Lucas: again a very strange decision on the part of the translator, considering that the action takes place in 1940 in the State of Mississippi. On the other hand, Stresau makes the young white man Roth Edmonds address old Lucas Beauchanp and his even older wife Molly by du, while both negroes use the formal Sie in their relations with him. In the original, Roth addresses the old negress as Aunt Molly, and the author makes it very clear that he has a great deal of respect for her: ... the woman who had been the only mother he, Edmonds, ever knew, who had raised him, fed him from her own breast as she was actually doing her own child, who had surrounded him always with care for his physical body and for his spirit too, teaching him his manners, behavior — to be gentle with his inferiors, honorable with his equals, generous to the weak and considerate of the aged, courteous, truthful and brave to all — who had given him, the motherless, without stint or expectation of reward that constant and abiding devotion and love which existed nowhere else in this world for him. (GDM, 87f)

Since we are here concerned with a rural society, one might easily imagine that Roth would express his respect for Tante Molly by using the old form Ihr Vilich is still quite customary in rural ccmnunities in Germany. Unfortunately, Stresau does not avail himself of this opportunity of using an intermediary

64 form of address between du and Sie. A very similar relation exists between Chick Mallison and Lucas Beauchairp in Intruder in the Dust, but Harry Kahn also neglects to use the old form Ihr. Airong the translators examined, only the Helmut M. Braein/Elisabeth Kaiser team use the intermediary form which might well be indicated for oomnunicatian between tenant, especially sharecropper, and landlord. In their translation of The Hamlet even the sewingmachine agent Ratliff unilaterally uses Ihr to Will Varner who in tum calls him du. In the first meeting between Flem Snopes and Jody Varner, the Braenv/ Kaiser translation selects forms of address which express even more subtle social gradations and personal characteristics of the speakers: the inpudent son of the bam-buming sharecropper cannot bring himself to go beyond the intermediary form Ihr tcward his landlord's son, who in turn uses the formal Sie toward the sharecropper's son, probably to emphasize the distance between than — viiich, ironically, Flem will be able utterly to destroy when only a few years later he "passed him", as Patliff egresses it. In Elisabeth Schnack's translation of The Mansion, Mink Snopes addresses his landlord by Sie while he is called du by Will Varner. In all these cases the differing forms of address are used very convincingly and to good effect; it is hardly to be expected that a poor sharecropper would use the familiar form to his landlord, and the polite form frcm Vamer to Mink, for exarrple, would be equally out of character. The fact that in the same translation Mink also addresses Jack Houston by Sie and does not object to being called du by Houston unilaterally is much less convincing, especially since the quarrel which leads to Houston's murder springs from Mink's hurt pride. In the Braeir/ Kaiser translation of The Hamlet we do not find this disparate form of address between Mink and Houston: here each addresses the other by du. In general terms, it may be said that most translators are quite skilfull in their choice of du or Sie. Except in Hermann Stresau's translations, negroes are always and by all people addressed as du, vÄiile they themselves always address all whites as Sie·, in the case of whites among themselves, the translator's choice of pronoun seems to be determined on the basis of his own 'feeling' for the social situation. In most cases this feeling leads to the choice of a form of address which does not appear strange or inappropriate to the German reader, even if it may sometimes be somewhat arbitrary or even inconsistent. Until fairly recently it was, anyway, conman practice among authors to use, irrespective of both consistency and verisimilitude, just that form of address which seems the most appropriate in any given situation —

65 and many readers probably never even noticed the shifts. Hermann Stresau makes use of the possibility of switching betwaen formal and familiar address in his translations of the verbell exchange during the fight between Lucas Beauchanp and Carothers Edmonds in "The Fire and the Hearth"; at mcments of high intensity he allows Lucas to shift frcm Sie to du. Similarly Ike MoCaslin in "Delta Autumn", who himself perhaps somewhat inprobably addresses Roth Emonds' negro mistress as Sie, is in turn called du by her at the final moment of their encounter when the nature of the discourse seems to demand the familiar form. The fact that many of Faulkner's characters appear in a number of different novels translated by different translators, leads to the result that the same characters use the familiar form in one novel and the formal in the next — but this shift probably does not disturb the reader. In the case of the Mink Sncpes— Jack Houston example, the respective social position of the characters is indeed different in the different novels: the Houston of the first volume of the Snopes trilogy is a small farmer who also owes money to Will Vamer, i.e. he is almost the social equal of the sharecropper Mink Snopes; in the last volume, on the other hand, he is represented as an independent landowner with a large herd of pedigreed stock, while Mink still owns only one half-starved ocw. That Faulkner was himself aware of such inconsistencies —

and that he

did not regard them as a fault — may be seen frcm the note with which he prefaced the third volume of the trilogy, The Mansion: ...Since the author likes to believe, hopes that his entire life's work is a part of living literature, and since 'living' is motion, and 'motion'is change and alteration and therefore the only alternative to motion is un-motion, stasis, death,there will be found discrepancies and contradictions in the chirty-four-year progress of this particular Chronicle; the purpose of this note is simply to notify the reader that the author has already found more discrepancies and contradictions than he hopes the reader will ...

Almost all the other failures properly to render the "standard literary dialect" — quite numerous in several of the translations —

can only be

regarded as genuine 'mistakes' which must be attributed to either carelessness or inccrrpetence on the part of the translator. It would therefore appear inappropriate to try to force such individually occasioned failures into general linguistic categories. The present chapter will, in the follcwing section, consider such difficulties of translation as derive frcm the problem of finding the "closest natural equivalent" for forms of geographical and social dialect used in the original.

66

2.1.1.2 Geographical and social dialect In a kind of foreword to Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain writes that he had used seven different dialects in this novel. During his stay at the University of Virginia in 1957-58 Faulkner himself was aksed how many different dialects he tried to distinguish in his own writing; his answer was quite precise (1959; 1965:125): A: I would say there are three. The dialect, the diction, of the educated semi-metropolitan white Southerner, the dialect of the hill backwood Southerner, and the dialect of the Negro — four, the dialect of the Negro who has been influenced by the Northern cities, who has been to Chicago and Detroit.

During the same session (with the English Department Language Program, May 7, 1957), another questioner referred to something Faulkner had said earlier: "I remember yesterday you said that it was the inflection, the sound of the vrords and the dialect that was very much a part of the people that you write about" (p. 127). Just hew carefully he did

indeed attenpt to reproduce the

actual dialect forms emerges clearly from an answer he gave about a year later (May 6, 1958) to

a question asked in an Undergraduate Course in Languages:

Q: Mr. Faulkner, I'd like to ask you about your use of 'ain't' in the dialogue of your characters, in particular in As I Lay Dying. When Anse Bundren is talking to Vernon Tull he says, "I ain't asking it of you", he says, "I can always do for me and mine. I ain't asking you to risk your mule. It ain't your dead; I am not blaming you". Now why do you have the switch from 'ain't'to 'am not'? A: 'Am not' is more positive. Q: So you use 'am not' when you are definite

—

A: Yes, to be very positive, yes. Otherwise they would have said 'ain't' (p. 265).

and, on again another occasion (First-Year English Course, May 20, 1957): Any writer that puts down what he sees and what he hears and that image and that sound come from the proper blending of observation, experience, and imagination. Yes you've got to see what you — the scenes you describe. You've got to hear the voice speaking the speech that you put down. You have to hear the vernacular he speaks in, rather than to think of the speech and then translate it into the vernacular (p. 181).

It is quite apparent, then, that both Faulkner's method and his aim in the use of dialect were essentially the same as Mark Twain had claimed for himself. In fact, a careful reader of Faulkner's novels in the original will not have much difficulty in distinguishing between the four dialects the author himself identifies, and he may even be able to discover a few more "modified varieties". It is true that the 'ordinary Yoknapatawpha County dialect' is in reality

67

a special form of the geographical dialect of the American South, but Faulkner normally used 'standard literary dialect1 to represent the speech of educated Southerners: those anong his characters who belong to the higher social levels, i.e. planters, businessmen, and intellectuals

speak a language whose gram-

mar and vocabulary is not essentially different from standard American English. On this social level, 'Southern dialect' called 'Southern drawl'

manifests itself above all in the so-

i.e. phonologically, and phonological peculiarities

are very difficult to represent with normal graphological means. A further exchange from the May 20, 1957, meeting of the First-Year English Course at the University of Virginia expresses the author's own thoughts on this aspect: Q: Sir, ... I noticed we are missing this Mississippi accent which is so prevalent in your people. You made no attempt to simulate that in the dialect. Is there any reason for that ? A: If the writer puts too much attention to transcribing literally the dialogue he hears, it's confusing to the people who have never heard that speech. That is, some of the words are difficult to spell. They would be — to a Mississippian, he would see the words spelled the way a Mississippian would spell it, he would know how it sounded, but to an outlander he wouldn't know, he would mispronounce that word wrong. You can go only so far with dialect and then there's a point where for the simple reason not to make too much demand on the CreaderD to distract his attention from the story you're telling you've got to draw the line (p. 181).

A further, possibly even more inportant reason for not 'marking' the speech of educated Southerners is this: specially marked language varieties in a literary vrork are used for the purpose of indicating deviations fron the norm — but in Faulkner's world it is precisely the 'ordinary Yoknapatawpha County dialect' vdiich is itself the norm. We mi^t therefore rather expect the dialect of his occasional Yankees to be specially marked to distinguish it frcm the norm of, say, Gavin Stevens' way of speaking. But even this is not the case. The language of the Yankee Colonel in The Unvanquished,

for exanple, is not

essentially different from the language of Grandma Millard; and even the Canadian Shreve MoCannon in The Sound and the Fiery and Absalom,

Absalom.'

speaks just as 'normal' English as his roatmate Quentin Ccmpson frcm Jefferson, Mississippi. It appears, then, that Faulkner uses dialect primarily to indicate the different social standing of his characters. Since, however, in his very accurate reproduction of the speech of characters whose social and educational position differs from the norm, he also and at the same time takes geographically based dialectal peculiarities into consideration, it would be inadvisable to retain, for the purpose of the present investigation, Catford's distinction between 'geographical' and 'social' dialect. In Faulkner's novels,

68

the purpose of the vise of dialect is the social, often sinply the personal 'placing' or even 'typing' of the character; the means used, hcwever, include geographically based diversions frcm the linguistic norm. In his suggestions for the translation of dialectally colored texts, Catford also inplies that the geographical and the social aspects cannot be neatly separated (1965:88): When an SL text contains passages in a dialect other than the unmarked dialect (e.g. in the dialogue of novels) the translator may have to select an equivalent TL dialect. Translation equivalence ... depends on relationship of SL and TL text to "the same" substance; for total translation this is situation substance. In the selection of an equivalent TL geographical dialect this means selection of a dialect related to "the same part of the country" in a geographical sense. Geography is concerned with more than topography and spatial coordinates — and human geography is more relevant here than mere location. Thus, in relation to the dialects of Britain, Cockney is a Southeastern dialect. In translating Cockney dialogue into French, however, most translators would select Parigot as the TL equivalent dialect, even though this is a northerly dialect of French. The criterion here is the "human" or "social" geographical one of "dialect of the metropolis" rather than a purely locational criterion.

Applied to the translation of Faulkner's novels, the above considerations lead to the following conclusions: The translator should render the un-marked language of the educated persons among Faulkner's characters by 'normal' colloquial German. The question hew the specially marked dialect of other characters, e.g. the sharecroppers, the different groups of negroes, or the language of V.K. Ratliff is to be rendered in German, is nore difficult to answer. Catford's reference to the Cockney-Parigot equivalence does not help much in this case: it must even be regarded as fortunate that most translators have resisted the terrptation to use locally defined rural dialects, such as Low German or Bavarian, to render the rural dialect of Faulkner's characters. Even the atterrpt made by Herberth E. Herlitschka to translate the language of Popeye and his gangsters into the dialect of the Berlin underworld is not a proper solution, hcwever close it may seem to cctne to Catford's suggestion. Why is it that Herlitschka's attenpt is unsuccessful, while Catford's similar suggestion to render, for exaitple. Cockney:"'e's gorn" by Parigot: "il a foutu l'cairp" is quite convincing? Why is it inappropriate when, in a randan exaitple frcm the translation of Sanctuary, Tcmry warns Tenple: "Jehn Se mir nach ... sons trappen Se uf'n loses Brett unn liejen unnen, eh Se's wissen"? Herlitschka's failure is due to the fact that his Berlin dialect contains not only lexical and grammatical, but also, and above all, phonological markings.

Such phonetic spellings as "Jehn Se", "uf'n", and "liejen" point much

more strongly to the —

in this case unconvincing — geographical provenance

of the speaker than to his inferior social position or inadequate education.

69 On the other hand, the translator who, in Catford's exarrple, rendered Cockney by Parigot, used only lexical and grairmatical markings (apart from the apocope of the 'e' in 'le', which, however, is not restricted to any particular region) to render a dialect which in the original was marked primarily by graphological/phonological means and which categorized the speaker not only socially but geographically as wall. If, however, the translator were to transplant Popeye to Berlin, it would not be enough to re-christen him "Froschaug"; he would then also have to transpose the entire action of the novel to Berlin and it need hardly be said that such an operation is irrpossible in the case of a novel which forms part of Faulkner's saga of the American South, hcwever much, on a higher level of interpretation, Yoknapatawpha County may be regarded as a microcosm mirrorring the life of all mankind.2 We should therefore modify Catford's suggestion concerning the translation of dialects to include in it this proviso: the TL dialect chosen as the equivalent of the SL dialect must not be phonologically marked as the dialect of a specific region, because this would place the speaker in a geographical position in which plot and scene of the original do not allow him to be ; it should merely indicate the proper social position, i.e. it should place him on as nearly as possible the same social and educational level as he occupied in the original. It is therefore unavoidable that the translator will lose one iirportant means of distinction which was at the disposal of the original author; but this makes it all the more iirportant that he attempt to reproduce, as accurately as possible, the fine gradations in social dialect of the original: they contribute significantly to characterization and they are, in addition, an iirportant element

of Faulkner's humor.

In rendering dialects it is particularly iirportant not to translate literally. Socially significant speech habits are of a different character in different languages. In order to convey to the German reader as accurately as possible the effect which the original had on the American reader, the trans-

2

The fact that, for example, Shaw's Pygmalion and Huxley's Brave New World were both successfully relocated to Berlin shows that such a transposition is indeed quite feasible in the case of works in which the scene of the action is merely the convenient, realistic background for a theme which does not itself depend on it. - At about the turn of the century, several novels by Dickens and Thackeray became very successful in Arabic versions with Cairo as the scene and under the name of the translator as the author: clearly 'adaptations' rather than 'translations' in the proper sense of the word •

70

lator must first of all accurately recognize which deviant forms of English are socially significant. He must then analyse the German language in a similar manner in order to find functionally equivalent — though often formally disparate —

forms which deviate from standard German. In almost all cases he

will have to errploy those procedures which Vinay/DarbeInet had called "proc6d£s indirectes". Particularly frequent will be (in Catford's terminology) "translation shifts": he will be obliged to use "category shifts",i.e. render grammatically non-standard forms of the source language by means of forms which deviate from standard target-language gramnar in an entirely different way; in many cases he will also have to resort to "level shifts"/ i.e. express by lexical means what the original had expressed by grairmatical means, and vice versa. Let us first of all see in what way socially significant levels of speech manifest themselves in English. If one considers the everyday language of educated persons as the un-marked dialect, the speech of persons occupying a lowsr social (or educational) position is "marked" in increasing measure as one moves dcwn the scale. (1) Simplified grammar. - Carefully built sentences of hypotactic structure are relatively rare even in the everyday discourse of educated persons. Further down on the social scale they are almost entirely replaced by paratactic sentences or even elliptical fragments. The tense sequence is no longer handled in a 'logical' fashion; for exanple,in cases where the educated speaker would use the future tense even in colloquial speech, the uneducated might use the present; in narration the present tense frequently takes the place of the preterite. Verb forms are sinplified to an increasing extent. The shall-will distinction in the future tense has practically disappeared from the use of even the educated American, and on an only slightly lower level, going to becomes the standard construction to express futurity (often spelled gonna, if the author wishes to errphasize the speaker's lack of education by means of so-called 'eyedialect'). Still lower on the scale we find regularly constructed analogous forms of irregular verbs, such as knowed instead of knew, and other verb forms not accepted in standard morphology, for exaitple, I seen instead of I saw, he 's went and he done gone instead of he 's gone and

he left, down to the

legendary American negro conjugation of the verb to be: Ah' is, you is, he am... The third-person -s is frequently emitted, but instead often appears in the first person: he go but I says. The few remaining irregular plurals become

71 regularized or approximated to the regular plural by the use of an additional -β: e.g. gooses and feets. (2) Double and triple negative. - Not very long ago the double negative could still be regarded as the standard way of expressing enphatic negation. It was only the application of the extra-linguistic categories of logic and mathematics, particularly during the Age of Rationalism, which led to the proscription of this construction. In modern English, however, double and triple negative clearly indicates a lower level of speech, and such forms as Ί aint done nothin nohow1 are definitely 'sub-standard'. (3) Slang and Vulgarisms.- It is true that slang is also used in the loose, everyday speech of educated persons and the higher levels of society, but its frequency increases — and its kind changes — on lower levels of style. This is even more noticeable in the case of vulgarisms and forceful expletives; damn and heVL are today almost acceptable in polite conversation, but 'stronger' expressions, especially those with a sexual or scatological derivation, clearly place the speaker on the lower end of the social scale (or serve as markers of 'register' rather than 'social dialect'). - Both slang and vulgarisms, however, present so many special problems of translation that they deserve special discussion in a separate section of this chapter. When the translator has thus established the social position of a fictional character as it manifests itself in his social dialect, he must attenpt to reproduce the same social position by using an equivalent German social dialect for the speech of this character. It is true that a nurtber of the categories detailed above apply, in a generell sort of way, to German as well as to English: Parataxis is more common than hypotaxis, and colloquial German as well does not apply the 'rules' of 'consecutio tenporum' very strictly. In detail, however, English 'mistakes' cannot be literally transferred into German if the translation wishes to preserve the effect of the original: 'wrong' verb forms, for example, which are very common in English, are quite rare in German. The double negative as well — which almost all translators render literally — is much less conrnon in German than in English. Hiere are, however, sufficient other means, granmatical as well as lexical, to mark the level of speech in German. The most striking difference between spoken and written German is the tense used in narration. While German narrative written prose, as English, uses the preterite tense, the German oral narrative, contrary to English, prefers the perfect tense. In most German translations we do indeed usually find the perfect

72

tense used in dialogues, but it is also not unconmon that a character is made to ' speak like a book1, sirrply because the translator has neglected to render the English simple past by a German perfect tense. Of the translators examined in this study, Hermann Stresau is probably the worst offender: In his version of Go Downj Moses there are fairly numerous occasions on which he uses the preterite tense in oral narrative embedded in dialogue: sere examples are, Iah versuchte Jim ausfindig zu machen (Erbe, 116); Iah sah ihn (165) ; Iah ging zu dem Wasserlauf (182); Er sahwamm direkt ruber (217); Iah kam her (347). There are numerous other examples throughout the text. Almost as striking — and much more frequently disregarded by translators is the fact that the subjunctive mood is largely avoided in spoken German. The prescribed subjunctive of the present in indirect speech has disappeared even from elevated speech, though it is still 'de rigueur1 in formal written prose. On the highest level of spoken usage it is replaced by the subjunctive of the preterite: Er glaubte, er hätte ihn gesehen, instead of the prescribed ...er habe ihn gesehen. On an only slightly lower level of speech —

in certain re-

gions generally, on all levels of spoken language — the subjunctive of the preterite is further replaced by, formally speaking, the conditional tense Vilich, however, functionally speaking no longer appears to be understood as a conditional: The sentence, Er glaubte3 er würde ihn gesehen haben for many German speakers no longer implies a condition ('he would have seen him if...'), but is understood as sinply the indirect statement he thought he had seen him. Practically all the translators, however, use the hypercorrect subjunctive of the present even in the dialogue of semi-illiterate peasants. Another typical mark of spoken German is the use of the prepositional dative in the place of the genitive: The expression, das Auto von meinem Onkel commonly replaces the written phrase, das Auto meines Onkels. The possessive dative meinem Onkel sein Auto, marks a level of speech which is again lcwer. Unfortunately, most translators do not dare to write such 'bad' German, even to render equally 'bad' English. Not infrequently, translators even use the preceding genitive construction, thereby producing an unwarranted poetic or archaic effect in perfectly normal modem prose, possibly influenced by the preceding possessive of normal English. Several examples can be found on the first few pages of Robert Schnorr's translation of Requiem for a Nun. The general translator's practice of retaining the double or triple negative, a typically English marking of sub-standard language, has a similar effect: It is true that the double negative does occur in German, but it is much rarer than in English

73

and, in addition, usually has a slightly archaic ring. 'Mistakes' in the morphology of verbs in English dialogues might well be rendered in German by the use of the 'wrong' case of nouns and pronouns. Such forms as wegen and mich·,

dem Regent

mit

das

Auto

and von

and incorrect plurals such as zwei-

das

Hiinde,

Haus·, or

the confusion o f

suei

Köters

mir

are n o t

restricted to any geographical dialect and might well be used to reproduce 'generally' sub-standard spoken English by means of 'generally' sub-standard spoken German. In Faulkner's novels, the negroes are the most striking group of persons whose language is dialectally colored. Here the translator must understand that their language — although it may strike him as 'broken' English such as a foreigner mi