THE CONCEPT OF TRANSLATABILITY

Walter Benjamin – The Task of the Translator (1923)

1.THE ORIGINAL (THE WORK OF ART) vs. THE TRANSLATION
Intention: consider the reader, communicate information, transmit the unfathomable

Definition of a bad translation: the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content

Paradox: if the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could the translation be understood on
the basis of this premise?

2. TRANSLATABILITY – what is it?

a. will an adequate translator ever be found?
b. does the original’s nature lend itself to translation and call for it?

3.TRANSLATION = strives to mediate between L1 and L2 by conveying the form and meaning of the
original as accurately as possible.
This is feat doomed to failure because in its afterlife, the original undergoes change and so does the
mother-tongue of the translator.

Kinship of languages. Languages have similar INTENTION but different modes of intention. Compare
the words bread and pain. Their intention is similar (refer to same object). The mode of intention is
different.

“Translation catches fire on the eternal life of the works and the perpetual renewal of language.” (bridge,
copy, medium)
“In translation, the original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air… It can’t live there permanently,
but at least attempts to point to the reconciliation of languages.”

4. While content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of
the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds.”

5. THE ORIGINAL - perennial (L1) vs. TRANSLATION L2a, L2b, L2c

6. The Translator – should he be a poet? E.g. Holderlin’s translation of Sophocles

7. The task of the translator: to find the intended effect (intention) upon the language into which he is
translating which produces in it the echo of the original
Translation has a different intention than the original: it intends language as a whole, taking an individual
work in an alien language as a point of departure.

8. The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, ultimate,
ideational.

9. The idea of translation as divination, search for truth, aiming at “ripening the seed of pure language”

10. traditional concepts such as fidelity/license no longer work, if a translator looks for other things in a
translation than reproduction of meaning
“the language of a translation can, in fact must let itself go, so that it gives voice to the INTENTIO of the
original not as reproduction, but as harmony, as a supplement to the language in which it expresses itself,
as its own kind of INTENTIO.”
The task of the translator – “to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
For the sake of that pure language he breaks through decayed barriers of his own language.”

“just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point… a translation touches the original lightly
and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the
laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux.”

11. a good translation depends upon the TRANSLATABILITY of the original

“Where a text is identical with truth or dogma, where it is supposed to be ‘the true language’ in all its
literalness and without the mediation of meaning, this text is unconditionally translatable. In such case
translations are called for only because of the plurality of languages. Just as, in the original, language and
revelation are one without any tension, so the translation must be one with the original in the form of the
interlinear version, in which literalness and freedom are united. For to some degree all great texts contain
their potential translation between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings. The
interlinear version of the Scriptures is the prototype or ideal of all translation.”

Raquel de Pedro - The Translatability of Texts: A Historical Overview (META, XLIV, 4, 1999)

Two traditional points of view: universalist & monadist

1.Universalist: the existence of linguistic universals ensure translatability (Eugene Nida)

2.Monadist: each lg community interprets reality in its own particular way and this jeopardizes
translatability (Edward Sapir)
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Our understanding is under the spell of the lg which it utilizes (the existence of a lg mediary world) – it is
the lg that builds the ‘real world’
The different perception and mental organization of reality can be used to explain the existence of certain
‘gaps’ bt languages, which can turn translation into a very difficult process.
Consequences of this hypothesis: Terms specific to each lg community/ concepts common to two or more
lg communities yet with different connotations in each// each lg community structures reality in a
different way, according to its own lg codes.

3.A more recent approach: deconstructionism, which questions the notion of translation as transfer of
meaning
the translation of a text affects the way in which that text is perceived and, therefore, there is a “re-
writing” of the original through translation. Target texts cease to be considered as subsidiaries of the
original, which, in turn, becomes dependent on translation. “What makes the foreign text original is that it
is deemed worthy of translation”(Venuti, 1992: 7). This is to say, the act of translating constitutes a
validation of the text that is being translated. Originality ceases to be a chronological concept (i.e. it is not
about which text was produced first) and becomes a qualitative matter (i.e. it refers to the nature of the
text which was conceived first).The question of authorship itself is challenged and translation is seen as a
process in which language is constantly modifying the source text.

TRANSLATABILITY vs. UNTRANSLATABILITY

A taxonomy of text types according to their degree of translatability. In the article “Invariantz und
Pragmatik”, published in 1973, Neubert established a classification in four different categories:
1. Texts which are exclusively source-language oriented: Relatively untranslatable.
2. Texts which are mainly source-language oriented (literary texts, for example): Partially
translatable.
3. Texts which are both source-language and target-language oriented (as the texts written
in language for specific purposes): Optimum translatability.11
4. Texts which are mainly or solely target-language oriented (propaganda, for instance):
Optimum translatability.

At present, the tendency is to presuppose that most texts are translatable, however different the
understanding of the nature of translation may be amongst scholars. > the issue of untranslatability -
different “tags”.
[Studies on cultural issues in translation and on the difficulties of cross-cultural communication have
flourished in recent times. e.g. Translation, History and Culture (1990), edited by Susan Bassnett and
André Lefevere; Translation/History/Culture. A Source Book (1992), edited by André Lefevere; or
Communication Across Cultures (1997), by Basil Hatim.]
In the essay entitled “Linguistic Transcoding or Cultural Transfer? A Critique of Translation Theory in
Germany”, Snell-Hornby proposes that translation scholars move from “text” to “culture” as a translation
unit (Bassnett and Lefevere, 1990: 5). The notion of taking culture as a translation unit is very
attractive. However, whereas it is easy to comprehend the translation of a text as a self-contained process,
it is possible to argue that culture cannot be translated. Culture can be explained or interpreted in its
specific manifestations, but it would appear that “translation” is too restrictive a concept to be applied in
this case. That which is understood by the readers of the source text merely because they belong to the
source culture is what makes the text relatively untranslatable: it will not be grasped by the readers of the
target text merely because of their belonging to a different cultural and/or linguistic community.
To sum up, the consensus now seems to be that absolute untranslatability, whether linguistic or cultural,
does not exist. The notion of untranslatability has been unpopular in the twentieth century mainly due to
ideological reasons. With the expansion in the concept of translation in the twentieth century, the debate
on translatability versus untranslatability loses part of its validity, since the various strategies that
translators can resort to when confronted with a gap between two languages or two cultures are
acknowledged as sound translation mechanisms. At the same time, it is assumed that the perfect
translation, i.e. one which does not entail any losses from the original is unattainable, especially when
dealing with literary translation. A practical approach to translation must accept that, since not everything
that appears in the source text can be reproduced in the target text, an evaluation of potential losses has
to be carried out.
“That nothing is negligible [...] is not a principle that could possibly survive in translation. Priorities must
be set.” (Snell-Hornby & Pöhl, 1989: 79).
ROBERT COOVER – Ghost Town, A Novel

His deputy, who is a goateed fat man with a flattened nose, finds him there in the middle of the dust
street, still rigid and locked in his boots, at high noon. Ho, sheriff, he says, picking up the dropped rope
and looping it over a cocked arm and handing him his fallen rifle, we got a problem. The wimmenfolk in
town is kickin up a awesome aggravation. It’s jest only about gittin raped too reglar by the goddam
savages, but their pants is on fire, it’s a genuwine uprisin. I reckon mebbe you better oughter talk to em.
He blinks into the blinding sunlight, lets his arms unbend and fall to his sides, the rope drop away. Talk to
em? He clears his throat, spits drily into the dead air. The sign on the building in front of him tells him
he’s standing outside the jailhouse. I don’t know nuthin about rape.
Well jest tell em it’s a bad thing’n yu’ll see to it it don’t happen no more.
How the heck am I sposed t’do thet?
Oh, aint much to it. Them wimmen mostly only imagine all that brutified belly-bangin anyhow, they aint
got nuthin better t’do, cept bake pies or warsh our underwear. So you tell em and ifn they don’t jest take
yer word fer it, well we kin slap em around fer a while, or else go cut us a bonyfide scalp or two; thet
should usually oughter pacify em.
He stares down at his deputy, who has eyes like little shotgun pellets buried in his lardy white cheeks and
a dry unwholesome reek about him. I aint much inclined toward takin scalps.
Shore yu aint, sheriff. The deputy smirks, nodding toward the scalp hanging from his gunbelt. But we aint
got no choice, do we? Ifn we let them slits git poked by a buncha wild tattooed injun buttsmashers, it
might cut inta their hankerin fer civvylized dick.
Well thet aint no nevermind t’me. I’m gonna go bunk down in the jailhouse fer a stretch. This job’s
plumb got me bushed.
Aint no time fer that, sheriff, here they come! He can hear them now, whooping and shrieking like
savages on the warpath, sounds like hundreds of them, though there’s no one in sight yet in spite of it
being more or less open space from where he stands all the way to the far horizon. Them ole flytraps is
really riled up, sheriff, they got a awful mad upon themselves! I reckon yu better brace yerself’n ready yer
weepons, yu may hafta shoot a parcel of em!
Suddenly the main street is full of women in bright calico frocks, shawls, aprons and sunbonnets,
marching noisily seven or eight abreast, wielding brooms and rolling pins and banging tin pots, and led by
the ginger-haired salon chanteuse, the one the men call Belle, all rigged out in her dancehall costume,
ruby pin in her cheek and powdered cleavage on display. He takes his deputy’s sleeve-tugging advice and,
cradling his rifle, steps back up on the wooden jailhouse porch for an elevated view, as the women,
looking fierce and determined under the blazing sun, crowd up around below him. one of them, a tall ugly
old buzzard with a frilly housecap pulled down over her tangled greasy hair, hikes her full skirts, reaches
into her bloomers, and hauls out a pistol, shooting into the air. He fires and the gun flies from her hand.
Aw shit, sheriff, she yelps, squeezing her wounded hand between her legs. I wuz jest only tryin t’whoop it
up a little!
Yu got a sumwhut tetchy aspect about yu t’day, sheriff hon, remarks the chanteuse with a wink, giving
her breasts a hitch. Yu have a bad night?
I mighta done. Now whut’s all this ruckus about, Belle?
It’s them devil injuns, sherfiff! They’re jest at it all time!
We caint git no peace! Squawks an ancient hunchbacked granny in a hand-sewn cape and slat bonnet,
stroking her beard with gnarled spidery fingers. It jest aint natcheral!
And they fuck dirty, sheriff, says an ugly wall-eyed woman dressed up in a velvet and silk wedding gown,
with her fat hairy belly sticking out. Not like decent folk do.