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Collaborative Translation
Bloomsbury Advances in Translation Series

Series Editor: Jeremy Munday, Centre for Translation Studies,


University of Leeds, UK

Bloomsbury Advances in Translation Studies publishes cutting-edge


research in the fields of translation studies. This field has grown in importance
in the modern, globalized world, with international translation between
languages a daily occurrence. Research into the practices, processes and
theory of translation is essential and this series aims to showcase the best in
international academic and professional output.

Other titles in the series:

Community Translation, Mustapha Taibi and Uldis Ozolins


Corpus-Based Translation Studies, edited by Alet Kruger,
Kim Wallmach & Jeremy Munday
Global Trends in Translator and Interpreter Training, edited by
Séverine Hubscher-Davidson & Michał Borodo
Music, Text and Translation, edited by Helen Julia Minors
Quality In Professional Translation, Joanna Drugan
Retranslation, Sharon Deane-Cox
The Pragmatic Translator, Massimiliano Morini
Translation, Adaptation and Transformation, edited by Laurence Raw
Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese Context, edited by
Nana Sato-Rossberg & Judy Wakabayashi
Translation as Cognitive Activity, Fabio Alves & Amparo Hurtado Albir
Translating For Singing, Mark Herman & Ronnie Apter
Translating Holocaust Lives, edited by Jean Boase-Beier, Peter Davies,
Andrea Hammel and Marion Winters
Translation, Humour and Literature, edited by Delia Chiaro
Translation, Humour and the Media, edited by Delia Chiaro
Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust, Jean Boase-Beier
What Is Cultural Translation?, Sarah Maitland
Collaborative Translation

From the Renaissance to the Digital Age

Edited by
Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2017

© Anthony Cordingley, Céline Frigau Manning and Contributors, 2017

Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted


in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
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refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by
Bloomsbury or the author.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-0602-7


ePDF: 978-1-3500-0605-8
ePub: 978-1-3500-0604-1

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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Series: Bloomsbury Advances in Translation Studies

Cover image © joto/gettyimages

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Research for this publication has been funded by the French Laboratories of Excellence
Arts-H2H (Investissements d’avenir program ANR-10-LABX-80-01) and TransferS
(Investissements d’avenir program ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02PSL* et ANR-10-LABX-0099),
as well as the Institut Universitaire de France.
Contents

Notes on Contributors vii

1 What Is Collaborative Translation? Anthony Cordingley and


Céline Frigau Manning 1

Part 1 Reconceptualizing the Translator: Renaissance and


Enlightenment Perspectives

2 On the Incorrect Way to Translate: The Absence of Collaborative


Translation from Leonardo Bruni’s De interpretatione recta
Belén Bistué 33

3 ‘Shared’ Translation: The Example of Forty Comedies by Goldoni


in France (1993–4) Françoise Decroisette 49

4 For a Practice-Theory of Translation: On Our Translations of


Savonarola, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Their Effects
Jean-Louis Fournel and Jean-Claude Zancarini 68

Part 2 Collaborating with the Author

5 Author-Translator Collaborations: A Typological Survey


Patrick Hersant 91

6 Vladimir Nabokov and His Translators: Collaboration or


Translation Under Duress? Olga Anokhina 111

7 Günter Grass and His Translators: From a Collaborative Dynamic


to an Apparatus of Control? Céline Letawe 130

8 Contemporary Poetry and Transatlantic Poetics at the Royaumont


Translation Seminars (1983–2000): An Experimental Language
Laboratory Abigail Lang 145
vi Contents

Part 3 Environments of Collaboration

9 Online Multilingual Collaboration: Haruki Murakami’s European


Translators Anna Zielinska-Elliott and Ika Kaminka 167

10 Translation Crowdsourcing: Research Trends and


Perspectives Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo 192

11 The Role of Institutional Collaborations in Contexts of Official


Bilingualism: The Canadian Example Gillian Lane-Mercier 212

12 A New Ecology for Translation? Collaboration and


Resilience Michael Cronin 233

Index 247
Notes on Contributors

Olga Anokhina, a linguist and a researcher at the Institute for Modern Texts
and Manuscripts (CNRS-ENS), works on the genesis of literary works by
multilingual writers. She edited the collective volumes Multilinguisme et
créativité littéraire (2012) and Écrire en langues: littératures et plurilinguisme
(2015). Her interests include the cognitive aspects of the written production,
multilingualism and creation. Within ITEM, Olga Anokhina is head of the
research team Multilingualism, translation, creation.

Belén Bistué is Associate Researcher in Comparative Literature for the


Argentine Research Council (CONICET) and Assistant Professor of English at
the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. She specializes in translation history, with a
focus on Renaissance collaborative and multilingual translation practices. Her
publications in this field include ‘The Task(s) of the Translator(s): Multiplicity
as Problem in Renaissance European Thought’ (2011), winner of the A. Owen
Aldridge prize, and the groundbreaking Collaborative Translation and Multi-
Version Texts in Early Modern Europe (2013).

Anthony Cordingley is Associate Professor of English and Translation Studies at


Université Paris 8, presently on secondment to the University of Sydney as ARC
Discovery Early Career Research Fellow. He edited Self-translation: Brokering
Originality in Hybrid Culture (Bloomsbury 2013) and co-edited the 2015 issue of
Linguistica Antverpiensia, ‘Towards a Genetics of Translation’. A literary scholar
with a special interest in Samuel Beckett, digital editing and manuscript genetics
he has published in journals such as Comparative Literature, Modern Philology
and Journal of Modern Literature. He is completing the Comment c’est/How It Is
module of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.

Michael Cronin is Professor of Translation Studies at Dublin City University. He


is the author of Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages and Identity (Cork
University Press, 1996); Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork
University Press, 2000); Translation and Globalization (London, Routledge,
2003); Translation and Identity (Routledge, 2006); Translation Goes to the Movies
viii Notes on Contributors

(Routledge, 2009) and Translation in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2013). He is a


member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Academia Europeae.

Françoise Decroisette is Emeritus Professor at Université Paris 8. A specialist of


Italian theatrical practices from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, she
has translated into French Basile’s Le Conte des Contes, de’ Sommi’s Les Quatre
dialogues en matière de représentations théâtrales, librettos, comedies written by
Goldoni for various publishers and directors (Lassalle, Morin, Cals, Hollund),
as well as Gozzi’s L’Oiseau Vert. She also oversaw the collaborative translation of
Gozzi’s Mémoires inutiles.

Jean-Louis Fournel is Professor of Italian Studies at Université Paris 8,


member of the Institut Universitaire de France, of the Laboratoire d’études
romanes and the UMR Triangle. With J.-C. Zancarini, he translated works
by Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Savonarola. His more recent books are La
Grammaire de la république (2009), La cité du soleil et les territoires des hommes
(2012) and, as editor, Les mots de la guerre dans l’Europe de la Renaissance
(with M.-M. Fontaine, 2015).

Céline Frigau Manning is Associate Professor of Italian and Theatre Studies


at Université Paris 8, and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. A
specialist of theatre and opera, she was resident scholar at the Villa Medici.
Her work has appeared in Opera Quarterly and Nineteenth-Century Music, and
she is the author of Chanteurs en scène. L’œil du spectateur au Théâtre-Italien
(1815-1848) (Champion, 2014). Founder of the translation collective La Langue
du bourricot, which has published translations of plays by Matteo Bacchini,
Antonio Moresco, and Emma Dante, she is coediting with Marie Nadia Karsky
a volume on theatrical translation.

Patrick Hersant teaches English literature and translation at Université Paris 8.


His research concerns modern and contemporary poetry. Recent publications
include a study of the translations of ‘Kubla Khan’ (S. T. Coleridge: In Xanadu,
Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2016) and the forthcoming Traduire avec
l’auteur, an edited collection devoted to author-translator collaboration. As
a translator, he has published French versions of British poets such as Philip
Sydney, R. L. Stevenson, Edward Lear and Seamus Heaney.

Miguel Ángel Jiménez-Crespo holds a PhD in Translation and Interpreting


Studies from the University of Granada, Spain. He is an associate professor in
Notes on Contributors ix

the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University, where he directs


the MA and undergraduate certificate in Spanish-English Translation and
Interpreting. He is the author of Translation and Web Localization published by
Routledge in 2013, and his papers have appeared in translation studies journals
such as Target, Meta, Perspectives, Lingüistica Antverpiensia, TIS: Translation
and Interpreting Studies, Jostrans as well as Translation and Interpreting. He is
the assistant editor of the upcoming John Benjamins journal JIAL: the Journal of
Internationalization and Localization.

Ika Kaminka studied art history at the University of Bergen and presently
works as translator of Japanese literature into Norwegian. She has translated
a number of books by Haruki Murakami in addition to Natsume Sōseki and
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. In 2012 she was awarded the Bastian Prize for her rendering
of Murakami’s 1Q84. Kaminka is presently chair of the Norwegian Association
of Literary Translators.

Abigail Lang is Associate Professor at Université Paris-Diderot (LARCA-UMR


8225). She is the author of a study on Louis Zukofsky and, with Thalia Field, of
A Prank of Georges (Essay Press, 2010). With David Nowell Smith she co-edited
Modernist Legacies. Trends and Faultlines in British Poetry Today (Palgrave, 2015).
Recent translations into French include books by Rosmarie Waldrop (L’attente,
2011), Lorine Niedecker (Corti, 2013), Ashbery and Schuyler (Presses du Réel,
2015). She is a member of the Double Change collective (www.doublechange.org).

Céline Letawe has a PhD in philosophy and literature and a specialized degree in
translation studies. She has published her PhD dissertation in German literature
(Max Frisch. Uwe Johnson. Eine literarische Wechselbeziehung, 2009), and has
begun research on literary translation in the framework of a postdoctoral stay at
the archives of the Berliner Akademie der Künste in 2011. She teaches translation
studies and translation at the University of Liège.

Gillian Lane-Mercier is Associate Professor of French literature at McGill


University. Her research interests include literary theory, translation studies,
the sociology of translation, the history of literary translation in Canada
and twentieth-century French literature. Author of La parole romanesque
and co-author of Faulkner: une expérience de retraduction, she has published
numerous articles in top European and North American journals. She is
currently embarking on a large-scale project on the emergence of traditions of
literary translation in Canada since 1980.
x Notes on Contributors

Jean-Claude Zancarini is Emeritus Professor of Italian Studies at the École


Normale Supérieure de Lyon (UMR Triangle, Labex COMOD). His research
concerns political thought, sixteenth-century theatre and translation. He has
translated Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Savonarola (with Jean-Louis Fournel) and
literary texts (Fenoglio, Fruttero and Lucentini, Nigro, Vegliani, Sofri, Pasolini).
With Séverine Gedzelman, he created HM tool (HyperMachiavel) which allows
for the comparison of an original text with its translations.

Anna Zielinska-Elliott is a translator of modern Japanese literature into Polish.


She has translated Mishima Yukio, Yoshimoto Banana and most of the works of
Murakami Haruki. Educated in Poland and Japan, she holds a PhD in Japanese
literature from the University of Warsaw. She teaches Japanese language, literature
and translation at Boston University, and has published a number of articles on
Murakami and translation, in addition to a literary guide to Murakami’s Tokyo.
1

What Is Collaborative Translation?

Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning

If I sit down to translate, alone, finish the task and dispatch my text, does the
translating end here? Or does it end once the text has been checked by the
reviser, editor, the author, other colleagues or by me again? Are the others who
work on my text, publish it, sell it, read it, debate it also translating? Are they part
of the translation? What if I sit down to translate, with others? What if they are
not in the same room, now, in the past, or the future? What if we share the task
between us? What if we have to? Are we performing the same activity? What if
we have separate roles? Can I do any of this alone? What if I do not know the
others? What if I do not agree with them? What if they are a machine? What is
collaborating, collaboration? What is translating, translation?
The popular image of the lonely translator is strikingly at odds with the reality
of his or her work within the profession. In both literary and ‘pragmatic’ contexts,
many ‘collaborators’ with different roles will typically shape a translated text before
it is published. Even if one defines translation narrowly, limiting it to decoding a
source text and writing it in another language, throughout history the practice has
not always been assumed to be a solitary affair. From Antiquity to the Renaissance,
translation was frequently practised by groups comprised of specialists of different
languages and with varied skills. At the centre of translation teams, experts from
various cultures came together to find solutions to translation problems, and
the acts of reading and rewriting were often separated and multiplied between
participants. Yet, during the Renaissance, prefaces and tracts which discussed
translation tended to elide these collaborative practices to promote a singular act.
Tracing this history in the West, Belen Bistué (2013) has argued that the desire
to represent translation as a conflation of different roles derived from a will to
accord the translated text poetic unity and singular authority. This aligned it with
wider political processes in Europe that were consolidating power around the
unification of church, state, family and patriarch. Devolving upon the individual
2 Collaborative Translation

the task that was sometimes performed by the many allowed those writing
about translation to promote an image of the translator as the text’s surrogate
author. It presented the translator with the daunting challenge of equalling the
comprehension of the author in the author’s tongue while matching that author’s
skill and style in another. The many hands that had frequently contributed to the
production of a translation were not replaced by a more expert, singular genius;
rather, the discourses around translation sought to suppress them so as to posit
the translator as surrogate author.
The trope of the solitary translator is thus not simply a post-Romantic
construct which mirrors that of the solitary genius. Translators continue to
be defined in relation to literary authors in ways that often little resemble the
reality of their work. The vast majority of translators, especially those working
in pragmatic or audiovisual contexts, must accept their role in the creation of
a negotiated, dynamic text over which they have only provisional authority,
knowing that their work may be modified significantly by revisers, editors,
dubbing adapters and publishers of some form. In recent years, authors have
been dethroned by certain literary historians (those, that is, who had not
already declared the author dead) and placed among their fellows at court: their
collaborators. This chapter will chart this process with reference to the English
literary tradition in particular, not to perpetuate a vision of translators filtered
through the prism of the literary authorship of a dominant culture, but rather to
interrogate the effects of that very equation. Furthermore, the following chapters
reclaim the plurality of translating through heterogeneous times and spaces,
between individuals and institutions of varying degrees of power, control and
respect for translation; they offer a panorama of collaborative translation, from
dyadic interactions to networks of actors, modalities and technologies. Indeed,
given the overwhelming diversity of skills, knowledge and practices that emerge
here, populating a vast landscape of translation, one may legitimately ask: what
does ‘collaborative translation’ mean? To address this question, we will retrace
the evolution of the most powerful myths of collaboration and explore how
current translation practices are influenced by the contemporary rhetoric of the
‘collaborative’ that is pervading social, political, economic and digital life.

Relationality and the perils of definition

It is not uncommon to see discussions of collaborative translation highlight


the many, often contradictory or conflicting practices included under the
What Is Collaborative Translation? 3

term’s umbrella by referencing various dictionary definitions for ‘collaboration’.


Inevitably, scholars exploit the ambiguous coexistence of collaboration’s positive
and negative connotations in English and other European languages – the
treacherous ‘collaboration with the enemy’ versus its more benevolent or even
selfless forms of cooperation – as a way of approaching the multiplicity of
situations, motivations and hierarchies that structure collaborative translation
practices. Indeed, the approach is often used when scholars try to grasp the
complicated notion of ‘translation’ itself. Such definitional problems increase
exponentially when one considers these terms in different language contexts
and their translation. For instance, in English the more benign adjective
‘collaborative’ was welcomed as the standard term for translations signed by
one or more translators, while this term was avoided for a long time in France,
where it still echoes uncomfortably with the historical fact of the nominalized,
historical Collaboration. Yet most likely under the influence of (global) English
spread through the internet and the vocabulary of translation technologies, the
term traduction collaborative is becoming more and more accepted in France,
where once traduction collective was the norm (though Francophones outside
France appear less sensitive to the question). Equally, a move in the opposite
direction would be problematic, for in English the adjectival use of ‘collective’
in ‘collective translation’ might for some suggest a notion of mass translation
factories or production lines, far from the idealized political harmony permitted
in such friendly compounds as ‘theatre collective’ or ‘artists’ collective’.
Yet, even more so than for other ambiguous terms, turning to the dictionary
for a definition of collaborative translation will never suffice. The field of
collaborative translation understood as an enumeration of practices resists
nominal definition: the field is non-essential, open and dynamic, and the position
of any one collaborative translation event within its unique fabric of relations
is constantly shifting. A relational definition of collaborative translation offers,
on the other hand, the possibility for multiple definitions of the term to evolve
from changes in its elements and the relationships between them at a given
moment. A nominal definition defines a term by its characteristics (collaborative
translation, CT = a, b, c, d), whereas a relational definition describes one thing
through its relationships or absence of relationships with other elements and the
forms of those relations themselves. The identity of a translation event is thus
not expressed in terms that are monistic (CT = a) or dualistic (CT = not (not
CT)), but relational, where the semantic definition of the identity of CT includes
its relations to its external world and the relational reflexivity of that world with
it. As such, a relational definition allows for a multiplicity of relational elements
4 Collaborative Translation

to be defined within a general concept, the capacity to compare different


definitions for a concept and the possibility of accommodating a dialectic
between the myths that it generates and those that fuel it. As with any definition,
a relational definition cannot exist outside of the way we articulate it. When one
speaks of collaborative translation, one’s subjective position, as much as one’s
collective historical position, necessarily situates one within that network and its
definition, altering its relationships.
Within a relational paradigm, the translator is no longer a fixed intermediary
between traditional binaries of source text/culture and target text/culture, he or
she is now an active node in an evolving and dynamic web. But when multiple
translators work together, is the translator’s authority and status multiplied? Is
it divided, be it in symbolic, semantic, legal or financial terms? If the translator
already suffers from a lesser authority, is this weakness increased by a plurality
of translators? Discourses around collaborative translation regularly posit its
many practices either as a galvanizing force or as a source of division. Might
the recognition of the collaborative aspect of translation, however, threaten the
hard-won recognition of the translator’s creativity? And while some voices in
translation studies aspire for translators to be considered in terms comparable
to those used for single authors, this has occurred at a moment when the very
model of single authorship is being called into question. Indeed, definitions of
the labour of translation currently include many activities that have not been
considered to be translation in the traditional sense of the term, to the extent
that in current usage, collaborative risks becoming a synonym for notions such
as social, transaction, production, or even relation itself. If it is none of these
precisely, its usage in the field now relates to them all, with varying degrees
of proximity. Indeed, the semantic effervescence bubbling around the term at
present is in great need of some historical contextualizing.

Author and translator: Myths of singularity

The most immediate understanding of collaboration in translation derives from


how the term has been applied to authorship: ‘the act of sharing authority over
a work or some portion of it’ (Shillingsburg 1996: 173). Yet was the writer ever
the work’s sole author, or its authority? The convenient separation of Western
literary history into epochs of Antiquity, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment,
Neo-Classical, Romantic, Modernist and post-Modern periods has offered blunt
categories for debating if and when authorship became or ever was a solitary
What Is Collaborative Translation? 5

affair. Scholars have highlighted how foundational texts of Western literature,


by such canonical authors as ‘Homer’ or ‘Sappho’, in fact evolved over the course
of many generations as they moved from oral to print cultures, invalidating any
notion of their singular authority. The controversy surrounding the extent of
Shakespeare’s authorial activity is representative of how collaborative authorship
has been perceived differently since the Renaissance; it is exemplary of the
problem of generalizing authorial practices based on generic assumptions of
periodization or different theoretical orientations, and serves as a paradigmatic
case for interrogating the myth of solitary genius. Indeed, the complex networks
that sustained the Elizabethan stage offer a visible microcosm of the kinds of
collaborative practices that have been attributed to non-theatrical texts, serving
as a productive analogy of the dynamics of textual production and reception that
are pertinent to translation. The demands placed upon the act of translation in
the Renaissance redoubled those attributed to the author, and the imperative to
characterize translation as a singular act should be understood in the context of
the ideological imperative to sustain myths of singular authorship.
Collaboration has been intensely debated in Renaissance scholarship, especially
with respect to the claim that there is a ‘simple, universally accepted truth’ that
Shakespeare’s ‘artistic genius … stands alone’ (Ackerman 2003: 2). Expressed in
the forward to The Bard on the Brain, a neurological inquiry into Shakespeare’s
characters, such uncritical bardolatry abstracts the transcendent Poet from
the craftsman of the actor-writer, and shows that even though collaborative
dimensions to Shakespeare’s production have been discussed since the nineteenth
century, the myth of his unique genius has a tenacious hold on both the popular
and scientific imagination (see Knapp 2009: 34–5). Yet scholars are divided as
to whether Shakespeare is ‘co-author’ or ‘collaborator’, and often disagree on the
definition of these terms. They tend nevertheless to admit that the man wrote
plays which others revised or to which they contributed, and that he worked
within a corporate theatre where the theatrical text was shaped by negotiations
between playwrights, stage managers and directors, the actors on stage, the crew
in the wings and the audience in the pit. When this text was set in print, it could
not only be subject to revisions by certain collaborators but was also prone to the
vagaries of scribes, censors, printers and editors.1 The terminological instability
between different definitions of collaboration, not to mention the introduction
of the term ‘co-author’, resembles certain ambiguities in present declensions of
collaboration with or between translators, to which we will return.
In his influential study, Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and
Sexualities in Renaissance Drama, J. Masten (1997) asserts that ‘collaboration’
6 Collaborative Translation

should no longer be regarded ‘as an aberrant form of textual production in a


period and genre in which it in fact predominated’ (7) and that this form of
cultural production cannot be accounted for by simply doubling or replicating
the single author model: ‘Two heads are different from one’ (19). He counsels
scholars to ‘forego anachronistic attempts to divine the singular author of each
scene, phrase, and word’. In so doing, Masten takes aim at the sizeable body of
scholars who assume the work of detecting and analysing which words belong
to whom in the plays of the period; in particular, he critiques the ideological
orientation of the small industry of scholars that applies quantitative measures,
such as computational stylometrics, to “Shakespeare” texts in order to separate
the Bard from his collaborators or ‘co-authors’ (e.g. Vickers 2002; Craig and
Kinney 2009). Masten charges the work of attribution scholars as ‘anachronistic’
by applying Foucault’s influential argument of his 1969 text ‘What is an Author?’
Foucault outlined his concept of the ‘author-function’ by arguing that in the West,
prior to ‘the seventeenth or eighteenth century’, ‘ “literary” narratives (stories,
epics, tragedies, comedies) were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized
without any question about the identity of their author’ (1984: 109). With
recourse to definitions of authorship provided by copyright law, Foucault states
that prior to this period literary texts did not require the ‘attribution to an author’
that emerged ‘once strict rules concerning author’s rights, author-publisher
relations, rights of reproduction, and related matters were enacted’ (108).
Masten combines this theoretical argument with certain insights from earlier
Shakespeare scholarship, notably Bentley’s (1971: 197–234) proofs – disputed by
others – that collaborative writing was the rule rather than the exception in the
London theatre, not only for Shakespeare, but also for Beaumont and Fletcher,
Greene, Marlowe, Peele, Dekker, Webster, Middleton and Heywood. Masten
(10, 19) uses Foucault to justify the broader claim that attributing authorship
to texts of the period is misguided because it maps onto dominant collaborative
practices an ideology of individual authorship. Collaboratively written plays, he
argues, precede, elude and resist ‘categories of singular authorship, intellectual
property, and the individual that are central to later Anglo-American cultural,
literary, and legal history’ (361–2).
This thesis has had a powerful effect upon the notion of authorship in
Shakespeare scholarship. It has become unavoidable in any serious treatment
of collaboration in the period, is reiterated in entries on collaboration in widely
read companions to the Renaissance or Shakespeare (e.g. Hoenselaars 2012;
McGuire 2002) and is regularly discussed in studies of modern authorship
What Is Collaborative Translation? 7

(e.g. Bennett 2005). Yet Masten’s contention, and the validity of Foucault’s view of
history, have been vigorously rebuked, notably by Brian Vickers in Shakespeare,
Co-Author (2002: 506–41) and Jeffrey Knapp in Shakespeare Only (2009). Such
scholars do not deny that the Elizabethan theatre functioned through networks
of collaboration; rather, they accuse historians who oppose collaboration and
singular authorship of ‘distort[ing] the historical picture’ for ideological reasons;
they hold that this ‘has prevented theatre scholars from recognizing that
paradigms of single authorship not only significantly predated Shakespeare but
also dominated his contemporaries’ sense of how plays were written’ (Knapp
2009: 18–19). For Knapp the risk of this interpretation of Foucault is that
everything prior to the seventeenth century may be deemed ‘collaborative’, which
‘is to miss the real innovativeness of large-scale coauthorship in the Renaissance
theatre’ (2009: 120). In a less polemical fashion, Hirschfeld (2004) demonstrates
that collaborative authorship could have models and purposes which surpass
Masten’s assumption of a possessive versus non-proprietary authorship.
The distinction that such Renaissance scholars draw between ‘collaboration’
and ‘co-authorship’ hinges upon the degree to which one affirms the presence
of any individual author in a text. When Vickers writes that ‘anyone who had
studied the Renaissance in even a perfunctory manner would have to be suffering
from amnesia to imagine that “the author” had not then “emerged” ’ (2004: 528),
he believes, in spite of a multitude of printing and editorial vagaries, not only
that certain words of Shakespeare’s texts are the Bard’s alone, but also that the
living writer felt ownership over them, perceived himself as their author and
was known by his peers and audiences as such. This contrasts with the tradition
that emphasizes the role of the institution: ‘The company commissioned the
play, usually stipulated the subject, often provided the plot, often parceled it out,
scene by scene, to several playwrights. The text thus produced was a working
model, which the company then revised as seemed appropriate’ (Orgel 1981: 3).
This view of decentred authority is dispersed even further by Stallybrass (1992:
601): ‘Instead of a single author, we have a network of collaborative relations,
normally between two or more writers, between writers and acting companies,
between acting companies and printers, between compositors and proofreaders,
between printers and censors.’
The quarrel surrounding collaboration in Renaissance drama reflects the
common divides of literary theory. Post-structuralists point to the fact that a
reader has no access to an individual author’s subjectivity and that any such
attempts only encounter social structures that are themselves subject to
8 Collaborative Translation

prevailing (capitalist) discourses of power and knowledge. Their interpretation of


‘collaborative’ processes implies that subjectivity is structured from without and
dispersed or fragmented throughout the network in which it is implicated; thus
the author’s function cannot be reconciled with the individual. Their detractors
hold, on the other hand, that when individuals collaborate within networks they
exercise their subjectivity, of which evidence remains in the material text.
Furthermore, the use of the term ‘co-author’ by scholars such as Vickers
and Knapp highlights their struggle to separate the writing of playwrights who
laboured on the genesis of their works – however contingent that ‘text’ may
have been – from subsequent interventions by ‘collaborators’ who performed
different functions (revising that does not significantly alter the text, performing,
transcribing, editing, acting, printing). They admit however that these functions
can resemble authorship, and do indeed leave material traces in the texts which
are passed on to future readers. They view the question as one of degree: the
authority of collaborators lessens as their capacity to alter the text diminishes.
Furthermore, they point to the fact that if there were only networks of social
and institutional interaction one could never account for the individuality of the
works produced. Indeed, some acknowledge the fallacy of ever thinking that a
reader has access to the intentions and subjectivity of an author and may object
to Harold Bloom’s conservative edification of the Western canon, yet are willing
nevertheless to concede that Bloom has grounds for arguing that, in cases of
roughly equivalent circumstances, aesthetic differences between authors cannot
be ignored: ‘If it is arbitrary that Shakespeare centers the Canon, then they
[social constructivists] need to show why the dominant social class selected him,
rather than say, Ben Jonson, for that arbitrary role’ (1995: 24). Yet for Knapp, the
existence of the individual author and a notion of singular authorship should not
exclude the coexistence of a collaborative author and notions of simultaneous
co-authorship. He highlights the plurality of roles that one can play within a
given structure: Shakespeare the actor-playwright, director, collaborator and
author are, in this line of reasoning, each ‘diverse yet inseparable components of
his professional identity’ (Knapp 2005: 19). Such critics imply that collaboration
is simply a fact of production and that endowing all collaborators with authority
is to introduce, from the distance of the critic, a certain pedantry which confuses
roles in a way that was foreign to the understanding of those at the time.
Renaissance translators and printers remain, on the other hand, interde-
pendent but distinct in A. E. B. Coldiron’s (2015) Printers Without Borders:
Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance. While they ‘co-operated closely’,
What Is Collaborative Translation? 9

translator and printer exercise separate functions, even if they may inhabit ‘the
same body, since many early English printers, beginning with Caxton, were
themselves also translators’. Coldiron likens each to early-twentieth-century
film producers, ‘not faceless middlemen or technicians, but entrepreneurs,
experimenters’ (3). Their combined effort to ‘creat[e] not only linguistic read-
ability but also cultural comprehensibility’ during the first two centuries of the
printing press in England involved printers ‘ “translating” continental technol-
ogy and technique as much as the translators were rendering words, styles, gen-
res’ – a symbiosis that helped realize the potentiality of each (3–4). Coldiron’s
stereoscopic view of book and translation history contrasts with Dobranski’s
(1999) use of bibliographical and literary research when considering a figure
whose eminence in the English tradition approaches that of Shakespeare’s. In
Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade he argues that Milton’s self-fashioning
as a solitary writer contrasts with the culture of amanuenses, acquaintances,
printers, distributors and retailers who could shape the poet’s content and were
accountable for it. Dobranski suggests that each collaborator might ‘qualify as
the book’s “author”’ in a wide definition of the term, or if not, at least ‘shar[e]
responsibility for the finished product’ (37). Paradise Lost is thus born from
a ‘collaborative genesis’ and ‘Milton was creating his poem as part of a com-
munity’ (37). Dobranski accuses critics of applying a modern notion of unitary
authorship that is inappropriate to seventeenth-century publishing when, he
argues, they fail to understand that instances of textual incoherence in Milton’s
work arise precisely because many hands shaped the work: ‘The construction
of the poet John Milton has effaced the book’s various collaborators’ (102). He
believes that such instances reveal the missed opportunity for critics to see past
their imposition of ‘Milton’ as critical construction to the poet himself. Despite
his indebtedness to Foucauldian analysis of the author as function, Dobranski
ultimately affirms a measure of singular authority that reinforces the mythical
stature of the author founded on the great poet’s infallibility (Bennett 2005:
99–100). This contrasts with Coldiron’s bibliographically informed translation
scholarship, which does not revert to such an authorial model to affirm the
particularity of the translator in the Renaissance.
When it comes to the Enlightenment and beyond, there is far more consensus
among literary scholars that the valorizing of unity in style and intention,
which emerged throughout the Renaissance, became thoroughly entrenched
in the ideology of the individual subject. The writer as artist was idealized as
the singular figure inspired with an immaterial, even spiritual genius; and the
10 Collaborative Translation

powerful Romantic mythologizing of solitary genius continues to shape the


popular conception of literary authorship. Its tenacity very likely derives from
the way its apotheosis of the author emulates a prevailing theological model
of monotheism and singular salvation. In this context, it is far more difficult
to deify a plurality of individuals, whose contributions to the genesis of an
oeuvre are unequal, variegated and imbricated. After having contributed to the
edification of such paradigmatic figures of English Romanticism as William
Wordsworth and John Keats, Jack Stillinger (1991) exposed the multiplicity of
actors that shaped the writing of Romantics and other writers since. The thesis
was confronting because it targeted not inherently collaborative arts such as
theatre, but what is often assumed to be the most solitary of literary endeavours:
poetry. His study then extended to the prose of paradigmatic Romantics, praised
both for its singular genius and for what it revealed about the spirit of its author
(John Stuart Mills’s Autobiography, Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria). Stillinger
showed how ‘texts considered to be the work of a single authorship turn out to
be the product of several hands’, how this was ‘extremely common’ (v) for the
Romantics and for authors today. ‘Multiple authorship’, he argued, was ‘one of
the routine ways of producing literature all along’ (201). A literary ‘work’ may
in fact ‘be the collaborative product of the nominal author and friend, a spouse,
a ghost, an agent, an editor, a translator, a publisher, a censor, a transcriber, a
printer, or – what is more often the case – several of these acting together or in
succession’ (v).
This vision of textual production must account for the temporality of a
work’s evolution, thus countering the Romantic vision of textual genesis as
defined by Wordsworth in his famous preface to the second edition of Lyrical
Ballads: ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ (1992: 744,
756). Poetry is here opposed to prose, but also to what Wordsworth calls ‘poetic
diction’ (747, 761–5) – an artificial, mechanical style, which denies ‘nature’, like
the eighteenth-century lyric poetry criticized in the preface. Authentic, ‘good
poetry’ on the contrary is natural, individual, passionate, and distinguishes
itself from ordinary language not by a difference in kind but in degree. The
tension between the individual and the collective manifests in oppositions
between spontaneity and meditation, original expression and habitual language,
individual talent and tradition.2 To maintain his position, Wordsworth must
of course belie the labour of his own artistry, his shaping and revising, his
co-opting or being co-opted by those ‘collaborators’ Stillinger identifies; he
offers instead the myth of composition as a solitary, internal activity, of ‘emotion
What Is Collaborative Translation? 11

recollected in tranquility’ (756). Stillinger points out that the preface is itself
the work of close collaboration: Coleridge wrote to Robert Southey on 29 July
1802 that ‘Wordsworth’s Preface is half a child of my own Brain. … [It] arose
out of Conversations, so frequent, that with few exceptions we could scarcely
either of us perhaps positively say, which first started any particular Thought’
(qtd in Stillinger 1991: 71). If the aesthetics of the two were so closely interwoven
and symbiotic at the time, it is problematic to sequester the individual from his
myth, as much as his poetry, and idealize his singular genius.
The concentration upon singular genius during the nineteenth century
galvanized into a critical method, fuelling a tradition of biographical literary
criticism and philology deemed reductive and positivist by 1960s structuralists
and later post-structuralists. In seeking to overturn this tradition, they excluded
the diachronic history of a text’s composition from their analyses, a move which
was in turn countered by French genetic critics (de Biasi 2011; Ferrer 2002,
2011; Grésillon 1994; Hay 1993, 1989) interested in the compositional process,
from which the figure of the author and his or her collaborators is inextricable
(see Van Hulle 2014). The methods of textual genetics have been applied to
translation, leading to the emergence of ‘genetic translation studies’ (Cordingley
and Montini 2015), which generally accounts for collaboration when it becomes
manifest (material) in the genesis of a translation. Stillinger also adds a genetic,
diachronic layering to his synchronic dispersal of authority, arguing for a ‘theory
of versions’ that embraces a multiplicity of authorial intentions: ‘Thus in a
collaboratively authored version, each contributor to the collaboration has …
an intrinsic rather than extrinsic place in the text. Removing one or more of the
authors … simply produces a different version’ (200).
Nonetheless, Stillinger comes up against the same issue that divides literary
historians of the Renaissance, finding that any notion of singular authorship
becomes untenable because of the implication of authorship in ‘collaboration’.
His study begins by detecting instances of what certain Renaissance scholars
would term the presence of ‘co-authors’ (contributors to Keats’s poems, Harriet
Mill’s substantial revisions of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, Wordsworth’s
reliance on the work of his sister Dorothy). Yet the dynamics of attribution lead
Stillinger to apprehend more and more the social web of collaboration. Given
the fact that all writing is bound to socio-economic structures that support
publishing and reading, generate meaning and construct a notion of authorship,
he asks if ‘pure authorship’ is ever possible, before finally rejecting the idea: ‘To
separate “pure” authorship from the circumstances of time and place, one would
12 Collaborative Translation

have to lock up not only the manuscripts but the authors themselves (and, in
the process, thereby deprive them of, among other necessities, language itself)’
(185). He holds, furthermore, that intertexts as much as readers are collaborators,
which implies that translators must also be collaborators with authors, logically
having their share in the authorship of what was supposed to be the “original”.
It is debatable whether such a definition of ‘collaboration’ is useful, but, before
returning to this central issue, let us consider if the sociology of translation will
shed any light upon these questions.

Sociologies of collaborative translation

In 1999, when Stillinger reflected upon his earlier challenge to the myth of
solitary authorship with the evidence of collaboration, he found that ‘the point …
seems obvious now that it has been out and reviewed for several years’ (8).
His pioneering work did not, however, attempt a full sociological description
of the social structures and actors that shape the production of literary texts.
His contribution to textual criticism and editorial theory sought to build upon
the work of Jerome McGann (1983). McGann had challenged the dominant
Greg-Bowers method in the Anglo-American tradition, which advocates the
construction of definitive editions of a work through the reconciliation of
its multiple variants and versions into an ideal form. Editors of these works
promoted them as the most perfect representation of the author’s intentions.
Like Don McKenzie (1986) in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, McGann
countered such editorial constructivism with a notion of ‘social text’, where
authority is shared not only between the author and all those who have a hand
in the book’s production (publishers, editors, printers, agents, lawyers) but also
its communities of reception (booksellers, readers, students, teachers, critics, the
media). McGann is attentive to the materiality of the work, yet materiality is
itself social: a book, not a text, is ‘fashioned and refashioned repeatedly under
different circumstances. … And because all its uses are always invested in real
circumstances, the many meanings of any book are socially and physically coded
in and by the books themselves. They bear the evidence of the meanings they have
helped to make’ (2006). In The Textual Condition (1991), McGann conceives of
literary texts as ‘collaborative events’ (60); rather than ‘an autonomous and self-
reflexive activity’ textual production is ‘a social and institutional event’ (100).
When he insists that a work’s ‘textual authority’ resides in ‘the actual structure
What Is Collaborative Translation? 13

of agreements’ – he cites the ‘cooperating authorities’ (54) of the writer and the
publishing institution – his theory implies that agreements extend to all parties
in the social network.
The move in literary studies towards a social definition of authorship has
expanded significantly since McGann’s writing in the 1980s, as studies continue
to be influenced by developments in social theory. They build upon Pierre
Bourdieu’s analysis of the literary field as a network of power relations which
internally situated agents struggle to maintain or influence through recourse to
their different reserves of capital, be they economic (financial) or cultural (one’s
education, professional standing), social (networks of contacts) or symbolic
(prestige, reputation, honour, fame). Interacting with each other, individuals
enact their embodied habitus – ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions,
structured structures, predisposed to function as structuring structures’
(1990: 53) – which emerges from an evolving dialogue with self, family and
society, psychology, class, gender and ideology. Habitus is ‘the active presence
of the whole past of which it is the product’, incorporated as dispositions it is
‘embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history’
(1990: 56); it is thus a set of competences and capacities that allow the individual
to improvise and adapt, especially when coming into contact with new situations
or fields. Moreover, habitus as practice constitutes the individual; there is no
substantial, pre-existing self, and individual subjectivity is formed in practices
situated within networks.
This fundamental premise of a non-essentialist ontology is common to
‘relational’ thinking in sociology. It is found in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems
theory, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and has become the focus of the
field of relational sociology (see Powell and Dépelteau 2013). In The Relational
Subject (2015), Donati and Archer critique accounts of relational sociology
that reduce social relations to ‘transactions’, circumscribing the capacity of
individuals to differentiate themselves from, or emerge out of, a homogenizing
‘flat ontology’. ‘North American Relational Sociology’ they claim ‘has effectively
eliminated the subject’ (12); by treating relations as dyadic those sociologists
‘cannot explain the context in which relationships occur despite there being no
such thing as context-less action’ (i). Donati and Archer’s ‘relational realism’
advocates a ‘stratified social ontology … with different emergent properties and
powers pertaining to different levels of reality, and, in this case, cultural reality’
(164). Indeed, the danger of limiting an understanding of translation to the basic
premise of relational sociology – namely that social roles are determined by
14 Collaborative Translation

systems – is the implication that the ‘translator’ cannot exist independently of his
or her system, and exists only if there is a network of authors, publishers, readers
and markets that create the role of the translator. Yet, it is untenable to hold that
the translator is only a function of a relational system, for if that were the case
anyone so positioned could be a translator. Each translator has, however, a unique
personality, different aptitudes, styles of writing and ways of reading, each of
which motivates and individuates him or her, making him or her more ready or
competent for the task. Given equivalent circumstances, some individuals will
translate, some will choose not to (see Bush 1997). Similarly, relatively abrupt
shifts in the macro environment can determine whether someone may become a
translator or not – the proliferation of access to computers and the internet being
perhaps the best example today of a significant environmental change resulting
in ‘social morphogenesis’ (Archer 2013) that has influenced how, and how
many, individuals can assume roles of translatorship. Furthermore, the immense
translating activity that accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings that began in
Tunisia in 2010 – of literary as much as political texts (poems, songs, chants,
narratives) – is a salient example of how individuals will be compelled to assume
roles as translators in reaction to a rupture in the political environment (see
Baker 2016) and integrate social change into pedagogical translation projects
(e.g. Mehrez 2012).3
From the perspective of relational sociology all translation is collaboration
in the sense that it does not have collaboration, but rather is collaboration. One
quickly perceives that Stillinger’s realization with respect to the embeddedness
of authorship in social structures applies equally to the figure of the translator.
The broad questioning of the central figure of literary studies – the author –
and the deconstruction of its myths and ideological underpinnings has
been paralleled in translation studies, especially since its ‘sociological turn’.4
Translation scholars have moved away from linguistic paradigms of translation
and interminable questions of ‘equivalence’ (Nida 1964), building upon
functional (Vermeer 1986) and descriptive (Toury 1995) translation studies to
enquire into the conditions of textual production that shape a translation ‘event’,
the nexus at which the power and influence of different networks and agents
intersect, as well as ‘the social discursive practices which mould the translation
process and which decisively affect the strategies of a text to be translated’ (Wolf
2011: 2). The particularity of translation is that its event occurs where the fields
of the source culture and the target culture overlap, traversing each translator
as agent, whose agency in turn shapes the event. The interaction at this juncture
What Is Collaborative Translation? 15

is theorized by Chesterman (2007: 13) as the dynamic relationship between


translation act and translation event: the cognitive act determined by the
translator’s subjectivity occurs within the context of the sociologically defined
translation event.

Historicizing the myths of collaborative translation

Contemporary interest in relationality and collaborative dynamics encourages us


to redefine past practices in a way that risks being anachronistic, while offering a
provocative means to historicize translation. Rather than extending the catalogue
of practices already mentioned into a more complete genealogy, we would
rather draw attention to how the rapid expansion of the semantic field covered
by the term ‘collaborative translation’ underscores the way that its meaning is
inextricable from its usage within specifically defined contexts. Anthony Pym’s
(2011: 77) definition in his ‘Translation Research Terms: A Tentative Glossary
for Moments of Perplexity and Dispute’ offers a pertinent example:

Collaborative translation: Synonym of ‘crowd-sourcing’ (q.v.), ‘community


translation’ (q.v.), part of CT3 (q.v.), etc., used for group translating where the
work is largely voluntary (i.e. unpaid in financial terms). ‘Collaboration’ in
English always sounds like illicit help given to the enemy, as in the case of the
French who helped the Nazi occupation of France. More appropriate terms in
English might be ‘participative translation’ or ‘volunteer translation’. Then again,
if the idea of collaboration connotes something illicit or underground, those
values might not be entirely out of place in many situations. Recommendation:
Volunteer translation (q.v.).

This definition, presented as provisory in this context, is crucial precisely for


its limitations, and for what these might reveal of our present relationship to
history. Pym defines ‘collaborative translation’, first, through the contemporary
vector of technology and the internet; secondly, through specific community
practices; and thirdly, with reference to a historically contingent connotation
of the noun ‘collaboration’. The divergence between Pym’s definition and the
way that we have used this term until now, in the present context, cannot be
reduced to terminological practices specific to literary and pragmatic translation
studies. Prior to the advent of the internet, ‘collaborative translation’ commonly
referred to translations made, and usually signed, by more than one person. If
the visibility of the translator was rare, instances of declared collaboration were
16 Collaborative Translation

even rarer. It was certainly highlighted when the translation benefited from the
assumed auctoritas of the author – English versions of Borges’ texts appeared as
‘Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author’
and certain English texts by Nabokov as ‘Translated by Dmitri Nabokov in
collaboration with the author’, while Paul Bowles’s translation of Molloy is a special
case in Beckett’s canon of self-translations, for it too is signed ‘in collaboration
with the author’. This convention has, in turn, been carried into literary and
translation studies, when scholars repeat this phrase in their bibliographies
and analyses. There is no doubt, however, that ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘community
translation’ refer to specific translation practices, which are considered forms
of ‘collaborative translation’ when the latter is used as an umbrella term. Pym
insists on the voluntary aspect which is lacking in the former two categories,
yet today both crowdsourcing and community translation (which can mean
translation by online communities or translating for specific communities, as
in the sense of community interpreting) are frequently remunerated and not
necessarily collaborative. This raises the issue of how ‘voluntary’ each party is
when working on a shared translation. Yet, Pym forecloses the debate because
for him ‘collaboration’, in English at least, ‘always sounds like illicit help given to
the enemy’.
Affirming that any definition of collaboration ‘always’ holds is somewhat
cavalier. The Dictionnaire historique de la langue française and the Oxford
English Dictionary list the first usage of ‘collaboration’ in the sense of ‘traitorous
cooperation with the enemy’ at 1940 and as a ‘spec’. (specific) form, while the
primary definition of the term in English as ‘united labour, co-operation; esp.
in literary, artistic, or scientific work’ is dated at 1860, some thirty years after
the French began using the term in this way. It derived from the Medieval
Latin collaboratio, applied to a marital union, which referred, in a context of
alliance relationships, to the profits and goods acquired by common work. In the
nineteenth century it retained its legal, economic meaning, but the term’s scope
extended outside of marriage to include all participants in the development of
a shared project. Today, the adjective remains influenced by the more sinister
nominal form, yet even the ‘most delicate of all the problems raised by the fall
and divisions of France: collaboration with the German occupant’ (Hoffmann
1968: 375) is itself subject to the different ideological perspectives of historians.
The term stood for a political – and legal – programme carried out by Marshal
Pétain in the framework of the new French State established after the defeat and
the signing of the armistice in 1940. Yet to ‘define’ collaboration requires one
to distinguish more accurately between servile and ideological collaboration, as
What Is Collaborative Translation? 17

well as its voluntary (the attempt to exploit necessity) and involuntary (a reluctant
recognition of necessity) modes (Hoffmann 1968: 378). Furthermore, recent
historical scholarship has emphasized that ‘it is hard to come up with a serious
theoretical reason for excluding from the concept practices of collaboration with
non-Axis forces, e.g. of German or Japanese elites with the Allied occupation
forces following the Axis defeat in 1945’ (Kalyvas 2008: 109). Indeed, the term
is now used by historians for forms of political collaboration that pre-date
the Nazi occupation and in non-European contexts. Timothy Brook’s (2005)
Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China does this while
also challenging a vertically oriented paradigm of collaboration as imposed on
populations by a country’s rulers: ‘Collaboration would not begin at the top as
it had in France,’ rather ‘at the local level of a new regime that would gradually
be brought into being, minor elites came forward to enter into agreements with
agents of the occupying Japanese army’ (2).
The slide in Pym’s definition from adjective to noun is significant, for in
twenty-first-century English ‘collaborative’ forms part of a set of positive values
founded on transparency, the circulation of data, the flattening of hierarchies
and participation in democracy. The resonances of the ‘collaboration’ as treason
are competing with a powerful repositioning of the concept in public discourse,
legitimized through official usage, such as in US president Barack Obama’s
2009 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
on ‘Transparency and Open Government’: ‘My Administration is committed
to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work
together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public
participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and
promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.’ Obama’s ‘system of …
collaboration’ inhabits a semantic field that overlaps with those of openness,
transparency, public participation, democracy, efficacy and effectiveness (see
Lathrop and Ruma 2010). This suite of concepts neatly surmises the utopian
trajectory in the contemporary rhetoric of collaboration. Technology is key to
the hopes of delivering this braver new world.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans


in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should
use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves,
across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses,
and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should
solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to
identify new opportunities for cooperation. (Obama 2009)
18 Collaborative Translation

Citizen participation in government through the use of networking technologies,


applications, open-source platforms and the internet has been termed Gov 2.0.
It promises a digital future where a frighteningly impersonal technocracy fades
behind a utopian vision of the ‘grassroots’ connecting organically with the
structures that govern it. Yet political collaboration is now feeding off the rhetoric of
the collaborative, appropriating the adjective as a trope to legitimize government’s
traditional responsibilities, mobilizing the term’s rhetoric of cooperation, its
claims to dissolve hierarchical barriers, especially through digital meditation.
Obama issued his Memo very soon after entering the White House as President,
on the back of an electoral campaign whose success owed much to its command of
social and electronic media (Twitter, Facebook, email), crucial also for mobilizing
its grassroots activists. Yet when it comes to the day-to-day policy making of the
executive branch, there appears to be very little meaningful collaboration in policy
making on subjects such as tax, drugs, Syria and drone strikes.
The idealism that pervades the rhetorical repositioning of the ‘collaborative’
has encouraged an adjectival rebranding of a host of existing situations and
practices, at the expense of other terms that are at least as legitimate. Qualifying
a translation process as ‘collaborative’ today makes a claim for its legitimacy and
improved quality. This improvement is declined in many ways: from a logic of
ethics – individuals working together for a common good while renouncing part
of their interests and authorship; to a logic of productive capacity and expertise –
the ability to harness more and diverse skills to create ‘better’ what would have
been produced differently, even sometimes facilitating translation that would
be impossible without cooperation (in the case of many online projects); a logic
of risk control – multiplying parties to a translation increases the potential
surveillance over quality; and the intimately connected logic of efficiency – the
rhythm and accuracy of the process can, ideally, be engineered faster through
the use of crowdsourcing, volunteer translating, machine translation, translation
memories and networked computer assisted translation (CAT) tools. Yet all is
not domination from above: in other cases, translators claim that translating
together allows the development of a shared epistemological and affective
project or mission, offering them with a means with which to approach the ideal
and practice of community. The issue here is less, ‘How do I benefit from the
collaborative process?’ than ‘What do I give to the community?’ leading to the
much debated question of ‘What is community?’
Collaborative translation as a tekhnê is, of course, not something bad
or good in itself, and the uses of technology are innumerable. Yet in some
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the land of the
lion and sun, or, modern Persia
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia
Being experiences of life in Persia from 1866 to 1881

Author: C. J. Wills

Release date: November 14, 2023 [eBook #72128]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1891

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading


Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE LAND


OF THE LION AND SUN, OR, MODERN PERSIA ***
IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN.
The Minerva Library.
1. Darwin’s Journal in the “Beagle.”
2. The Ingoldsby Legends.
3. Borrow’s Bible in Spain.
4. Emerson’s Prose Works.
5. Galton’s Tropical South Africa.
6. Manzoni’s The Betrothed Lovers.
7. Goethe’s Faust (Complete). Bayard Taylor.
8. Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon.
9. Dean Stanley’s Life of Dr. Arnold.
10. Poe’s Tales.
11. Comedies by Molière.
12. Forster’s Life of Goldsmith.
13. Lane’s Modern Egyptians.
14. Torrens’ Life of Melbourne.
15. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
16. Barth’s Travels in Africa.
17. Victor Hugo: Select Poems, &c.
18. Darwin’s Coral Reefs, &c.
19. Lockhart’s Life of Robert Burns.
20. Barth’s Travels in Africa (II.)
21. Lyra Elegantiarum. Locker-Lampson.
22. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, &c.
23. Life and Letters of Franklin.
24. Beckford’s Vathek, and Travels.
25. Macaulay’s Historical and Literary Essays.
26. Yonge’s Life of Wellington.
27. Carlyle’s French Revolution.
28. Wills’ Land of the Lion and Sun.

London: WARD, LOCK & CO.


SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY.

(From a Native Drawing.)

IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN,
OR
MODERN PERSIA.

BEING EXPERIENCES OF LIFE IN PERSIA FROM


1866 TO 1881.
ILLUSTRATED BY FULL-PAGE PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
AND FROM
NATIVE DRAWINGS.

BY
C. J. WILLS, M.D.,
LATE ONE OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HER MAJESTY’S TELEGRAPH
DEPARTMENT IN PERSIA.

THE ARMS OF PERSIA


(from the Teheran Gazette).

NEW EDITION.

WARD, LOCK AND Co.,


LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE,
1891.
The right of translation is reserved.
EDITORIAL NOTE.
The author of the Land of the Lion and Sun may claim an
exceptional degree of credit for his book on one of the most
interesting countries in the world; for he derived his knowledge not
merely from a journey through the country, but from a sufficiently
prolonged residence to make him thoroughly at home with the
people, and to understand their inner life. The Times, on its first
appearance in 1883, characterized it as probably the most amusing
book of travel that had been published in recent years. The author’s
profession gave him access to the personality of the people to a
marked extent, giving origin to many of the amusing anecdotes
referred to. The verdict of the Times was endorsed by very many
journals. Nature described the anecdotes as “distinguished by three
cardinal virtues: they are characteristic, they are well told, and they
are infinitely varied.”
Since his return to England, Dr. Wills has become well known as a
novelist and writer of short stories, which he has contributed to most
of the leading magazines and society journals. His novels, some of
which have been written in collaboration with Mr. F. C. Philips, have
been widely read and highly appreciated.
The illustrations, on separate plates, appear here for the first time.
They are reproduced from native drawings, and from Dr. Wills’s
photographs and drawings.
G. T. B.

TO
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. J. GOLDSMID,
C.B., K.C.S.I.,

FORMERLY DIRECTOR IN CHIEF OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN


GOVERNMENT TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT,

SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF THE

PERSIAN FRONTIER,

This Book is Dedicated,


WITH AFFECTIONATE ESTEEM, IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY

KINDNESSES,

BY HIS MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
My reason for calling my book ‘The Land of the Lion and Sun’ is
that the Lion and Sun are the national emblems of Persia, while the
second title alone, ‘Modern Persia,’ would have suggested an
exhaustive and elaborate array of matter which is beyond the scope
of this work.
In a personal narrative, it is necessary to use a good many I’s; and
to avoid being obscure, I fear I have been at times over minute, but I
have preferred this to the risk of giving a false impression.
I have striven to describe life in Persia as I saw it, not
exaggerating or softening anything, but speaking of Persia as it is.
The whole narrative may be considered as a record of life in an out-
of-the-way corner of the world; and the reader being left to make his
own reflections, is not troubled with mine.
Usually no names are given, save of those of the dead, or public
men.
The important subject of our fast-dying commerce with Persia, and
the means of really opening the country, I have relegated to an
Appendix.[1]
As to the spelling and transliteration of Persian words used, it is
not classical, it does not pretend to be; but it will convey to the
ordinary reader the local pronunciation of the colloquial; and the
reader not knowing anything of Oriental languages is troubled very
seldom with accents and (apparently) unpronounceable words. Thus
Mūnshi is spelt Moonshee, as that gives the exact sound: ū is often
used to avoid the barbarous appearance of oo. Of course there is no
C in Persian; still as, from habit, we write Calcutta and not Kalkutta,
so some words, like Cah, that use has rendered common, are
inserted under C and K. I think that all that is required is, that the
ordinary English reader shall pronounce the words not too
incorrectly; and it is only when a work is philological that accuracy in
transliteration is of any real importance. With this end in view, I have
tried so to spell Persian words that by following ordinary rules, the
general reader may not be very wide of the mark. To avoid continual
explanation I have added a Glossary, with a correct transliteration. I
have to gratefully acknowledge the valuable help of Mr. Guy le
Strange in correcting this Glossary, and kindly favouring me with the
transliteration according to the system adopted by Johnson, in
several cases in which that author has not noted words, &c.
Oriental Club,
Hanover Square.
CONTENTS.
PAGE

CHAPTER I.
I GO TO PERSIA.
Wanted a doctor—The Director-in-chief—Doubt and distrust
—Simple advice—Am referred to ‘Hadji Baba’—My kit—
Saddle for riding post—Vienna—Rustchuk—Quarantine
—Galatz—Kustendji—Constantinople—Turkish ladies—
Stamboul—I have my hair cut—“Karagews”—Turkish
coffee—A philo-Turk—Shooting party—The theatres—
The Opera—Armenian theatre—Gambling house—A
Bashi-bazouk—We leave, viâ the Black Sea—The
Russian captain—Unarmed vessels—White Crimean
wine—Foreign wines in Russia—Deck passengers—
Sinope—Batoum—Poti—The post-house—Difficulty in
getting food—Travelling en tröika—Kutais—A tarantass
—Apply for horses—An itching palm—We start—Tiflis—
Lecoq’s beer—A happy reprieve—The joys of travel—
Chief of the Telegraph in Tiflis—Uniforms—Persian
Consulate—Coffee and pipes—Smoking, an art—Effects
on the tyro—Tea—The Consul—His age—Dyeing the
hair—The Opera, varied costumes at—The Tiflis ballet—
Leave Tiflis—Erivan—The Pass—We lighten our load—
Hotel—Washing—Nakchewan—Julfa, the frontier of
Persia 1
CHAPTER II.
POST JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL.
Preparations for the start—Costume—Chaff bed—First fall— 20
Extra luggage—The whip—Stages and their length—
Appearance of the country, and climate—First stage—
Turk guides—Welcome rest—Weighing firewood—
Meana bug—Turcomanchai—Distances—New friends—
Palace of Kerrij
CHAPTER III.
TEHERAN.
Teheran—The Director’s house—Persian visits—Etiquette—
Pipes, details of—Tumbakū—Ceremony—Anecdote—
The voice of the sluggard—Persian medicine explained
—My prospects as a medico—Zoological Gardens 28
CHAPTER IV.
TEHERAN.
The Gulhaek Road—Visit to a virtuoso—His story—Persian
New Year—Persian ladies—Titles—The harem—Its
inhabitants—A eunuch—Lovely visions—The Dervish—
The great festival—Miscellaneous uniform—At the Court
of Persia—The Shah—The ceremony—Baksheesh—
Rejoicings 36
CHAPTER V.
HAMADAN.
Start for Hamadan—Bedding—Luggage makes the man—
Stages—Meet Pierson—Istikhbals—Badraghah—
Pierson’s house—Hamadan wine—Mode of storing it—
My horses—Abu Saif Mirza—His stratagem—
Disinterested services—Persian logic—Pierson’s horse’s
death—Horses put through their paces—I buy Salts and
Senna—The prince’s opinion—Money table—Edict 54
CHAPTER VI.
HAMADAN.
Morning rides—Engage servants—Dispensary—A bear- 64
garden—Odd complaints—My servants get rich—
Modakel—The distinction between picking and stealing
—Servants—Their pay—Vails—Hakim Bashi—Delleh—
Quinine—Discipline—I commence the cornet—The
result of rivalry—Syud Houssein—Armenians—Cavalry
officer—Claim to sanctity of the Armenians—Their
position in the country—Jews
CHAPTER VII.
HAMADAN.
Tomb of Esther and Mordecai—Spurious coins—Treasure-
finding—Interest—A gunge—Oppression—A cautious
finder—Yari Khan—We become treasure-seekers—We
find—Our cook—Toffee—Pole-buying—Modakel—I am
nearly caught—A mad dog—Rioters punished—Murder
of the innocents 75
CHAPTER VIII.
HAMADAN.
Antelope—Hunting and hawking—Shooting from the saddle
—Thief-catching—The prince offers his services as
head-servant—Our hunting party—The prince takes the
honours—Kabobs—A provincial grandee—His stud—
Quail-shooting—A relative of the king—Persian dinner—
Musicians and singers—Parlour magic—The anderūn—
Cucumber-jam—Persian home-life—Grateful Armenians
—Lizards—Talking lark—Pigeon-flying—Fantails—
Pigeons’ ornaments—Immorality of pigeon-flying—Card-
playing—Chess—Games—Wrestling—Pehliwans—
Gymnastics 84
CHAPTER IX.
KERMANSHAH.
Leave for Kermanshah, marching—Detail of arrangements— 100
Horse-feeding—Peculiar way of bedding horses—Barley
—Grape-feeding—On grass—Nawalla—Colt, anecdote
of—Horses, various breeds of—Turkomans—Karabagh
—Ispahan cobs—Gulf Arabs—Arabs—Rise in price of
horses—Road cooking—Kangawar temple—Double
snipe—Tents—Kara-Su River—Susmanis—Sana—
Besitūn—Sir H. Rawlinson—Agha Hassan—Istikhbal—
Kermanshah—As we turn in another turns out—
Armenians—Their reason for apostatising—Presents of
sweetmeats
CHAPTER X.
KERMANSHAH.
Kermanshah—Imād-u-dowlet—We visit him—Signs of his
wealth—Man nailed to a post—Injuring the wire—
Serrum-u-dowlet—Visits—We dine with the son of the
Governor—His decorations and nightingales—Dancing
girls—Various dances—The belly dance—Heavy dinner
—Turf—Wild geese—The swamp—A ducking through
obstinacy—Imādieh—Wealth of the Imād-u-dowlet—The
Shah loots him—Squeezing—Rock sculptures—
Astrologers—Astrolabes—Fortune-telling—Rammals—
Detection of thieves—Honesty of servants—Thefts
through pique—My lost pipe-head—Tragedy of two
women 112
CHAPTER XI.
I GO TO ISPAHAN.
Deficiency of furniture—Novel screws—Pseudo-masonry—
Fate of the Imād-u-dowlet’s son—House-building—
Kerind—New horse—Mule-buying—Start for Ispahan—
Kanaats—Curious accident—Fish in kanaats—Loss of a
dog—Pigeons—Pigeon-towers—Alarm of robbers—Put
up in a mosque—Armenian village—Armenian villagers
—Travellers’ law—Tax-man at Dehbeed—Ispahan—The
bridge—Julfa 123
CHAPTER XII.
JULFA.
Illness and death of horse—Groom takes sanctuary— 136
Sharpness of Armenians—Julfa houses—Kūrsis—
Priests—Arachnoort—Monastery—Nunnery—Call to
prayer—Girls’ school—Ancient language of the
Scriptures—Ignorance of priests—Liquor traffic—Sunday
market—Loafers—Turkeys—Church Missionary school
—Armenian schools
CHAPTER XIII.
ISPAHAN.
Prince’s physician—Visit the Prince-Governor—Justice—The
bastinado—Its effects—The doctor’s difficulties—Carpets
—Aniline dyes—How to choose—Varieties—Nammad—
Felt coats—Bad water—Baabis—A tragedy—The
prince’s view 145
CHAPTER XIV.
JULFA AND ISPAHAN.
Julfa cathedral—The campanile—The monk—Gez—
Kishmish wine—The bishop—The church—Its
decorations—The day of judgment—The cemetery—
Establishment of the Armenian captives in Julfa—Lost
arts—Armenian artificers—Graves—Story of Rodolphe—
Coffee-house—Tombstone bridges—Nunnery—Schools
—Medical missionary—Church Missionary establishment
—The Lazarist Fathers 157
CHAPTER XV.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Tame gazelle—Croquet-lawn under difficulties—Wild 167
asparagus—First-fruits—Common fruits—Mode of
preparing dried fruits—Ordinary vegetables of Persia—
Wild rhubarb—Potatoes a comparative novelty—Ispahan
quinces: their fragrance—Bamiah—Grapes, Numerous
varieties of—At times used as horse-feed—Grape-sugar
—Pickles—Fruits an ordinary food—Curdled milk—Mode
of obtaining cream—Buttermilk—Economy of the middle
or trading classes—Tale of the phantom cheese—
Common flowers—Painting the lily—Lilium candidum—
Wild flowers—The crops—Poppies—Collecting opium—
Manuring—Barley—Wheat—Minor crops—Mode of
extracting grain—Cut straw: its uses—Irrigation
CHAPTER XVI.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Pig-sticking expedition—Ducks not tame, but wild—Ruined
mosque with tile inscription—Ancient watch-towers—The
hunting-ground—Beaters—We sight the pig—Our first
victims—The bold Gholam—Our success—Pig’s flesh—
A present of pork—How Persians can be managed—
Opium—Adulteration—Collection and preparation—
Packing—Manœuvres of the native maker—Opium-
eating—Moderate use by aged Persians—My dispensary
over the prison—I shift my quarters—Practice in the
bazaar—An ungrateful baker—Sealing in lieu of signing
—Seals—Wisdom of a village judge 176
CHAPTER XVII.
ISPAHAN.
Cost of living—Servants—Our expenses—Price of provisions
—Bargains—Crying off—Trade credits—Merchants—
Civil suits—Bribery—Shopkeepers—Handicrafts—
Damascening—Shoemakers—Other trades—Bankers—
An Ispahani’s estimate of the honesty of his fellow-
townsmen 186
CHAPTER XVIII.
ISPAHAN.
Daily round—The river—Calico-rinsers—Worn-out mules and 193
horses—Mode of treating the printed calico—Imitations
of marks on T-cloths—Rise of the waters of the Zend-a-
Rūd—Pul-i-Kojū—Char Bagh—Plane-trees—The college
—Silver doors—Tiled halls and mosque—Pulpit—Boorio
—Hassir—Sleepers in the mosque—Cells of the
students—Ispahan priests—Telegraph-office—Tanks—
Causeways—Gate of royal garden—Governor’s garden
—Courtiers and hangers-on—Prisoners—Priests—The
Imām-i-Juma—My dispensary—Ruined bazaar—A day
in the town—Bazaar breakfasts—Calico-printing—
Painters—The maker of antiquities—Jade teapot—Visit
to the Baabis—Hakim-bashi—Horse-market—The
“Dar”—Executions—Ordinary—Blowing from guns—A
girl trampled to death—Dying twice—Blowing from a
mortar—Wholesale walling up alive—A narrow escape
from, and horrible miscarriage in carrying it out—Burning
alive—Crucifixions—Severity: its results
CHAPTER XIX.
MY JOURNEY HOME AND MARCH TO SHIRAZ.
Julfa quarters—Buy a freehold house—I ornament, and make
it comfortable—Become ill—Apply for sick leave—Start
marching—Telegram—Begin to post—Reach Teheran—
Obtain leave—Difficulty at Kasvin—Punishment of the
postmaster—Catch and pass the courier—Horses knock
up—Wild beasts—Light a fire—Grateful rest—Arrive at
Resht—Swamp to Peri-Bazaar—Boat—Steamer—
Moscow—Opera—Ballet—Arrive in England—Start
again for Persia—Journey viâ Constantinople—
Trebizonde—Courier—Snow—Swollen eyes—Detail of
journey from Erzeroum to Teheran—The races—Ispahan
—Leave for Shiraz—Persian companions—Road-beetles
—Mole crickets—Lizards—Animals and birds—The road
to Shiraz—Ussher’s description—Meana bug legend
again 206
CHAPTER XX.
SHIRAZ.
Entry into Shiraz—Gaiety of Shirazis of both sexes—Public 218
promenade—Different from the rest of Persians—Shiraz
wine—Early lamb—Weights: their variety—Steelyards—
Local custom of weighing—Wetting grass—Game—Wild
animals—Buildings—Ornamental brickwork—Orange-
trees—Fruits in bazaar—Type of ancient Persian—
Ladies’ dress—Fondness for music—Picnics—Warmth
of climate—Diseases—The traveller Stanley—His
magazine rifle and my landlord’s chimney—Cholera—
Great mortality—We march out and camp—Mysterious
occurrence—Life in a garden—The “Shitoor-gooloo”—
Bear and dog fight—The bear is killed
CHAPTER XXI.
SHIRAZ WINE-MAKING.
Buy grapes for wine-making—Difficulty in getting them to the
house—Wine-jars—Their preparation—Grapes rescued
and brought in—Treading the grapes—Fermentation—
Plunger-sticks—Varieties of Shiraz wine and their
production—Stirring the liquor—Clearing the wine—My
share, and its cost—Improvement by bottling—Wasps—
Carboys—Covering them—Native manner of packing—
Difficulties at custom-house—The Governor’s
photographic apparatus—Too many for me—A lūti-pūti 229
CHAPTER XXII.
SHIRAZ AND FUSSA.
Cheapness of ice—Variety of ices—Their size—Mode of
procuring ice—Water of Shiraz: its impurity—Camel-fight
—Mode of obtaining the combatants—Mode of securing
camels—Visit to Fussa—Mean-looking nag—His powers
—See the patient—State of the sick-room—Dinner sent
away—A second one arrives—A would-be room-fellow—
I provide him with a bedroom—Progress of the case—
Fertility of Fussa—Salt lake—End of the patient—Boat-
building—Dog-cart—Want of roads—Tarantulas—
Suicide of scorpions—Varieties—Experiment—Stings of
scorpions—The Nishan 240
CHAPTER XXIII.
SHIRAZ—THE FAMINE.
Approach of famine—Closing of shops—Rise in mule-hire— 251
Laying in of stores—Seizures of grain—Sale of goods by
poor—Immigrations of villagers to the towns—Desertions

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