Robert Esposito (“Jakobson and Eco”)
- Having chosen to write my response on another piece, I am glad I read your response to Jakobson and Eco’s discussion of translation. Your praise of Jakobson and his ability to successfully argue each point, in light of Eco’s tendency to suggest he is reaching some end but fail to do so, is very interesting. As with much of the discussion we have in class, the ability to support a claim, whether it is grandiose or fairly straightforward, is critical. Moreover, something that stuck out to me in your response was your discussion of Jakobson’s point that that “[l]anguages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey” (236). I spent some time grappling with this point before I really understood it myself. As I see it, rendering a text from a source language into a target language is characterized by some structural asymmetry between the two languages, especially lexically. For example, while in English there exists one word for the color blue, the Russian language makes a distinction between sinij (dark blue) and goluboj (light blue), (Šipka, Lexical Conflict). One could say that Russian may be a more adequate language by splitting up this semantic unit. One could also say that English is correct in simplifying or synthesizing this unit. However, is impossible to conclude if the color blue is “originally” one unit or “originally” two distinct units, (Šipka, Lexical Conflict). In line with Jakobson’s point, sometimes what language must express lexically, the other simply does not have to.
Anita Hotchkiss (“Translation #3 – Translation of Excerpt from review of ‘L’amica geniale’”)
- This was an interesting post to read, of course, since I also wrote my own translation of the review. In short, something I really appreciate about your translations is that you tend to translate much more communicatively than literally. I have a tendency, which I see as a poor one, to rectify the source text into the target text as precisely as I can. As such, I easily lose sight of the meaning of the source text and my translation becomes a distant relative of it. Moreover, when I put my translation of the book review next to yours, there are clear differences between them. As early as the first few lines, one can easily note divergent choices made between us. For example, you translated a particular part as “They are buried stories of characters that, thanks to her writing, rise to the surface and bubble on the page as from a sort of powerful well-spring while at the same time recognizing the constraint of oppressive legal obligations – a duality that infects and unnerves the reader.” I, however, translated it as “They come from within, buried stories that come up to the surface thanks to the written word. They maintain a sort of spring force on the page and at the same time, the solemnity of the necessary act that both infects and impresses the reader.” While both convey the same idea, if you are to look at the original, mine is much more closely aligned. As such, I feel as though my translation is less clear in English than yours, which reads very well. I often forget that I am translating for an English speaker who has presumably acquired all of their lexical and grammatical skills in English only.
Nicole Muscat (“Umberto Eco, Experiences in Translation”)
- I also found your response a very enjoyable one to read because I chose a different quote of Eco’s to write about. You do a great job of providing examples in order to explain a rather confusing quote. Eco’s belief that “The difference between modernizing the text and keeping it archaic is not the same as the one between foreignizing or domesticating it,” is, for lack of a better expression, a different beast. While I understand it, I find it challenging to fully articulate all that he is trying to say here. My attempt is that in transferring a text from one language to another, the translator has two choices: render it to be more suitable for a contemporary audience, or maintain the outmoded syntactical and/or lexical structure. Clearly, these are two very different approaches, but what makes them different is not the same difference that dictates reproducing the source text as more appropriate for a foreign vs. domestic audience. For example, “ti voglio bene,” literally translates to “I want you well,” though it is really a way to say “I love you,” especially amongst those who hold a deeper love for one another. To domesticate it in English, therefore, would be to translate “ti voglio bene” as “I love you” with added context so that the reader understands the intimacy of the expression. Maintaining target-language cultural values or not is not the same as maintaining source-language forms or not.