While reading Anita Raja’s speech on “Translation as a Practice of Acceptance,” she discussed many aspects a translator must consider when working with texts of different languages. She harps on the idea that each word being translated is so deeply connected to the translator that it creates an intimate relationship, regardless of the fact that they both embody unequal substance. Additionally, she talks about unveiling her own cultural and linguistic revelations through understanding other languages and their cultural contexts. As a translator, it’s a duty to remain faithful to the text but it’s imperative to implement manipulation to the context in order to render it with fulfillment in a different language. Personally, I thought her speech invoked vulnerability and recognition when learning or translating texts from another language. She encourages open-mindedness as it may influence growth, even in one’s own comfortability of their native language and culture.
Raja touches upon embracing inequality among any different language. Instead of holding adverse opinions towards translating difficult texts, she welcomes the attractiveness of the challenge. One must surrender their own beliefs and cultural understandings, and almost become a subordinate of the contrary language in order to accommodate appropriately. Language is a tool that holds immense power and capacity, and it’s something that is fluid and interchangeable as time continues on. Each language holds their own personality and it’s truly impossible to entirely understand all that exist. When translating, it’s inevitable for one to confront challenge and ambiguity. However, out of devotion and adoration for literature and language, a translator should accept the invasion of the uneasiness of contrasting languages and commit to the challenge. Raja notes, “The translator must have a talent that is both critical and mimetic. But even the most astute gaze has its myopia.” There’ll always be loss of meaning from one language to another, but within the process of uncovering new connotations in alternate languages, one discovers more about their own.
In any language, there’s always something new to learn and unearth. Translating texts of different languages than that of one’s own native language facilitates a vessel into new discovery and abstract thinking. No two languages are alike, and each hold their own terminology and prose. When facing texts that exhibit underlying meanings, it can be extremely difficult to execute a similar interpretation in a different language. To understand the context of words, one must understand their historic and literary backgrounds. For example, Raja talks about her experience of struggling with Christina Wolf’s 1976 novel title, Kindheitsmuster. While thinking of how to translate the title to Italian, she researched its meaning finding three completely different interpretations that reference the one word. To find an equivalent in Italian that conveys all of this is clearly very difficult for someone to execute. Eventually, she translated the title to Trama d’infanzia, with “trama” signifying the woven memories of childhood events but also incorporating elements of the art of weaving, such as fabrics, templates, and patterns that govern the weaving. In order to do this, Raja had to deeply understand the context of what the German author was intending to provoke in the readers, and also have a clear insight of Italian language in order to conceive something of similar meaning.
Raja quotes Wolf on dealing with problematic expressions with “the most precise indefiniteness, [and] the clearest ambiguity.” With best efforts in maintaining fidelity to the original author, the translator must surrender themselves to the alternate language and void formal reasoning. There’s multiplicity within the meanings of words in every language, and this calls for the inventiveness and imagination of the translator to bloom.