Anita Hotchkiss
October 7, 2019
Blog Post: “Traduzione, Tradimento”: Reaction to: “To what extent can a translation be referentially ‘unfaithful’?” (Umberto Eco, Experiences in Translation, 30).
Every translation reflects choices of the translator that in some way result in a loss, a betrayal if you will, of the original meaning. In my view, there are multiple ways that the translator (and thus the translation) can be “referentially unfaithful” to the original. Eco speaks of just a few ways in his chapter “Can a Translator Change the Story?” [i] He explains the “micro-propositions” and the “macro-propositions” of a work – single sentences and the global sense – in what he calls the translator’s “game of faithfulness.” However, Eco mainly discusses the word choices made by various translators of his novel, The Island of the Day Before. I would elaborate on his theme.
Assuming that the goal of “referential faithfulness” means to preserve and transmit as much of the author’s meaning and intent to the target audience – be it in a poem, a short story, a tourist book, a technical manual, or a novel – then, in my view, “unfaithfulness” can be, at a minimum, either cultural, tonal, stylistic, or textual (i.e. meaning). For example, if the translator is so removed from the cultural milieu of the author that he/she does not appreciate the cultural significance of various references, unfaithfulness is likely to occur. Eco makes reference to just such a situation when he discusses the character, Jacopo Belbo’s, reference to himself as “una Tigre,” which all Italian readers would recognize as a reference to the fictional hero, Sandokan, Tigre della Malesia. Translating this passage as Belbo calling himself a “Tiger” misses the author’s point entirely. Conversely, if the translator is well-versed in the cultural milieu of the source text but inaccurately presumes the same cultural knowledge in the target audience, a huge referential loss can occur.
Moreover, if the translator does not know enough about the source language to appreciate the tone in which various speakers express themselves (i.e. formal, or in dialect, poetically or matter-of-factly), again the translation may be unfaithful. An author presumably has good reasons for the tone he adopts. The language of professors cannot faithfully be translated as rap, and faithful translations can’t have rappers speaking like college professors.
Style is also important. If, for example, lyrical or poetic language or imagery in the original is rendered in slang, street talk, or pedantically, or if the translator misses or mistranslates the humor or irony in a situation, the translation will be unfaithful.
Perhaps most important, if the translator does not understand the meaning of a word or words in the original and mis-translates them, either because of temporal distance from the original source or from sheer ignorance, the result can be disastrous. Two famous examples come to mind. First, in one of Michelangelo’s Buonarroti’s earliest poems, written around 1501 on a drawing containing sketches for his famous sculpture David, he wrote: Davitte colla fromba e io coll’arco. For centuries, this was translated as “David with his sling and I with the bow,” which was understood to be a bow and arrow, and for two hundred years multiple commentators discussed and argued at length over what the sculptor meant by comparing his “bow” (a weapon?) to David’s sling. It was only in 1967, 400 years after Michelangelo died, that Charles Seymour, an art historian, discovered that, in Italian, the tool sculptors use to drill holes into marble is called an “archetto” and it is shaped like Cupid’s bow.[ii] Suddenly, the unfaithfulness of earlier translations was exposed and the poet’s meaning became clear. He and David both had ways of serving God: his was his sculptor’s bow and David’s was the sling he used to slay the giant, Goliath.
Another famous example of unfaithfulness resulted in centuries of in art and sculpture showing the prophet, Moses, with horns on his head. These grave misrepresentations stemmed from an error in the original Hebrew translation of the Old Testament which described Moses descending from Mount Sinai with “his face…horned from the conversation of the Lord.” The word which was originally translated as “horned” is now known to mean “shining” or “emitting rays.”
It is unlikely that a current unfaithful translation would have such far-reaching consequences, but the examples above indicate just how many ways translators can be referentially unfaithful to the original text.
Moses, Tomb of Julius II, Michelangelo (1540).
Endnotes:
[i] Perhaps Eco himself should be using the word “may” rather than “can.” A translator “can” do anything; whether he may, and still be faithful to the original text and intent of the author is another question.
[ii] Saslow, James M. The Poetry of Michelangelo. Yale University Press, 1991.