Translation as Act of Creation: Between the Devil of Deformation and the Deep Blue Sea of Adaptation - LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
Translation as Act of Creation: Between the Devil of
Deformation and the Deep Blue Sea of Adaptation
Ferhat Mameri,
United Arab Emirates University
Email: fmameri@uaeu.ac.ae
Salah Bakhouche
University Mentouri-1
Email: indianasalah@yahoo.fr
Issue Details Abstract
Issue Title: Issue 1
Received: 15 January, 2021 The prevailing canons and conceptual paradigms of translating literature
Accepted: 08 February, 2021
Published: 31 March, 2021
usually places the act of translation either within the source text environment,
Pages: 1409 - 1426 by commending source-oriented strategies such as overt translation,
foreignization, literality, etc; or within target text environment by commending
Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and
Linguistica Antverpiensia opposite strategies like domestication, covert translation, equivalence etc.
This paper consists of comparative analyses of Ahlam Mosteghanmi’s novel
Ábir Sarir ( )عابر سريرand its translation into English by Nancy Roberts (the
Dust of Promises). It is meant to explore the idea that a translated literary text
is not condemned to abide by the norms and literary conventions of the source
text environment nor the target text environment.
This leads us to raise a set of interrelated questions. To what extent the literary
translator is allowed to manipulate the source and target texts? Is the visibility
of the translator a sign of breaking the norms? Are the social and cultural
norms imposed on literary translators a hindrance to creative writing? How the
foreign should be transferred, transformed and received in the target culture?
What are the most relevant strategies in dealing with the language mobility
prevailing in the translation of literary texts? Should a translated literary text be
regarded as a ‘creation’, a ‘re-creation’ or just a ‘shadow’ of the original?
Our research findings indicate that a successful literary translation is rather
expected to be viewed as an open space of creativity for the translator, an in-
between area where a ‘third language’, a ‘third literature’ or a ‘hybrid
language’ is shaped through a complex process.
Keywords
Annexation – Otherness – Decentering – Ethnocentric Translation – Creativity
1409 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
INTRODUCTION
Recent research in the field of translation studies has noticeably shifted
towards a focus on the creative character of the translator's writing output
with a growing interest in translation as a particular form of creative writing.
With regard to the very interdisciplinary nature of translation studies, literary
translation is struggling to unleash itself from the manacles of some
unsolvable traditional dichotomies such as faithfulness-unfaithfulness,
literal-free, target text –source text, and form-meaning. The theoretical
discourse of literary translation is now using terms like politics and poetics,
ethics and aesthetics, socio-cultural factors, literary canons, decision-making
strategies, language and power, postcolonial writing, stylistic features and so
forth. In this new context of research, the translator is incorporated not as a
neutral mediator of a message from one linguistic system into another, but
rather as a key influential player.
This paper is meant to explore the idea that a translated literary text is
expected to be viewed as an open space of creativity for the translator, an in-
between area where a ‘third language’, a ‘third literature’ or a ‘hybrid
language’ is shaped through a complex process. This leads us to raise a set of
interrelated questions. To what extent the literary translator is allowed to
manipulate the source and target texts? Is the visibility of the translator a sign
of breaking the norms? Are the social and cultural norms imposed on literary
translators a hindrance to creative writing? How the foreign should be
transferred, transformed and received in the target culture? What are the most
relevant strategies in dealing with the language mobility prevailing in the
translation of literary texts? Should a translated literary text be regarded as a
‘creation’, a ‘re-creation’ or just a ‘shadow’ of the original?
Our major concern in this paper is not to tackle the classical dilemma of
whether a good literary translation should be “source-oriented” or “target-
oriented”; but rather to pose and defend the idea of the possible existence of
a language “in-between’ or a ‘no-man’s language’ resulting from creative
dialectic movement between the source and target texts, and bearing the
traces of the translator’s intervention or, better yet, the translator’s visibility.
We are also assuming that translating any piece of literature is an act of
creation, exactly like writing. The translator has to think, create, invent and
responsibly take decisions; and sometimes he has to break the norms of
his/her own culture. Translators are not condemned, as was traditionally the
case, to situate themselves within the source text conventions or within the
target-text norms. To support our assumptions, we have selected, compared
and analysed a set of examples from a representative piece of literature
written in Arabic by the novelist Ahlam Mostaganmi under the title ‘ عابر
’سرير, translated into English by Nancy Roberts as ‘the Dust of Promises’.
LIETERARY TRANSLATION AND THE TRANSLATOR’S
LANGUAGE
Some researchers (Frawley, Lavioza, Baker) stressed the importance
of ‘translation language’ or the translator’s writing style. One of the leading
figures was William Frawley (1984) who argued that the translator first gets
in touch with a source text (first code) to convey its meaning to a target
language (second code) using his/her own style which may, consciously or
unconsciously, deviate from the conventional rules and standards of that
1410 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
target culture through a series of modifications and a touch of strangeness
(Baker, Meta, 1998,4). Baker affirms that ‘the third code’ or ‘the translation
language’ is of paramount importance in explaining many pending issues in
translation studies. ‘Translation’, says Baker, ‘creates a third code not
because it is a false communication pattern showing deviation from the
established norms, but simply because it represents a unique form of
communication.’ (Ibid: 3) According to Baker, one of the plausible
explanations of translation language is that translators are fully aware of the
sensitive linguistic and social status of translation in the target culture;
therefore, they spontaneously strive to provide a linguistic product satisfying
the expectations of both the target readers and critics. This can be possible
only by making use of the most correct, coherent, appealing and widely
accepted language structures (Ibid: 4).
Literary translation language is supposed to be approached as a new form of
creative writing, a third language standing at the borderline between source-
language and target-language. In El Mutargim Journal, Ferhat Mameri
suggested a comprehensive definition of translation language which could be
reformulated as follows:
A language in-between, a hybrid language marked with impurity, a second-class
language in constant need of revision, improvement, adaptation and acclimatization.
It is a non-natural language, partly deliberately invented, partly unconsciously
improvised… a language that smells translation; strange requiring domestication,
wild requiring taming. It is a sort of a rebellious and treacherous mediating
language. It is nothing but a mere image of the original; therefore, it is neither
original nor authentic. It is a language which resists submission to any hegemony; it
is an attempt to unveil the hidden potentials of language, a step forward towards
otherness, a space for renewal, for revival, a no-man’s language. (issue n° 25)
Since the author of any literary piece of writing, be it prose or poetry, is
allowed in the name of creativity to violate some conventional rules of
writing, the translator has also the right to be granted the same privilege with
language. In other words, translators should be given a wider room for
creativity. This specific language, called ‘outre-langue’ (hybrid language) by
Alexis Nouss and François Laplantine has to meet three criteria, namely : to
stand as a distant co-presence of two languages, to mirror the existence of
two different original horizons and eventually to be the representation of
otherness in the same language or of its own origin (2001: 471).
For David Bellos, the translator’s task consists of conveying ‘a feeling
of foreignness’ to the target-culture readers’. But this is a peculiarly hard and
rather paradoxical thing to do unless you call on the conventions that the
target language already possesses for representing the specific ‘other’
associated with the culture of the language from which the source text
comes. (2011:48) In this case, a kind of symbiosis or rather metamorphosis
occurs when the translator intervenes, giving birth to a strange language that
is half-native half-foreign, a bridge between selfhood and otherness.
Obviously, the more language is exposed through translation to culturally,
geographically and historically remote languages the more it gets nurtured
with new foreign unusual elements. ‘ It is the translator’s task’, states
Meschonnic (2001: 361), ‘to hear and produce a new language through the
historical encounter between the poetics of a given language and that of
1411 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
another language.’1 Based on Meschonnic’s understanding of translation, we
might assume that the birth of a new language takes place at a critical
historical moment when marriage is contracted between two different
poetics. The translator plays here the role of a ‘midwife’ to liberate or to
deliver that hidden force of language.
DOMESTICATING OTHERNESS THROUGH THE
ETHNOCENTRIC TREND
It is commonly admitted that translation unavoidably leads to inserting
different linguistic and cultural values that are familiar to specific
domestic constituencies. This insertion affects every stage of production,
circulation and reception of the translation. The publication, review,
reading, and teaching, can further complicate the results, generating
cultural and political effects that differ according to the institutional
context and social position. According to Venuti (1998), the most
inevitable effect and therefore the greatest potential generator of “scandal”
is the formation of cultural tendencies. Foreign literature undergoes
selection that removes it from its literary form where it attains its
importance. This leads to dehistoricizing the foreign literature. These texts
are often rewritten to conform to styles and themes that are presently
prominent in domestic literatures. Translation patterns can be a curse and
a blessing. They may fix or create stereotypes by attaching esteem or
stigma to special ethnic, racial and national groupings, they can sway
respect towards cultural difference or hatred based on ethnocentrism,
racism, or establishing the grounds of diplomacy, reinforcing alliances,
antagonism, and hegemonies between states.
An exceptional example of a successful project of standardizing and
de-foreignizing translation took place in Penguin Publishing House within
special historical circumstances. The editor built his commercial
enterprise on a conscious domesticating translation culture aiming at
providing ‘the general reader with readable and attractive versions of the
great books in modern English, shorn of the unnecessary difficulties and
erudition, the archaic flavour and the foreign idiom that renders so many
existing translations repellent to modern taste.’ (David Bellos, 2012: 305)
Thus, a strict style was imposed by the editor on these versions and the
outcome was that the first 200 Penguin Classics ‘read as if they had all
been written in the same language- fluent, unpretentious British English,
circa 1950’ (Ibid 306). The series was an outstanding success story as it
contributed hugely to the education of millions of people around the world
and to a wider circulation of the English Language. Bellos considers this
achievement as one of the ‘historical sources of the strong preference in
English-language translation for adaptive, normalizing or domesticating
styles.’(Ibid 306) He argues that later retranslation projects of the same
great books were not undertaken in the same conditions and were not all
motivated by the same aspirations.
1 L’écoute et la production d’un langage nouveau, par la rencontre historique entre la poétique d’une langue et celle d’une autre, sont le travail d’un
traducteur.
1412 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
In this regard, translation is an inception for constructing a domestic
representation for a foreign text and culture, at the same time creating a
domestic object, “a position of intelligibility that is also an ideological
position, informed by the codes and canons, interests and agendas of
certain domestic social groups.”(Venuti, 1998:68). Translation can also be
credited in preserving or revising the hierarchy of values in the target
language by communicating it in churches, schools, States, etc. The right
choice of foreign text and translation strategy can alter or consolidate
literary canons, conceptual paradigms, research methodologies and
commercial practices in the domestic culture. Whether the effects of a
translation pose as conservative or transgressive depends essentially on
the strategies used by the translator, but also on the different factors in
their reception, such as their page design and cover style of the printed
book, the advertising copy, the opinion of reviewers, and the way the
translation is utilized in cultural and social institutions, the way it is read
and the way it is taught.
A translation practice that meticulously redirects its ethnocentrism has
a high chance in being insurgent to domestic ideologies and institutions. It
would form an intercultural identity, not only in the sense of connecting
two cultures but crossing the cultural borders among domestic audiences.
It will mark a historical point distinguished by awareness of the domestic
and the foreign cultural traditions including traditions of translation “A
translator without historical consciousness (conscious),” wrote Berman,
remains a “prisoner to his representation of translating and to those
representations that convey the ‘social discourses’ of the moment”
(ibid.:84). Hence, limiting a translation’s ethnocentrism does not
necessarily risk its incomprehensibility and cultural marginality.
The intrinsic features of the text can mirror its socio-cultural status .
Anthony Pym confirms that:
Translated texts can try to achieve “acceptability” (Toury) or “fluency” (Venuti)
through a “domesticating” strategy that makes them look like original writing.
Or they can incorporate opaque cultural references, unusual syntax, stylistic
variation, archaisms and so on, in order to showcase the irreducible otherness of
the original text and thus their own status as translated discourse. (2008: 239)
Any translated text, of any text type, would be judged acceptable by
its readers through its fluency and according to the target culture norms.
In other words, “the more fluent the translation, the more invisible the
translator, and, presumably, the more visible the writer or meaning of the
foreign text” (Venuti, 1998: 01). This concept holds two main
disadvantages for the translator. First, the translation acts as a second-
order representation, where only the source text is the original authentic
one and the translation is no more than a derivative. On the other hand,
the translation should efface its second-order status due to transparency,
thus, causing it to be taken as the original text.
CONSTRUCTING A DOMESTIC SUBJECT THROUH A
DECENTRING STRATEGY
There are some translation projects which are carried out with the
intention of forming domestic cultural identities by using foreign texts. In
1413 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
such cases, the translations have shown high literacy, made to nurturing a
new literary movement, constructing an authorial subject through an
incorporation of a particular literary discourse (ibid.:76)
A famous example of this phenomenon of linguistic and cultural
enrichment occurred in nineteenth-century Germany through conscious
joint efforts made translators to help achieve the Germans’ aspiration for
a unified nation and build a stronger distinguished identity. Those
translators loaded German intentionally with a great deal of Greek,
French and English terms and structures in the aim of empowering their
national language (Bellos, 2012: 53). In 1927, Goethe wrote about how
foreign literature can revive national literature and continued to describe
mirroring mechanism by which a domestic subject is formed in
translation.
Translation constructs domestic subjects by enabling a process of
“mirroring” or self-recognition. The foreign text becomes explicit when
the reader relates to the translation by identifying the domestic values that
were behind the selection of that particular foreign text, and that are
inscribed in it through a particular discursive strategy. The self-
recognition is the fact of recognizing the domestic cultural norms and
resources that compose the self, that determine it as a domestic subject.
Lawrence Venuti (1998: 81) expands on self-recognition in Antoine
Berman’s point of view:
…the reader’s self-recognition is also a misrecognition: a domestic inscription is
taken for the foreign text, dominant domestic values for the reader’s own, and
the values of one constituency for those of all others in the domestic culture.
Goethe’s mentions of “scholar” is a reminder that the subject constructed by his
nationalist agenda for translation entails an affiliation with a specific social
group, here a minority with sufficient cultural authority to set itself up as the
arbiter of a national literature.
In other words, translations position readers in domestic
intelligibilities that are also ideological positions, ensembles of values,
beliefs, and representations that foster the interests of particular social
groups over others. Such social groups can be schools, churches or the
state; the identity-forming process performed by a translated text
potentially affects social reproduction by presenting a sense of what is
true, good and possible.
On Antoine Berman’s view on translation Ethics, Venuti suggests that
a bad translation is one that shapes a domestic attitude that is ethnocentric
to the foreign culture “generally under the guise of transmissibility, (it)
carries out a systematic negation of the strangeness of the foreign work”.
On the other hand, a good translation is one that limits the degree of
ethnocentrism and presents “an opening, a dialogue, a cross-breeding, a
decentering” therefore forcing the domestic language and culture to allow
in the foreignness of the foreign text (ibid.:81). Berman suggested an
ethics of decentration as an alternative to ethnocentric translation trends.
For him, ‘the selection of texts for translation and the way in which
individual translations construct representations of foreign cultural
1414 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
products would now be read as offering a window on cultural self-
definition. This is because domestic values inform both the process of
inclusion and exclusion and the choice of a particular mode of
representation.’ (In Piotr Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau, 2007: 85).
Berman notes that the discursive strategies utilized in the translation
process play a great role, whether they are providing correspondences to
enrich and enlarge the translating language or hide their manipulations of
the foreign text. So is the very choice of the foreign text to be translated. It
can emphasize the foreignness of the foreign text by questioning domestic
canons for foreign literature and domestic stereotypes of foreign cultures.
Berman states that we can’t deem a domesticating translator unethical if
he/she doesn’t cover up his/her tracks and instead exposes them in
prefaces and notes. On the contrary, we should respect the achievement of
producing a translation that is, to some point, correspondent to the original
with its own aim and strategies.
Venuti continues, “A translation ethics, clearly, can’t be restricted to a
notion of fidelity” (Venuti, 1998: 82). Translation includes not only
interpretation of the foreign text with different cultural situations at
different historical moments, but also canons of accuracy are expressed
and executed in the domestic culture, hence its ethnocentrism. The ethical
values suggested in such canons are mostly professional or institutional,
created by agencies and officials, academic specialists, publishers, and
reviewers and later acquired by translators, who adopt varying attitudes
towards them, from acceptance to ambivalence to interrogation and
revision. Any evaluations of a translation project must incorporate a
consideration of discursive strategies, their institutional settings, and their
social functions and effects.
Furthermore, the descriptive use of the term “violence” in “the
violence of translation” is in the fact that a translator is forced to eliminate
aspects of the signifying chain that constitutes the foreign text and to
dismantle and disarrange that chain in accordance with the structural
differences between languages, so that both the foreign text and its
relations to other texts in the foreign culture never remain intact after the
translation process (Ibid: 14). Translation is, in this sense, considered to
be the replacement of linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text
with a version that is comprehensible to the target reader.
For Henri Meschonnic (2001), translation is thought to be a
decentration process, a movement forward and backward for the sake of
enriching the receiving language with a great deal of loans (words,
expressions, concepts). He believes that ‘if translation defines itself not as
annexation but rather as decentration, then it becomes an act with double
effect, an inside-outside of a language and its literature. It is the
incarnation of a huge linguistic loan.’(p.360)2
2 - Si la traduction se reconnaît non annexion mais décentrement, alors elle devient cette œuvre double, ce dedans-dehors d’une langue et de sa
littérature. Elle est le grand emprunt.
1415 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
The essence of language, as stated by Meschonnic (1973 : 411-412),
is understood to be ‘a sort of a decentring process’, a complex
overlapping of two or more language systems where ‘we cannot make
ourselves understood unless we get integrated into the linguistic system of
the ‘Other’’, a cautious step towards bringing otherness and strangeness
within. In fact, in order for a language (translation) to achieve a balanced
decentring process, its users must accept that changes occur in their own
entity, and even in the linguistic structure of their own language. In
translation, decentring is viewed as a textual space which is not located in
the realm of the source language-culture nor in that of the target
language-culture, it is rather a potential space to come into being, an ‘in-
between’ area where the translator would deliberately escape the
prevailing translation deformation strategies. It is noteworthy, however, to
admit that attaining this in-between space is a hard task for the translator.
It is a matter of knowing how to conciliate some heterogeneous or even
contradictory elements. Thus, the translator’s authorial role proves to be
crucial.
The German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher argues that
there are only two methods of translation (Venuti, P. 15), either by a
domesticating practice which is done through bringing the author to the
cultural values of the reader; or by a foreignizing practice by bringing the
reader abroad to the cultural aspects of the author. Schleiermacher’s made
a clear choice for foreignization, which was treated as an ethics of
translation, where it is considered a place in which another culture is
manifested. He showed a rejecting attitude towards ‘fluent, natural’,
foreignness-free and, in more contemporary terms, ‘invisible’ and
‘ethnocentric’ translations, arguing that the foreign should be seen as a
source of energizing and enriching the mother tongue rather than a risk
threatening its entity. Why should we want or need Kafka to sound
German in any case? In German, Kafka doesn’t sound ‘German’-he
sounds like Kafka. But to the ear of an English-speaker who has learned
German but does not inhabit that language entirely naturally, everything
Kafka wrote ‘sounds German’ to some degree, precisely because German
is not quite that reader’s home tongue. Making Kafka sound German in
English is perhaps the best a translator can do to communicate to the
reader his or her own experience of reading the original. (Bellos, 2012:
48)
The French critic Antoine Berman and the North American
translation scholar Lawrence Venuti are two leading advocates of this
trend. Berman criticised harshly the ‘ethnocentric deformation’ resulting
from 'naturalising' transparent translation and he, instead, sought a strict
respect of “la lettre” through a pattern which reshapes the receiving
language and makes it ethically more accessible to 'the Foreign as
Foreign' (Piotr Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau, 2007: 85). Lawrence Venuti
is currently the main advocate of this approach in the English-speaking
world. He praised the practice of forms of translation that make language
teeming and heterogeneous. For Venuti, such translating modes are
desired since they are ‘politically beneficial’ and ‘ethically responsible’,
though posing some problems (Ibid: 85).
1416 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
The terms “domestication” and “foreignization” indicate
fundamentally ethical attitudes towards a foreign text and culture; ethical
effects produced by the choice of a text for translation and by the strategy
developed to translate it. “Foreignizing translation signifies the difference
of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in
the target language” (Venuti, P. 15). Resistancy is a strategy that results
from the translator’s work on different aspects of the language, including
lexicon and syntax, registers and dialects, styles and discourses. In
developing such a strategy, instead of abandoning fluency, it is reinvented
in advanced ways. The translator who follows foreignization usually
wants to create new conditions of readability and expand the range of
translation practices.
David Bellos (2011) stood against the unethical ethnocentric practices
occurring mainly in literary translation. He raised a critical question about
the way a foreign work should be dealt with in the target culture: ‘how
should the foreignness of the foreign best be represented in the
receiving language?’ For David, a compromising answer to this question
had already been suggested in 1763 by Jean d’Alembert, the philosopher
and co-editor of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, who believed that in a good
translation:
[…]The original should speak our language with the superstitious caution we
have for our tongue, but with a noble freedom that allows features of one
language to be borrowed in order to embellish another. Done this way, a
translation may possess all the qualities that make it commendable- a natural and
easy manner, marked by the genius of the original and alongside that the added
flavour of a homeland created by its foreign colouring. (cited in David Bellos,
2010:42 )
LITERARY TRANSLATORS AS WRITERS AND CANON
CREATORS
Literary translation is thought to be a particular form of creative
writing. A literary work is open to a wide range of interpretations by a
number of influential actors, such as readers, critics and translators, but
translators are particularly placed at a quite different level as their
interpretative act results always in recreating the original text or, simply,
in producing-reproducing a new text. Thus, translation and writing can be
said to have an interactive and reciprocal relationship. In this perspective,
H. Meschonnic affirms that: ‘Translating and writing are inextricably
linked through a reciprocal work: translation does not only receive, it can
also be a source of production )3 (Cited in Persée: n°51, 1981).
According to Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla (2007), there is an obvious
overlap between the crafts of translation and writing, yet the two terms
cannot be used interchangeably. In this special area, only a set of practices
occurring at this borderline can be explored; ‘practices where translation
tests its boundaries, overlapping with other categories of writing’ (p.10)
In his seminal work ‘Pour la Poétique II. Epistémologie de l’écriture.
Poétique de la traduction (2001), Henri Meschonnic highlights the
3 ‘Traduire et écrire sont liés dans un travail réciproque : la traduction n'est pas seulement ce qui prend, elle peut aussi être ce qui donne.’
1417 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
individualistic creative character of translators and their importance in
reshaping the linguistic system of the receiving cultures. He holds the
belief that the best literary translators were also writers who incorporated
their translations into their creative works, and translators who are not
writers are nothing but mere introducers and conveyors of messages but
not ‘creators’. For Meschonnic, translation is a distinctive pattern of
creative writing and‘if a translated text is regarded as a text, it is a
writing of a reading-writing, a personal non-transparent adventure, a
constitution of a specific language pattern (langage-système) with the
overall linguistic system (langue-système) similarly to what is labelled ‘an
original work’. (Ibid. 354)
Translation, understood this way, can pave the way for a remapping
of the literary landscape through breaching the traditional cultural rules
and challenging the existing canons. Hence, the target-language system is
shaken through the successive and massive waves of translation and
through conscious interventions of translators-writers. Moreover,
translation has the merit of unveiling the hidden potentials of other
languages, and when it is carried out in a systematic movement, it leads at
first to producing in the target language a semantic and syntactic material
that is particular to translations, and then this same material becomes a
driving force for the development of certain language properties (Ibid
356)
In fact, one of the major pathways to revive a given language is to
put it into intensive contact with other foreign languages, mainly through
translation other forms of cultural exchange, and then to normalise it so
that it becomes more open to import and assimilate new words, concepts
and even structures. When Luther faced the challenge of rendering a text
from Latin, a homogenous standard language, into an unstable Germanic
language with a variety of dialects, he preferred a normalising pattern
inspired from the German linguistic heritage. Luther resorted first to
Latin grammatical structures, and then he ‘fixed’ a literary standard
dialect of German, which he relied on later as ‘the norm for translating
the Bible’. Luther’s translation ‘achieved two things: first, it resulted in
the creation of a normative linguistic entity in order to translate; at the
same time, it was through translating that the standard language,
German, came into being.’(Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla 2007.p 33)
According to Anthony Lewis, Luther’s translational experience is
important for two reasons :‘First, it created a normalised linguistic
variety, the German language, to translate the Bible, but it was through
translation itself that this normalised language was created.’. Thus, we
conclude that there is an intimate intrinsic relationship between translation
and standardisation. In other words, translation, which can be itself a
normalising tool, requires the existence of a normalised language. For
Lewis, the two elements have the same impact on the understanding of
translation, though both of them can be discussed separately: ‘the practice
of translation is based on the prior existence of a normalised language.
But if ever this normalised language does not exist, translation will create
it.’ ‘Normalised’ or ‘standardised’ languages are actually needed in
translation because they are relatively steady and, as such, they can
establish correspondence relations.(Meta, vol. 48, n° 3)
1418 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
In contrast, modern Arabic, for instance, showed stiff resistance in
dealing with this phenomenon of language standardisation. The situation,
however, was different during the Golden Age of translation in the Arab
and Islamic civilisation, particularly in the ‘House of Wisdom’, when
translators, who used to be knowledge carriers and language developers,
showed soft flexibility towards ‘foreign’ cultures, leading to substantial
shifts in the Arabic language with plenty of new concepts of philosophy,
thought, mathematics, optics and so on. But, Arabic had known a long
state of stagnation ever since and remained reluctant to change as a
logical result of a decline in translation activity and a lack of openness to
other cultures and languages.
The phenomenon of language standardisation through translation is
not exclusive to the Reformation period (Martin Luther, King James), it
is also a distinctive feature in the context of colonialism. Wherever the
European colonialists encountered linguistic situations opposing the
prevailing European perception of language, they always tried to impose
their own pattern through stabilising and homogenising the colonised
people’s languages and dialects as a preliminary step towards facilitating
the task of translation. (ANTHONY LEWIS, 2003: 415)
In postcolonial countries, a generation of writers (Assia Djebar,
Patrick Chamoiseau, Gabriel Okara, Sam Selvon and many others)
attempted to make their voices heard through the medium of European
languages imposed on them previously in special historical
circumstances. They produced texts that are ‘a combined version of
other literary by-products resulting from an indigenous speech pattern,
thinking patterns and world view […] transliterated into the European
language » (Ojo, 1986 Cited in ANTHONY LEWIS, 2003: 415).
Those writers used their cultures and languages as a starting point to
give birth to hybrid texts that can be of a great impact on translation
studies and would turn the concept of ‘source language’ and ‘target
language’ upside down. (Ibid:416)
Translation as a specific form of writing is carried out under a set of
constraints and according to several levels of choices and decisions that
might be labelled ‘degrees of translation’ occurring across a large
spectrum. Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla explained this idea as follows:
we might imagine a spectrum, indicating a range of interactions, where writing
occurs ‘from’, ‘with’, ‘through’ and ‘over’ other texts. At the most minimal end
of the spectrum, translation is apprenticeship or inspiration (…) At the other
end of the spectrum, we find ‘interlingual writing’ which is informed by
multilingualism. (2008:109)
Language hybridity is a hallmark of post-colonial writing. It is the
outcome of a double mode of expression (expressing ‘self’ through
‘otherness’) and a use of ‘impure language’ (overlapping dialects and
heterogeneous registers and cultural representations). These cross-
cultural writing practices are somehow driven by a certain ‘translative
impulse’. They reflect ‘the instability of cultural borders and changing
configurations of identity’ (Ibid 110). In this particular perspective,
writers/translators act not only as mediators, but also as canon creators
since they produce hybrid texts nurtured by a double or even a polyglot
culture.
1419 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
DATA ANALYSIS
LINGUISTIC MOBILITY (THE EFFACEMENT OF THE
SUPERIMPOSITION OF LANGUAGES)
The destruction of vernacular networks or their exoticization
Page Page
Source Text Target Text
Number Number
Dans quelle taille voulez-vous cette robe ‘what size are you looking for, sir?’
13 6
Monsieur? - she asked.
Bonjour, Je suis Françoise ; que puis- je pour ‘Hello! I’m Françoise. What can I…
49 47
vous? for you?’
68 ‘Oh my God, you remind me so much
Oh.. mon Dieu.. Comment tu me rappelles Ziane 69
of Zayyan! This is crazy. And all of
c’est- fou.. tout ça pour un pont!
this on account of a bridge!’
Bon anniversaire! 82 Bon anniversaire! 85
(Villejuif) 87 Ville Juive 92
He was his usual scattered self.
il est marrant ce type : ضحكت.إنه هايص و حايص كعادته 114 121
‘He’s funny! She said with a laugh.
Tu sais que je t’aime, toi 116 ‘Do you know that I love you? 123
C’est vrai ca? 116 ‘Do you really? 123
Oh merci, elle est mieux ainsi! 132 Oh thank you! It’s better this way! 140
Je suis désolée Monsieur. Il est décédé 198 I’m sorry, sir. He’s deceased 210
Ce n'est pas possible. Oh mon Dieu 212 It isn’t possible. Oh my God… 227
Ce n'est pas grave 216 It’s no big deal 231
Les Orientalistes 234 Les Orientalistes 251
The source text (in Arabic) contains 13 sentences in French
❖ Only in three situations, the translator used French (Bon anniversaire,
P.85; Villejuif, P.92 and Les Orientalistes, P. 251).
1. Bon anniversaire, borrowed expression
2. Villejuif: use of connotative equivalence.
3. Les orientalistes: borrowed expression
❖ In 10 translations, there is absolutely no trace of French in the target
text.
❖ When dealing with the indicated sentences, the translator adopted a
domesticating strategy using a mixture of target-oriented techniques.
❖ By doing so, the translator erased the traces of different forms of
French that co-exist with Arabic in the ST. This is actually considered
as one of the deforming tendencies of Translation and is commonly
known as the effacement of the superimposition of languages.
1420 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
N° Arabic text Page Literal English page Analysis
n° Rendition version n°
الكالب ما همش هنا The ‘dog’ has generally a negative connotation in
اليوم the Arab culture. This is why the translator has
opted for the word ‘bastard’ as an adaptive strategy
to the Anglo-Saxon culture rather than keeping
‘I see the
The dogs aren’t ‘dog’ which is highly cherished in the Western
01 34 bastards aren’t 29
here today. civilisation being a symbol of faithfulness and a
here today!’
source of joy. However, if we apply the back
translation technique, we will unavoidably use the
Algerian word for ‘bastard’ which itself bears a
very negative connotation.
يقودوا
ّ يروحوا كلهم The Arabic expression has two different negative
1st meaning: May meanings, soft and harsh, depending on regions in
they all get lost! Algeria. It is the first meaning, the soft one, that is
2nd meaning They can all go chosen here by the translator. It corresponds to the
02 61 (offensive) to hell
61
use of the expression mainly in the Eastern part of
I want them all to the country. The second meaning stands for an
‘fuck off’! offensive expression used particularly in coastal
areas to tell someone to go away or to leave.
قل لي يرحم باباك The Arabic expression is a particular form of
politeness in relation to the Islamic religion where
the parents are held in high esteem. Therefore,
Tell me, , God Now tell me,
03 62 bless your father! please,
62 using only the word ‘please’ does not render the full
connotation of the expression. It would be better to
use a similar expression of a religious origin, such
as ‘for God’s sake’.
وجه الخروف The translator rendered the general meaning of this
!معروف If a guy’s local proverb, and then he translated it again
innocent, it’ll literally for more emphasis, yet he destroyed the
The sheep’s face
04 101 is known !
be obvious. You 107 rhyme. By doing so, the translator saved the
can tell a sheep strangeness of the local proverb; in other words, he
by its face’ made the foreign accessible as foreign as termed by
Berman.
حبس يا راجل من ‘So, man, The two expressions are in the dialect of the region
enough of this of Djijel, a coastal area in Algeria. In this particular
زافيرات «لي You man, stop talk about context, the first expression is used in a humorous
»متاع الكتيالت talking about burglars and manner to refer to a widely known Algerian
هاذي اللي كالو ‘murder stories’. murderers! As
As the saying the saying goes,
comedian, the Inspector Tahar, who incarnated the
05 فيها «جبت قط 108 goes: I brought a “I got a cat to
113- role of a funny police inspector in the seventies of
114
ولي يوانسني cat to keep me keep me the 20th century. As for the second expression, it is
»!يبرك في عينيه company, but it company, but it employed in a proverbial form, and the translator
scared me with scared me kept the meaning in a literal, but faithful way. This
its glowing eyes. when its eyes can certainly be an effective method to enrich the
glowed in the target language.
dark!”
..هللا يجعلها خير This expression is used in a superstitious
عندي بالزاف perspective, particularly in the Algerian culture. It is
employed when a person or a group of people laugh
!مضحكتش هكذا May Allah turn it
in an excessive and unusual manner, and at the end
into a blessing …. ‘I really
It has been really shouldn’t be they become afraid of something bad to happen
06 108 a long while since laughing this
114
later.
I haven’t laughed way!’
this way!
1421 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
THE DESTRUCTION OF VERNACULAR NETWORKS OR
THEIR EXOTICIZATION
❖ In translating such texts, translators generally tend to destroy these local
networks, unknowingly or on purpose, for the sake of serving the
formal and standard language.
❖ Out of 34 examples in the original text containing vernacular networks,
two examples are completely omitted by the translator. This is indeed
a loss in the artistic and literary value of the original novel. The
remaining examples are either destroyed or exoticized.
1422 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
وين راك The translator shaped intelligently a similar image
ISSN: 0304-2294
غاطس؟ I thought into English to transmit the idea of a person being
Where are you’d absent-minded or absorbed in thought. In the
07 135 you drowned in 144 Algerian dialect, we use either the expression ‘ وين راك
diving? a lake!’ ( ’غاطس؟the image of somebody diving into water) or
‘( ’وين راك غارق؟drowning into water) and both have
something to do with water.
يا وهللا ‘Now if The Algerian expression ‘ ’يا وهللا مهابلmeans ‘You are
I swear by really crazy!’. The English translation is given in the
..مهابل that
God you form of an idiom used when we see something
08 108 doesn’t 114
terribly bad and unacceptable that has happened or
are
take the that someone has done. Its alternative equivalent is
crazy…
cake!’ ‘that is too much!’
التاريخ ال Once again, we are dealing with an animal that is
»«الحلوف disgusted religiously and culturally in the Algerian
society. The word ‘ ’حلوفis used both in standard
!راه يسجل Bloody and colloquial Arabic to refer to the ‘wild boar’, but
The ‘boar- history the colloquial language generally uses it with a
like’ does its negative connotation. It is an insult meaning:
09 140 149
history is own ‘damned’. Logically speaking, since this word is
recording ! recording now officially integrated in the French dictionary as
‘halouf’ through transliteration technique, the same
!’ thing can be done in English. The word ‘bloody’
chosen by the translator failed to transfer the
semantic features embodied in the word ‘ ’حلوف.
In this particular context, both expressions are used
to show politeness and express gratitude towards
someone. They are so close to the formal Arabic
usage and can easily be understood by almost all
▪ May God give ▪ May God Arab speakers. However, when we consider
يا يعيْشك you long life, give you semantically the second expression, we see that it
..وليدي son. long life, denotes more than the meaning of thankfulness. It
10 259 son. 280 contains a religious wish through which the speaker
يعطيك - • May God asks God to grant good health to the listener as a
..الصحّة make you ▪ That’s kind reward for the favour he/she has done. In addition,
healthy.. of you. the word ‘health’ ( )الصحّةembodies a special value in
the Arab culture, and in the Algerian one in
particular. There is even a common phrase used in
this sense, namely: ‘health and peace of mind’ ( الصحة
)والهناءas a wish for ultimate happiness in life.
In the Arabic version, the two descriptions ‘’الرعيان
and ‘ ’بني عريانdon’t have just special connotations,
but they are also rhyming in a way that created a sort
of a wordplay. The translator managed partly to
convey the rhyme effect by choosing three words
containing the letter ‘P’, and succeeded in translating
With
مع the connotative meaning of the word ‘ ’رعيانwhich
plebeians
11 ))((الرعيان 261 With 282 refers to ‘scum of society’, ‘thugs’ or ‘uncivilised
and poor
،))و ((بني عريان ‘shepherds’ people’; the denotative meaning of this word being
people.
and ‘sons of ‘shepherds’. However, he failed to render the strong
naked negative connotation of the phrase ‘ ’بني عريانand
people’ deformed it. This phrase refers not only to poor
people, but to arrogant poor people who show off and
try always to place themselves in a social position
that is not theirs.
Omitted A real loss occurred in the English version. The
I love you; may author made use of a very powerful form of dialogue
when two contradictory feelings, affection and hatred,
نشتيك يلعن God’s curse be
12 189 201 are gathered in one expression, though the intention is
..بوزينك put on your
just an emphasis of love towards the person to whom
beauty’s origin.
the speech is addressed. This is a usual way of
communication in the Algerian dialect and even in
1423 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
other dialects around the Arab world, such as the
Egyptian one where we find strong love and insult put
together in the same expression and addressed to the
listener. A common example is the Egyptian
expression ( )بحبك يخرب بيتكwhich means literally: I
love you; may Allah ruin your family. This is just a
figurative language, and the meaning here is ‘come on
dear, you need to know that I love you so much’.
حتى لكأن التاء198 210 The image used in English does not represent nor
المفتوحة في correspond to the one in Arabic. The Arab writer
آخرها ليست compared the shape of the stretched letter ‘ ’تat the
end of the word to a coffin/hearse (both terms being
سوى تابوت of the same semantic field) but the translator used the
It was as if the
It was as though letter ‘h’ and compared it to a hearse. Visually, there
Arabic letter ‘’ت
the ‘h’ in the
13 (T) in the end was
end was nothing
is no point of resemblance between the letter ‘h’ and
nothing but a
but a hearse the shape of hearse unless the ‘h’ is reversed
coffin. vertically. The translator should have used the letter
‘C reversed counter- clockwise and stretched’ since
the letter C in English corresponds in the Arabic
alphabetical order to the letter ‘ ’تand it stands for an
initial to the word coffin itself.
الدنيا بنت الكلب229 The Arabic text made use of the phrase ‘ ’’بنت الكلبto
الغالي تدي This bitch of a 245
talk negatively about life and the translator
وتخلي This daughter-of- world takes the intelligently managed to use a dynamic equivalent
through euphemism by keeping only the word ‘bitch’
كان..الرخيص bitch life takes the good ones and
which can also be used in English in this sense. The
good ones and leaves the bad
14 سيد الرجال leaves the bad ones. He was Arabic expression ‘ ’بنت الكلبcan be rendered
ones. He was the the best man literally in English as ‘son of bitch’ which is so
master of men. I’ve ever
known.’ offensive. As for the expression ‘’كان سيد الرجال, it
could be simply translated as follows: ‘He incarnated
manhood perfectly’
.. آآآه يا ظالمة232 249 This passage is rendered almost word for word, yet it
وعليك انخلِّّي conveyed the general intended message with some
shades of meaning. In the first part, the translator used
أوالد عرشي the expression ‘you’ve wronged me’ as an English
يتامى equivalent to the exclamatory phrase ‘’آآآه يا ظالمة.
Ahhhh, how The English translation of the Arabic word ‘ ’ظالمةis
Ahhhh, you unjust you’ve wronged ‘unjust’, and we know that ‘injustice’ implies in this
woman ! For your me… for your particular context the idea of misleading or doing
15 sake I would have sake I would
something wrong to someone. In the second section of
left my own tribe have left my
orphans! own children the passage, the translator rendered the phrase ‘ أوالد
orphans! ’عرشيby ‘my own children’. This is partly true, but
does not really transfer the full connotation of the
word ‘ ’عرشin the Algerian culture which refers to
‘tribe’, ‘community’ or even ‘nation’. We notice that
it is limited here to the narrow context of the small
family.
1424 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
CONCLUSION
Despite the undeniable recent achievements made in the field of
translation studies, the real task of the translator is still partly shrouded in
mystery in much the same way as Walter Benjamin’s seminal work ‘The
Task of the Translator’, particularly when it comes to understanding the
nature of literary translation or, to put it more clearly, translation of
creative texts.
We can draw the conclusion that in dealing with any form of literary
works, a fusion - or a sort of marriage- takes place at the very borders
between the local and the foreign languages to give birth to a hybrid and
‘pure language’ whose delivery is secured by the translator being a
leading agent behind this creative act. Generally speaking, most
translators tend either to defend their own cultures through the use of a
handful of domesticating strategies aiming at adapting the foreign to the
taste of the target culture or to open up the way to foreignness to invade
and shake the local culture for the sake of empowering it. It is through the
combination of both methods that we can come out with a neutral and, to
some extent, a specific area of creativity.
On the basis of the theoretical background and the findings, we can
argue that there should be an impartial space between the two extremes,
domestication and foreignisation, an area of creation and re-creation
reserved solely for the translator as a key-player in the translation process.
This space of creativity located in-between the source and the target
realms requires negotiations and imposes concessions from both sides. It
stands for a third space that is reached by means of a ‘decentring’
approach based on a vivid mobility of language; a reciprocal movement
back and forth taking into account a wide range of parameters beyond the
simple sphere of the linguistic structure. As far as translation is concerned,
the essence of language, as stated by Meschonnic (1973), is believed to be
‘a decentring movement’ resulting in a cautious interplay between two or
more linguistic systems in which ‘Selfhood’ can be better understood only
in the mirror of ‘Otherness’’. Decentration is an essential phase in
language mobility. It is also a sign of good health of languages as it
encompasses a move forward towards the ‘Other’ in an attempt to
integrate it within the receptive culture and allow it to co-exist in harmony
within several heterogeneous components. It is through decentring
strategies that the creative space widens up to free the translators from the
traditional paradoxical dichotomies.
In a nutshell, literary translators are crippled by a set of social and
cultural constraints imposed to them as a heavy historical heritage; that is
why they have to get rid of such obstacles to pave the way for themselves
to a real creative writing horizon rather than playing the mere role of
shadow trackers. In other words, literary translation is expected to offer
1425 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIALINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021 Issue-1
www.hivt.be
ISSN: 0304-2294
translators a wider room for creativity and many venues still need to be
thoroughly explored in this sense.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Anthony Lewis, Rohan (2003) : Langue Métissée et Traduction :
Quelques Enjeux Théoriques , Meta, vol. 48, n° 3, 411–420
2. Baker, Mona (1998): Réexplorer la langue de la traduction : une
approche par corpus. Meta, XLIII, 4.
4. Bellos, David (2012): Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing
Adventure of Translation. London. Penguin Books.
3. BOASE-BEIER, JEAN (2011): A Critical Introduction to Translation
Studies. Continuum International Publishing Group.
4. Hatim, Basil (2013): Teaching and Researching Translation –
Routledge. 2nd ED. – PP. 48-61.
5. Kuhiwczak, Piotr and Littau Karin (2007): A Companion to Translation
Studies. Cromwell Press Ltd.
6. Mameri, Ferhat (2001): Language of Translation ()لغة الترجمة. Al-
Mutargim. Volume 12, No 1. https://www.asjp.cerist.dz/en/article/60813.
7. Meschonnic .H (2001). Pour la Poétique II. Epistémologie de l’écriture.
Poétique de la traduction. Guallimard.
8. Mirella, Conenna et D’Oria Domenico (1981) : Traduction, Lecture
D’écritures. Persée : In Langue française, n°51. La traduction. pp. 77-81.
9. Muntaner, Jaume Pérez (1993) : La traduction comme création
littéraire. Meta, XXXVIII, 4.
10. Pym, Anthony et al. (2008): Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies,
John Benjamins Publishing Company
11. St-Pierre, Paul and Prafulla (2007): In Translation- Reflections,
Refractions, Transformations. Benjamins Translation Library.
12- Venuti, L. (1998) : The Scandals of Translation : Towards an Ethics
of Difference, London / New York, Routledge.
1426 LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIAYou can also read
