Reflections 03/21

Cooperson's talk changed around my perception of his translation of Impostures, his relaxed attitude and a way of not taking himself too seriously felt refreshing to me, while his enthusiasm - inspiring. An important detail that I believe I did not pay enough attention at first was that the English translations of Importures were not widely read, and so there was no risk in taking a creative and unorthodox approach to its translation. In the lens of its purpose being that of interest incitement rather than faithfulness, I find Cooperson's choices now completely justified. Especially after Cooperson admitted he was not overly familiar neither with authors nor dialects that he imitated, I think it should have been mentioned in the introductions that the readers are supposed to have as much fun with the text as the translator did, and that this is not a scholarly work. In Cooperson's explanation of how translations to other languages worked, I got an impression of slight frustration with the limits of the English language. I wonder once again if more flexibility will be introduced into English in the future.

More generally, many authors attach a great deal of importance to rhythmic and sound patterns, which are given precedence over strict linguistic faithfulness. - I wonder why it is the case and why this question was not attempted to get answered in the article, i.e. the question of why some authors prefer linguistic faithfulness, while others prefer a melodic one, and what that means. 

"This is what I meant. Is it what you said in French?" For me it was very useful. - The immediate meaning of this sentence seems to be about the help of the author in translation of their works. There is another layer to it, too, in my opinion - How does the author themselves know what they mean? I believe that is because they have an idea in their mind and show the translator how to help the foreign readers get access to it, too. This idea exists as a multidimensional invisible entity - we cannot touch it, yet we can perceive it, and we can see its two-dimensional shadow through words. It also clearly does not belong to the author alone, hence the ambiguity inherent to "authorship", the extent to which the text should be allowed to get twisted, etc. - all of these debates I see as attempts to reconcile seemingly contradictory impressions of the writer owning and at the same time not owning the text, as well the translator somewhat owning it and at the same time definitely somewhat not owning it, too.. I believe these impressions can get comfortably reconciled within the concept of the author as the discoverer of an idea and the creator of its expression.

 Similarly, the discussions over whether there is one text or many since any text can get "multiplied" through translation will never have an "either-or" answer, either, and I find it a waste of time and effort to discuss it simply for the discussion's sake and lukewarmly pretend like we do have to and are not supposed to arrive at any conclusion regarding what we observe and talk about. It is an issue that many still avert their eyes from - that hundreds and hundreds of papers in academia, both in humanities and science are written without arriving at anything, and I find both that and the eye-aversion equally as harmful practices. In my view, a text can seem singular and multiple at the same time because the idea expressed through it has many dimensions in the abstract time-space, and new sides to it get exposed through variations in its articulation. The original written text becomes therefore akin to the first map, the first drawing of something beyond what can be immediately observed, and that is why it seems "important". Yet translations are no less important, either, in how the translator firstly is to decipher the directions toward what was drawn, and then depict it from a different angle - for both another language and the new phrasings and choices that the language requires, constitute a differing perspective. In other words, varying articulations are like sides outlining a complex figure - the text is not the figure itself but only a demarkation of it. 

With the act of creation and recreation in regards to writing and translation mentioned many times, I think discussing "sameness/nonsameness" is like discussing whether a frog that procreates and "multiplies" is the same frog. Obviously it is not and at the same time it is, the genes remain and the species is the same, too (and now what?). I see ideas acting similarly, only in the abstract space. If the perspective of constancy and simultaneous dimensionality of literature and ideas is taken, then all of the relationships and their subtleties and vacillations between the author, the text, the readers, and the translators make much more sense and lose the veneer of arbitrariness and mental passivity in the form of "sometimes it's this and sometimes it's that and nobody really knows why and that's okay". The purposelessness of many discussions on translation, and often the purposelessness behind translation and literature itself bother me quite a bit - i.e. when the meaning of the outcome is barely touched on or kept in mind - the outcome is just stated and is to be celebrated no matter what it is - let alone seen as a pivotal component of progression toward more meaningful literature, more meaningful translation, and more meaningful discussions of everything. 

Kesnia