Thoughts on Cooperson's Impostures and Author-Translator Relationships

Michael Cooperson gave such an engaging talk and was so personable, especially when we met with him before the lecture. He told us then that translators "are his favorite people." We talked a bit about translating living authors versus dead authors, which connects quite nicely to the readings for this week. Cooperson mentioned in his talk that "being a translator is about hiding," but when you're working with an author from hundreds of years ago like Al-Hariri, it's difficult to "hide" behind authorial intent or feedback, because that kind of information simply isn't available to you, and author can't interfere or assert control in the translation process. 

While it is ultimately Al-Hariri's text, Cooperson's voice is conspicuous throughout the translation. It seems that when we talk about reading a domesticated versus a foreignized translation, one of the criteria we point to most often is whether or not readers are conscious that they are reading a translation; whether or not the reader is conscious of the translator's interference. Cooperson's translation complicates this dichotomy in that, while the language is hyper-domesticated and localized, the reader's attention is constantly being drawn to the fact that this is a translation and is required to do a lot of work to understand its mechanisms, thanks to the glossaries and explanatory notes. Cooperson made an important distinction at the beginning of his talk: that domestication of language is not the same as domestication of content. I think Cooperson has managed to demonstrate the difference between these two forms of domestication in his Impostures, and I wonder if there's something about ludic or Oulipo-adjacent texts that allows them to demonstrate so clearly that a piece of writing can be "domesticated" while simultaneously requiring the translator to be extra "visible." I hope that makes sense... I'm still parsing it out myself. 

Isabelle Vanderschelden's article on authority in translation was full of wonderful anecdotes, and drove home the point that it is difficult to make any generalized claim about authorial intervention being good or bad for the translator and the target text. I'm working on translating a novel for my capstone project, and I agree with Nadine Stabile that the author can serve as a sort of "extra safety net" for an early-career translator (26). I hope to reach out to the authors of the novel I'm translating soon, so I can ask them some questions. That said, I think it would be daunting and ultimately stifling to receive a thirty-page list of instructions like the one Umberto Eco sent out to his translators for Foucault's Pendulum. 

It seems that the success (or failure) of such translator-author collaborations often comes down to the temperament and ego of the author. The collaboration between Juliet Carpenter and Minae Mizumura seems to have been particularly fruitful. From Carpenter's examples, it seems that Mizumura truly wanted to collaborate, building on Carpenter's work with thoughtful guiding questions and suggestions ("Could we do something more with the description of the moonlight?") (4). On the other hand, some authors like Singer and Kundera seem to view translators as a necessary evil, and clearly would prefer to simply do the translation themselves if they were so able. It would be hard to achieve a fruitful collaboration with an author who already views you and your work with suspicion, and feels from the start that their job is to correct your errors. 

 Maggie

Reflections 3/21

     I loved Michael Cooperson's talk! He seemed so timid and unconfident in his work, but I think he did an amazing job. I loved that he focused more on the process of translation, because I've been quite curious, but understand that it's different for everyone. I love the quote that he ended with, about non-translatable works truly just being able to be translated in an infinite number of ways.

    When Kundera admitted to spending more time reading and supervising his translations than writing, it not only reinforced my opinion that "fidelity" to an original is not only unnecessary but actually a hindrance. In the case of the English translation and domestication of his novel Zert, I understand Kundera's protest. But the fixation on "sniffing out" the "unfaithfulness" of translations that have existed for years seems unproductive. Kundera probably could've written other novels if she hadn't been so concerned with re-translating her own works, and adding her own modifications that other translators clearly couldn't.

    Nabokov and Pertzoff's translation relationship seems much more effective, and perhaps this comes from Nabokov having experience translating work that wasn't his own. Reading their letters was so cool. It's easy to render someone like Nabokov as more of a legend than a person, but reading that he was "interested in a library position" was just so wholesome. It humanized him in my eyes and was fun to read.

    My favorite part from the Juliet Winters Carpenter interview was that she used other novels to finesse her style in the translation of A True Novel. She mentions Wuthering Heights (which the plot is loosely based on), The Tales of Genji, and The Great Gatsby. These callbacks reminded me of Michael Cooperson's talk, and how he used Jane Eyre, Edgar Allan Poe, and The Odyssey (among many others) to finesse the style he was trying to copy in his translations. It's so interesting how much prose goes into translation beyond the original text-- not only to copy a style, but transformative works that influence a language, which years down the road influence a translation into that language... the amount of works that go into a translation is honestly infinite. 

Sarah

3/21 Reflections

Translator-author relationships are always interesting to read about, possibly more so now than ever before, personally, coming off the lecture given by Micheal Cooperson earlier last week. Perhaps the most resonant thing he said during the time we had his company, was in his belief that once the text was published to the world, it ceases to be the author's possession when the author has passed away. Arguably even when the original author is still alive, as Tracy, in her guest lecture, and others, could be said to have created translations that do not reflect the original, and done so even with the blessing of the author themselves, though it is much simpler to be beholden to the constraints of the original text and language. 

And it seems though by and large most authors in an author-translator pair are fairly laissez faire about the translated work, even if in the letters from Nabokov he takes more of guiding role for example, he never outright gives direct instructions aside from a few regarding sentence length and the correction of a mistake. It would be interesting to see if the tendency of authors to be less restrained about the quality and direction of the translations of their works has some sort of cultural side to it, especially considering most if not all of the translator pairs in the readings are into English, a language that has long solidified its position among languages as one that is culturally dominant and widely taught throughout the world, or perhaps it is because authors themselves are more aware of what they cannot do in English themselves. 

Steven C.

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

Cooperson and "Not Knowing" 20/03/2022

 As summer approaches, and several of us anticipate finishing the MFA program, there are a lot of unknowns, and so I was, perhaps, most struck by Michael Cooperson’s ability to admit, accept, and even thrive on not knowing. He admitted openly that he could not have translated such a text without the internet or without the help of many colleagues and friends. He talked about reaching out to people who spoke different dialects for their help, support, and knowledge. He acknowledged how some of his colleagues would have produced different, perhaps even better, translations. He told us that he no longer feels inclined to translate from Arabic anymore, although he might change his mind later. When Professor Litvin asked him why he did not render an imposture in “Arabeezi” he ultimately said that he didn’t really know why. When asked with which authors or dialects he was familiar before he started the project, he told us that he hadn’t known any of them that well. 

I think “not knowing” is central to translation, and perhaps we don’t talk about it enough. Time and time again we come up against words, authors, styles that we don’t know or haven’t heard before. We think of not knowing as a constraint. But Cooperson’s talk was a good reminder that it’s okay not to know. It’s anything but a constraint; it’s an opportunity to take the time to learn, to ask, and to ultimately give it a try.

 

Relationships between translator and author similarly seem to pivot on this notion of “not knowing.” Vanderschelden explains how “translation collaboration can sometimes shift the decision process from translator to author” (26). In other words, when a translator is unsure about something and asks the author, the translator can simply avoid this “not knowing” process which, as Cooperson demonstrated, can be central to thoughtful, analytical, creative translation. Moreover, while “not knowing” often enables translation to proliferate discourses and allow for many different interpretations of a given text, Vanderschelden explains that “collaboration of the author with the translator can be perceived as a way of controlling the proliferation of meaning” (26). This proliferation of meaning is perhaps one of the most profound and beautiful aspects of translation.

 

That being said, I think this question of collaboration between an author and translator may also depend on the languages and cultures in question. For example, given the power dynamics that exist between Arabic and English, I believe it is important for translators from Arabic—especially American English speakers like me—to communicate with the author when possible and, at the very least, make sure that the author has given their approval on any liberties taken in the translation and the overall translation produced. English/American culture has already cherry-picked and distorted so much from Arabic that this seems like a basic act of respect for the author, their work, and the Arabic language. If they do not want something represented or translated in a certain way, I should, at the very least, ask, understand, and respect why. Their name will be attached to the translation too, after all.

-sharon

C is for translator

 

To invent under constraint, I’m curious what could be said about translation using words that begin with c.  Creativity (first a consummate reader, the translator is also an adroit writer, his inventions tethered to, derived from, and always harkening back to the source text).  Confidence (because if the translator doesn’t believe he can produce a sound translation, the most likely outcome is that he will not).  Commitment (because to hear Cooperson talk about that strata of revisions and to read how Carpenter and Mizumura labored over every word is to suppose translation is as much a show of talent as a feat of persistence).  And finally collaboration (a c word correlative with the last).

 

I’d be amongst the first to plant a theoretical flag in the domain of Roland Barthes and to suggest that the death of the author entails, a priori, the ousting of authorial authority.  How many translators in how many languages have brought a question to the venerated personage of the author, only to hear, “I didn’t mean it that way, but now that you say it, you’re absolutely right”?  An author is the best writer but perhaps not the best reader of his work. Once a text leaves his desk, it enters a web of associations whose gamut no writer, however perspicacious, can foresee.  One of the most careful readers a text will ever enjoy, a translator is thus uniquely positioned to detect the depth and nuances of a text, one of the persons best qualified to maximize the meanings which transcend authorial design.

 

In theory.  And I say “in theory” because economic and personal interests quickly complicate any metaphysical web of associations.  As Vanderschelden points out, in contrast to the evolution of literary theory, an author can veto or authorize a translation (e.g., Kundera) in accordance with how he’d like his work to be perpetuated or perceived.  The model, although it feels like an anachronism, underpins the mercantile construct surrounding translation.  Unless the death of the author signifies literally the death of the author, for a translator working on a modern text, the author is inevitably in the room, able to say yea or nay.  That is, collaboration is implicit in the structure of contemporaneous translation.

 

The practical expression of this tacit collaboration hinges upon a multitude of factors.  The author’s command of the target language (Kundera could never micromanaged a translation into Zulu), the translator’s fluency in the source culture (not just the language), the preoccupations and personalities of writer and translator (Nabokov seems to prefer an amanuensis to a translator, Sotiropolous was generous with her time but exacting in her methods, Yi Lei gave Tracy Smith great latitude)—these are some of the determinants shaping the nature and degree of the collaboration between author and translator.

 

Personally, as a land mammal loth to speak, I would be discombobulated by direct collaboration.  While I hope to enjoy a positive rapport with (if not the friendship of) the writers I one day translate, to ask for clarification and to discuss textual choices, I’m speaking to revisions.  The generative process, for me, calls for hermetic concentration, that I immerse myself completely and without competing priorities in the field of the text in order to hear its tone and to catch its rhythm.  My first draft, in the best of circumstances, is a product of this elusive flow, and I suspect that the author’s physical presence would stifle my creativity in favor of the author’s own.

 

In closing, despite the weight of the author’s veto and the swiftness with which it may fall, it’s befitting to recall that, in the end, both parties want the same thing:  the best possible text in the target language.  Differences of opinion about what constitutes that text—and how to achieve it—arise later.  I’d expected Cooperson to burnish his lingual tour de force, but rather than a translator quick to shine his merits, we heard one willing to air the frequency with which he asked for help and to credit (even financially) those who gave it.  Humility is another trait characterizing the translator.  Although obviously, the word doesn’t begin with c.

 

-Josh

On Impostures

 Cooperson’s introduction revealed so much more about Impostures than I would’ve got from reading the text itself. I think that the cultural context and history that he provided truly enhanced my understanding of the reading, which I found tedious to decipher. Whilst the translation by Cooperson was so clearly in English, the work seemed almost foreign to read. The glossary shed a lot of light on the language used and it was interesting to note how the majority of vocabulary was recognised to be typically unfamiliar to the reader. The theory of translation that Cooperson states seems immaculate and whilst the resulting translated work showcases so much of his notions concerning translation, it seems distant due to its complex language.

The transduction of dialects seems to be less efficient than he proposed and the entire piece loses the tradition fluidity that a poem has. However, I feel that Cooperson is of course completely aware of the complexity in his finished work and that he perhaps chose to translate the source work in this fashion as it pays respect to the his personal theory of translation and maintains a very literal language transfer through cultures rather than grasping the essence or feeling. I was left with this feeling of intangible roughness that doesn’t usually precede poetry in my experience but I am sympathetic to the fact that the work is being converted from the incredibly deep and complex Arabic language.

Diya