3/21 Reflections

 Cooperson’s Lecture

I really enjoyed last week’s lecture! I think Cooperson did well to shed light on his process of translation and how many people actually touch the work before it comes into our (the readers) hands. I really enjoyed how honest he was in saying that he needed help and how he reached out to people who were able to strengthen his visions for his translated pieces. It was so interesting to hear about how he took genuine inspiration from his surroundings such as using UCLA slang and how he owned his work as a culmination of disparate people and knowledge.

 The quote he ended on really stuck with me and I admired his attitude towards texts that may seem impossible to translate. I triggered me to think about how every translation is such a unique result of an individual’s vision, perception and interpretation. Throughout the works we’ve analysed in class, I’ve realised that each translator has captured various facets of the source text, some more than others but nonetheless it’s interesting to see the transduction between languages occur as a result of their subjective interpretations. I feel like we’re able to have fruitful debate as a result of our diverse perceptions whilst simultaneously building on each other’s understanding. All in all, I appreciated him being candid about his struggles during his process with the Impostures as well as how it left him knackered with translating Arabic. I think we rarely hear about the effects of the translation on the translator and it was refreshing to hear his side.

Diya

 

Reflections 3/21

 Guest Speaker: Michael Cooperson 

Last week, we had Professor Cooperson from UCLA speak to us about his work The Imposters. Translating this book is a ginormous project accompanied by many challenges. The most memorable challenge to me was carrying Al Hariri’s word/sound play from Arabic into English. As a student who is obsessed with rhymes, I have a strong desire to bring the rhymes in Chinese into English and often run into the problem of my translation accidentally sounding like a nursery rhyme. However, Professor Cooperson skillfully adopted not just the sound play in arabic (e.g. using only letters with no dots) but also variations of English to realize idiomatic adaptation, and that, to me, is truly an art that he did. He quoted Diyafat at the end to conclude his lecture. The quote goes: 

“The untranslatable is, therefore, not something impossible to translate, but rather something that can be translated infinitely many ways.”

Indeed, the untranslatable is “untranslatable” in the sense that it is impossible to carry over the meaning and word play from one language to another perfectly simultaneously. However, it also means that you can try out many different approaches and pick and choose the most important factor in translating a certain work and deliver that magic to the audience of another language. Take The Imposter as an example, soundplay is a big part of the splendidness of Al Hariri’s writings, so a translation that acts as nothing but a conduit of the literal meaning of the text wouldn’t do justice to the work. Professor Cooperson treats the word/sound play with high importance and makes a good point in isolating domestication of content and idiomatic adaptation, thus attaining the wonderful English adaptation of Al Hariri’s Maqāmāt. 

Readings on translation collaboration. 

This week’s readings concern a topic that has always intrigued me: how do translator and the original author interact? When I translate a text (mostly tanka), there is no way I can consult the original poet for they have deceased over 10 centuries ago. I get to take all the freedom in interpretation after historical background research—being able to interpret poetry freely is one of the tankas has to me. However, the readings suggest to me that one of the most valuable things that come out of the collaboration between the original author and translator is that the author can explain their word choice. Antonio Tabucci explains on page 24 in the authority in literary translation: collaborating with the author article: 

I intervened in the work of my translator to explain some specific words or regional idiomatic phrases. I know how hard it is to translate this book. This is why the French translation will be the only one that I will authorize. 

Nabokov, similarly, has also been giving Petr suggestions and feedback such as “You have a tiny little error: "solnechnik" is an old word for ‘sunshade’” in his letters to his translator. This reaffirms to me that it really is the intricate word choice (especially between translators and authors who are from different ages where the topic of archaic word choice comes into play), that lies in the core of the author-translator collaboration/communication. 

When it comes to translations of East Asian literary works into English where there is more cultural explanations to do, without the excessive use of footnotes, translators will have to weave explanatory sentences of cultural backgrounds into their paragraphs. This, in my opinion, is too much freedom and responsibility for the translator to take alone. However, as revealed in the interview with Juliet Winter Carpenter where she answers the following to professor Elliot’s question: 

A lot of rewriting went into the final version. I don’t know how carefully you compared the translation and the original, but the description of Karuizawa is a good example of something inserted into the text for the benefit of Western readers. I would certainly hesitate to write anything that extensive all by myself. When a longer passage such as that needs to be inserted, Mizumura writes it herself in either English or Japanese, I translate/rewrite it, and then we go over it together—usually quite a few times before it’s finalized. 

JWC’s answer to this question, I think, is really the description of the best solution to cultural adaptation of literature from a culture further from the target language. 

 

Jiayi 

Ronkainen, Jonika -- Comments 3/21

Cooperson's Talk:

I completely loved Cooperson's talk! It was so well structured/was clearly thought out in the level of precision Cooperson seems to apply to everything he does. Hearing him talk about the book, he was so self-effacing that he almost made the book seem like a feasible project anyone with the right connections could have undertaken -- but revisiting the amount of work and ingenious that had to go in to writing convincingly in 50 different styles, imitating some of the most revered authors in the world, that's so clearly also not the case -- he really made it sound like 2 years could be a sufficient amount of time for most people to learn so much as he did, and his ability to argue as convincingly as he did is a feat in and of itself. To me, hearing about the mechanics of how the book came together really only exaggerated the impressiveness of it. It was also just really striking to hear him talk about the utter sacrifice he had to make in publishing it -- it seems like that's a factor for any published piece of writing, but with the level of time, effort, and thought he had to put into this absolute behemoth of a piece, you just know how much of a pain it had to be to him to call it quits and actually publish -- that also seemed encouraging -- to see, that is, someone successfully continuing on after cutting themself off from a project of that grandeur. It also seemed like a partial-answer he had for when you know it's time to publish something being when you're most completely entrenched in it, and basically fed up with yourself -- essentially, when you know you've exhausted yourself (as he said, he doesn't think he can translate any more arabic, or translate arabic straight on). 

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