Translation, conventionally, prioritizes accuracy in meaning between different languages. Along these lines, good and bad translations exist. The measure of such quality is based on consensus between fluent speakers, readers, and writers of the languages in question.
However, fluency is not equivalent to expertise. They may reinforce one another, but they do not stand in for each other. How many words I memorize in any particular language does not guarantee my ability to communicate what I truly mean to express. (I’ve been speaking English since before I can remember and still most things I say out loud challenge my ear; why else would I spend time writing poetry?). This means communication (and, thus, language) is sensitive to improvisation and accidents of expression as much as it is to a sheer volume of vocabulary and conjugational possibilities.
Of course, there’s the audience’s influence on a translator’s purpose. All of these elements combine to make translation quite political, or, at the very least, much more complicated than an automated translation service lets on (Anyone whose multi-lingual already knows this, of course).
E-E:
So what am I doing here?
E-E stands for English-to-English translation.1 It’s a writing exercise; it’s a game; imagine that space between play and playful—American Football must be played, for instance, but I wouldn’t describe the average game as playful.
It’s fair to say that this exercise is a distortion of a text—yet this is not unique to the field of translation. Take, for instance, Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien Años de Soledad. Gregory Rabassa’s 1970 English translation—One Hundred Years of Solitude—is an iconic novel; it is also a distortion of the original text. This doesn’t make this translation any less legitimate or incredible.2
Within the same language, an E-E might seem like an interpretation rather than a translation.
Or a fabrication.
Maybe an alteration.
Outright destruction?
Sure, but I prefer to call it translation because translation encompasses, when you get down to the act, all of these modes. In doing it, I feel through the boundaries of the original text’s intentions, my loyalty to that text, my rejection of that text, and, if I’m lucky, some spirited bobbing and weaving with my own self-doubt and intuitive delight.
Context:
Below is my translation of a letter called “Animal Magnetism” from one H. Imlach to the editors of a medical journal called The Provincial Medical Journal3 dated 16 February 1843.
Didn’t choose it for any particular reason; maybe its age and self-righteous tone were a draw for me. Animal Magnetism is also a wild subject.
(This footnote contains the original text).4
“Healing”
TO THOSE IN CHARGE.
MEN,—Easy explanations have, from time
to time, arrived in my town like unexpected
pigments of the eye, like food too salty
in the moment but craved too easily
in the seawater of tomorrow—animations,
I think, animations we breed for her little
majesty, with the labors of our memories,
the bubble pockets in this old window
pane, this land on the edge, where
well-shorn art turns medicine into money,
where the songs of you & me skewer fakery
& eat belief, in the night, like animals,
magnetic or gentle, given away, learning
like carpenters, defending my freedom
to not know & be a muse, an idea pressed
like the Lord’s prayer between the pages
of childhood, fraying, tearing because I looked
at them, the boy I’m not, the one being
stabbed by inconsequential metal, & the girl,
the girl I gave an apple, grinning because,
whether or not science can bless it, for one
day this was my life in the village,
as certain as my enemies & my amputations
waiting out a state of kindness.
I am brave
& correct.
E. IMLACH.
Sitting born, sixteenth day in the last month of winter, eighteen hundred & forty-three years.
The writer Jen Hofer introduced me to the idea of Engligh-to-English translations at CalArts. Most of the opinions I’m sharing about translation were fed and formed her class, “Stranger In A Strange Land: The Poetics of Translation.”
In fact, Gabo thought One Hundred Years of Solitude was a better book than Cien Años de Soledad: “García Márquez himself read One Hundred Years of Solitude in the Harper & Row edition and pronounced it better than his Spanish original,” Elie writes. “He called Rabassa ‘the best Latin American writer in the English language.’ ”
TO THE EDITORS OF THE PROVINCIAL MEDICAL JOURNAL.
GENTLEMEN,— I have read with considerable interest the remarks upon Mr. Spencer Hall and Phreno-magnetism contained in your Journal of the 11th current, because the good folks of Kent have lately been entertained with similar exhibitions. Many respectable people are inclined to believe the humbug, because, at the moment of exhibition, no one takes the trouble of denouncing the lecturers as impostors. But really the scene is quite disgusting when such barefaced tricks are practised for the sake of raising a little money.
I lately attended a lecture upon animal magnetism given by two gentlemen, one of whom had been apprentice to a carpenter, and the other had formerly gained, as I am informed, an honest livelihood as a marker in a billiard-room. In the present instance ignorance and impudence went hand in hand to the amusement of most of the audience, who now talk of the evening with some little shame, as if they had been witnessing the jugglery of some miserable country fair. Two young women and two boys were the patients, but they had not got their lesson perfectly; one boy cried when pricked with a blunt pin, and one of the girls when on her knees, like the Yorkshire tailor, began repeating the Lord's prayer; but I put an apple to her mouth so as to interrupt her profanity, and she laughed outright, and covered her face with her hand so as to conceal her grins.
The parties left the village immediately after their paltry performances were over, having gained a sovereign or two for themselves, but no credit for their science.
I confess I did not expect to be converted to a belief in Mesmerism when I paid my shilling; but as I was not previously aware of the private history of the lecturers, and as similar scenes have been patronised by such a man as Dr. Elliotson, and by the highly honorable commandant and other officers of the Chatham garrison, I thought I was more likely to ascertain the truth by personal investigation than by reading newspaper accounts of amputations without pain, and other statements of the like kind.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant.
H. IMLACH.
Sittingbourne, Feb. 16, 1843.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25491889
Accessed: 23-02-2023 21:54 UTC
This is so fascinating. I'm shook. While my field is primarily literature (I have no theoretical background in creative writing beyond self-learned and application), this has come up a few times. In my Old English class a few semesters ago, the act of translation was broken down for us, but I was always caught up in rendering the text being translated and how to reflect its meaning--but also how much space was I, the translator-poet, given to play with this meaning? What words am I allowed to use to express this meaning? Can I dictate ambiguity? Can I clarify meaning? So much creative space and that shit is wild.
Also, that poem thoooooo!!! Like, that line/s about freedom and muse being known but not able to be seen, torn when looked upon, like. Yeah!
Anyway, I want to try this! And I might have to hit you up to discuss this a bit more if you have the time and mental space, tbh?