Translating the Body: Towards an Erotics of Translation

Abstract

By seeking the impossible goal of full understanding, the translator as a maximally engaged reader seeks the plenitude of another's words as a surrogate of the elusive Other. Translation as at once a physical, mental, and emotional attempt fully to understand another's utterances thus constitutes a process of complete engagement characterized by the desire for knowledge. Such desire can be deemed erotic inasmuch as it hopes to dissolve the customary separation of minds and attain oneness of understanding. A particular moment in the English translation of Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa involving the translation of a description of an erotic body part introduces the erotics of translation more broadly. Evidence from the translation journals of Eco's translator William Weaver, as well as Eco's own remarks on translation, are brought to bear. Thereafter discussion moves into more theoretical material, including George Steiner's key observations on translational erotics, and finally addressing three further ‘moments’: a linguistic appropriation of Georges Bataille's erotism, Augustine's account of language acquisition, and the matter of the bodily translation of the biblical Enoch.