Translation and Criticism

Abstract

At a conference in Paris, in March, 1967, I heard Polish and French poets and translators discuss the problems of translation. Their immediate theme was three anthologies of recent Polish poetry translated into English, French, and German respectively. But they went, of course, quickly and far out beyond the topic at hand. To their efforts at discussing the problems of translation was added a strik ing piquancy: that much of the conference's discussion of translation was car ried on by means of translation. That situation made the whole event more meaningful than I could quite analyze. The discussers were thereby put into an unusual position. Some of their analyses were communicated to one another in a medium or form which was an example of the thing they were discussing. The conditions of their act of communication were the most eloquent comment to be made on the contents of their communication. Not only the difficulty of translation was illustrated, by that situation; but also the fact that even in talking about translation we go out be yond our analyses, and forget how difficult it is for us even to discuss the diffi culty of understanding one another across language barriers. It is in various ways worth thinking about what kinds of alleviation trans lation can be, to the burden of language barriers. We often think it can provide equivalents, in a new language, for what was written in another language. This concept of equivalents or equivalence needs a close look, for it opens the door to a flock of confusions. I have fought with the idea already, but it is well worth returning to here. 'Equivalence' usually means, in the kind of case I am thinking of, 'value in a new language which is like and worth the value of that from which the trans lation was made, the original.' I have already examined some of the roots?onto logical and political?of this conviction: here I simply state it. Sometimes this conviction joins with the belief that translations can deal very freely with their originals, and sometimes with the opposite belief, that translations must be very, as it is called, 'literal.' Either of these views, and a spectrum of possibilities lying between them, can be supported by the kind of equivalence-conviction I describe. These opposed views have in common, in the present case, the conviction that they represent ways of establishing equivalence. There is an alternative to this definition, or at least another way of looking at it; a view of translation which if not original is at least unorthodox, which is backed up by many contexts, and which has the merit of describing translation's relation to the main landmass of meaningful uses of language.