‘Untranslatable Testimony’: Paul Celan in Back-Translation

Abstract

When writers are called ‘untranslatable’, it is either because of the singularity of the experience they write about or because of their unique use of language. As a Holocaust survivor whose poetry remains largely hermetic, Paul Celan is foremost among authors deemed ‘untranslatable’. This article uses back-translation as an empirical method of exploring the reasons for the untranslatability that tends to be attributed to Celan's work. It back-translates Michael Hamburger's and Pierre Joris’ translations of two poems by Celan, and demonstrates that back-translation can enhance the work of translators and be a creative form of criticism when it renders the scene of literary translation more visible and interpretable. Rather than opposing Barbara Cassin's and Lawrence Venuti's respective approaches to the ‘untranslatable’, the article argues that they can be reconciled through the practice of back-translation, insofar as it makes more visible the decision to domesticate or foreignize ‘untranslatable’ philosophical and poetic terms.