Once accepted that the translation process, as we have demonstrated
in the previous unit, is a rationalized interpretation preventing a
reader of the metatext to read it with all the ambivalences and
different potential interpretations available to the prototext reader,
we have to undertake the problem of translation loss. How is it
possible to express the thought content that the rationalization
necessary to produce the translation erases, and inform the metatext
reader about this forced rationalization?
Torop proposes to take advantage of the opportunities
offered by a book. Since a translated text, in its practical life,
takes on the form of a publication, the parts that are untranslatable
within the text, the interpretation choices that are no longer
available to the metatext reader owing to the translator's policy,
the presence of cultural terms (realia) that complicate comprehension
in the receiving culture "can be 'translated' in the commentary, in
the glossary, in the preface, in the illustrations (maps, drawings,
photographs) and so on" 1 .
Otherwise, if the translator opts for a "transparent",
unperceivable translation, in which the interpretation and
rationalization work is unconscious in the translator (because she is
not able to realize the linguistic and cultural differences between
prototext and metatext), or even in a hidden fashion (the translator
rationalizes and simplifies the text and takes shortcuts without
presenting the whole roadmap of the possible interpretations, but
presents the reader with the abridged version as if it were fully
detailed), the result would be to nullify the reader's
responsibilities and to deny the cultural differences.
We agree with Torop when he states that one of the
duties
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of translation activities is to support (ideally) the struggle against
cultural neutralization, leveling neutralization, the cause, in many
societies, on one hand, of indifference toward cultural "clues" of the
author or the text (above all in multiethnic nations) and, on the
other hand, to stimulate the search for national identity or cultural
roots. Even in developed democratic countries, there are examples of
totalitarian, rather than total, translation, i.e. of a reideologizing
(in the broadest sense of the word) "rewriting" of the translation
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This problem is particularly important in the present, owing to
growing opportunities and the rapidity of global communication. The
technical tools themselves provide for enormous possibilities for the
transfer of information all over the world. It is up to the user to
decide whether the purpose of such potential should be the
homogenization of cultures and languages in a single global blob or,
contrarily, the potential of these technical tools should be used to
strengthen cultural differences and to spread the culturally
distinctive features that, in the past, have played small role in the
interactions in the semiosphere.
We favor the second choice, and struggle against what
Torop rightly calls "totalitarian translation", i.e. unfounded
appropriation of other's cultures, reideologization of the texts.
The totalitarian approach tends to minimize the impact of a text in
the dominant culture, to facilitate its fruition, to simplify it and
offer its products to a public less and less aware of their own
cultural identity and that of the other cultures they interact with.
In this view the translator's mission is crucial: she
can preserve cultural differences and insert them as they are into the
receiving culture, or, on the contrary, she can deny the existence of
such differences and appropriate what belongs to different cultures in
a stealthy way.
Holmes, the founder of translation studies as a
discipline, has proposed a very efficient model to describe the
translator's choices within the framework of her own/other's
dialectics. Holmes holds that the translator operates in three areas:
the linguistic context, the literary intertext, and the socio-cultural
situation. In these three spheres, the translator may opt for a
greater or lesser preservation of the other's element in the
translated text, which is visualized along two axes: exoticizing
versus naturalizing, and historicizing versus modernizing:
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Each translator of poetry, then, consciously or unconsciously works continually in various dimensions,
making choices on each of three planes, the linguistic, the literary, and the socio-cultural, and on the x axis of
exoticizing versus naturalizing and the Y axis of historicizing versus modernizing
3.
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In other words, in Holmes's view, there is a diachronic axis,
along which the chronological, historical distance between prototext
and metatext is measured. Along this axis, the translator can opt for
the preservation of the historical element (historicizing) or for its
adaptation to the times of the metatext (modernizing). Moreover, there
is a synchronic axis, along which the cultural differences are
measured against one another, not concerning the single historical
periods, but as they occurred in different areas. Along this axis,
the translator can opt for the preservation of the other's element
(exoticizing) or for its adaptation to the receiving culture
(naturalizing or, better, familiarization, domestication).
Obviously, historicization and exoticization are
choices that tend to preserve the other's element in the translation,
while modernization and naturalization tend to deny the diachronic and
synchronic differences.
On the basis of this model, Holmes thinks it possible
to describe the attitude of a culture toward translation. The famous
researcher holds that, for instance, in the 18th century there was a
general trend toward modernizing and naturalizing of the translated
texts (just think of the belles infidels phenomenon in France,
for example); in the Romantic 19th century there had been, in
Holmes's opinion, a greater trend toward exoticizing and
historicizing, while in the 20th century the situation is more complex:
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Among contemporary translators, for instance, there would seem to be a marked tendency towards
modernization and naturalization of the linguistic context, paired with a similar but less clear tendency towards
in the same direction in regard to the literary intertext, but an opposing tendency towards historicizing and
exoticizing in the socio-cultural situation
4.
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Some book collections play witness to such a trend.
In the following units, we will see the great
importance of JUrij Lotman's studies for the definition of
translatability.
Bibliographical references
HOLMES J. S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam,
Rodopi, 1988. ISBN 90-6203-739-9.
TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed. Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu
Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.
1 Torop 2000, p. 129.
2 Torop 2000, p. 129-130.
3 Holmes 1988, p. 48.
4 Holmes 1988, p. 49.
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