« Les traductions, comme les femmes, pour être parfaites, doivent être à la fois fidèles et belles. »
Faithfulness in translation. It's something I've thought about a lot. I can't tell you how often I've spent a considerable amount of time, or rather a considerably minimal bit of time (I'm not a desk-job jockey, I'm a freelancer, I don't get paid by the hour) tightening up text, only to realize that the original was not faithful to my translation.
Back when I was a beginner, I tried to deal with this in the logical manner. I called up the customer (We don't call customers “writers” or – God-forbid – “artists”. They are customers, like the people with smelly socks in a shoe store), and told him we needed to talk things over. In other words, I threatened to leave him. After I explained the situation, he would suggest, "I guess you will have to work on it some more".
I said "whoaaah, Mister. Me!? Why is this my problem? I thought we were in this relationship together. What kind of person do you think I am? Faithfulness ain’t no one-way street, you know. You expect me to be faithful – without you doing your part?”
This worked pretty well, and numerous clients (or “clents” as we call them in some translator circles. A client is a client without an “i”. No “eye” for translation) would recognize the superiority of my work. They’d rewrite their not-exactly up-to-par original to bring it into line, thanking me profusely for being allowed to benefit from my subtle formulations.
With dead writers this is a bit more awkward, and we are forced to put up with clunky unfaithful originals. Or better yet, find “old” corrected manuscripts. This is remarkably handy and satisfyingly satisfactory for religious texts. Somehow the original stone tablets always get both broken and irretrievably misplaced, just like the second sock.
But after I gained more experience as a translator, I realized the stupendelicious and essential advantage of our profession. When a doctor treats you, after a few days you know whether you got well or not. It may not be their fault if you're still hacking and nose-running, but you do tend to notice.
But even if my translation gives the original text bedsores and nosocomial infections, clients usually don’t notice. They just can’t tell the difference. (Explains why doctors get paid more?)
My clent-client-customers will complain that my version is missing the “the” where the French had the “le”.
But they miss that tough paragraph (or rather, happily they don’t miss it) that was just too much work, and no longer exists, my having accidentally trashed it.
So now, if I discern the slimmest hint (or even the fattest beer-bellied blubbery soupçon) of faithlessness in the original, I let it slide. Just like any understanding wife who wants to keep her charming faithful Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
« Les traductions, comme les femmes, pour être parfaites, doivent être à la fois fidèles et belles. »
This is a striking boutade. (For those of you who don’t know French, boutade translates as – just as it sounds – “dumb obnoxious remark”. For those of you who do know French, well that’s not my problem, is it? But have a look into Lewis Carroll’s tantalizing theoretical writings on the art of translation, where he explicates, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less. The question is, who is to be master”).
Translating the French into contemporary English, it gives something like:
“To be perfect, translations – just like bimbos – must be both true-blue and smoking hot.”
When I tried to google (or as they say in French, googler) to find the culprit culpable for this phrase, I came to the conclusion that the real original version was actually something more in the vicinity of, “Les traductions ressemblent aux femmes – lorsqu'elles sont fidèles, elles ne sont pas belles, quand elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fidèles.”, [Translations are like women. When they’re faithful, they aren’t beautiful; when they are beautiful, they aren’t faithful.] In revenge, the author of this boutonnade was immediately accused of authoring translations which were “belles infidèles” – faithless beauties.
That accusation was made by a character from Molière, Vadius in Les Femmes savantes.
Or rather, Molière translated the “real” Gilles Ménage into his stage character Vadius, smearing in a fair degree of spite and thespian cattiness.
Mr Ménage, one of the original précieuses hobnobbing with Mme de Sévigné, really cleaned up at making enemies. First Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. And then, no less a figure than Racine was responsible for Gallic-coq-blocking Mr Ménage from entering the Académie Française. Forcing the shunned Gilles into penning his own etymological dictionary long before the Académie got around to theirs.
Comparing translation to womenfolk is pretty cool if you enjoy insufferably silly sexism. In my neck of the Tennessee woods, the perfect wife was “pregnant and barefoot”. And so the perfect translation logically must be “pregnant with meaning & barefoot with modesty.”
What I love most about all this theorizing about translation is everyone is always imagining they are translating Shake-Spear. Not all of us are lucky enough to translate noble works of transcendent literary value. Masterpieces like Dan Brown for example. In dealing with an “author” as lusciously stilted and cliché-bound, would faithfulness really be a virtue? Think of the havoc wrecked on the language gene pool. I’m willing to bet cold cash and a bottle of monastery wine that each one of the 136 translations of the Da Vinci Code is better written than the original.
Asking what is the perfect translation is like asking what is the perfect text. But who cares? Fact is, much of the text we deal with is perfunctory and careless at best. It’s more reasonable to ask can an imperfect text be morphed and transmogrified into a perfect translation? By faithfulness?
Why respect an original that doesn’t respect itself? Some of these originals would sleep with anyone.
So how about pontificating some useful theory about how to translate a lousy text? Isn’t that what translation studies should be focusing on?
Delusions of grandeur about our texts can lead smack into delusions of insignificance on the part of the poor unassuming translator. It may be gratifying to imagine ourselves translating masterpieces, but most of us spend more time bitching about the frogs we try to transform into princes. When you’re faithfully kissing toads, your translation just gets warts.
So another approach? How about stealing the journalist’s Six W’s? (I’ll get to the translator’s Three C’s later.) Why? Where? When? What? Who? How?
Why does this text exist? Where will it be read? When was it written? What is it really trying to say and do? Who is going to read it? How am I gonna get this done before my deadline?
If you don’t pay attention to that bunch of stuff, faithful fidelity is flimsy folly.
David Vaughn
David Vaughn, Dijon. Auto-Biography
Like most translators, I was never much good at anything. If I had been, surely that’s what I’d now be doing? And so I bumped around from racket to job, developing a marvelously varied résumé. Corollary to the Peter Principle, I rose through the ranks until they actually saw my finished work – leading them to generously offer me the opportunity to explore new horizons. My wealth of experience naturally led to translation, where my clients still haven’t realized my true capabilities. So I’m still working.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The translator’s Three C’s. Context. Context. And Context.
Jonathan's postscript: David omitted to mention that he has written for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and Time Magazine.
