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  • Translating Dickinson:The Translator as Cultural Ambassador Traduttore, Traditore
  • Roland Hagenbüchle (bio)

We are all familiar with the time-honored dictum: "traduttore—traditore." According to this witticism, translators ineluctably betray their texts. Is this really the case? The answer, I am afraid, is far from easy. The famous classicist Wolfgang Schadewaldt—echoing Leopold von Ranke's wie es eigentlich gewesen (how it really was)—advocated what he called "a documentary method" (quoted in Koller 293). The German translator of a Greek text, Schadewaldt suggested, should be a Greek, but of German mother tongue. In other words, he should know the source culture as intimately as his own. Whether this is a realistic stipulation is a question that I shall tackle later on. Jacob Grimm, by contrast, maintained that "faithful" translation was an impossibility. Since it could under no conditions be made identical with the original, it was of necessity "poorer" (quoted in Koller 28). The romantic writer Jean Paul quipped that it would be very dubious praise if an author could fully be translated into another language. Wilhelm von Humboldt, too, claimed that translation was a hopeless task. Humboldt shared the romantic view that every nation has a language peculiarly its own, and that the national character is largely determined by its use. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the beginning of historicism coincides with a feeling of growing skepticism as to the possibility of translating one culture into another.

Some twentieth-century theoreticians, Mario Wandruszka among them, contend that among literary genres, poetry remains the most untranslatable. Unlike drama and narrative, Wandruszka argues, the lyrical genre is too dense and functions on too many levels simultaneously. Roman Jakobson similarly insists that poetry cannot be translated; in his eyes it might at best be "creatively transposed" (quoted in Frank 118). Famous translators like Walter Benjamin or Vladimir Nabokov (the translator of Pushkin) share his [End Page 28] view. It could be argued that the principle problem, especially as regards the lyrical genre, consists in the fact that the translator is virtually forced to disambiguate what is (and often is meant to be) ambiguous. This is eminently true for Dickinson's poetry.

As Martin Luther's Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen highlights, theologians have always been interested in language and the problem of translation; the long and stormy history of Bible translations amply documents this fact. In the nineteenth century, the rapid rise of science along with the threatening influence of "higher criticism" rallied the clergy to the defense of the Holy Word, and ministers like Thomas Marsh or Horace Bushneil began to explore and test the reach of symbolic language (Gura 15-71). A brilliant commentary on the problem of translation was offered by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the founder of modern Protestant theology and co-originator of modern hermeneutics. Two arguments advanced by Schleiermacher deserve special attention: first, all translation is an act of understanding (Übersetzen heisst Verstehen) and thus an act of interpretation; second, translations must not read like originals (quoted in Koller 41, 295). Schleiermacher opts for what he calls a method of estrangement (eine Methode des Verfremdens). Instead of camouflaging as original creations, translations should rather acknowledge their distance (or difference) from the source. Such distancing helps to make the reader aware of the peculiar qualities of the original text, while throwing into relief the idiosyncrasies of the culture in which it is embedded. In Schleiermacher's view, the translators' task is one of mediation; they are not artists in their own right. Nor is Schleiermacher alone in his distrust of artistic translations that try to read like originals.

Evidently, the question whether translation—particularly the translation of poetry—is possible or even feasible can only be answered with a qualified "yes." The problems are all too evident and the theoretical concept of "equivalence," once so dear to translators, is now largely discredited. And yet, at the same time we are all immensely grateful for translations that allow us to enjoy, if at a remove, the masterpieces of other cultures written in languages we do not master: Russian, Arabic, Chinese, the list is endless. It is not the aim of this essay, however, to offer a new...

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