Translating Rousseau

TRANSLATING ROUSSEAU 339 Translating Rousseau AUBREY ROSENBERG Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile or On Education Introduction, translation, and notes by Allan Bloom New York: Basic Books 1979. ix, 501. $18.50 cloth, $7.95 paper When Rousseau's Emile appeared in 1762 it was immediately translated into English. Since that time there have been various translations, the last and most readily available until now being the one by Barbara FoxIey in the Everyman's Library series, first published in 1911 and reprinted several times over the years. The most recent reprint appeared in 1976 with an introduction by the noted Rousseau scholar P.D. Jimack. Now Professor Bloom, who has previously translated Rousseau's Lettre tl d'Alembert under the title Politics and the Arts(Glencoe, Ill: Free Press 1960) and Plato's Republic (New York: Basic Books 1968), provides us with a wholly new translation of Emile. Bloom justifies his endeavour on two main grounds. In the foreword he points out that 'there is general agreement that the only available translation is inadequate in all important respects,' and in the introduction, which isa revised version of an article entitled 'The Education of Democratic Man' that he contributed to the special Rousseau issue of Daedalus (Summer 1978, pp 135-53), he argues convincingly that the full significance of Emile has not been understood and that ilis 'one of those rare total or synoptic books, a book with which one can live and which becomes deeper as one becomes deeper, a book comparable to Plato's Republic, which it is meant to rival or supersede.' Bloom is currently working on a detailed commentary that will demonstrate the validity of his argument. It would be premature, therefore, for me to discuss it here. But if, as he claims, Emile is a work of such significance, then clearly, for it to be fully appreciated in the Englishspeaking world, it demands a translation that reproduces as accurately as possible the intention of its author. And this is what Bloom has given us. Rousseau was the greatest writer of his age. Even those who detested his ideas could not help praising the way he expressed them. Bloom, therefore, has wisely made no attempt 'to imitate the felicity of his language' but has adhered to the principles that served him so well in his version of the Lettre Ii d'Alembert. There are, of course, no infallible guides to translation but, as Bloom states in his foreword, there are indisputable obligations: The translator of a great work should revere his text and recognize that there is much in it he cannot understand. His translation should try to make others able to understand what he cannot understand, which means he often must prefer a dull ambiguity to a brilliant resolution ... An old book must appear to be old-fashioned, and a translator cannot lessen the effort required of the reader; he can only make it possible for the reader to make that effort. Therefore the translator will try to imitate the text, insofar as possible following sentence UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 3, SPRING lcj31 0042-{)247/81/o500-033g$oo.ooIo Cl UNIVERSIn' OF TOR.ONTO PRESS 340 AUBREY ROSENBERG structure; he will never vary terms Rousseau does not vary, but where Rousseau repeats a particular French word, the translator will also repeat its English equivalent. If one accepts these criteria, and I cannot see how one could not, Bloom's translation must be judged an outstanding success since it is the first to reproduce , as faithfully and as objectively as possible, precisely what Rousseau wrote. As an illustration of this one has only to compare his rendition of the famous opening sentence of Emile with the one supplied by Barbara Foxley: ROUSSEAU: Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'Auteur des choses, tout degenere entre les mains de l'homme. FOXLEY: God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. BLOOM: Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man. There is no doubt that the Foxley version is more 'readable,' but it is so far and so...