Translating the Perception of the Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology by Clive Scott (review)

In echoing Walter Benjamin’s disapproval of the view that a translation is intended for ‘readers who do not understand the original’ (p. 16), Clive Scott convincingly argues in favour of translation as a literary art that helps promote the language of the source text rather than seeks to provide substitutes for it. The importance of the acoustic, graphic, and grammatical specificity of the source language is celebrated as part of a process of ‘espousing difference as diversity’ (p. 9), while the bygone notion that meaning constitutes the main or sole object of translation is played down. Homophonic translation, as Scott suggests, should be ‘brought from the periphery to the centre of translation theory’ (p. 18). This implies drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the embodied experience of the world through language in order to arrive at ‘a phenomenological translation, or a translation designed to capture the phenomenology of reading’ (p. 17). It is not so much a question of seeking to render as accurately as possible the meaning of the source text into another language, but rather of asking oneself ‘how we listen to a literary text, and, more particularly, how we “listen-to-translate”’ (p. 18). Scott’s approach is bound to raise a few eyebrows as it sets out to challenge a number of widespread presuppositions about translation, one of which is that translation caters for ‘those ignorant of the source language’ (p. 15). If the new phenomenological translation does not pretend or aspire to be a philosophy of consciousness, it nevertheless endeavours to prompt a radical ‘shift of emphasis from text to reading, from a translation of meaning to a translation of read-erly perceptions and sensations’ (p. 20). The first part of Scott’s study assesses the relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception for the practice of translation, aiming to incorporate the body among the expressive means through which we inhabit the world of our native tongue. As it becomes clear from the explanatory notes and ensuing practical analyses of translations from French and German into English (to which the entire second part of the volume is devoted), the author is less concerned with the reception studies aspects of ‘the English Baudelaire, or the English Rilke’, and more interested in the possibility of redefining translation as the process capable of delivering ‘the French Baudelaire, or German Rilke, as perceived by the contemporary English reader, leading to a mutual enrichment of both’ (p. 23). The problem with this otherwise thought-provoking and engaging argument is that it fails to question some of Scott’s own presuppositions such as aiming at the monolingual English readership while ignoring audiences of translations into minority languages whose demands may neither spring from monoglotism nor encourage any notions of ‘standardized language’. Another problem with his approach is that an English translator cannot possibly approximate the perception of the source text by a native speaker (the example of the French Baudelaire as compared to the English Baudelaire), so the new phenomenology of reading fails to question its ‘blind spot’ — that of the intended (French) readership of Baudelaire’s poems.