Noise That Stays Noise: Essays

Translating Writing/Writing Translation

Translating Writing/Writing Translation People who both translate and write are often asked about the relationship between the two—in the abstract, but also in the particular, in terms of how translating influences the practice o writing; however, the ver y question may be misleading in that it implies if not a dichotomy , at least a sharp distinction, when in fact, translating is in itself writing, and the translator must, therefore , also be a writer. Which is not to say that the translator must be an a priori self-identified writer outside of his or her translat ing, for such an assertion would, again, deny translation itself as writing. This is not to erase the distinction the two words allow , but rather to insist that translation includes both: the text must be translated out of the first language, and then must be writte into the second language, so, though we routinely speak simply of translation, that’s really only half the process. If it becomes the whole process, i.e., if the work is translated into, rather than written into, the second language, it remains locked to the first, to it rhythms and its syntax, and even more to its deep assumptions, which may be thought of as a deeper r hythm and deeper syntax than those that we change in changing the words—a rhythm and syntax of the mind that sculpts the language rather than those of the language itself. These deeper r hythms, though they can’t be isolated or directly perceived, will always leave their traces and cause a haunting; this is excellent—and inevitable. The translator does not need to ensure it through intentionally “foreignizing ” aspects, which are often the result of the translator’ s fear of accidentally appropriating a text by truly writing it into the target language. Yet if the new text remains translated and not written, 96 it will be not so much haunted by as imprisoned in the first lan guage, and will therefore never really arrive, never come alive, in the second. The “writing into” stage is quite separate from the “translating out of” stage. It requires a dif ferent set of questions, all of which address the intangible and untraceable. It’ s a stage beyond the questions of semantics, beyond even those of tone and style. It’s a level that instead faces and must acknowledge the inherent incommensurability of language (of any two languages and even within a given language) that the first stage has suc cessfully denied. Therefore, it must begin with the admission of failure, with the admission that the apparent success of the firs stage is illusor y—functional, yes, but illusor y. Where the translator could claim success, the writer must confront language at that level at which there are no equivalencies, at which language is an asser tion of singularities in ever y respect. And it is there that we encounter the true character, not so much of language, but of a language. Which is the character of its people and their history, which they have stored there. And it’s translation that reveals this character , that exposes language as a telescopic palimpsest encoding a culture’ s values through its finest nuances, which are always ina ticulable, composed of impulses too light and small for any physical realization. And though at this point, where translation fails and writing must take over , the writer must admit that the character -thatbears -history cannot be re-created in the second language, she or he can, however, introduce there a slight differential that will allow readers an intimation of that other that cannot be captured , an other ness whose slipperiness aligns it with the uncanny , which thus adds an impor tant dimension that did not exist in the text in its first language and which cannot be gotte into a text except by the dif ferential of fered by translation, which is why translation is always also an act of critical acculturation and cultural criticism. Focusing on these aspects on the one hand and the centrality of writing creatively on the other can keep the translation from becoming domesticated, allowing its foreignization, but with an attention to sur face that distinguishes a haunted translation from a merely inept one. In other words, writing into the 97 target language does not mean writing a target-language text; it means putting an emphasis on the writing in...