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Coda: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century
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Coda: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century In his paper “Sending: On Representation,” Jacques Derrida asks whether “translation [is] of the same order as representation,” whether it “consist[s] in representing a sense, the same semantic content , by a different language”. 1 This question is not answered explicitly in his further remarks, but his discussion does imply that for him translation is at least a form of representation, as it clearly is for Goethe, even if the terms and nature of this representation remain subject to negotiation. But in fact this definition involves (in Derrida’s case as well) redefining a problematic concept in terms equally problematic. A translation is a representation of an original text (and of the semantic content that text sought to express), yet the thickness of the description , the slant of the prism, remains an open question. If this book has demonstrated one thing, it is surely the precariousness of the assumptions that allowed for the development of service translation in the first place. Service translation implies the belief in the possibility of accurate representation in a medium—literary language—whose indeterminacy is profound. In the end, all translation is, to some extent and of necessity , authorial; service translation exists merely as a goal to be pursued, but a goal that provides the basis for most approaches to modern translation . What distinguishes—now, that is, since 1800—an emphatically 193 CODA 194 authorial translator from one who is merely bad is the vision and skill that enable him to make his translation a thing apart—a text worthy of consideration as a primary work, one that in Appiah’s terms is, like an “original,” worth teaching. The great authorial translators whose work has been analyzed here cannot serve as our models in the strictest sense: these translating renegades violated the rules of translation, indeed of the very reception of literary works, the respect for authorship, that have helped to constitute our modernity. Yet the artistic violation of authorial rights they perform with such virtuosity is perhaps itself—in this post-Benjaminian, post-Barthesian, post-Foucauldian age when everything is ruled by the vast and vastly productive anonymity of the electronic media, when all is “information”—pointing the way to new forms of translation, of reception, that can lead to a new post-authorial conception of writing as a social/communal endeavor. This is a mode of reception that asks not only “What is there?” and “Why is it there?” but “What can be made of it?” It is a way of catapulting works into a new era, not by erasing their characteristics, but by searching out the constitutive nub of the work that, grafted onto a new branch, will produce marvelous blossoms of a sort never before seen. Not the erasure of the older work, but its rebirth in a new form. Naturally all such projects carry with them the danger of reducing all works to the common denominator of readily transmissible mediocrity. For the endeavor not to be in vain—or, worse than that, destructive—the highest possible level of artistry (what Goethe would call “genius”) is called for, such that the authorial prowess of the translator in no way lags behind that of the original author. Thus, while the translators-authors who have been examined here offer us a lesson in freedom, they also offer lessons in responsibility , since the further the translator ventures from the fold of serviceoriented fidelity, the greater the risks become and the higher the stakes. The translator who approaches a text enters into a compact with the original author (not the historical person, of course, but the author such as can be extrapolated from the work), and certainly there is more than a literary reputation to uphold. The great authorial translators of the nineteenth century show us how it is possible to translate great works as great works, in translations that possess their own internal coherence, their own concerns, their own moral, social, political, artistic validity. [3.227.251.194] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:47 GMT) CODA 195 If finally, as Novalis tells us, all writing is translation, it is equally true that all translation is writing, and writing is an art form whose development has by no means come to an end. This page intentionally left blank ...