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ACTS OF TRANSLATION Gitta Honegger "The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelopes the foreigner . .. in an auditory film which halts at his ears the alienation of the mother tongue: the regional and social origin of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence , of taste, the image by which he constitutes himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize. Hence, in foreign countries, what a respite! Here I am, protected against stupidity, vulgarity, vanity , worldliness, nationality, normality." (Roland Barthes) I know the feeling. It was my original seduction by the English language. To the Austrian child those were the smiling sounds of Mickey Mouse, movies and Pan Am stewardesses. I wanted to be happy and pretty and from another country. I wanted to be a foreigner. Character(s) in Translation (Myself) I became American. Now I think and even dream in English. Only when I switch back to German and my whole body aligns itself to the structure and rhythm of the language do I realize that my life in the English language constitutes a complete translation of myself. This experience goes far beyond language to include my movements, gestures, facial expression, perceptions and understanding of things. I speak, live and think in two languages. I am a translator. But I can't trans21 late my own writings from either language into the other. What I have to say determines my choice of language. What I have to say about this subject matter would be different if I were to think and write about it in German. So far, this text is not a translation. I like myself better in English, I know myself better in German. In German, I was an actress. Perhaps I still am. In English, I became a translator and stage director. The combination is not a coincidence. Both are acts of translation. At a recent reading of my translations of Elias Canetti's Comedy of Vanity and Life Terms I read both in English and in German. I realized for the first time how much easier it was for me to portray a character in the original Viennese-accented German. I knew those people by heart. I could slip right inside the skin of their language, which created a strong enough reality to protect me against the audience and my own nervousness. The characters, gestures, movements and intentions instantly became my own, so I was responsible only for them and didn't have to worry about myself. In the English version, however, I was no longer inhabiting the same original world as my characters. I couldn't locate them inside myself. I couldn't hide inside them, I had to reach out for them. They had become strangers in foreign territory . I felt unsafe, exposed. Acting is not translation. It's being there. It's dangerous. Acoustic Masks: Canetti and Horv~th Elias Canetti speaks of "acoustic masks" in describing the concept of dramatic language and characterization in his two satirical comedies The Wedding and Comedy of Vanity. They are a person's speech habits, his repertoire of idioms and favorite expressions, which give him an "acoustic shape" as distinct as his physiognomy. Both plays are written in Viennese dialect, that is, in its many different variations of pronounciation, syntax, choice of vocabulary according to a character's class, his social ambitions and the strategies he employs to achieve his goals. Underneath this hilarious schlag of individual speech habits, Canetti reveals the frightening mechanism that keeps the charming sound and usage of Viennese German in motion. This technique makes him part of a tradition in Viennese comedy which goes back to 19th-century playwright Johann Nestroy and continues with Karl Kraus, whose influence links Canetti to Horvath. It still resonates in the plays of such different Austrian writers as Thomas Bernhard, Jakov Lind and Wolfgang Bauer. Acoustic masks create great problems for the translator. They are very specific . They are ethnic and deeply rooted in local culture and mentality, whose hypocrisies and meanness they capture with chilling precision. They 22 are not pyschological. To the intitiated ear they establish a person's entire background including his...

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