An initial exploration of the complexities of multiple translations and how to approach them as readers and translators.
Hello, everyone. Given that the spring semester is fully underway, it has been over a month since I shared a new newsletter edition. With the much-needed spring break this week, I am catching up with some of my writing and translating projects, including newsletters. I must add that I have missed sending out these newsletters because, with my social media hiatus, these are also my primary mode of connection with friends.
Introduction
This semester, as part of my doctoral studies, I am taking an interdisciplinary seminar on the history of the American reception and transformation of French theory—from various disciplines like structural linguistics, anthropology, and feminist philosophy—primarily through the lens of translation. This means that we are exploring the cultural, political, and literary aspects of seminal texts through a critical comparison of multiple French-to-English translations and also reading how other theorists, translators, critics, and scholars have read (or misread) and analyzed them. French theory has shaped so much of what we practice now as Western literary theory, so this is a fascinating way to understand the origins and development of the latter—especially with respect to how various translation efforts caused or exacerbated unintentional gaps, misreadings, biases, and even deliberate omissions and edits.
Beyond all of my expectations, I am enjoying this course more than any I have taken in a very long time. I can almost hear my synapses crackling and firing as my aging neurons make new connections with every paper we read and then discuss in class. A lot of credit is due to the two professors leading this seminar together: Dr. Cotter and Dr. Wilson. Beyond their extensive knowledge bases, the structure they have co-designed for this one-of-a-kind course is helping generate much valuable discussion and learning.
Of course, all of this has me thinking deeper about the whys and wherefores of multiple translations. So far, I have only mentioned a couple of such works in passing and in different contexts—Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf when discussing translators’ notes and Kalidasa’s Śakuntalā when talking about a book of multiple translations of classic poetry.
Before we get into this brief exploration, please allow me an upfront disclaimer: I am still thinking things through here. And we’re only at the mid-semester mark with plenty more reading, discussing, and writing to be done.
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How I Approached Multiple Translations in the Past as a Translator
Decades ago, I began teaching myself to translate from Gujarati to English through retranslation. I imagine every translator has done this at some stage of their career, whether their retranslation was a private effort—like mine—or a professional one for publication. My self-guided approach was reading the original text, attempting to translate it, and then comparing it with the available translation.
In the seventies and eighties, the rare Gujarati-to-English translations that I could find were not the best. Either the English was in a somewhat archaic-sounding register or riddled with grammatical errors. So, surpassing those earlier translations with my amateur efforts was not sufficiently challenging.
Still, I learned the practices of closely reading and critically questioning translation choices made by others. In those early years, I never considered critically examining the translations for gaps or biases. My underlying assumption was that the more experienced translator had good and valid reasons for omitting or editing anything from the original text. Thankfully, an evolving political awareness in other areas of life helped reduce some of that naïveté about translation expertise.
Note: Back translation was another self-learning technique, but that is a separate topic we will discuss another time.
How I Approach Multiple Translations as a Reader
Growing up in India, I rarely ever considered whether a work I was reading was in translation. For example, every version of the Bible, which we read at least a couple of times a day at my Christian missionary boarding school, was a translated one. Yet, the thought never occurred to us that the differences across these versions might mean something. Beyond British and American literature, we read a lot of Russian literature. [Sidebar: This was in the 1970s and 1980s, so if you know about the strong ties between India and the former USSR during the Cold War, you know why Russian literature was a considerable import into the country.] But, again, we never questioned the Russian-to-English translations, which were often “strategic” abridgments of the originals. I only realized that the versions I had read and loved at school were entirely different when I revisited some of them while studying in the UK during the early 1990s.
In the past decade or so, unless I am writing a book review for or related to a translated text, I have rarely attempted to read multiple translations of the same text. For example, for a review of Every Rising Sun, a novel by Jamila Ahmed, I revisited both the Hadawy and the Seale translations of Arabian Nights. Otherwise, I have generally aimed to read what other respected critics and scholars have declared as the “best” translation.
Of course, there is no such thing as a “best” translation because every translator has their philosophies, agenda, strategies, and biases. This is why, for example, there are still debates about the many Proust translations, including the famous first line.
I should add that my readerly approach to a text that has been translated multiple times is certainly evolving now. I now look to understand both the author’s and the translator’s philosophy to see if they align with mine, especially in terms of sociopolitical dynamics related to gender, race, class, caste, and other such intersectional hierarchies. And, increasingly, I look to understand the translator’s technical approach regarding foreignization and domestication. While I still believe translation is an act of generosity and, for the most part, underpaid labor, I also appreciate that it can create just as many problems as it seeks to resolve.
There Will Always Be a Need for Multiple Translations, But . . .
The need for multiple translations of a single literary text is driven by at least five inter-related factors: the multifaceted nature of the source text, changes over time in the target language and culture, differences in interpretations by various readers and translators, the ever-evolving craft of translation, and even the pedagogical use of such translations. If we consider each translation as “a different performance of the work,” as Dr. Shulte often reminds us, then multiple translations allow us to experience a symphony of voices as a collaborative effort. This, in turn, can enhance our engagement with the text and enrich our understanding of the richness and complexity of the work and the source and target languages and cultures.
I’m sure that we all appreciate, to some extent or other, how dominant constraints in both the source and target systems condition the production and reception of any translation. Pascale Casanova has an excellent essay-length discussion about literature-as-capital (see The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti) about how, beyond the author and the translator, a “complex chain of mediators which includes bilingual readers, travelers, specialists, publishers, critics, literary agents, etc.” influences how a translated text comes to occupy a certain status in literary culture and history.
We would do well, then, to consider each translation as a “refraction” of the original work, as Andre Lefevere discusses in his essay (see, again, The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti.) Such a refraction, he writes, represents a compromise between the source and target systems and, therefore, indicates the dominant constraints in both systems.
All of the above reinforces for me how a deeper understanding of the conditions of the production and the reception of a translated text, especially when it exists in multiple translations, matters even more when the source or target system is not located favorably in either the global language hierarchy or even a particular national language hierarchy. In the past, I have discussed some of the issues related to the Indian language pyramid at Literary Hub and Words Without Borders. Recently, I also shared about this on social media (Facebook; Instagram; Twitter.) Earlier this year, I briefly mentioned the historian Romila Thapar’s book-length study, Śakuntalā: Texts, Readings, Histories of Kalidasa’s Śakuntalā, a classic Indian narrative that has been retold and retranslated many times through the centuries and in different languages. In it, she demonstrates how such sensitivity can provide valuable perspectives on the cultural and historical moments conditioning the production and reception of various translations and refractions of significant texts.
So, the much-needed practice of multiple translations can indeed foster profound and necessary dialogue and debate among translators, scholars, critics, literary historians, and readers about craft choices, challenges, and complexities. It can certainly transform our engagement with texts as cultural artifacts and with the multidimensional and heavily mediated process of translation itself. However, all of this can only happen if we approach such texts with an increased appreciation of the many sociopolitical and commercial transactions that influence source and target system power dynamics.
Your Thoughts?
The more I read, discuss, and write about this topic, the more I realize how much I have yet to learn. This newsletter is barely the tip of the iceberg, so we will revisit this topic in future editions.
In the meantime, I would love to know how you approach a work with multiple translations. How do you decide which you will read and why? Are any of the above ideas new to you? Will they alter your reading or translation philosophy? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and I will respond.
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