Now, universal words and phrases are usually not too hard to translate — thus, “the sun was setting” and “she opened her eyes” are so generic that it’s pretty cut-and-dried what to do with either of them. On the other hand, partially or highly localized expressions give a translator headaches. How localized should the expressions in the receiving language be? And localized in which culture? And how does this depend on whether the expressions are found inside descriptions or inside conversations?
Dans les Ascenseurs de Paris
THE last thing in the world that translators of novels wish to do, unless they are into playing special kinds of intellectual games, is to carry a work of literature across the seas and re-set it in another land and culture; nonetheless, because vast numbers of words and phrases give off subtle aromas of which one is not always aware, this can happen, at least to some extent, despite their best intentions. The most insidious problem is that every single tiny act of translation, no matter how innocent-seeming, involves some degree of transculturation. This happens even with highly universal, vanilla-flavored words, such as “house”, “door”, “dog”, “walk”, “happy”, “thanks”, and so forth.
To take a concrete example, how does one say “elevator” in French? If one uses the dictionary equivalent ascenseur (and there really is no alternative, so it’s a forced move), that word will tend to conjure up in the mind of a native French speaker an image formed over the course of thousands of experiences with French elevators (strictly speaking, to be self-consistent, I should have written, “with French ascenseurs”). To be sure, the images of ascenseurs that jump to a French mind have much in common with the images of elevators that jump to an American mind, but there are also many differences, as anyone who has spent any time in the two countries knows very well.
For instance, American elevators are usually quite large and frustratingly slow. They tend to have very thick walls and very thick, multi-layered doors that, on opening, slide out of view and, often after quite a long wait, slide back shut. They are rather silent (except for beeps at every floor), they have lots of lights, and they “intelligently” or “politely” stop at intermediate floors, if someone has pushed a button there. By contrast, European elevators (especially those of a few years ago) are often small (sometimes just a couple of people can squeeze in), their manual doors swing open outwards (and often there are two sets — one inner and one outer). They move fast and are often “dumb” or “impolite”, blithely ignoring people on intermediate floors, who simply have to wait till all current passengers have disembarked. And then there are those wonderful antique elevators with cages instead of actual walls, where, as you ascend or descend, you can see the spiral staircase winding around you, and woe to anyone who sticks their finger through the iron grillwork of the cage.
The contrast between these kinds of images is enormous. Although both the American elevator and the French ascenseur serve the function of vertically transporting people, animals, suitcases, and other items in some tallish building, the “vibes” that they emanate are radically different. Therefore, if a French translation of an American novel taking place in Richland, Washington replaces the word “elevator” by the word ascenseur all three times it occurs, there will result a tiny, microscopic, almost undetectable effect of transculturation in the minds of French readers. (To be sure, many French people have traveled to America and are perfectly familiar with American elevators, but human nature being what it is, even they will still have a subconscious tendency to visualize described scenes in the easiest, laziest, most mindless fashion, and that tendency will somewhat cancel the effect due to their worldliness.)
The effect of just this one particular word-substitution is very small, but since this kind of “innocent” replacement is inevitably going to be carried out thousands of times, with bread in a Richland grocery store being replaced by pain, cars driving down Richland streets by voitures, sidewalks by trottoirs, high schools by lycées, mountain climbing by alpinisme, songs sung in American English by chansons, hoodlums by voyous, coffee by café, kisses by bisous and baisers, cigarettes by cigarettes, giggles by fou rire, and so forth, the novel will perforce become, to some extent, a novel rooted in France, no matter how much care is taken by the translator not to transculturate. The mere act of shifting these “universal” words from language E to language F already amounts to a non-negligible act of transculturation, and one can do nothing about it. In short, some amount of the Wrong-Place Paradox is an inevitable effect of any act of translation.
“Traduttore, Traditore”
WITH this, we find ourselves square in the territory staked out by the celebrated and hugely negativistic Italian slogan Traduttore, traditore, which literally means “Translator, betrayer” or “Translator, traducer” — or then again, “Translator, traitor.” The irony residing in the final one of these three possibilities is that it beautifully undermines its own claim. The pithy slogan “Translator, traitor” shows very clearly that a translator need not be a betrayer or traitor, for it beautifully preserves the key quality that makes the original Italian phrase so memorable — namely, its catchiness, which is due to the fact that the two nouns inside it sound so much alike. There is no important aspect of the phrase Traduttore, traditore that is missed by “Translator, traitor”, and so this English translation is a checkmate in response to the strong-seeming check tendered by the Italian opponent.
I am not in the least a believer in the extreme pessimism expressed by Traduttore, traditore (or its perfect English counterpart “Translator, traitor”), no matter how catchy this famous phrase may be and no matter how often it is repeated like a clever mantra by supposed literary sophisticates. I hear it as a cute sound bite rather than as a serious thesis about translation. In fact, I am far more inclined to believe in a rival (and also cute) sound bite — namely, “Translator, trader” (or if you wish, I can spell it out more explicitly as “Translator, phrase-trader”).
The philosophy of this alternative motto is self-evident: that in translating from language A to language B, one always has to sacrifice some aspects of the original passage in language A, but in exchange one gets brand-new but comparable aspects of the resulting passage in language B. You lose a little here, you gain a little there, but as long as you are in the hands of a sufficiently skilled translator/trader, in the end it all balances out pretty well.
One Phrase-trade Examined Up Close
LET’S explore the philosophy expressed in the sound bite “Translator, trader” by taking a close look at a fine example of phrase-trading — namely, the rendering of Traduttore, traditore by the English phrase “Translator, traitor”.
To begin with, the skeptical and cynical meanings of the two slogans are identical (at least as identical as anyone could ever hope), so there’s no loss or gain there — it’s a precise tie game in the semantics department. To be sure, some wet blanket could trot out the argument I just gave about the untranslatability of even the simplest words, such as “elevator”, “sidewalk”, “bread”, and “kiss”. Yes, yes, all right — in some nitpicky sense, a traduttore might not be exactly to speakers of Italian what a translator is to speakers of English, and likewise a traditore might not be quite the same thing as a traitor. The cultural models for both concepts might be ever so slightly distinct. I don’t recall how I learned about traitors in history classes in school, but surely there was some specific American cultural component, and presumably when Italian children learn about traditori in history, they are given different people as canonical examples. But to claim that “translator” is an inadequate translation of traduttore or that “traitor” is an inadequate translation of traditore amounts to claiming that nothing can ever be translated at all — a most silly pose that, in my view, cannot be taken seriously.
The other side of the coin is, of course, the question of the phonetic catchiness of the two slogans. In Italian, both words have four syllables, whereas in English one has three and the other has two. Some peop
le might consider this inequality to be a slight loss in the passage from language A to language B. In compensation, though, the English slogan boasts a precise two-syllable rhyme (“lator”/”traitor”) whereas the Italian features a double “t” contrasting with a single “t”. These are not identical sounds. Not only do the Italians savor the beauty of their double consonants, but they exploit them to distinguish between words. For instance, whereas molti anni means “many years”, molti ani means “many anuses” — so watch out! To enjoy as precise a rhyme as its English counterpart, the Italian phrase would have to be either Traduttore, tradittore or else Tradutore, traditore, either of which grates against the Italian ear.
All in all, then, in the phonetic-catchiness department, there might be a tiny gain in the passage from language A to language B, though that’s debatable. I won’t insist either way. The main point is, a tiny bit has changed, with perhaps a slight gain here and slight loss there, but overall, it’s very close to a perfect balance. Some people might feel that the original Italian phrase is superior, some might prefer the English version, but in any case a pleasing trade has taken place, with some virtues and faults disappearing and other ones taking their place.
This little example reveals the essence of the art of translation, showing it to be the art of trading X for Y, pondering what constitutes the best possible trade, and refusing to settle for a bad deal. And most fortunately, translation, unlike trading in a bazaar, is not an act of bargaining or haggling with an adversary, because there is no adversary. It’s merely a careful search for a sufficiently good trade, and it’s the skill of the trader alone that will determine the quality of the results turned up in the search.
Now suppose that someone had the temerity to propose “Translator, trader” not just as a fun new slogan but actually as a translation of the classic phrase Traduttore, traditore. Well, that would carry the whole game one step further, since this move not only trades in the dark pessimistic meaning of the original Italian phrase for a cheery optimistic meaning, but it also simultaneously alludes, via near-perfect homonymy, to the more obvious English translation “Translator, traitor”, and in so doing, the cocky new slogan amusingly thumbs its nose at its snooty, pessimistic rival. By trading so much for so much at once, “Translator, trader” takes a far larger risk than does “Translator, traitor”. But since he believes his cute new sound bite hits the nail on the head, your friendly translator/trader will take the risk any day. In fact, he’s adopted it (and please forgive him for this!) as his trade mark.
Françoise Quoirez Sagan and her Novels
BEFORE I plunge into the nitty-gritty of my translation of La Chamade, I would first like to say something about the novel itself, and then to recount in brief how I came to read it and what impelled me to translate it.
Françoise Quoirez was born in 1935 in the tiny village of Cajarc in southern France, and she wrote her first novel, Bonjour tristesse (literally, “Hello, sadness”), when she was eighteen. It was a mildly scandalous but sensitive novel about a teen-age girl’s first explorations of sexuality, love, and jealousy, and as soon as it was published in 1954, under the pseudonym “Françoise Sagan” (the last name was borrowed from the Princesse de Sagan, a character in Proust), it received rave reviews from the French press as well as the prestigious Prix des Critiques, and it enjoyed an enormous success in France. Soon it was translated into many languages and was also made into a movie, and thus Sagan skyrocketed to international fame. Writing Bonjour tristesse was a remarkable achievement for someone so young, and there is no doubt that Françoise Sagan was a prodigy both in terms of her insight into the human psyche and in terms of her ability to tell a powerful story in elegantly flowing, compelling prose.
Over the next couple of decades, Sagan wrote several more novels that were generally well received, although her first novel, for better or for worse, remained the one that people most strongly associated with her name. She also branched out into drama, writing several successful plays in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and producing yet more novels and a couple of memoirs in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Like many people who grew up when I did, I often heard of Françoise Sagan when I was a teen-ager, but I never read any of her novels. Bonjour tristesse sat on my parents’ bookshelf for years, and yet, despite my love for the French language, I never picked it up. At some point when I was in my late twenties, my parents went to Paris for a couple of weeks, and one evening they were invited by Serge Gorodetzky, a French physicist from Strasbourg who was an old friend of theirs, to a small dinner party with two friends of his, one of whom turned out, to their surprise, to be Françoise Sagan. Since I knew that Sagan was a very famous writer, it was with considerable interest that I heard about this dinner on my parents’ return. My mother, to whom I always looked up as an extremely avid reader of serious fiction, told me that Sagan had grilled her nonstop about all the latest American writers but that, to her great chagrin, she hardly knew a thing about any of them. But all in all, Sagan had left her with a good impression. Well, the only concrete effect on me of my parents’ dinner with Sagan was to spur me, the next time I was in a French-speaking city, to buy copies of several of her books.
Two more decades passed, and in early 2002, while spending a year in Italy, I was scheduled to give several lectures in Paris. On my various flights between Bologna and the City of Light, I read Un certain sourire (“A Certain Smile”) and I enjoyed it a great deal. I particularly savored the smooth flow of her words and the way in which she would often place herself inside her characters’ heads, affording strongly flavored snapshots of the world from various inner perspectives.
It took another couple of years for me to get around to reading the remainder of my small Sagan collection, which consisted of Aimez-vous Brahms (“Do You Care for Brahms?” — and don’t ask me why, but the question mark is always left off the French title), Bonjour tristesse, Les Violons parfois (“Occasional Violins”) and La Chamade. I read the first three during the Christmas vacation of 2003, and as before, I found them all engaging and gracefully written, but none of them left me reeling with a sense of tremendous power.
However, when I returned home after the vacation, I picked up La Chamade, which was the last one on my shelf, and the experience of reading it was extremely intense. I know I could never articulate precisely what it was that so touched me about this novel. All I can say is that I found myself deeply moved by living inside Lucile’s soul and feeling how torn she was between two complex men who were completely different from each other, and I was just as moved by witnessing, from very close up, the power of these two men’s feelings for Lucile. When the novel came to an end, I was indeed quite overwhelmed, and I felt very sad to say good-bye to these people forever.
One time earlier in my life, I had had a similar feeling about a novel in a foreign language, and as a consequence, I had wound up translating that novel into English. I am speaking of Alexander Pushkin’s remarkable novel-in-verse Evgenij (or Eugene) Onegin, and the year I spent translating it from Russian verse to English verse (1998) will forever remain in my memory one of the most vivid, vibrant, and rewarding periods in my life. Well, with such a memorable experience as precedent, it is perhaps understandable that the idea of translating La Chamade into English came flashing to me, and it took me no time at all to decide to take on this challenge. I loved French immeasurably and I had been deeply touched by this novel, so what better way to savor both at the same time than to make the events in the story all take place once more, but this time in English?
Transcription dna Translation
FOR some odd reason, I have always been very drawn to the physical act of writing with pen or pencil, and so, just as I had done with Eugene Onegin, I decided to do my translation in some blank notebooks that I already had, using ballpoint pen, with crossing-out very welcome at any time. Each session always consisted in an alternation between two modes, the first of which was literal transcribing. I would copy a few pages of the F
rench text line by line onto lined sheets in my notebooks, always leaving two blank lines below each line of text. For some ill-defined esthetic reason, I chose to make my line breaks coincide exactly with those of the printed text, and it gave me great pleasure thus to make the original work my own, in some sense.
Incidentally, this act of homage — or of love — toward the original has a close counterpart in my personal engagement with Eugene Onegin — namely, it corresponds to my memorization of stanza after stanza of the novel, all in the original Russian. At my peak I knew 75 stanzas by heart, amounting to well over a thousand lines. It was in that fashion that I internalized Eugene Onegin and made it my own. Although copying the entire text of La Chamade was far less intense than that, it played a similar psychological role in deepening my involvement with a book that up till then I had only read. I did not notice this analogy at the time I was translating La Chamade, but now, after the fact, it jumps out at me, clearly revealing how I tend to seek to “marry” beautiful books that have a powerful emotional effect on me.
The other mode in each session was, of course, that of translating what I’d just copied. I always used different colors of ink for the two languages, and I tried to think out each line of English very carefully before committing anything to paper, hoping thus to produce a full handwritten sheet without a single crossed-out word or even letter. But if crossing-out was called for, I didn’t hesitate in the least, and as a consequence, there aren’t more than a dozen or so pristine sheets out of the 500 or so that I penned.
Every morning during the first three months of 2004, I would spend several hours in this fashion, alternating between copying a page or two from the book and then rendering that passage in English, going back and forth between transcribing and translating. Now if you happen to know some molecular biology, this pair of words may ring familiar: the transcription of a strand of DNA results in a strand of RNA, and it is soon followed by the translation of that very strand of RNA into one or more proteins (via the genetic code). This is called “gene expression”. This two-stage process lies at the very heart of all life on earth. Though purely coincidental, it is a pleasing parallelism.