On being translated II

Who wants to be invisible? In this era of the individual, where self-declaration is encouraged, celebrity is envied and people become famous for their mediocrity, it’s hard to imagine voluntary self-effacement going hand in hand with the pursuit of excellence.

All of us, I think, want to leave some mark of ourselves on the world. And every day we do leave traces, though mostly ephemeral ones. Imagine doing something in which you could not leave any sign of yourself. And I’m not talking about murder. Rather, a painstaking labour, which requires weeks, months, maybe even years of your time. You draw from your deepest reserves of language, knowledge and experience to complete your task – and yet you must remain hidden behind your creation. This, I started to realize during The Chronicles discussion yesterday, is the lot of the translator.

Translating can be a type of Stanislavsky-style method acting where the translator completely submerges himself in the period, style or subject relevant to the work of the moment. This is the sort of camouflage behind which the translator operates, like an agent on a sensitive and secretive mission. And then, once the mission is accomplished, the costume is discarded and the translator is free to become someone else. Quite unlike writers who must find their very own unique mode and then develop that, while seeking to convey within it the great multiplicity of life.

Ina Rilke described herself and fellow translators as ventriloquists. It’s an apt description: the translator as the frozen-lipped vessel through which the foreign writing is received and understood. Of course, given the inevitable losses that occur as meaning moves from one language to another, we have to remember that often, in J. M. Coetzee words, ‘what comes across in translation is, at best, overheard rather than heard directly’. But how wonderful that it can be overheard at all. Having access to other societies and cultures through their literature enriches our own lives and sensibilities. And, as Peter Bergsma pointed out during our discussion, translation can enhance the host language by forcing it to absorb new modes of expression or pushing it to new heights of beauty and lyricism.

Babies have the potential to speak every language – all languages – like a mother-tongue. This potential is, and of course never can be, fully harnessed. As we are shaped by our environments, and adhere to one or two languages, we lose that infinite ability. But what we never lose is the ability to understand language, and through it ourselves, better. This is what we do when we read good literature, whether translated or in the original. And this is what our little group of Chroniclers have had tremendous fun doing over the last couple of days. Over the bustle of the Strand and the bang of building works outside the Poetry Society there have been regular bursts of laughter – that deliciously contagious sound which never needs translation.