Translations and Translation Theories East and West
Workshop Two:
Understanding Translation Across Cultures
19-20 June 2002
Venue: UCL
Project Leaders: Prof Theo Hermans (UCL) and Dr William Radice (SOAS)
Research Assistant: Dr Ross Forman
ABSTRACTS
PROFESSOR PAUL BANDIA (French Studies, Concordia),
African European Language Writing and the Ethics of Translation
This paper is an overview of the main issues at the core of theorizing translation
practice in the African context, particularly those pertaining to translation ethics
in a postcolonial context. The history of translation in Africa is long and varied
and, as is the case in most pre-industrialized societies, it stretches from precolonial times when communication was ensured mainly through oral traditions,
through the colonial era when writing systems began to compete with the oral
tradition medium, to the post-colonial era when literacy and a culture of writing
were firmly established.
As they are part and parcel of the colonial legacy in Africa, European languages
(and cultures, to a certain extent) have had an enormous impact on modes of
communication, competing with, and sometimes displacing, indigenous
languages in matters of literacy and intercultural communication. The tension
between European languages and indigenous languages is clearly evident in the
area of creative writing. It has been argued that ideally African literature should
use African languages as its medium of expression. However, European colonial
languages are today part of the linguistic landscape of Africa, with many African
writers claiming the right to use them for their artistic expression. This paper will
explore the interface between orality and writing in African literature in
European languages. It will examine the linguistic status of European-language
texts in African literature highlighting issues of hybridity/métissage and
intertextuality. Issues related to acculturation and linguistic experimentation will
be discussed from a diachronic point of view to trace the evolution of the status
of European-language texts. Factors such as exile, migration, education,
globalization and editorial policy will be considered in order to assess their
significance in defining African European-language discourse.
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 2
The paper will then deal with the interface between creative writing and
translating in the postcolonial context focussing on the concepts of writing as
translation and translating from an ‘imaginary original’. The paper goes on to
examine the issue of translating from one ‘colonial’ European language into
another in the context of African literature. This is viewed against the backdrop
of the linguistic colonial divide and the problem of the dissemination of
knowledge across borders in Africa as well as in the diaspora. Questions are
raised as to who translates African literature, for whom, and under what
editorial circumstances. This section of the paper, by implication, also addresses
the issue of translating hybrid linguistically multi-layered texts with the aim of
showing the limitations of Western translation theories which are often based on
a universalizing and homogenizing discourse. Postmodern philosophy has
helped in providing the basis for establishing some ethical guidelines for
translating postcolonial discourse and has informed ethical questions dealing
with the theory and practice of minority translations. The paper covers a wide
range of issues regarding the translation of African European-language writing
in the light of postmodern theories that inform the ethics of translation.
PROFESSOR CHARLES BURNETT (Warburg Institute, London)
Translation from Arabic into Latin in the Twelfth Century
The talk will discuss the particular problems of translating from Arabic into
Latin—the incompatibility of the languages, the difference of cultures, and the
novelty of the subject matter—and will give examples of how these problems
were resolved in the case of translations made by John of Seville, working
probably in Toledo in the second quarter of the twelfth century. The solutions
involved a sensitive combination of rather literal translation complemented by
marginal notes that gave alternative translations, or commented on the meaning
of the passage, sometimes by resorting to vernacular expressions. In the course of
time one can observe not only a refinement of translation technique, but also the
development of the marginal notes into scientific glosses of considerable
sophistication.
DR OVIDI CARBONELL CORTÉS (Translation and Interpretation, Salamanca)
There Was, There Was Not:
Newness, Exoticism, Translation and Our Need for Other Worlds
Current debates on translation and the representation of foreign cultures,
translation ethics, postcolonial translation and the reception of the translated text
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 3
cannot avoid the issue of exoticism. We may wonder to which degree it is
legitimate to convey the sense of newness and/or cultural distance that is always
experienced in the act of reaching the foreign text. To what extent is newness
necessary? When does newness become exoticism?
There are two opposite trends in contemporary translation as regards difference.
One—mostly theoretical—aims to highlight difference and go beyond the
devouring, allegedly ethnocentric attitude that naturalises (domesticates) the
foreign text. At the other end, texts from so-called “exotic” cultures (such as
specimens from Arabic literature) are translated in such a way that exoticising
practices and expectations are consciously avoided or counteracted. Both
attitudes, however, can be highly controversial once they go beyond university
debates and into the jungle of real-world readership.
In this light, and starting from some telling examples, I would like to reflect on
the nature of difference and identity in interpretation and translation and
challenge an ethics of difference that remains unequivocally Eurocentric.
“Foreignising” might not be such a useful category, after all—being too easily
institutionalised (and therefore neutralised) to be effective. In the context of the
more general revision of postcolonial theory that is currently taking place, the
cultural dialogue between peoples that is at the heart of translation needs to find
new liberating directions—and this far from easy task implies a radical new
approach to identity, agency and representation.
References:
Araeen, Rasheed (2000), “A New Beginning. Beyond Postcolonial Cultural
Theory and Identity Politics”, Third Text 50, Spring 2000, pp. 3-20.
Bhabha, Homi (1994), “How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space,
Postcolonial Times, and the Trials of Cultural Translation”, The Location of
Culture. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 212-234.
Carbonell Cortés, Ovidi (1996), “The Exotic Space of Cultural Translation”, in
Alvarez, R.; Vidal, M.C.A. (eds.), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters, pp. 79-98.
Carbonell Cortés, Ovidi (1997), Traducir al Otro. Traducción, exotismo,
poscolonialismo. Cuenca: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
Carbonell Cortés, Ovidi (2000), “Traducción, Oriente, Occidente... y la necesidad
del exotismo para la traducción”, in Fernández Parrilla, G.; Feria
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García, M.C. (eds.), Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción. Cuenca: Publicaciones de
la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, pp. 173-180.
Pym, Antony (2001), “Translingual imagination”, Review for Translation and
Literature.
Venuti, Lawrence (1998), The Scandals of Translation. London and New York:
Routledge.
PROF SUKANTA CHAUDHURI (English, Jadavpur)
Translation, Transcreation, Travesty:
Two Models of Translation in Bengali Letters
The talk will focus on two models or ideals of translation: the 'creative', whereby
the translator assumes an independent identity and projects an independently
valid work, and the 'mediatory', where the translator sees himself as simply
providing an entry to the original work for readers who do not know the source
language. Perhaps no translation conforms entirely to one norm or the other,
but locates itself somewhere along a spectrum between these notional opposites.
I shall look at the interaction—or rather, the notable absence of interaction—of
these two models in the context of Indian, particularly Bengali literature. On the
one hand, modern Bengali literature has extensively employed the mode of
creative absorption of texts from other languages, along a trajectory ranging from
direct translation to adaptation to 'imitation' to memorial traces to general
inspiration. (This merely intensifies the intertextual process inherent in
all writing.) At the same time, the Bengali reading community demands an
exceptionally high fidelity to the original in formal translations out of its own
literature, above all as regards the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In fact,
Bengalis take an unusual (perhaps unique) interest in the translation of their own
literature.
I shall look at the coexistence of these two diverging modes of rendering, and try
to identify their root cause in certain features of colonial and postcolonial
cultural relations.
DR RUTH EVANS (English Literature, Cardiff),
Vulgar Eloquence?:
Cultural Models and Practices of Translation in Late Medieval Europe
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 5
I aim to introduce participants to some of the major historical differences in
attitudes towards translation and in actual translation practices of the longue
durée known as the Middle Ages (roughly 6AD to 1500AD). My focus will be
largely on England and on English texts, mostly from the later part of this period.
‘Vulgar eloquence’ is a rough Englishing of the title of Dante’s famous Latin
treatise on poetics, the De vulgari eloquentia (1304-9), a text that paradoxically
(because it is in Latin) addresses the need for an illustrious national poetry in the
vernacular. Although Dante’s treatise does not directly address the question of
translation, it identifies a key concern of translation theory and practices in the
later Middle Ages: the status of the various European vernaculars in relation to
elite Latin culture. Middle English translations played a vital (and sometimes
conflicted) role in negotiating access for the illiterati (the unlettered, those
ignorant of Latin) to high-status texts. And medieval translators also strove to
create a vernacular literary culture that vied with Latin models for eloquence and
prestige. In so doing they drew on powerful ideological tropes.
Chief among these is the Latin concept of translatio imperii et studii (transferral of
power from Rome, and of learning from Athens or Rome to Paris), current from
at least the ninth century, and used in medieval historiography to underwrite
notions of Empire. As Eric Cheyfitz claims, ‘from its beginnings the imperialist
mission is ... one of translation: the translation of the “other” into the terms of the
empire’ (1991: 112). Aristotle’s understanding of the structure of metaphor
(translatio) is crucial here. Rita Copeland shows how medieval vernacular
translation is metaphoric in structure, insofar as it ‘inserts itself into the
ideological project of translatio studii as a new linguistic medium for carrying
over the learning of the ancients.’ While the vernacular can challenge the official
culture of Latinity by exposing ‘the ideological fictions of that culture’, namely
by revealing the historical discontinuity which it is the project of imperialism to
cover up, nevertheless the ‘substitutive structure’ of vernacular exegesis
‘represents the mastery and appropriation of a privileged discourse’ (Copeland
1991: 106). Translation practice in the Middle Ages is a combination of deference
and displacement, transmitting cultural value and authority between past and
present (another powerful set of ideological concerns). But I will also show that
Middle English translators drew on a varied set of pragmatic and intellectual
models that extend beyond that of translatio studii, for example, those concerned
with ‘openness’ and access for the illiterati, exemplified (inter alia) by the
Wycliffite project of Biblical translation.
Short Bibliography
Beer, Jeanette and Kenneth Lloyd-Jones, ed., Translation and the Transmission of
Culture Between 1300 and 1600, Kalamazoo, Mich : Medieval Institute
Publications, Western Michigan University, 1995
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Cheyfitz, Eric, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from
“The Tempest” to “Tarzan”, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991
Copeland, Rita, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages:
Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, Cambridge, New York and
Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991
Ellis, Roger, ‘Textual Transmission and Translation in the Middle Ages’,
Translation and Literature 3 (1994), 121-30
Evans, Ruth, ‘Translating Past Cultures?’ in The Medieval Translator Vol. 4,
Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994, pp. 20-45
Geary, Patrick J., The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe,
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002
Jongkees, A.G., ‘Translatio studii: les avatars d’un thème médiéval’, in
Miscellenea Mediaevalia in Memoriam Jan Frederick Niermeyer, Groningen:
Wolters, 1967, pp. 41-51
Kelly, Louis, The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice
in the West, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979
Minnis, A.J., Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the
Later Middle Ages, 2nd ed. Aldershot: Wildwood, 1988
Welliver, Warman, Dante in Hell: The “De vulgari eloquentia”: Introduction,
Text, Translation, Commentary, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1981
PROFESSOR G. GOPINATHAN (Hindi, Calicut)
Transcreation, Translation and Culture:
The Evolving Theories of Translation in Hindi and Other Modern Languages
Translation theory in Indian languages has always been something which was
practiced and not written down. The modern period has shown some difference
since many individual translators have recorded their experiences and
reflections. The development of theory literature as part of the translators'
training and higher studies in translation introduced in some of the academic
institutions in India after the Seventies have also contributed for a change in the
attitude. The evolution of translation theory in Hindi and other modern Indian
languages can be traced as follows:
1. The Tradition of Transcreation: Transcreation has been the general mode of
translation in modern Indian languages from the olden days. This was mainly
practiced in the translation of great classics like Ramayana, Bhagavata and
Mahabharata in the regional languages from Sanskrit. Transcreation in this
context is a sort of rebirth or incarnation (Avatar) of the original work. In a
general sense, it can be understood as an aesthetic re-interpretation of the
original work suited to the readers/audience of the target language in the
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particular time and space. This re-interpretation is done with certain social
purpose and is performed with suitable interpolations, explanations, expansions,
summarising and aesthetic innovations in style and techniques. Usually such
texts serve as metatexts in the religious and spiritual fields. According to the
concept of word or Veda as Brahman or God ('Sabda Brahman'), these texts being
the revelation of Vedic truth through the sages like Valmiki and Vyasa, reincarnate in their transcreations in the regional languages. Since they are the
Vedas for the common man speaking these languages, they became the classics
in these languages. This tradition is still alive through the transcreations of
modern poets like Rabindranath Tagore.
2. The Nationalist Theory of Translation:
Translation As Resistance to Western Cultural Influence: The Nationalist theory of
translation can be seen in the Indianisation of the cultural atmosphere in the
translated texts from the west during the freedom movement. Perhaps this was
the reaction of the Bible translation and the attempt to westernise the Indians
through western type of education. The translation and interpretation of Vedas
and Bhagavad Gita by people like Dayananda Saraswathy and Tilak was also
done with a Nationalistic bias. The motive of such translation was to develop
our own literature and culture – 'swadesi' and to resist the cultural infiltration
from the west.
3. The psycho-spiritual theories of Translation: The psycho-spiritual theories of
translation developed by Shri Aurobindo are very important in the context of
modern Indian languages. His ideas like the impersonality of translator,
establishing oneness between the trio of text, author/translator and the reader,
the role of consciousness in translation, the problem of toning down the alienness
of cultural and aesthetic elements etc. are quite relevant.
4. The Indian poetic theories and their application: In the contemporary period,
Indian poetic theories like 'Dhvani' (suggestive meaning) and Auchitya
(appropriateness) have been applied as yardsticks of translation. This needs
evaluation.
5. The synthesis of western and eastern ideas: The contemporary Indian theory
literature on translation presents a synthesis of the Western and Indian ideas.
The paper will attempt to trace the possibilities and prospects in this area.
WANGUI WA GORO
Translation, Africa in/and Global Contexts:
Reflections on Prospects for a Pedagogy of Change
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 8
A renewed interest in translation theory and practice in relation to Africa as a
result of 'new' theories in the West. The paper argues that Modern Africa in the
global context is in fact a translation. Against this view, I address the question of
"Western" translation theories and practice which has been accused of failing to
take diversity into account, given its own involvement in translating Africa in its
approaches to Ethics and power.
My paper will explore the criticism through insights gleaned from translation
in/and Africa in global contexts, and its relationships particularly with
traditional and contemporary theories of translation.
I address the question of diversity in African languages and cultures and the
global interface, and the impact of the political and social discourses on
translations in/and Africa for global theory pedagogy and practice.
CELIA HAWKESWORTH (Serbian and Croatian Literature, UCL)
‘Catching Up’: The Experience of Literary Translation in Serbian Culture
There are two key factors in the history of the absorption of foreign literatures
into a ‘small’ literary culture: historical circumstances and individual mediation.
Why was it that in each of the five years between 1947 and 1952 at least one work
by George Bernard Shaw was published in Serbian translation? What made it
possible for Ogden Nash to influence a whole school of humorous poets in
Serbia? The history of translation into the language once known as Serbo-Croat is
one of an initial timelag between the source and target cultures, because of a lag
in the appropriate conditions for reception. This was further compounded in the
case of Serbian literature by the fact that European culture could at first penetrate
only indirectly, via Russia and the Ukraine. It was not until one highly motivated
individual, Dositej Obradovic, at the end of the eighteenth century began to
travel widely in Western Europe and translate the works of enlightenment
philosophers that the gap began to be narrowed. Obradovic encouraged the first
translations of the currently popular sentimental literature, introducing the small
Serbian reading public through such works to German and English literature. He
was also responsible for encouraging the first translation of Robinson Crusoe in
1799.
The first translated novel into Serbian was, however, by Marmontel (1776), who
played an important intermediary role even if his work is hardly remembered
today in his native France. The initial focus of Serbian culture was on Western
Europe, since that was seen as the model which other smaller cultures must
strive to attain. Later, again thanks to individual interests, more remote
literatures also began to penetrate. The influential modernist poet, Milos
Crnjanski, was responsible for introducing translations of Chinese and Japanese
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 9
poetry into Serbian literature, now an accepted part of the culture, with regular
prizes for haiku poetry in all the man centres of the former Yugoslav lands. After
haphazard beginnings, a steady process of translation began to gather pace until
today foreign bestsellers are found in Belgrade bookshops as soon as their impact
on their home market has begun to be felt. By the present day, it is possible to
talk of a two-way process, where writers in Serbo-Croat are no longer outside
racing to catch up, but are an integral part of a world literary scene. An
extraordinary illustration is the figure of Alexander Hemon, a young writer from
Sarajevo who happened to be in the US when the war broke out. He stayed and
began to write in English, winning prizes throughout the English-speaking
world and hailed as ‘the new Conrad’. This phenomenon would not have been
possible without the tradition of translated literature that was his heritage.
PROFESSOR CAROL MAIER (Modern and Classical Language Studies, Kent State)
The Translator As Theôros: Theorizing without Theorems
“Like poetry, . . . translation studies--scrutinizes--the nature of knowing.”
“Forms in Alterity: On Translation”, Lyn Hejinian
The Language of Inquiry
Spurred by a reading of The Translator, a novel by Sudanese writer Leila
Aboulela, I have been studying other fiction in which the experiences of
translators and writer-translators is explored in depth (for example, Pat
Goodheart’s The Translator and two other novels with the same title (by Ward
Just and John Crowley), Banana Yoshimoto’s N.P., Ismail Kadare’s Three-Arched
Bridge, Nicole Mones’s Lost in Translation, Pablo de Santís’s La traducción, Jhumpa
Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, and Barbara Wilson’s Cassandra Reilly novels).
What intrigues me is the thought that, by probing the often unsettling effect of
translation on translators, fiction writers might offer a contribution to translation
theory that has been overlooked in translation studies. In addition, I wonder if
that contribution may not exemplify Gideon Toury’s understanding of
translation theory as the study or potential or “what translation can or might do”
more appropriately than what is often referred to as translation theory, which is
frequently quite prescriptive (certainly prescriptive to a degree greater than that
Toury indicates as inevitable).
In a way I found surprising, a recent article by Andrea Wilson Nightingale, (“On
Wandering and Wondering: Theôria in Greek Philosophy and Culture,” Arion)
seems to confirm this in her discussion about the theorist as originally one who
travels, observes and contemplates, glimpses possibilities and learns about other
people and their customs, but also risks becoming estranged, rejected, ridiculed.
So that, in addition to being the traveler linked with translation by such recent
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theorists as James Clifford, Michael Cronin, and Cora Kaplan, a theorist or
theorôs, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, is a sort of ambassador, witness, or
reporter but not a pontificator of universals, norms, rules, or arguments. Nor
does the theorist mandate a particular practice. Rather, theory is associated with
contemplation and wonder, is a precondition of practice. It will inform but not
legislate, as Lyn Hejinian has explained in her comments about theorizing as “the
very opposite of theorem-stating . . . a manner of vulnerable, inquisitive, worldly
living” (“Reason,” The Language of Inquiry)
What I intend to do is pursue the connection I sense between theôria as discussed
by Nightingale and others and several fictional representations of translators as
theorists. I will test or contrast those representations with several nonfictional
discussions by translators of their work (for example, Suzanne Jill Levine’s
Subversive Scribe and her biography of Manuel Puig, John Felstiner’s work with
Celan, and M.R.Ghanoonparvar’s Translating the Garden). Although I will not
work exclusively with the three language traditions on which the workshop will
focus, I will address indirectly some of the issues to de discussed, and I will use
examples from both western and non-western work. What I find increasingly is
that it is fiction and, at times, autobiography, rather than translation theory per
se that probes the wondering as well as the wandering of translation. In order to
focus on the specific translation tradition of a particular language or ethnic group
and compare it with others in hopes of finding patterns and distinctions, I
believe that it would be helpful to have a fuller understanding of (translation)
theory as a contemplative and possibly transformative activity that will give rise
to a wide range of practices. My reading of fiction and translators’
autobiographies leads me to suggest that, in the work of creative writers,
translation theorists will find insights into the integral relation between theory
and practice that embraces not only the methods used to (attempt to) convey the
unsettling knowledge to which translation gives rise but also the nature of that
knowledge itself.
DR IBRAHIM MUHAWI (Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Edinburgh)
Towards a Theory of Folkloristic Translation
The connection between folklore and translation has recently come to the fore in
a number of studies, the most prominent being Appiah's on the thick translation
of proverbs. More recently, I tried to tease out a relationship between Benjamin's
idea of pure language and women's speech in the Palestinian folktale. The need
for a theory of folkloristic translation arises from the nature of verbal folklore,
which exists in the memory, suspended between orality and literacy without
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 11
fixed form and capable of multiple realisations before manifesting itself as a
performance that must be textualised to be translated.
A theory of folkloristic translation must therefore fulfil a number of functions
and deal with certain issues brought to the fore by the nature of the folklore text
itself. At the most general level, it must be a theory for the translation of
performance that takes into account this double oral/literate articulation and its
possible effect on translation. Hence in exploring the notion of the folklore text
we will be interrogating the place of textuality in the theory of translation. Given
also that the language of oral performance, particularly in Arabic, belongs to a
different variety than the written language, an analysis of language in translation
must also enter the picture. Further, since all folklore texts, oral or written, are
ethnographically saturated, our theory must also shed light on the question of
culture in translation from the perspectives of cultural anthropology as well as
translation studies itself. Finally, because of the heightened awareness of
performance in our analysis, our theory has the potential of shedding some light
on the question of performance—that is, the relation of the "oral" to the
"written"—in all texts, whether they started out as oral performances or as
written documents.
PROFESSOR SALIHA PAKER(Translation Studies, Bogazici),
The 1897 ‘Classics Debate’ As a Focus
for Examining Change in Ottoman Conceptions of Translation
This paper is a critical discussion of the “classics debate” (Klasikler Tartismasi) of
1897 as it was presented by Ramazan Kaplan under the same title and published
(by Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Baskanligi, Ankara) in 1998. Kaplan’s publication
consists of an annotated introduction followed by eight articles (transcribed in
the modern Turkish alphabet) of varying length which represent the beginnings
of the debate.
That which sparked the debate was a piece (5 September 1897) by the popular
novelist, translator and publisher Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912). In an article he
wrote for his newspaper Tercüman-i-Hakikat on 5 September 1897, Ahmed Midhat
called on the talented “pens” of his time to “offer” their readership the European
classics in translation (e.g. certain works by Corneille, Racine, Molière,
Shakespeare and Goethe). The debate took a polemical turn with the intervention
of Kemalpasazade Said, a well known translator of the time who published 18
“Notebooks” under the title Galatat-i-Terceme (Erroneous Usage in
Translation/s).
Except for two excerpts from Kemalpasazade Saîd’s Notebooks 15 and 16 of
Galatat-i-Terceme, all the articles in Kaplan’s volume had initially appeared in the
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 12
Istanbul daily press (Tercünan-i-Hakikat, Ikdam and Malumat) (Kaplan 1998:193195). In his introduction Kaplan also refers to other articles which contributed to
the debate, but has not included them in this volume. My criticism will be based
chiefly on Kaplan’s introductory essay and the articles he has chosen to represent
what he calls the “initial phase”. It will also cover Agah Sirri Levend’s discussion
of the debate, his commentary and related excerpts in Türk Dilinin Sadelesme
Evreleri (Plain Turkish: stages in the process) (1972). In examining some relevant
aspects of the post-Tanzimat cultural context that is largely missing in Kaplan’s
discussion, I shall be drawing on Mehmed Fuat Köprülü’s research on the late
nineteenth century which is much more analytical than Levend’s.
The so-called “classics debate” is important because it marks not only a linguistic
but literary-cultural interest in translations from the European languages and
what they signify for Ottoman society. It represents an important moment of
reckoning with about 30-35 years of translational contact with French literature
(and other European literatures, mostly via French) since the beginnings of the
literary Tanzimat period. For the Ottoman literati, it was also a moment (perhaps
the first) of collective confrontation, on the one hand with the problems of
translating a ‘foreign’ literature and culture and, on the other, with the problems
of generating a comparable literature ‘of their own’. In this sense, the debate
represents a certain significant recognition of what was “totally foreign” (Kaplan
1998:47) (i.e. French) in comparison with what was ‘not so foreign’ (i.e. Arabic
and Persian) according to the educated Ottomans of the end of the nineteenth
century. It was generally agreed that European classics may or should be
translated but not imitated.
The central point of my discussion is the concept of “imitation” (taklid/tanzir) as it
comes up in connection with translation (terceme) in the course of the debate. I
shall compare my findings here to certain conclusions I reached in previous
research (“Translation as Terceme and Nazire...” in T. Hermans, forthcoming).
Another important point that ties in with previous research has to do with the
late Ottoman perceptions and criticism of the hybrid or tri-lingual nature of the
language named Osmanlica (Ottoman Turkish). This topic too has important
implications for our understanding of Ottoman translation practices and will be
discussed with reference to the question of non-translation and to the related
question of appropriations from Arabic and Persian.
DR WILLEM SMELIK (Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)
The Antiphony of the Hebrew Bible and Its Jewish Aramaic Translations: The
Need to Read a Translation in Concert with the Original
Jewish Aramaic Bible translations have an uncommon structure in performance
and contents. They are deliberately modelled as a counterpoint to the original
Translation Workshop Two Abstracts 13
text, without which the translation was not supposed to be recited or studied.
This restriction was formulated in the second century CE to prevent the
translation from taking the venerated place of the original, that was no longer
understood; to this day, study bibles routinely print the standard Aramaic
version of the Torah alongside the Hebrew text.
The bilingual structure of these translations is reflected in its character as a
translation and commentary-in-one. They are painstakingly literal in a one-toone fashion wherever possible, up to the point of copying Hebrew syntax, while
freely adding interpretative supplements, or substituting some lemmata (within
the one-to-one mode), for exegetical and theological reasons.
While these remarks apply to all of the Jewish Aramaic translations, they are
quite distinct from one another in several ways. While some translations bear the
imprint of rabbinic authority, others reflect the concerns, interests and opinions
of educated laymen. These latter translations usually contain a far more
embellished text, that is on average more than three times as long as the original.
They also show elements which official Judaism denounced.
By way of introduction to these translations, translated samples of several microstrategies will be given. Attention will also be paid to current studies into what is
commonly but less fortunately called the translation techniques of the
targumists.