Languages – Cultures – Worldviews: Focus on Translation [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-28508-1, 978-3-030-28509-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxii
Introduction (Adam Głaz)....Pages 1-15
Front Matter ....Pages 17-17
Linguistic Relativity in the Age of Ontology: How Language Shapes Worldview and Ways of Being, Even Going Beyond the Human (Sean O’Neill)....Pages 19-52
Translating a Worldview in the longue durée: The Tale of “The Bear’s Son” (Roslyn M. Frank)....Pages 53-80
Front Matter ....Pages 81-81
Translation as Philology as Love (John Leavitt)....Pages 83-108
Bourdieu’s Distinction: (Translating) Language as a Means of Expressing Worldviews (Nigel Armstrong)....Pages 109-136
The Sociological Turn in Translation Studies and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology: A Case of Convergence or Divergence? (Patrycja Karpińska)....Pages 137-156
Front Matter ....Pages 157-157
Translational Roots of Western Essentialism (Piotr Blumczynski)....Pages 159-182
Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations: Biblical Hebrew as Transformer of Language Theory and Society (Marko Pajevič)....Pages 183-210
St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System via the Prism of Axiological Modelling and Cultural Matrix (Taras Shmiher)....Pages 211-236
Borrowings and the Linguistic Worldview or How to Domesticate Foreignness (Jerzy Bartmiński)....Pages 237-258
Front Matter ....Pages 259-259
Do Paradoxes Have a Place in Worldviews? Conceptual Configurations of “Heart” and Their Contradictions in English and Other Languages (James W. Underhill)....Pages 261-291
Traces of Speaker’s Worldview in Translations of EU Parliamentary Debate (Anna Wyrwa)....Pages 293-318
The Cultural Semantics of Untranslatables: Linguistic Worldview and the Danish Language of Laughter (Carsten Levisen)....Pages 319-346
Front Matter ....Pages 347-347
Norwegian Translations of Anne of Green Gables: Omissions and Textual Manipulations (Susan Erdmann, Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson)....Pages 349-366
Cultural References and Linguistic Exponents of Gender in the Norwegian Translation of Michał Witkowski’s Lubiewo (Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson)....Pages 367-391
The Many Faces of Alice: Twists and Turns of Lewis Carroll’s Classic in Poland (Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska)....Pages 393-413
Historical Narrative as a Culture Text (Elżbieta Tabakowska)....Pages 415-429
Back Matter ....Pages 431-440

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN TRANSLATING AND INTERPRETING SERIES EDITOR: MARGARET ROGERS

Languages – Cultures – Worldviews Focus on Translation

Edited by Adam Głaz

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting

Series Editor Margaret Rogers School of Literature and Languages University of Surrey Guildford, UK

This series examines the crucial role which translation and interpreting in their myriad forms play at all levels of communication in today’s world, from the local to the global. Whilst this role is being increasingly recognised in some quarters (for example, through European Union legislation), in others it remains controversial for economic, political and social reasons. The rapidly changing landscape of translation and interpreting practice is accompanied by equally challenging developments in their academic study, often in an interdisciplinary framework and increasingly reflecting commonalities between what were once considered to be separate disciplines. The books in this series address specific issues in both translation and interpreting with the aim not only of charting but also of shaping the discipline with respect to contemporary practice and research. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14574

Adam Głaz Editor

Languages – Cultures – Worldviews Focus on Translation

Editor Adam Głaz Department of Modern Languages Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Lublin, Poland

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting ISBN 978-3-030-28508-1 ISBN 978-3-030-28509-8  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Melanie Hobson/EyeEm/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

For the last decade, I have had the pleasure of teaching a course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which I call “Language and Worldview,” to theoretically naïve undergraduates–that is, to nonlinguists who, as a general rule, have not thought much, prior to taking the course, about what we might call the “language-culture-mind nexus” and what in this volume is sometimes referred to as a “linguaculture.” In my course, we delve into the theory (or rather theories) of cultural linguistics primarily by discussing cross-linguistic case studies of the meanings of terms and concepts (e.g., everyday words like home, modes of conveying spatial orientation, words related to human psychology, philosophy, morality, and spirituality). Along the way, we also read a few works of literature and ask how they comment upon or extend our understanding of some of the concepts that we have examined in our ethnolinguistic analyses (a particularly good example of this is how Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery prompts readers, in dramatic fashion, to rethink their understanding of words like fate and destiny). At the end of one incarnation of this course, an especially gifted, bilingual student with a strong interest in poetry asked me why, given my interests in cultural linguistics and literature, I had never tried v

vi      Foreword

my hand at literary translation. My answer was simple: because I am so readily diverted by questions related to translation as a process of negotiation between divergent worldviews that I would never be able to complete an actual translation project. This volume is for people like me who delight in thinking about the linguistic worldview conception “approached from the perspective of translation as a process and translation as texts” (Adam Głaz, this volume). Put another way, the volume sees translation as an operation performed not on languages per se, but rather on worldviews that inform those languages. It combines engaging theoretical discussion with a lively focus on actual language material in a translational and comparative context. Contributors to the volume are linguists, linguistic anthropologists, practicing translators, and/or translation studies scholars. Taken collectively, individual chapters in the volume cover a great deal of ground. Languages–or rather linguacultures–referenced in a substantial way include the following: Arabic, Czech, Dalabon (an indigenous culture of Australian), Danish, English, French, German, (classical and biblical) Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Kumaoni (a language spoken in parts of India and Nepal), Latin, Navajo, Norwegian, Old Slavonic, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and native linguacultures of the Pacific Northwest in North America. Topics covered include, in no particular order: the theory and practice of translation; the “sociological turn” in translation studies; the poetics of translation; translation as (philological) love; the worldview concept from both theoretical and practical angles; philosophy; religion; parliamentary debates; emotion; laughter and humour; grammar and style; gender; folktales; “paradoxes of the heart”; linguacultural translation in the longue durée; thick translation; historical narrative; worldview entrenchment; axiological analysis of texts and worldviews; the domestication of “foreignness” in national linguacultures; the cultural semantics of untranslatables; worldview “refraction”; the impact of cultural models on translation pathways. Specific works analysed over the course of the volume include Lewis Carroll’s iconic Alice in Wonderland (in Polish translation), L. M. Montgomery’s children’s book Anne of Green Gables (in Norwegian translation), Michał Witkowski’s provocative novel Lubiewo or Lovetown (in a multiplicity

Foreword     vii

of translations from the original Polish), the Bible and other religious as well as philosophical texts. The editor’s introduction neatly ties together the remarkably diverse set of contributions that make up this volume: in an informal and friendly tone, he lays out an aspirational plan for this line of research, a plan that the volume’s contributions, each in its own particular way, implement. Taken as a whole, the volume develops a new dimension of linguistic worldview research by placing it in the context of translation as a process as well as a body of products. As the editor himself notes, some of this ground has been covered previously—in closing this short Foreword, however, I would emphasise that this volume represents a welcome addition to an on-going and endlessly fascinating conversation. April 2019

David S. Danaher, Professor Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, USA

David S. Dahaner is Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching interests include cultural linguistics, translation, Václav Havel, the culture of dissent in East Central Europe, science fiction, and the Czech and Russian languages. He is the author, most recently, of Reading Václav Havel (University of Toronto Press, 2015), and he is currently at work on a co-edited volume with Kieran Williams to be titled Key Concepts in Václav Havel’s Core Vocabulary: Analyses and Implications, which will be published by Prague-based Karolinum Press.

Acknowledgements

Even a cursory look at the Table of Contents of this volume shows it’s a work of many people. To all of them I give thanks and appreciation of their patience with the editor, their openness, and willingness to share ideas. Many of us had a chance to discuss some of those ideas at the LCW2017 conference in Lublin, Poland, in November 2017 (at a time, as you will recall, when Lublin was particularly difficult to get to for all the construction work that was going on). I thank Agnieszka Mierzwińska-Hajnos, Rafał Augustyn, and Konrad Żyśko for helping make that conference possible. Others, who regrettably couldn’t make it, very generously contributed their chapters. Special thanks go to David S. Danaher for writing the Foreword and doing several other things that in fact I should have taken care of. This book is a joint effort of us all and I’m proud to join you in sharing it with the academic community at large. I’m also thankful to my contacts at Palgrave, Margaret Rogers, Cathy Scott, Alice Green, and Keerthana Muruganandham, who have guided me through the editorial and production process. Lublin, Poland May 2019

Adam Głaz ix

Praise for Languages – Cultures – Worldviews

“The editor of this trailblazing book brings together in a single volume a broad range of insights into the hitherto under-researched impact of translation on worldview. Many of the contributing authors are undisputed leaders in the field, and all have been prompted to think outside the square, making this a collection readers will want to go back to time and again.” —Bert Peeters, Australian National University, Australia and Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium “This collection gathers a number of researchers who engage in a meaningful dialogue with the peculiarities of language and culture in an increasingly globalised world, where the local becomes global (and vice versa) by means of translation. The contributors problematise the concept of translation as part of the interaction between individuals and societies by using of a variety of examples, including a Himalayan text, the Bible, a catechism, the classic Canadian novel Anne of Green Gables and the Polish homosexual novel Lubiewo. Although the authors are based in Europe and North America, the wide range of languages discussed will appeal to all those interested in the process and product of translation outside the West.” —Roberto A. Valdeón, University of Oviedo, Spain xi

Contents

1 Introduction 1 Adam Głaz Part I Setting the Scene: Worldviews Emerging, Worldviews Expressed 2

Linguistic Relativity in the Age of Ontology: How Language Shapes Worldview and Ways of Being, Even Going Beyond the Human 19 Sean O’Neill

3

Translating a Worldview in the longue durée: The Tale of “The Bear’s Son” 53 Roslyn M. Frank

xiii

xiv      Contents

Part II  Rethinking Translation 4

Translation as Philology as Love 83 John Leavitt

5 Bourdieu’s Distinction: (Translating) Language as a Means of Expressing Worldviews 109 Nigel Armstrong 6

The Sociological Turn in Translation Studies and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology: A Case of Convergence or Divergence? 137 Patrycja Karpińska

Part III The Shaping of Worldviews: Focus on Philosophy and Religion 7

Translational Roots of Western Essentialism 159 Piotr Blumczynski

8

Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations: Biblical Hebrew as Transformer of Language Theory and Society 183 Marko Pajevič

9

St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System via the Prism of Axiological Modelling and Cultural Matrix 211 Taras Shmiher

10 Borrowings and the Linguistic Worldview or How to Domesticate Foreignness 237 Jerzy Bartmiński

Contents     xv

Part IV Translating Worldviews Across Languages and Cultures 11 Do Paradoxes Have a Place in Worldviews? Conceptual Configurations of “Heart” and Their Contradictions in English and Other Languages 261 James W. Underhill 12 Traces of Speaker’s Worldview in Translations of EU Parliamentary Debate 293 Anna Wyrwa 13 The Cultural Semantics of Untranslatables: Linguistic Worldview and the Danish Language of Laughter 319 Carsten Levisen Part V It’s All About the Details: Focus on Diction, Grammar, and Style 14 Norwegian Translations of Anne of Green Gables: Omissions and Textual Manipulations 349 Susan Erdmann and Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson 15 Cultural References and Linguistic Exponents of Gender in the Norwegian Translation of Michał Witkowski’s Lubiewo 367 Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson 16 The Many Faces of Alice: Twists and Turns of Lewis Carroll’s Classic in Poland 393 Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska 17 Historical Narrative as a Culture Text 415 Elżbieta Tabakowska Index 431

Notes on Contributors

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska  is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of Modern Languages of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She researches and publishes in translation studies, Jewish studies, and American literature. She has translated more than a dozen books from English and Yiddish into Polish. Nigel Armstrong is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Leeds, UK. His current teaching and research focus on two related subject areas: sociolinguistic variation in contemporary spoken French, and the study, from a translational perspective, of how language is used in popular culture. He has published on translation and culture, standardisation, and ideology in linguistic contexts. Jerzy Bartmiński  is Professor Emeritus at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin, Poland, as well as a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning. He has published extensively in ethnolinguistics, the language-culture interface, linguistic worldview, axiological semantics, and the language of folklore. Bartmiński acted for thirty years as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Etnolingwistyka. He is also the editor of Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols. xvii

xviii      Notes on Contributors

Piotr Blumczynski  is Senior Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting at the School of Arts, Languages and English, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Much of his earlier work focussed on linguistic and ideological aspects of translation; lately he has been exploring issues of its axiology, methodology, logic, and ethics. He is Editor of the journal Translation Studies. Susan Erdmann  is Senior Lecturer at the University of Agder working in the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation. She publishes on issues related to immigrant educational trajectories in Norway, and children’s literature in translation. She is on the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of Modern Language Methodologies and is leader of the Translation and Intercultural Communication research group. Roslyn M. Frank  is Professor Emerita at the University of Iowa. Her research areas are cultural linguistics, cognitive linguistics, ethnography, and anthropological linguistics with a special emphasis on the Basque language and culture. Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson  is Professor of Translation Theory and Intercultural Communication at the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. She has her M.A. from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Lund University, Sweden. Her research interest range from machine translation, computational semantic models, and corpus linguistics to translation theory and literary translation. Adam Głaz  is Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin, Poland. He researches in cognitive and cultural linguistics, linguistic worldview, and translation. In particular, his interests include viewpoint in language and linguistics and comparative analyses of linguistic worldviews (also with regard to translation). Patrycja Karpińska  is a doctoral student at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland. She is alumna of Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław and two times winner of the

Notes on Contributors     xix

Rector’s Award for the Best Students (2013, 2015). Her academic interests revolve around the sociology translation and cultural theories in Translation Studies. John Leavitt is Professeur titulaire at Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Canada. He specialises in linguistic anthropology. John Leavitt has done research on oral poetry in the Indian Himalayas and in Ireland, on comparative mythology, and on the history of ideas about language diversity. His book Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought appeared in 2011. Carsten Levisen is Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark, and a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His research interests are in lexical semantics, linguistic anthropology, and postcolonial linguistics. He has authored and edited work in cultural semantics, social cognition, Creole studies, language ideologies, and cultural aspects of discourse. Sean O’Neill  is linguistic anthropologist, currently Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma. He specialises in the expression of oral literature in multicultural and multilingual settings. He is particularly interested in the intersection of language and music (with an equal emphasis on oral narrative and song), focusing on the indigenous languages the Americas, including California, Brazil, and the American Southwest. Marko Pajevič  studied Comparative Literature, Philosophy and Slavic Studies in Munich, Berlin and Paris. He wrote his Ph.D. on the poetics of Paul Celan and his habilitation on Poetic Thinking. After teaching in Paris, Belfast and London and a senior fellowship at the Centre Marc Bloch (HU Berlin), he now occupies the Astra Chair of German at Tartu University. Taras Shmiher is graduate of and Associate Professor at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. Shmiher researches and publishes in the history and theory of translation, translation quality assessment, and early Ukrainian texts. He is Laureate of the Hryhoriy Kochur Literary Prize and the full member of Shevchenko Scholarly Society (both 2015).

xx      Notes on Contributors

Elżbieta Tabakowska  is Professor Emerita at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, specialising in cognitive linguistics and translation studies. She is founder of the UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication at the Jagiellonian University. She is a practising interpreter, translator, and researcher. In 2007–2010, Elżbieta Tabakowska was member of the group of European Union experts for the development of standard M.A. programme in Translation Studies. James W. Underhill is Professor at Université Normandie, Rouen, France. He is a professional translator of French and Czech and has published on linguistic worldview, poetics, metaphor, and translation. James Underhill is the founder of the Rouen Ethnolinguistic Project (REP) in the framework of ERIAC Research Group, which aims to further investigations into the philosophy of language and exploration of worldviews. Anna Wyrwa  graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and is currently a Ph.D. student at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, and Lecturer at Stanisław Pigoń State College in Krosno, Poland. Her academic interests include relations between language, thought, and culture. Her doctoral dissertation deals with linguistic worldviews in the translation of EU parliamentary debate.

List of Tables

Chapter 1 Table 1 Examples of być albo nie być from the PWN Corpus of Polish (https://sjp.pwn.pl/korpus; accessed 28 October 2017)

6

Chapter 3 Table 1 The predator-prey pattern in the “Bear’s Son Tale” Table 2 Earlier animistic version vs. Slavic version of “Koshchei the Immortal”

61 74

Chapter 5 Table 1 Percentage use of post-vocalic /r/ in New York City (US) and Reading (UK) (MMC—middle middle class; LMC—lower middle class; UWC—upper working class; LWC—lower working class) 117 Table 2 Percentage of 3rd-person verbs without -s in Norwich and Detroit (MMC—middle middle class; LMC—lower middle

xxi

xxii      List of Tables

class; UWC—upper working class; MWC—middle working class; LWC—lower working class) 123

Chapter 9 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

The three translational paths of Petro Mohyla’s Catechism 213 Terms for marriage in the versions of the Catechism 219 Nominations of God in the Catechism and its translations 224 Nominations of Messiah in the Catechism and its translations 226 Table 5 Synonyms to Збaвитgль ‘Savior’ in Old and New Ukrainian 228 Table 6 The value systems associated with λόγος, cлoвo, and word 229 Table 7 Renderings of бapaнoкъ in (Part 1, Question 45) of the Great Catechism 230

Chapter 10 Table 1 Numbers of words borrowed into Polish until the 1970s 242

Chapter 12 Table 1 Underhill’s model adapted for the analysis of metaphor and emergent worldview 304

Chapter 13 Table 1 Semantic primes: English exponents, grouped into related categories (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) 323 Table 2 Semantic primes: Danish exponents (based on Levisen 2012, 2017) 323 Table 3 Top 20 of synaeshetic humor metaphors 326

Chapter 15 Table 1 A Polish song fragment translated into Norwegian and English Table 2 A fragment alluding to Mickiewicz’s Dziady (the underlined words in the original text are quotations from the play) Table 3 Examples of translation of Lubiewo-nicknames into English, German, and Norwegian Table 4 Central camp terms in translation

375 376 384 388

1 Introduction Adam Głaz

1 Inspiration Whenever I get a chance, in class, to refer to Edward Sapir’s famous claim that “[t]he worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached” (Sapir 1961 [1929], p. 69), I usually notice three kinds of reactions from my students. One is a puzzled look of disbelief and incomprehension, something like “what on earth is he [Sapir? me?] talking about?”; another is an outright rejection (“that’s a silly thing to say, everybody can see that!”); the third one is this elusive spark in their eyes, a “eureka” kind of look to the effect: “yes, that’s what I’ve always felt but couldn’t find the words to express it!” It obviously takes us a little while, anything between one session to half a semester, to make out what Sapir might have had in mind, and no, certainly not get to the bottom of A. Głaz (*)  Department of Modern Languages, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_1

1

2     A. Głaz

it, but perhaps scratch the surface of that mystery a little. Usually what happens is that the sceptics come out a little less sceptical, those who intuitively side with Sapir become better equipped with arguments, and the puzzled ones begin to see some light. But before anything else, we can all be a little more precise about why and in what sense Sapir might or might not have had a point. With some liberty, one can say that this book is about just that: it explores the worlds that languages construct, interpret, express, and make available to their speakers. Or better: the worlds that speakers construct with the help of their languages. Or better still: the worldviews that emerge, interact, and clash when speakers operate within the realms of the languages they speak—which is basically at all times during their waking hours. We are thus moving within the perimeter of the linguistic worldview conception1 but approached from the perspective of translation as a process and translations as texts, and the contribution of the two to the worldview inherent in the receiving linguaculture. This is a relatively new perspective but certainly not totally original: there have been studies on worldviews inherent in the writings of specific authors and in translations of those (cf. e.g. Gicala 2013 and forthcoming on Wisława Szymborska in Polish and English; or Danaher 2013 and 2015 on Václav Havel in Czech and English). So, the path has already been taken, some ground has been covered—but there’s never enough. Although the book attempts to cast its net wide, in terms of the problems being identified, the methodologies applied, the contexts and linguacultures discussed, it certainly shows a recognisable influence of my own linguacultural background, which is Polish. It arose from the conference we held at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) at Lublin, Poland, in November 2017, where thirteen of the sixteen ­chapter authors were present.

1For synthetic accounts of the notion, cf. e.g. Bock (1992) or Hill and Mannheim (1992). For a more recent overview, cf. Głaz et al. (2013). Of course, the very idea is far from being generally accepted or understood, and the debate has even gone beyond the bounds of academia onto publications for broader readership; cf. McWhorter’s (2014) well-written but misguided reaction to Deutscher (2010).

1 Introduction     3

2 The Rationale In fact, the idea for the 2017 conference I’ve mentioned, and so for this volume, emerged from James Underhill’s (2013) inspiring list of strong and weak points of research on linguistic worldview, as it is pursued in some linguistic circles at UMCS (cf. Bartmiński 2009). Says Underhill: The place of translation within this approach needs to be established, consolidated, and defended. What are the essential foreign texts that have helped cultivate Polish literature? The Bible? Shakespeare? What others? How did the daily translation of Russian into Polish affect the Polish worldview? And how is that worldview holding up to the daily influence of English journalism and its translation into Polish? (Underhill 2013, p. 344)

Obviously, parallel questions concern all languages and cultures, the Polish context is just a pretext—nevertheless, it does bear a distinctive mark on the content of this volume. On that more general plane, however, Piotr Blumczynski and John Gillespie evoke Hans-Georg Gadamer’s rather idyllic picture of intercultural encounter: If, by entering foreign language-worlds, we overcome the prejudices and limitations of our previous experience of the world, this does not mean that we leave and negate our own world. Like travellers we return home with new experiences. (Gadamer 2004, p. 445; in Blumczynski and Gillespie 2016, p. 9)

This almost sounds too beautiful to be true. Although language-tolanguage and culture-to-culture contact may involve give-and-take, mutual enrichment, and broadening of horizons, it comes at a cost. Do we really overcome our prejudices and limitations? Do we unconditionally cherish the new experiences? Does either of the parties involved, the giving and the receiving, cry out in exultation when confronted with the “otherness” of the other side? Or rather, isn’t the contact actually painful, full of apprehension, and characterised by the desire to have the upper hand? In our attempts to advance our experiences to Others, and/ or to accommodate the foreign viewpoints into the fabric of our own

4     A. Głaz

linguaculture, don’t we engage in struggle and strife rather than in an exchange of gifts? Indeed, Vladimir Macura’s (1990) discussion of the nineteenth-century Czech context resonates well with those intuitions: [T]ranslation now acquired the character of a complex semiotic operation, a refined manipulation of foreign texts. Translation was not seen as passive submission to cultural impulses from abroad; on the contrary, it was viewed as an active, even aggressive act, an appropriation of foreign cultural values. To put it in more figurative language, translation was seen as an invasion of rival territory, an invasion undertaken with the intent of capturing rich spoils of war. (Macura 1990, p. 68)

Can Macura’s images of aggression, invasion, and war be taken as at least a partial answer to Underhill’s concerns? Quite possibly, for he’s invoking them with reference to the receiving culture, in this case Czech, as it comes into possession of a bounty by “appropriating” the cultural values and concepts from foreign territories. It is these kinds of concerns, among others, that this volume has the ambition to address. They can be captured in the form of questions: 1. Isn’t there a need to re-define translation when it faces the “(linguistic) worldview” issue or are we splitting hairs? 2. How do translated works contribute to the shaping of the linguistic (or linguacultural) worldview entrenched in the target language? What’s the import of the notions of inter-pretation “placing between ” and trans-lation “carrying across ” (see Forster 1998, p. 171, in Leavitt this volume) for the sense we make of the world in and through linguacultural contact? 3. Are there translation strategies that favour the preservation vs. modification of that worldview? 4. What aspects of culture get (or don’t get) translated in the process? Cultural values? Cultural models? Metaphors? Can a focus on translation help us define what those are? 5. What is the place of translational practice and translations as products in the societies we live in?

1 Introduction     5

6. How do translated texts and their originals continue to affect their respective audiences? 7. How does translation draw from and affect the development of various disciplines, such as philosophy, theology, or other endeavours that focus on “ideas”? After all, worldviews are all about ideas. This is not to claim that all these questions are posed for consideration here in exactly that form, nor that we obtain satisfactory answers to them. The list on both sides of the Q&A is open-ended. Crucially, I hope the book will help us realise if there are specific problems that we’re failing to appreciate, in which direction we should be going, and how should we be searching for answers.

3 A Few Ideas for a Start Before other authors in this book take the floor, I’d like to share some of the ideas that came from ruminations on my native tongue, Polish, interacting with other languages. Surprisingly (or maybe, unsurprisingly), some of them have also independently stimulated others who have contributed to this publication.

3.1 To Be, or Not to Be The famous line from Hamlet’s soliloquy has almost become an international cultural property and Polish is no different: ask any person in the street and they will be familiar with być albo nie być, the most commonly used rendering of the line (even if many won’t be sure where it comes from). But who is actually speaking in or “through” that line: is it Shakespeare, Hamlet, any of the several Polish translators of Hamlet who have rendered the line in this way, or all of the translators collectively? Does this question still make sense given the degree to which the expression has been entrenched and conventionalised in Polish usage? Besides, the Polish rendering, być albo nie być, is now living a life of its own, somewhat detached semantically from its English original. Table 1 presents a few randomly chosen hits from the PWN Corpus of Polish:

6     A. Głaz Table 1  Examples of być albo nie być from the PWN Corpus of Polish (https:// sjp.pwn.pl/korpus; accessed 28 October 2017) Być albo nie być (“to be, or not to be”) English rendering (A.G.) in context Te pieniądze to dla nich „być albo nie być”. Muszę im zaraz dać odpowiedź, czy dostaną jutro forsę

That money is their “be or not to be.” I have to tell them straight away if they’ll be getting the dough tomorrow … centrum to dla nas być albo nie być. … the centre is our “be or not to be.” Jeśli szkołę zamkną, miasto będzie If they close the school, the city will skazane na powolną wegetację be doomed to slow vegetation Listy, których emitowanie decyThe letters, whose publication is duje o być albo nie być banków “to be or not to be” of land banks… hipotecznych

One can easily see that the expression here means “it’s a matter of life and death,” a “make-it-or-break-it” kind of predicament—which is not what Hamlet is contemplating. Putting aside the many interpretations of his soliloquy over the centuries, Hamlet is unsure of his decision to either continue to live and endure the hardships of life or to enter the sleep of death. How did that change, from contemplating a choice to a matter of life and death, come about? As far as I’ve been able to establish, the soliloquy has been translated into Polish twenty-six times by twenty-four translators. Of the twenty-six translations, twenty-two contain the wording być albo nie być or similar, disseminated through publication and theatre. Now, although Hamlet contemplates a choice, the conjunction albo “or” is ambiguous: it may introduce (a) a possibility of choice or (b) a result/consequence. If the resultative meaning is absent from the original, it is precisely that which comes to the foreground in the Polish być albo nie być (cf. the corpus examples in Table 1). Also, recall that Hamlet is in fact is asking a question (that is the question )—albo is not what occurs in Polish questions. Rather, one would expect the conjunction czy (lit. “whether/ if ”), without an obvious English counterpart. Indeed, the remaining four Polish translations of the soliloquy do contain czy: it doesn’t only have an interrogative sense but unambiguously introduces an “alternative of choice,” not an “alternative of consequence.” Wouldn’t it be therefore legitimate to suggest that the shift from Hamlet’s original

1 Introduction     7

contemplation of a choice to the Polish meaning “matter of life and death” comes from the use of albo, in a line that’s widely known and generally accepted, but nonetheless unfaithful to the Danish prince? But if there do exist more faithful Polish translations with czy, why have they lost against albo? My intuitive answer is that być albo nie być is prosodically attractive and pleasing to the ear. Być czy nie być or Być czy też nie być are based on a different rhythm, accentuation pattern, and metre, and above all, they are full of difficult-to-pronounce fricatives (“ż” [ʒ]) and affricates (“ć” [tɕ], “cz” [tʃ]), a major drawback on the stage. The more open, “flowing,” vowel-based albo comfortably beats the harsh and “clusterly” być czy też nie być. Whoever then talks to us in and through this verse, whether Shakespeare, Hamlet, the translators, or the actual actors—it is also the lexical and phonological systems of Polish that do that.2

3.2 Winnie-the-Pooh Sometimes the voice of the translator overshadows that of the author, as is the case with the rendering of Winnie-the-Pooh into Polish by Irena Tuwim (Milne 1938). Without much exaggeration, it can be regarded now as the translation of the two Pooh books, not only because it has made itself at home in Polish culture, but also because few have dared to tread on that territory ever since. The one who has is in fact one of the contributors to this volume, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, who caused a major furor in the 1980s by retranslating the two Pooh books (Milne 1986, 1990) in a way that showed Winnie-the-Pooh’s sex/gender to be a vague matter, threw new light on the personalities of the other characters, and more faithfully reconstructed the atmosphere of the Hundred Acre Wood. As it turned out, she was fighting a losing battle: the Polish Winnie-the-Pooh (or Kubuś Puchatek) stayed who he had always been, that is, the first 2In

a recent conference paper, my colleague Przemek Łozowski (2019) has suggested a reading of Hamlet’s soliloquy at three levels: lexical, sentential, and textual. The latter reading leads him to propose a novel rendering of its first line: mieć, czy być ‘to have, or to be.’ Note that it contains czy, rather than albo, which suggests that Łozowski’s perspective is indeed semantic-textual and still leaves room for considerations at the phonetic level.

8     A. Głaz

translator’s creation loosely based on the English original. It seems to be a clear case of what Jorge Luis Borges calls the original [being] unfaithful to the translation.

3.3 Alice Lewis Carroll’s Alice books are a different case. By my count, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into Polish as many as twelve times (see Adamczyk-Garbowska in this volume for a discussion of those translations). Apparently, many must have felt a need to retranslate Alice (one or both books) for the sheer hope of doing it differently from others—which in fact was very often the case. Elżbieta Tabakowska, who produced the tenth Polish version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 2012), adds another reason to engage in a struggle with the book’s linguistic matter: its very existence. Some things are simply irresistible. An experienced translator and translation critic that Tabakowska is (see also her contribution to this volume), she was actually inspired to translate Alice by the discovery of Tove Jansson’s illustrations to the book: it was the allure of the peculiar atmosphere of those drawings that she tried to capture. We thus have here not only interlingual and intercultural translation, but also multimodal adaptation and interpretation. This situation says a lot about who Winnie-the-Pooh is to Poles (and I mean Pooh the bear, not really the Pooh books)—Alice (and Alice) may be interesting but with far less emotional attachment. Winniethe-Pooh, or rather Kubuś Puchatek, is very much “ours” and woe to anyone who dares fiddle with it! Except that Kubuś is rather far from Winnie-the-Pooh: he is Tuwim’s gift to us, not Milne’s.

3.4 Heart of Darkness One more case of someone “redoing” a classic of world literature is Jacek Dukaj’s “polonisation” of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Conrad 2017), produced after six other translations of the novella. Dukaj openly admits his is not a translation: it’s Conrad writing the story anew

1 Introduction     9

in Dukaj’s head for the twenty-first-century Polish reader. This very singular read bears a palpable mark of Dukaj’s idiosyncratic interpretation, viewpoint, and style, which begins with the very title: contrary to the sacrosanct tradition of calling it Jądro ciemności (lit. “the core of darkness”), as all the other translators had done, Dukaj goes for Serce ciemności, which at its face value is closer to the original, as the English heart is Polish serce. But serce is positive—Norman Davies’s The Heart of Europe (2001 [1984]) and its Polish rendering Serce Europy (2014) evoke no objections. Is there anything positive about Conrad’s heart of darkness? Is Dukaj merely being original and/or provocative or is he trying to subvert the axiology of the whole work? (More on the heart in James Underhill’s chapter in this volume.)

3.5 Translation of German Theology into Polish The question of what translations do to the target language has been tackled, in the Polish context, by Eliza Pieciul-Karmińska, who did a study of the linguistic view of God and the world in translations of German theology into Polish (Pieciul-Karmińska 2007). Following but also elaborating on George Steiner (1975), this involves an incarnation of a foreign idea into the receiving linguistic worldview, whereby that worldview is enriched, or an infection of the target language with an unwelcome, alien concept. But are we dealing with distinct worldviews, a distinct and idiosyncratic worldview in each of the two linguacultures, or perhaps with a migration of ideas within what Underhill (2009) calls a cultural mindset (a theological mindset in this case?) with a series of “local,” language-specific modifications that take place in the process? For some discussion see the chapter by Wyrwa in this volume.

3.6 No Return to Pre-Babel Whatever the case, after Babel we must translate—as James Underhill once remarked (p.c.), “if we aren’t translating, we aren’t talking.” But this isn’t (only) a curse, it’s also a blessing: it forces us to make an effort of or towards understanding (cf. Haugen 1987).

10     A. Głaz

And then, understanding goes far beyond the comprehension of language, it is much more serious: “to ‘understand’ language is to understand what it means to be human” (Maitland 2017, p. 50); it is to understand the mystery of the other but also of oneself. Understanding involves a recognition of the worldviews that come in and with languages and that are a matter of form as much as of content. The worldviews that get petrified, propagated, distorted, disregarded, accepted, or rejected as speakers of those languages engage in contact, and consequently in the art and struggle of translation. But that journey eventually brings us back to ourselves—such is Paul Ricoueur’s paradox, expressed by Richard Kearney: “The shortest route from self to self is through the other” (1996, p. 1).

4 This Book We begin our ruminations on these issues with Part I, “Setting the Scene: Worldviews Emerging, Worldviews Expressed.” Sean O’Neal (Chapter 2) views translation as something that also (or perhaps, predominantly) involves the standard everyday practice of oral translation for the purpose of communication and joint cultural activity. Roslyn Frank (Chapter 3), in turn, talks about worldview in the broad sense of “cosmovision,” as something that emerges through cultural and cross-cultural interaction over thousands of years. Against this backdrop, Part II, “Rethinking Translation,” proposes to do just that: rethink the very notion. First, John Leavitt (Chapter 4) takes a humanistic approach to translation as an activity that calls for and actually entails strong emotional involvement. Then come two chapters on the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu: first, Nigel Armstrong (Chapter 5) locates translation and worldview in the context of Bourdieu’s notion of distinction; next, Patrycja Karpińska (Chapter 6) traces the developments and consequences of the sociological turn in Translation Studies, again with reference to Bourdieu’s sociological thought. Part III, “The Shaping of Worldviews: Focus on Philosophy and Religion,” looks at those two areas as major manifestations of how

1 Introduction     11

worldviews are shaped, manifested, and translated. Piotr Blumczynski (Chapter 7) attributes the emergence of the Western concepts of substance and essence to Latin translations of the Aristotelian ousia, amidst religious debates, as substantia and essentia.3 Marko Pajevič (Chapter 8) compares Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig’s with Henri Meschonnic’s translations of the Bible (into German and French, respectively), with a view to how they have impacted the “system of life.” Taras Shmiher (Chapter 9) traces the development of religious terms on the basis of seven translations of St. Petro Mohyla’s seventeenth-century Catechism (The Orthodox Confession  ). Finally, Jerzy Bartmiński (Chapter 10) looks at the problem of the reception of lexical borrowings and translated biblical stories in the target linguaculture. He proposes that the target linguacultural worldview contains the category of “domesticated foreignness,” which breaks out of the binary domestication-vs.-foreignisation dichotomy. In Part IV, “Translating Worldviews across Languages and Cultures,” we move on to other domains. James Underhill (Chapter 11) focuses on the “heart”: potentially a universal faculty of thinking and feeling but nevertheless full of paradoxes and linguacultural nuances. Anna Wyrwa (Chapter 12), referring to Underhill’s earlier work, investigates the parameters of linguistic worldview (and what happens to them) in translations of EU parliamentary debates. Carsten Levisen (Chapter 13), in turn, looks at his native Danish linguacultural category of laughter and synaesthetic metaphors of humour, in an analysis performed within the framework of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Finally, Part V, “It’s All about the Details: Focus on Diction, Grammar, and Style,” delves into the bits and pieces of language and languages, in an attempt to add precision to the vague notion of “style,” as well as to investigate the use of style in translational practice. Susan Erdmann and Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson (Chapter 14) analyse Norwegian translations of Anne of Green Gables, whose omissions,

3Blumczynski’s

essay fits well into a broader enterprise of marking out the role of translation in shaping scholarly thought. For a view on how different translations may give rise to different Christian “anthropologies,” cf. e.g. Gomola (2014).

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manipulations, and textual transformations of the original are contextualised with respect to political and/or ideological convictions of the translators. Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson (Chapter 15) then proposes an analysis of the Norwegian translation of a contemporary Polish novel, whose cultural allusions, socio-political context, and peculiarities of grammatical gender pose major challenges to the translator. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Chapter 16) traces the history and the peculiarities of the many Polish translations of Carroll’s Alice books. She shows how much of what the reader gets is a matter of cultural context on the one hand, and the translator’s situated context on the other. The volume ends with Elżbieta Tabakowska’s consideration of historical narrative (Chapter 17), specifically the differences between the scientist narrative (“history as history”) and perspectivist narrative (“history as relation”) in history writing. Meticulous attention to detail reveals how that difference in attitude is reflected in the use of language and in translational decisions. To hope that the book will provide the ultimate answers to the questions we ask above would be preposterous or even arrogant. But it can reasonably be expected to shed light on those questions, mark directions of inquiry, and help organise ideas for further endeavours in this area.

References Adamczyk-Garbowska, Monika. this volume. The Many Faces of Alice: Twists and Turns of Lewis Carroll’s Classic in Poland. In Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, ed. Adam Głaz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Bartmiński, Jerzy. 2009. Aspects of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics, ed. Jörg Zinken; trans. Adam Głaz. Sheffield/Oakville, CT: Equinox. Blumczynski, Piotr, and John Gillespie. 2016. Introduction. In Translating Values: Evaluative Concepts in Translation, ed. Piotr Blumczynski and John Gillespie, 1–9. London: Palgrave. Bock, Philip K. 1992. World View and Language. In International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ed.-in-chief William Bright, vol. 4, 248–251. New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Carroll, Lewis. 2012. Alicja w Krainie Czarów, trans. Elżbieta Tabakowska. Kraków: Bona. Conrad, Joseph. 2017. Serce ciemności. “Polonised” by Jacek Dukaj. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. Danaher, David S. 2013. Ethnolinguistics and Literature: The Meaning of svědomí ‘Conscience’ in the Writings of Václav Havel. In The Linguistic Worldview: Ethnolinguistics, Cognition, and Culture, ed. Adam Głaz, David S. Danaher, and Przemysław Łozowski, 93–113. London: Versita [open access: www.degruyter.com/view/product/246955]. Danaher, David S. 2015. Reading Václav Havel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Davies, Norman. 2001 [1984]. Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland’s Present. New York: Oxford University Press. Davies, Norman. 2014. Serce Europy, trans. Elżbieta Tabakowska. Kraków: Znak. Deutscher, Guy. 2010. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Forster, Michael N. 1998. On the Very Idea of Denying the Existence of Radically Different Conceptual Schemes. Inquiry 41: 133–185. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. London/New York: Continuum. Gicala, Agnieszka. 2013. The Linguistic Worldview and Conceptual Disintegration: Wisława Szymborska’s Poem Identyfikacja and Its English Translation by Clare Cavanagh. In The Linguistic Worldview: Ethnolinguistics, Cognition, and Culture, ed. Adam Głaz, David S. Danaher, and Przemysław Łozowski, 61–75. London: Versita [open access: www. degruyter.com/view/product/246955]. Gicala, Agnieszka. Forthcoming. Translating a Worldview: Linguistic Worldview in Literary Translation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Głaz, Adam, David S. Danaher, and Przemysław Łozowski. 2013. Introduction. In The Linguistic Worldview: Ethnolinguistics, Cognition, and Culture, ed. Adam Głaz, David S. Danaher, and Przemysław Łozowski, 11–24. London: Versita [Open Access: www.degruyter.com/view/ product/246955]. Gomola, Aleksander. 2014. The Myth of the Creation of Woman in Genesis 2: 18–23 and Its Possible Translations—The Consequences for Christian Anthropology. Studia Religiologica 47 (2): 77–88. https://doi.org/10.4467/ 20844077SR.14.006.2379.

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Haugen, Einar. 1987. Blessings of Babel: Bilingualism and Language Planning: Problems and Pleasures. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Hill, Jane H., and Bruce Mannheim. 1992. Language and World View. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 381–406. Kearney, Richard. 1996. Introduction. In Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, ed. Richard Kearney, 1–2. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage. Leavitt, John. this volume. Translation as Philology as Love. In Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, ed. Adam Głaz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Łozowski, Przemysław. 2019. Hamlet’s to Be, or Not to Be in a Prototype Perspective: From Words Through Sentences to Texts. Conference Students’ Corner 2019, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland, 8–9 April, 2019. Macura, Valdimir. 1990. Culture as Translation. In Translation, History and Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 64–70. London: Cassell. Maitland, Sarah. 2017. What Is Cultural Translation?. London: Bloomsbury. McWhorter, John H. 2014. The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milne, Alan A. 1938. Kubuś Puchatek and Chatka Puchatka, trans. Irena Tuwim. J. Przeworski. Milne, Alan A. 1986. Fredzia Phi-Phi, trans. Monika Adamczyk. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie. Milne, Alan A. 1990. Zakątek Fredzi Phi-Phi, trans. Monika AdamczykGarbowska. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie. Pieciul-Karmińska, Eliza. 2007. Językowy obraz Boga i świata. O przekładzie teologii niemieckiej na język polski. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. Sapir, Edward. 1961 [1929]. The Status of Linguistics as a Science. In Edward Sapir, Culture, Language and Personality: Selected Essays, ed. David G. Mandelbaum, 65–77. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Steiner, George. 1975. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tabakowska, Elżbieta. this volume. Historical Narrative as a Culture Text. In Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, ed. Adam Głaz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Underhill, James W. 2009. Humboldt, Worldview and Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Underhill, James W. 2013. Reflections Upon Bartmiński’s Ethnolinguistic Approach to Language and Culture. In The Linguistic Worldview: Ethnolinguistics, Cognition, and Culture, ed. Adam Głaz, David S. Danaher, and Przemysław Łozowski, 339–370. London: Versita [open access: www. degruyter.com/view/product/246955]. Underhill, James W. this volume. Do Paradoxes Have a Place in Worldviews? Conceptual Configurations of “Heart” and Their Contradictions in English and Other Languages. In Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, ed. Adam Głaz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Wyrwa, Anna. this volume. Traces of Speaker’s Worldview in Translations of EU Parliamentary Debate. In Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, ed. Adam Głaz. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part I Setting the Scene: Worldviews Emerging, Worldviews Expressed

2 Linguistic Relativity in the Age of Ontology: How Language Shapes Worldview and Ways of Being, Even Going Beyond the Human Sean O’Neill

1 Introduction: Ontology and Linguistic Relativity Let me start by saying that there is something profoundly Whorfian, in spirit, about the current wave of research on the subject of ontology, among distinguished anthropologists such as Phillipe Descola, Edardo Kohn, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Here we see a return, in contemporary scholarship, to a defense of relativism, to a sense of support for the legitimacy of other ways of seeing and inhabiting the world—as Marshall Salhins notes in the Foreword to Beyond Nature and Culture (Descola 2013, pp. xi–xiv). In this way, the ontological turn engages Michael Silverstein’s initial call to “generalize Whorf ’s penetrating insights from the plane of reference to the whole of language function” (1979, p. 194). Language, in this sense, has the power to invoke different ways of being within this world. Descola, for his part, has offered S. O’Neill (*)  University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_2

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up a four-way typology of ontological systems, arguing that there are at least four fundamentally distinct frameworks for thinking about nature and culture among modern human societies, including animacy, totemism, naturalism, and analogism, as discussed in further detail throughout this chapter. Are these ontological frameworks in any way akin to the worldviews of the Boasians? To the typologies of Edward Tylor, including the premise of animism? When it comes to these often-profound differences of interpretation among human societies, as witnessed throughout geographical space and historical time, one must ask: Do humans willfully construct realities of their own making, and, if so, what role does language play in shaping human experience, including the social imagination? Do we enter into these ontological frameworks willfully, such as the ontology of naturalism, where animals and humans are set apart, as separate orders of existence? Or do we participate in these social realities unwittingly, as a trick of perception, induced by everyday language or the hegemonic force of routine social thought, habitual language? The deeper question here was, of course, set into motion, not by Whorf (1956), but by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (cf. e.g. Aristotle 1984), however surprising that may be to modern-day anthropologists, who may not be aware of that deep philosophical lineage, casting doubt on the realism of everyday language, including emotionally charged political rhetoric, which routinely overpowers reason, shaping misguided action. Among anthropologists, we have a handful of metaphors, within our professional discourse, for talking about these differences in human experience, throughout the world’s many languages and cultures, now and in the past. There are so many tropes here, starting with “worldviews,” based on the potent modality of sight, perhaps the dominant one in the West (Dundes 1980, pp. 86–92). Seeing is believing, after all. But then there is often more to culture than meets the eye, and more to language than mere reference (Silverstein 1979)—more than what is immediately available to the senses. Another popular trope invokes the sense of “reality,” based, presumably, on what is real or not—what is negotiable or true, perhaps only as a self-fashioned “social reality.” Here even figment of the collective imagination (Becker and Yengoyan 1979), beyond individual delusion, may come to hold sway, as we see in the

2  Linguistic Relativity in the Age of Ontology …     21

news everyday even with presidential tweets, but more often in folklore, gossip, and oral literature, before the era of the internet. In this sense, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) originally framed the ­classic question of “linguistic relativity” as a problem in human cognition, suggesting that there are many—equally legitimate—ways of thinking about the world when under the spell of everyday habitual language. Language has that kind of magic, or holds that kind of spell over us, changing how we see “things” based on how someone talks about those things, framing them in ways that shape not only perception, but also the very real actions that follow, even when based on misperception. Reference may have been his original trope, following the dualistic ontology of his day, with a split between sense and referent, the word and the thing. Thus, Whorf began his own discussion of the power of language with examples drawn from workplace accidents, wherein language catalyzed (without directly causing) misguided action, based on misunderstandings arising from misleading language. Here he diagnosed a disease in human language (see Silverstein 2000), after which this body of thought is in part named, to this day. But the principle of linguistic relativity is also an antidote to parochial thinking, and thus leads us away from such potentially dangerous misunderstandings—not just in the workplace, but in all areas of life. One gains a deeper sense of the world—even “reality” itself—by seeing things from more than one perspective; hence his interest in comparative linguistics, following Wilhelm von Humboldt (1999 [1836]). Moving beyond reference, attention soon turned to the (somewhat Marxist) concept of “ideology,” based on what begins in the mind and is imposed on reality, despite evidence to the contrary. Ideologies, even language ideologies, are only true up to a point, as much as they become self-fulfilling prophecies, as people eventually place stock in these systems of ideas, making them real by investing in them. And they usually exist in stark contrast to competing frameworks of thought, along the lines of Bakhtin’s seminal work on heteroglossia (1981), where even a single strip of discourse, such as the US Constitution, can be shot through with multiple ideological registers—with some people being more “equal” than others, to paraphrase George Orwell. When it comes to language, when you believe that your language is sacred, as a

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kind of ideological framing, you fulfill that prophecy by investing in it every minute (or hour) of every day, eventually mastering every aspect of this “sacred tongue” to enter into the realm of your ancestors, or even the divine. In this way, mere ideologies, however contestable they may seem on the surface, come to materialize as self-made “realities” over time; look no further than Hebrew and Maori, two miraculous cases, supported by religious and nationalist ideologies, which eventually materialized as regular practice. Such is the power of ideology. To this growing list we may now add “ontology,” based not on the modality of “sight” or the sense of what is “real” or even our “systems of ideas,” but on ways of being within the world, and ways of relating to other life-forms or spiritual agencies. The term is not new, of course, but it was introduced to our profession by the American anthropologist, Irving Hallowell back in 1947, as a way of taking other religions seriously, including their very real impact on human relations with the ecology, in a spiritual modality. In this sense, we potentially go beyond a sense of “seeing” or even inhabiting to “social realities,” as tropes for understanding differences in “lived” human experience. In a deep way, there is an opportunity here to reframe these discourses about relativity in terms of matters of “being in relation to others” and perhaps even a sense of the mythic, imported to experience from the collective (or social) imagination, as I explore in this paper. So far, few of the ontologists have looked seriously at the ontological status of language itself, a question Hauck and Heurich (2018) open up to the world in their recent contribution to this area. Surely, this question has been considered before, in philosophical circles, in particular, where the term “ontology” originated, as a way of considering our deepest grounds of being as humans (see Heidegger 1978 [1927]). But, so far, the question of “language ontologies” itself remains virtually unexplored, as a topic worthy of cross-cultural attention throughout the world. In this sense, it is worth remembering that languages differ not only in relation to reference (Silverstein 1981), how we describe objects of shared experience, but also in relation to how we speak at all about anything (Hymes 1966)—that is, how we deploy language in an ­ethnographic sense. For this reason, Hymes himself initiated a movement known as “the ethnography of speaking,” as a program aimed at

2  Linguistic Relativity in the Age of Ontology …     23

describing how and why people speak in various cultures. Yes, different languages often invoke different worldviews—even different ideologies, cosmologies, and ontologies. Thus, there are many forms of linguistic relativity (Leavitt 2011). Ultimately, when speaking of ontologies in a productive way, let us hope that we may one day move beyond “frameworks” for interpretation, to consider different ways of being in the world, as prescribed or suggested by language ideology. This gets to the heart of Whorf ’s argument about language fundamentally changing the course of human relations, going beyond thought, as words shape not just the imagination, but also action and interaction. Different moods and motivations, across culture, much as the experience of music potentially changes one’s whole affect (Sacks 2008), one’s whole way of being in the world, in relation to other humans and life-forms. Talk about ontological reorientation! Of course, the same could hold true of registers in languages, or even ideological frameworks, as we shall soon see.

2 The Ontological Turn: A Return to Indigenous Languages, Worldviews, and Ontologies In his groundbreaking new book, How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn (2013) makes some remarkable claims about language and life, going so far as to insist that all life is inherently semiotic (p. 16); and, by extension, he says, thought is alive (p. 72). Recently, so goes the news, Western scientists have begun to validate such views, as witnessed with the work of Terrance Deacon (2012) and a slew of other evolutionary biologists, who now frequently serve as witnesses to the intelligence of other forms of life—and even life itself, as an interactive “code” based on the constantly evolving nature of DNA. So much for human uniqueness in the light of this wave of scholarship, a point that should particularly speak to anthropologists, including those of us in linguistics, where we often claim this uniqueness as a professional identity. Anthropologists, for the most part, have claimed human uniqueness for a long time, often on the basis of dubious claims about our superior

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intelligence, high-level thought, tool use, or sophisticated systems of communication, including music and grammar. And, as even Darwin observed, many other animals (from birds to whales) have musical abilities, which suggests a kind grammatical code, with rules for constructing phrases. Yet the accepted wisdom, for well over 150 years into the Darwinian era, is that no other animal can speak or construct complex thought using the regular patterns, structures that we associate with grammar. But communication and musical abilities are common among other species—both of which are surprisingly parallel to language, structurally or semantically, as ways of arriving at a collective sense of the imagination, or worldview, getting back to the central theme of this book! The counter-claims, now, come from almost every point on the planet, seeming almost like a consensus genitum (in the Geertzian sense), a common conclusion reached by most of our ancestors throughout the past, containing perhaps a grain of wisdom. We are not unique and are embedded in the web of life, which is filled with intelligence and wisdom beyond belief, not just for our own species to claim, as a birthright, as Kohn illustrates based on his experiences in the Amazon. Nor is any of this particularly surprising within the realms of world philosophy and literature, where humans are often seen as part of the web of life, and our ability with spoken language is often extended to other species in folklore and oral literature, where animals and plants regularly talk. Is there really any such dialog across species, given and take, communication? Do other species think, even if they don’t really talk? Or are humans really exceptional, as we have recently been led to believe, in a time when most other species have been brought to the brink of extinction? Can we survive without them, without what even Darwin proved to be our kin? Does language, in fact, set us apart as a species? Does symbolism, as even Kohn claims? Does language itself set members of our species apart from each other, in terms of high and low languages, as much of the world continues to insist? Recall that just little of over 100 years ago now, many Western scholars, including Edward Tylor, were convinced that languages and cultures could also be ranked—that grammar was only a feature of civilized tongues, like Latin or Greek, not the universal wellspring of speech throughout our species, as we now recognized

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today, thanks in no small part to Edward Sapir and Franz Boas. This should give us some reason to doubt our negative views of nonhumans. Or are these mere reflexes of the naturalist ideologies that have swept European philosophy and literature since the time of the Enlightenment? Are we in fact set apart from other life forms, in our supposedly unique capacity for thought—that is, reacting to the needs of the moment in intelligent ways, with forethought and real understanding? Are these uniquely human traits? This chapter reexamines some of these ancient questions about language and worldview on cross cultural grounds—looking at both the structure of language and the philosophical systems surrounding everyday language use.

2.1 Dueling with Cartesian Dualism: The West vs. the Suppressed These claims about intelligent life here on earth, both among our fellow humans and among other species, go very much against the grain of recent trends in Western thought, where, at least since the era of the Enlightenment, a deep split between animals and humans has ruled the day, along with a strong ontological divide between these orders of existence, including the supposed “races” of humans, which anthropologists and other scientists obviously do not support. As Ferdinand de Saussure (2000 [1916]) later came to articulate, as an inheritor of the Enlightenment, language itself could be approached on such dualistic terms, as something humans, for example, possess, as opposed to other life forms—setting us apart from “animals” and “plants” as a symbolic species of supreme intelligence, capable of expressing new thought without limit according to paradigmatic and syntagmatic principles of combination and substitution. Throughout his whole semiotic enterprise, we see the impresses of dualism again and again, as an underlying ontological premise, into which he (and other structuralists) force the world to fit—a cosmological projection and an ontological one at that. On similar grounds, language could also be seen, in dualistic terms, as the pairing of sound and meaning, as a relationship between a

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word and an object of consciousness, with perhaps a concept standing between them. Yet denotation was the focus. A word, or construction of any kind, in this sense, literally, means what is “spelled out” by the letters, with an exact one-one relationship between the word and the thing! In other words, a limited view of language, which snuffs out the possibility of productive misunderstanding. Talk about taking things literally, missing the meaning in the message, which is often “beyond the words,” as we say. This is precisely where the “enlightenment” left us in the dark. Did de Saussure’s philosophical dualism—as an unstated ontological premise—really answer these enduring questions about language and life, even if this framework was one he inherited from the Enlightenment, with its focus on denotation to the exclusion of other orders of meaning? Above all, enlightenment thinkers saw language as a system of reference that could potentially signal reality in a direct way, without any distortion, misunderstanding, or ideological overtones. Even Isaac Newton (1642–1726), among others (including many philosophers and scientists before him), set out on a search for a “perfect language,” which would describe reality without any confusion in the terms. And, in this sense, Newton eventually searched for language beyond the human, expressed in the language of math. As we shall soon see, Sanskrit is another language, among many, that is purported to hold, when properly intoned, such a direct relationship to mystical and mathematical truth, a list that also includes Arabic, Navajo, and Hebrew, according to the spiritual masters within those communities. For all of these reasons, statements such as Kohn’s may be shocking to many in the academic world, at least outside anthropology, when it comes to his claims about the universality of intelligent life and the pervasiveness of semiosis and thought among all life-forms—not just on other planets, but here on the earth itself, with all its myriad lifeforms. Yet these claims are not the least bit surprising to many of the world’s indigenous communities, where our place within the web of life has long been recognized. In this sense, the capacity for thought often given as a uniquely human thing is something that linguistic anthropologist celebrate with our tradition on the diversity of “language thought” going back to the times of Benjamin Lee Whorf, if not Aristotle before

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him, as someone who wrote about the power of rhetoric to shape the human imagination, even action carried out on the basis of faulty logic (the enthymeme)—very much like today’s fake news. Thus, in a deeper sense, this new work on ontology begs an old question in anthropology, one from the linguistic—or discursive—quarters of our profession.

2.2 From Worldview to the “Four Ontologies” of Philippe Descola Turning now to one of the major proponents of the ontological movement, Philippe Descola has identified four contrasting “dispositions”— or ways of being—in relation to nature and culture—that is, between humans and other life forms within an ecological system. In his magnum opus, Beyond Nature and Culture (2013), Descola goes so far as to claim that people everywhere have essentially alternated between four fundamental ontological types. Here we go from “worldview” in the traditional sense, espoused by anthropologists like Franz Boas (2017 [1911]), Edward Sapir (1985 [1949]), and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956), for instance, to something possibly far more profound. The root metaphor is based not on merely “seeing” the world but “being” or “existing” within it, as dispositions in relation to other beings within this world, relative to other life-forms. We can start our global tour with the age-old notion of “animism”— the launching point for many early thinkers in anthropology, such as Edward Tylor (1871), who came to see this characteristic worldview as standing in striking opposition to their own way of life, as inheritors’ Western culture, with its stark contrast between humans and other forms of life. From an animist perspective, on the other hand, everything is alive: animals, plants, humans, and even rocks and stars, creating grounds for a potentially far-reaching kind of equality or relationality. Beings differ only in their outward appearances, not in their inner spiritual essence. That is, things take different physical forms, while sharing similar spiritual lives or “interiorities,” as Descola puts it. We will return to this perspective in a moment with examples from around the planet, including my own fieldwork in Northern California.

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Continuing the tour, the notion of totemism turns out to be equally common, as an orientation, when traveling around the world, reaching deep into the heart of Western culture itself, with such notions as heraldry (see Lévi-Strauss 1962), where a human family identifies with an animal or plant as an emblem of their line. The distinction here is in asserting a more far-reaching similarity between animals and humans— or humans and other life forms. The parallels are profound, and we share not only the same physical substance, but also a parallel spirituality. The parallels go beyond the level of metaphor or suggestive analogy, striking right to the heart of our very being. In clan-based societies, such as those described by Durkheim, each clan identifies with a particular totem, as a kind of ultimate ancestral source, a kind of kinship between a human group and a particular animal species or force of nature. So, in the words of Descola, we differ in our interiorities, but share a similar spiritual essence. From still another point of view, humans and nonhumans could be seen as profoundly different, with a sharp line dividing the two orders of existence. Descola identifies this disposition as the ontology of ­“naturalism,” with its hallmark emphasis on human uniqueness; this is perhaps the familiar “worldview” that early anthropologist, as inheritors of the Enlightenment, simply took for granted, finding animism and totemism to be exotic by comparison. Sure, animals and humans may share a similar underlying substance, understood today, for instance as the natural elements or even DNA. But they are profoundly different on the spiritual or psychological planes, from the perspective of naturalism. Animals and humans have very different minds or even mindsets. This particular worldview is very common today in Western societies, and was eloquently expressed in the philosophy of René Descartes in the seventeenth century (cf. Descartes 1988). Animals have bodies, while humans also have a mind within that machine. Taking this all to its logical extreme, one may see everything in existence as being fundamentally distinct, in both body and mind—a worldview that perhaps embraces this attendant sense of radical difference. This disposition is one that Descola identifies as “analogism,” based on the fact that this ontology, unlike the others, recognizes extensive parallels at the level of analogy. Here we inhabit a world of radical difference,

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and every creature has a different essence. Navajo animacy hierarchy is one such case in point, as we shall see toward the end of this chapter.

3 Ontology and Relativity in the Pacific Northwest Let us now turn to Northwestern California, where I first cut my teeth as a linguist, following in the footsteps of Edward Sapir (1884–1939), whose voluminous posthumous works on the area’s languages I helped see to print when I was still a graduate student (Sapir 2001). Where do the people of this region stand in relation to the “four ontologies,” the phenomenological life-worlds, propounded by Descola? Betwixt and between, I would say, with all of these latent possibilities, otherwise available to all people everywhere, as Descola (2013, pp. 232–246) himself acknowledges. Are there reflections of these tendencies in the shared culture of the region? In everyday language? Throughout the Pacific Northwest, animals and plants “think,” as portrayed in popular songs and folktales; indeed, their thoughts shape the world in which we live, bestowing many spiritual and medicinal gifts upon humanity. But no sharp line is drawn between animals and humans, and humans owe a huge debt to their spiritual progenitors among the other life-forms. Though out of step with the naturalism of recent Western thought, this ontological orientation is absolutely in sync with current evolutionary biology (Deacon 2012), while resonating with such some of the deepest religious convictions and ecological insights from perhaps the majority of the communities where anthropologists have worked: from the Indigenous languages of the Americas to Aboriginal Australia, the Middle East, and even parts of Southeast Asia, particularly within Hindus, Buddhists, and Taoist philosophical circles. Here, in this part of the world, it appears that all of these ontological orientations can be seen every day, as played out in ordinary speech— among the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk Tribes, who speak totally unrelated languages, while sharing a common cultural orientation and worldview (Sapir 1921, p. 213; O’Neill 2008). But which one dominates?

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Even here, in NW California, it’s not always clear, but situational. Are there different worldviews in each community? In each village? Do these differences of interpretation continue down to the level of the person, despite the social forces acting upon the individual? I have always presumed so, and I have plenty of evidence to back that up! For now, let me return to my Whorfian question: How pervasively are these ontologies embedded in everyday language—that is, in metaphors, myths, words, and even vocabulary? Going one step further, let me also ask: How is ontology conveyed in speech, where these ­cosmological frameworks become compelling, “taking on an aura of ­factuality,” as Geertz (2017 [1973], pp. 93–135) might say, “making the moods and motivations [of the religious life] seem realistic”? Now, let me give some examples based on my own fieldwork.

3.1 Blurring the Boundaries Between Ontologies: Reflections of Animism, Totemism, Naturalism, and Analogism in Everyday Speech To begin, animism is certainly at work within this region. Animals and plants speak and have agency, as we shall soon see, in folklore and oral literature, sometimes even surpassing humans in power—so do rocks and stars, like everything under the heavens. According to oral traditions shared by the Hupas, Yuroks, and Karuks, the original inhabitants of this earth had the characteristics of both animals and plants, before differentiating into different species or lifeforms we know today, many of which retain powerful spiritual and medicinal qualities going back to the creation times. One learns from the stories—and from the framing of everyday language and vocabulary—that all of these life-forms are intelligent and have the capacity to express their thoughts with words. Then, during the era of the transformation, only a handful of generations ago, humans began to set themselves apart other forms of life, some of the spirit moved away to the heavens, where they still watch over humanity from the fringes of the universe to this very day. These spirits feared the evil that would soon be unleashed by humans,

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as they became differentiated from the other life forms, particularly with their capacity to voice thought in the form of speech, with other beings, such as the dog, gave up. In this sense, there’s a pervasive present-day split between animals and humans, even if this split was not an ancient one, and speech plays a crucial role here, as it does for the Navajos. Humans speak, other life forms do not, at least today. Yet they understand our speech, and find our thoughts quite unsurprising, even mundane, as many of them had the capacity for thought and speech before us—bestowing us with those traits in their image. They were our progenitors, as the “First Persons” among other life forms. Just as Kohn says, based on his experiences in the Amazon, animals and plants are “persons,” with rights and abilities equal to ours. It follows that more than a touch of totemism is present among the Indigenous languages and worldviews of NW California, with equivalencies between animals and humans—with personal names, among other things, not just clans. And, in this way, there is a sense of analogism, as expressed in everyday language. People are often named after animals, which bestow a sense of dignity, as animals and plants were the First Persons, within the sense of cosmology, and still hold admirable qualities, as benefactors and sources of wisdom, even healing. But, after the era of the transformation, the world entered into a state that begins to resemble Descola’s “naturalism,” with a sharp ontological line separating animals and humans.1 In fact, much of traditional religion is aimed at undoing the wrongs humans committed in their separateness, which will one day be reversed, restoring justice. During this time of transition, the great Dances were established, such as the Jump Dance and White Deerskin Dance, with the purpose of restoring the world, undoing the damage inflicted by human wrongdoing, everywhere on the planet, not just in the region. Some of these beings chose to stay in this world to protect humans, after the transformation

1On

the other hand, one may wish to see this split as an instance of late-stage animism, with a split between animals and humans, who emerged from the same spiritual substance, only recently taking on different bodies, with different linguistic capacities; see Descola 1996 [1986]. But here, I think, we are splitting hairs. There is still a split, an ontological divide, at least in NW California.

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when most of the spirit beings fled for the heavens. Among these holy creatures was the Dog and even the Coyotes, its wild cousin. But many other creatures were seen as holy in this sense, including many dozens of animals and plants, as well as many other features of nature, such as the rivers, the sun, and the sky, all of which held spiritual qualities, with wisdom and the ability to remedy suffering. And, still, throughout everyday life, the split between animals and humans is not completely supported in language, among the Hupas, Yuroks, and Karuks, like other peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Both animals and humans have hands for example, as expressed in the idiom -la’, which means both “hand” and “paw,” without asserting an ontological split between the orders of animals and humans.2 So, when it comes to third-person markers, animals frequently are placed alongside humans and myth figures, which is no surprise given their status in the mythological system, as beings that were created alongside one another, as equals. Stories, in this way, often start with lines like this: “He (or she) was running,” without overtly stating whether that figure is animal-human or indeed even male or female. One must infer the identity of the character based on a kind of action metonymy, as they are known for their deeds as much as their names. Yet there is an underlying unity among the life forms. But, then, akin to naturalism in recent western thought there was eventually a rift between animals and humans. So, many species lost the capacity to voice their thoughts in speech, including the dog. But this rift was shallow and was something that could be undone—with a sense of liminality around it.

3.2 The Talking Dog and Its Vow of Silence, with Coyote as Cousin The Dog is one case in point—as both a religion figure and common fixture in the traditional home. In analogical terms, the Dog is anthropomorphized, seen as a near person, with qualities parallel to ours, such as 2The same pattern is observed in Basque, a mysterious isolate somewhat demystified by Frank (2018, cf. note on p. 202 therein).

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intelligence, compassion, and the ability to speak. In the creation times, one learns from the stories, the Dog could speak fluently. In the framing of everyday language, even vocabulary, the dog was portrayed as a wise character with wisdom to impart, with a care-taking role—as a protector of humankind, watching out for us with its considerable intelligence. Just a little farther north, on the Columbia River, which is still part of this general culture-area sometimes known as the Northwest Coast, the Wasco-Wishram tell a parallel story about humans sharing a language with dogs in the early phases of infancy, only becoming human when they are fully socialized out of this original language, one that deeply connects animals with humans (Michael Silverstein, personal communication 2018). Thus, ontology recapitulates phylogeny, as the biologists say—humans, here, retrace their evolutionary path, which takes us back to a place of common kinship with other animals—the dog, in this case. For the Hupa in particular the dog is sacred. Remember, the domestic dog traveled to the Americas with the first peoples. So, it is an indigenous species, one that arrived with the first native Americans, many millennia ago now. In the Hupa oral tradition, the Dog could talk at the beginning of time, voicing its thoughts through verbal speech, intelligible to humans. In this sense, the Dog crosses the line between animal and human. Though, with the coming of humans, the Dog chose the role of protector. Yet, if the Dog should ever speak again, so the ancients said, the end of the world would be at hand. Thus, twenty years ago now, when I was doing my fieldwork, the elders used to joke about Taco Bell commercials, which featured a talking Chihuahua saying “Yo quiero Taco Bell,” loosely translating as “I want (some) Taco Bell (food).” The elders joked that this commercial was foretelling the end of the world, not through a lapse in taste, but through the fact that the dog was speaking intelligently again, giving up its vow of silence at the end of time. There is so much for humanity to learn from these canines, as spiritual role models, especially when it comes to Coyote, who is often seen as a creator figure, especially among the Karuk. Coyote is often seen as a heroic trickster, on the border between the sacred and profane, doing filthy things (like eating its own excrement) while establishing many of the sacred features of the cosmos, such as the directional flow of the rivers or putting constellations in the sky with his nightly

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exploits. Such power, and such an honor to be equated with the Coyote in name, when transferred to a human, even as a nickname. (Bear, similarly, is framed as a loving parent, having an easy childbirth, making for an affectionate transfer when applied, as a name, to a person.) Since the languages are all intensely polysynthetic, few of the names dwell at the level of the mono-morphemic noun, without conveying a vivid story, without framing the animal as spiritual. Most of these animal monikers are descriptive and carry a sense of story with them— vivid scenes, captured in a handful of morphemes. Like “tiny imagist poems,” as Sapir (1921) once famously said. Sparing but evocative, like haikus, with only a few images painting a vivid scene. So, the dog is sometimes called nook’ineeyood “the one who hunts things down,” which I have seen translated loosely as “the one who startled one into stopping by means of barking.” The older, mono-morphemic word was łing’, which once meant “pet” but now means “horse.” Then, in everyday language, animals often assume new names every generation, since they must be replaced when a person named after the species passes away. This also keeps the semantics alive, as something one may witness emerging, rather than having to reconstruct through etymology. Ultimately, all of the other animals and plants also have souls, according to the oral traditions of this region. When taking a life in hunting or fishing, one must atone for taking its soul. Otherwise, this departed being may not reincarnate, and humans will therefore suffer the consequences as the world loses precious resources, beloved souls, and sustenance for all of us. Yet, when done properly, the soul survives and reincarnates; death is not final, but a transitional state between lives. That is why one, as a human, must take the proper cautions, when bringing other life forms to the point of dying. In this sense, even the earth was considered alive, according to the elders. The earth was, in fact, a living being, like an organism made up of many distinct parts that function together, as any follower of Malinowski will understand, as an (organism-based) metaphor for society. To cause harm within this world, according to one classic Hupa idiom, is literally “to fling filth into the mouth of a living thing,” as they say in the stories. The expression is ninis’aan ‘the world’ chwin’-da’wiłteen “one throws dirt into (a living being’s) mouth.”

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3.3 The Living Canoe and Its Agency In this way, even supposedly “inanimate objects,” such as boats, were sometimes granted agency and therefore animacy, in the poignant ­idioms of everyday language and religion. Once I asked a Hupa elder how to say something as simple as this: “He landed a boat,” based on an old story we were re-transcribing—one he eventually chose to retell on his own terms. This was a simple sentence on the surface, no doubt. But the translation surprised me, unlocking a flood of poignant ontological claims, embedded in this single construction, as part of a larger story. And it took quite a time to work it out, developing into an exercise in cross-cultural exegesis, as it turns out. Here is what the elder said in Hupa that day: xoł-meenandiGeed. Breaking it down, the root, -Geed, comes last, as is the standard order in an Athabaskan tongue. It signals the movement of a stick-like object, such as a cane, pencil, shovel, or, in this case, a canoe. But the marker right before it (di-) signaled a reflexive situation, with the subject acting upon itself. The proclitic xoł- suggested that the passenger was merely along for the ride, not in control, while the positional marker mee- suggested a movement toward the shore. The na- in the middle of the word suggests a return, “going back again,” having once been there before, while the n- that follows it suggest the activity came to a halt, here on the shore. So much information in such a short, one-word construction. As an aside, it is worth noting that the morphemes are often discontinuous, so that even speakers who have mastered the paradigms may not be aware of what the individual prefixes, suffixes, and clitics contribute to the overall meaning, just as Silverstein described in his classic essay The Limits of Awareness (1981). Here we witness the genius of polysynthesis; there are something like 50,000 possible conjugations with this particular verb root! So, without dwelling on the meanings of the individual morphemes, the elder confirmed my translation and analysis of the form as a whole, as a kind of perceptual gestalt (see Sapir 1985 [1949], pp. 544–559). The underlying image was this: the stick-like object propelled itself, as the instigator of the activity, the underlying agent, even if an animal “first person” might seem to be in control, for the English speaker,

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who may project different assumptions onto such a situation—making a different ontological claim about this “inanimate object.” Yet, for the Hupa, the animal protagonist was merely along for the ride, in the comitative role. The instigator, but a mere bystander, along for the ride, but not in control at all. The one on control was the boat! Thus, my translation was this: “a sticklike object propelled itself back to shore with an animal or person aboard.” The canoe pushed itself back to the shore, with some other being as passenger, with the passenger in the same role for either an animal or person, it turns out—the same grammatical role. All of this is to say that the myth figure here, an ancient bird with human-like qualities, such as consciousness and will, was not really in control. The canoe was. And there was a reason for that as well. Worldview is, of course, an old metaphor based on the primacy of the sense of sight. Yet there can be a sense of parallax here, seeing the same thing from different perspectives, creates quite different results. As Boas used to say, different languages create different mental images. So, to some extent we are talking about “views” of the world. But the process of framing doesn’t stop with the visual modality, as a passive “witnessing” of the world from different hypothetical vantages. As “wise words,” constructions such as these also impart a lesson about how one ought to behave in the world. So, the ontological meets the axiological. In this sense language coordinates not only psychological reality, within the collective imagination, but social action, as a consequence. Part of the wisdom instilled by the boat story is the sense of being cautious on the open water. Language is “heuristic,” according to Edward Sapir; that is, you can learn from it, from teasing apart words and thinking about stories. Elders, in this sense, impart words of wisdom, passed down through the ages. And you have to dwell on them to understand (see Basso 1996). Part of what we learn is ontological, that is, ways of being with in the world. We are learning not just views, but frames and even ways of interacting. As Heidegger used to suggest, one of the key figures in phenomenology and ontology, language has us more than we have it. Language is often our guide, even when we are not fully aware of how this framing affects us. Here there was wisdom to carry through the day. Be cautious on the water is the lesson here; don’t imagine you’re in control, or that humans have agency

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above other life-forms, even the canoe, which came from a tree and carries a spiritual potential, with important lessons to impart about life and death. Now, this story, in particular, was delivered in the high religious register that was traditionally linked with the stories of creation, the sacred narratives that form the basis of the local mythologies. Within this register, this fashion of speaking associated with the gods and those who have attained a high spiritual status, the expression about landing the boat conveyed spiritual wisdom (honor spirits) and practical advice (stay away from the rough water and pray for a safe return). Thus, the canoe could invoke a sacred frame of reference where language could impart a lesson about respect and spirits and remaining cautious when on the open water. Yet in the grittier language of everyday life, which is shot through with sexual innuendo, the story meant something very different. Once, when this elder had a visit from his sister, she laughed hysterically after hearing us speak of the canoe landing as a stick-like object, as clearly the reference could also be to a penis, as another instance of a typical “long object” finding a home on some lost shore! Here expression had a far more colorful, sexual interpretation, which, from here, I will leave to your imagination. (As we shall soon see, the womb was seen as a creation place, which could be equated with the entire universe, as a metaphor.) Just think about how my transition could apply to other areas of human experience: “A stick-like object propelled itself back to shore with a person aboard.” She teased him mercilessly about other possible meanings, in sexual terms!

4 Language and Worldview Around the Planet: Global Patterns and Comparisons In light of this these ethnographic portraits from NW California, let us now return to the core question in this chapter: What role does language play in establishing these ontological frames of reference? For one, can we now begin to consider the universality of Descola’s fourfold approach to

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ontologies? Are they overlapping or mutually exclusive, and how do they resonate with everyday language, even the higher religious and aristocratic registers, as opposed to the everyday ones? But, then, we can also ask if these ontologies operate anything like Boasian worldviews, making these symbolic constructions, including the cosmological premises, appear “real”—not on the surface of things, but through inference, like Whorfian cryptotypes. For that matter, ontologies need not be openly stated, on the surface, any more than any of the other rules of cultural life, though we can begin to discover them through the comparative method, showing where these premises are at work, and where they are absent. Ultimately, can we, for now, begin to speak of a new “linguistic relativity” that goes beyond mere reference, ideology, pragmatics, or even the social imagination, right to the heart of human experience? To ontology, the very foundation of our beings? Can we reasonably assert that languages or ontologies establish a series of stable relationships between animals and humans for example, between nature and culture, as Descola seems to assert in his works, without drawing much on language per se? Does the linguistic relativity principle operate on the ontological plane, creating not just a shared sense of the social imagination in the magical realism of storytelling, but also some lasting effect on behavior, in ways that have long-term consequences within this world? For Whorf himself, it was not enough to say that languages shape perception or allow for the construction of social realities, as Boas and Sapir had said before him; language, as Whorf came to insist, also had a very real impact on human behavior, as he attempted to show with his examples from the fire insurance industry, where mistaken linguistic formulations led to real work mistakes, based on mistaken perceptions, spread by the faulty language of the workplace (see Silverstein 2000). Here, again, language acts as a catalyst, not directly causing but facilitating larger social interactions and personal calamities, arising from verbal misunderstanding. But now I must ask: Do these ontological positions (based in language) also affect other everyday decisions and actions? In this way, ontology, as exploring “ways of being” (beyond merely “thinking” or “imagining”) has real potential when it comes to cases of syncretism and liminality, especially in multilingual settings, where stories and themes circulate across linguistic, social, and political boundaries

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in multiple ways. Do those four ontologies do justice to the diversity of lived-realities among human societies, our many ontologies, ways of being in the world—our ways of interacting and thinking about life? Language as heuristic, following Sapir, teaching us with “wise words,” as Basso has said (1996), to live and think together socially. Coordinating action, thought, social relationships, and even a sense of lived reality, in sync with the social imagination, including myth and fiction. If not mutually exclusive, do not some of these ontologies overlap, under whatever circumstances: language contact in multilingual settings, to be realistic? Personal versus societal worldview, to grant humans some creativity as subjects? At stake here are current claims about the diversity of ontological orientations among human societies, along with classic claims about linguistic relativity, or the social construction of such lived-realities by means of the symbolism of everyday language: in particular poetry and music, as pan-human ways of “painting” mental imagery with ordinary sound. Yet, do all cultures adhere to just four ontologies, as Descola (2013) has suggested? Do all humans share a common worldview, as anti-relativist writers such as Steve Pinker and John McWhorter have suggested (in their popular writings), stemming, perchance, from our common biology? This brand of Cartesian dualism—now the common-sense worldview for many languages beyond French—appears to be deeply out of step with human wisdom throughout the planet, taking us on an unfortunate detour for several centuries now. Going back as far as the origin of writing, the deeper thoughts of our species are inscribed even in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, the Middle East, and Central America, among the Maya and Nahuatl. So, we have many other models to consider, as scholars in the realms of language and philosophy. Let us take just a short tour.

4.1 The Damaging Effects of Naturalist Ontology: Animals Versus Humans Let us start our tour with our own culture, the appropriately “reflexive” thing to do these days! Starting at home in the “West,” going back to the Age of Discovery, the philosopher Descartes famously carved up

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the universe into a series of distinct types—not seeing the ­spectrum, the continuum, perhaps. An ontology expressed in everyday language, with familiar dualistic frameworks of everyday speech. Blackand-white. Nature and culture. Human and nonhuman. Soul and soulless. Structuralism more or less, under the guise of his many devotees: de Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Chomsky, for example, all leaders (and perhaps “misleaders”) in the humanities and social science to this day. So, other animals share features of our physicality, without the membership card that gives us soul, according to Descartes and his many followers. Naturalism pure and simple, in terms recently defined by the French anthropologist, Phillipe Descola. If Descartes was a genius— and, of that, there can be little doubt—perhaps he was a misguided one, as he himself suggested in his writings, with the notion of reality being a trick of some “evil genius.” While nonhumans may have similar physicalities, their interior lives could not be more different. How better to describe a complete lack of empathy for other beings? Mind and machine. Talk about dualism! We have inherited these concepts, as members of the modern world an academy, even beyond the semantics of any particular languages, into which these supposed realities have been translated. Chomsky (1966), of course, counts himself among the followers of Descartes and his rationalism, with his intense subscription to “Cartesian Linguistics,” severing linguistic structure almost completely from society and meaning, as something mostly outside of the purview of rationalist linguistics. The important point is this: the naturalist ontology had an immediate impact in the era of colonialism. As father of this creed, René Descartes (see Descartes 1988) was the progenitor of contemporary dualism, a deeply illogical worldview that came to sweep the world, with the rise of colonialism: brother and against brother, tribe against tribe. Human against animal. This ontology, in turn, transformed our relationship with the world, justifying extractive practices in the colonies, laboratories, and plantations, where “lower” forms of life (including human) were routinely and callously mistreated—ontology as more than worldview, but also action, invoking here, often violent ways of “relating to” other life-forms.

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4.2 Naturalist Ontologies in Everyday English: Animals as Pests Leaving behind the philosophers, in their high scholarly registers, one may also ask: Does any of this resonate with everyday language in English? One such ontology can be uncovered in English sayings reflecting ­qualities we project onto animals. To say get your paws off the cookies is to place a person, metaphorically, within the animal category, as a lesser being, perhaps a hungry beast. Humans are often seen in an unflattering light when compared to animals—as varmints, beasts, or simply as oversexed. There is nothing positive about badgering someone or trying to ferret something out, nor is it that flattering to be mousey or birdbrained. A stud is little more than a sperm donor, and a cougar, is a similarly predatory specimen of a female. The list is endless, and it is hard to find an animal that is not subject to such metaphors, as the source of an insulting comparison, suggesting one has crossed over the ontological line into the uncivilized world of animals. But the whole world does not share this negative view of non-human life-forms, which is where we can begin to speak of ontological relativism sharing some common ground with—or coming into alignment with—classical “linguistic relativity,” as a way of not just talking but existing within this world, in relation to others. Thus, in Northwestern California, as I have already shown, both animals and humans have “hands” in many of the languages, including Hupa and Tolowa, without distinguishing between these two orders of beings. In English, our animal metaphors resonate deeply with an ontology of naturalism, not unlike the one Descartes spelled out with his assertion that animals are automatons, machines without minds—or at the very least, beings on a lower scale of animacy, without the capacity for speech. Are there any effects here, beyond speech and the underlying ontologies that motivate these metaphorical systems? Look no further than the pervasive cruelty to animals, licensed in our naturalist ontology and supported in our everyday language, where animals are often diminished. Not surprising, then, that they are also diminished in other forms of action, moving beyond the symbolic violence of everyday speech into the practices of

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the food industry or medical profession, where animals are often treated as mere bodies without souls or feelings, much as Descartes described them.

4.3 Reverence for Animals and Plants in the Pacific Northwest: Our Part in the Great Chain of Being Returning now to the Pacific Northwest, animals and plants are often said to “think,” as represented in the storytelling traditions of this region, as I have shown in previous sections. Such a general worldview—or ontology, if we take it even more seriously, as “a way of life”—holds from Northern California to Alaska, going as far inland as Montana and modern-day Oregon and Idaho (see Frey 2017). Language itself is often framed as a spiritual endowment, with the power to reshape the imagination in the moment—a creative power stemming back to the origins of the universe itself. Not an arbitrary symbolic endowment, or an arbitrary system of reference, which varies from place to place according to local histories—but a spiritual endowment, filling us with creative powers that stem back to mystery of ­creation itself. A huge swath of our species represents nature this way— as recognized by the likes of Edward Tylor and Philippe Descola. If so, what are the consequences, effects on action, once you assume animals and plants are our equals, that we emerged from the same source? For, ultimately, animals and plants have souls, according to the oral traditions of this region, even if they no longer speak. When taking an animal in hunting or fishing, one must atone for taking its soul, as discussed above. Thus, there is no cold-blooded killing, even of the sort that is common in biological laboratories or the modern food industry, as licensed in part by an overarching naturalist ontology, expressed in language and everyday action. Without ensuring the return of the soul, in the logic or NW Californian spirituality, the animal itself may not reincarnate, and humans will suffer the consequences as the world loses its resources. Life-forms are interdependent, within this ontological framework. When done properly, on the other hand, killing does not take the saw, which survives and reincarnates. That is why one must

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take the proper religious precautions, honoring the game animal and its spirits throughout the course of life, up until its death. And, in this sense, even the earth was considered alive, according to the elders. As I have said (above), to cause harm within this world, according to one classic Hupa idiom, is to fling filth into the mouth of a “living thing,” as they say in the stories, to defile the earth. The religious dances, on the other hand, restore the world to the state of balance the ancestors knew, before there was a split between animals and humans. Within this ontological framework, one is careful with all forms of life, and even warfare is something one enters into with great caution.

4.4 Language and Ontology Among the Navajo: Continuity Among Life-Forms Similarly, among the Navajo, it is relatively easy to reveal similar correspondences between language and ontology, including elaborate chains of being, such as the classic “Navajo animacy hierarchy,” as described by Kenneth Hale (1973) and Witherspoon (1977). As evidenced even in ordinary syntax, Navajo speakers pervasively rank life-forms, down to incorporeal abstractions like “hunger” and “thirst,” according to their power and control over a situation. Language plays a key role here, as something that gives humans the ability to voice their thoughts and thereby exert power over other actors in the universe. Those words become flesh, so to speak, as internal thoughts and plots take shape and come to pass, when taking the “name of action.” Talk about “doing things” with words (a reference to Austin 1962)! While everything in the universe is suffused with music, thought, and intelligence, according to the traditional Navajo system of belief, only humans have the capacity to unleash these streams of thought through formal language, with divine power stemming from the First Man and Woman, who sang the universe into existence. Here we have an elaborate “chain of being,” parallel to what Descola (2013, p. 202) describes among the Nahuatl and many other societies, such as the ancient Chinese. Yet there is also an assertion that animals and humans have a similar spiritual substance and agency, with only language setting

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them apart, which sounds a bit more like animism. Beyond the Navajo, so many of the groups with whom we work have given us even reasons to doubt these propositions, including the ones I have considered here, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, but also Indian, ancient Egypt, Australia, and the Amazon.

4.5 Sacred Language and Ontology in India and the Middle-East The Brahmins of ancient India were among the first, perhaps, to go on record with a consideration of the interrelatedness of all life forms, extending perhaps even into the inanimate. Even the universe itself, filled with all of its spirits and stars, undergoes endless cycles of creation and destruction—down to the level of the indivisible atom itself, which they described. Everything pulsates and is alive, much like the worldview of modern physicists, even string theorists. A Great Chain of Being, like the one to which the ancient Greeks also subscribed, with humans at the top, but perhaps not of different spiritual substance. Buddhists, for example, often pray for all living things, with the understanding that we all share a similar spirituality. Even Descola acknowledges this, but only up to a point. Here we also have animism alongside totemism, as special relationships with individual species as representations of the divine in partially human form. But there is also a hint of naturalism, with special status of humans, as apart from the rest of nature in the universe. And there is a hint of analogism, in the writings of the Brahmins, who saw all of these works as psychological projections, literary analogies, allegories, with lessons to impart on humanity. So, what else is new under the sun!?? All of this could be conveyed. The high language of the gods, Devanagari, had the spiritual power to restore this sense, to bring the speaker into a deeper understanding of the life and universe—above all, into a place of peace (see Yelle 2013). We know less of the ancient Egyptians (apart from the tombs), perhaps, as many of their records, their deep scholarly archives going back 5000 years, were burnt with the libraries of Alexandria. Another sad point in the history of Western civilization snuffing out the discoveries

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of other groups, then claiming them for themselves. Like much of the medicinal and spiritual wisdom of the indigenous world today. The reason for this conference, as a reconsideration of the wisdom of other cultures. And the reason for the field of anthropology. But what is clear is that the ancient Egyptians included animals and their cosmology, often with beings that combine animal-human, like the original spirit beings in NW California. The line between human and not human was often blurred, with figures such as Anubis. Much of this would be familiar to the worldviews in many indigenous societies, where animals often play a powerful symbolic role in the religious life, symbolizing our interconnectedness within the ecosystem. But this may represent a recognition of common roots, which even scientists recognize since the discovery of DNA and evolution, if not much before (as with Darwin and the ninth-century Arabic philosopher, Al-Jahiz).

4.6 Mystical Ontology in Classical Arabic Poetry and Music (Chant) Arabic is language of revelation, according to the Islamic tradition. Reciting the prayers, the root meaning of the word Quran, brings the believer into a relationship between God (Allah) and humanity, echoing a transaction between. Here, as well, language is understood as mystical, especially with its fusion with music and poetry, with the power to instill peace, the root meaning of Islam, namely, “the peace that comes through submission to God,” which can be approached through prayer. I still remember waking up in Egypt to the stirring “call to prayer,” which often brought me to tears, even as a non-Muslim, out of its sheer beauty and profound emotional charge. These were not trained professionals, but members of the local mosque, who cycled through their duties chanting within the minaret, often with a microphone in this age. There is a sense that the melodic source must be mysterious, coming not from bookish learning, but from divine inspiration (like American Gospel). Here we have another powerful language ontology, as least as it is ideologically framed, one that brings the believer into a different relationship with language, humanity, God, and the universe.

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4.7 Totemism and Chains of Being in Australia: The Multiplicity of Worldviews in a Multicultural and Multilinguistic Land Let me end this section with a few words about Aboriginal Australia, where my own advisor, the late Aram Yengoyan (1936–2017) worked for many years, alongside his friend, Ken Hale, the distinguished polyglot linguist and life-long collaborator of the great Noam Chomsky. (Perhaps the ultimate inheritor of Cartesian linguistics, even as he has come to doubt many of these premises, late in life.) Like Northern California, much of Australia was traditionally multilingual, with religious ideas and marriages even, flowing across neighboring tribes. It was a strong sense of the local, which Jane Hill (2001) describes as “localist ideologies” and commitment to the village. Ken Hale sometimes described as the “quest for complexity.” For, knowing the neighboring languages, to some extent, makes the work of differentiation easier to carry out, as languages inevitably change over time, drifting further apart. But my main question here is this: Does totemism really do justice to this complex social universe, as so many grand theorists, from Durkheim to Descola have suggested? Or is animism not also at work, alongside totemism, as it is in the Pacific Northwest? Are there analogical layers, with a tinge of naturalism, even analogism, as I showed in NW California? Consider the classifiers of the Dalabon, of Arnhem Land on the Northern Australian Coast, whose language partitions all living things into just four categories. Not based on animacy at all, as it turns out, or the ability among animals to move of their volition, free will. Or even based on something like the possession of a soul, or lack thereof, as in naturalism. In Dalabon, instead, the system of classification is based on something far more abstract—yet, still, as Whorf says, something that stares us all in the face, even if we fail to notice! Something as simple as this: the number of elements in which a being exists or enjoys freedom of movement. That would be one for fish, as they move freely only in the water, in one element. (Excluding flying fish, of course.) Two for trees, as they move within two elements, the earth and the air, but in slow motion. Three for large marsupials, as they have two modes of locomotion, walking and jumping, on just one element, namely, the solid

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earth. And four would include most other living things, who move freely in two or more elements (air, water, and earth) with two or more modes of locomotion. The system is unique and does not easily fit any one of Descola’s four ontologies, but still inclusive of those basic possibilities! Here we have an analogical worldview (Descola 2013, pp. 201–231), with an elaborate “chain of being,” existing alongside totemism, within the same language and culture.

5 Conclusions This chapter started out with a nod to the concept of “linguistic relativity”—the ancient thesis that language holds a powerful and pervasive influence over human action, thought, and perception, expressed over and over again by so many philosophers and writers throughout history—from Sapir and Whorf in the twentieth century to Aristotle at the dawn of civilization. Throughout this chapter, we have considered the relationship between language and thought, not in the abstract, but in the flow of daily life—as speakers come to influence one another in ongoing social interactions. Popular critiques of linguistic relativity tend to revolve around grand abstractions, phrased in general terms like “language,” “thought,” and “perception,” though without allowing much room for variation within languages or among speakers. In many of these works, the poetic side of language is almost completely ignored (see Pinker 1994; McWhorter 2014), while social interaction is curiously absent as well. In many attempts to test the so-called “SapirWhorf Hypothesis,” speakers are isolated in hermetically sealed laboratory settings, without any room for creativity, emotion, or variation in perspective—and without either culture or speaking roles. Boasian anthropologists certainly knew better. Whorf ’s mentor, Edward Sapir, constantly advocated for the role of the creative individual in society, while showing great sensitivity to the powerful emotional appeal of poetry in all languages everywhere (Sapir 1985 [1949]). This paper builds on a key insight from Sapir’s work on the “genius” of polysynthesis in Native American tongues, where a single word-form often resembles “a tiny imagist poem” (Sapir 1921, p. 228). Like dropping

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lines from a Shakespeare play into ordinary English conversation, these “tiny imagist poems” are repeated in many Native languages throughout the day to great dramatic effect (see Basso 1996), building on references established in social mythologies and shared religious worldviews. The central thesis of this paper is that language pervasively shapes thought and perception, not in some abstract fashion, but very much in the midst of everyday social interaction, as speakers negotiate worldviews in the moment, drawing on the standard resources of their traditional languages. Thus, poetry is cited and recited throughout the day! In this sense, the so-called “Whorfian effect” is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, constantly shaping how humans see, feel, and act, based on the conclusions they draw from spontaneous verbal encounters with other actors. For many speakers of endangered languages, the drive to reinstate ancestral worldviews is pressing as these tongues undergo ­revitalization, given that ordinary words can powerfully re-invoke traditional systems of mythology, folklore, and religion in everyday settings. In this sense, the paper offers a synthesis of Austin’s How To Do Things with Words (1962) and Whorf ’s Language, Thought, and Reality (1956), and draws on the author’s fieldwork on the indigenous languages of California (Hupa, Yurok, Karuk) and Oklahoma (Ponca and Plains Apache, among others). Over a century now after Whorf “perished before publishing” his many seminal writing (thus reversing the standard academic formula), we continue to honor his inspiring legacy by considering these enduring questions about the role of language in human life, form perception to thought and action, even emotion—as Aristotle first pointed out in his works on poetics and rhetoric, with their emotional charge and ability to shape human action. Now that we have taken on non-referential language, pragmatics, ideology, and ontology, perhaps it is also time to begin thinking about language even more broadly, in relation to epistemology, ethics, axiology—the whole philosophical works! For now, let me now plant the seeds for a new argument in favor of linguistic relativity: each language, from an ontological point of view, potentially frames the world of lived-experience from a different perspective that is invested with spiritual powers, invoked in part by place! Here, of course, my primary reference is to NW California. I can also

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say a few words about Cabalistic notions of language, as reflections of the mind of God, and as a kind of dialogue between humanity and divinity, with language being invested, from the start, with a creative spark—God taking delight in Adam and Eve coining new words, for example. This would also resonate, up to a point, with a Navajo sense of language being used to sing the universe into existence, with language and music having a joint healing power and with Navajo being ­especially tied to divinity. Acknowledgments and Dedication  To begin, I would like to thank Jan Hauck and Guilherme Heurich for inviting me to give a talk on this subject at Oxford University in the fall of 2018, and for giving me stimulating feedback along the way, pushing me to think more deeply about these critical questions in this area: ontology, relativity, and Indigenous models of reality, including language. There’s still so much more for all of us to say! I would also like to thank Michael Silverstein for his generous feedback over the years, particularly concerning the Boasian legacy in linguistic anthropology, along with the question of Whorfianism in particular, based on his own sweeping contributions and his profound knowledge of philosophical debates in this area. This paper is dedicated to the memory of the late Aram A. Yengoyan (1936–2017), my mentor for many years, who cared deeply about human diversity and whose deepest intellectual commitments flowed from his heartfelt defense of human differences—aesthetic, philosophical, ontological, ethical, and otherwise.

References Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle: Revised Oxford Translation, vols. 1–2, ed. Johathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Austin, John. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

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Becker, Alton L., and Aram A. Yengoyan. 1979. The Imagination of Reality: Essays in Southeast Asian Coherence Systems. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. Boas, Franz. 2017 [1911]. Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages, ed. Preston Holder, with a new introduction by Michael Silverstein. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. New York: Harper & Row. De Saussure, Ferdinand. 2000 [1916]. Course in General Linguistics, trans. from the French by Roy Harris. London: Open Court. Deacon, Terrance. 2012. Incomplete Nature: How the Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: Norton. Descartes, René. 1988. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols., trans. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descola, Philippe. 1996 [1986]. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture, translated from the French by Janet Lloyd, with a Foreword by Marshall Sahlins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press [Originally Published in 2005]. Dundes, Alan. 1980. Interpreting of Folklore. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Frank, Roslyn. 2018. Looking at Europe Through a Basque Lens: Ethnolinguistic Considerations of Two Worldviews. Etnolingwistyka 30: 189–213. https://doi.org/0000-0002-2472-0091. Frey, Rodney. 2017. Carry Forth the Stories: An Ethnographer’s Journey into Native Oral Tradition. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 2017 [1973]. Interpretation of Cultures, with a foreword by Robert Darnton. New York: Basic Books. Hale, Kenneth. 1973. A Note on Subject-Object Inversion. In Issues in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Henry and Renee Kahone, ed. Braj Kachru, 300–310. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hallowell, A. Irving. 1947. Myth, Culture, and Personality. American Anthropologist 49 (4): 544–556. Hauck, Jan D., and Guilherme O. Heurich. 2018. Language in the Amerindian Imagination: An Inquiry into Linguistic Natures. Language & Communication 63: 1–8. Heidegger, Martin. 1978 [1927]. Being and Time, trans. from the German by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Hill, Jane H. 2001. Languages on the Land. In Archeology, Language, and History, ed. John E. Terrell, 257–282. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Hymes, Dell. 1966. Two Types of Linguistic Relativity (with Examples from Amerindian Ethnography). In Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964, ed. William Bright, 114–157. The Hague: Mouton. Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press. Leavitt, John. 2011. Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity in Modern Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. Totemism, trans. from the French by Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press. McWhorter, John H. 2014. The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language. New York: Oxford University Press. O’Neill, Sean. 2008. Cultural Contact and Linguistic Relativity Among the Indians of Northwestern California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow and Company. Sacks, Oliver. 2008. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Revised and Expanded. New York: Vintage Books. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Sapir, Edward. 1985 [1949]. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir on Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. David Mandelbaum; with a new Introduction by Dell Hymes. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sapir, Edward. 2001. Northwest California Linguistics, ed. Victor Golla and Sean O’Neill. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Silverstein, Michael. 1981. The Limits of Awareness. Sociolinguistic Working Paper 84. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, Austin, TX. Silverstein, Michael. 2000. Whorfianism and the Linguistic Imagination of Nationality. In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, ed. Paul Kroskrity, 85–138. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

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Tylor, Edward Burnett. 1871. Primitive Culture: Research into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. London: John Murray. von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1999 [1836]. On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, ed. Michael Losonsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. John Carroll. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Witherspoon, Keith. 1977. Language and Art in the Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Yelle, Robert. 2013. Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics. London: Bloomsbury.

3 Translating a Worldview in the longue durée: The Tale of “The Bear’s Son” Roslyn M. Frank

1 Introduction Translation is usually understood as the practice of rendering a text written in one language into another language. That process also requires taking into consideration the cultural similarities and differences entrenched in each of the languages in question. In what follows this notion will be expanded to apply to the way that cultural conceptualisations embedded in a set of folktales have been translated across time and more specifically the way that the interpretative framework utilised by storytellers and their audiences has changed as the cultural conceptualisations intrinsic to reception and understanding of meanings of words and actions in the tales have been altered. These shifts in the worldview are reflected in the modifications that the texts have undergone across time. In other words, the chapter enters a little explored terrain, engaging with and addressing not only the question of the role R. M. Frank (*)  Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_3

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played by folktales in projecting cultural mindsets, but also their role in constructing, maintaining, and ultimately deconstructing a worldview indigenous to Europe. My own relationship to this project goes back to the early 1980s when I began doing fieldwork in the Basque Country and learning Euskera (Basque). That was when I first discovered that the Basques used to believe they descended from bears, a belief that had been transmitted from one generation to the next, only orally, until the latter part of the twentieth century (Frank 2008a; Peillen 1986). The first written evidence for the belief comes from an interview conducted in the fall of 1983 by the Basque anthropologist Txomin Peillen with the last two Basque-speaking bear hunters of the Pyrenees, Dominique Prébende and his father Petiri. It was the 80-year-old Petiri who, after he made sure that that the tape-recorder had been turned off, confided to his Basquespeaking interviewer the following: “Lehenagoko eüskaldünek gizona hartzetik jiten zela sinhesten zizien,” that is, “In earlier times Basques believed that humans descended from bears” (Peillen 1986, p. 173). Subsequently, I spent several decades doing additional fieldwork and research trying flesh out the implications of this archaic belief in bear-ancestors and the associated ursine genealogy assigned to humans. It is a worldview that clearly harkens back to a hunter-gatherer mentality and resonates strongly with the animistic ontologies associated with bear ceremonialism as it has been practiced in North America and Eurasia. The aspect of the research discussed in this chapter centers on a pan-European phenomenon, the tale of “The Bear’s Son,” a folktale whose protagonist is half-human, half-bear. This is because his mother was a human female and his father was a bear. In times past, this figure appears to have been viewed as a kind of intermediary, as a kind of “Jesus bear,” according to one of my informants. Moreover, it will be argued that the tale of “The Bear’s Son,” along with several other orally transmitted narratives, was a central component of this much earlier worldview grounded in the belief in ursine ancestors. Nonetheless, as will be demonstrated, with the passage of time, the underlying significance of

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the story line becomes increasingly obscured. This occurs as the cultural conceptualisations that supported the interpretative framework slowly fall away and, as a result, key episodes making up the overall plot end up being separated and viewed as independent tales, mere fragments of the original narrative. Nevertheless, viewed in the longue durée, these narratives have facilitated the transmission across time and space of this much older worldview and the belief in bear-ancestors.

2 Bear-Ancestors As will be demonstrated, in spite of all the attention that variants of the tale of “The Bear’s Son” have received, no serious consideration has been given to the possibility that the ursine ancestry of the hero should be interpreted as an indication of the archaic backdrop of the tale and the underlying cultural conceptualisations associated with it in times past and hence its earlier animistic interpretative frame, once shared by storytellers and their audiences. Rather, the tales caught the attention of the group of researchers who have been attempting to discover pre-textual Märchen traditions in Beowulf and other Germanic “heroic” poetry. For instance, Glosecki draws on parallels found in Native American and Eurasian materials, cultures in which bears were considered relatives or ancestors (Glosecki 1989; Stitt 1995). As a result, what has not been fully recognised is the possibility that the persistence of these tales viewed in the longue durée could be evidence, albeit indirect, of the resilience of an earlier animistic worldview in which bears were viewed as ancestors and venerated. Moreover, even though the Christian church spent many centuries attempting to wipe out this ursine-centred worldview, it survived on the margins, in fragments of folk belief and performance art as well as firmly embedded in the interpretive frame of the set of folktales under analysis (Corvino 2013; Lajoux 1996; Pastoureau 2011; Truffaut 2010).

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3 Traditional Classification of “The Bear’s Son” The tale of “The Bear’s Son,” along with its variants, is recognised as one of the most widely diffused European folktales. However, the term utilised, namely, the tale of “The Bear’s Son,” is an informal one, regularly used to refer to a group of related narratives, categorised formally by folklorists as tale type ATU 301 (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1–27; Espinosa 1946–1947, pp. 499–511; 1951; Fabre 1968). The tales themselves have never been the subject of serious investigation by ethnographers and anthropologists, that is, in terms of the worldview implicit in them. Instead, by the end of the nineteenth century folklorists were concentrating their efforts on the task of classifying the narratives by motif and tale type (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1–27; Dundes 1997). By 1910 Panzer had documented 221 European variants of ATU 301, the descent of the Bear’s Son hero to the Under World (Panzer 1910). In a study published in 1959, 57 Hungarian versions of the tale are mentioned (Kiss 1959), and in 1992, Stitt, in his study Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic Saga, and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition, recorded 120 variants of the Bear’s Son story for Scandinavia alone (Stitt 1995, pp. 25–27, 209–217). The cycle of oral tales is present in all the Indo-European language groups of Europe as well as in Basque and in Finno-Ugric, for example, Finnish, Saami and Magyar (Hungarian), and even among the Mansi (Voguls). Moreover, the most complete and least disturbed versions of these tales—ones containing the most archaic structural elements and most consistent story-line—come from former Basque-speaking zones of France and the Spain and from the Basque-speaking region itself.1 In short, generally speaking, a cline from west to east can be detected in the tales with the most archaic variants being found in western Europe, 1Although analysis of the individual tales lies outside the scope of this paper, there are many written sources (Arratibel 1980, pp. 65–74; Barandiarán 1973–1983, II, pp. 301–305; Barbier 1991 [1931], pp. 84–94, 129–132, 151–152, 157–158; Bidart 1978, pp. 80–83; 1979, pp. 130–137; Cerquand 1986 [1875–1882], pp. 78–85; Satrústegui 1975, pp. 18–21; Vinson 1883, pp. 80–92).

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especially in the Pyrenean zone and its immediate environs, the zone in which the belief in bear-ancestors survived into the twentieth century. Although the belief itself is absent, throughout Europe still today we encounter abundant examples of the cultural practices and performance art that point to the previous veneration of bears and bear-ancestors (Bertolotti 1994; Fréger 2012). Indeed, there is a performance counterpart to the story of the birth, life, and exploits of the Bear’s Son character, that has been passed down orally from one generation to the next. More concretely, the fêtes de l’ours celebrated in the Pyrenean zone each year still incorporate elements taken from the plot of the Bear’s Son narrative, reenacting, for instance, the initial encounter between his mother and father and his subsequent birth in the bear cave (Bosch 2013; Gual 2017). The Pyrenean zone where these bear fests continue to be performed extends from the Basque-speaking zone in the west to the Mediterranean coast. The festivals continue to be performed each year while their origins are currently under intense investigation. Moreover, in the rest of Europe, in what were once remote mountain villages, similar although somewhat less structurally complex performances have survived where the performers dress up as “bears” (Fréger 2012), activities extensively documented today by hundreds of YouTube videos. Consequently, the widespread distribution of the motif is best understood once we recognise that we are dealing with relatively archaic materials emanating from this much earlier European cosmology and the belief that humans descended from bears. While this theme is represented in one of the most widely disseminated European folktales, until the belief that humans descended from bears was plugged into the interpretive frame of these narratives and related performances, they were not viewed as particularly significant.

4 Summary of the Bear’s Son Tale After several decades spent comparing and contrasting European as well as North American examples of these tales, paying special attention to the versions collected in and around the Basque-speaking region,

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eventually the contours of the story-line came into clear focus. Some versions are much more archaic than others in terms of the implied worldview, completeness of the story-line and the logic embedded in the sequence of episodes that make it up. As noted, this has been the case of the folktales collected in the Pyrenean region. In the plot summary that follows, the protagonist is referred to as Little Bear, given that in Basque the hero is called Hartzkume (from hartz ‘bear’ and -kume ‘infant, child’) and Harzko (hartz ‘bear’ plus the diminutive affix -ko ). The tale begins with a description of a young woman who goes out walking in the woods, when suddenly she meets a bear. In some versions it is a very handsome bear and she goes off with him to his cave, in others the bear, being more brutish, grabs her and carries her off against her will. Sometime later, a child is born, half-bear, half-human. Years pass and one day Little Bear decides he wants to go out to see the world. He manages to remove the rock that his father places each day at the mouth of the cave when he goes out hunting. Little Bear and his mother escape and at this point the adventures of Little Bear commence. Early on, he has an encounter which allows him to acquire his Spirit Animal Helpers. Walking along a path in the woods, he spies four animals ahead of him standing next to a dead deer. They are a mountain lion, a dog, an eagle, and an ant. Mountain Lion calls out to him: “We’re hungry and have been arguing about how to divide up the meat. Can you help us?” Little Bear responds saying that he will try. “Mountain Lion, I’ll give you the haunch which is what you like best.” And to Dog, he gives the ribs. Addressing Eagle, he says: “To you I’ll give the innards and intestines because you don’t have any teeth, and this is what you like best.” Finally, to the tiny Ant, Little Bear says, “To you I’ll give the skin and bones and when you’ve eaten the marrow from the bones you can use them for your house when it rains.” With that, Mountain Lion responds: “You’ve done so well with the division that we want to reward you.” And each of them gives him an amulet, telling him that when he needs their help all he has to do is touch it and call out their name. That way he will gain the animal’s innate abilities and take on the shape of the animal in question. Mountain Lion gives him a tuff of fur, Dog another tuff; the Eagle a feather, and little Ant a leg because she has several.

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Time passes, and Little Bear finds himself at a farmstead where he meets the young woman who lives there with her old father. Naturally, since all good stories need a romantic twist, Little Bear falls in love and wants to run off with the young woman. But she explains that she cannot leave because she must care for her old father who happens to be immortal. Little Bear insists that there must be a way to get the old man to die. At this point the first example of shape-shifting takes place. The young woman tells him to come back the next day to the garden where she will be combing the old man’s hair and removing his lice. Little Bear is to climb up into the tree located next to them and hide in its branches while she asks the old fellow what will make him die. So Little Bear shows up, shape-shifted into an ant, and climbs silently up into the tree from where he overhears the old man’s response: “For me to die, the challenger will have to do battle with my brother who is a shape-shifter, too. He will appear as a porcupine and the challenger must show up as a mountain lion and engage in battle with him. If he triumphs, a hare will appear, and the challenger must turn into a dog and catch it.” The old man continues explaining: “Once the hare is caught, a pigeon will fly up and my opponent must turn into an eagle, snatch the pigeon, open it and remove the egg inside, take the egg and break it on the forehead of my brother who by then will appear as a snake (or dragon).2 When that happens the egg inside my head will break and I will become mortal and die.” 2In

the Basque versions, the last act of shape-shifting brings into view the Herensuge, a name that has been understood to refer to a “three-headed serpent.” But it is quite possible that is a modern interpretation that was influenced by the wide-spread pan-European motif in a snake-like creature with three or more heads, for the Basque expression can be understood in a very different manner. There are two components in the name: suge ‘snake’ is modified with heren ‘third.’ The term heren is also used to refer to a third-degree of relationship, e.g., herenamona, where amona is ‘grandmother’ (Euskaltzaindia 1987–2005). Hence, an herenamona is one’s ‘great-great-grandmother,’ a ‘three-times removed grandmother.’ In the Basque versions of the tales, since all the helper animals appear to be female, it might follow that earlier the use of heren to modify suge could have communicated the notion of something like a ‘great-great-grandmother snake’ or ‘three-times removed serpent.’ If one were to translate the expression ‘three-headed snake,’ the normal result would be hiru burudun sugea, most definitely not heren-sugea. For example, herenegun, where the second element egun is ‘day,’ does not refer to ‘three days’ or the ‘third day’ but rather means ‘three days ago.’

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Naturally, Little Bear is able to follow these instructions successfully, shape-shifting into one animal after another, while his opponent does the same. In the end the shape-shifted snake (or dragon) is defeated, and Little Bear’s opponent is no longer immortal. From one point of view, the identity the antagonist appears to be clear: he is the father of the young woman. However, other versions of the tale point directly to his identification with the Herensuge, the serpent or dragon who is killed by a blow to his forehead with a magical egg (Satrústegui 1975, pp. 18–21).

5 Interpretation of the Meaning of the Tale At this juncture we can look at the meanings embedded in the tale when it is reinterpreted using the framework provided by the animistic coding associated with the belief that humans descend from bears. The protagonist is half-human, half-bear, born of the union of a human female and a bear. Hence, he is an intermediary being, one that combines two natures. After leaving the bear cave, he begins his adventures, going out into the world where he undertakes what might be best described as a “vision quest,” a ritual similar to the ones still practised today by Native Americans, in which the seeker of the vision, after ritual purification, goes into the forest alone to acquire one or more protector animals. And, having obtained objects pertaining to the helper animal or animals in question, these Native Americans keep them in a special leather pouch called a “medicine bundle” (Brown 1993, pp. x–xi; McWhorter 1940). Little Bear’s encounter along with the talismans he receives gives him the ability to shape-shift into the form of each animal when needed— a characteristic regularly associated with the healer practitioners of ­circumpolar bear ceremonialism (Conway 1992; Feit 1994). Anyone familiar with such healing practices would recognise the role played by these Spirit Animal Helpers. The fact that this element consistently appears in the tales allows us to reconstruct, always tentatively, the earlier cultural conceptualisations that made up the cognitive frame of the storyteller and the members of the audience and, hence, the way that the tales themselves were interpreted.

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5.1 The Spirit Animal Helpers A closer analysis of the plot reveals other cultural conceptualisations that informed the interpretive framework for the tale, that is, an animistic ontology typical of hunter-gatherers who lived (or live) in close contact with bears and other wild animals, along with the associated belief in shape-shifting that is embedded in the narrative (Brightman 2002; Hallowell 1926). On this view, the backdrop of the story becomes Nature itself, upon which the actions are projected. A child, seeing an eagle swooping down to catch its prey, could have interpreted the scene, symbolically, as an exteriorisation of a familiar episode from the traditional narrative. When interpreted on this deeper level, what we find in the tale is a series of purely ritual battles between two shape-shifters, one who is already half-bear, and his older adversary. From this perspective, the role of the four Spirit Animal Helpers is of fundamental importance to the hero, beginning with the smallest one, Ant. Moreover, there is a pattern to the ritual confrontations: they are encounters between a predator and its prey (Table 1). In the end, it is a magic egg that makes the old man become mortal like the rest of Nature, subject to life and death, rather than standing apart as a transcendent immortal being. The act of breaking the pigeon’s egg on the forehead of the Herensuge has an ethnographic counterpart worth mentioning, namely, a remarkable custom that I was told about back in the 1980s. It survived in the Basque Country into the 1930s and 1940s and was performed by the godmother on a young child who was just beginning to babble but had not yet started to speak. A pigeon egg, referred to as an “Herensuge egg,” was broken on the child’s forehead. This was thought to make the child “break out speaking” (Azkue Table 1  The predator-prey pattern in the “Bear’s Son Tale” Predator

Prey

Mountain lion Dog Eagle [Pigeon egg]

Porcupine Hare Pigeon Snake

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1989 [1935–1947], p. 101). Over time, that ritual evolved into a tradition where the child was presented with a pastry by the godparent. The pastry in question, referred to as a mona in Spanish, has an unpeeled hard-boiled egg sitting on top, while the custom of breaking an egg on the forehead of another person to bring about good luck, continues to be practiced on Easter Sunday in various parts of Spain and a hundred years ago was still found in parts of Europe, such as Bavaria.

5.2 A Different View of Nature: Against the “Law of the Jungle” The equitable “division of the dead deer” can be read as a parable of sharing and reciprocity in which Little Bear restores the natural order of things. It speaks of the harmony and balance of Nature and the interlocking networks of dependencies that act to maintain that balance. Large carnivores bring down the prey. Smaller carnivores then approach to eat the scraps. Next in line come the scavenger birds, eagles, and vultures. And, finally, the insects arrive to pick clean the skin and bones. Viewed from the perspective of modern conservation biology, the food web described implicitly in the narrative suggests an understanding of the dynamics of “trophic cascades” and the concept of “keystone species,” for example where the actions of large carnivores impact the complex food-web dynamics in positive ways. At the same time, it speaks of the cycle of life and death. In summary, the ursine genealogy of the main character appears to be grounded in the archaic belief that humans descend from bears. The plot unfolds on a landscape infused by trophic relations, a metaphysics characterised by an awareness of the intricate reciprocal relations inherent in Nature. The complex food-chain network of predator–prey interactions is emphasised, rather than the triumph of “man over beast.” Animals are collaborators and function as active participants. Overall the plot is framed by elements typical of an animistic worldview, for example, vision quests, medicine bundles, shape-shifting, while the plot revolves around ritual combats between two shape-shifters, each aided by their respective Animal Helpers (Frank 2016; Shepard 1999, 2007).

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5.3 An Animistic Worldview Not so Far Away The belief that humans and bears could mate and produce fertile offspring was accepted as factual in much of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (Pastoureau 2011, pp. 68–85). Indeed, it was not unusual to find folk heroes and even actual kings tracing their own lineage back to such a bear-human mating (Glosecki 1989). Hence, until that belief faded from view, the Bear’s Son tale was interpreted by audiences in a very different and far more realistic fashion than it is today by modern readers. Plus, rather than being long forgotten, the belief that humans and animals could shape-shift—humans becoming animals or vice versa— and that certain people were equipped with their own animal helpers was widely accepted in Europe until quite recently. Indeed, it was a key element in confessions made, often under duress, by members of the popular classes. More tellingly, it constituted one of the main arguments brought forward by highly educated witch-hunters, such as de Lancre (1612), well into the seventeenth century, to prove that someone was guilty of engaging in witch-craft. In contrast, shape-shifting is a common and totally non-stigmatised feature integral to the ritual performances of Native-American and Siberian healers.

6 Role of Translation in Generational Transmissions of the Tale Oral literature is understood as the text and its performance including the interpreter and the audience as well as the social context of the performance. Hence, the worldview and belief system shared by the teller and those making up the audience play a role in how the traditional tales are transmitted. Keeping in mind that initially the narratives were remembered and reproduced from memory without recourse to any written back-up, the resilience of certain themes and motifs is quite remarkable. At the same time, it is not surprising to see new elements being introduced into the stories as they were passed on from one generation to the next.

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At this juncture we can begin to consider two pathways typical of the processes of oral transmission and translation that played out across time and space, one vertical and the other horizontal or lateral in nature. The types of vertical transmission involved probably included the following: 1. from one generation to the next in the same language—no translation only reproduction, partial or total of the tale; 2. from one generation to the next in an increasingly bilingual setting, leading to partial or total translation of the tale when rendering it into the second language; 3. retelling of the tale now fully translated into the second language by the new generation of monolingual speakers with no knowledge of the first language of their elders but still residing in the same geographical zone. The types of horizontal transmission and translation which developed across time and space can be characterised as follows: 1. from speakers of one language who, upon moving to a new location, would retell, that is, translate, the narrative they had heard in their native language into what was for them a non-native second language to an audience composed exclusively of speakers of the second language; 2. next, speakers of this second language, who were now twice or more removed from the original story, would pass their version(s) on to subsequent generations. These processes of vertical and horizontal transmission and repeated translations from one language to the next, as well as the adjustments made by the teller to accommodate changes in the sociocultural norms and beliefs, caused the original story-line and associated details to be modified, often with confusing results. For instance, one signal that the plot has been modified is the introduction of bizarre actions and objects into the story. These modifications are also easily detected when the intricate sequence of cause and effect found in the earlier versions of

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the tale is compared with later versions, in which the role played by the Animal Helpers is either eliminated entirely, that is, replaced by anthropomorphic male characters, or the significance of the ritual battles between predator and prey is lost. Curiously, one of the most resilient elements in the tales concerns the repeated attempts made to describe the formula used to bring about the death of the antagonist, resulting in variants of the tale where a sequence of animals is mentioned, although the animals often are no longer viewed as helpers, nor are they always the same animals. Clearly, in addition to inevitable occasional failures of memory on the part of the tellers of the tales, another major cause for the changes that can be detected in them seems to be the fact that, when viewed in the longue durée, language change—replacement—was also going on in various parts of Europe. A bilingual generation of story-tellers would develop who would keep a few elements in the original language which the speaker and bilingual audience still understood. However, when the storyteller was a member of the next generation of monolingual speakers, these elements might be retained, but their meaning would no longer be comprehended. Rather, they could end up integrated into the story-line as exotic entities. In short, these processes of vertical and horizontal transmission often required the teller to translate the tale from one language into another, which also contributed to incomplete knowledge transfer between generations with respect to the story elements themselves. In addition to these types of vertical and horizontal transmission and the acts of translation that they implied, there was yet another modification that came about when the tales passed from orality and gained support in the written word. With the exception of a few collections dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for the most part this transition took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century, when collecting the folktales of each region and committing them to written form became a major pastime of folklorists, driven in part by the Romanticism of the epoch and the belief that the tales were central to the identity of each region. And that process, once again, often involved recording, as best was possible at the time, the words, frequently of unlettered informants

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speaking in local dialects, which were difficult to capture in print (Halbert and Widdowson 2015 [1996]). That process, in and of itself, did not guarantee that the written version of the tale would replicate the orally recorded form for it was not unusual for the tale to undergo modification and elaboration, embellishments of a literary nature that the collector of the tale felt was appropriate, as well as the suppression of elements that were distasteful to the collector. Finally, there was the feedback that occurred when literary versions of the tales, often themselves transcribed and/ or translated from another language, were read before unlettered audiences. Years later the same narratives were retold to collectors of folktales who assumed a totally oral transmission of the tales (de Blécourt 2012, pp. 158–170; Zipes 2012, pp. 175–190). The next step consisted of producing translations of the most well-known collections of classic tales, for example, the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen, into the major languages of Europe. That process led to the proliferation of selected literary variants of the tales while versions found in minority languages never got translated. As has been demonstrated, by paying close attention to changes taking place in the stories, it is possible to identify in them evidence concerning the nature of the transmissions that took place in times past, as the cultural conceptualisations that shaped the interpretative frame fell away and modern interpolations were added. Hence, the ways in which the tales themselves were reshaped are a result of several factors, memory lapses, mistranslations, as well as efforts on the part of storytellers to adjust the content of the tales to achieve a better fit with the ongoing changes in sociocultural norms and beliefs of their audiences.

7 Factors Leading to Changes in the Text and the Fragmentation of the Narrative Structure Over time, the cultural conceptualisations supporting the earlier animistic cosmovision and ursine genealogy were replaced by new ones. This contributed to the loss of awareness on the part of subsequent

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generations of tellers and translators of the tale concerning the deeper meaning of the four Spirit Animal Helpers and the shape-shifting that takes place. In the Middle Ages, Christianity contributes to this ­erosion, bringing about a strict dichotomy, a conceptual divide which sets humans totally apart from animals. And, as this portrayal of animal otherness becomes increasingly entrenched in the worldview utilised by both the tellers of the tale and their audiences, it becomes harder to understand the earlier interpretive framework. Moreover, in the eyes of the Church, the European bear cult was perceived as a threat and impediment to conversion of the popular classes. For example, as Pastoureau notes, the Germanic veneration for the bear shows that the animal was a being apart, an intermediary creature between the animal and human worlds and considered even an ancestor or relative of humans (Pastoureau 2011, p. 2). During the Middle Ages, worship of the bear, however, was not confined to the Germanic world for it was also deeply engrained among the Slavs, who admired the bear as much as the Germans did. Then there is the fact that both Germanic and Slavic languages use noa terms—euphemisms—to refer to the ­animal, which recalls the wide-spread pattern of semantic avoidance documented among the indigenous peoples of North America and Eurasia (Black 1998; Nagy 2017; Pastoureau 2011, pp. 46–52; Sokolova 2000). More concretely, where bear ceremonialism is practiced, such patterns of semantic avoidance go hand in hand with the belief that the bear is omniscient and, therefore, has the power to hear all that is said about him. Addressing the bear with its real name is considered dangerous, so hunters avoid mentioning the bear’s true name, choosing rather to speak about him using euphemisms. In times past, the common noa term utilised by speakers of Slavic languages was medved “honey-eater,” which today is the word used to refer generically to a “bear,” while Germanic tribes preferred to call him the “brown one,” an expression that gave rise eventually to the English word bear, linked etymologically to the English words brown and bruin. Consequently, the Slavic and Gemanic words for “bear” can be considered semantic residue left over from this older ursine belief system. Indeed, we can say that throughout much of Europe “in the Carolinian period, the bear continued to be seen as a divine figure,

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an ancestral god whose worship took on various forms but remained solidly rooted, impeding the conversion of pagan peoples” (Pastoureau 2011, p. 3). Almost everywhere, from the Pyrenees to the Baltic, “the bear stood as a rival to Christ. The Church thought it appropriate to declare war on the bear, to fight him by all means possible” (Pastoureau 2011, p. 3). In summary, whereas the struggle of the medieval church against the bear was ultimately successful, that is, in terms of eliminating most traces of the ancient ursine cults, what it was not able to do was to stop storytellers from passing on the tenets of the ursine belief system itself in the covert form of traditional narratives. These stories insured that the hero’s life and times would be transmitted orally, under the radar, across generations. With the passage of time, the narratives would be translated from one language to another, a process that would introduce modifications and significant fragmentation of the narrative structure along with an increasing loss of awareness of the underlying animistic cosmovision.

7.1 The Role of Tale Types in the Breakdown of the Narrative Structure Over the past century, one of the primary concerns of researchers in folkloristics has been the creation of tale types that permit the classification of the stories and, in theory, allow for cross-cultural comparisons. For instance, in tales of “The Bear’s Son,” the hero is often portrayed as descending to the underworld to rescue up to three princesses, a plot line that has elicited many different scholarly labels (Cosquin 1887, Vol. 1, pp. 1–27). The most well-known is that of Aarne and Thompson (1961, pp. 90–93), who refer to the story as “The Three Stolen Princesses” (ATU 301)3 with the following variants: “Quest for a Vanished Princess”

3In

2004 an updated version of the Aarne and Thompson (1961) tale type index was published by Uther (2004). Although in the present chapter, tale types will be referenced as ATU (AarneThompson-Uther), I would note that use of tale type indexes and the most recent iteration of them have been a called into question (Dundes 1997; Jason 2006).

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(ATU 301A); “The Strong Man and His Companions Journey to the Land of Gold” (ATU 301B); “The Magic Objects” (ATU 301C) and “The Dragons Ravish Princesses” (ATU 301D).4 Hansen (1957, pp. 24–25, 75–77) classified the tale similarly, with some modifications, but he saw that ATU 301 combined often with “Strong John” (ATU 650) (“Der Starke Hans”), a version of which appears in Grimm. Yet no particular significance has been attributed by folklorists to the fact that the hero is often portrayed as having a human mother and an ursine father, even when the hero is described as being very hairy or having bear ears. At times, he is described as a human from the waist up and a bear from the waist down. In the case of ATU 650 “Strong John,” his ursine paternity is not mentioned. The hero is merely described as extraordinarily strong without any explanation being given, for example having the strength of fourteen men or eating as much as fourteen men, but without any reason for why this is so. In the Basque language variants of the tale classed collectively as ATU 650, the main character is called Hamalau, a term that translates literally as the number “Fourteen” (Frank 2008b). Hence, finding tales in Romance languages, for example Spanish, Catalan and Italian versions of ATU 650, in which the hero is called “Fourteen,” would suggest that the ultimate source of those tales was probably the Basque-language version itself and that at some point a form of bilingualism played a role in the transmission of the tales.5 We need to remember that the label frequently used by folklorists, that is, “The Bear’s Son,” is a broad one.6 It encompasses not 4A

remarkably in-depth discussion of the tale and its diffusion is found in the Wikipedia entry for “Jean de l’Ours”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_l%27Ours (accessed 28 Jan 2019). 5Joan Armangué, email message to the author, 20 Aug 2009. 6ATU 301, referred to globally as “The Bear’s Son,” refers to tales with a remarkably similar narrative structure that have been recorded in many different languages. Although in actual practice the tales show up with different titles, the name of the main character has tended to be stable, no matter the language in which the tale was collected: Juan el Osito in Spanish, Jan de l’Os (Catalan), Jan l’Ourset (Gascon), Jean de l’Ours in French, Giovanni l’Orso in Italian, Hans Bär in German, and Ivanuska as well as Ivanko Medvedko in Slavic languages. In contrast to this generic naming process found in all these languages, as has been noted, in Basque the hero is simply called Hartzkume and Harzko. Even though the reasons for this discrepancy are fascinating, they lie outside the scope of this study.

70     R. M. Frank

only ATU 301 and its variants but also, as mentioned, this tale type has been linked to ATU 650. A key element in the plot line of ATU 301 is the fact that the protagonist acquires two or more unusually strong and fully anthropomorphic companions who help him. What has not been recognised, however, is that the fully anthropomorphic helpers replaced the Spirit Animal Helpers that are found in older variants. Instead, the Spirit Animal Helpers end up being relegated to a totally separate and supposedly unrelated tale type, ATU 554, called “The Grateful Animals.”7 And, to complicate matters even more, as will be demonstrated, the Spirit Animal Helpers resurface in the tale type referred to as “The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302). To summarise, over time the plot of the tale broke into pieces, each of which realigned itself in different ways to reflect the changing cultural conceptualisations of Europeans. Hence, we can see that narratives associated with the expression “The Bear’s Son” include ATU 301, plus ATU 301a, b, c, and d, variants referred to globally by folklorists as “The Three Princesses.” At the same time there are other tale types that form part of the same narrative tradition: ATU 650 “Strong John,” ATU 554 “The Grateful Animals,” and ATU 302, now shortened to “Soul in an Egg.” In sum, over time the story-line and episodes associated with earlier version of the tale ended up breaking apart and, as a result, became classified as different tale types (ATU 650, ATU 554, ATU 302, and ATU 301, plus at least four subtypes of ATU 301).8

7Little attention has been paid to this tale type or the fact that episodes making up the story-line of ATU 302 and ATU 554 overlap in remarkable ways. One of the few studies is found in Vinson’s collection of Basque folktales, where he talks about a tale called “Les Dons des Trois Animaux” (Vinson 1883, I, pp. 166–177, II, pp. 129–131). 8Examples of tales where there is a melding of motifs from ATU 301, ATU 302, ATU 650 and ATU 554 include two versions of a story called “La princesa encantada” (Espinosa 1946–1947, pp. 294–299); “La serpiente de siete cabezas”; and two versions of “El cuerpo sin alma” collected by Wheeler (1943, pp. 317–339).

3  Translating a Worldview in the longue durée …     71

7.2 The Disappearance of the Animal Helpers In the tale of “The Bear’s Son” (ATU 301), the Animal Helpers disappear entirely from view, replaced by figures more in consonance with the later worldview. Instead of animal helpers, the hero acquires two or three anthropomorphic companions, huge male figures endowed with immense strength. Although the main protagonist is still portrayed as half-bear and half-human, born of a human female and a bear, his helper companions are no longer animals as is the case in the earlier versions. For example, de Blécourt (2012, pp. 179–181) discusses a literary tale dating from 1634 in which the animals morph into helping ­brothers-in-law or brothers, a tale type classed as ATU 552. With the passage of time a kind of bifurcation takes place giving rise to two variants. On the one hand, we have the set of stories that continue to retain the animal helpers (ATU 302 and ATU 554) and, to a certain extent, imprints from the animistic coding of the earlier story-line. But in these tales, the ursine identity of the hero is gone. On the other hand, there is the set of stories (ATU 301), known as the tales of “The Bear’s Son,” in which the ursine ancestry of the main character is retained, but the animal helpers are translated into human companions. In summary, the encounter of the hero with the four animal helpers often survives, together with some iteration of the magic formula. However, these elements constitute a separate tale type. In the process, the key structural importance of the animal helpers to the development of the overall plot is lost. In other instances, episodes from the plot detach themselves entirely and wander off, becoming viewed as standalone stories in which the magic formula is only a peripheral element. In these instances, the ursine identity of the main character also disappears. Not uncommonly, even when animals are mentioned, the now fully human hero is elevated even further, as elements from a hierarchical society are introduced into the frame, reconfiguring the main character as a prince who rescues a princess. And, because of his success, based on carrying out individual actions on his own, he is rewarded and able to marry the daughter of the king.

72     R. M. Frank

At times, in these stand-alone tales the antagonist from the ­original narrative survives and can be easily recognised, transformed into a kind of ogre portrayed as the “immortal enemy.” For instance, he shows up in Slavic folktales as Kościej nieśmiertelny (Polish) or Кoщéй Бeccмépтный (Russian). This stand-alone story, classified by the tale type “The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302), will serve as an example of the way that the older narrative and story-line becomes modified over time.

7.3 An Example of Fragmentation: “Koshchei the Immortal” A well-known Russian version of the story speaks of how a warlock called Koshchei the Immortal carries off a princess and keeps her prisoner in his golden castle. A prince named Ivan encounters her one day as she is walking alone and disconsolate in the castle garden, and cheered by the prospect of escaping with him she goes to the warlock and coaxes him with false and flattering words, saying, “My dearest friend, tell me, I pray you, will you never die?” “Certainly not,” says he. “Well,” says she, “and where is your death?” In this case his “death” is portrayed as a concrete object that must be located, albeit with great difficulty, and not as the result of a sequence of successful ritual battles. Eventually Koshchei tells her the following: My death is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean: in that sea is the island of Bujan, and upon this island there grows a green oak, and beneath this oak is an iron chest, and in this chest is a small basket, and in this basket is a hare, and in this hare is a duck, and in this duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, at that same instant causes my death. (Dietrich 1857, p. 23)

The prince procures the fateful egg and with it in his hands he confronts the immortal giant. In one of the descriptions of Koshchei’s death, he is said to be killed by a blow to his forehead, inflicted by the mysterious egg (Curtin 1891, pp. 119–122; Dietrich 1857, pp. 21–24; Ralston 1873, pp. 100–105, 109).

3  Translating a Worldview in the longue durée …     73

Over time Koshchei turned into a legendary figure in Slavic ­countries and remains very popular even today, albeit in new incarnations. He has been used in various games, movies, and theatrical productions. For example, The Witcher is an action role-playing hack and slash video game, developed by CD Projekt RED and published by Atari. It is based on a book series of the same name by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, who must have been familiar with the Slavic versions of the folktale and its frightful antagonist. The vitality of this character as a source of creative reconstructions in Slavic culture is truly remarkable. In addition to inspiring producers of video games and novels, Koshchei was utilised earlier by Slavic composers, appearing as the villain in Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Firebird, while Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote an opera involving him, titled Кaщeй бeccмepтный, or Kashchey the Immortal.9 When we compare the older version with the Slavic example, significant changes in the story-line and cast of characters can be ­ detected (Table 2). As mentioned, another example of the fragmentation of the story is the fact that this episode has been extracted and used as a separate classificatory tale type: “The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” (ATU 302). Frazer utilised an even broader classification in order to illustrate the wide-spread nature of this motif which he described as “The External Soul in Folk-tales.” Indeed, he dedicated an entire chapter to exploring its manifestations in European folktales. The majority of the narratives treated fall under ATU 302 and include encounters with the Animal Helpers and references to variations, often quite strange in nature, of the formula that needs to be carried out to bring about the death of a monster, evil fairy, warlock or dragon, a formula that frequently requires breaking a magic egg on the forehead of the enemy (Frazer 1913, pp. 95–141). However, in the tales discussed by Frazer, the ursine identity of the hero is not mentioned even once.

9For

further discussions of the origins and diffusion of this character cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Koschei (accessed 28 Jan 2019).

74     R. M. Frank Table 2  Earlier animistic version vs. Slavic version of “Koshchei the Immortal” Hero Female Antagonist Powers attributed to main characters Cast of characters Role of predator animals

Earlier animistic version

Slavic version

Half-bear, half-human (Bear’s Son) Young woman who cannot leave her old father Old man who is immortal Shamanic—shape-shifting

Prince Ivan

Commoners Active—spirit helpers—shape-shifters Role of prey animals Active—shape-shifters playing the role of the Old Man’s Brother Mortality caused by blow Egg to the forehead

Princess who is held captive Giant who is immortal Physical strength and prowess Royalty Absent Passive—physically dissected by the hero to obtain the egg Egg

8 Conclusions: Viewed in the longue durée When viewed in the longue durée, we can see that the tale has been retold and retranslated thousands of times, given that variants show up in languages spoken across much of Europe. Features integral to the master narrative and hence the story-line itself can be viewed as proxies for estimating the chronological horizon that should be assigned to the interpretative framework accessed by storytellers and their audiences, that is, the worldview entrenched in the story. Our analysis reveals an animistic cosmology typical of bear ceremonialism, grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears and, conversely, that bears are relatives of humans (Fig. 1). A close reading of the narrative plot and the logic implicit to the story-line allows us to gain insights into contextual factors and knowledge structures that were once functioning in the background and that allowed storytellers and their audiences to make sense of the events narrated. Whereas it is impossible to know the time-depth that should be assigned to the story-line itself, the ursine genealogy takes us back to a pre-agro-pastoral mentality and to an audience familiar with an animistic ontology typical of hunter-gatherers (Frank 2018). Even though

3  Translating a Worldview in the longue durée …     75

EĂƌƌĂƟǀĞdžƚĞƌŶĂůŝnjĞĚ ŝŶWĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞƌƚ

ͻ DƵůƟƉůĞĞdžĂŵƉůĞƐŽĨďĞĂƌĨĞƐƚƐ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵĞĚŝŶǀŝůůĂŐĞƐĂĐƌŽƐƐ ƵƌŽƉĞ ͻ WĞƌĨŽƌŵĞƌƐĚƌĞƐƐĞĚĂƐďĞĂƌͲ ŚƵŵĂŶƐĂŶĚƋƵŝƚĞƉŽƐƐŝďůLJĂƐƚŚĞ ĞĂƌΖƐ^ŽŶŚŝŵƐĞůĨ

^ƚŽƌLJŽĨ>ŝĨĞΘdŝŵĞƐ ŽĨƚŚĞ,ĞƌŽĂƐ ^ŚĂŵĂŶƉƉƌĞŶƟĐĞ

ͻ ,ŝƐƌŽůĞĂƐĂŶ/ŶƚĞƌŵĞĚŝĂƌLJ ďĞƚǁĞĞŶŚƵŵĂŶƐĂŶĚďĞĂƌƐ ͻ ǀŝƐŝŽŶƋƵĞƐƚĂŶĚĂĐƋƵŝƐŝƟŽŶŽĨ ŚŝƐ^ƉŝƌŝƚŶŝŵĂů,ĞůƉĞƌƐ

ĞůŝĞĨŝŶĞĂƌ ŶĐĞƐƚŽƌƐ

ͻ ^ŚĂƉĞͲƐŚŝŌŝŶŐĂŶĚƐŚĂŵĂŶŝƐŵ ͻ EŽŶͲĂŶƚŚƌŽƉŽĐĞŶƚƌŝĐĂŶŝŵŝƐƟĐ ǀŝĞǁŽĨEĂƚƵƌĞ

Fig. 1  The “Bear Son’s Tale” in the longue durée

the age of the tale itself cannot be dated with precision, the fact that the most undisturbed variants of it have been collected in the Pyrenees and areas nearby, raises a question concerning the current assumption that these tales should be assigned an Indo-European origin, as many have alleged (da Silva and Tehrani 2016; Frazer 1913, pp. 133–134; Grimm and Grimm 1884, pp. 580–581), or whether, instead, they have a pre-Indo-European origin and represent stories that later came to be translated and integrated into the storytelling repertoire of IndoEuropean languages. We can appreciate that until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the majority of these tales were first collected and recorded in written form, we are talking about primarily face-to-face oral transmissions, interactions that separate us from those hunter-gatherers who first came up with the story. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that in this process, involving multiple levels of translation and reinterpretation, enough of the elements embedded in the archaic worldview have survived, both in the tales themselves and in the associated performance art and folk belief of Europeans, that we can still perceive the outlines of the original narrative.

76     R. M. Frank

Moreover, their survival raises a raft of questions concerning the role of these oral traditions and the reasons that they survived. Were they once viewed by storytellers, the knowledge keepers of the past, as a vehicle for maintaining and transmitting key elements of this worldview from one generation to the next? Less expected perhaps, is the emergence of the clear possibility of finding in these folkloric traditions, reflexes of an older pre-Indo-European culture. Clearly in the intervening millennia separating us from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, Europe has undergone major socio-cultural and economic transformations, both ideological and demographic, all of which have acted to undermine this earlier hunter-gatherer ideology and the animistic worldview that supported it. Nevertheless, the primacy of the figure of the bear and the ursine pattern of descent intrinsic to the pan-European Bear’s Son tales is still visible beneath the accumulated layers of translation and transformation.

References Aarne, Antti, and Stith Thompson. 1961. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Arratibel, José. 1980. Kontu zaarrak. Bilbao: Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca. Azkue, Resurrección María. 1989 [1935–1947]. Euskalerriaren Yakintza: Literatura popular del País Vasco. I. Costumbres y Supersticiones. Madrid: Euskaltzaindia & Espasacalpe. Barbier, Jean. 1991 [1931]. Legendes Basques. Donostia/Baiona: Elkar. Barandiarán, José M. 1973–1983. Obras completas. Bilbao: La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca. Bertolotti, Maurizio. 1994. La fiaba del figlio dell’orso e le culture siberiane dell’orso. Quaderni di Semantica 15 (1): 39–56. Bidart, Pierre. 1978. Récits & Contes Populaires du Pays Basque 1. Recuellis par Pierre-Bidart en Basse-Navarre. Paris: Gallimard. Bidart, Pierre. 1979. Récits & Contes Populaires du Pays Basque 2. Recuillis par Pierre Bidart dans le Labourd. Paris: Gallimard. Black, Lydia T. 1998. Bear in Imagination and in Ritual. Ursus 10: 323–347. Bosch, Robert. 2013. Fêtes de l’ours en Vallespir. Perpignan: Trabucaire.

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Brightman, Robert A. 2002. Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships. Regina, Saskatchewan: Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina. Brown, Joseph E. 1993. Animals of the Soul: Sacred Animals of the Oglala Sioux. Rockport, MA: Element. Cerquand, Jean F. 1986 [1875–1882]. Ipar Euskal Herriko Legenda eta Ipuinak. Basajauna, Laminak, Tartaroa. Anuntxi Aranaran Transkripzioa. San Sebastián: Editorial Txertoa. Conway, Thor. 1992. The Conjurer’s Lodge: Celestial Narratives from Algonkian Shamans. In Earth & Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore, ed. Ray A. Williamson and Claire R. Farrer, 236–259. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Corvino, Claudio. 2013. Orso: Biografia di un animale: Della prehistoria allo sciamanesimo. Bologna, Italy: Odoya. Cosquin, Emmanuel. 1887. Les Contes populaires de Lorraine comparés avec les contes des autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers. Paris: F. Vieweg, Libraire-Editeur. Curtin, Jeremiah. 1891. Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs and Magyars. London: Little Brown & Company. da Silva, Sara Graça, and Jamshid J. Tehrani. 2016. Comparative Phylogenetic Analyses Uncover the Ancient Roots of Indo-European Folktales. Royal Society Open Science 3: 150645. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150645. de Blécourt, Willem. 2012. Tales of Magic, Tales in Print: On the Genealogy of Fairy Tales and the Brothers Grimm. Manchester: Manchester University Press. de Lancre, Pierre. 1612. Tableau de l’Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons où il est amplement traicté des Sorciers & de la Sorcellerie. Paris: Jean Berjon. Dietrich, Anton. 1857. Russian Popular Tales: Trans. from the German Version of Anton Dietrich, with an Introduction by Jacob Grimm. London: Chapman and Hall. Dundes, Alan. 1997. The Motif-Index and the Tale Type Index: A Critique. Journal of Folklore Research 24 (3): 195–202. Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1946–1947. Cuentos populares españoles, recogidos de la tradición oral de España. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto “Antonio de Nebrija” de Filología. Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1951. Spanish and Spanish-American Folk Tales. Journal of American Folklore 64 (252): 151–162. Euskaltzaindia. 1987–2005. Orotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) = Diccionario general vasco. Bilbao: Euskaltzaindia; Desclée de Brouwer. http://tinyurl. com/euskaltzaindia. Accessed 28 Jan 2019.

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Fabre, Daniel. 1968. Jean de l’Ours: Analyse formelle et thématique d’un Conte populaire. Carcassonne: Éditiones de la Revue ‘Folklore’. Feit, Harvey. 1994. Dreaming of Animals: The Waswanipi Cree Shaking Tent Ceremony in Relation to Environment, Hunting and Missionisation. In Circumpolar Religion and Ecology: An Anthropology of the North, ed. Takao Yamada and Takashi Irimoto, 289–316. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Frank, Roslyn M. 2008a. Evidence in Favor of the Palaeolithic Continuity Refugium Theory (PCRT): Hamalau and Its Linguistic and Cultural Relatives. Part 1. Insula: Quaderno di Cultura Sarda 4: 91–131. Frank, Roslyn M. 2008b. Recovering European Ritual Bear Hunts: A Comparative Study of Basque and Sardinian Ursine Carnival Performances. Insula: Quaderno di Cultura Sarda 3: 41–97. Frank, Roslyn M. 2016. Paul Shepardss “Bear Essay”: On Environmental Ethnics, Deep Ecology and Our Need for the Other-Than-Human Animals. Creative Commons License. http://www.tinyurl.com/paul-shepard-bear-essay. Accessed 26 Jan 2019. Frank, Roslyn M. 2018. Looking at Europe Through a Basque Lens: Ethnolinguistics Considerations of Two Worldviews. Etnolingwistyka 30: 189–213. https://doi.org/110.17951/et.12018.17930.17189. Frazer, James G., Sir. 1913. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, vol. 11. New York: The Macmillan Company. http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/43433/43433-h/43433-h.html#noteref_370. Accessed 26 Jan 2019. Fréger, Charles. 2012. Wilder Mann: The Image of the Savage. Stockport, England: Dewi Lewis Publishing. Glosecki, Stephen O. 1989. Shamanism and Old English Poetry. New York/ London: Garland Publishing Inc. Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. 1884. Grimm’s Household Tales: With the Authors’ Notes. Vol II, trans. Margaret Hunt. London: George Bell and Sons. Gual, Oriol Lluis. 2017. Les derniers ours: Une histoire des fêtes de l’ours. Quaderns del Costumari de Catalunya Nord. Halbert, Herbert, and John D.A. Widdowson. 2015. Folktales of Newfoundland (RLE Folklore): The Resilience of the Oral Tradition. London: Routledge. Hallowell, Alfred Irving. 1926. Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern hemisphere. American Anthropologist 28: 1–175. Hansen, Terence L. 1957. The Types of the Folktale in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Spanish America. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Jason, Heda. 2006. Review of the Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Fabula 47 (1/2): 172–186. Kiss, Gabriela. 1959. A 301-es mesetípus magyar redakciói. Ethnographia (Budapest) LXX: 253–268. Lajoux, Jean-Dominique. 1996. L’homme et l’ours. Grenoble: Glénat. McWhorter, Lucullus V. 1940. Yellow Wolf: His Own Story. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers Ltd. Nagy, Zoltan. 2017. Everybody’s a Bit Scared of the Bear: Fear of the Bear along the Vasyugan River in Siberia. In Sous la peau de l’ours: L’humanité et les ursides: Approche interdisciplinaire, ed. Karen Hoffmann-Schickel, Pierre Le Roux, and Éric Navet, 453–491. Paris: Éditions Connaissances et Savoirs. https://tinyurl.com/fear-of-the-bear. Accessed 5 Jan 2019. Panzer, Friedrich. 1910. Studien zur germanischen Sagengeschichte. I. Beowulf. München: C.H. Beck. Pastoureau, Michel. 2011. The Bear: A History of a Fallen King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peillen, Txomin. 1986. Le culte de l’ours chez les anciens basques. In L’ours brun: Pyrénées, Agruzzes, Mts. Cantabriques, Alpes du Trentin, ed. Claude Dendaletche, 171–173. Pau: Acta Biologica Montana. Ralston, William R.S. 1873. Russian Folk-Tales. London: Smith, Elder and Company. Satrústegui, José M. 1975. La leyenda del dragón en las tradiciones de Urdain. Cuadernos de Etnografía y Etnografía de Navarra 19: 13–30. Shepard, Paul. 1999. The Significance of Bears. In Encounters with Nature: Essays by Paul Shepard, ed. Florence R. Shepard, 92–97. Washington, DC/ Covelo, CA: Island Press/Shearwater Books. Shepard, Paul. 2007. The Biological Bases of Bear Mythology and Ceremonialism. The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 23 (2): 74–79. Sokolova, Zoya P. 2000. The Bear Cult. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 2 (2): 121–130. Stitt, J. Michael. 1995. Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic, Saga and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition. New York/London: Garland Publishing Inc. Truffaut, Thierry. 2010. Contribution à la connaissance de la permanence ursine dans les diverses manifestations culturelles, culturelles et festives dans le périmètre de l’ancienne province romain de Novempopulanie. Munibe 61: 407–434. https://www.aranzadi.eus/fileadmin/docs/Munibe/2010407434AA.pdf. Accessed 6 Jan 2019.

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Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, 284–286. Helsinki: Folklore Fellows Communication. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Vinson, Julien. 1883. Le Folk-lore du Pays Basque. Paris: Maisonneuve. Wheeler, Howard T. 1943. Tales from Jalisco Mexico. Philadelphia: American Folk-Lore Society. Zipes, Jack. 2012. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of the Genre. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Part II Rethinking Translation

4 Translation as Philology as Love John Leavitt

Translating means serving two masters. It follows that no one can do it. But it follows also that it is, like everything else no one can do in theory, everyone’s task in practice. Franz Rosenzweig, “Scripture and Luther,” 1994 [1926], p. 47.1

1 The Impossible Reality of Translation While there are many reasons to take on the task of translation, some of them purely practical, the actual practice of translation exceeds its occasions. To translate means to have dwelt in another language world and to have returned. Such an engagement with a world and its texts is what is called philology, in the old sense of a discipline of editing texts 1“Übersetzen

heißt zwei Herren dienen. Also kann es niemand. Also ist es wie alles, was theoretisch besehen niemand kann, praktisch jedermanns Aufgabe” (Rosenzweig 1963 [1926], p. 195).

J. Leavitt (*)  Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_4

83

84     J. Leavitt

requiring, to the extent possible, understanding of the language of the text, its internal structuring, its poetic devices, its social and historical contexts, and the lived world from which it emerges. This kind of philological dwelling must imply, as the etymology of the word suggests, a deep connection, a deep attachment, that in other circumstances is called love. Here I want to point out some of these connections and identities: between translation and philology, and between philology and love. There are two great facts about translation. One is that translation is possible between any human languages. All languages are potentially capable of conveying any referential content. Content previously unexpressed in what translation theorists call the target language can still be conveyed by paraphrasing and explanation. This fact was noted, for instance, by Franz Boas and his students in saying that no language sets limits on what it is possible to say. The other great fact is that languages are different from each other, and different in too many ways to be accounted for entirely when going from one to another. A corollary of this is that permissible linguistic styles, how you use the specific linguistic material, also differ from each other. What must be concluded from these two inescapable facts is that translation is always possible, but always hard. The two great facts about translation—that it is always possible and never perfect—have led to opposed extreme positions. For some, the fact of universal mutual translatability indicates that all human beings must inhabit the same lived world, that all must share a single “conceptual scheme” (Davidson 1973).2 But others have argued the reverse, that the fact that one cannot translate perfectly and easily proves that speakers of different languages live in different, incommensurable conceptual worlds (Bynon 1966, p. 472, citing the work of Leo Weisgerber). The implication of our conclusion that translation is always possible but always hard is that people speaking different languages and participating in different cultures do inhabit lived worlds that are themselves 2For

a critique of this view, see Forster (1998).

4  Translation as Philology as Love     85

different—in some ways, and to some degree—but not sealed off from each other, if one is willing to put in the work necessary to cross boundaries. How much a translation seeks to ignore or emphasise these differences depends on what the translation is for.

2 Why Translate? What Translation? How one translates depends on why it is being done—what the translator wants to get out of the process and what the translator’s environment and sources of sustenance expect and are willing to reward. We can distinguish a number of ideal-typical cases. One is the sheer useful transmission of information, as, for instance, in the manual for a computer or instructions for putting together a piece of furniture from IKEA. As long as the job gets done, the translation has been successful. This is what Herder and Schleiermacher (2012 [1813]) call dolmetschen, usually translated “to interpret.” But the traditional goal of translation, going back to ancient times, is more ambitious than this. It seeks the true transmission of the fullness of meaning, in its specifics as far as this is possible (Forster 2010, pp. 392–393). This in itself raises a host of questions, since it depends on what one means by meaning. For instance, much of what is carried in a text is background information required for normal expression in the source language, information which may not seem useful or relevant in another language. In translating from French to English, should we indicate gender, that a table and the moon are somehow girls, a wall and the sun boys? One almost never does this in translating, but gender, while indeed formal and presupposed, is still a real way of grouping lexemes and so images, and indeed seems to affect aesthetic attitudes (Boroditsky et al. 2003), rising to the surface of consciousness when there is any kind of personification, in what Jakobson calls “everyday mythology” (1959). As the philosopher Ortega de Gasset put it (2000 [1937]; cf. Becker 1995), all translations involve deficiencies (suppression of material that is there in the source text) and exuberances (addition of material to make the text assimilable in the target language).

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A third goal has been argued a number of times through history: it is that a translation should seek to produce the same effect on its readers as the original did on its own intended readers. Since the original text did not, presumably, seem bizarre to its consumers, so the translated text should be in the normal, expected style of its projected audience. This argument, fully formulated in France in the seventeenth century and further developed since them (cf. Nida and Taber’s 1969 dynamic equivalence), while initially impressive, in fact justifies distortions of the meaning and style of the original, avoiding all shocks and surprises for the highly protected reader. Such translations are now called domesticating (Venuti 1995; Bassnett 2014); Herder and Schleiermacher said that they were not true translations (Übersetzungen ), but Nachbildungen “imitations.” Indeed, the American poet Robert Lowell, in offering a series of English-language versions of Greek, Italian, French, and German poems “as if the author was writing now and in America,” called his book Imitations (Lowell 1961).3 Yet another goal of translation has been the transmission of the aesthetic power of the original. This is what has inspired some translation theorists (such as Herder and Schleiermacher) to insist that a verse original should be translated into verse, in an attempt to preserve the specific musicality of the text (Forster 2010, pp. 403–405). All of these are what we might call internal goals for the translation process. Some recent translation theory concentrates, rather, on externals: it expresses a new realism, or perhaps one should say a new cynicism, about translation. From the external perspective, the question is what does and doesn’t get translated, the economic and historical role of translation, the power relations implied in this reality. In this view, translation is seen as a way of asserting and increasing power. In his 2011 book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, the translator David Bellos points out how massively a few languages are translated from, while large

3Lowell is referencing Dryden’s 1680 presentation of “imitation” as the translator writing “as he supposes that the author would have done, had he lived in our age, and in our country” (in Lefevere 1992, p. 103). Dryden calls this a “libertine way of rendering authors.”

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numbers of others are neglected, with English clearly the language most translated from during our historical period. Given that power differentials are always present, and that there are more powerful and less powerful linguacultures (Friedrich 1989), translation can go in two directions. In what we could call the colonial enterprise, the speaker of a powerful language goes forth and brings back riches. Hans-Georg Gadamer has written: If, by entering foreign language-worlds, we overcome the prejudices and limitations of our previous experience of the world, this does not mean that we leave and negate our own world. Like travellers we return home with new experiences. (Gadamer 2004 [1960], p. 445; cited in Blumczynski and Gillespie 2016, p. 9)

The inverse of this is translation as self-assertion. Here advocates of a relatively weak linguaculture see translation as a way of claiming pieces of powerful linguacultures that already have worldwide recognition. The goal is to appropriate such broadly admired pieces into one’s own linguistic repertoire, thus increasing its “territory.” Having the Bible, Homer, and Goethe in Czech (Macura 1990), or the Kalevala in Faroese (Plourde 2003), are ways of incorporating the universal into the local. From the external point of view, translation indeed involves power differentials and exploitation. But this is a quality that translation shares with other activities, including political interaction, which can mean war; economic interaction, which can mean exploitation; and personal interaction, which can mean bullying. The differentia specifica that distinguishes translation from other human encounters is not its ability to go out and bring back treasure, as Gadamer would have it; there are many other ways to bring back treasure. Rather, translation requires a distinctive kind of work: the intimate engagement with at least two languages, their sounds, categories, grammatical patterns, and afferent cultures, in their specificity and their differences from each other.

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3 Worlds? If we take seriously the idea that language specifics matter, that different languages are truly different and imply or presume worlds that differ in some ways, then the statistics don’t tell us very much about the actual work of translation. This must be considered from what I am calling an internal perspective. It is this that gives us what is distinctive about translation as opposed to other kinds of human activities. What does it mean to say that different languages constitute different worlds, which is to say different ways of organising perception and conception? Certainly, this proposition is by no means generally accepted (see, for instance, Pinker 1994, McWhorter 2014, and of course Davidson, already cited). To some degree, one’s attitude towards this question is very personal. Since languages are different, yet have some basic structures and a world in common, whether one chooses to focus on the specificities or the commonalities may depend on one’s own deep personal taste—as Boas (1887) said about particularistic versus universalistic geography. As my teacher Paul Friedrich put it, I feel that American English, as opposed to British English, and English of any major dialect as against Russian, and both languages as against the Tarascan language of Mexico, constitute different worlds… [Each] natural language is a different way not only of talking but of thinking and imagining and of emotional life. (Friedrich 1986, p. 16)

These lines refer implicitly to the formulation by Friedrich’s own inspiration, Edward Sapir, who wrote in 1921 (pp. 120–121): When we pass from Latin to Russian we feel that it is approximately the same horizon that bounds our view, even though the near, familiar landmarks have changed. When we come to English, we seem to notice that the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general lay of the land. And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking down upon us.

If we take this analogy seriously, then passing between languages is less like traveling from country to country than from planet to planet.

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Translators are more like astronauts than like travel writers (Leavitt 2014, p. 196). To pursue the analogy, the seriousness and risks of interplanetary travel, the enormous investment of a large part of one’s life that it requires, mean that a translator is not really comparable to a traveller. On the contrary. To translate is not to traverse or to visit, but to have dwelt in profoundly different territory: first to have survived the crossing, which, if not always dangerous, always requires the full measure of one’s resources; then to have lived under a new sky, breathed its air, learned the ways of its denizens—and to some degree have been transformed by this experience, so when you do come home you are not the same person and home no longer looks the same. This is more than Gadamer’s returning home “with new experiences.” The proper comparand for translation, then, is not travel writing,4 but something more like ethnographic fieldwork. Fieldwork within a text, dwelling in it, is what has traditionally been called philology.

4 Translation as Philology Translation depends entirely on philology, it is a thoroughly philological art. (Schlegel, “Philosophie der Philologie,” 1797 [1928], p. 47)5

I remember talking on the phone one day with Charles Malamoud, the French scholar of ancient India. I asked him what he was up to these days, and he replied, “O moi, je reste dans mon village.” His village being the Veda, Malamoud and philologists like him are justified, it seems to me, in thinking of themselves as anthropologists of a world available only through texts, practitioners of virtual ethnography (cf. Leavitt 1996).

4Claude

Lévi-Strauss begins the book of his travels, “Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs. Et voici que je m’apprête à raconter mes expeditions” (1955, p. 4). Lévi-Strauss hates tales of journeys and explorations, and in French haïr is a strong verb. 5“Das Uebersetzen gehört ganz zur ϕλ, es ist eine durchaus ϕλ Kunst.” In these manuscript notes, Schlegel is using the Greek letters phi-lambda as shorthand for “philo-logy.”

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To read a translation into one’s own language is to visit—briefly— another world. To do a translation requires not just visiting, but actually dwelling in another world to the point that you get to know it well— never well enough, but well enough to make something of it. This is ethnography: what, ideally, a social or cultural—or linguistic—anthropologist does in and with a given community. The act of translating presupposes this kind of field ethnography within a textual world, a philology. It presupposes long-term engagement with the text and its world. Philologists have provided some of the sharpest critiques of the domesticating style of translation. I’ll mention two famous cases. In 1654, the classicist Gilles Ménage is supposed to have made the following comment on the translations of Perrot d’Ablancourt: “Elles me rappellent une femme que j’ai beaucoup aimée à Tours, et qui était belle mais infidèle” (Zuber 1968, pp. 202–203). This was the source of the label les Belles Infidèles for the dominant, highly domesticating, translation practice—and theory—of the French seventeenth century. And the Hellenist Richard Bentley is said to have remarked to Alexander Pope soon after the publication of Pope’s Iliad in 1715, done in rhyming heroic couplets: “It is a pretty poem, Mister Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” For the German translation theorists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—Herder, Schlegel as in the citation above, Schleiermacher—translation is intimately bound to philology, since the essential precondition for transmitting a text is to have understood it in the first place. As Herder put it, The best translator must be the best exegete… Where is a translator who is simultaneously philosopher, poet, and philologist? He should be the morning star of a new epoch in our literature! (1767, translation in Forster 2010, p. 398)6

6“Der beste Übersetzer muß der beste Erklärer sein… Wo ist ein Übersetzer, der zugleich Philosoph, Dichter und Philolog ist: er soll der Morgenstern einer neuen Epoche in unsrer Literatur sein!” (Herder 1877 [1767], pp. 273–274).

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The word here translated “exegete” is Erklärer “illuminator,” ‘one who makes clear’—a near-synonym for the philologist. In philology, the establishment of a text can be seen to involve the same kind of problems of indeterminacy that typify translation. This parallel generally goes unremarked, since textual philology is supposed to be able to fix a single best version of a text. In the announcement for the Languages–Cultures–Worldviews conference in Lublin in 2017, one of the questions raised is: “What role is played here by subsequent translations of a given work, produced at different times (the Bible? Hamlet? Heart of Darkness?), given that the original stays the same?” But does the original stay the same? The editing of any set of versions to give a proposed edition requires precisely the kind of consequential choices that are faced in translation (as is pointed out in Sean Gurd’s [2005] idea of radical philology). A choice has always been required as to which original one starts from: there continue to be disputes over the text of the Hebrew Bible, or which lines in Hamlet are and are not authentic, and how to read them. Even in the case of a published novel such as Heart of Darkness, Conrad apparently took years to work through his experiences and produce the final text. When a modern author produces multiple drafts and goes through and changes them to settle on a final version, this is philology performed on his or her own multiple texts. A text, in this view, would be better understood as a cloud of possibilities—something that is unavoidable in the case of oral texts.

5 The Philology and Translation of Oral Texts, with an Example The degree of personal implication, and the contradictions that this can involve, are particularly acute in the case of texts from oral traditions. In 1905, addressing a joint meeting of the American Anthropological Association and the American Philological Society, Franz Boas affirmed the centrality of language and text in work with peoples without writing:

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According to the canons of philological research, would not the investigator who is not able to read the classics be barred from the number of serious students? […] Still, this is the position which has confronted anthropology up to the present time. There are very few students who have […] deemed it worth while to record the customs and beliefs and the traditions of the people in their own words… I think it is obvious that in this respect anthropologists have everything to learn from you [philologists]… The time must come when we must demand […] from the serious student the same degree of philological accuracy which has become the standard in your sciences. (Boas 1906, p. 642)

This is the kind of vision that Dell Hymes carried forward under the name of “anthropological philology” (Kroskrity and Webster 2015). What many linguistic anthropologists and most folklorists do is seek to transform an oral or multimedia performance in one language into a written text in another. This requires passing through a number of stages. Much of what I am about to say will seem, and may be, selfevident. But it is sometimes worth making the self-evident explicit. The preliminary stage is preparation. Why do you want to record this particular tradition? What do you know about it? Often there is a new language to learn, a civilisation to get to know, as well as theories and methods to try and master. This can involve a commitment of years; in fact, it usually means a complete orientation for one’s life. And we must ask: Why make this effort? In our world, one rarely undertakes this kind of work as a direct means of sustenance. Unlike most kinds of professional translation, you can’t make a living at it without some kind of academic or research position, and usually without some kind of external funding. As I said, all of this is preparatory. The first stage of the real work is to be there: what is often called participant observation, but which may as often be observant participation. It is necessary to interact with people, to share their life to some degree, to work out together why they should allow you to be there at all. We can call this ethnography. This stage includes the actual recording—once upon a time done only by pen, then by tape recorder or other audio device, now often by video—of one or more performances, that is, actualisations of texts. The specific

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circumstances, including the contribution or distortion due to the presence of the researcher, will of course affect the performance itself. And depending on the tradition, the very idea of what a text is can vary: in some cases (e.g., Inuit and Somali poetry), the poet creates and memorises a text that is fixed word-for-word; in others (e.g., Slavic, Turkic, South Asian, and probably ancient Greek heroic epic), every performance is a new recreation putting together a mass of fixed formulaic elements (Lord 1960; on the diversity of the oral, see Finnegan 1977). In the latter case, does Hymes’ anthropological philologist give all the varying performances he or she has access to? Or try to put together a synoptic version, as Lönnröt did in nineteenth-century Finland to create the Kalevala? In the field, you are dealing with real people, singers or storytellers, and in some cases the engagement is long term and intense. Bo Almqvist, the great folklorist of Ireland, said that the hardest part of his work was that his “informants,” the storytellers and singers, friends with whom he had worked for many years, were usually old people and so were gradually dying off; and he missed them (Almqvist, personal communication). In the case I am using as an example here, I had studied Hindi, Sanskrit, and Nepali in order to work on and in Kumaoni, a regional language that is not taught in any school or institution—including in Kumaon itself, a region of the Central Himalayas in northern India, now part of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, where the medium of instruction is strictly Hindi. I was in the region for about six months before finding what seemed to be a suitable location for recording. People were remarkably welcoming, and I fairly quickly found myself and my cassette recorder participating—as part of the audience—in rituals of narration and spirit possession that took much of the night. I got to know three singers, of whom I found one, Kamal Rām Ārya, particularly clear and accommodating, in the sense that he was willing to talk about his performance. Although he was not generally considered the best performer in the area, he’s the one I worked with the most. The example given here will be based on a recording of some verses he chanted on the night of April 1–2, 1982.

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Once there is a recording, the usual next step is transcription. Given our historical dependence on writing, the audio, and perhaps aspects of the video and the event as it was lived, will be inscribed in writing. Here there are many choices to make, in some cases as simple and potentially consequential as the choice of alphabet: in the case of many oral traditions, there are still disputes about the mode of writing to be adopted, a choice that often defines one dialect as standard or that presupposes the inclusion of a local tradition in one or another Great Tradition. Do we transcribe in Latin or Cyrillic? In Devanagari, Arabo-Persian, or some version of Latin? Do we use a rich phonetic system, noting much of what may not be semantically pertinent, or a phonological system, based on a previously established theory of the structure of the language, richer in understanding but potentially leaving out expressive features? This choice was a bone of contention between Boas and Sapir for many years. Transcription, the transformation of sound to writing, is a hideously long, fussy, and difficult task. It often—no, it always involves painful philological choices (cf. Duranti 1997, pp. 122–161). I started transcribing using the Devanagari alphabet, the one used for Hindi, for Kumaoni’s sister-language Nepali, and for the small amount of publishing that actually happens in Kumaoni—mostly verse by regional poets who have made the choice to write original work in a language that many speak, but few people read. It was also the only alphabet that people around me would recognise as fairly normal. After a little while a collaborator, Sri Indar Singh Negi, started to work with me, and he took over the bulk of the transcription work, as in the present example. We would sit down together to go over his transcriptions, make sure Indar Singh and I understood as much as we could, and annotate them, sometimes with the help of the singer himself. Every Kumaoni performance of the “same” narrative is unique; each singer has his own way of doing it (the singers are usually men), and the rendition changes from one performance to the next. Being utterly without the ambition to be a Kumaoni Lönnröt—not even being a Kumaoni—my goal was, and is, simply to allow access to a performance, then perhaps another performance, then perhaps another one, and to generalise on the basis of these and of performances recorded by others.

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Given that one of my ultimate audiences would be Western or trained in a Western mode, in subsequent work I retranscribed these texts in Latin letters, which also allowed the notation of some Kumaoni distinctions that are not usually rendered in Devanagari. Once there is a text in hand it is time for philology proper, that is, analysis, interpretation, contextualisation, usually requiring some preliminary translations. The goal here is to make explicit, as far as possible, the implications of the text. This is something any translator has to go through: to be able to translate you have to be able to read, or, in this case, to listen. The discussions that have taken place in the field of ethnopoetics since the 1960s have largely been debates about the nature of translation and the presentation on a page of texts that first re-echoed in sound. One of the great contributions of North American ethnopoetics has been a concern with presentational form, which depends on an effort to understand the performative characteristics of the original. Some important points in this history are Hymes’ (1981) discovery of lines and verses in what had been presented as blocks of prose; Tedlock’s (1983) focus on the actual voice of the taleteller, to reproduce his phrasing in a transcription; and, more recently, Robert Moore’s (2015) distinguishing levels of voicing: the teller speaking in her own voice to her interlocutor, the teller as a teller of a tale, the voices of characters within the tale (on this history, see Leavitt 2010; Webster 2015). In the case of the verses presented here, a great deal of the structuring was already clear in the performance itself. The singer, who is also a drummer, chants a number of phrases grouped together, divided one from the other by a series of drumbeats. This is not how all such performances are structured, but it is the case for how this singer performs his Twilight song. The performance has been transcribed and the next stage in the process is that of translation into an understandable text in the target language, seeking to convey the referential meaning of the source text. Here, of course, is where the great debates on domesticating or foreignising translation come in. Again, for whom am I translating? Given the limits of this chapter, I will not be attempting any serious formal experimentation—although such experimentation is certainly to be encouraged.

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Here is an attempt at a translation of the referential content—but for it to make sense, the reader needs to know that this is part of the opening section of a ritual of divine embodiment, inviting a god or gods to come into the body of a medium to dance, something the gods love to do, and be consulted. This series of verses (should they be called verses?) tells what is happening in the house where the ritual is taking place, matokuṛi, the “mother’s little house”: purification, the laying-out of the blanket on which the medium (i.e., the god) will sit, the invocation of the god Saim, Mother’s Brother (māmū ) of all beings, creator of this mortal sphere, the special patron of this set of rituals. (This is a revised translation of material in Leavitt 1985, pp. 401–403.) jhulani sandhyā mẽ kyā kām hai rī̃, isvar mero bābā, paṛani sandhyā mẽ, isvar mero bābā. sandhyā kā̃ jhuli ge, isvar mero bābā? sandhyā jhuli ge, isvar mero bābā, matokuṛi mẽ, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. ‘In the twilight that comes swinging what works are going on, Lord my father, in the twilight that comes falling, Lord my father? Where has twilight swung, Lord my father? Twilight has swung, Lord my father, to the mother’s little house, Lord my father, at twilight time.’

The characterisation of twilight as swinging and falling is found in this twilight-song section of virtually all “wakings” (jāgar ), as this ceremony is called. ki matokuṛi mẽ kyā kām hai rī̃, isvar mero bābā? suci-nici hai rai, isvar mero bābā, māmū ki ārati hai rai, isvar mero bābā. kapās ki baṭṭi jal rai, isvar mero bābā, sunasa diyeri jal rai, isvar mero bābā, tilõ ko tēl jal rau, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. īhō, devtāō, tumāro nām lhinū, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. ‘In the mother’s little house what works are going on, Lord my father? Sprinkling and purifying are going on, Lord my father, Māmū’s worship is going on, Lord my father.

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The cotton wick is burning, Lord my father, the golden lamp is burning, Lord my father, sesame oil is burning, Lord my father, at twilight time. Oh gods, we take your name, Lord my father, at twilight time.’

Since these rituals take place at night, we have an evocation of the prepared front room, the public room, of a traditional Central Himalayan house. It has been sprinkled with cow urine, a purifying substance; small clay oil lamps are glowing in the dark. jhulani sandhyā mẽ kyā kām hai rī̃, isvar mero bābā? lipo-thāpo hai ro, isvar mero bābā, suci-nici hai rai, isvar mero bābā, bichai ratan jo cha dharti chai ge, isvar mero bābā, ucai ratan muṭhi mẽ ai ge, isvar mero bābā. ki soban dulaĩci mẽ kyā kām hai rī̃, isvar mero bābā? māmū ko bāso cha, isvar mero bābā. māmū kaun māmū chī, isvar mero bābā? māmū naraṅkār chī, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. ‘In the twilight that comes swinging what works are going on, Lord my father? Cleaning and smearing are going on, Lord my father, sprinkling and purifying are going on, Lord my father. Spread out, the jewel-blanket covers the earth, Lord my father, folded up the jewel-blanket fits in a fist, Lord my father. On the lovely palanquin what works are going on, Lord my father? That is Māmū’s throne, Lord my father. Which Māmū is Māmū, Lord my father? Māmū is the Formless, Lord my father, at twilight time.’

The medium sits on a folded blanket, literally the “jewel” (ratan ), facing the singer. It is called a palanquin, the proper vehicle for kings and gods—and which must be carried by the assembled people. ki māmū kā kyā kām hai rī̃, isvar mero bābā, soban dulaĩci mẽ, isvar mero bābā? soban kamal ko phūl dhari rau, isvar mero bābā. kamal ko phūl mẽ jo chī māmū ko bāso chī, isvar mero bābā.

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ki māmū kā jo chī āsan lāg rī̃, isvar mero bābā, trijugi dhuṇi jo cha jāgṛt hai rai, isvar mero bābā, māmū ki ārati hai rai, isvar mero bābā, rāidās, biṇidās ki naumat lāgi rai, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. ‘What works of Māmū are going on, Lord my father, on the lovely palanquin, Lord my father? They have put down lovely lotus flowers, Lord my father, in the lotus flower is Māmū’s dwelling, Lord my father. They have spread Māmū’s throne, Lord my father, the three-age fire is being awakened, Lord my father, Māmū’s worship is going on, Lord my father, praise of Rāidās and Biṇidās is going on, Lord my father, at twilight time.’

These verses are a naming, description, eulogy of Mother’s Brother, the special patron of these rituals. In fact, flowers have been thrown onto the jewel-blanket. The fire is the dhūnī, the ascetic’s portable fire, which is both carried around and absolutely permanent, since it has burned through the three ages of the world. Rāidās and Biṇidās are names for the singer’s own predecessors in a legendary line of gurus. ki kapās ki baṭṭi jal rai, suṇa ki diyeri jal rai, isvar mero bābā, māmū ki ārati hai rai, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ, isvar mero bābā, māmū kā dhyān lāg rī̃, isvar mero bābā, māmū kā bāra baras kā gyān lāg rī̃. ki māmū jo chī, nar kā māmū, narāyaṇ kā māmū, bhūt kā māmū, kabhut kā māmū, taintīs kror devtõ kā māmū chī, isvar mero bābā. māmū kā jo chī āsan lāg rī̃, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. ki māmū jo chī, isvar mero bābā, daiṇi jāṅh mẽ soban harāi cha, baī̃ jāṅh mẽ kimu kā nal chī̃, isvar mero bābā. dāṛi mẽ gauntāi kā ghol chī̃, isvar mero bābā, netrõ mẽ sirmāli kā pau chī̃, isvar mero bābā. ‘The cotton wick is burning, the golden lamp is burning, Lord my father, Māmū’s worship is going on, Lord my father, at twilight time, Lord my father, Māmū’s meditation has begun, Lord my father, Māmū’s twelveyear wisdom has begun.

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Māmū who is men’s Māmū, gods’ Māmū, ghosts’ Māmū, goblins’ Māmū, three hundred and thirty million gods’ Māmū, Lord my father, that Māmū’s throne has been spread, Lord my father, at twilight time. Māmū, Lord my father, on his right thigh lovely greenery is growing, on his left thigh mulberry-branches are growing, Lord my father, in his beard are swallows’ nests, Lord my father, in his eyes are privet plants, Lord my father.’

Mother’s Brother is a meditating god, lost to the world to the point that plants grow up over him and birds build nests in his beard. The word dhyān “meditation” also denotes the state of the medium, whose mind is focused, to the exclusion of all else, on the god who is coming into his or her body during this section of the ritual. ki satmukhi saṅkh baj rai, urdhāmukhi nād baj rai, isvar mero bābā, rāidās, biṇidās ki naumat lag rai, isvar mero bābā, sandhyā kā bahat mẽ. īhō, devtāō, tumāro nām lhinū, isvar mero bābā, jhulani sandhyā mẽ, paṛani sandhyā mẽ ‘The truth-faced conch is sounding, the upward-faced bell is sounding, Lord my father, praise of Rāidās, Biṇidās is going on, Lord my father, at twilight time. Oh gods, we take your name, Lord my father, in the twilight that comes swinging, in the twilight that comes falling.’

This last verse summarises the whole previous section. What are some of the insufficiencies in this attempt at a translation? There are far too many to list, but here are a few. The sounds, the specific musicality of the phonetics, cannot be conveyed in another language; and more specifically, the many alliterations and internal rhymes the poet is using (e.g., dhyān/gyān “meditating/ knowing”) must be eliminated or changed. Many of the words do not have exact translation equivalents. John Locke had already pointed to the non-exact-overlap of meanings of words in different languages (1700 [1975], pp. 432–433), and the argument was extended by Wilhelm von Humboldt, particularly in the case of poetic language, in which all the nuances potentially count. In the preface to his 1816 translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Humboldt

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writes, “Such a poem is […] untranslatable […] if we disregard expressions that designate bodily objects, no word of one language is fully the same as one in another language” (Humboldt 1909 [1816], p. 129).7 Some of the vocabulary here, such as the word ārati, will be familiar to readers who are Hindu or know about Hinduism, but I have simply translated it “worship.” One characteristic of Kumaoni is the use of the feminine ending –i as a diminutive. The translation, then, requires a heavy, clumsy specification that this is a little house, kuṛi (matokuṛi ), rather than a large house or fortress, koṭ. Another trait of Kumaoni, shared by other modern Indo-Aryan languages (Masica 1991, p. 329), is the use of compound verbs. In this case two verbs appear together: the final one carries the endings with the grammatical information about person, number, time, while the main meaning is carried by the first verb, in a “suspended” construct form. Here there is much use of a construct form followed by a finite form of the verb “to go,” which indicates completed action: sandhyā jhuli ge “twilight has swung-gone (i.e., swung completely)”; and those of a verb meaning something like “to remain” to mark incompletion: saṅkh baj rai “conch blow-remaining (continuing to blow).” Overall, the syntactic structure of normal sentences in this, as in other South Asian languages, is verb-final, which means phrasing that is often the reverse of that in English. The defining element of the construction, called the head by linguists, always comes at the end: there are postpositions rather than prepositions (sandhyā mẽ ‘in the twilight’), a dependent clause before the element it modifies, the verb at the end, repetitively anchoring each clause. Overall, the listener learns all the qualities of something before he or she knows what’s being talked about, and knows all the participants before finding out what they’re doing. The meaning of the sentence remains suspended until the final

7“Ein solches Gedicht ist… unübersetzbar… so wie man von den Ausdrücken absieht, die bloss körperliche Gegenstände bezeichnen, kein Wort einer Sprache volkommen einem in einer andren Sprache gleich ist.” But Humboldt was probably wrong to exclude terms for body parts from this argument. They, too, are not congruent across languages. See now the videos on Translating Hearts & Parts (2019) at the Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project website.

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verb gives the whole thing a retroactive meaning. South Asian poetic traditions exploit these features to create all kinds of suspense and ultimate satisfaction. The exuberances, the additions, are, of course, the other side of the deficiencies. Evidently, Kumaoni sound turns into English sound. Since South Asian languages do not use the definite article, one constantly has to choose between a and the. English words, with their own semantic penumbras, replace the Kumaoni words with theirs. A choice has to be made between “female house” and “little house,” or just “house,” since the gender or size of the house is almost incidental here. And, as mentioned, the syntax has to be altered drastically: tumāro nām lhinū, element for element your name take-we, becomes “we take your name.” And one exuberance is simple, but embarrassing. The most direct translation of jhūlani sandhyā mẽ is “in the swinging twilight.” But given the use of swinging in English during the last sixty years or so, this suggests a wild party rather than the movement of light over a landscape. So I have domesticated it, since it would be domesticated in any case, but probably wrongly. The point of this example is to give a modest illustration of the enormity of the choices that have to be made at every step of the passage from voice to recording to transcription to translation, all drawing on ethnographic and philological work. Many other choices could have been made, in the cutting-up of the transcription, the organisation of syntax, the selection of vocabulary for meaning and sound … one could produce volumes of alternative presentations and interpretations simply of these verses (Hofstadter 1997). And all of these volumes are potentially there, present, in the voice of the bard, itself a winnowing-down of the possibilities offered by his tradition. Particularly at the stage of translation proper, not only must this multitude of possibilities be cut down, but, to have a usable final product, the obligatory patterns of the target language must be imposed. Deficiencies and exuberances. Given this multiplicity of possibilities in the source text (or textual cloud), the requirement that some basic norms of the target language must be respected, and the fact that every level of linguistic structure is potentially activated in poetic language (Jakobson 1960), I’m not convinced that one can translate a poetic utterance in a way that does

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not transform it fundamentally. This situation is why some (Appiah 2012 [1993]; Leavitt 2005) have proposed something we call “thick translation,” or why the linguist A. L. Becker (1995) called for going “beyond translation”: instead of replacing a text in one language from one tradition with a text in another language meant to be easily metabolised by a participant in the second tradition, is it possible to figure out mechanisms to give the reader at least a taste of how the original feels, its rhythms of sound and idea, its specific choreography? The reader— or listener—would have to work, but can we help her or him in this work?

6 Philology as Love I have argued that translation presupposes, indeed embodies, a practical philology, a willingness to “read slowly” as Nietzsche says: It is not in vain that one has been a philologist […] a teacher of slow reading… For philology is that honorable art that requires one thing above all from those who honor it—to step to one side, to leave oneself time, to be still, to be slow—a goldsmith’s art and knowledge of the word, which has to do fine and foreseeing work, and attains nothing if it does not attain it lento… Philology […] teaches how to read well, that is, slowly, deeply, looking before and behind, with afterthoughts, with doors open, with delicate fingers and eyes. (Nietzsche 1887, pp. x–xi; my translation)8

Insofar as it is philology, then, translation presumes a dwelling in a text, an extended engagement with it. The very word philology, which

8“Man

ist nicht umsonst Philologe gewesen […], ein Lehrer des langsamen Lesens… Philologie nämlich ist jene ehrwürdige Kunst, welche von ihrem Verehrer vor Allem Eins heischt, bei Seite gehn, sich Zeit lassen, still werden, langsam werden –, als eine Goldschmiedekunst und -kennerschaft des Wortes, die lauter feine vorsichtige Arbeit abzuthun hat und Nichts erreicht, wenn sie es nicht lento erreicht […] sie lehrt gut lesen, das heisst langsam, tief, rück- und vorsichtig, mit Hintergedanken, mit offen gelassenen Thüren, mit zarten Fingern und Augen lesen…”

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combines the Greek words for love and for words, belongs to the group of Greek determinative compounds in which the first element is modified by the second: philology is a kind of love, the love of words, as philosophy is love of wisdom, philanthropy that of human beings, philharmony that of concordant sound. It is emphatically not of the series in which the final term –logy means words in the sense of doctrine or discipline or science, as in anthropology, astrology, psychology, biology… If it were part of this second group, it would mean the science of love, an erotics, perhaps a Western Kama Sutra. But this remains an unrealised possibility. As J. R. R. Tolkien put it in a lecture on his delight in the Welsh language: “[N]o language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself ” (Tolkien 1983 [1955], p. 189). I teach at a French-language university, so when choosing readings for students I try to find a French-language text or a French translation. This is how I came to read the French translation of this passage, and to discover a telling replacement: It would appear that to say you study a language for love, for which the closest translation equivalent would be pour l’amour, is just too hot for contemporary French academic style. The last part of this phrase was translated “pour elle-même, pour le ­plaisir  ” (Tolkien 2006 [1955], p. 234, my italics). As to the pleasure: In a letter from 1803, Wilhelm von Humboldt writes that “the high pleasure [der hohe Genuss ] of entering with each new language into a new system of thinking and feeling [Gedanken- und Empfindungssystem ] attracts me endlessly [ziehen mich unendlich an ]” (cited in Swiggers 1985, p. 729). Drawn to one or another language by elective affinity for its specific difference, the philologist will dwell in this new territory for a long time, and translation is one possible fruit of this extended, slow experience.

7 Translation as Love In these respects, translation itself can be compared to love. As Robert Frost says of poetry, “The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love” (1939, p. vi).

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Translation, as we saw earlier, necessarily involves power relations; but power relations are found in every human action, and certainly are not the defining trait of translation. Love, too, can be shown to involve power differentials, differences in real and emotional resources, aggression, exploitation, sometimes conquest, sometimes destruction. But even at its worst, we would not call it love if it did not involve intense engagement, the kind of engagement that is presupposed and carried out in the actual work of translation. For his own translations from oral sources, although already-­ published ones, Herder asked the translator to give us a whole, faithful natural history of peoples in their own monuments with some completeness! […] not speaking oneself, but letting [them] speak: not always asking what this is good for, but, good or not good, presenting it: not beautifying: not trimming and distorting it with the hood of religion or of classical taste; but giving it as it is; yet with faithfulness, pleasure [Lust ], and love. (Herder 1877 [1774], p. 83; translation modified, based on Forster 2010, p. 407)9

In his own hermeneutic work and his discussion of translation, Gadamer’s ultimate hermeneutic goal is of a fusion of horizons between languages, as it is between individuals (2004 [1960], p. 389). Herder, on the other hand, like Humboldt in his letter, is not talking about a fusion, but about a glad recognition of difference, the joy of crossing into a new place. The goal is not some kind of amalgamation, but first a recognition of the reality of different worlds, then the willingness to put the work into learning how to move among them—as is indeed suggested by the words inter-pretation “placing between,” and trans-lation “carrying across ” (Forster 1998, p. 171, n. 21). As to wisdom: The kind of long-term devotion represented by philology and, it seems to me, a precondition for translation, is summed 9“…daß man uns ganze, treue Naturgeschichte der Völker, in eignen Denkmalen mit einiger Vollständigkeit gebe![…] nicht selbst redete, sondern reden ließe: nicht immer früge, wozu das gut wäre sondern gut oder nicht gut es darlegte: nicht verschönte: nicht mit der Kappe der Religion oder des classischen Geschmacks verbrämte und verunstaltete; sondern gebe, wie es ist; aber mit Treue, Lust und Liebe.”

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up by the narrator Marlow in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with reference to his boat. There was a lot wrong with this boat, “but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her.” Acknowledgements   I am grateful to Adam Głaz and the other organisers of the Languages-Cultures-Worldviews workshop at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland, November 2017, for the opportunity to present a first version of this text. Special thanks to Marko Pajevič and James William Underhill, and to an anonymous reader, for very helpful comments. Research for this paper and participation in the workshop were made possible by a joint grant from the Université de Montréal and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2012 [1993]. Thick Translation. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Laurence Venuti, 3rd ed., 331–343. London: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan. 2014. Translation Studies, 4th ed. London: Routledge. Becker, A.L. 1995. Beyond Translation: Essays Toward a Modern Philology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bellos, David. 2011. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. London: Penguin. Blumczynski, Piotr, and John Gillespie. 2016. Introduction. In Translating Values: Evaluative Concepts in Translation, ed. Piotr Blumczynski and John Gillespie, 1–9. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Boas, Franz. 1887. The Study of Geography. Science, n.s., 9: 137–141. Boas, Franz. 1906. Some Philological Aspects of Anthropological Research. Science 23: 641–645. Boroditsky, Lera, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips. 2003. Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought, ed. Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow, 61–79. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bynon, Theodora. 1966. Leo Weisgerber’s Four Stages in Linguistic Analysis. Man, n.s., 1: 468–483. Davidson, Donald. 1973. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47: 5–20.

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Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finnegan, Ruth. 1977. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forster, Michael N. 1998. On the Very Idea of Denying the Existence of Radically Different Conceptual Schemes. Inquiry 41: 133–185. Forster, Michael N. 2010. After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1986. The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1989. Language, Ideology, and Political Economy. American Anthropologist 91: 295–312. Frost, Robert. 1939. The Figure a Poem Makes. In Robert Frost, Collected Poems. New York: Henry Holt. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004 [1960]. Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum. Gurd, Sean Alexander. 2005. Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1877 [1767]. Über die neuere deutsche Literatur. Zwote Sammlung. In J.G. Herder, Sämmtliche Werke I, 241–356. Berlin: Weidmann. Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1997. Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. New York: Basic Books. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1909 [1816]. Einleitung zu Agamemnon. In W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften VIII, 119–147. Berlin: B. Behr. Hymes, Dell. 1981. “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In On Translation, ed. Reuben Brower, 232–238. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language, ed. Thomas E. Sebeok, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kroskrity, Paul V., and Anthony K. Webster (eds.). 2015. The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Language, Narrative Inequality, and Voice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Leavitt, John. 1985. The Language of the Gods: Discourse and Experience in a Central Himalayan Ritual. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, the University of Chicago. Leavitt, John. 1996. Philology, Anthropology, and the Language of the Gods. American Anthropologist 98: 647–649.

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Leavitt, John. 2005. Thick Translation: Three Soundings. In Language, Culture, and the Individual: Essays in Honor of Paul Friedrich, ed. Catherine O’Neil, Mary Scoggin, and Kevin Tuite, 79–108. Munich: LINCOM. Leavitt, John. 2010. L’ethnopoétique: moments dans l’histoire d’une discipline. In La voix actée. Vers une nouvelle ethnopoétique, ed. Claude Calame, Florence Dupont et al., 125–142. Paris: Klimé. Leavitt, John. 2014. Words and Worlds: Ethnography and Translation Theory. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (2): 193–220. Lefevere, André (ed.). 1992. Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. Tristes tropiques. Paris: Plon. Locke, John. 1975 [1700]. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lord, Albert Bates. 1960. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lowell, Robert. 1961. Imitations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. Macura, Vladimír. 1990. Culture as Translation. In Translation, History and Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 64–70. London: Pinter. Masica, Colin P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McWhorter, John. 2014. The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, Robert. 2015. Reinventing Ethnopoetics. In The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Language, Narrative Inequality, and Voice, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity and Anthony K. Webster, 11–36. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nida, Eugene A., and Charles R. Taber. 1969. The Theory and Practice of Translation: With Special Reference to Bible Translating. Leiden: Brill. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1887. Morgenröthe. Leipzig: E.W. Fritzsch. Ortega y Gasset, José. 2000 [1937]. The Misery and Splendor of Translation, trans. Elizabeth Gamble Miller. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Laurence Venuti, 49–63. London: Routledge. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow. Plourde, Éric. 2003. Le Kalevala par la traduction. Cuadernos de Tradução 11: 151–178. Rosenzweig, Franz. 1963 [1926]. Die Schrift und Luther. In Das Problem des Übersetzens, ed. Joachim Störig, 194–222. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgesellschaft.

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Rosenzweig, Franz. 1994 [1926]. Scripture and Luther, trans. Laurence Rosenwald and Everett Fox. In Scripture and Translation, ed. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 47–69. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Schlegel, Friedrich von. 1928 [1797]. Friedrich Schlegels “Philosophie der Philologie” mit einer Einleitung herausgegeben von Josef Körner. Logos 17: 1–72. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 2012 [1813]. On the Different Methods of Translating, trans. Susan Bernofsky. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Laurence Venuti, 3rd ed., 43–63. London: Routledge. Swiggers, Pierre. 1985. Catégories grammaticales et catégories culturelles dans la philosophie du langage de Humboldt: les implications de la “forme grammaticale”. Zeitschrift Für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft Und Kommunikationsforschung 38: 729–736. Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Tolkien, J.R.R. 1983 [1955]. English and Welsh. In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, J.R.R. Tolkien, 162–197. London: Allen & Unwin. Tolkien, J.R.R. 2006 [1955]. L’anglais et le gallois. In Les monstres et les critiques et autres essais, J.R.R. Tolkien, 203–245. Trans. Christine Lafferière. Paris: Christian Bourgois. Translating Hearts & Parts. 2019. Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project, Université de Normandie, Rouen, ed. James W. Underhill. https://webtv.univ-rouen. fr/channels/#2019-translating-hearts-parts. Accessed 3 Apr 2019. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Webster, Anthony K. 2015. Cultural Poetics (Ethnopoetics). Oxford Handbooks Online. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199935345.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935345-e-34. Accessed 22 Mar 2019. Zuber, Roger. 1968. Les “Belles Infidèles” et la formation du goût classique. Paris: Armand Colin.

5 Bourdieu’s Distinction: (Translating) Language as a Means of Expressing Worldviews Nigel Armstrong

1 Introduction We present the theme of this chapter partly from the viewpoint of some of the concepts used in Bourdieu’s well-known work, La Distinction (in English: Bourdieu 1984), as well as elsewhere in his copious writings. The rationale for this approach stems not from any particular adherence (or aversion) to his work, but rather that these concepts constitute an intellectual component of what one might call, at the risk of some vagueness, the current intellectual climate, or at least one element of it, not only in the academy but in a wider context, as discussed below. Bourdieu’s ideas continue to inspire a copious flow of work, and concepts like social and cultural capital, if not coined by him, have been promoted by his followers and entered non-specialist language. Bourdieu was of course inspired by Marx, some of whose ideas, like

N. Armstrong (*)  University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_5

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Freud’s, continue to inspire work outside their original area of application. The influence of Freud and Marx within and without the academy has been incalculable, and the parallel between them is not a fanciful one. We can suggest that just as Freud’s work was responsible for bringing into the mainstream in a theorised form propositions about the influence of the unconscious mind, propositions which had been informally expressed well before him, so Marx’s ideas about class conflict and class consciousness contributed greatly to shaping and sharpening conceptions of what already existed. In particular, Marx’s idea of class conflict as a zero-sum game which one class will inevitably win has been falsified by the Soviet enterprise, and every other, but the concept and its derivatives, and the uncompromising state of mind that goes with it, continue to hold sway in some sections of society, and the notion has been extended in various directions, to include gender relations, for instance. Our aim is to explore some of the ways in which variable language runs parallel with this view, or indeed any other. We wish then to explore here Bourdieu’s notion of distinction in some of its various, very rich contemporary implications as it applies to variable language. Of continuing interest is the reflexive effect that the propagation of the doctrine and its derivatives has exerted on “distinction” in general—the social and political analysis that Marx set out has contributed to the erosion, or at least nuancing, of the distinctions that were of interest to Bourdieu. But a further rich vein of enquiry is provided by Bourdieu’s very breadth. This led him to formulate propositions on distinction in several cultural areas that repay more detailed consideration. Further, the notions of “hexis,” “embodiment” and “habitus” have implications for linguistics that amply repay study. As was stated above, Marx said that one’s socioeconomic status, or relation to the means of production (expressed in conflictual terms), has an all-pervading and mostly unconscious influence on most if not all aspects of one’s social behaviour, taking “social” in the broadest possible acceptation. Again, this creates a very rewarding field of study, since it encompasses all manifestations of culture. Indeed, Bourdieu’s output is striking as much in its range and multidisciplinary nature as in its sheer volume: language, economics, photography, television, education and the sociology of Algeria, as well as several volumes setting out his theories of society and sociology.

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2 Variation in Language Generally One implication of Bourdieu’s deploring of rigid boundaries between academic disciplines is an assumption that language and other types of social behaviour can be conceptualised in similar ways, a proposition we now consider, as it is central to our analysis. A quotation from Bourdieu may serve to throw the problem into relief: The paradox of the imposition of legitimacy is that it is impossible ever to determine whether the dominant feature appears as distinguished or noble because it is dominant – i.e. because it has the privilege of defining, by its very existence, what is noble or distinguished as being exactly what itself is, a privilege which is expressed precisely in its self-assurance – or whether it is only because it is dominant that it appears as endowed with these qualities and uniquely qualified to define them. It is no accident that, to designate the legitimate manners or taste, ordinary language is content to say “manners” or “taste”, “in the absolute sense”, as the grammarians say. The properties attached to the dominant – Paris or Oxford “accents”, bourgeois “distinction”, etc. – have the power to discourage the intention of discerning what they are “in reality”, in and for themselves, and the distinctive value they derive from their unconscious reference to their class distribution. (Bourdieu 1984, p. 92)

We can remark firstly that Bourdieu is perfectly correct to say that the socio-economically dominant mode can often be used as what linguists call the “hyperonym,” or general term that embraces the hyponyms or sub-types (as “tree” subsumes “elm,” “fir,” etc.). In language considered as a cultural phenomenon, the standard is taken by many if not most speakers to be the language variety that subsumes all the others. This is reflected in the term language, opposed to and inclusive of varieties or dialects, and there is a parallel here with the various terms used to refer to culture—the bare term culture remains available to denote “high” culture, while marked terms like popular culture are needed for reference to the hyponyms in the set. From this viewpoint the phrase standard dialect is an oxymoron, although some linguists do use it, seemingly with ideological intent (cf. Trudgill passim). Joseph (1987, p. 2) calls this

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linguistic situation “synecdochic,” in reference to the common rhetorical trope whereby the part stands for the whole (the same old faces = people). As can be seen in the quotation, Bourdieu uses the metaphor of “legitimacy” to refer to this state of affairs, as he often does. This mirrors his Marxian point of view, according to which dominant modes of behaviour are accorded official or even moral status by virtue of being enshrined in law, whether literally or figuratively: a reflex of the “base– superstructure” concept often found in theorising of this kind. The example commonly cited is a system of legislation, doubtless conceived by its authors as drafted in a spirit of equity but open to the charge of merely codifying the advantages of the dominant or possessing class. No deep reflection is needed to show that while certain laws may be admirably drafted, access to their provision is beyond all but the most comfortably off. But this situation has arisen from a nexus of factors of such complexity as to defy any explanation that refers to “false consciousness,” unless one assumes some form of mass hypnosis that afflicts all but the very few. The parallel with a “legitimate” language (standard is the most commonly used term) is not remote, and despite the strictures just expressed, just as a legal system quite literally legitimises ongoing changes, Bourdieu’s term does capture accurately the conceptualisation of standard languages as being subject to continuing, ­multi-dimensional pressures, as well as exerting them, and equally the legitimate and dynamically legitimating properties of these language varieties. These properties are capable of inciting their speakers to engage in a continual process of assimilating arbitrary linguistic forms, in the interests of conferring on these forms a legitimacy that assures the capacity to maintain social distinctions. This is in contrast to the stasis implied by the term standard. To return to the discussion of the dominant type of behaviour assumed as the universal, and expressed in the “absolute sense,” examples can easily be multiplied: to say of someone that he “has no manners,” an absurd statement if taken literally, implies a generally accepted standard of behaviour which may indeed derive from some version of an upper-class stereotype. A similar observation can be made of the commendation applied to someone who “knows how to behave,” or the injunction laid upon to a child to “behave (yourself ).” The problem

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here, as so often, is one of multiple interpretation, as many cases of this type can be referred to the “Pollyanna Principle” (Leech 1983, pp. 147–148), developed in linguistic pragmatics to explain the supposed predominance of favourable over unfavourable lexical items across languages generally. The principle derives from the “Pollyanna Hypothesis” formulated by the psychologists Boucher and Osgood (1969). The hypothesis states that a tendency to regard the good as the “unmarked” or normal state of affairs is a basic and universal human characteristic. This is reflected in the tendency to attenuate the negative, as in: it was a bit boring, not it was a bit interesting. Similarly, the positive appears to be the default interpretation of any given utterance; thus for instance: I was [sc. favourably ] impressed. Other evidence (Clark and Clark 1977, pp. 538–539) relates to the unmarked character of positive terms, such that an E+ term [evaluatively positive] can be negated through the addition of a prefix to produce the longer, marked term, as in happy ~ unhappy, while the negation of the E– term sad using the same prefix gives an odd result: ?unsad. If the Pollyanna Principle is correct, this is because the E– term is itself marked. Similarly, no language seems to express the notion of “good” negatively, by as it was using the term unbad, while many languages have a good ~ ungood polarity. Caution is therefore needed when applying Bourdieu’s generalisation: to speak of someone who “has culture” or “is cultured” does indeed refer to the dominant or “high” culture, but the hyperonymic principle does not apply in every relevant case. A further conclusion to be drawn seems to be that, pace Bourdieu’s insistence on the need to erode boundaries between disciplines, the effort to do so presupposes non-superficial acquaintance with the essential concepts of the specialisms in question. Turning again to the difficulties attending the approach sketched above, that which generalises across the various forms of social or cultural behaviour, we may remark firstly that “culture” has a broad and twofold scope. On the one hand, it splits fairly neatly into two senses: the anthropological, which refers to the totality of practices that distinguish a community, large or small; and the narrower sense of artistic enterprise. Within the former definition, broad culture pervades language, for example, but also of course other types of social behaviour, in ways that reflect several senses of the term. Within the latter, culture

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ranges from high to low. On the other hand a student of the social sciences, looking at a situation where variation and possible change occur, would wish to distinguish between the two fundamentally different types of variable in question: the “independent” and the “dependent.” In broad culture there obtains a one-way relation between these, such that the independent variable influences the dependent but not vice versa, or at least not in ways that might concern the investigator interested in variation and change. Regarding language, the assumption axiomatic in sociolinguistics is that society is in some way primordial and that “language reflects society.” There is nevertheless no straightforward sense in which linguistic structure maps on to social, except in certain perhaps rather obvious ways: for example, the recent, largely successful campaign against sexist language, which sees masculine pronouns used “generically” to designate both sexes, illustrates a case where a group of persons concerned to combat this usage can change it. This example can be construed as showing how language reflects society, as well perhaps as how language can affect society, since sexist attitudes are both shown and perpetuated through the sexist use of pronouns. Similarly, citizens are expected to internalise the expectation laid on them to speak their nation’s language, and if the citizen in question is what one might call a fully-paid-up member of society, this is a fairly straightforward affair. Even some apparently complex examples turn out to have their origin in social practices that may be unfamiliar to Westerners uninstructed in anthropology: a frequently cited example concerns an Amazonian tribe of which the male and female adult members speak different languages (Edwards 2009, p. 133). Acquaintance with the concept of exogamy clears up the mystery, such as it is. In general, the relation between language and society is however more complex. Edwards (2009, p. 51), discussing language and identity in connexion with cultural relativism, asserts that “a society which condones female circumcision, believes in witchcraft, and eats its enemies is inferior, in these respects at least, to one which does not. I do not see that this constrains me to accept that the language of that society is inferior to the one spoken next door […].” We may argue therefore, against the cultural relativists, that there exist societies which are in some ways

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primitive, if only because from the progressive or Enlightenment viewpoint they deny their member’s certain freedoms, and maintain beliefs that are both demonstrably false and socially deleterious. But no “primitive” language has so far been recorded, using the term to designate simplicity of structure that would make acquisition by a non-native adult an easy matter. Vehicular language like pidgins, which have no native speakers, can be excluded from this generalisation. The observation may seem banal, and it is certainly a commonplace in linguistics, but it accounts for one side of the complexity equation, as it was: in societies where the inflections of an individual’s social identity are convoluted, these can be represented in subtle and differentiated ways through variation in the intricacies of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, the three “levels of analysis” commonly recognised in linguistics. The other side of the equation, the inflections of one’s social identity, are complex when one takes into account its various interrelated social elements: class, age, gender, regional origin and ethnicity are perhaps the most commonly cited, and this is to say nothing of personal characteristics that are the psychologist’s province. This is not to say that these inflections are necessarily the object of conscious choice, and it may be convenient to consider how language reflects society in this way through the prism of a rather sceptical representation of how sociolinguistics proceeds. Cameron (1990) argues that nothing is explained by simply correlating social facts and linguistic facts, an analytical procedure she refers to as the correlational fallacy. As the author points out (1990, p. 85), this correlation is itself in need of explanation; or we can add that it may be, depending on the nature of the research programme being pursued. Taking the example of variable post-vocalic /r/ in New York City, where the consonant can be variably pronounced (i.e. pronounced or not) in a sequence like fourth floor (emboldened in the spelling), Cameron remarks: […] it could be claimed that my score for the variant [r] is explained by the fact that I belong to a particular social category – say, working-class women of Italian descent aged 50+ and living in New York City – and am speaking in a particular context, say a formal interview with a linguistic researcher. (Cameron 1990, p. 85)

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The linguist presents this “explanation” as an example of the fallacy and argues that in fact nothing is explained thereby. The main burden of Cameron’s criticism is that it is difficult to see how abstract social attributes like class, situated at the “macro,” ascribed, impersonal, institutional level of society and perhaps not an immediate reality for many speakers, affect a speaker’s linguistic behaviour. This is a perfectly valid criticism, and regarding the correlation between linguistic features and the various social characteristics that are held to influence their variation in some way, James Milroy (1992, p. 169) suggests that “what the graphs […] of the quantitative paradigm model is not the behaviour of speakers …: what they model is the linguistic system ” (emphasis in original). This is true in the sense that no speakers, whatever their social characteristics, employ (say) post-vocalic /r/ 50% of the time in a mechanistic way, as a function of their social identity and the speech situation in which they find themselves. The percentage conveys a very general average at a specified time and place, and to this extent is uninformative, although it may prove to serve some scholarly purpose—perhaps to a researcher interested in comparing it with earlier or later results, so as to assess the degree of any diachronic shift in the variable’s level of use. Criticism directed against the “variationist” branch of sociolinguistics, which uses quantities, based on the notion of the linguistic variable, for purposes like these, overlooks the fact that the setting up of correlations is simply a preliminary. It must also be true then that a speaker’s social identity does determine their linguistic behaviour, even if quantities reflect this in a rather crude way. If this were not so, one would not expect to see the regularities that do in fact result from the correlational method. Rather, one would expect linguistic variation to be entirely random when measured against social categories (or other indicators of an individual’s social identity). It must therefore be the case that speakers are attuned to the social meaning of language and that the proclivity to deploy a particular variant—or to adopt an innovation—is a direct function of this capability. We consider now the social meaning of variable phonology, or pronunciation.

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3 Variable Pronunciation A brief explanation of the quantitative method seems apposite at this point. Many variants, especially in pronunciation, occur often enough to make possible the quantification of speech, such that for example a speaker can be recorded as using the non-standard variant as a certain percentage of all possible occurrences. The figures can be correlated against the demographic categories distinguished by sociologists (age, sex, class, ethnicity, etc.) so as to obtain results which are statistically robust and which, as well as avoiding the shortfalls of impressionistic observation, may reveal recurring regularities or indications of change, especially if compared with earlier results: the “real-time” method. Percentages of this kind will now and then be referred to below. To resume our discussion, in general, language reflects society; and the other issue raised by Bourdieu, “whether the dominant feature appears as distinguished or noble because it is dominant,” can be addressed by reference to some of the quantities gathered by linguists and referred to above. Table 1 below exemplifies this latter point, showing use of post-vocalic /r/ as a percentage of all possible occurrences by four social-class groups. Table 1 shows percentage use by four groups of speakers, classified by socio-economic category, of post-vocalic /r/, the variable discussed previously. The neat flip-over pattern in the table brings out very clearly the fact that speakers are capable of employing linguistically entirely arbitrary phonological features in a way that is nevertheless highly charged socially: thus rhoticity (use of /r/) is used by overtly prestigious speaker Table 1  Percentage use of post-vocalic /r/ in New York City (US) and Reading (UK) (MMC—middle middle class; LMC—lower middle class; UWC—upper working class; LWC—lower working class) Social class

New York City

Reading

MMC LMC UWC LWC

32 20 12 0

0 28 44 49

Adapted from Romaine (1984, p. 86)

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groups in New York City, while almost exactly the opposite pattern obtains in Reading, UK. The terms conventional or unmotivated are perhaps better applied to these features than arbitrary, since speakers are of course not free to set up their own. The variable phonological pattern shown here is not difficult to explain: no propositional meaning is involved at the level of individual sounds, so that while rhoticity in Reading may convey elements of social meaning such as rusticity and lack of education, native-speaker knowledge of the British English dialectal pattern is necessary to decode this. The same is true mutatis mutandis of rhoticity in New York City. This point is related to the broader one that in language, it is not the form of language that achieves meaning, but its structure, or the relationships between the items that compose a language. Put at its most crudely, we know what “cat” means, not because of some mystical virtue inherent in the phonetic sequence /kæt/, but because, or partly because, /kæt/ contrasts with /hæt/, /bæt/, /fæt/, /ræt/ and so on. The next step that follows clearly from this is that the linguistic forms that make up the structure of a language are arbitrary; that is, they bear no necessary relation to the concepts to which they refer (their referents). We notice that linguistic forms or “signs” are arbitrary the moment we begin to learn a second language, and once we realise that English has dog while French has chien, German Hund and so forth, this fact seems perfectly obvious. However, the arbitrary nature of the sign, or l’arbitraire du signe in Saussure’s celebrated phrase, goes even beyond this, and has consequences for linguistic variation that are momentous and far-reaching. It may be useful to recall one of the famous analogies that Saussure used in order to explain the structural view of language, to do with the pieces used in chess. Although chess pieces have conventional shapes, we recognise each piece, both in itself, but also by virtue of its differences from the others, and a chess set could be (and no doubt has been) assembled from bottle-tops, pebbles, etc., for lack of a conventional set. In this latter case, what is important is (a) that the players should recognise and agree on the value of the unconventional pieces; and (b) that these pieces should be differentiated one from the other. This is what is meant by the achievement of meaning through a system

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of oppositions. As Saussure expresses the matter: “leur plus exacte caractéristique [des termes] est d’être ce que les autres ne sont pas” (1973 [1916], p. 162); or even more starkly (and famously): “dans la langue il n’y a que des différences” (p. 166). Thus, it so happens that we produce language by issuing pulses of air from our lungs, and by modifying these pulses through the movements of our vocal organs. This process results in a series of pops, clicks, hisses and notes, or “consonants” and “vowels” to use the commonly accepted terms, and we combine these in groups we know our hearer will convert back into meaning. The secondary language system deriving from this relies (typically) on black shapes imposed on a white ground of some sort; that is, writing. We take these systems for granted so much that we cease to see them as conventional, but other systems relying on the rapping of our knuckles on a hard surface, air entering the lungs rather than issuing from them, the production of puffs of smoke, and so forth, are quite conceivable, and indeed some have been devised. In this light, we can refine our remarks on the different social values of post-vocalic /r/ in Reading and New York City. Rhoticity acquires its value in the two locations, or wherever it is found, partly as a function of the other localised variables with which it collocates. Structure, in Saussure’s sense, is therefore crucial at the variable level of language as well as that which conveys propositional rather than “indexical” or social meaning. It seems clear enough then from the foregoing that the dominant, legitimate or standard language is able to present itself as “distinguished or noble” because it is dominant. Bourdieu’s epithets are of course not the only ones that have been applied to the standard; and this situation is possible only in an ideal standardising situation, one that goes unchallenged. Thus Wyld, a socially highly placed historian of the English language, was able to say in 1936 that “I believe no unbiased listener would hesitate in preferring Received Standard as the most pleasing and sonorous form [of English], and the best suited to be the medium of poetry and oratory” (p. 4). Listeners acquainted with the UK dialect system, in 1936 or now, may have found or may find the standard pleasing and sonorous; they may also find it remote and affected. Their response, and the epithet they apply, will depend on their attitude to

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the speakers of the standard. But it is worth repeating that judgements like these are social, masquerading as linguistic. The use of terms like dominant, legitimate or standard to describe a language variety recalls the Bourdieusian view that social relations are in essence power relations. The example of a further English variable may suffice to clarify the issue. Variation is fairly complicated in the word-set exemplified by poor ~ pore transcribed [puə] and [pɔː] (the cure set in the jargon), and involves both the north and south of England, with northerners more likely to have the older pronunciation [puə], and thus maintain the distinction between poor and pore ), while in the south, according to Jones (1956, p. 66) “the use of ɔː for uə is so frequent among non-dialectal speakers that it has to be considered as belonging to RP as a recognised variant of uə.” RP refers to “Received Pronunciation,” the accent of the upper and upper-middle classes. Sociolinguists would not now adopt these terms, implying as they do that all other accents are “dialects” of the “language,” a view that accepts unquestioningly the dominance of the standard. To return to variation in the cure word set, the following quotation from a novel by Cyril Hare (1949, p. 34) illustrates the point made by Jones, with the addition of some quite complex social information: ‘Darling, how sickening!’ wailed the voice. ‘Can’t just nothing be done about it, just to please pore little Violet?’

Violet’s interlocutor reflects disagreeably on her “kittenish” manner. The adjective, applicable only to a woman, designates something akin to an attempt at childish playfulness, and the fragment illustrates the interplay of various elements of social identity as they find expression in linguistic variation. The example is of course the more intricate because it is meant to represent linguistic variation, and to analyse it we are obliged to take into account the author’s attitude to what is portrayed. As often, non-standard grammar is easier to construe: multiple negation was expelled from the standard English canon some time ago, and is now available to speakers having any pretensions to education only as a jocular device. Jocularity is of course the intention here, but from the

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standpoint of Violet’s interlocutor the attempt misfires, since he finds her request unwelcome. From its juxtaposition with the sequence of double negation, we can suggest that Hare, a barrister and court judge of upper-middle-class origin who wrote detective novels in his spare time, regarded the pronunciation of poor as [pɔː] as being on more or less the same social level as the non-standard grammatical construction. We have already seen that different judgements apply to variation on the different linguistic levels, but it may be that Hare simply wished to pile outrage upon outrage, for cumulative effect. His deployment of pore illustrates the mismatch between the objective or at least dispassionate judgement of Jones, that the [pɔː] variant “has to be considered as belonging to RP,” and that of Hare, whose privileged position enabled him to see a continuing distinction between the old and new variants. One aspect of the situation, the more straightforward, is therefore that linguistic change in progress is generally greeted with disapproval by the more conservative speakers of the community. Correspondingly, younger speakers express derision at older forms. What merits a closer analysis is the connection implied here between childishness and non-standard or lower-class language. That the connection exists in speakers’ minds is beyond doubt; the common misinterpretation of Bernstein’s celebrated distinction between “restricted” and “elaborated” linguistic codes is no doubt significant in this regard. The distinction is best understood by reference to the different social networks characteristic of working-class and middle-class speakers (referred to previously), and the misconception that equates restricted code with cognitive deficit is capable of being entertained even by those who are in general fairly well informed. One UK English consonantal variable that does have a developmental correlate is no doubt exceptional: /r/, which in standard English, is generally realised as an alveolar approximant in initial position (transcribed as [ɹ], as in real pronounced [ɹiəl]). The non-standard variant is “labial /r/,” a labiodental approximant, in IPA notation transcribed [ʋ]. This phenomenon, referred to as “/r/-fronting,” has been reported in several UK cities. The labiodental variant is of fairly recent emergence, at least with its current value; it is of course caricatured as an upper-class stereotype in the works of British authors like P.G. Wodehouse. Jones (1956, p. 109) treats the variant

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as “defective” and offers recommendations for its correction. Trudgill (1988) reported that he noticed the use by one speaker of labiodental /r/ during his first field investigation in Norwich, but assumed that it was a speech defect. Use of the variant had increased dramatically by the time of Trudgill’s second field trip to the city some twenty years later. Speculation in this regard would focus on the developmental correlate to the variant’s current status. The standard alveolar approximant is acquired relatively late in children’s speech, and one might suggest that the normativism prevalent at the time when Jones stigmatised the labiodental variant as defective, has been replaced by a quite widely generalised attitude of greater tolerance, connected with greater egalitarianism, such that many parents may now be less ready to correct this variant as defective in their children’s speech. Aside from this example, the connection between child language and non-standard language is of interest because of the parallels it offers with popular distinctions between high and low culture, and with Bourdieu’s question whether legitimate cultural forms have inherent “nobility,” or whether they borrow the quality from their legitimacy. There is evidence suggesting that some developmental forms are also found in non-standard language: for instance, the blurring of the less/fewer distinction, associated prescriptively with mass and count nouns (less cheese/fewer biscuits ). It is however probably more accurate to turn the relation the other way around: Chomsky, no particular friend of sociolinguistics, asserts that “much of [the standard literary language] is a violation of natural law” (Olson and Faigley 1991: 30). In relation to language, the concept of “natural law” is a difficult one, as it implies the existence of default patterns which external intervention, in the form of standardisation, can disrupt. But much complexity in language is undoubtedly an artefact of standardisation, needs to be explicitly taught as it is unnatural and, we might add, must also be presented as rational, since perceived rationality is one of the attributes at least of the grammar of the standard language, and hence their users. This goes some way to explaining the association of non-standard varieties with elements of social identity having a negative perception, from a traditional viewpoint.

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4 Variation in Grammar The foregoing remarks apply to patterns of use and evaluation in English variable pronunciation, which can be localised to an extent that seems less common in grammar. That this localisation is linked to the arbitrary nature of the phonetic signal is quite patent, as we have seen, while greater complexity attaches to variation in grammar. The results shown in Table 2 have a pattern contrasting sharply with those in Table 1: speaker groups in Norwich and Detroit appear to share much the same pattern of evaluation regarding non-standard subject-verb agreement, as in she go. A comparison of Tables 1 and 2 leads one to assume therefore that the absence of a dramatic contrast between middle-class and working-class use of /r/ in both speech communities indicates a fundamental difference between patterns of evaluation and use of non-standard pronunciation and grammar. Chambers (1995, pp. 51–52, 241–242) suggests that patterns of grammatical variation tend to be sharp or “qualitative,” while variation in phonology is generally quantitative or probabilistic. Chambers appears to use the term qualitative merely in opposition to quantitative, so that while all speakers in a given speech community usually participate in the use of phonological variables, and in terms of degrees of more or less that are amenable to quantification, grammatical variables may be distributed less evenly, with some speaker groups showing a qualitative or near-total avoidance of certain variants. Thus a qualitative pattern by no means implies a lesser degree of evaluative judgement Table 2  Percentage of 3rd-person verbs without -s in Norwich and Detroit (MMC—middle middle class; LMC—lower middle class; UWC—upper working class; MWC—middle working class; LWC—lower working class) Social class

Norwich

Social class

Detroit

MMC LMC UWC MWC LWC

0 2 70 87 97

UMC LMC UWC – LWC

1 10 57 – 71

Adapted from Romaine (1984, p. 86)

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by speaker-listeners of the linguistic “quality” of a variable involved in quantitative variation. The use of the term is akin to the everyday distinction between a difference of “kind” rather than “degree.” Table 2 shows this sharp or near-qualitative pattern in the use of non-standard verb concord. There is a dramatic contrast between lower middle-class and upper working-class use of the variable feature; and this is true of two widely separated speech communities, although the UK pattern is more sharply polarised. Other English grammatical variables showing the same pattern as that in Table 2 are multiple negation (I don’t want none ) and variable copula deletion (you (are ) crazy! ) (Chambers 1995, pp. 117–118). Several inferences can be drawn from this pattern: one has to do with the greater purchase, as it were, that standardisation has on grammar in literate societies; another, related inference concerns speakers’ evaluative reactions to grammatical variation, such that grammatical variation is perhaps perceived as being in some way less arbitrary or unmotivated than phonological variation. There appears to be an association in the popular (that is, linguistically uninstructed) mind between non-standard grammar and cognitive deficit, whereby the use of multiple negation, for instance, is held to indicate illogicality. Certain examples like multiple negation are clearly susceptible to criticism using arithmetical arguments which are in fact inapplicable to natural language (“two negatives make a positive”) but the use of all non-standard grammatical constructions is popularly associated (in Anglophone countries at least) with lack of education at best; from this, it is only a short step to perceived deficient cognition. We need before taking this discussion farther to define the scope of grammar: it customarily includes syntax (the formation of sentences from words) and morphology (the formation of words from morphemes, discussed below). The term syntax is from the Ancient Greek, and means something like “arranging together.” It is: “the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence” (Matthews 1981, p. 1). Here Matthews parenthetically includes morphology within the definition of syntax, in the phrase “with or without appropriate inflections.” By reference to the etymology

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of the term, morphology deals with the “shape” or form of words; the very first example introduced by Matthews, it tastes nice, shows very clearly that a “syntax” in the sense of a word order is necessary to achieve clear meaning, since ?tastes it nice and so on read very oddly, if not meaninglessly. Matthews (ibid.) says that a connection of meaning is also shown by “inflectional agreement between the verb and pronoun (it tastes, not it taste ).” Regarding this latter “connection of meaning,” which depends on the presence of a final -s on the verb form, we can see a fundamental difference between the variation in pronunciation discussed above and what also looks like variation in pronunciation, in this instance between tastes and taste. But all native English speakers know that morphology has to do with grammatical function, whether or not they could express it in these terms. To take a simpler example, it suffices to ask a speaker how the plural of nouns is formed: the fact that the answer, “put an ‘s’ on the end” or words to that effect, is phonetically inaccurate only serves to illustrate the speaker’s ability to abstract beyond the concrete pronunciation to the element of abstract grammar. The element is referred to in the jargon as a morpheme, commonly defined as the smallest unit of meaning. Although the word seems intuitively to form the smallest unit, no linguistic instruction is required to see that the word in Matthews’s example, tastes, analyses into a verb as the core form and the suffix -s. Appended to the noun, the suffix indicates plurality. The word is therefore complex or polymorphemic, in the sense of containing more than one unit of meaning. So much is obvious enough; the further refinement necessary here is that the abstract morpheme may find expression in different phonetic forms or “morphs.” Again, all native speakers know intuitively that the -s morpheme is phonetically /s/ on words like taste, phonetically /z/ on words like beer, and /ɪz/ on words like church. It is of course possible that the pervasiveness of literacy prompts replies like “put an ‘s’ on the end,” but in production (as opposed to description), all native speakers prove capable of adding the phonetically suitable affix to an unfamiliar word. This is convincing evidence that the abstract quality of -s is perceived as such and undergoes a phonetic transformation in conformity with the English pronunciation

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pattern. We should not underestimate the language learner’s task, but as Matthews again remarks (1991, p. 19), “If a category is always marked in the same place, it is more easily perceived, or more easily recognised by children learning the language, or contributes generally to a more orderly system. The patterns are in that way motivated ” (emphasis in original, introducing a key term). The notion of motivation in linguistics stands in opposition to what we have referred to quite often, that of arbitrariness, and the distinction takes us back to the core of our discussion of Bourdieu’s reflections on the nature of language. The distinction is not wholly clear-cut, but it may be useful to recall that it is only historians of a language who have the specialist knowledge necessary to explain certain “arbitrary” features of a language. But the non-specialist has none the less full competence in the contemporary state of the language. The grammatical categories we have looked at here are capable of being evaluated by speakers as being less arbitrary, or more motivated than the phonological, even if these terms, like many in linguistics, are rather fluid. Matthews in the quotation given above equates motivation with predictability, but other attributes can be associated with the term; for instance, consonantal assimilations like “speeg camera” or “gung crime” are clearly motivated, in the sense of being explicable as processes arising from the juxtaposition of certain consonants in the stream of speech. It is perhaps this “motivation” that explains their widespread tolerance, or even the fact that they go unnoticed. It may be that what is popularly perceived as the ready “corrigibility” of low-level grammatical constructions in English (cf. Matthews 1981, pp. 6–7) arises from their apparent motivation, and increases the stigmatisation to which non-standard variants are subject. By corrigibility Matthews means the possibility of the application of a clearly definable (or motivated) rule of syntax or morphology that “corrects” an unacceptable sentence; as opposed, for instance, to the essentially arbitrary tendencies of lexical covariance which govern collocational restrictions (to grill the steak, not *to toast the steak ), and which are properly the domain of the vocabulary. These have to be learned on a case-by-case basis, since no overarching rule governs them. In discussing this distinction Matthews (p. 6), in his monograph on syntax, written purportedly

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from a non-normative viewpoint, uses the example of subject-verb agreement, as shown above in Table 2: For a constructional or syntactic relation we will … require [when defining the scope of syntax] that it should be subject to a rule, or that a rule should be associated with it. An obvious instance is the agreement in, for example, ‘It sounds good’ and ‘They sound good’… Combinations like ‘They sounds good’ or ‘It sound good’ are errors which could in principle be corrected, or put into more acceptable English, by any speaker who said or encountered them. To learn English is, in part, to learn to conform to the rule by which this is so. (Matthews 1981, pp. 6–7; emphasis in original)

Later (p. 7), discussing examples of ungrammatical word-order, Matthews asserts that “in ordinary [i.e. non-poetic] speech such forms are as wrong, and as corrigible, as those which gratuitously break the rule of agreement [discussed previously]” (emphasis added). The implication in this discussion, which shows a normative bias that is perhaps surprising in a monograph of linguistics, is that such rules as subject-verb agreement are simple, low-level and easily learnable “in principle” by all members of a speech community. It is true that the term rule is used in linguistics with non-prescriptive intent, in a sense that it is more or less interchangeable with procedure, but the connotations of the term are unfortunate in a discussion implying that a rule is available to correct an error. A sociolinguist will prefer to say that for many English speakers, there is “variation between” sequences like It sounds good and It sound good, rather than say that the second sequence is incorrect, even if this is true from the perspective of the standard or dominant variety; and even if this judgement is widespread among English speakers, including those who derive no obvious benefit from espousing it. The perception may be therefore that while the ready control of certain relatively complex grammatical constructions, such as (in English) correlative constructions or the use of the subjunctive, are inaccessible without prolonged education, the basic grammar of the language is open to all; and those who fail to internalise it show a perverse resistance to education, self-improvement and social mobility.

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This view is plausible enough if we consider the regular verb paradigms of English, most of which are quite straightforward in their morphology; in the present tense, only the third-person form has an inflection, and it may be that the very simplicity or motivation of the paradigm accords the single exception greater salience. The relation between the two levels of combination in language, pronunciation and grammar, is vividly expressed by Lyons (1981, p. 20), who uses what appears to be a metaphor drawn from chemistry or physics. He terms the coexistence of these two combinatory levels “duality”: By duality is meant the property of having two levels of structure, such that the units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organisation.

The primary level is grammar, the secondary is pronunciation. In this analysis, individual sounds, meaningless in isolation, enter into combination to produce units of meaning. The “element” image is striking because it evokes the contrast between the world as perceived by the senses and the unintuitive way in which it is made up, at least according to scientists. At the level of the individual word, the types of meaning produced can, for our present purposes, be listed as lexical, inflectional and what sociolinguists call “indexical,” that is meaning conveyed about the speaker. But this last type is in a different category to the other two. It illustrates how language reflects society at the level of the individual speaker as he or she “embodies” the process, to introduce a term frequently used by Bourdieu. We have been referring to the “lexical” level of meaning so far as exemplified in the phrase fourth floor, as an illustration of how pronunciation can vary in English, at the word level and without compromising the meaning of the words. Variation of this type is not therefore “lexical variation,” as indeed is implied by its inclusion in the section called above “variation in pronunciation.” The further consequence inherent in the difference between variable pronunciation and morphology, aside from the contrast between the arbitrariness of the one and the apparent motivation of the other, is therefore that meaning is attached to the grammar in a way that affords prescriptivism greater opportunity for plausible criticism.

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We use the term plausible in its pristine, disobliging sense of “specious, seeming reasonable or probable” (Concise Oxford Dictionary  ), since no prolonged immersion in linguistic theory is required to see that much morphological inflection is redundant. Indeed, if it were not, then no variation would be possible. We could, as it were, train the heavy artillery on a sequence like it tastes nice by analysing it in terms of the prototypical agreement relation between the subject and finite verb, in the sense introduced by Chomsky (2001), widely agreed to be the leading theorist of syntax. In this perspective it can be remarked that agreement is usually asymmetrical, in the sense that the relevant feature value (e.g. “plural” or [+ Plural] in the notation) is semantically significant for one of the items but has only grammatical weight for the other; that is, the second sequence merely “agrees” with the subject in a mechanical way. For example, in the sequence the dogs are barking, while the fact that the subject the dogs is plural is semantically significant—the sentence is only true if more than one dog is barking—the fact that are is plural does not determine any additional semantic content: the plurality of are is a purely formal reflex of the fact that the subject is plural. This latter point can be seen if one considers that the sentence the dogs is barking—deemed ungrammatical in standard English but perfectly possible in dialectal or jocular usage—is equivalent in propositional meaning to the “correct” sentence. We can thus say that the feature of number is interpretable (i.e. meaningful) when it is located in the subject but uninterpretable (i.e. purely grammatical) when it is located in the verb. This matching of interpretable and uninterpretable instances of a given feature is claimed by Chomsky and others to be an intrinsic part of grammatical agreement. The approach relies heavily on data drawn from the standard language, however. But we can also analyse the issue in less theory-laden terms, by evoking again the concept of redundancy, referred to above. Plurality is marked twice in the dogs are barking, in the noun and the verb form, and one can theorise this by reference to the wish or need to promote unambiguous communication by marking semantic features more than once, to combat “noise” or static in the channel. Nonetheless, much redundancy is eliminated in speech and the surrounding context, linguistic or situational, will usually clear up any possible misunderstanding.

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Broadly therefore, standardisation can be argued to exert normative pressures more effectively in grammar. It is worth pointing the different effects of standardisation on different linguistic levels: other things being equal, pronunciation should logically be more resistant to this process than grammar, because if it is assumed that language standardisation largely proceeds through the promotion of literacy, in most languages that have a written system the orthography does not strongly favour any particular variety; this is certainly true of English and French (cf. Milroy and Milroy 1999, pp. 66–67). The written language, leaving aside (decreasingly) marginal phenomena like vernacular literature, and the reproduction of non-standard language in mainstream literature, overwhelmingly uses the standard grammatical forms. Thus Table 2 can be interpreted as showing the effect of “top-down” standardising pressures squeezing as it were non-standard grammar out of the linguistic system of middle-class speakers. Standard grammatical forms are perceived therefore as being readily available to those who wish to learn them, while phonological forms are not, or less so; an important exception is of course the spoken media, where talk is conducted for the most part using standard accents. Thus we seem to be concerned here with different evaluative axes of language variation where phonology and grammar are in question: while variable phonological features encode aspects of a speaker’s social-regional origins, variable grammar may be evaluated as being more “cognitive,” in the sense of referring to a speaker’s level of education, literacy, and therefore perhaps intelligence. We have however just argued that on purely linguistic grounds, variable morphology and pronunciation have in common that the standard language selects and promotes a variant that, on a closer view, is unmotivated in relation to its exponent function. This is self-evident in pronunciation, on the assumption that misunderstanding caused by variable pronunciation is uncommon. By contrast, Table 2 above shows that the kind of low-level morphological variation exemplified by non-standard NP-verb concord is highly stigmatised, in English at least, in a way that many variable pronunciation features are not. This is true even though all non-standard grammatical variants are as functional or efficient as the standard counterpart. Thus a linguistic system using non-standard multiple negation, as in I don’t want none, consistently

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(if variably) selects none rather than standard any, which in any case in the standard language often carries a negative suggestion (contrast Do you want some more? with Do you want any more? ). The other example referred to above, so-called copula deletion, as in you (are ) crazy!, is just as vulnerable to specious criticism, along the lines that a dialect which misses out important elements like verbs must be deficient in some way. Again, this argument is under-informed in ignoring the fact that many languages, for instance the Slavic group, have in the present tense no copula, which is merely a verb connecting subject and complement. We may mention finally that while variable morphology and syntax share the “discreteness” suggested by Lyons (1981, p. 21) as one of the essential attributes of language, some variable pronunciation is harder to situate along this dimension. Lyons defines discreteness as follows: Discreteness is opposed to continuity, or continuous variation… To illustrate: the two words ‘bit’ and ‘bet’ differ in form, in both the written and spoken language. It is quite possible to produce a vowel sound that is half-way between the vowels that normally occur in the pronunciation of these two words. But if we substitute this intermediate sound for the vowel of ‘bit’ or ‘bet’ in the same context, we shall not thereby have pronounced some third word distinct from either or sharing the characteristics of both. We shall have pronounced something that is not recognized as a word at all or, alternatively, something that is identified as a mispronunciation of one or the other. Identity of form in language is, in general, a matter of all or nothing, not of more or less. (Lyons 1981, p. 21)

This view of language is sometimes expressed by stating that language is digital, not analogue. However that may be, it is useful for the present argument to point out that a speaker who substitutes an intermediate sound for the vowel of cat or kit may well introduce what we called above indexical information, and that hearers are skilled in decoding variation of this kind. This remains discrete variation, but an additional facet of information is being conveyed. Moreover, phonetic variation is capable of producing a serial effect of the type that is akin to what Lyons calls continuous variation; it remains discrete, but we know that digital techniques are used to mimic analogue, in audio reproduction

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for instance. It may be a question of how fine-grained the discreteness proves; indeed the antithesis between discreteness and continuity can arguably be a false one if granularity is fine enough. To resume once again the fourth floor example, there are four possible pronunciation variants (both occurrences of the consonant pronounced, none pronounced, and so forth) and it seems likely that each possibility will produce a different indexical effect, leaving aside the fact that the site of the second consonant, if before a pause, is more salient than the first. Postvocalic /r/ is perhaps an extreme case of perceptual vagueness, since the consonant, an “approximant” in the jargon, is produced with relatively little force and can produce a vocalic effect on the hearer. The result may be that it is difficult to distinguish from a vowel. Respondents often prove incapable of describing what they are hearing, in striking contrast to their ability to decode the variant’s indexical significance.

5 Summary and Concluding Remarks To summarise the foregoing, morpho-syntactic variation, since it is discrete and involves meaning, may imply a high level of consciousness on the part of middle-class speakers of the stigma attaching to its use, partly on account of the specious reasoning that argues against it. In contrast, the gradient in Table 1 is non-sharp for use of /r/, implying by contrast a degree of consciousness of variable use of /r/ that prompts a more tolerant or less normative judgement by speakers of variable phonology, again for the reasons given above. It needs to be emphasised that these remarks have no universal application as regards the indexical significance of the linguistic levels of interest here: French, for instance, has true syntactic variation, in the sense of variable word-order, with variation that sees all social groups participating in a non-polarised way. It is tempting to see variation in standard French as having been largely displaced to the grammatical level, on account of the relatively levelled nature of its pronunciation. In any event, one can only assume that syntactic variation in French is in some way “equivalent” to variation on other levels in other languages, so that the foregoing discussion of English is largely irrelevant to that language. In practical translation

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terms, this means that variable French syntax, in fictional dialogue for instance, needs to be replaced (most often) by phonology. The notion of equivalence in translation is acknowledged as an uncomfortable one, but a possible way forward is the use of reception studies to elicit empirical data on what variation at the different linguistic levels “means” for speaker-hearers. Attempting to theorise or even describe the interplay between the various elements of linguistic structure, social structure and social identity is a formidable task indeed, at least on any large scale. It has been assumed until fairly recently that social class is generally the major element driving changes in social structure. The more recent development in cultural studies known as the “cultural turn” lays stress on the difficulty of disentangling the various social and economic elements in any cultural phenomenon under examination—the phrase is calqued on the earlier “linguistic turn” applied to positivist philosophy, and refers to a turn to, or emphasis on, the study of culture in disciplines that attempt to theorise social and cultural history. The cultural turn is in contrast, say, to a Marxist approach that lays stress on the economic as underlying the social and on an “objective” view of any given situation, as against the “false consciousness” that may be held to afflict a social class. Clearly, however, economic, social and cultural elements and effects can scarcely be separated out in a hierarchical way, for instance in the Marxist “base–superstructure” model according to which the cultural and social merely express the economic. This view cannot be supported in any strong sense, since the perspective of an individual or community on their socio-cultural experience forms an integral part of that experience, and cannot be overridden by any “objective” viewpoint, as no cogent theoretical or empirical arguments support the theorist’s claim to the privilege. As Cannadine puts it, historians have more recently “become increasingly aware of the associational richness and diversity of people’s lives: as men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children […]” (Cannadine 1998, p. 16). The list continues for some time, and Cannadine’s conclusion is that “with so many fluctuating and sometimes contradictory senses of identity, which constantly cut across each other, there no longer seems any justification for privileging class

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identity […].” He then goes on to argue what was put forward in the previous paragraph, that while class remains important, the subjective is as important as its external correlate. It is not controversial to state that individuals are inconsistent in the views they profess, at a given moment or as time passes. There is a current tendency to view many social problems in a binary, zerosum optic and it is tempting to see this as deriving from the conflictual Marxist worldview. We have seen that this either/or view of things is inadequate to describe variable language, and hence the social dynamic that underlies it. What requires further investigation is whether it is legitimate to call the information that is expressed at the level of language a “worldview.” The essence of indexical information might be summarised by reference to an individual’s quasiconscious attitude to current ideological tensions. If it were legitimate to see this as a worldview, it would be challenging to try to theorise the relation between such an embodied, complex and dynamic view and what occurs at what we find it convenient to call the “rational” level.

6 A Postscript: Implications for Translation The linguistic and cultural interest of the foregoing discussion is probably in inverse relation to its representativeness (although the rendering of indexical information in the widespread practice of subtitling, for example, can present stiff challenges). Worldview as expressed in a language-specific term is no doubt usually a bolt-on that can be translated by a circumlocution. Further, the modification of an ideology as expressed in an updated retranslation, as discussed elsewhere in this volume, is open to analysis that at least appears to be supported by theoretical frameworks that are robust and well-established. We have explored in this chapter what is perhaps the aspect of worldview expressed in translation that is the most recalcitrant to analysis. Further reflection, perhaps with the support of insights from allied disciplines, may show a way forward.

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References Boucher, Jerry, and Charles E. Osgood. 1969. The Pollyanna Hypothesis. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 8: 1–8. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cameron, Deborah. 1990. Demythologizing Sociolinguistics: Why Language Does Not Reflect Society. In Ideologies of Language, ed. John E. Joseph and Talbot J. Taylor, 79–93. London: Routledge. Cannadine, David. 1998. Class in Britain. London: Penguin. Chambers, Jack K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. Oxford: Blackwell. Clark, Herbert H., and Eve V. Clark. 1977. Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by Phase. In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. Michael Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Edwards, John. 2009. Language and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hare, Cyril. 1949. When the Wind Bows. London: Faber. Jones, Daniel. 1956. The Pronunciation of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joseph, John E. 1987. Eloquence and Power. London: Pinter. Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Lyons, John. 1981. Language and Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, P.H. 1981. Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, P.H. 1991. Morphology, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, James, and Lesley Milroy. 1999. Authority in Language, 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Olson, Gary A., and Lester Faigley. 1991. Language, Politics and Composition: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky. Journal of Advanced Composition 11: 1–35. Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. The Language of Children and Adolescents. Oxford: Blackwell. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1973 [1916]. Cours de Linguistique Générale, ed. C. Bally, A. Sechehaye, A. Riedlinger, and T. de Mauro. Paris: Payot.

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Trudgill, Peter. 1988. Norwich Revisited: Recent Linguistic Changes in an English Urban Dialect. English World-Wide 9 (1): 33–49. Wyld, Henry Cecil (ed.). 1936. The Universal Dictionary of the English Language. London: Joseph.

6 The Sociological Turn in Translation Studies and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology: A Case of Convergence or Divergence? Patrycja Karpińska

1 Introduction Translation Studies (henceforth: TS) appears to be a discipline that is difficult to frame: it overlaps and seeks cooperation with numerous other fields of study. Whatever the reason for such a state of affairs— whether it is the specificity of the subject or its still ongoing struggle for place and acceptance among other disciplines1—it makes the study of TS history a study of its relationships with other subjects. In this chapter, attention is devoted to the relationship between TS and sociology, which resulted in the so-called sociological turn in Translation Studies. In the first section, possible ways of investigating 1In

Poland, for instance, TS is still not considered a scholarly discipline. It is not possible to study TS or to write a doctoral dissertation in TS—therefore, TS adepts choose most commonly either linguistics or literary studies as their main field of association. The newly introduced Law on Higher Education (2018) does not address or amend the situation either.

P. Karpińska (*)  Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_6

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and categorising the history of TS are briefly discussed (e.g. Bassnett 1991 [1980]; Steiner 1975). The perspective of Gentzler (2014), who emphasises the turns in TS, is discussed in detail, as it appears particularly relevant to further discussion of the drawbacks of the sociological turn. In the second section, the sociological turn and its main assumptions are introduced on the basis of Wolf ’s (2007) article “Introduction. The emergence of a sociology of translation,” which opened one of the most significant publications of the sociological turn, Constructing a Sociology of Translation (Wolf and Fukari 2007). Then, leading trends and chosen works classified as the sociology of translation are subject to inquiry, including the works of Chesterman (2007), Heilbron and Sapiro (2007), and Hermans (2009 [1997]). In the same section, system theories are also briefly discussed in order to present the sociological undertones in translation theories long before the announcement of the sociological turn. Finally, these findings are confronted with field theory as formulated by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001), which is one of the most commonly applied sociological theories in TS. The aim is to establish how much sociology is truly present in the sociological turn. The chapter ends with a postulate regarding the future of the sociological turn and alternative options for sociological research in TS.

2 Turns in Translation Studies There are several different approaches to studying the history of TS. For instance, George Steiner (1975, after Bassnett 1991 [1980], p. 40) distinguishes four uneven periods. The first one lasted from the times of Ancient Rome to 1791, marked by the publication of Alexander Pope’s work titled “Essay on the Principles of Translation.” The second continued from 1791 to 1946, and it was a period of establishing the first academic investigations of translation practice. The third started in the 1940s and continues up to the present, and is characterised by a linguistic approach to translation. Finally, the fourth one began in the 1960s and also continues, overlapping with the third period. It focuses on the

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interdisciplinary approach in TS and its cooperation with cultural studies, ethnography, anthropology, and/or sociology. Susan Bassnett (1991 [1980]) investigates the development of TS from Antiquity to Modernity. While doing so, she reflects upon the role and development of translation and translation theory during, for instance, Romanticism, Renaissance, and Victorian Times, placing them within a wider sociocultural and historical context. A similar organisation via historical study appears in the work of, for instance, Jeremy Munday (2001). There are studies restricted to specific geographical areas, certain periods, particular text types, or carried out with a view to ordering different approaches to TS history (Woodsworth 2005 [1998]). However, as Bassnett argues, a periodic organisation in the discussion of TS history serves only one function—organisational. According to the author, any attempt at a strict “periodisation” of TS will probably fail due to, for instance, the prevalence of certain ideas independently of the periods being recognised, or due to difficulties in the classification of both texts and authors that display different qualities to those characteristic of their epoch (Bassnett 1991 [1980], pp. 40–42). Edwin Gentzler (2014) partially manages to avoid those issues by discussing not periods in TS, but rather phases or stages of its development. Gentzler’s perspective also proves most useful for this chapter, as the scholar places emphasis on the newest developments and on the relationships between TS and other disciplines. According to Gentzler (2014), it is possible to divide the development of TS into four stages: pre-discipline, discipline, interdiscipline, and post-discipline. The pre-disciplinary period spans over the 1950s and 1960s and is mostly characterised by translational activity in North America (2014, p. 15). The sudden advancements in translation are connected to the process of globalisation as well as to the fact that the United States was at the time in the process of attaining control over the world’s economic, political, and cultural spheres (2014, pp. 15–16). According to Gentzler, this is a period of mostly non-academic translation activity that, however, gave rise to academic debate in the second half of the twentieth century.

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Without further elaboration, it is worth noting that Gentzler does not take into account several milestone works in TS which were published at that time, such as Nida’s Toward a Science of Translating (1964), Catford’s A Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965), or, in Polish, Wojtasiewicz’s Wstęp do teorii tłumaczenia [Introduction to the Theory of Translation] (1957). For Gentzler, the first signs of proper academic debate on translation appear only in the 1970s, and they inaugurate the discipline phase in TS (2014, p. 17). The main event during this stage was a conference in Leuven in 1976 that hosted scholars such as André Lefevere, Itamar Even-Zohar, and James Holmes. According to Gentzler, that was the moment when the proper foundations were laid for the future development of TS. Nevertheless, the discipline stage was in itself marked by numerous disputes over the proper paradigms for studying translation, a lack of cooperation, and locally based, undisseminated research. The interdisciplinary stage begins in the 1990s (Gentzler 2014, p. 18). The previous conflicts within TS had not been resolved, and instead of the cooperation within the field, TS scholars sought cooperation with other disciplines, such as psychology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and gender studies. Owing to these developments, TS earned recognition as a discipline and flourished in academic terms. It was introduced as a principal subject at universities in numerous countries, prestigious summer schools were established, and thematic conferences and papers proliferated. Nonetheless, these advancements did not result in the internal integration of the field and often appeared cursory. For instance, Ginette Michaud (1998; in Gentzler 2014, p. 18) investigated interdisciplinarity in the context of the relation between psychology and TS. She concluded that the interdisciplinary interest of TS in psychology was often superficial: psychological theories were frequently studied only partially, taken out of their context, or without proper in-depth reflection. It seems that similar accusations would hold in regard to numerous other cases in TS. The post-disciplinary stage in TS is supposed to be a time of close cooperation between disciplines and to serve as a framework to provide answers to the above-mentioned critical points. Siri Nergaard and Stefano Arduini used the concept of post-disciplinarity first in 2011:

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We propose the inauguration of transdisciplinary research with translation as an interpretative as well as an operative tool. We imagine a sort of new era that could be termed post-translation studies, where translation is viewed as fundamentally transdisciplinary, mobile, and open-ended. (Neergard and Arduini 2011, p. 8; in Gentzler 2014, p. 20)

For Gentzler, it is an opportunity to fully exploit the potential of cooperation initiated during the interdisciplinary period and to investigate translation and TS itself not from the “inside” but from the “outside,” with the application of discourses and paradigms foreign to TS (2014, p. 21). In the next part, the main assumptions of the sociological turn are presented, and there is an attempt to ascribe certain tendencies to one of the stages identified by Gentzler.

3 The Sociological Turn In 2007, Michaela Wolf published her article “Introduction. The emergence of a sociology of translation,” in which she introduced the concept of the sociological turn in TS and its foundations. This text, as well as the edited book that it opens, could perhaps be treated as a manifest of a sociology of translation, as they lay the necessary foundations in a manner similar to, for instance, Theo Hermans’s The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (1985) for the Manipulation School. However, the relationship between TS and sociology has been maturing for the previous thirty years, as Claudia V. Angelelli points out (2014, p. 1). The sociology of translation views translation as entangled in the social system in a twofold manner: by being performed by persons functioning therein and by being regulated by social organisations (Wolf 2007, p. 1). Therefore, numerous factors that condition translation and the related processes are social. Following Hermans, Wolf claims that understanding of these factors, as well as relations and interactions between them, allows us to view translation from the perspective of sociology. According to the author, “[t]he social function and the socio-communicative value of a translation can be best located within the contact zone where the translated text and the various socially driven agencies meet” (Wolf 2007, p. 1).

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It should be underlined now that this statement, however crucial for translation, is also disputable. The term “agency” is widely used in sociology, yet at the same time, it is defined differently depending on the theory. Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens all view it somewhat differently. A similar situation concerns the term “discourse” in linguistics. Therefore, its application without indication of meaning may be confusing and inadequate in sociological terms. Furthermore, the general meaning of “agency” involves “organisation,” a meaning previously present in TS and perhaps the most prominent one for the TS reader not familiar with sociological contexts. Yet this leads us to a potential contradiction: as both texts and agencies in this meaning are not animate beings, nor do they possess consciousness, they are not able to “meet.”2 It is the individuals within the agencies and behind the texts that interact with each other. It is their social entanglement and individual understanding of the situation that should be of utmost importance to the researcher working in a sociology of translation. It seems that such “shortcuts” should be avoided and attention should be paid to a careful delineation of the notions being proposed. This is especially important given the background of TS and its overall tendency to downplay the individuals that perform and are recipients of translation. They are the crucial actors: as Albrecht Neubert and Gregory M. Shreve once wrote, translation is possible as long as someone is willing to translate and someone is in need of translation (1992, p. 85; after Hejwowski 2007, p. 16). Wolf notes that placing individuals in the spotlight of scholarly interest leads to significant alterations in the TS methodology, if not creating a new one (2007, p. 1). An interdisciplinary approach is advocated, with a need for close co-operation between disciplines, rather than simply borrowing tools and methods, as TS tends to do only too often (2007, p. 2). Wolf views interdisciplinarity from two perspectives: on 2Unless we assume that agency (qua organisation) possesses its own agency, following the train of thought presented by Bruno Latour (2014). Latour provides evidence for the claim that in the last several thousand years the Earth has been repeatedly given and taken away its agency and notes that we live “[a]t the time of anthropocene, with its utter confusion between objects and subjects” (2014, p. 9). The result is a complex and multi-layered situation, which appears to require dismantling before the application of the terminology being discussed and proves how tricky it may be to explore the issue of agency.

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the one hand, it leads to development of disciplines and new vantage points. On the other hand, it always involves disagreement and causes tensions when incompatible (perhaps partly incompatible) scholarly disciplines are brought together. Nevertheless, most of TS development is based on interdisciplinary undertakings, which often result in “turns,” the most famous probably being the cultural turn, that enrich the field with new methods, tools, perspectives, and issues of interest. According to Wolf, the sociological turn is a descendant of the cultural turn, which for her, as for many others, is a milestone in the process of contextualisation of translation and introduction of macro-perspective to TS (2007, p. 3). These sociological developments allow one to potentially approach translation not only from the cultural but also from the social perspective and emphasise the role of the individuals engaged in the translation process. These individuals are embedded in a social network of numerous relations, and thanks to a sociological perspective, they can be finally “viewed as socially constructed and constructing subjects” (Wolf 2007, p. 3). Perhaps as a result of this connection between the cultural and the sociological turns, Wolf distinguishes two planes on which translation is shaped. The first one is cultural, “a structural one [that] encompasses influential factors such as power, dominance, national interests, religion or economics,” whereas the other one is social, and “concerns the agents involved in the translation process, who continuously internalise the aforementioned structures and act in correspondence with their culturally connotated value systems and ideologies” (Wolf 2007, p. 4). However, as shown below, the division into two domains, cultural and social, creates a clash between TS and sociology—or at least, Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, one of the most heavily exploited approaches in the sociological turn. In the end, Wolf also concludes that, firstly, culture and society are so closely interlinked that two separate methodologies are superfluous and, secondly, that the tools and methods applied in TS thus far are no longer applicable (2007, pp. 5–6). It seems that the very roots of the sociological turn are plagued with significant tensions. Despite the call for interdisciplinarity, the downsides of interdisciplinarity stand out in stark contrast. It is acknowledged that culture and society should be studied together and that the

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division may be artificial, but reference to two separate “realities,” cultural and social, is still maintained. What is more, the basic concepts seem to be too vague, lacking explicit, clear definitions. In the next section, the links between TS and sociology are examined, including a few attempts at constructing an acceptable methodology and conducting research within the realm of a sociology of translation.

4 Selected Trends and Theories in the Sociology of Translation This section should be treated as an attempt to highlight certain trends, directions, and most prominent names in the sociology of translation, rather than being a full-fledged state-of-the-art survey. Before moving on to the relationship between sociology and translation in the twenty-first century, it is worth noting that numerous other theories exhibit a sociological orientation although they are not classified as part of the sociological turn. These are mostly system theories and emerged under the label of the cultural turn or Manipulation School. For instance, Even-Zohar’s (1990a, 1990b, 1990c [1978]) polysystem theory is built upon similar assumptions as Bourdieu’s field theory. In an interview with Dora Sales Salvador (2002), Even-Zohar claims that while developing the polysystem theory, he drew upon the works of Bronisław Malinowski, Edward Sapir, and Pierre Bourdieu. More light on the relation between Even-Zohar and Bourdieu is shed by Nitsa Ben-Ari, who was the first translator of Bourdieu into Hebrew and one of Even-Zohar’s students. The scholar recalls that Even-Zohar “was the first to introduce Bourdieu to Israeli academia” and “was interested in Bourdieu’s theories and started corresponding with him” (Ben-Ari 2014, p. 23). The publications of André Lefevere also show his growing inclination towards sociology. The sociological undertones are present in his rewriting (or refraction) theory (Lefevere 1998, 2012 [1982], 2014 [1985]), which emphasises the sociocultural and political environment in which translation is embedded. At some point, Lefevere started to develop his theory of cultural capital in TS (1998), drawing upon Bourdieu’s work. However, due to his tragic death, he

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never managed to publish more on this topic. Finally, let me mention norm theories, such as Toury’s innovative work on norms (1995), which leans increasingly towards sociological thought: Toury views the practice of translation as “being able to play a social role ” (1995, p. 53, italics original). The need for sociology becomes even more apparent in the norm theories that follow, for example Hermans’s (1996) sociocultural norms. When it comes to the newest achievements, Wolf distinguishes three main “sociologies” within the sociological turn: the sociology of agents, the sociology of the translation process, and the sociology of the cultural product (2007, pp. 14–18). The sociology of agents focuses on the individuals that take part in the process of translation and analyses these subjects from various perspectives. Among some of the academics following this trend, there is Wolf and her study on female translators, focusing on their societal stance (Wolf 2006). Anthony Pym (1998) advocates placing the focus on translational figures rather than texts, along with the shift from “objectivity” to “subjectivity” and individualism. Jean-Marc Gouanvic’s (1997) analyses the translation field with the application of Bourdieu’s field theory in the context of translation of science-fiction literature from English to French in 1945–1960 (after Wolf 2007, pp. 14–15). Let me also mention studies that focus on the translator as a professional, such as Dam and Zethsen’s (2014) juxtaposition of the professional context of national and EU translators from Denmark. The sociology of the translation process is based mostly on descriptive works, such as that of Clem Robyns (1992), who focuses on the original text and its translation from three different perspectives: the present discourse; the transfer of various elements and aspects through translation; and, finally, the choice of strategies in translation from the perspective of the receiving system and its constraints (after Wolf 2007, pp. 15–16). In the sociology of cultural product, translation is subject to numerous shaping factors, many of which are social, and participates in forming other powerful factors in society (Wolf 2007, pp. 16–17). For instance, Heilbron and Sapiro’s (2007) model of the global system of translations is reminiscent of the global language system proposed by Abram de Swaan (2001). The authors analyse the translation market in the context of exchanging goods, building cultural capital, and

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constructing or sustaining power relations. By applying Bourdieu’s field theory, they focus on the key factors that shape the translation market, and relate the processes therein to the hegemony of the Englishspeaking world and the hypercentral position of the English language. Finally, it seems plausible to mention proliferating theoretical publications that do not explore translation but rather the potential of the sociological turn itself. For instance, Chesterman focuses on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, calling it a bridge concept (2007). The scholar claims that the notion of habitus provides a broad theoretical framework that helps reanalyse and combine perspectives in TS that so far have functioned separately. In another publication, Wolf (2014) traces the development of the sociological turn with a focus on the translator’s habitus. Sapiro (2017) changes the perspective in order to claim that sociology may also be enriched thanks to the sociological turn in TS. As can be seen even from this brief review of the sociological turn, the name that tends to recur is that of Pierre Bourdieu. Admittedly, some authors draw upon other sociological theories; for instance, Hermans (2007) applies Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, or Mason and Ren (2014) draw upon Michel Foucault’s work in their study of interpreters. Before the sociological turn was announced, there were attempts to transfer the actor-network theory to TS (Callon 1984). However, these works are significantly outnumbered by references to Bourdieu. Closer analysis of some of the writings from the sociological turn, however, does not provide much information on the sociological theories applied in their construction. Terms such as habitus, field, or capital are widely used, yet they are not clearly defined. The question of methodology and methods still holds, the empirical studies in translation with sociological optics are not very numerous and the methods they use are reminiscent of other methods previously available in TS. Moreover, numerous works recall the already mentioned theories from the cultural turn rather than presenting new and innovative quality. Finally, even though more than ten years have passed since the publication of Constructing a Sociology of Translation, it seems that it is still “being constructed” and still facing the same issues—mostly related to the basics such as “terminology, subject of study and research model” (Zheng 2017, p. 28).

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Therefore, in order to gain a fuller picture of the sociological turn and its adequacy, the works of Bourdieu are investigated in the next subsection.

5 Field Theory Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) is one of the most distinctive personas of French or even European sociology. However, sociology was not his primary interest—first, he studied philosophy and was particularly interested in epistemology. Yet, when he was conducting his research in Algeria, he started to explore ethnographic methods. Finally, he turned to sociology in the 1960s and became the chair at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Field theory, comprising the triad of field, habitus, and capital, is perhaps his most known achievement. Bourdieu developed field theory throughout his whole professional life (Oxford Bibliographies 2012).

5.1 Introductory Remarks In his description of Bourdieu’s work, Löic J. D. Wacquant emphasises that Bourdieu’s imperative goal was to overcome certain dichotomies present in the sciences: subjectivism/objectivism, theory/research, structure/individual, and microanalysis/macroanalysis (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 8–9).3 Some of these dichotomies pertain to TS as well: some areas of translation research are considered to be too subjective, and the attempts to use subjectivity to the advantage of the field are infrequent (as only objectivity is considered to have scientific value). The theory sometimes becomes too abstract to apply to real-world practice: systemic and structural theories notice individuals and their potential but fail to include them in research (e.g. see Hermans’s criticism of polysystem theory (2009 [1997], pp. 118–119) or Chesterman’s 3This

short presentation of Bourdieu’s theory was prepared on the basis of Polish translations of his works. This was a conscious decision, given that English translations have been said to involve oversimplification of Bourdieu’s thought (e.g. Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001).

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remarks on sociocultural norms [1998]). Therefore, the choice of Bourdieu’s work as one of the main pillars in the sociology of translation appears to be adequate and justified. A closer examination of the objectivity/subjectivity issue shows the potential for significant change in how we approach translation practice. Wacquant uses the example of society to illustrate the potential of Bourdieu’s approach—the observation of a society as an “objective structure” leads to the revelation of repeatable patterns (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 13). However, a solely objective view is incomplete and insufficient for a proper and comprehensive understanding of reality. The objective structures revealed should not be treated as living beings with the power to act. What is more, a scholar should not assume that structures are reflected identically in every mind. Individuals functioning within the structure are equally important, and so are their perspectives. Hence, subjective understanding should become part of the comprehensive grasp of reality (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 14). Simultaneously, if only subjective understanding of the world is considered, it is impossible to uncover and fully explain the aforementioned repeated patterns. To sum up, researchers should not ignore the role of individuals functioning in the system, but nor should they give individuals all the power. Subjectivity and objectivity should not be viewed as a dichotomy but as two elements of reality that can only function together: the yin and yang of the social sciences (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 15–16). According to Bourdieu, any investigation of social practices should be supplemented with an attempt to grasp both the individual’s understanding of the system and the individual’s value system (2001, p. 16). It is rooted in the assumption that there is a relation between the objective (social) and subjective (personal, cognitive) structures. How one sees the world is determined by the social system in which one functions (2001, p. 17). The inner world is thought to be shaped twofold: firstly, by the educational system, and secondly, by the social circumstances in which individuals function and which become internalised by them. Moreover, the internalised system also performs the controlling function. It makes society operate in a certain way by promoting one perception over others (2001, p. 18). This point solely shows the potential in the application of Bourdieu’s thought to TS.

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5.2 Field, Capital, and Habitus The most significant concepts in Bourdieu’s theory are perhaps field, capital, and habitus. They are developed on the basis of the assumption that modern societies are highly heterogenous and, thus, involve numerous spheres—for instance, religious, cultural, academic, etc. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 20). Bourdieu names those spheres “the fields.” Each field assumes its place within a larger social map and forms boundaries that separate it from other fields (2001, p. 21). The inside of the field is regulated by its own rules, bounding the individuals that function therein. However, individuals have a choice to either maintain the rules or to attempt to change them. Field is also a structure that influences one’s worldview. The outside is interpreted through the prism of the inside, giving sense and meaning to its participants. The field can be understood through numerous metaphors: for instance, through the metaphor of a game (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 78–79). In the field, there are players that follow the rules of the game. Players compete with each other and play the same game because they all agree to play and to follow the rules. They are also interested in the gain, and they consider the overall game to be of key importance.4 Players possess a set of cards that allow them to make various moves and sometimes give them power over other players. The value of cards is, however, not given once and for all but changes over time and depends on the game. The cards are also strictly connected to the goal of the game, which is twofold: either to gather more cards or to change the rules of the game (2001, pp. 80–81). The cards in the game correspond to the idea of capital, another crucial term in field theory. Bourdieu views capital as a weapon and as leverage possessed by an individual against others acting in the field. Capital allows an individual to be active in the field, to play and

4At

this point, the concept of illusio should be briefly mentioned. It is defined by Bourdieu as a state in which one is consumed by the game, views the game as meaningful and considers the gain to be worth the game (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 101–102). Illusio is necessary to keep the players interested and to make them agree to the rules. It also depends on the player’s capital and habitus.

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attempt to change the rules, rather than just passively exist (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 79–80). The type of the capital depends on the field. Bourdieu distinguishes three main types of capital: economic, cultural, and social (2001, p. 104). Each of them is also related to symbolic capital, that is, the form they assume once they are viewed through the prism of the field. Capital is of utmost importance in a field study as, according to Bourdieu, it is not possible to establish the boundaries of the field without establishing what the capitals in the field are and what is their influence (2001, pp. 79–80). The third element of field theory is habitus, which can be found inside an individual functioning within the field. Habitus is understood as an inside mechanism that is activated when people face various situations in the field, and that provides them with various strategies5 for coping with those situations (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 22–23). Bourdieu compares habitus to Noam Chomsky’s notion of deep structure—it is a social matrix built during the process of socialisation that facilitates the generation of both systematic and creative solutions. It is worth mentioning at this point that the strategies being applied also depend on the player’s capital and its structure (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 80). The structure of the capital is determined by its history and components: the social development and the life of an individual. The chosen strategies are also influenced by the person’s view and understanding of the field, as well as their grasp of the complete structure as viewed from the inside (2001, pp. 83–84). Bourdieu claims that the concept of habitus was proposed in order to pay attention to “small” everyday tasks that have been previously ignored but that, nevertheless, prove significant (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, pp. 106–107). Simultaneously, habitus obliterates the dichotomy of objectivity/subjectivity: the system does not work on its own anymore and the actions are not completely rational,

5Significantly, Bourdieu does not define “strategy” as “a detailed plan for achieving success” (Cambridge Dictionary 2019) but as ordered activities that create clear patterns, even though they apparently do not follow any agreed rules (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 26).

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well-considered, or one-of-a-kind, but are instead shared with other individuals. Summing up, habitus could be defined as an internal system built upon various experiences and practices and created to support these practices. It should not, however, be understood in terms of “habits”: it is significantly more creative (2001, p. 108). There is a reciprocal relationship between the field and habitus. On the one hand, the field shapes habitus, which is supposed to help an individual function within the field and fulfil its requirements (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 114). On the other hand, habitus makes the field important to an individual. It makes them believe that the field is valuable, significant, meaningful, and worth the effort. If habitus and the field correspond, one knows what to do, how to act, how to achieve goals, and how to fit in (2001, pp. 115–117). Yet, habitus is not immutable; indeed, it constantly fluctuates, being influenced by numerous new situations and experiences. Conscious change is possible, especially if auto-analysis and insightfulness are also present (2001, p. 122). As Bourdieu notices, a significant change comes with an effort because individuals normally do not change their fields. Hence, they constantly encounter similar situations that, in effect, make their habitus only stronger.

5.3 Field Theory and TS Bourdieu places emphasis on a certain postulate that seems to be sometimes forgotten in TS: the study of a structure should be supplemented by the study of social agents. As Bourdieu notices, the structures do not exist or change on their own: there must be another active subject. These subjects cannot be treated as automatised and mindless cogs but as individuals capable of making decisions and acting within the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 23). Thus, the link between the structure and individual is one of co-creation. Current and past theories of translation in the cultural context can also be criticised with the application of Bourdieu’s theory. Upon his investigation of cultural products, Bourdieu concludes that scholars often incorrectly connect the products of culture with general

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circumstances in which they were created, for example social, economic, etc. (2001, pp. 49–50). Bourdieu claims that such a connection ignores the medium between these two, namely the field. The field—in this specific case, the field of cultural production—is a separate structure with its own rules, so that whoever acts therein needs to behave accordingly. Thus, without considering the field, it is not possible to truly understand the actions of individuals and the occurring events. This error of short circuit, as Bourdieu calls it, seems to be present in numerous system and cultural theories in TS, for instance in polysystem or rewriting theories. The analysis applying the category of the field should focus on three interrelated aspects (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001, p. 87). Firstly, links between the potential investigated field—in this case, translation field— and the field of power should be established. Secondly, a researcher should describe the internal structure of the potential field—thus, the relations between the institutions and individuals (e.g. publishers, translators of various specialisations, commissioners) that function within the field and that participate in the fight therein. Thirdly, a researcher should pay attention to the habitus and capital possessed by the individuals functioning in the field. Such an analysis allows for the existence (or non-existence) of the translation field and its structure, as well as providing more context on other sociological research on translation.

6 Conclusions Summing up, it seems that sociological undertones have been present in TS almost from the beginning of the discipline. The emergence of the sociology of translation in the twenty-first century appears to be not only highly awaited but also unduly prolonged. I would like to put forward an argument that even though the sociological turn in TS is inarguably a late bloomer, it still has not avoided certain issues lying at its very roots. Perhaps, one of the most significant issues is the treatment of the sociological turn as a descendant of the cultural turn and a continuation of its traditions. By its interdisciplinary approach to sociology, the sociological turn creates tensions between the disciplines involved and does not realise its full potential. Partial and selective transfer of sociological

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theories does not result only in partial and possibly distorted picture of reality, but it may also stand in opposition to basic ideas inscribed in those theories—as is the case with Bourdieu’s field theory. This claim has been questioned (e.g., Gouanvic 2005; Ben-Ari 2014)—yet it seems to be the case often enough to merit attention. Finally, the application of field theory, which seems to be the most widespread sociological concept in the sociological turn, may not even be justified. Since Bourdieu himself studied the existence and structure of the literary field, it is likely that the translation field exists as well. Still, the sociological turn lacks local grassroots research that would, firstly, confirm whether it is possible even to discuss the existence of a translation field or not—just because there is structure involved, it does not imply that this structure must be a field—and, secondly, if the field does exist, it would provide researchers with more detailed information on the field’s internal structure. I side with Gentzler when he says that it might be high time for TS scholars to abandon thinking and acting in interdisciplinary terms. Perhaps, ours is a post-disciplinary period. The sociological turn might be an innovatory area, yielding new results and proliferating in ground-breaking research. Yet, as long as the inclination towards interdisciplinarity and superficial treatment of theories prevail, the chances of success do not appear to be as high as they could be.

References Angelelli, Claudia V. 2014. Introduction: The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies. In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies, ed. Claudia V. Angelelli, 1–5. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bassnett, Susan. 1991 [1980]. Translation Studies, rev. ed. London/New York: Routledge. Ben-Ari, Nitsa. 2014. Political Dissidents as Translators, Editors, and Publishers. In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies, ed. Claudia V. Angelelli, 23–40. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Löic J.D. Wacquant. 2001. Zaproszenie do socjologii refleksyjnej, trans. Anna Sawisz. Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa [published in English in 1992 as An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press].

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Callon, Michel. 1984. Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review 31 (1): 196–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1984.tb00113.x. Cambridge Dictionary. 2019. Strategy. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pl/dictionary/english/strategy. Accessed 13 Feb 2019. Catford, John. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford/London/ Glasgow: Oxford University Press. Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. Description, Explanation, Prediction: A Response to Gideon Toury and Theo Hermans. Current Issues in Language and Society 5 (1–2): 91–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13520529809615505. Chesterman, Andrew. 2007. Bridge Concepts in Translation Sociology. In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, ed. Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari, 171–183. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dam, Karen V., and Karen Korning Zethsen. 2014. Translators in International Organisations: A Special Breed of High-Status Professionals? Danish EU Translators as a Case in Point. In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies, ed. Claudia V. Angelelli, 93–114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. de Swaan, Abram. 2001. Words of the World: The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity Press and Blackwell. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990a. Introduction [to Polysystem Studies]. Poetics Today 11 (1): 1–6. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990b. Polysystem Theory. Poetics Today 11 (1): 9–26. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990c [1978]. The Position of Translated Literature Within the Literary Polysystem. Poetics Today 11 (1): 45–51. Gentzler, Edwin. 2014. Translation Studies: Pre-discipline, Discipline, Interdiscipline, and Post-discipline. International Journal of Society, Culture, and Language 2 (2): 13–24. Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 1997. Translation and the Shape of Things to Come. The Emergence of American Science Fiction in Post-war France. The Translator 3 (2): 125–152. Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. 2005. A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances: Field, ‘Habitus’, Capital and ‘Illusio.’ The Translator 11 (2): 147–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2005.1 0799196. Heilbron, Johan, and Giséle Sapiro. 2007. Outline for a Sociology of Translation. Current Issues and Future Prospects. In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, ed. Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari, 93–108. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Hejwowski, Krzysztof. 2007. Kognitywno-komunikatywna teoria przekładu. Warszawa: PWN. Hermans, Theo. 1985. The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation. London: Croom Helm. Hermans, Theo. 1996. Norms and the Determination of Translation: A Theoretical Framework. In Translation, Power, Subversion, ed. Román Álvarez and M. Carmen-África Vidal, 25–51. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hermans, Theo. 2007. Translation, Irritation and Resonance. In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, ed. Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari, 57–75. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hermans, Theo. 2009 [1997]. Translation in Systems: Descriptive and SystemOriented Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Latour, Bruno. 2014. Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene. New Literary History 45 (1): 1–18. Lefevere, André. 1998. Translation Practice(s) and the Circulation of Cultural Capital: Some Aeneids in English. In Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 41–56. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lefevere, André. 2012 [1982]. Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 3rd ed., 203–219. London/New York: Routledge. Lefevere, André. 2014 [1985]. Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm. In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, ed. Theo Hermans, 215–243. New York: Routledge. Mason, Ian, and Wen Ren. 2014. Power in Face-to-Face Interpreting Events. In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies, ed. Claudia V. Angelelli, 115–134. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Michaud, Ginette (ed.). 1998. Psychanalyse et traduction: Voies de traverse/ Psychoanalysis and Translation: Passages Between and Beyond. TTR 11 (2): 107–130. Munday, Jeremy. 2001. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London/New York: Routledge. Nergaard, Siri, and Stefano Arduini. 2011. Translation: A New Paradigm. Translation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, inaugural issue: 8–17. Neubert, Albrecht, and Gregory M. Shreve. 1992. Translation as Text. Kent: The Kent State University Press. Nida, Eugene A. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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Part III The Shaping of Worldviews: Focus on Philosophy and Religion

7 Translational Roots of Western Essentialism Piotr Blumczynski

As part of the volume Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, this chapter engages with all three titular phenomena but does so from the perspective of a fourth one which, before being named as providing the focus, is first implicitly represented by the two dashes. This often invisible yet undeniably powerful phenomenon is translation: a force that not only facilitates contact between linguistic and cultural communities, but also shapes them from within. The broad research perspective embraced in this collection invites an adequately broad concept of translation, extending beyond textual operations and reaching into the very ­substance of thought.

P. Blumczynski (*)  Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_7

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1 Substance Metaphysics and Essentialism in a Linguistic Worldview Yet, in what sense can thought be said to “have substance”? In fact, both these words probably require their own sets of inverted commas to signal the doubly figurative use at work here. What is, then, this ­“substance” that can be “had”? In the sciences, substance is understood as “material with particular physical characteristics” (Cambridge Dictionary 2019) but given that, according to this definition, methane qualifies as a substance and gasoline does not, it is clear that a scientific deployment of this concept draws on popular use by profiling material purity, homogeneity, stability, and predictability. Indeed, substance in non-specialist discourse stands for “importance, seriousness, or relationship to real facts” and, therefore, for “the most important part of what someone has said or written” (Cambridge Dictionary 2019). MerriamWebster dictionary (2019) equates substance with “essential nature,” and in turn defines essence as “the most significant element, quality, or aspect of a thing or person.” The most salient element of both substance and essence is inherent importance, which is particularly clear in their adjectival forms. Something described as substantial or essential implies formative influence on a key or central aspect; this is confirmed when we consider their numerous antonyms (marginal, incidental, accidental, trivial, superficial, additional, auxiliary, and so on). In this context, a useful theoretical construct is that of linguistic worldview, theorised by Jerzy Bartmiński as “a language-entrenched interpretation of reality, which can be expressed in the form of judgements about the world, people, things or events” (2009, p. 23). So when we say in English that “in essence, this argument boils down to” or in Polish, that “zasada ta w swojej istocie dotyczy” (“this principle, in its essence, applies to”); when we dismiss something as unessential (Eng.) or nieistotne (Pol.), or deem some allegations to have no substance—what interpretation of reality are we invoking? It could be argued that this and similar usages demonstrate an enduring legacy of the worldview which George Lakoff terms “objectivist metaphysics” (holding that “all of reality consists of entities, which have

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fixed properties”) combined with “another metaphysical assumption, essentialism,” according to which, “among the properties that things have, some are essential, that is, they are those properties that make a thing what it is, and without which it would not be that kind of thing” (1987, pp. 160–161; original emphasis). Crucially, essentialism is not limited to particular areas, subjects or topics but extends into metaphysics, which guides our thinking at the highest, most abstract and intuitive levels. But rather than seek to point out, as Lakoff does in his very next chapter, “What’s Wrong with Objectivist Metaphysics,” my intention is to explore how this worldview emerged, spread and eventually became so entrenched that “it is taken as being so obviously true to be beyond question” (Lakoff 1987, p. 160), and especially what role translation has played in this process. It is a fascinating story with elements of romance (philosophy, etymologically, is a love of wisdom), drama (as particular languages, institutions, and views fight for domination), suspense and detective work (when what looks like a solid noun turns out to be a fluid participle). But before we delve into this story, several qualifying statements are in order. First, given that substance metaphysics has been “the dominant research paradigm in the history of Western philosophy since Aristotle” (Seibt 2012), it would be naïve and arrogant to suggest that its development can be satisfactorily covered in a single volume, let alone a short chapter. Therefore, certain limitations of scope have to be imposed. One of them is a predominantly linguistic and translational lens (though some philosophical perspective is inevitable); another is a focus on lexicogrammatical issues. As we trace the translational transformations of ousia in classical and biblical Greek into substantia and essentia in medieval Latin, and further into substance and essence in contemporary English (as well as their cognates in several other modern languages), we will consider mainly religious and theological writings, and narrow our gaze even further to the position of the Roman Catholic Church. This is of course only one of many genealogical strands in the rich linguistic history of metaphysics in the West; there are vast areas (for example, non-Aristotelian views, “secular” philosophical thought, the role of Arabic translations or other religious traditions, and so on) that will have to be left untouched in this account (for a broad overview,

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see Courtine 2014). Nevertheless, I believe that even this necessarily narrow scope offers valuable insights into the gradual entrenchment of concepts such as substance and essence, resulting in their undeniably central place in the (meta-)linguistic worldviews influenced by Greek and Latin. The story behind this entrenchment is very long and complicated, and an attempt to make sense of it calls for due appreciation for its narrative characteristics and the various historical contexts involved. Philosophical views are normally formulated in critical response to other ideas. Today, many of these ideas are at best unclear and oftentimes simply unknown. Therefore, expressions such as “the Aristotelian ousia” must be considered conceptual shorthand—useful but risky— and held in check by the conviction, shared with many ancient philosophers as well as contemporary linguists, that “words are protean in nature. That is […] they can shift meanings in different contexts of use” (Evans 2009, p. xi). Let us note in passing that the qualification “in nature” is very relevant to our discussion. Paraphrasing this statement, we could say that “it is in the very nature of words to be protean” or that “shifting meanings is an essential part of being a word.” The entrenchment of substance metaphysics is unmissable even in this, it would seem, strictly linguistic observation made well into the twentyfirst century.

2  Ousia in Aristotle’s Metaphysics The beginnings of our story, as is the case with many true stories, are shrouded in mystery and confusion. The gradual emergence of ousia as a philosophical term must be seen against the background of the rich but largely unstandardised Greek vocabulary used to discuss various aspects of being—which we could retrospectively classify as exploring ontology, phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics, and possibly several other areas of philosophy. With open acknowledgement that we begin in medias res, let us turn to Aristotle’s (384–322 BCE) Metaphysics, which offers his fullest treatment of being—understood in the most general, abstract sense. Indeed, the central and most basic question of

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Metaphysics, articulated in various ways, is: “What is being?.” Aristotle comes to address it at length at the beginning of Book 7, in a passage quoted below in an English translation (my only intervention consists of reinstating ousia in place of the word chosen as its English equivalent which I do not want to disclose at this point): We speak in many ways of what is, i.e. the ways distinguished earlier in our work on the several ways in which things are spoken of. On the one hand it signifies what a thing is and a this, and on the other of what quality or quantity or any of other things thus predicated. But while what is is spoken of in these various ways, it is clear that the primary thing that is is what a thing is, which signifies [its?] ousia. […] And other things are said to be by being either quantities of what is in this way, or qualities, or affections, or something else of the sort. (Bostock 1994, p. 1; emphasis added)

This somewhat awkward translation, in some places verging on ungrammaticality, rather well conveys Aristotle’s “cryptic and disconcerting manner of using philosophical expressions” (Owens 1963, p. 137) as well as his general style: convoluted, elliptical, and mostly reluctant to use the Greek equivalent of quotations marks (which makes it difficult to determine whether it is the word itself or its reference that is being discussed). As we focus on the key statement in this passage, emphasised in boldface, let us consult two other, slightly more domesticated translations: “that which ‘is’ primarily is the ‘what’, which indicates the ousia of the thing” (Aristotle 2009); “the primary sense [of ‘being’] is clearly the ‘what,’ which denotes the ousia.” (Aristotle 1989 [1933])

The kind of being with which this statement is concerned could be called “being in its own right” or “being in so far as it is being”; in several other parts of Metaphysics Aristotle makes the key distinction between the first, primary or principal ousia and other, i.e. non-primary

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ousiai. The former, unlike the latter, cannot be reduced to a certain quality, quantity, shape, position, and so on—it is simply what makes a thing what it is. To refer to Aristotle’s own example, Socrates may be described as snub-nosed; however, “being snub-nosed is true of Socrates not in virtue of being the very thing he is […], but in virtue of something else, namely, snub-nosedness, being true of him” (Politis 2004, p. 112). Here is the difference between primary and non-primary beings: the latter depend on the former as subjects of predication (snub-nosedness makes little sense in the absence of a nose) but primary ousia does not depend on anything else to be what it is. Moreover, the primary ousia is not something that a thing shares with other things; it is not a kind (genus ) or category membership. That is why Aristotle, when giving examples of ousia, points to particular persons—notably Socrates—and, generally, concrete living entities: roses, plants, dogs, and so on. But “even when the term does not denote a concrete thing, it invariably refers […] to something highly individual” (Owens 1963, p. 139). It is “that which is true of the thing in virtue of the thing’s being the very thing that is” (Politis 2004, p. 114) which Aristotle repeatedly calls by the phrase to ti estin, literally, “the what it is.” That relation between a thing and its what-it-is-ness, “is not a relation between two things, but rather a fundamental relation between a thing and itself ” (Politis 2004, pp. 114–115). This brings us to several linguistic points which have immediate relevance for translation. Morphologically, ousia is a present participle derived from the verb einai “to be,” the most irregular and mysterious of all verbs in possibly any language. As a participle, it behaves partially like a noun or an adjective (in that it can be inflected for gender, number and case: the form ousia is feminine, singular, and nominative), and partially like a verb (in having a tense and voice). Ousia can therefore be translated with reasonable morphological precision into languages with a similar system of grammatical categories. For example, in Polish, on morphological grounds it corresponds most closely to będąca (feminine singular active adjectival participle, here in the nominative case) which like the Greek form resonates with verbal associations and resists a reduction to nominalisation. Będąca is not a neologism or a technical term; it is a very common and perfectly ordinary auxiliary word to

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which we normally pay little attention as far as its lexical meaning is concerned. It could be argued that its sense is not primarily lexical but grammatical; it draws attention to the words it accompanies rather than to itself. Like in Greek, many participles in Polish can be used as substantives; a notice at a museum entrance could say Zwiedzających prosi się o korzystanie z szatni (lit. “The visiting [ones] are requested to use the cloakroom”). But the temporal dimension is key here. Zwiedzający (“a visiting [one]”) is not a description of a permanent role or stable identity; one can only be described as zwiedzający during the act of visiting or otherwise in relation to a visit. Similarly, the participle kierujący (“[a] driving [one]”) signifies someone who is currently driving a vehicle, in contrast to the noun kierowca (“driver”), designating a person who is qualified to drive or who does it regularly. One can, without contradiction, speak of a kierowca (“driver”) who is not currently driving or indeed does not drive at all anymore; but kierujący (“[a] driving [one]”) implies current and active involvement in that activity. Based on examples such as these, it is not difficult to understand why nuanced grammatical distinctions, though not necessarily made in a systematic way, are inseparable from philosophical reflections on being, as is the case in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Of course, I am not suggesting that Polish grammar is commensurate with or even broadly analogous to that of ancient Greek. Rather, by referring to the grammatical fabric of the language with which I am most intimately familiar, I want to illustrate a vital semantic difference between participles and nouns, and by doing so challenge the dominant and mostly uncritical tendency of interpreting (and translating) the former in terms of the latter. Writing specifically about the grammar of Greek, Daniel Wallace argues that “just because a particle is […] substantival, this does not mean that its verbal aspect is entirely diminished. Most substantival participles still retain something of their aspect” (1996, p. 620; original emphasis). Without pressing the point too far, I want to suggest that a participle derived from the word to be, when used substantively, still retains something of its verbal aspect; that it brings with it a certain tension, however subtle, against a definite, fixed categorisation. Ousia, then, as Aristotle uses it, may convey a more dynamic sense than its traditional, nominal interpretation—and translation—would suggest.

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It is in the middle of this linguistic analysis that we come to the crux of the problem: translating ousia by a noun may well have ­far-reaching interpretative implications. This becomes particularly evident when working into a morphologically simpler language such as English in which translators and commentators regularly feel a need to apply non-standard solutions. For example, Joseph Owens (1963, p. 139) tentatively considers “Beingness” or even “a Beingness”—which additionally highlights the interpretative, quantifying lens of the English article system—as the “nearest English equivalent morphologically” of ousia, which however “implies a different time of abstractiveness from that of the Greek term” (Owens 1963, p. 140). In the spirit of even greater lexical creativity, David Bostock observes: One the one hand, he [Aristotle] uses it [ousia] as an abstract noun, speaking of the ousia of the thing, and often equating this with what being is for that thing. Here we could perhaps speak either of the “be-ence” of the “be-ity” of the thing. But he also uses it as a concrete noun, naturally taking a plural, and in this use he will claim that men, horses, and trees are all ousiai. Here, “be-ity” would seem a little less harsh. For example, the claim that “men are be-ities” could be construed on the model of “men are realities”. Indeed, though it lacks the etymological connection with the verb “to be”, the word “reality” would serve well as a translation. For it has both the grammatical uses just mentioned, and at the same time, reflects another facet of Aristotle’s word: that ousiai are the things that really, genuinely, or fundamentally are. (Bostock 1994, p. 43)

Indeed, central to Aristotle’s thought on ousia is the emphasis on what is real, genuine, or fundamental (as opposed to illusory, fake, or accidental). His Greek idiom allows him to discuss it from several angles using various linguistic forms, including the phrase to ti estin (“the what it is”) alongside ousia, without committing definitely to a particular grammatical category. By contrast, Bostock’s comments quoted above (“Aristotle […] uses ousia as an abstract noun […] But he also uses it as a concrete noun”) demonstrate a notorious conceptual leap evident in much of the later translational history of ousia. The reinterpretation of a participle as a noun, far from being a minor grammatical adjustment, is a radical

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interpretative step. A nominalised ousia becomes reified: it is something one can have as well as be. This is a critical moment. From now on, like the noun property in English, it may refer to a specific quality (e.g. “What are the properties of a living organism”?) which however is prototypically conceptualised in terms of possession. In other words, we normally say that a living organism has or possesses certain properties but not that it is these properties. In pre-Aristotelian texts, including those of Plato, both aspects of ousia—being and having—were interlaced without a clear separation: [O]usia meant permanent property, real estate, non-transferable goods: not the possessions we are always using up or consuming but those that remain – land, houses, wealth of the kind one never spends since it breeds new wealth with no expense of itself. When Socrates asks Meno for the ousia of the bee he is not using a technical philosophical term but a metaphor: what is the estate of a bee that each one inherits simply by being born a bee? (Sachs, n.d.)

But when conceptualised as an object of possession rather than an aspect of being, ousia—understood as estate or property—can be completely abstracted from the entity it is predicated on, and denote something physical, material, and tangible: for example, land, house, money, personal belongings. The usage “Private property – no trespassing” hardly echoes the Aristotelian sense of ousia.

3  Ousia in the Greek Bible Yet this is precisely the direction in which ousia leaned for a considerable period of time, roughly between the fourth-century BCE—that is, the time of Aristotle—and the first and second centuries CE, which mark the beginnings of the Christian Bible. Of course, over this period the Greek language itself underwent a significant transformation; the Attic Greek of Plato and Aristotle differs in many ways from the Koinē Greek in which the New Testament was written. Changes in semantic ranges and lexical connotations can occur particularly fast; it would be

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erroneous and naïve to make assumptions regarding the sense of a certain lexical form based on its occurrences separated by several centuries. With that in mind, let us turn to the text of the New Testament. Ousia as an independent word—by then, most likely a regular noun—is extremely rare. It occurs only twice (Thayer 1896, p. 466) in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), first when the younger son demands of his father to give him his share of the ousia, and then, having gone away, squanders his ousia. It is therefore not surprising that based on those two uses, ousia is defined in the Greek-English Lexicon as “what one has, i.e. property, possessions, estate” (Thayer 1896, p. 466). The connection to being is lost or at least made very obscure. The absence of any explicit traces of a central Greek philosophical term in the canonical Christian texts suggests that the fine ontological distinctions explored by Plato and Aristotle were either unknown to or deemed irrelevant by the authors of the New Testament, who were under the dominant influence of the Jewish philosophical tradition. But a big change was just around the corner.

4 Early Christian Terminology It was in the context of doctrinal controversies of early Christianity that the concept of ousia made a spectacular return. The dynamically spreading Christian religion began to face a pressing need to establish its doctrinal and, indirectly, philosophical foundations. Having originated as a Jewish sect, Christianity was strongly committed to the idea of monotheism and the authority of the Hebrew Bible. However, the belief in one God whose most sacred name was YHWH, “I Am that I Am,” was remarkably difficult to reconcile with those parts of Jesus Christ’s teaching in which he asserted his divine sonship without negating his humanity. Can there be two gods? What is Jesus’ status? How can he be fully human and fully divine? How was he different from ordinary human beings? What about the Parakletos, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised to send to his disciples after his own return to the Father? It is important to realise that by the second and third centuries CE these and similar questions were increasingly being asked in Latin as

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well as Greek—and therefore involved translation between these two languages and their conceptual systems. Among the early Christian philosophers and theologians writing in Greek, a place of special significance is held by Origen (c.185–c.253 CE). In his attempt to explain the many paradoxes of the budding Christian theology, Origen affirms that God’s immutable ousia (whose fullness he attributes only to the Father) should be distinguished from his three hypostases. The term hypostasis—etymologically, “that which stands/lies beneath”—appears already in earlier philosophical discourse (including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Porphyry) but seems to be largely synonymous with ousia. Drawing heavily on analogies and allegories, Origen used the term homoousios (“of the same ousia ”) to describe the relation between God’s second and first hypostases, that is, the Son and the Father. In his view, the sameness of ousia does not preclude internal hierarchy or subordination: the Father, or first hypostasis, is “the only one who is autotheos, God in the fullest sense, whereas the Son is his dunamis or power and the Spirit a dependent being” (Edwards 2014, n.p.). Origen’s contemporary, Tertullian (c.155–c.240 CE), was the first important theologian to write in Latin (Hill 2003, p. 31). He approached the paradox of the Christian Godhead along broadly similar lines, though using distinctly different terminology, much of which was his own creation. He invented the word trinitas to express the threein-oneness of the Christian God. More importantly for the present study, Tertullian also introduced the Latin terms persona and substantia, which were to correspond to hypostasis and ousia in Greek. His famous Trinitarian formulation tres personae, una substantia (“there persons, one substance”) marks another key moment in the translational history we are tracing, and which at this point becomes even more complex and confusing. Before Tertullian, ousia was translated into Latin by several words, including materia, queentia and essentia. Of these three, the last one was morphologically closest to the Greek original, with a strong derivational link to esse “to be,” and for some time prevailed as a standard equivalent. There is evidence that at least initially essentia carried with it a certain semantic tension; both Quintilian and Seneca, roughly a century earlier, “found it harsh for Latin ears” and emphasised its

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“bizzare character” but admitted no other word as an acceptable Latin rendition of ousia (Owens 1963, pp. 141–142). It may be somewhat surprising to find that substantia was Tertullian’s preferred concept for the unity of the Godhead; etymologically, it corresponds to hypostasis— “something ‘standing under’ quality or designation or accidental characteristics” (Owens 1963, p. 141)—rather than to ousia, which was considered indivisible. This terminological choice, however, demonstrates the prevalence of ideological factors over etymological considerations. It has been argued that Tertullian, under the influence of Stoic philosophy, believed in the materiality of all real things. In his view, God, though a spirit, was still “a material thing made out of a finer sort of matter” (Tuggy 2016) who at the time of creation brought the Son into existence “using but not losing a portion of his spiritual matter. Then the Son, using a portion of the divine matter shared with him, brings into existence the Spirit” (Tuggy 2016, n.p.). Substantia is precisely what is shared between the three divine personae. This latter term is just as telling of Tertullian’s theology and his interpretation of the Greek concepts: persona, literally meaning a mask, such as that worn by an actor in a Roman theatre, suggests the one God who “played three distinct yet related roles in the great drama of human redemption” (McGrath 2017, p. 304). In this image, the three persons or characters are different stage appearances of one and the same actor.

5 The First Ecumenical Councils Even though Christianity in its early stages was quite diverse in doctrinal terms, its gradual integration into the power structures of the Roman Empire brought standardisation and centralisation efforts, especially in the face of numerous heresies, that is departures from orthodoxy, as officially declared by the emerging collective authority of bishops. The first major attempt to attain broad doctrinal consensus was made by Constantine I, the first Christian Emperor, who in 325 convened a council in Nicaea, attended by several hundred bishops from across the Roman Empire. One of the main purposes of the council was to address the controversy raised by Arius of Alexandria, who

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taught that Christ was not a divine but a created being—which naturally involved heated and detailed deliberations of Trinitarian ontology, including the most appropriate terminology. The various accounts of what transpired at Nicaea, predominantly based on the extensive report of Eusebius of Caesarea, almost entirely overlook the linguistic and necessarily translational aspects of the council proceedings and the canons that followed. Given that the vast majority of the delegates came from the East, the discussions must have been held predominantly in Greek. Eusebius notes in passing that the Roman Emperor addressed the assembly “in the Greek language, for he was not unacquainted with it” (Schaff and Mace 1997a, p. 9), which indirectly suggests the presence of Latin as the mother tongue of Constantine himself, as well as the relatively few delegates from the West. The most important outcome of the council was the formulation of a joint profession of faith, known as the Nicene Creed, which asserted that Jesus Christ was ek tēs ousias tou patros (“from the ousia of the Father”). The sense of this statement was expounded by the formula that immediately followed it: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made” and then emphatically sealed with the phrase homoousion tō patri (“of the same ousia as the Father”). The term homoousios was very carefully crafted in contrast to the deceptively similar homoiousios (“of a similar ousia ”) which was seen as promoting the Arian heresy, though some bishops failed to see a significant difference between these two (see Pelikan 1971, pp. 208ff.). The Nicaean Creed was at pains to stress that Jesus emerged from the Father’s ousia (hence the image of begetting and birth) and was not made like other created beings. The divine ousia—which has since become a cornerstone of the Christian theology and, with it, ontology—cannot simply be acquired or imparted on something; it is a matter of being rather than having. The translation of the Nicene Creed into Latin, which must have been completed almost simultaneously with finalising the Greek text, brings evidence of some conceptual anxiety and terminological struggle. The Latin version at several key points inserts the phrase quod Graeci dicunt (“as the Greeks say”), followed by a transliteration of the original word. Even though ousia is rendered as substantia the first time, the Latin phrase unius substantiae cum patre (“[of ] the same substance as the

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Father”) only several lines below is firmly anchored to, “as the Greeks say,” homoousion (Baron and Pietras 2001, p. 24). This sense of uncertainty and confusion lingered for some time, fuelled by further doctrinal controversies. In 381, when another major council was convened in Constantinople, the earlier statement of faith was updated and reaffirmed. Interestingly, the NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed dropped the Nicene ek tēs ousias tou patros (“from the ousia of the Father”) which was seen as already being contained in the phrase homoousion tō patri (“of the same ousia as the Father”) (Baron and Pietras 2001, p. 69), thus eliminating the somewhat overemphatic repetition. This was largely due to the contribution of the so-called Cappadocian Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, who in the several decades preceding the council argued in favour of the Trinitarian formula: one ousia, three hypostases (superficially reminiscent of Tertullian’s one substantia, three personae ). Concerned that both terms were being used imprecisely and indeed interchangeably (even in the canons of the Nicene council!), and responding to the multiple threats of heresy, Basil concluded that the only way to dispel the confusion was to define these apart from one another. “The hypostasis, then, had to be ‘that which is spoken of distinctively, rather than the indefinite notion of the ousia’” (Pelikan 1971, p. 220). Yet despite a promise of greater precision and clarity, the Cappadocian exposition of the Trinitarian doctrine invited a range of further questions. An especially thorny one concerned the relation between the divine and the human in Christ: if he was divine by virtue of being homoousios with the Father, could he also be considered homoousios with human beings? Could even the same word properly designate the divine and the human ousiai? Debates around the various aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine continued over subsequent centuries, bringing about ever more detailed formulations. The Council of Ephesus in 431 affirmed that the divine and the human natures in Christ were combined in “a hypostatic union.” Merely two decades later the Council of Chalcedon decreed that “our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as […] consubstantial with the Father […], and consubstantial with us; […] [he] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably

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(united)” (Schaff and Mace 1997b, p. 264; Baron and Pietras 2001, p. 221). This procession of negative descriptions, each one of which addresses a specific heresy, illustrates the increasing precision of the doctrinal vocabulary which started to feed into the tension gradually building up between the Eastern and Western Christianity. The Great Schism of 1054, which remains unbridged until this day, must of course be considered in its historical complexity, but undoubtedly one of its aspects was the deepening linguistic rift, affecting both reflection and expression. The Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking Christianity adopted different epistemological attitudes. In the East, an apophatic theological tradition became dominant, stressing the insufficiency of language to accurately describe the spiritual domain. The West, though also recognising the limitations of human language, seemed more inclined to push them nevertheless. Once again, translation practices provide a sensitive gauge of this tendency. Beginning with the NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed of 381, the Latin versions of the official documents produced by the subsequent Ecumenical Councils are no longer explicitly concerned with “what the Greeks say.” In a subtle but momentous conceptual shift, ousia entirely gives way to substantia and several other Latin words.

6 Thomas Aquinas: Substantia and Essentia The next milestone in the translational history of ousia—by now reconceptualised and redefined in Latin—comes with the work of medieval scholastics, and especially Thomas Aquinas (1125–1274), who is credited with “rediscovering” Aristotle and integrating much of his philosophical system into Christian theology. It is noteworthy that Aquinas’ fascination and engagement with Aristotle came from a thoroughly translated encounter: while he may have had some rudimentary Greek (scholarly opinion on this matter is divided), all his work was produced in Latin and relied exclusively on contemporaneously completed translations, notably those by William of Moerbeke. Indeed, it may have been the emergence of the new Latin translations that “would have awakened in him his vocation as a commentator” (Torrell 2005 [1993], p. 172).

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It was a vocation pursued extensively and with passion: Aquinas p ­ roduced detailed, line-by-line commentaries on all Aristotle’s major works, including Metaphysics. This is not to say that he was ignorant of the realities of translation. In the prologue to his treatise Contra errores Graecorum (“Against the Errors of the Greeks”) he writes: [M]any things which sound well enough in Greek do not perhaps, sound well in Latin. Hence, Latins and Greeks professing the same faith do so using different words. For among the Greeks it is said, correctly, and in a Catholic way, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three hypostases. But with the Latins it does not sound right to say that there are three substantiae, even though on a purely verbal basis the term hypostasis in Greek means the same as the term substantia in Latin. The fact is, substantia in Latin is more frequently used to signify essence. And both we and the Greeks hold that in God there is but one essence. So where the Greeks speak of three hypostases, we Latins speak of three personae. (Aquinas, n.d.)

This statement illustrates several important things. The status of Latin as the authoritative language is by now unquestionable. It is the standard against which the Greek expressions are measured, however implicitly, for their “correctness” and compliance with “a Catholic way.” The feeling that some words do not “sound right” in Latin is enough to dismiss a “purely verbal basis” in search for equivalence. Just as importantly, Aquinas seems to entertain the idea of full and perfect equivalence. In his comments, there is no admission of only approximate correspondence between the Latin and Greek terms which he views as fully commensurate; there is no trace of translational anxiety. In the statement which interests us most (“both we and the Greeks hold that in God there is but one essence”), Aquinas does not even deem it necessary to invoke the Greek word in question. Could it be ousia that he has in mind, though? While Contra errores Graecorum contains over a dozen references to hypostasis (transliterated into Latin), ousia is not mentioned at all. It had completely dissolved in a network of Latin concepts, including substantia, essentia, materia, forma, natura, persona, and many others. In his exposition of Metaphysics, Aquinas writes:

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Substance is that which truly is, while the remaining type of being, namely, accident, depends upon substance for existence. This may be seen from the fact that when we ask what something is, we state, not an accident, but the substance of the thing. […] [W]hat we call accidents, they [the first philosophers] called forms of things, for example, the shape of things, the color of things, and other quantitative and qualitative aspects. […] Thus, prime matter can neither exist, not be known, by itself, since it has by itself no actuality, no form. […] Because matter has no form of its own, and because it is through form that one knows, therefore, in dealing with composites of matter and form, to know the substance is sufficient to know the form. The first step will be, then, to know the form of material things. This is equivalent to knowing their essence or quiddity or nature or whatness. For although the essence, as the universal nature abstracting from singular characteristics, involves both the form and the matter, nevertheless, to know the form is sufficient, since the form is known as the form which requires a certain matter. (Conway 1996: 190–192; emphasis added)

The ease with which this passage—originally written in Latin, and commenting on Aristotle’s work, originally written in Greek—can be read and comprehended in English is high testimony to the epistemological power of translation. Against the somewhat awkward and often puzzling English renditions produced on the basis of the Greek original (as in the very first passage from Metaphysics quoted in the opening pages of this essay), translating Aristotle via Latin is a much more straightforward task. Of course, that is because a complete suite of key concepts borrowed directly from Latin—substance, essence, nature, matter, form, person, etc.—is not only already present but firmly entrenched in the English vocabulary and the conceptual system that underpins it. The same is true of a range of other languages with a history of Latin influence; nearly all European languages would be in that category. The dominant Western vocabulary of ontology, phenomenology, and epistemology is built of Latin lexical bricks. The question is, how many specific, though largely invisible, epistemic, and axiological assumptions did these bricks bring with them?

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7 Transubstantiation The distinction between the substance and the accidents, so elegantly articulated by Aquinas, was applied by him to one of the most contentious doctrines of the medieval Church, one concerning the Eucharist. The controversy surrounded the understanding of Jesus’ words as he shared bread and wine with his disciples at the Last Supper: “This is my body; this is my blood” (Matthew 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:19–20). Opposing a purely symbolic interpretation of these pronouncements, Aquinas in his monumental Summa Theologiae declares that when the Eucharistic elements are duly consecrated by the priest, all the accidents of the bread and wine remain […] [but] the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood. Hence this is not a formal, but a substantial conversion; nor is it a kind of natural movement: but, with a name of its own, it can be called “transubstantiation.” (Question 75. The change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ [Knight 2016])

Ever since the thirteenth century up until the present day, this has been the official terminology of the Roman Catholic Church. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that “in the sacrament of the altar […] the bread is transubstantiated into the body [of Christ], and the wine into [his] blood” and the Council of Trent declared in 1551 that the use of the term “transubstantiation” was “proper and appropriate” (Pelikan 1971, p. 44). Now, this is not a purely linguistic debate. The understanding of the Eucharistic formula has profound implications for the social life of the Church: its authority, structure, and influence on the community of believers. A non-sacramental view in which the bread and wine have only symbolic or ceremonial value in communitybuilding undermines the notion of the Church with the exclusive power to administer sacraments which bring eternal life. This is one of the main reasons for which the doctrine of the Eucharist has been so fiercely defended by the Roman Church against the claims of “heretics.” Surely enough, the mechanics of the Eucharist was among the

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most contentious themes of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, not just in the disputes with the Roman Catholic Church but even between the various reformers. Moreover, the reality of the Eucharistic substantial transformation is unfalsifiable; no amount of scientific examination may verify whether the bread and wine have “really” or “truly” changed into Christ’s flesh and blood because the only dimension accessible to the senses, the accidents, remain unaffected. The transubstantiated elements still look, taste, smell, and feel like bread and wine—but in their essence, their whatness, they have become something else. The doctrine of transubstantiation, formulated and defended by the most powerful religious organisation whose impact on Western culture has been truly incalculable, may be viewed as the pinnacle of metaphysics founded on the concept of substance. It is not difficult to understand why this concept is so attractive: incidentally, the same religious organisation has claimed to be in exclusive possession of the life-giving substance and have the sole authority to administer it. By asserting that an internal change of substance occurs in the most sacred of Christian rites, the Roman Catholic Church has affirmed that it cannot happen anywhere else. Transubstantiation is the proverbial exception that proves the rule; the rule itself declares that substance, essence, nature, quiddity, or whatness—Aquinas has given us licence to use these terms as synonyms—is permanent, immutable, and immanent.

8 The Power of (Mis-)Translation In one sense, this is where our story ends, at least as far as we can tell from the present vantage point. Some eight centuries after Aquinas, and in a very different intellectual climate, our linguistic worldview does not seem to be much different from his in terms of its key metaphysical concepts. When in the course of the prolonged political storm over President Trump’s conduct, one tweeter disparagingly describes him as a person of “no substance” (DuVernay 2018) while a former ally wonders “Why are no Republicans standing up and defending the president on the substance [of Michael Cohen’s testimony]?” (Gstalter 2019), both

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are invoking—unknowingly, no doubt—a medieval Latin interpretation of a key Aristotelian term. Ousia translated as substance and essence continues to shape our ontological vocabulary. But the claim regarding a key role of translation in shaping worldviews can also be made on hypothetical grounds, by imagining an alternative course of the history of ideas. We can ask: if ousia had been interpreted differently, could Western linguistic worldviews have followed other trajectories? This is not a merely speculative question. One of the most influential modern philosophers exploring the problem of being, Martin Heidegger, who appears to have been in equal measure inspired by and critical of Aristotle’s ideas, has argued that the traditional interpretation of ousia is misguided because it is based on a mistranslation. “In traditional ontology what a being has (its accidents and properties) is distinguished from what a being is (ousia),” therefore “what a being has can change while what a being is remains permanent throughout these changes”; however, “this split between existence and essence is denied in the original meaning of ousia” (Brogan 2012, p. 48). When it is translated by words which “have no etymological connection whatsoever with ‘being’ […] the general question ‘what is being’? may be entirely forgotten in the preoccupation with ‘ousia’” (ibid.). According to Heidegger, this is exactly what has happened in the history of metaphysics” (Sadler 1996, p. 48). While it is customary to understand the Aristotelian ousia as “the true nature of a thing” (Liddell and Scott 1883, p. 1096), in Heidegger’s view, ousia cannot be abstracted from time: he interprets it as “stable or continuous Presentness” (stete Anwesenteit ) and renders it in German as Seiendheit, “Beingness” (Sheehan 1973, p. 18; cf. Heidegger 1962), purposefully avoiding the more familiar translations drawing on the established Latin equivalents, essentia and substantia. Crucially, “ousia is the way of being of natural beings that are constituted by movement […] Since the traditional interpretation of ousia as substance or essence excludes movement from consideration, it misses its meaning completely” (Brogan 2012, p. 47). Heidegger is not isolated in his critique of ousia viewed as immobile and eternal. The mathematician and philosopher Alfred North

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Whitehead, commenting on the ancient Western epistemology, observes that “the discovery of mathematics […] both advanced human understanding, and also produced novel modes of error. Its error was the introduction of the doctrine of form, devoid of ‘life and motion’” (1968, p. 93). As a result, “it was the West’s ontology of substances that was causing mathematicians and physicists to struggle, as they attempted to treat as substantial those phenomena better understood as process ” (Chapman 2016, p. 38, original emphasis; cf. Whitehead 1968, pp. 86ff.). The philosophical movement pioneered by Whitehead, known as process thought, takes as its basic premise that being is dynamic, and consequently, that it is “process, rather than substance, that should be taken as the most fundamental metaphysical constituent of the world” (Irvine 2015; cf. Whitehead 1929). An alternative course of history in which the idea of timeless substances has little currency is perhaps difficult to imagine in detail but not entirely inconceivable—in fact, this difficultly testifies to the power of translation in propagating worldviews which, once sufficiently entrenched, are not easily challenged.

References Aquinas, Thomas. n.d. Contra Errores Graecorum, trans. Peter Damian Fehlner, ed. Joseph Kenny. https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraErrGraecorum.htm. Accessed 3 Mar 2019. Aristotle. 1989 [1933]. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vols. 17, 18, trans. Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. http://www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg025.perseuseng1:7.1028a. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Aristotle. 2009. Metaphysics, trans. W.D. Ross. Provided by the Internet Classics Archive. http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/metaphysics.html. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Baron, Arkadiusz, and Henryk Pietras (eds.). 2001. Dokumenty Soborów Powszechnych, vol. I, 325–737. Kraków: Wydawnictwo WAM. Bartmiński, Jerzy. 2009. Aspects of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics, ed. Jörg Zinken, trans. Adam Głaz. Sheffield and Oakville, CT: Equinox.

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Bostock, David (ed.). 1994. Aristotle Metaphysics Books Z and H. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brogan, Walter A. 2012. Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cambridge Dictionary. 2019. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Chapman, Kelly. 2016. Complexity and Creative Capacity: Rethinking Knowledge Transfer, Adaptive Management and Wicked Environmental Problems. London: Routledge. Conway, Pierre. 1996. Metaphysics of Aquinas: A Summary of Aquinas’s Exposition of Aristotle Metaphysics. Lanham and London: University Press of America. Courtine, Jean-François. 2014. Essence. In Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, ed. Barbara Cassin, trans. Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathaniel Stein, and Michael Syrotinski. Translation ed. by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood, 298– 311. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DuVernay, Ava. 2018. You have no sense of self outside of the disparagement of others. You project your weakness onto others. You are of no substance. Twitter, 27 June 2018. https://twitter.com/ava/status/1011963922784641024. Accessed 3 Mar 2019. Edwards, Mark J. 2014. Origen. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/origen/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Evans, Vyvyan. 2009. How Words Mean: Lexical Concepts, Cognitive Models, and Meaning Construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gstalter, Morgan. 2019. Christie: No Republicans are Trying to Defend Trump on ‘Substance’ of Cohen’s Testimony. The Hill, February 27. https:// thehill.com/homenews/administration/431842-christie-no-republicansare-trying-to-defend-trump-on-substance-of. Accessed 3 Mar 2019. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, trans. John MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson. London: SCM Press. Hill, Jonathan. 2003. The History of Christian Thought. Oxford: Lion Publishing. Irvine, Andrew David. 2015. Alfred North Whitehead. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2015/entries/whitehead/. Accessed 2 Mar 2019.

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Knight, Kevin. 2016. The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. http://www.newadvent.org/ summa/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. 1883. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McGrath, Alister. 2017. Christian Theology: An Introduction, 6th ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Merriam-Webster. 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Owens, Joseph. 1963. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1971. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol 1. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Politis, Vasilis. 2004. Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Aristotle and the Metaphysics. London/New York: Routledge. Sachs, Joe. n.d. Aristotle: Metaphysics. In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-met/#H8. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Sadler, Ted. 1996. Heidegger and Aristotle: The Question of Being. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: The Athlone Press. Schaff, Philip, and Henry Mace (eds.). 1997a. Socrates, Sozomenus. Church Histories. Vol. II of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Schaff, Philip, and Henry Mace (eds.). 1997b. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. Vol. XIV of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Seibt, Johanna. 2012. Process Philosophy. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 Edition. https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/process-philosophy/. Accessed 3 Mar 2019. Sheehan, Thomas J. 1973. Heidegger: From Beingness to the Time-Being. Listening 7 (Fall): 17–31. Thayer, Joseph Henry (ed.). 1896. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Being Grimm’s Wilke’s Clavis Novi Testamenti, trans., rev. and enl. Joseph Henry Thayer. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

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Torrell, Jean-Pierre. 2005 [1993]. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume I: Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal, rev. ed. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Tuggy, Dale. 2016. Trinity. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 ed. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2016/entries/trinity. Accessed 1 Mar 2019. Wallace, Daniel B. 1996. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1929. Process and Reality. New York: Macmillan. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1968. Modes of Thought. New York: The Free Press.

8 Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations: Biblical Hebrew as Transformer of Language Theory and Society Marko Pajevič

1 Introduction The Bible is the text par excellence to demonstrate the cultural ­importance of translation—it is a foundational text for all Christian societies and has had a fundamental impact on the entire world. The Bible is the book, or rather, to refer to its Greek name biblia, the books in the plural. This plurality of the Bible also becomes manifest in its many translations, in spite of the existence of one canonical version for most traditions. In Germany, Luther’s translation occupies an even more prominent position since at the same time it became the foundational text for a standardised German language, considerably shaping German and Germany until today.1

1Cf.

Antliff (1996).

M. Pajevič (*)  University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_8

183

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In my contribution, I would like to present and analyse Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber’s retranslation of the Bible from 1925 to 1961, in view of their intention to have a cultural impact on Germanness through a “foreignising” translation. In this translation— Verdeutschung, as they called it, that is, “Germanisation”—they attempted to create a version of the Bible which allows for a new access to faith and establishes a space for the Jewish/Hebrew tradition in Germany. They thus intended to offer German Jews a new identity and create a closer bond between Christian and Jewish Germans. The translation was presented less as Jewish or sectarian than as modern and universal (Rosenwald 1994, pp. 145–146). Buber and Rosenzweig pursued these goals with linguistic means, trying to find German equivalents for Hebrew notions and structures by developing innovative methods. After the first parts were published in the late 1920s, a lively debate took place in Germany about this ambitious enterprise which, first of all due to historical political reasons, was already doomed a few years after its beginning. The main target audience hardly existed any more by the time the tremendous work was finally accomplished. It was nonetheless a remarkable endeavour with great qualities, showing how translating foreign linguistic forms can shape a language and has the potential to change worldviews considerably. I will then compare Buber and Rosenzweig’s translation strategy with that of Henri Meschonnic’s Bible translations and with his theory of language in the wider sense. Meschonnic worked throughout his life on a “poetics of society,” and translating the Bible was not only a fundamental and formative experience shaping his ideas on language and society, it was also the lever for his project to transform Western episteme altogether, by integrating a way of thinking based on the rhythm of the Bible. This was for him the contrary of theological thinking, by which he meant preconceived ideas, and the basis for his theory of rhythm; it makes it possible to think society without its persisting hierarchical structures. Buber and Rosenzweig, as well as Meschonnic, were convinced that their translations could have an impact on “the system of life.” Despite Meschonnic’s criticism of his predecessors, the parallels between them are remarkable, and both versions revolve around an interesting notion

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of rhythm, focusing on its semantic dimension, its “signifiance,” that is, its “means of signifying”: the signifying process of how sound and linguistic patterns organise language into meaningful configurations. Learning what language does, from the original Bible via its translation, is, according to Meschonnic, a means to change our conception of the subject, of the ethical, of the political, of the individual and of society altogether.

2 Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig Even though Martin Buber had thought for many years about translating the Bible to make it accessible once again to the increasingly secularised German Jews, the translation was finally triggered by Lambert Schneider, who wanted to start his new publishing house with it. Motivated by his dialogical principle and legitimated by Luther himself who said: “Translators should not work alone; good and true words don’t always occur to a man by himself,”2 Buber approached Franz Rosenzweig in 1925 with a project that was to occupy the last four years of the already fatally ill Rosenzweig’s life, and decades to come for Buber himself, who finished it in 1961. Their procedure was that Buber made a first version which was then criticised by Rosenzweig as “Diotima and Xanthippe united,”3 as he wrote, and thoroughly discussed. While Rosenzweig initially believed that any new Bible ­translation could only be a revision of Luther’s version, Buber convinced him of the necessity of making manifest the hidden Hebraic foundation of German thought. As Buber commented later on, “what was at issue was not details but a system of life” (Buber in B/R 1994, pp. 213–214). Rosenzweig quickly adopted the idea more zealously than Buber, stressing the importance of Hebrew syntax whereas Buber

2In

Table-Talk, quoted by Buber in Buber and Rosenzweig (henceforth B/R) (1994, p. 215). This text is not part of the German version of this book. 3Quoted in Luc Rosenwald’s Preface in B/R (1994, p. XLVIII).

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paid more attention to excavating the Hebraic context.4 Rosenzweig wanted a translation “against Luther,” transvaluing the Jewish within the German and demonstrating that Christianity has wrongly claimed scripture as its own (Benjamin 2009, pp. 103–108). The new translation was to overcome Luther by superseding its Christianness with a new, Hebraic German. That was to be done by freeing the Bible from its institutional, particularly Christian, meaning and by setting free the original Word. Only in respecting the particularity of the Jewishness of the worldview represented in the form of the Hebrew Bible, Rosenzweig was convinced, could its true character and its universal value be realised. This was meant as a kind of decolonisation of the Bible from Christianity which had radically altered its nature. The consequence was also to free German from a too narrow framework and to realise its full potential as a multiplicity of voices, including evidently the Jewish tradition (M. Benjamin 2009, pp. 120–134). Rosenzweig insisted, in the foreword to his 1927 translation of Jehuda Halevi (Rosenzweig 1983), that the translation should not let us forget that the poems were not German and not contemporary. He turned decidedly against “Nachdichtung,” that is, rewriting, or making the original more understandable. Making the foreign German is for him an error (ibid., pp. 1–2); on the contrary, translation should change German, let the foreign transform German. He is thus an early defender of what Lawrence Venuti calls foreignisation (Venuti 1995), in sync with Walter Benjamin’s text on The Task of the Translator from 1923 (W. Benjamin 1972), who referred in his turn to Rudolf Pannwitz (1917). In Rosenzweig’s view, language needs to be challenged so that 4Rosenzweig wrote to Buber: “I would try to render all these inner infinitives. So, for example: ‘you may eat, yes, eat.’ But this has to do with the fact that if I were to go beyond Luther I would seek to surpass him in Hebraicising the syntax, whereas you, in a dehebraicised syntax, seek to surpass him in excavating the Hebraic context of the individual word” (in B/R 1994, p. 180). [Diese inneren Infinitive würde ich alle wiederzugeben suchen. Also: magst essen du, essen. Aber das hängt damit zusammen, daß ich, wenn ich über Luther hinausgehen würde, ihn in der Hebraisierung der Syntax zu übertreffen suchen würde, Sie, bei enthebraisierter Syntax, im Aufgraben des hebräischen Gehalts des einzelnen Worts.] Buber thus aspires to syntactic recreation within the different German framework. Cf. Buber in B/R (1936, pp. 324–235). I will always give the original version in brackets; also, because I often disagree with this official translation, which is not always close enough to the original.

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it is not degraded to a mere means of communication (ibid., p. 3). His criterion for the performance of the translator is that the translation must have changed the language: “If the foreign voice has something to say, then afterwards, the language must look different from the way it did before.” [“Wenn die fremde Stimme etwas zu sagen hat, dann muß die Sprache nachher anders aussehn als vorher” (ibid.).]5 The renewal of a language through translation comes down not only to what the foreign poet has to say, but also to the general spirit of his language (ibid.). While Luther’s influence on German is well known, Rosenzweig pointed to the rich presence of Hebraisms in his language, something that is no longer recognised.6 For Rosenzweig, all speaking is translating, and he connects this idea to his dialogical conception of language: Everyone must translate, and everyone does. When we speak, we translate from our intuition into the understanding we expect in the other – not, moreover, some absent and general other, but this particular other whom we see before us, and whose eyes, as we translate, either open or shut. When we hear, we translate words that sound in our ears into our understanding – or, more concretely, into the language of our mouth. We all have our individual speech. Or rather: we all would have our own individual speech, if there were in truth such a thing as monolithic speaking (as logicians, those would-be-monologists, characteristically postulate) and all speaking were not already dialogic speaking and thus – translation. (B/R 1994, p. 47) [Jeder muß übersetzen und jeder tuts. Wer spricht, übersetzt aus seiner Meinung in das von ihm erwartete Verständnis des Andern, und zwar nicht eines unvorhandenen allgemeinen Anderen, sondern dieses ganz bestimmten, den er vor sich sieht und dem die Augen, je nachdem, aufgehen oder zufallen. Wer hört, übersetzt Worte, die an sein Ohr schallen, in seinen Verstand, also konkret geredet: in die Sprache seines Mundes. 5Translations,

if not otherwise marked, are my own, MP. in B/R (1936, pp. 130–134; 1994, pp. 70–71). He claims elsewhere, however, that Luther’s thinking was Latin and not Hebrew while translating, referring principally to the Vulgate (B/R 1936, p. 118; 1994, pp. 63–64).

6Rosenzweig

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Jeder hat seine eigene Sprache. Oder vielmehr: jeder hätte seine eigene Sprache, wenn es ein monologisches Sprechen (wie es die Logiker, diese Möchtegern-Monologiker, für sich beanspruchen) in Wahrheit gäbe und nicht alles Sprechen schon dialogisches Sprechen wäre.] (1936, p. 88)

We have here several important points: every act of speaking is situational and dialogical; language is material, sound; language is always individualised, but not monological—monological language does not exist. All of this is a clear echo of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of language. Buber makes the acroamatic element—that is, the oral—more explicit; language is always parole, it should always be considered in its concrete speech situation; it is about hearing—its tonality or voice is crucial: “Do we mean a book? We mean the voice. Do we mean that one should learn to read it? We mean that one should learn to hear” (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 21) [“Meinen wir ein Buch? Wir meinen die Stimme. Meinen wir, daß man lesen lernen soll? Wir meinen, daß man hören lernen soll,” 1936, p. 45.] Buber grants Hebrew a crucial role in the meaning of the Bible: “The Hebrew Bible is profoundly stamped and ordered by the language of Botschaft [religious message]” (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 27) [“Die hebräische Bibel ist wesentlich durch die Sprache der Botschaft geprägt und gefügt”, Buber in B/R 1936, p. 55.] And he introduces the notion of rhythm to describe its meaningmaking principle: This formal principle is rhythm – but rhythm both in a broad sense and in a very particular one. By rhythm here we understand not segmented movement in general, but the auditory connection, manifested in a significant order, of a constant with a variable. The constant can be purely structural – the recurrence of a cadence, of tempo, of quantity. Or it can be phonetic – the recurrence of sounds or sequences of sounds, of words or sequences of words. Accordingly, the formal principle of Botschaft is a double principle. Phonetic rhythm – “paronomasia” and the like – is taken directly into its service as such; but structural rhythm becomes an expressive instrument for Botschaft only by alterations beginning at a given moment. (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 28)

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[Dieses Gestaltungsprinzip ist der Rhythmus, der Rhythmus zugleich in einem weiten und besonderen Sinn: Unter Rhythmus ist hier nicht die gegliederte Bewegung überhaupt, sondern die in einer sinnreichen Ordnung erscheinende akustische Verbindung eines Gleichbleibenden mit einer Mannigfaltigkeit zu verstehen. Das Gleichbleibende kann entweder rein strukturell – Wiederkehr des Tonfalls, der Bewegungsintensität, der Maße – oder phonetisch – Wiederkehr von Lauten, Lautgefügen, Worten, Wortfolgen – sein. Das Gestaltungsprinzip der Botschaft ist demgemäß ein doppeltes. Und zwar wird die phonetische Rhythmik – die “Paranomasie” und deren Verwandtschaft – als solche in ihren Dienst genommen, wogegen die strukturelle durch Änderungen, die im gegebenen Moment einsetzen, zum Äußerungsmittel der Botschaft wird.] (1936, p. 57)

This is an extremely important passage, particularly for the parallel to Meschonnic’s later theory of rhythm. Buber presents sound patterning as meaning, rhythm as semantic principle. Paronomasia, which means here any auditory similarity between words, is a poetic, that is, meaning-making feature, allowing for additional semantic richness through variation. This importance of sound patterning in paronomasia, alliteration and assonance should not be considered purely aesthetically. As Buber insisted, they “belong for the most part to the matter and character of the biblical message itself, and rendering them rightly is one of the central tasks of the translation” (Buber in B/R 1994, pp. 81–82) [“gehören zum Gehalt und Charakter der Botschaft selber, und ihre richtige Wiedergabe ist eine der innerlichsten Aufgaben der Übertragung,” Buber in B/R (1936, p. 152)].7 He describes paronomasia as the use of several words of similar construction or sound in sequence, or at any rate in so close a succession that when we encounter the second or the third occurrence in the series we still hear the sound or echo of the 7Also

Rosenzweig insists that it is an error to consider their translation under an artistic or aesthetic perspective: ‘The goal is not beauty but truth,’ in B/R (1994, p. 25) (“Nicht um Schönheit geht es, sondern um Treue,” in B/R 1936, p. 51).

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first. Such words are thereby removed from their immediate environment and put in a special relation. (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 81) [die Verwendung mehrerer Wörter ähnlichen Baus oder Klangs dicht oder doch so nah beieinander, daß man, wo einem das zweite, das dritte entgegentritt, noch das erste nach- oder wiederertönen hört. Diese Wörter werden dadurch, abgehoben von ihrer Umgebung, in eine besondere Beziehung gesetzt.] (1936, p. 152)

Paronomasia thus reinforces meaning. For translating, this means that the same Hebraic root in such repetitions needs to be also the same in German and imprecisions would lead to wrong associations. That is often extremely difficult and necessitates at times the use of archaisms and neologisms in an audacious and at the same time obedient attitude (1936, p. 142; 1994, p. 76). That is why both Buber and Rosenzweig put so much emphasis on sound and speech, on orality, the spoken word: “Every word is a spoken word” (Rosenzweig in B/R 1994, p. 40) [“Alles Wort ist gesprochenes Wort,” Rosenzweig in B/R 1936, p. 76)].8 Rosenzweig grants the way we read, its “musical value,” a charge of meaning (1994, p. 44; 1936, p. 83). The breath is material and the organisation of speech: “Breath is the stuff of speech; the drawing of breath is accordingly the natural segmenting of speech” (1994, p. 43) [“Der Atem ist der Stoff der Rede; so ist das Atemschöpfen ihre natürliche Gliederung” (1936, p. 81)]. That is what made them both construct an opposition to writing; Rosenzweig wrote “Writing is poison” [“Schrift ist Gift”] and both agreed on the necessity of translating it back into orality (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 211). Explicitly, Buber wanted to take seriously not only the specificity of the words but also of sound (Buber in B/R 1936, p. 304; 1994, pp. 168–169). Consequently, in order to reveal the

8Everett Fox (1989, pp. 373–374) makes a footnote on sound, pointing out that Rosenzweig, in his early prayer translations, stressed the oral element, reproducing sound patterns as in the Hebrew original. Rosenzweig also believed that the Hebrew would give more than any German translation, as long as it could be read, for sound reasons. He was very interested in music; Fox comments that for Rosenzweig, the musician and the translator are on the same level (p. 383).

8  Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations …     191

natural rhythm of the Bible, Buber developed a procedure to divide language into cola, that is, units corresponding to the breathings of the human speaker. Buber defined them as the first translation “that gives the text its natural division into lines of meaning as these are determined by the laws of human breathing and human speech, with each line constituting a rhythmic unit” (in B/R 1994, p. 170) [“die erste, die dem Text seine natürliche, von den Gesetzen des menschlichen Atems und der menschlichen Rede regierte Gliederung in Sinnzeilen, von denen jede eine rhythmische Einheit darstellt”, 1936, pp. 307–308]. The cola is not formal metrics but units of meaning. They need to be read aloud in order to be fully appreciated (Reichert 1996, p. 217). Another invention by Buber is his so-called Leitwortmethode (leading word method) which he described as follows: By Leitwort I understand a word or word root that is meaningfully repeated within a text or sequence of texts or complex of texts, those who attend to these repetitions will find a meaning of the text revealed or clarified, or at any rate made more emphatic. (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 114) [Unter Leitwort ist ein Wort oder ein Wortstamm zu verstehen, der sich innerhalb eines Textes, einer Textfolge, eines Textzusammenhangs sinnreich wiederholt: wer diesen Wiederholungen folgt, dem erschließt oder verdeutlicht sich ein Sinn des Textes oder [wird] auch nur eindringlicher offenbar.] (1936, p. 211)9

He added that the same word root is sufficient; this could even in its differences be favourable for the dynamic general effect. It is the sentence, that is, the entire utterance, not the word, that is the natural element of speech for Buber, and phonetic connections with their variations form the meaningful rhythm of language (Buber 1954, pp. 12–14). He saw a measured repetition as the best way for meaning

9Everett

Fox considers this method an “enduring contribution” and it is the element the most referred to (in B/R 1994, pp. XXI, XXII). Laurence Rosenwald also notices that there are only strikingly few of Chouraqui’s (a French translator of the Bible) radical etymological renderings in B/R, perhaps because they do not consider them Leitwörter (footnote on page XLI).

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to be conveyed outside an explicit report.10 By avoiding such a pure report and by constructing the religious content through rhythm, the explicit message is transcended for Buber: “Those who listen will hear the higher meaning in the similarity of sound” (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 115) [“Wer nun recht hinhört, den rauscht aus dem Gleichklang die obere Bedeutung an” (1936, p. 213)]. The thus created connections say more immediately what is behind the described events (1936, p. 213). This enables them to refer to something which is perceivable in its reality, but which cannot be described or conceptually thought.11 What takes place, does so in and through language, Buber claims: “Language is where it happens” (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 117) [“Sprache ists, woran das geschieht was hier geschieht” (1936, p. 216)]. To give an idea of the form these principles took in their translation, here are a few examples (all in B/R 1936, pp. 276–291; 1994, pp. 151–160): for annen anan, translated by Luther as Wolken führen (carrying clouds), Buber and Rosenzweig made Wolken wölken, which is unusual but keeps the close connection of noun and verb of the original; for tavoach tevach, in Luther simply schlachten (slaughter), Buber and Rosenzweig give Schlachtvieh schlachten (slaughter slaughtercattle), again respecting the Hebrew construction in spite of, or because of, the reduplication. It gets slightly more problematic when they translate ha-alot olot, in Luther Brandopfer opfern (to sacrifice a ­fire-sacrifice), as Höhungen höhen (highten heights). The idea of sacrifice is difficult to perceive but they argue that in Hebrew, there is no fire or sacrifice because the sacrifice has today connotations which were completely alien to the Hebrew, which is why they emphasise the elevation. For k’desha Luther used Hure (whore), too vulgar for Buber and Rosenzweig since it comes from kadosh “holy/consecrated,” which is 10“Die maßhafte Wiederholung, der inneren Rhythmik des Textes entsprechend, vielmehr ihr entströmend, ist wohl überhaupt das stärkste unter allen Mitteln, einen Sinncharakter kundzutun, ohne ihn vorzutragen” (B/R 1936, p. 211). 11“Interpretation by Leitwort style can only be interpretation toward, demonstration can only be demonstration toward – toward something that is to be perceived in its actuality, but not paraphrased in language or thought” (Buber in B/R 1994, p. 116). [“Die Leitwortstil-Deutung kann nur Andeutung, die Aufzeigung nur Hinzeigung sein auf etwas, was in seiner Wirklichkeit wahrzunehmen, nicht aber zu umschreiben und zu umdenken ist” (1936, p. 214).]

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why they translate it as Weihbuhle—this has a very archaic sound in German but implies the context of the temple and consecration. Even the names had to stay Hebrew since otherwise their root meaning gets lost, so they kept Chava instead of Germanising it into Eva, in order to keep the meaning, that is “life.” There was much debate about archaic-sounding word choices. Their translation of the beginning of the Genesis looks like this; I only will cite the first few lines (Gen 1:1–3): Im Anfang schuf Gott den Himmel und die Erde. Die Erde aber war Irrsal und Wirrsal. Finsternis über Urwirbels Antlitz. Braus Gottes schwingend über dem Antlitz der Wasser. Gott sprach: Licht werde! Licht ward.12

Irrsal und Wirrsal shall structurally render tohuvabohu; but Urwirbels Antlitz was considered difficult to fathom and artificial, Luther simply translates it as Tiefe. Braus Gottes was associated by some with in Saus und Braus, an expression for debauchery which was not suitable for ruach “spirit/breath.” All of this is predominantly on the level of word choices. Buber and Rosenzweig claimed that they had to translate ­simply what was written in Hebrew (“Concerning a Translation and a Review,” in B/R 1994, pp. 161–165; “Zu einer Übersetzung und einer Rezension,” 1936, pp. 292–299). Siegfried Kracauer’s criticism (in Frankfurter Zeitung, April 27/28, 1926) that their translation was not in tune with the times and sounded Wagnerian, was for them simply a criticism of the Hebrew text, not of the translation (1936, p. 290; 1994, p. 159). The alliterations and reduplications, they insisted, are not Wagnerian, but as sensuality and spirituality of the Word they are an essential part of any human speech (1936, p. 283; 1994, p. 155).

12Here

is the version from the King James Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth./And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters./And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

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These principles also entailed avoiding accidental alliterations in German which were not in the Hebrew text (1936, p. 282; 1994, p. 155). They agreed that archaisation is wrong and wanted to be entirely in the present time. However, to do this, they claimed the recourse to things lost is indispensable (1936, p. 289; 1994, p. 158). But of course, this intention to revitalise German from its roots was in the air and Wagner did make an early attempt, as did others, such as George, Borchardt and Heidegger, as Klaus Reichert points out (cf. Reichert 1996, p. 179). The critics of the translation were mostly assimilated Jews and analysts of society for whom religion was a remote illusion so that Buber and Rosenzweig seemed esoteric to them. As international intellectuals with a political sociological approach, they were concerned about the parallels to nationalist movements in Germany. Reichert asks whether it is possible to separate language from its historical context and suggests that perhaps we are only now capable of understanding the merits of this translation: A veritable utopian design: to be a Jew and a German, self and other, without appropriation. Never has translation been more utopian, never has it been carried out with greater consequence. Now that we slowly begin to listen to the other voice beneath our own, this translation has perhaps, at last, a chance to be heard. (Reichert 1996, pp. 184–185)

It is true that our evaluation is never free from our historical situation and that this translation saw the light of day in very unfavourable circumstances. Again and again, Buber and Rosenzweig emphasise that it is all about rendering exactly “what is there” (“was dasteht”), that is, the product “of Scripture itself, of its discourse, of the sound and history and meaning of its words, of the cadence and structure and content of its verbal sequences” (B/R 1994, p. 164) [“aus ihrer Rede, aus Laut, Herkunft und Bedeutung der Wörter, aus Tonfall, Bau und Gehalt der Wortfügungen hervorgegangen”; B/R 1936, pp. 297–298; 1994,

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pp. 161–165)].13 What is there needs to be taken seriously, they insist, in “its wording, its meaning, its sequences and connections” (B/R 1994, p. 172) [“In seinem Wortlaut, in seinem Sinngehalt, in seinen Zusammenhängen” (1936, p. 310)]. Saying it differently would have a different meaning: “play upon words” is actually the deep seriousness of the word itself (1936, p. 312; 1994, p. 173). The aim is therefore to strengthen the awareness of such unity of language, in such connections and correlations (1936, p. 315; 1994, p. 175). Buber even uses the term of Leiblichkeit “bodilyness” of language: the what cannot be separated from its how without damage,14 which, incidentally, is also a major tenet of contemporary cognitive linguistics. It is also important to remember that Buber considers not the word, but the sentence to be the natural element of living speech; the word only results from analysis (Buber 1954, p. 14). He thus introduces the notion of dynamics, by which he refers to the movement of coming and going between the interrelated sound textures, so that the paronomasia works over a larger textual space (Buber 1954, pp. 15–16). Generally speaking, the critics of the time disagreed over word choices and felt that at times there was a problem of artificial poetisation (a problem Buber and Rosenzweig were aware of themselves), but the argument of faithfulness to the Hebrew original was well-received (cf. Jay 1976, p. 12). Another criticism aimed at the fact that, particularly, Rosenzweig believed in an original language and considered translation generally to be “a messianic act, which brings redemption nearer.” Thus, Hebraisation would open up divine speech15 to the reader. More 13Obviously,

there is no neutrality in this: it is a subjective reading, as Fox points out. The criterion must be whether it gives illumination and a deeper understanding of the Bible (in B/R 1994, p. XXVII). Thus Augustin Rudolf Müller stresses the impossibility of an absence of interpretation. He points to the fact that this would also be against the Jewish tradition, which is characterised by the inclusion of all possibilities of interpretation, something that makes the unity of the written and read book an illusion (Müller 1982, pp. 44 and 110). 14Buber (1954, p. 6). German distinguishes between Leib and Körper, the Leib being in the famous definition of Helmuth Plessner the body that we are as opposed to Körper, the body that we have. 15Cf. Jay (1976, pp. 11–12), and for Rosenzweig’s theory of language: Hahn (2013). This is evidently a question of great complexity, and I cannot go into the details; the one language Rosenzweig evokes is not a sort of Esperanto but persists in the existing, diverse languages when perfect agreement renders speech unnecessary. Until then, each language grows toward a fullness of spirit through translation; all languages depend on each other. Cf. for this also Galli (1995).

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secular Jews such as Kracauer, and later on Adorno, received this metaphysical orientation with scepticism and preferred a more social intention (Jay 1976, p. 12). Nonetheless, particularly when considering the translation within the framework of Buber’s dialogical principle, one could just as easily see their approach as a very earthly procedure, taking its starting point in the encounter of two persons. Peter Gordon has pointed to the proximity between Rosenzweig and Heidegger, a proximity Rosenzweig explicitly claimed in 1929 but which could hardly be accepted afterwards by Rosenzweig scholars due to Heidegger’s later commitment to National Socialism. However, both present translation as a model for understanding, both work with paronomasia and a mix of archaism and modernism and both considered the history of Western metaphysics to be a history of linguistic deformation, for Heidegger from Greek, for Rosenzweig from Hebrew (Gordon 1999, pp. 113–148). But, as can be seen in later texts, at least, Buber had a very different conception of language than Heidegger and opposed the latter’s mystification of language.16 Contrary to Heidegger’s idea of the language that speaks, independently of human beings who merely respond to it, Rosenzweig’s conception was much more historical: clearly Buber rooted language generally in the dialogical principle, that is, in an earthly encounter of two human beings. In any case, it is true that Buber and Rosenzweig’s Bible was an “eminently philosophical enterprise” (Gordon 1999, p. 142). They wanted to connect two cultures, standing more than 2000 years apart. By changing the awareness of language and by making Hebraic elements more sensible to the German readership, they not only wanted to address modern German Jews and enable them to reconnect to their tradition and their faith, they wanted to change the German language altogether, freeing it from the Christian dominance imposed by Luther and working on a conception of life that reintegrates the materiality of language into the labour of the mind, implying a change of the entire episteme. In 1961, Buber reacted to Scholem’s remark about the Bible translation that his language utopia failed after National Socialism, 16See

their contributions to the volume Sprache und Wirklichkeit. Essays (Buber and Heidegger 1967).

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by affirming that he wanted to educate people in the sense of hearing language: “to proselytise” – yes, by all means! I am normally radically opposed to all proselytising … but this mission here I am happy with, a mission that is not concerned with Judaism and Christianity but with the common original truth on which depends the revivification of the future of both. Scripture is proselytising. And there are already indications for it to succeed. [‘missionieren’ - ja, auf jeden Fall! Ich bin sonst ein radikaler Gegner alles Missionierens … Aber diese Mission da lasse ich mir gefallen, der es nicht um Judentum und Christentum geht, sondern um die gemeinsame Urwahrheit, von deren Wiederbelebung beider Zukunft abhängt. Die Schrift ist am Missionieren. Und es gibt schon Zeichen dafür, daß ihr ein Gelingen beschieden ist.] (Buber 1962–1963, p. 1182)

That means, for Buber, that language and translation have far-reaching ambitions: language awareness is a mission, not only to understand religious revelation better, but even more so to understand how the functioning of biblical Hebrew connects body and mind, past and present, Jewishness and Christianity.

3 Meschonnic Henri Meschonnic (1932–2009) was a language thinker, Bible translator and poet who, through his life and in his theory of language, developed a theory of society. More precisely, he presented his theory of language as a theory of society. His starting point, the trigger of his ideas, he said time and again, was his experience of translating the Bible. That is, translating, incorporating another way of thinking, that of Biblical Hebrew, was for him a revelation about what language does with us and we with language. And what that means for our being as humans and for life and society. Meschonnic was an eminent theorist of translation, in Lawrence Rosenwald’s words from 1994, his work is even “the most important work on biblical translation and translation generally since Buber and

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Rosenzweig’s own” (in B/R 1994, p. XLIV, footnote). Meschonnic often referred to Buber and Rosenzweig’s as one of the important translations of the Bible to which he compared his own work, generally rather critically, but without discussing their ideas in more detail. In discussing Meschonnic’s translation theory, I will show that the parallels in their ideas go further than Meschonnic himself admitted. I will then go on to elaborate on how far Meschonnic’s underlying language theory is in fact a theory of society and rightly claims its fundamental importance for a change in the episteme and consequently in worldview. Meschonnic presented the functioning of language in the Bible as the “theoretical lever” for the entire theory of language, this through the movement of the continuous [le continu  ] (Meschonnic 2016, pp. 20, 33). Meschonnic’s claim that such a theory would alter our philosophical ideas, and hence the entire episteme, becomes evident in the title of one of his books, Un coup de Bible dans la philosophie [A Blow of the Bible in Philosophy ] (2016 [2004]). The challenge is consequently to make this functioning transparent and to render it in translation— this would then lead to another theory of language and, Meschonnic believed, to another conception of how human beings and society function. Meschonnic is in line with Rosenzweig and Buber’s ambition to change the course of culture by reintroducing the original way of thinking of the Hebrew Bible, which, in his view as well, was covered up by Christian theology in the existing translations. He called this an “annexation” and “linguistic imperialism” (Meschonnic 1973, p. 308) and wrote: “The Bible, the effacing of the Biblical, of Hebraism and of Judaism” [“La Bible, effacement du biblique, de l’hébraisme et du judaisme” (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 93)]. Reintroducing the Biblical into Western culture would provide a new basis for the humanities. By “embibling” translating (he prefers to use the active form of the noun, le traduire/the translating, over the result, the translation ), the subject in its continuous [le sujet-continu ] would take its place in the theory of language (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 113), so far denied but ineluctable for a full understanding of language and of the human. Like Rosenzweig and Buber, Meschonnic stressed the orality of the Bible and the Jewish tradition of Miqra, which does not mean

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scripture but reading aloud (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 35). There is, however, a difference, since Meschonnic made of orality a key notion of his theory, overcoming the opposition of the written and the oral. For him, orality reaches its highest intensity in the written, in literature, since in its rhythm the written best manifests the subject. Orality is in Meschonnic’s theory not sound, but becomes the manifestation of the subject which invents itself in speaking; it is thereby an invention of thinking, a specificity and a historicity (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 225). Now what is this particularity of the Biblical, and how does it manifest this orality? According to Meschonnic, in Biblical Hebrew there is a general rhythmisation of language, based on a complex system of rhythmic accents, the te’amim. They are an organisation of the sense of a discourse, not of the word, by a system of eighteen disjunctive and eight adjunctive accents. Meschonnic states: “Being the rhythmic organisation of discourse, they are as much a part of meaning as the meaning of the words” [“Étant l’organisation rythmique du discours, ils ont autant de part au sens que le sens des mots” (Meschonnic 1999, p. 429)]. The rhythmic accents “establish the very reason of the text” [ils “font la raison même du texte” (Meschonnic 2007, p. 75)]. The term ta’am (sg of te’amim ) itself is the parable of the language-in-body, as Meschonnic points out on several occasions: it means the taste of what is in the mouth, the flavour, and that flavour is the reason for what is said. The physicality, even sensuality, of language and meaning are one. This is how Meschonnic understands orality: that which comes from the mouth, the physicality of language (Meschonnic 2009, p. 23). And this is a key to how he understands rhythm.17 This is why Meschonnic calls for a general ta’amisation of language and of our way of thinking, of our episteme altogether (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 117): to connect the subject with its form, to reconnect meaning and language-in-body and thus finally and really to overcome the separation of content and form. Coming from this semanticising 17Meschonnic

is aware that the notation of this rhythmics was done only sometime in the sixth to ninth century of our time but he states that it is anterior to its written form, just as people sang before they knew how to write music (cf. Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 50).

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accent-system, he criticises the exclusivity of the sign in the theory of language and hermeneutics which reduces language to meaning based on the sign. If one thinks within the parameters of the sign, which is discontinuous and separates signifier and signified, granting primacy to the signified, one cannot see, or rather hear, that there is also a continuous [le continu ] in language, that is, the serial organisation of movement in speech. The Biblical with its rhythmical organisation and its value of pausing divisions and connections forces one to think differently, to hear what the sign, on the level of the word, cannot hear (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 146). In Meschonnic’s view, Christian hermeneutics negates this rhythmic organisation, and Jewish hermeneutics considers it merely as punctuation for phonetic or logico-grammatical effects. Hermeneutics thus blocks thinking language. Meschonnic wanted to make people see that this organisation of movement of speech in writing constitutes the dimension of the body-in-language, and thus the continuous of language, poem, the ethical and the political (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 118). For him, meaning depends on the movement of sense (“le sens depend du movement du sens”), on this organisation of rhythm and the continuous: But the flavour is not opposed to sense. On the contrary, it carries it, since it is the movement itself of sense and it is in no way words on their own. It is what passes from one word to another, and what makes of this a serial semantics. Through which it is inseparably pausal rhythm, syntax and prosody. The recitative of language, which says infinitely more about it than the narrative [récit ]. Rhythm, in the sense of the continuous, is the great encompasser of language […] in the sense of a subject-form(er), in the sense of body-inlanguage, and of the continuous activity which makes of it one single unit inseparably language-poem-ethics-politics. [Mais le goût ne s’oppose pas au sens. Il le porte au contraire, puisqu’il est le mouvement même du sens, et il n’est dans aucun cas des mots pris à part. Il est ce qui passe d’un mot à l’autre, et qui en fait une sémantique sérielle. En quoi il est inséparablement rythme pausal, syntaxe et prosodie. Le récitatif du langage, qui en dit infiniment plus que le récit.

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Le rythme, au sens du continu, est le grand englobant du langage […] au sens d’une forme-sujet, au sens du corps-langage, et de l’activité continuée qui en fait une seule unité inséparablement langage-poèmeéthique-politique.] (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 187)

So meaning is transported by this flavour, by this rhythm, this movement of language-in-speech. Meschonnic is working here with the concept of discourse, derived from Benveniste, to render these ideas more accessible. In discourse, the sentence is the smallest unit of meaning and the concept of discourse emphasises the historical and cultural situation of each moment of speech. This means that language in the general sense of la langue does not really exist but manifests itself only in discourse, in concrete individual speech. On this basis, Meschonnic can affirm: a text is not in a language […] as a content in a container. In this sense, it is not languages that one translates. But a discourse of a language. It is because discourse is the historical activity of subjects and not simply the use of the language that a text is a realisation and a transformation of a language through discourse. Which takes place only once. The subject then is the function and the effect of this transformation. [un texte n’est pas dans une langue […] comme un contenu dans un contenant. Dans cette mesure, ce n’est pas des langues qu’on traduit. Mais un discours d’une langue. C’est parce que le discours est l’activité historique des sujets, et non simplement l’emploi de la langue, qu’un texte est une réalisation et une transformation de la langue par le discours. Qui n’a lieu qu’une fois. Le sujet étant la fonction et l’effet de cette transformation.] (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 142)

In language generally and in translating, only discourse counts for Meschonnic, as a historically positioned activity that transforms language and creates the subject. The poem is in Meschonnic’s theory the term for this process of transformation; it is not the literary genre but an activity. As such, the poem shows the limits of the sign, it breaks the sign, as Meschonnic formulates it (“le poème casse le signe”), and this becomes evident in

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translating (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 148). The poem takes place in the continuous of language, in the organisation of the movement of speech, in a generalised subjectivation of a system of discourse by a subject of a poem. How are we to understand this? It means that the poem is made up of its serial semantics—which overcomes the notions of form and meaning in the notion of rhythm (p. 149). In this way, translating the poem as activity means to refashion a poem and thereby to transform language and translating, something that grants the translator an important role, beyond the simple service of communication (p. 169). Meschonnic shifts the focus from what a text says to what a text does—that is what needs to be translated; not the sense but the force; not language [langue ] but discourse; not the discontinuous but the continuous of language. In this continuous as the subjectivation of discourse, a subject invents itself through its discourse, and thereby invents a new historicity (Meschonnic 2009, p. 22). So if one wants to translate what a poem does to its language, one has to invent discourse equivalences in the target language: prosody, metaphor, wordplay, rhythm, poem—they all need to be taken into account and rendered in order to translate the continuous of language. This would also implement the overcoming of the opposition of identity and alterity and show that identity always arrives through an alterity (Meschonnic 2009, p. 23). This is, of course, inconceivable for us, if we insist on thinking within the paradigm of the linguistic sign. Any theory of language therefore depends on its theory of literature, and translation, rhythm and the discontinuous are ineluctable elements of it. Consequently, Meschonnic states that translation is far from being a simple transmitter of messages, as mainstream language theory suggests, but on the contrary plays a major role for the theory of language and of society, since a society depends on its theory of language. He concludes: “Translation is the stakes of a veritable cultural revolution” [“La traduction est donc l’enjeu d’une véritable révolution culturelle” (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 113)]. I would like to give at least a short example of Meschonnic’s Bible translation, a short extract from Au commencement, his translation of the Genesis:

8  Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations …     203

1 Au commencement      que Dieu a créé      Le ciel      et la terre 2 Et la terre           était vaine      et vide          et l’ombre      sur la face du gouffre      Et le soufflé de Dieu          couve      sur la face de l’eau 3 Et Dieu a dit      qu’il y ait la lumière      Et il y a eu la lumière. (Meschonnic 2002)18

What strikes us immediately is the spacing. These hierarchical spaces are Meschonnic’s method to render the te’amim, the accent system: an internal alinea in the verse for the accent atnah that equals the main caesura of the verse, a large space for zaqef katan, gadol, or segolta; and a smaller space for the others—there are eighteen disjunctive accents altogether. The eight conjunctive accents are not marked, apart from, at times, the absence of a comma. Meschonnic understands these spaces less as metronomic pauses than as reactivations, connections or de-connections. This is a matter of intonation but not of metrics (Meschonnic 1999, p. 429). At times, a single word gains a very strong position by forming a unit, separated from the rest by empty spaces. Indeed, Meschonnic’s translation is very simple and natural on the level of words but, here particularly with the repetition of the initial Et/And of the sentences, it does a lot on the level of sentence structure and of rhythm. There are also many appositions, stressed by the same procedure, often producing a syntactic violence, as Meschonnic admits and intends, in the service of the original—a violence that is most often dropped in translation. Meschonnic wants to keep what he calls a semantics of position (Meschonnic 2001, p. 17). Thus, instead of aligning the syntax by saying for instance “His enemies will bite the dust,” he would say, following the original “And his enemies /// the dust they will bite.” There is a difference between 18Meschonnic

recorded his translation and the original so that we can compare the sound patterns, see http://www.pileface.com/sollers/spip.php?article857.

204     M. Pajevič

And he will be      like a tree

and And he will be like a tree.

In the first form, being gains in importance and only then does the tree come into play—this actually can mean very different things. Quite often, the units start by an initialising and [et ], which is frequently omitted or modulated in other translations, whereas Meschonnic keeps them all as in the original, because he considers them as rhythmic elements, and therefore semantic. At times, the semantic of sound even dominates the meaning of the words. He gives the example of having translated the Hebrew ledor vador, literally from generation to generation, by pour un tour et un tour (for a round and a round), thus recreating the repetition of the circular movement of generations: ledor vador. This might not be the same meaning, he says, but it carries and transports the meaning. All of this creates the feeling of orality; he calls his typography “the visualisation of orality” (Meschonnic 2001, p. 37). He wants to make the reader hear the Hebrew in the translation. At times this is a bit surprising, but it creates the climate of the text. A longer quotation from his introduction to this translation (Meschonnic 2001, p. 16) will give an excellent condensed idea of his position: According to the way of hearing of the discontinuous in isolation, the units are the words. According to the way of hearing of the continuous, the unit is the discourse, the system of the discourse: the poem. It is the poem, here, that I wanted to translate. Its network of reminders, which makes the word-units prolong themselves in echoes, some continuing, partially, in aspects, in the others, some communicating to others something that is not of the order of meaning but which obscurely relates to it since it is part of their activity, and this is what could be called their force. They are communicating vessels. The poem is therefore not situated in its form since the form is one of the two discontinuouses of the sign. Nor is it in the meaning, for the

8  Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations …     205

same reason. But it is, after all quite banally so, in the mutual positioning of syntax, rhythm and prosody. [Selon l’écoute du discontinu seul, les unités sont les mots. Selon l’écoute du continu, l’unité est le discours, le système du discours: le poème. C’est le poème, ici, que j’ai voulu traduire. Son réseau de rappels, qui fait que les unités-mots se prolongent en échos, se continuent, partiellement, aspectuellement, les unes dans les autres, se communiquent les unes aux autres quelque chose qui n’est pas du sens, mais qui obscurément s’y rapporte, puisqu’il fait partie de leur activité, et c’est ce qu’on peut appeler leur force. Ce sont des vases communicants. Le poème ne se situe donc pas dans la forme, puisque la forme est une des deux discontinuités du signe. Ni dans le sens, pour la même raison. Mais dans la tenue, toute banale pourtant, entre syntaxe, rythme et prosodie.]

It is evident enough that these ideas are all based on language considered not via the words but because of what happens in-between them. Meschonnic criticised Buber and Rosenzweig quite harshly, saying that they do not have the right concepts to think discourse and poetics. He wrote that Biblical rhythm is absent in their translation (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], pp. 82–83).19 It is true that they do not mention the te’amim but, as we have seen, even if Buber in his examples for their procedure often remains on the level of concepts, of Leitwörter, rather than meaning-making through sound, he very clearly goes beyond the unit of the word in his understanding of how signifiance, meaning-making procedures, functions. We have seen that he even develops the notion of rhythm and even if this remains quite sketchy and is far from being a full theory, explained at length, his reflections are a considerable predecessor for Meschonnic’s theory of rhythm. Buber uses even the term rhythm to characterise his

19His

criticism of Chouraqui, whose French translation of the Bible follows ideas similar to those of Buber and Rosenzweig’s, is no less devastating. In spite of Chouraqui’s efforts to get closer to Hebrew, according to Meschonnic, he cannot achieve this goal since he remains within etymologisms and the word unit instead of taking the te’amim into consideration (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], pp. 109, 186).

206     M. Pajevič

theory of paronomasia over distance, which uses sound patterning to create meaning by repetition and variation. The relation to Meschonnic’s theory of rhythm is clear here. The importance of the physicality of language, Leiblichkeit, and orality are further parallels. All of this, as well as Buber’s colometry, the breathing units, which could be compared to Meschonnic’s groupings of words in his translation. Nonetheless, Meschonnic regards this as insufficient since, in his view, Buber and Rosenzweig are still functioning within the Greek metrical framework, not within the te’amim (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 81). It is unclear how much, if any, Meschonnic read of Buber’s explanations of their translation, but in my view his criticism, albeit not without justification, neglects their merits and innovations. Perhaps, like many others, he did not take them seriously because of their clearly religious impetus, particularly in Rosenzweig’s case, which is considered an unpardonable flaw by scholars. This is indeed a problem with Rosenzweig, who argues in the final instance with a divine beyond of language which one cannot really react to, except by believing—or not. Meschonnic also criticises Rosenzweig for simply repeating a phenomenology of translating, remaining within a theory of understanding of sense and negating the specificity of the concrete moment of speech (2016 [2004], p. 81). Saying that there is only One language, as Rosenzweig did,20 is diametrically opposed to Meschonnic. So in the final analysis, what are we to conclude? No doubt, Meschonnic did go further in theorising rhythm and the act of translation. But he could arguably have found allies in Buber and Rosenzweig, instead of simply dismissing them.

4 Consequences for Worldview/Society So beyond the obvious fact that translated texts become part of culture and hence shape society as any other cultural product does, much more so in the case of the Bible, why is this poetics of translating relevant for society? It is crucial because it shows the limits and problems of the 20Rosenzweig

(1983, p. 3). Cf. also Rosenzweig (1988 [1921], sections 98 and 385).

8  Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations …     207

conception of language based on the sign. It shows that the sign is only one element of language and that there is more to language, and to how meaning emerges. It thereby challenges our society’s conception of sense and of representation, with the potential of changing our episteme, with manifold consequences. According to Meschonnic, Saussure’s presentation of the sign, consisting of signifier and signified, has always been misinterpreted in favour of a binary notion where the signified is the real thing and the signifier occupies a secondary position. In Saussure, however, the signifier cannot be separated from the signified. The split into signifier and signified, the latter being considered to be the real thing, the political, whereas the signifier is considered to be merely the technical, material means of coming to grips with it, results in the opposition of content and form, or of sense and sound, which is for Meschonnic at the basis of many problems. Nowadays, evidently, hardly any literary scholar or linguist would explicitly defend a distinction between content and form; nonetheless, elements of this prevail and Saussure’s own metaphor of “the stream of language” [le fleuve de la langue ] has hardly been taken into account in the history of linguistics. The sign, argued Meschonnic, looks at language as “discontinuous” [discontinu ], it splits up the stream of language and reduces language to a means of expressing something else. The signified, however, does not equal the meaning of the sign; there is more to meaning-making than the “meaning” of words, or, rather, we have to have a wider notion of meaning. This is why Meschonnic was at war with what he called la pensée du signe, sign-thinking, and hermeneutics. For him, the sign stands for the discontinuity of signifier and signified, and this discontinuity represents an obstacle to thinking life and society. That is why he wanted to develop a poetics of society, poetics being the only approach that allows us to think beyond the remit of the sign. Meschonnic basically considered language to be languagein-movement, the flow of language in its continuous. The logic of the sign breaks this continuous; rhythm on the other hand refers to the whole, to language in its continuous, which Meschonnic defines as “the living in its history” [“le vivant dans son histoire”] (Meschonnic 1995, p. 129).

208     M. Pajevič

Via the translation of the Bible and its way of making language function, Meschonnic intended to escape the binary mode: “I see the Biblical as the major opposition to the sign and its theologisation of language, in its generalised dualism, its anthropology of totality, which opposes form to content, affect to concept, language to life” [“Le biblique, je le vois comme l’opposé majeur du signe et de sa théologisation du langage, dans son dualisme généralisé, son anthropologie de la totalité, qui oppose la forme au contenu, l’affect au concept, le langage à la vie” (2012, p. 722)]. It becomes the “theoretical lever” to transform the conception of language (Meschonnic 2016 [2004], p. 20).21 The te’amim, manifesting a serial organisation of the movement of speech which the sign cannot account for, force us to think very differently.

References Antliff, Mark. 1996. The Legacy of Martin Luther. Ottawa: McGill University Press. Benjamin, Mara H. 2009. Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1972. Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV/1, 9–21. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Buber, Martin. 1954. Zu einer neuen Verdeutschung der Schrift. Beilage zu dem Werk‚ Die fünf Bücher der Weisung’ verdeutscht von Martin Buber in Gemeinschaft mit Franz Rosenzweig. Köln/Olten: Jakob Hegner. Buber, Martin. 1962–1963. Werke II: Schriften zur Bibel. Munich: Kösel/ Lambert Schneider. Buber, Martin, and Martin Heidegger (eds.). 1967. Sprache und Wirklichkeit: Essays. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch. Buber, Martin, and Franz Rosenzweig. 1936. Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung. Berlin: Schocken. –MB: Die Sprache der Botschaft: 55–75. –FR: Die Einheit der Bibel: 46–54. 21Meschonnic often explained the importance of the Biblical, starting with the introduction to his translation of the Biblical Les cinq rouleaux, 1970. I also refer here to Meschonnic (2009, p. 23).

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–FR: Die Schrift und das Wort: 76–87. –FR: Die Schrift und Luther: 88–129. –FR: Unmittelbare Einwirkung der hebräischen Bibel auf Goethes Sprache: 130–134. –MB: Über die Wortwahl in einer Verdeutschung der Schrift: 135–167. –MB: Leitwortstil in der Erzählung des Pentateuch: 211–238. –MB/FR: Die Bibel auf Deutsch. Zur Erwiderung: 276–291. –MB/FR: Zu einer Übersetzung und einer Rezension: 292–299. –MB: Eine Übersetzung der Bibel: 300–309. –MB: Ein Hinweis für Bibelkurse: 310–315. –MB: Aus den Anfängen unserer Schriftübertragung: 316–329. Buber, Martin, and Franz Rosenzweig. 1994. Scripture and Translation. Translated by Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. –MB: People Today and the Jewish Bible: From a Lecture Series: 4–21. –FR: The Unity of the Bible: 22–26. –MB: The Language of Botschaft: 27–39. –FR: Scripture and Word: 40–46. –FR: Scripture and Luther: 47–69. –FR: The Hebrew Bible’s Direct Influence on Goethe’s Language: 70–71. –MB: On Word Choice in Translating the Bible: 73–89. –MB: Leitwort Style in Pentateuch Narrative: 114–128. –MB/FR: The Bible in German. In Reply: 151–160. –MB/FR: Concerning a Translation and a Review: 161–165. –MB: A Translation of the Bible: 166–171. –MB: A Suggestion for Bible Courses: 172–175. –MB: The How and Why of Our Bible Translation: 205–219. Fox, Everett. 1989. Franz Rosenzweig as a Translator. In Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 34, 371–384. Galli, Barbara Ellen. 1995. Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi. Translating, Translations, and Translators. Montréal & Kingston/London/Buffalo: McGillQueen’s University Press. Gordon, Peter. 1999. Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Translation, Ontology, and the Anxiety of Affiliation. New German Critique 77: 113–148. Hahn, Frank. 2013. Der Sprache vertrauen – der Totalität entsagen. Annäherungen an Franz Rosenzweigs Sprachdenken. Freiburg im Breisgau: Karl Alber Verlag. Jay, Martin. 1976. Politics of translation: Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin on the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 21: 3–24.

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Meschonnic, Henri. 1970. Les cinq rouleaux. Paris: Gallimard. Meschonnic, Henri. 1973. Pour la poétique II: Epistémologie de l’écriture. Paris: Gallimard. Meschonnic, Henri. 1995. Politique du rythme, politique du sujet. Lagrasse: Verdier. Meschonnic, Henri. 1999. Poétique du traduire. Lagrasse: Verdier. Meschonnic, Henri. 2001. Gloires. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Meschonnic, Henri. 2002. Au Commencement, Traduction de la Genèse. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Meschonnic, Henri. 2007. Éthique et politique du traduire. Lagrasse: Verdier. Meschonnic, Henri. 2009. Traduire, et la Bible, dans la théorie du langage et de la société. Nouvelle Revue D’esthétique 3 (1): 19–25. Meschonnic, Henri. 2012. Langage histoire une même théorie. Lagrasse: Verdier. Meschonnic, Henri. 2016 [2004]. Un coup de Bible dans la philosophie. Édition revue, corrigée et augmentée. Chalifert: Les Cahiers de Peut-être, Association des Amis de l’Oeuvre de Claude Vigée. Müller, Augustin Rudolf. 1982. Martin Bubers Verdeutschung der Schrift. Erzabtei St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag. Pannwitz, Rudolf. 1917. Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur. Nürnberg: Verlag Hans Carl. Reichert, Klaus. 1996. ‘It Is Time’: The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation in Context. In The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, ed. Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, 169–185. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rosenwald, Lawrence. 1994. On the Reception of Buber and Rosenzweig’s Bible. Prooftexts 14 (2): 141–164. Rosenzweig, Franz. 1983. Jehuda Halevi. Fünfundneunzig Hymnen und Gedichte. Deutsch und Hebräisch, mit einem Vorwort und mit Anmerkungen. The Hague/Boston/Lancaster Martinus Nijhoff (Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk, Gesammelte Schriften IV, 1. Band: Sprachdenken – Jehuda Halevi). Rosenzweig, Franz. 1988 [1921]. Der Stern der Erlösung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge.

9 St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System via the Prism of Axiological Modelling and Cultural Matrix Taras Shmiher

Axiological analysis pays attention to values that are fundamental or dominant in a specific community. Those values can manifest themselves in a number of domains (literature, arts, or religion), including language as a social phenomenon: therefore value systems affect the form and content of speech, text, and discourse. It is, however, not values per se or their manifestations in general that are important for a translator and a translation analyst, but the understanding of specific values in a specific text and their subsequent rendering in the target text, which either replicates the values of the source linguaculture or contradicts them. This chapter explores how values may be identified in a specific text, what criteria for comparing them may be adopted, and how the target culture can influence the process.

T. Shmiher (*)  Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_9

211

212     T. Shmiher

1 Many Texts of St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism One of the crucial texts for the study of religious translation is The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church, compiled by the Kyivan Metropolitan Petro Mohyla in 1640 (it will be referred to here as “the Catechism,” emphasising the genre of this text). It was later approved by all Eastern Patriarchs and was published, ­translated, and retranslated many times. This paper is based on three translational traditions relating to that text: 1. the 1645 Middle Ukrainian Little Catechism and its 1996 New Ukrainian translation by Valeriy Shevchuk (Katekhyzys 1996); 2. the 1642 Latin text of Great Catechism, composed by Kyivan theologians (Mohila 1643) and its 1975 English-language translation by the Very Rev. Dr. Ronald P. Popivchak (1975); 3. the 1666 Greek-language publication, originally translated by Meletios Syrigos in 1642 (Mohila 1695), which was the editio princeps for its translations into Latin (in 1695 by Laurence Norman, Mohila 1695), English (in 1762 by Philip Lodvill, Mogilas 1762), and New Ukrainian (in 2011 by Rev. Evhen Kumka, Mohyla 2011) (cf. Table 1). Thus, the study of the Catechism can demonstrate the development of religious terms as well as the specific features of their translation, the linguistic and ideological influences of earlier Churches on the most authoritative text in all Orthodox churches and the successful presence of Slavia Orthodoxa in Western civilisation (as evidenced in the English translations).

2 Value as a Textual and Semantic Category Value is a fundamental axiological category but it still lacks an established definition. The three major approaches define it as a sign of objects of reality (the naturalistic approach), as a unit of a special

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     213 Table 1  The three translational paths of Petro Mohyla’s Catechism 1640, Prototext: Mohyla’s Orthodox Confession 1642 The Great Catechism Latin translation by Kyivan theologians

1642 The Great Catechism Greek translation (from Latin) by Meletios Syrigos (manuscript)

1645 The Little Catechism Polish translation Middle Ukrainian translation

1996 New Ukrainian translation by Valeriy Shevchuk

1975 English translation by the Very Rev. Dr. Ronald P. Popivchak

1666 Greek translation ­(editio princeps ) 1695 Latin translation by Laurence Norman 1696 Church Slavonic translation 1762 English translation by Philip Lodvill 1831 Russian translation

2011 New Ukrainian translation by Rev. Evhen Kumka

transcendental world with its own ontological status (the dualistic approach), or as an expression of the individual human will (the subjective approach) (Chaplia 2006, pp. 15–16). From the viewpoint of textual analysis, we should also focus on the attributive nature of values and their relation to a specific person or community. This enriches the text-reader relationship because “a value does not exist without the subject who recognises it as such” (Chaplia 2006, p. 51).1

1All

translations into English by the Author (T.Sh.).

214     T. Shmiher

Hence, a value may have objective properties but also a potential to represent needs, interests, and goals of a person (Sukhina 2011, pp. 14–15). Therefore, one can accept the following definition: “Values are the anthropomorphic senses which, being mental units of consciousness, determine the specific features of a person’s perception and imagination and act as integral motivational factors in his/her sense-creating life and actions” (Sukhina 2011, p. 19). Translation, in one of its important aspects, can be described as an action performed on a lexical system (if and when the focus is indeed lexical) according to certain beliefs, adapting it to another cultural reality. Therefore, values, which are inherent in lexis, constitute a semantic parameter of a text. They have a bipolar nature with regard to their presence in text (they either do or do not exist in it) but they do not exhibit polarity in terms of assessment (good–bad, beautiful–ugly, pleasant–disgusting). The aim of evaluating translation involves the idea of modelling, which is a comparability- and systemicity-based process of constructing a real or imaginary object for experiencing the world (Hrytsenko 1984, pp. 11, 12). Axiological modelling means that the translator converts the lexical microsystem in the source text according to their own or generally accepted values. In the process of translation, modelling is a direct action of the translator, and it becomes the object of study in translation quality evaluation. If the semantic structure of a lexeme (or even a lexical microsystem) is based on the “repertoire of components” (Hrytsenko 1984, p. 14), in axiological modelling we can talk about a “repertoire of values.” Those can be understood from the semantic viewpoint as a set of personally and culturally dependent features of the phenomenon being assessed (cf. Sukhina 2011, p. 14). In other words, values are extracted out of the meaning of the lexeme (or the group of lexemes) that is fundamental to describing the given context or situation. While producing a text, a repertoire of values is shaped. No system of values is closed or unambiguously defined—its repertoire depends on experience (Shevchuk 2013, pp. 42–43). Religious values derive from religious experience. But that repertoire can be captured in a system of terms as a relatively self-sufficient lexico-semantic group. Therefore, a reproduction of the values inherent in key terms of a text will lead to

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     215

reproducing the author’s goals, even if different texts are produced in different languages (prototext originals vs. translations). The analysis of a term system ought to cover both special and general terms, since these latter lexemes can evolve as full members of a term system because of its dynamism and openness (Tsytkina 1988, p. 40). At the same time, the basic feature of terms is “the exactness of [their] semantic boundaries” (Krotevych and Rodzevych 1957, p. 194); therefore, when analysing texts, the context of a particular discipline is taken into account: a specific text “occurs” in time and space, as well as among the plurality of other texts-sources of that discipline.

3 Focus on the Sacraments In the domain of the term system of the sacraments, we are dealing not so much with the biblical context as with the theological one, including the reader’s denominational background. However, the Catechism under discussion here accurately describes the fundamental concepts of a specific denomination, which should allow readers of any Christian denomination to understand both logico-semantic and axiological import of the text. In an etymologically inspired search for values, the logic of creating terms corresponds to the logic of giving abstract senses to concrete concepts in accordance with theological doctrine. In the very word sacrament one can identify the values of “divinity,” “divine inspiration,” “loyalty,” “oath to God,” and “interaction between God and humans.” In the original Greek, μυστήριον actually involved a multiplicity of theological interpretations as a divine act, a symbol, and as a connection between humans and God. This is why it activated the senses ‘secret ritual,’ ‘holy sign or object; talisman,’ ‘oath,’ ‘secret,’ or ‘divine mystery’ (GEL 1996, p. 1156; PGL 1961, pp. 891–893). Therefore, in the text of the Catechism there is a bidirectional action: an oath before God (human action) and the granting of God’s grace (God’s action). The semantic values of “divinity” and “divine inspiration” are rendered almost flawlessly in all the translations in Table 1, which follow the doctrine of the original text. In contrast, the accompanying values, such as

216     T. Shmiher

“loyalty,” “oath to God,” or “interaction between God and humans,” do not always appear in the translations, so that the theological domain they create is not open, to the same extent, to cooperation between the Divine and humans. Comparing the texts of the Little and Great Catechisms, one can apply the contextual approach to the search for values, which points to the individual (coming from the author) and generally accepted (approved by the Church) accents in descriptions of the sacraments. In Baptism, the value of “thingness” is manifested through the significant objectbased symbolism (water, Spirit, verbal formula). Even the synonymous use of Кpgmgн¿g and Кpgcтъ emphasises the physical aspect of God’s mystery. The idea of thingness is also supported by the value of “naturalness,” whose symbolic import lies in how much attention is devoted to the choice of water for the rite. The initial formula, “the water that gave birth to itself,” is extended after the Church’s approval of (pure) water, rather than another liquid. Obviously, such an explanation was an extended interpretation of the Orthodox doctrine, unlike the Catholic doctrine, where St. Thomas Aquinas justified very rationally that there is no need to use pure and natural water for Baptism and, for example, to avoid oil at all (Thomas Aquinas 2007, vol. 4, pp. 2376–2377). The lexemes that describe the water used in Baptism, πρέπον / debitum / proper / пpиcтoйний, boost or discard this value. The Greek lexeme emphasises adherence to the rules (GEL 1996, p. 1461); the Latin lexeme was initially very solemn (‘obliged under an oath’), but also possessed the simpler sense ‘what ought to be, what should happen’ (OLD 1968, p. 487; Smith 1866, p. 281). In the Middle Ages, it developed a series of extended senses: ‘duty,’ ‘proper thing,’ ‘respect,’ ‘church fee’ and even ‘sin,’ ‘guilt,’ ‘fine’2 (MLLM 1976, pp. 303–304). The contexts of the use of the English lexeme proper evoke such values as “naturalness,” “perfection,” “refinement,” “purity,” or even “conformity” (CEOED 1971, vol. 1, p. 2327; cf. DEL 1785, vol. 2, p. 405). In contrast, the

2Cf. The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9–19, translated in e.g. English Standard Version (2001) as “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

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Ukrainian lexeme пpиcтoйний exclusively codes compliance with approved rules (SUM 1970–1980, vol. 8 [1977], p. 40) and therefore it is not relevant to naturalness. In Chrism, the basic value is that of “sign” (“signing”). From the biblical point of view, the Orthodox doctrine that “the gifts of the Holy Spirit should be obtained by prayer, faith and good deeds” (PM 1989, p. 219) codes a profound sense of labour. In the Great Catechism, one finds one more subject who actively constructs values (besides God in the Bible and St. Petro Mohyla): Meletios Syrigos, representing the Greek-speaking Orthodoxy, who established a certain interpretation of this sacrament with a shift in values from labour to gift. St. Petro Mohyla described Chrism by quoting the Bible; cf. the Little Catechism: “Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1, pp. 21–22). In the Great Catechism, the value of “labour” is generally neglected because “the Seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit” is interpreted in a way that seal(ed) means ‘available; the one that exists,’ and thus, it exists in full amount. In the description of Communion provided by Kyivan theologians, the leading motif is memory. Memory represents the Divine mystery via symbols. The decoding of the author’s intention from the terminology of the description of Communion will help answer two main questions in textual axiology, concerning the object of axiological description and the means of its presentation (Puzynina 2003, pp. 31–32). The term Tagмнa# Bgчgpa Пaнcкa# ‘The Lord’s Mysterious Supper’, appeared under the influence of the Polish linguaculture (Wieczerza Pańska ‘The Lord’s Supper’), although it is rooted in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 11:20). St. Petro Mohyla chose this phrase because Communion is a complex symbolic connection between the Last Supper of Jesus Christ and the liturgy that was codified by the Church. In Western theology, the liturgy contains three inseparable components: sacrifice, the memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Communion (participation in the Easter Sacrifice) (Shevtsiv 1982, p. 82). As St. Thomas Aquinas states, this sacrament commemorates, via memory, the passion of Jesus Christ, who is the true sacrifice (Thomas 2007, vol. 4, p. 2430). In the Kyivan text,

218     T. Shmiher

the terminological system actives two main values: “memory” and “sacrifice.” Bread was established by Jesus Christ as the symbol of his body (cf. Matthew 26:26). This Old Testamental symbol of the earth’s fertility became the symbol of God’s gift to humankind (EFC 2003, vol. 1, p. 242), in particular the gift of eternal life: the expression “збaвgньg вhчнog” (‘eternal salvation’) indicates the absence of temporal limits and therefore denotes not so much the act of salvation (which, in the hope of the faithful, will come shortly) but the very essence of this mystical act. Finally, in connection with Jesus’s words “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), the value of “eternal life” is completely lost in the Great Catechism, with its emphasis on what is going on in “this life.” We can deduce that the value of “memory” is weakened; instead, symbolism remains but is no longer equally important and is therefore easier to substitute, in particular, by a hypernym (like in the lexemic pair wheat–grain (cereal grasses). The value of “memory” becomes a special macro-value for another value—that of “sacrifice.” On the one hand, the memory of the sacrifice appears in the use of symbols and historical information (in particular, from the Bible); on the other hand, sacrifice symbolises a relationship between God and humans, which is also a value in the sacrament of Baptism. The sacrament of Marriage is most closely connected with social life and with two values: “mutual consent” and “social responsibility.” In the description of this sacrament, we encounter a lot of words of Polish origin, such as мaлжgнcк¿й ‘matrimonial,’ кpoлgвcтвo ‘kingdom,’ or зgзвoлgньg ‘salvation.’ The most important modern term шлюб ‘wedding’ is also a Polish word, whose primary meaning was ‘oath,’ an equivalent to the Old Slavonic lexeme бpaк (meaning ‘banquet’ or ‘wedding’) (Osinchuk 2009, pp. 77–78). This transition from “a solemn meeting” to “a mystical sacrament” reflects a linguistic strategy where a new proper term is being sought. St. Petro Mohyla used three terms to denote this sacrament: Cтaнъ Maлжgнcк¿й ‘the state of Matrimony’ or Maлжgнcтвo ‘Matrimony’ (Katekhyzys 1996, pp. 182, 184), Cuпpuжgcтвo ‘Matrimony,’ and Зaкoнный Бpaкъ ‘Official Matrimony’ (Trebnyk 2007, vol. 1,

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     219 Table 2  Terms for marriage in the versions of the Catechism

Ukrainian Greek Latin English

‘Contract’

‘Union’

‘Wedding’

малжgнство

сuпрuжgство

бpaкъ γάμος

Conjugium Marriage

‘Entrance into motherhood’

Matrimony

p. 359). Brückner (1927, vol. 1, pp. 320–321) links the Polish lexeme małżona ‘wife’ with the German root māl ‘condition, contract,’ whereas Ukrainian researchers claim that the word cuпpuжgcтвo derives from the Old Slavonic verb cъпp#шти ‘connect, harness’ (ESUM 1982–, vol. 5 [2006], p. 478). On the basis of explanatory and etymological dictionaries, the original senses of all the terms designating marriage in the analysed texts can be presented as in Table 2. As we see, the terms denote the same Christian sacrament but are not identical in terms of linguistic and cultural history. In all the texts, we observe a contextual symmetry between the terms for ‘marriage’— ‘consent,’ but the deep cultural axiology in the semantics of these terms is asymmetric. In modern Ukrainian religious discourse, Extreme Unction or Anointing of the Sick has the largest number of synonyms: Єлeoпoмaзaння, Єлeocвячeння, Oливoпoмaзaння, Coбopyвaння, Macлocoбopyвaння, Macлocвяття, Haмaщeння xвopиx, Пoмaзaння xвopиx (Osinchuk 2009, p. 81). The choice of the key term influenced further selection of related terms of the system, so that their values vary depending on other terms. The meaning of Coбopyвaння, for example, includes the value of “joint action,” an involvement of several clergy, while the meaning of Macлocвяття evokes the value of “thingness,” where the emphasis is on the preparation of the oil for the sacrament but not the sacrament itself. St. Petro Mohyla focuses on the value ​​of “healing,” where the state of the body is related to behaviour (sins): Extreme Unction directly refers to the forgiveness of sins but does not directly indicate salvation or healing of the soul. In the text approved by the Church, the emphasis goes from the forgiveness of sins to the healing of the body. However, in all cases, we

220     T. Shmiher

see an actualisation of the value of “thingness,” as the substance through which the sacrament is performed is mentioned repeatedly. A clear case is the English texts, where the standard and fixed term should be Extreme Unction, being associated with the forgiveness of sins when full confession and the Holy Communion are impossible. The translators evidently followed the logic of the original and committed violations in the Church terminological system by using the terms Holy Oil and Consecration with Oil, strengthening in this way the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy. On the other hand, after the 1970s there was greater emphasis on the value of “healing,” when the term Anointing of the Sick became the standard one.

4 Discussion of the Values of the Sacraments Culturally motivated values are a semantic parameter within a given lexical group, a way of actualising the content of key ideas of a specific worldview, shaped by the relevant linguaculture and the intentions of the text’s author. In the domain of religion, the question is whether a member of one denomination can properly perceive a fundamental text of another denomination. The hypothesis that the repertoire of the values involved will be different has not been confirmed, at least in the OrthodoxCatholic comparison. The reception of values is a universal advantage of human nature, so that even non-believers can identify the semantic values typical of a particular author. Thus, the crucial factor in text interpretation is the author’s intention. The existence of two different versions of Petro Mohyla’s Catechism, Little Catechism and Great Catechism, points to a different repertoire of values in two textual traditions deriving from these two versions. The main difference between the Kyiv and approved texts of 1645 and 1666 lies in more conspicuous references to people in the descriptions of abstract concepts: the Little Catechism is more anthropocentric. Two major and complementary ways of identifying values in a lexico-semantic group are etymological and contextual. The etymological

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     221

approach helps clarify the historical and cultural context, with the motivation behind the choice of a lexeme to denote a more complex and abstract concept. The contextual approach helps differentiate attention to a value as an individual act (the author’s intention) and as a social act (the community’s approval). Changes in the repertoire of values are more pronounced between the Little and the Great Catechisms than between their interlingual translations into other languages. The typology of discrepancies is not extensive: a. replacement of values; for example, the interaction between God and humans is replaced by the notion of Divinity, eliminating the human and elevating the nature of God in the portrayal of sacraments; in Baptism, the emphasis is shifted from the interaction between God and humans to a unilateral action on the part of God; b. addition of values; for example, “responsibility” in Baptism; in Extreme Unction, the Orthodox value of “thingness” does not correspond to the traditional Catholic description of the sacrament; c. deletion of values; for example, “labour” in Chrism or “memory” in Communion. The repertoire of values definitely goes beyond the simple “reproduced—non-reproduced” classification, since they are motivated by cultural, historical, social, and philosophical factors. In translation, the target text loses its connection with the polysystem associated with the original, but communication is successful even if there is mere reproduction of values and hence no violation of the author’s intentions. Therefore, successful translation does not always result from a developed and well-established term system: the existing terms do not guarantee a proper rendering of cultural and semantic content either in later acts of communication or in translation; indeed, they may petrify cultural content. If there is comparable semantic content in two cultures, experience will contribute to transforming it into a value either at the level of one text or a body of corresponding future texts in the target culture.

222     T. Shmiher

5 Cultural Matrix Modifying Ślósarz’s (2013, p. 15) definition of “ideological matrices,” we can accept that a cultural matrix is a set of acquired judgements, value codings, and semantic networks/maps inscribed in secondary texts on the basis of certain literary and non-literary primary works that underlie them. Between the system of values at the level of terminological microsystem, which helps interpret specific contexts, and the system of values at the level of discourse, there is a middle niche with a system of values at the textual level, which endows the text with its unique identity. In this light, there is a need to reformulate the definition of “equivalence” through the prism of culture and cultural studies. In religious discourse, equivalence is a balance between, on the one hand, linguistic and terminological symbols, and, on the other, social and religious patterns of behaviour. The essence of the cultural dimension of equivalence lies not only in the existence of adequate synchronic “replacements” but also in their diachronic—cause-and-effect—development, in particular in the process of transition from the original to the translation, but also in the dynamic coexistence of cultures.

6 Theanthropism While translating the term system associated with theanthropism (the union of the divine and human natures), the cultural value codes that have been shaped in the target linguaculture constitute the frame of reference for determining how successfully a given translation can be received by the target reader. At the same time, it is necessary to establish the validity of the following principles for reproducing the vocabulary of theanthropism: 1. Christianity is a novel quality, and thus, it is inappropriate to use pagan vocabulary to describe its concepts. Buslaev relates to the 1056 Ostromyr Gospel as an example of Slavonic religious translation that

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     223

is distinguished by “the purity of the expression of Christian concepts which arose as a result of separation from any hints of the previous, pre-Christian life” (Bulsaev 1848, p. 210). 2. The vocabulary of ancient texts and translations is oriented towards family values, but Christianity contributed to the significant development of state-shaping concepts and terms (Buslaev 1848, pp. 210–211). 3. When translating texts related to the Bible, the translator should take into account the Biblical prototext only, and thus follow the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. 4. Despite the difference of conceptual structures entrenched in languages, translatability is achievable. Difficulties in understanding arise not so much because of differences in language systems but because of differences in speakers’ experience (Grzegorczykowa 1999, pp. 45–46).

6.1 God: Existence Outside and in the Human Person Plus Naming We believe that the essence of theanthropism reflects the change of conceptualisation from focus on the material to that on the abstract, or from the human to the divine. That is why characterisation of divinity is partly of human origin: what we do not know is perceived via what we do know. Especially the knowledge of God is contemplated through the awareness of humans and their role in society in a given historical period. Table 3 presents the entire system of nominating God in the Catechism. The dichotomy Бoгú vs. Бoзcтвo emphasises the supreme essence of God. Бoзcтвo is the divine cause, the essence of holiness (SUM 1994–, vol. 3 [1996], pp. 9, 12) because in folk culture, Бoгú has many human attributes, as evidenced in the phraseological expressions: бoгъ зaплaтитъ ‘God will pay,’ бoгъ нgxaй xoвagтъ ‘may God protect,’ зocтaвaйтg зъ бoгoмъ ‘God be with you’ (lit. ‘stay with God’), дyшy бoгoви в pyци пopyчити ‘hand one’s souls in God’s hand,’ къ бoгy ити ‘go to God (i.e. ‘die’), etc. (SUM 1994–, vol. 3 [1996], pp. 3–5).

224     T. Shmiher Table 3  Nominations of God in the Catechism and its translations St. Petro Mohyla

V. Shevchuk

Rev. E. Kumka

F. Lodvill

Rev. P. Popivchak

Богú Бозство

Бог Божество

God Godhead Divinity

God Divinity

Бозска Wсоба Пgрсона

Божа Особа особа

Бог Божество Божественна природа Особа істота єство

Person Essence Nature

Divine person Person Essence

The anthropocentricity of perceiving God is evidenced in the accompanying nominal Пgpcoнa, which denotes a human being (Tymchenko 2002–2003, vol. 2, p. 104). By comparison, Wcoбa ‘image’ denotes a visual representation, an image (Tymchenko 2002–2003, vol. 2, p. 55), and carries the sense of the embodiment of holiness and “non-humanness” in the expression Бoзcкa Wcoбa ‘God’s image.’ Thus, in the Catechism, we see a clear-cut division: if the theanthropic lexeme Бoгú ‘God’ is too general for certain theological purposes, the terms Бoзcтвo and Wcoбa noticeably code divinity, whereas the lexeme Пgpcoнa ‘person’ evokes the notion of human nature or human traits. Accordingly, the interpretation of the text proceeds from the use of a given term to the context, rather than vice versa. From the viewpoint of the translations, there is no direct correspondence of the terms. For example, Popivchak translates Бoзcтвo both as divinity and as God (Part 1, Questions 9 and 38); Popivchak and Lodvill use one term in two contexts (divine person and divinity respectively in those of Part 1, Question 30). This means that the translators perceived God’s embodiment in different contexts in different ways. We can observe an expansion of the terminological system that blurs the key distinction between the human and the divine: there is a transition from the divine essence through an ambivalent, dual zone to the human nature. According to SUM (1970–1980), in the New Ukrainian language, three lexemes (ocoбa ‘person,’ icтoтa ‘creature,’ єcтвo ‘being, substance’) relate only to a person, two lexemes (бoг ‘god,’ бoжecтвo ‘divinity’) can be interpreted in an “earthly” manner as an ‘imaginary

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     225

supernatural being,’ and only one term (Бoжecтвeннa пpиpoдa ‘divine nature’) goes totally beyond the bounds of humanity. In today’s English, the situation is the opposite (cf. CEOED 1971): three lexemes (essence, divinity, godhead ) relate only to divinity, while three lexemes (god, person, nature ) are in the ambivalent zone and, depending on the context, can invoke either/both the divine or human qualities. In fact, we see a different axiological accentuation in the translations: in the Ukrainian texts, it is the subconscious reception of the divine nature through the matrix of human preconditions, and in the English texts, it is the exaltation of the Divine nature and the avoidance of earthiness.

6.2 Social Dimension of the Names of Jesus Christ In identifying axiological associations in the semantics of the social representation of Christ, we will relate to Andreichuk’s (2011, pp. 85, 87) idea of linguistic and cultural space as an interpretive model. Since a person perceives the world via language and so language constructs human existence as an axiological and semantic universe (Andreichuk 2011, p. 89) within the matrix of linguacultural space as a framework for interpreting semantic systems and cultural texts (p. 102), the analyst may look for close and distant associations in the interpretation of specific lexemes. It is therefore advisable to differentiate between the nearest and the more distant associations of certain concepts. The nearest associations reveal some of the semantic features of given terms so as to create the “inner horizon,” while the more distantly related concepts generate a thematically broad background, the “outer horizon” (Andreichuk 2011, p. 86). In the text of the Little Catechism (Katekhyzys 1996, pp. 90, 92) and in the corresponding fragment of the Great Catechism (Part 1, Questions 34, 40), we find two names for Christ, which balance the duality of Christ’s nature: his earthly and divine essence (Table 4). In ancient Middle Eastern cultures, “anointing” was a sign of elevation in one’s legal status, including the manumission of a slave woman, the transfer of property, the betrothal of a bride, and the deputation of

226     T. Shmiher Table 4  Nominations of Messiah in the Catechism and its translations St. Petro Mohyla

V. Shevchuk

Rev. E. Kumka

F. Lodvill Rev. P. Popivchak

помазанgцъ Збавитgль

пoмaзaнeць Cпacитeль

Пoмaзaник Cпacитeль / Cпac

anointed Saviour (Savior)

a vassal. In Jewish history, there was a tradition of anointing kings and supreme priests (EJ 2007, vol. 2, p. 179).3 Consequently, within the inner horizon, we have associations with the state or Church supreme authority, while within the outer horizon, there are associations with the state system and the Church hierarchy. As the anointing ceremony symbolised the granting of the “Spirit of the Lord” (ibid.), the theanthropistic duality reflects here the belief that all power comes from God and is manifested in its earthly social organisation. In the modern Ukrainian language, the words пoмaзaнeць and пoмaзaник only evoke the meaning of ‘monarch awarded with the ceremony of anointing’ (SUM 1970–1980, vol. 7, p. 111). The ceremony of anointing symbolises God’s blessing but not a qualitative change in the state of the anointed—there is no transition to the status of deity. In English linguaculture, the expression The Lord’s Anointed similarly means ‘Jesus Christ; Messiah,’ but also ‘king,’ according to the “divine law” (CEOED 1971, vol. 1, p. 87). In Old Ukrainian, the lexeme пoмaзaникъ also meant ‘appointed by the divine power’ (Sreznevskiy 1893–1912, vol. 2 [1902], p. 1155). The inner horizon of Ukrainian and English languages is based on the sense of ‘the highest power,’ both in the religious and secular sphere. In comparison, in the Biblical context, anointing means ‘dedicating oneself to serve God’ (NCE 2002–2003, vol. 1, pp. 477–478), and this is confirmed in the Catechism: Jesus Christ is anointed for тpи oyp#ды: нa c[в#]mgнcтвo, нa Кpoлgвcтвo и нa Пpopoцтвo ‘three offices: Priesthood, Kingdom and Prophecy’ (Katekhyzys 1996, p. 92). Within the outer horizon there are two lexemes: up#дъ ‘office’ and кpoлgвcтвo ‘kingdom.’

3Recall

the anointing of David by Samuel in 1 Samuel 16.

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     227

The lexeme up#дъ in Old Ukrainian only meant ‘agreement, treaty’ (Sreznevskiy 1893–1912, vol. 3 [1912], p. 1263) but already in Middle Ukrainian, the polysemy of this word evolved into ‘agreement, contract,’ ‘legal force,’ ‘official position,’ ‘established duty’ (SSUM 1977– 1978, vol. 2 [1978], p. 484), which leads to a broad interpretation of the functions of Christ: the use of his power to fulfil obligations that follow from his position. This interpretation entirely fits the description of state. The New Ukrainian variants (cлyжiння ‘duties and service under one’s control,’ cтaнoвищe ‘position’) reflect the spatial fullness of political life, but there is no space for the agent, including any religious function. The English translators used the lexeme office with its extensive network of senses that invokes social and religious values and indirectly influences (specifies) the axiological interpretation of the lexeme anointed. In spite of the Biblical topoi heaven and Zion (Part 1, Question 15), the state is mainly presented as кpoлgвcтвo ‘kingdom,’ and Christ bears the title Ц[thca]pь Iuдgйcк¿й ‘Judean Caesar’ (Part 1, Question 34). There is a hidden paradox here in that both terms originate from the names of real people: кpoлgвcтвo from the Frankish emperor Charlemagne (ESUM 1982–, vol. 3 [1989], p. 39), and цthcapcтвo from the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar (ESUM 1982–, vol. 6 [2012], p. 261). The English lexeme kingdom has an etymological basis that is more relevant in Biblical contexts: ‘management of a kin, clan and tribe’ (CEOED 1971, vol. 1, pp. 1539–1540). It is interesting that the same Germanic root migrated to the Ukrainian language, to yield the lexeme кън#зь ‘prince’ (ESUM 1982–, vol. 2 [1985], p. 475). The lexeme збaвитgль ‘saviour’ is a counterpart of the Greek σωτήρ, which was originally used when God’s intervened in human misfortune (illness, shipwreck, war) to offer succour and support (NCE 2002–2003, vol. 12, p. 712). Divinity was thus conceptualised in human terms: pagan gods were viewed in the human image. In the Old Testament, the idea of salvation related to earthly affairs, while in the New Testament, its meaning expanded into more abstract domains, in particular through the use of the notion of “faith.” In theology, the concept of “salvation” is directly related to “grace,” as well as behavioural

228     T. Shmiher Table 5  Synonyms to Збaвитgль ‘Savior’ in Old and New Ukrainian Old Ukrainian

New Ukrainian

Old Ukrainian

съпасъ

спас

съпаситgль

Rescue Well-being Rescuer Jesus Christ Church or monastery in honour of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Rescuer Church or monastery in honour of Jesus Christ Religious holiday

New Ukrainian спаситель Jesus Christ Rescuer

models (NCE 2002–2003, vol. 12, p. 713): the outer horizon of abstract concepts shapes the inner horizon of the original lexeme. In Middle Ukrainian discourse, the most widespread sense of the lexeme збaвитgль ‘saviour’ was the religious one: ‘Christ, who saves from eternal sufferings’; but a more neutral sense was also present: ‘rescuer, liberator’ (SUM 1994–, vol. 11 [2004], p. 59). Table 5 juxtaposes synonymic lexemes in Old and New Ukrainian. The Church Slavonic suffix -итeль narrowed its application from polysemantic functionality to the sense ‘performer.’ Therefore, Rev. Kumka accurately uses the lexeme Cпac in at least some contexts because in the Old Ukrainian period it was a perfect theanthropic term. The English lexeme Saviour has a rather narrow meaning: ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘church or monastery in honour of Jesus Christ’ (CEOED 1971, vol. 2, p. 2648). This actualisation of senses points to the dominant human element in perception of Jesus Christ but it quite well renders the Middle Ukrainian lexeme збaвитgль.

6.3 Allegorical Representation of Jesus Christ In the text of the Catechism, we find two Christian allegories for the designation of Jesus Christ: one is a purely Biblical, non-material allegory of the Word; the other is the Lamb, rather traditional and material. The representation of Jesus Christ as the Word is elaborated by John the Apostle (John 1:1, 1:14; 1 John 1:1–3, 5:7; Revelation 19:13). The Word is an ontological embodiment of theanthropism; not a product of

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     229 Table 6  The value systems associated with λόγος, cлoвo, and word

Aesthetic categories Ethical models Ideological intentions

Greek linguaculture (before and contemporaneous with the New Testament) λόγος

Ukrainian linguaculture cлoвo

English linguaculture word

Perfection, Poetic beauty Normativeness, legality Wisdom Divinity Promise

Loftiness, Artistic beauty Honour

Singing beauty

Testimony Power Order Advice

Cooperation Commandment Order

Morality

human activities, but their purpose, foundation, and hope. The Word did not originate from humans: it has an inspired and inspiring quality. The Word exists outside humans and does not belong to them: it comes from the Supreme Being. In Old Greek linguaculture, including the New Testament period, λόγος (logos ) had a diverse variety of senses (GEL 1996, pp. 1057– 1059). In patristic literature, this semantic manifold and the network of Biblical interpretations was expanded (PGL 1961, pp. 807–811). Theologians have developed a double interpretation of the Logos: (i) reason or intelligence that exists internally in thinking; (ii) reason or intelligence expressed externally in speech (Commentary 1978, p. 774). With the aid of the matrix principle, one can juxtapose aesthetic categories, ethical models, and ideological intentions (Ślósarz 2013, p. 16). On the basis of lexicographic corpora of Old Greek, Ukrainian, and English (GEL 1996; PGL 1961; Sreznevskiy 1893–1912; SUM 1970– 1980; CEOED 1971) one can visualise the value systems associated with the lexemes λόγος, cлoвo, and word in tabular form (Table 6). In the list of God’s properties mentioned in the Catechism, one can identify two values for the description of God: the aesthetic category of “perfection” (Part 1, Questions 8, 14) and the ethical category of “correctness” (Part 1, Question 14: God engenders nothing evil, sinful,

230     T. Shmiher Table 7  Renderings of бapaнoкъ in (Part 1, Question 45) of the Great Catechism St. Petro Mohyla

Shevchuk

Rev. Kumka

Lodvill Rev. Popivchak

бapaнoкъ

aгнeць ягня

aгнeць

Lamb

or wrong). These categories are smoothly superimposed on the Greeklanguage matrix but are not very coherent with the Ukrainian and English matrices. This fundamental discrepancy is not important for translation, since the theological features in the Ukrainian original text, although borrowed from Greek linguaculture, were to change and/or fix the concept of God in Ukrainian culture—accordingly, the English translators did not have to pay attention to the existing concepts but they were entitled to create new ones. The second allegory for the signification of Jesus Christ is the Lamb. In the text of the Little Catechism, the renderings of the lexeme бapaнoкъ (Katekhyzys 1996, p. 108) in the corresponding fragment of the Great Catechism (Part 1, Question 45) are presented in Table 7. The use of aгнeць and бapaнoкъ at the same time and in the same context reveals St. Petro Mohyla’s creative language-shaping strategy. It also points to the fact that the allegorical use of бapaнoкъ really reflects the ethnochronotope of social life, that is, the habitual interconnections of its spatial, temporal, and ethnic components (Volovyk 2013, p. 82). In Old Ukrainian, the difference between the lexemes aгньць/aгнgць (cf. Latin agnus ) and бapaнъ is that of age: the former is a young animal, the latter is a mature one (Sreznevskiy 1893, vol. 1, pp. 6, 41–42). Incidentally, not all dictionaries list the religious senses of these words, although their examples are taken from religious discourse. The Dictionary of Middle Ukrainian points to the rich polysemy of both aгнgцъ/aгнgць and бapaнoкъ: ‘animal; male sheep,’ ‘pastry in the shape of a lamb,’ ‘church community’ and, in particular, ‘humble, sacrificial being/symbol of Jesus Christ’ (SUM 1994–, vol. 1, p. 72; vol. 2, p. 20). Since aгнeць is a borrowing from Old Bulgarian (ESUM 1982–, vol. 1, p. 46), the use of бapaнoкъ as a religious term reflects the desire of the Ukrainian church hierarchy to develop a living literary

9  St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism in Translation: A Term System …     231

language. The Academic Dictionary of the New Ukrainian Language notes the sense ‘humble, gentle, tender man’ only for the lexeme aгнeць (SUM 1970–1980, vol. 1 [1970], p. 17). In the Biblical context, the allegory of the lamb symbolises innocence (Matskiv 2007, p. 74), the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world, which even entered the Ukrainian Christmas carols (pp. 127– 128). In folk tradition, the ecclesiastical value of innocence that accompanies the image of Jesus Christ is manifested in both the lexeme aгнeць and бapaн, although the latter also symbolises male primordial creative energy, fertility, renewal, wealth, dignity, etc. (Zhaivoronok 2006, pp. 8, 26). By ​​ the using the lexeme бapaнoкъ, St. Petro Mohyla evoked values from cultural matrix that had been shaped long before Christianity. The semantics of the English lexeme lamb coincides to a large extent with the Middle Ukrainian бapaнoкъ: ‘animal; male sheep,’ ‘novice, in particular in the church community,’ ‘soft, tender man; weak as a lamb,’ ‘simpleton,’ ‘symbol of Jesus Christ,’ but another meaning of lamb also developed in English: ‘ruthless and cruel soldiers,’ in particular those that commit acts of violence during elections (CEOED 1971, vol. 1, p. 1561). It is clear that this last sense emerged through irony vis-à-vis the main senses, but its use in the political reality of nineteenth-century England created a precedent for a possible change in the relevant cultural matrix. On the other hand, we can also speak of the resistance of the matrix to phenomena that are not correlated with the most important social values. The value of “innocence” outweighed the influence of political life and the related values associated with weakness continue to exist.

7 Conclusions A text of the kind of authority that is enjoyed by St. Petro Mohyla’s Catechism is intended to change religious consciousness, so the collision between the original and the target cultures is inevitable. Over time, the modified conceptual system may or may not be fully absorbed in the target language-culture: if it is, it preserves the uniqueness of the original use in a different sphere of application.

232     T. Shmiher

Even a well-established terminological system does not mean that the translation becomes mechanical, without taking ethnochronotopes into account. The cultural and historical context influences the formation of the matrix so strongly that the latter does not change easily, even when there are other attempts at interpretation. When reproducing values in a religious text, one should not adhere to the principle of sola scriptura. Rather, the prima scriptura principle, which can be described in philological contexts as the use of etymological, historical dictionaries and encyclopaedias, helps establish the values of the original from the viewpoint of the Biblical prototext, but in translation, the expression of a given value always correlates with the cultural matrix of the target language-culture. In the translations discussed here, axiological modelling was based on the observation that the translators of the Catechism usually added values for fear of distorting the authoritative primary source; in doing so, they neglected the readers’ viewpoint (as in the case of the term lamb ). However, authoritative texts and practices contribute to the emergence of new values. In the case of Extreme Unction, we see that targeted modelling is a characteristic feature of religious translation, since the translators followed the pattern of the original rite, rather than the practice present in the target linguaculture. Because terminological systems are based on values, and terms are culturally dependent, translation often involves a displacement of cultural contexts or cultural experience, so that the task of the translator is to make sure that the displacement or substitution does not affect the author’s main ideas. With regard to the question whether the case at hand represents internal or external church communication in the Orthodox-Catholic encounter, the axiological analysis has revealed a much deeper common ground of ecumenical ideas in The Orthodox Confession than one could suppose. Clearly, the Catechism is immersed in pan-European Christian civilisation, which also contributes to the proper reception of its translations. The cultural matrix, embodied in a linguaculture, shapes the readers’ experience in fundamental ways; it is therefore either impossible to change it or the changes can only be partial and prolonged in time.

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Languages are mutually translatable but their respective fundamental matrices will promote or obstruct formation of certain metaphors in accordance with the value systems involved. Focus on the axiological aspects of translation shows, with respect to religion and the image of God, that linguacultural issues are more important than the peculiarities of specific denominations (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism). It is possible to maintain the idiom of one’s translation within the bounds of a particular denomination but this need not resonate with the mentality of the target nation-as-a-reader. In religious discourse, human-centred values contribute to the cognition and knowledge of God, and God-centred values change humankind via changing its mentality. It is impossible to disregard historical and cultural collective memory but, as the creative practice of St. Petro Mohyla testifies, it is not necessary. The essence of the Divine message is not affected by the use of pre-Christian vocabulary on the part of this great ecclesiastical authority figure, in a way that would render it inexpressible or that would stop the message from achieving its goal. The vocabulary that pertains to family values is more stable than state-oriented terms and therefore, in translation, it is the social dimension that is the most specific and requires closest attention. Perhaps the social dimension will change over time but the process cannot be quick because the translator may and should always take into account the different models and circumstances of the state in different parts of the world. Value systems help find translational correspondences that do not contradict the key principles of Christianity.

References Andreichuk, N.I. 2011. Semiotyka linhvokulturnoho prostoru Anhliyi kintsia XV – pochatku XVII stolittia. Lviv: Vyd-vo Lviv. politekhniky. Brückner, Aleksander. 1927. Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, 2 vols. Kraków: Krakowska Spółka Wydawnicza. Buslaev, F. 1848. O vliyanii hkristianstva na slavianskii yazyk. Opyt istorii yazyka no Ostromyrovomy Evangeliyu. Moskva.

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CEOED. 1971. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Complete text reproduced micrographically, 2 vols. Oxford, London, and Glasgow etc.: Oxford University Press. Chaplia, T.B. 2006. Aksiologiya informatsyonnogo vzaimodeystviya: teoretiko-metodologicheskiy analiz. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Commentary. 1978. A Commentary on the Holy Bible by Various Writers, Ed. Rev. J.R. Dummelow. New York: Macmillan. DEL. 1785. A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers: To Which Are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar, 2 vols., 6th ed. By Samuel Johnson, LL. D. London. EFC. 2003. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, 3 vols., ed. Solomon H. Katz and William Woys Weaver. New York: Scribner. EJ. 2007. Encyclopedia Judaica, 22 vols., 2nd ed. Detroit et al.: Gale. Thompson Learning. English Standard Version. 2001. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles. ESUM. 1982–. Etymolohichnyi slonvyk ukrayinskoyi movy, 7 vols. Kyiv: Naukova dumka. GEL. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon. Compiled by H. G. Liddell and R. Scott; revised and augmented by Sir H. S. Jones with the assistance of R. McKenzie and with the cooperation of many scholars; with a revised supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grzegorczykowa, Renata. 1999. Pojęcie językowego obrazu świata. In Językowy obraz świata, ed. Jerzy Bartmiński, 39–46. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Hrytsenko, P. Yu. 1984. Modeliuvannia systemy dialektnoyi leksyky. Kyiv: Nauk. dumka. Katekhyzys. 1996. Katekhyzys Petra Mohyly, ed. A. Zhukovskyi and trans. V. Shevchuk. Kyiv–Paryzh: Voskresinnia. Krotevych, E.V., and N.S. Rodzevych. 1957. Slovnyk linhvistychnykh terminiv. Kyiv: Vyd-vo AN URSR. Matskiv, P. 2007. Kontseptosfera Boh v ukrayinskomu movnomu prostori. Drohobych: Kolo. MLLM. 1976. Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus: Lexique latin medieval – français/anglais. A Medieval Latin – French/English Dictionary. Composuit J. F. Niermeyer. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Mogilas, Peter. 1762. The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern-Church: Faithfully translated from the originals [by Philip Lodvill]. London.

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Mohila, Petrus. 1643. Ορθόδοξος Ομολογία της πίστεως της Καθολικής και Αποστολικής Εκκλησίας της Ανατολικής. = Orthodoxa Confessio fidei Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesiae Orientalis/[Graece convertit Meletius Syrigus]; cum subscriptionibus autographis patriarcharum. Manuscript. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Codex Parisinus grec 1265. Mohila, Petrus. 1695. Ορθόδοξος Ομολογία της Καθολικής και Αποστολικής Εκκλησίας της Ανατολικής. Hoc est, Orthodoxa Confessio Catholicae atqve Apostolicae Ecclesiae Orientalis. Interprete Lavrentio Norrmanno. Lipsia: J. Thomas Fritsch. Mohyla, Petro. 2011. Pravoslavne spovidannia viry Katolytskoyi i Apostolskoyi Skhidnoyi Tserkvy. Trans. from the Russian by Evhen Kumka (pdf created 10 Oct 2011). http://www.stmstguoc.thishouse.us/linked/catechism_part_1.pdf; http://www.stmstguoc.thishouse.us/linked/catechism_part_2.pdf; http://www. stmstguoc.thishouse.us/linked/catechism_part_3.pdf. Accessed 16 Sept 2017. NCE. 2002–2003. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols., 2nd ed. Detroit et al.: Gale. Thompson Learning. OLD. 1968. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Osinchuk, Yu. 2009. Istoriya ukrayinskoyi bohosluzhbovo-obriadovoyi leksyky. Kyiv: Vyd. dim Dmytra Buraho. PGL. 1961. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. PM. 1989. Pravoslavnyi molytvoslov. Vydannia ekzarkha vsiyeyi Ukrayiny Filareta, mytropolyta kyivskoho i halytskoho. Lviv. Popivchak, Ronald P. Rev. 1975. Peter Mohila, Metropolitan of Kiev (1633–47): Translation and Evaluation of His “Orthodox Confession of Faith” (1640). The Catholic University of America, S.T.D. [No. 259]. Manuscript. Washington, DC. Puzynina, Jadwiga. 2003. Wokół języka wartości. In Język w kręgu wartości: Studia semantyczne, ed. Jerzy Bartmiński, 19–34. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Shevchuk, K. S. 2013. Estetychna aksiolohiya Romana Ingardena. Rivne. Shevtsiv, Ivan o. 1982. Sviati Tainy i yikh zdiysniuvannia v ukrayinskim obriadi. Melbourne: Prosvita. Ślósarz, Anna. 2013. Ideologiczne matryce. Lektury a ich konteksty. Postkomunistyczna Polska, postkolonialna Australia. Kraków: Universitas. Smith, William. 1866. A Latin-English Dictionary, Based upon the Works of Forcellini and Freund: With Tables of the Roman Calendar, Measures, Wright, and Money, 6th ed., revised and corrected. London: John Murray.

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Sreznevskiy, I.I. 1893–1912. Materyaly dla slovarya drevne-russkago yazyka po pismennym pamyatnikam, 3 vols. Sanktpeterburg. SSUM. 1977–1978. Slonvyk staroukrayinskoyi movy XIV-XV st., 2 vols. Kyiv: Nauk. dumka. Sukhina, I.H. 2011. Aksiologiya kultury: filosofsko-antropologicheskiye osnovanniya. Donetsk: Donbas. SUM. 1970–1980. Slovnyk ukrayinskoyi movy, 11 vols. Kyiv: Nauk. dumka. SUM. 1994–. Slovnyk ukrayinskoyi movy XVI – pershoyi polovyny XVII st. Lviv. Thomas Aquinas, St. 2007. Summa Theologica, 5 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Cosimo. Trebnyk 2007. Trebnyk Mytropolyta Petra Mohyly, 2 vols. Reprint. Kharkiv: Folio. Tsytkina, F.A. 1988. Terminologiya i perevod (k osnovam sopostavitelnogo terminovedeniya). Lviv: Vyshcha shkola. Tymchenko, E. 2002–2003. Materialy do slovnyka pysemnoyi ta knyzhnoyi ukrayinskoyi movy XV-XVIII st. Kyiv–New York. Volovyk, V.M. 2013. Etnokulturni landshafty: rehionalni struktury i pryrodokorystuvannia. Vinnytsia: Vinnytska miska drukarnia. Zhaivoronok, V. 2006. Znaky ukrayinskoyi etnokultury: slonvyk-dovidnyk. Kyiv: Dovira.

10 Borrowings and the Linguistic Worldview or How to Domesticate Foreignness Jerzy Bartmiński

1 Introduction: In Reply to James Underhill Relating to the strengths and weaknesses of the Lublin School of Ethnolinguistics, specifically its programme of reconstruction of the Polish linguistic worldview (LWV), James Underhill wrote1: 1According to Underhill, the strengths of the Lublin approach include: (i) continuation of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s legacy; (ii) reliance on field research; (iii) contacts with speakers outside major population centres; (iv) engagement in international contexts with the participation of students; (v) attention to historical contexts within a general focus on contemporary language; (vi) the use of literary texts; (vii) the idea of variable profiling at the level of discourse. On the side of weaknesses, the author mentions: (i) the risk of over-separation of different aspects of meaning; (ii) excessive reliance on binary comparisons between and oppositions of languages; (iii) failure to decide whether stereotypes have the structure of prototype-based, radial categories or family-resemblance categories; (iv) insufficient justification for the use of non-linguistic data; (v) insufficient use of linguistic corpora; (vi) failure to take into account the role of translations in shaping the LWV (the problem partially addressed here); (vii) excessive expansion of the research field, which may result in blurring the analytical focus of the approach (Underhill 2013, pp. 340–344).

J. Bartmiński (*)  Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 A. Głaz (ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28509-8_10

237

238     J. Bartmiński

The place of translation within this approach needs to be established, consolidated, and defended. What are the essential foreign texts that have helped cultivate Polish literature? The Bible? Shakespeare? What others? How did the daily translation of Russian into Polish affect the Polish worldview? And how is that worldview holding up to the daily influence of English journalism and its translation into Polish? (Underhill 2013, p. 344)

This sparked interest in the place of borrowings and translated texts in the reconstruction of the Polish LWV. Adam Głaz (2019) has recognised Underhill’s remark as pertinent and goes even further in posing more detailed questions: [C]onsider the Polish Być albo nie być as a rendering of Shakespeare’s To be, or not to be: can we treat it as a part of the Polish linguistic worldview, especially as the more faithful option Być, czy też nie być, used by a few translators of Hamlet, has not gained the same level of entrenchment? Does the Polish worldview include Kubuś Puchatek (Winnie-thePooh) in the shape it was actually created by Irena Tuwim, the Polish translator of Milne’s book [..], the shape that significantly differs from its English prototype? Do we include in the Polish worldview Hemingway’s komu bije dzwon (from For Whom the Bell Tolls ) or Conrad’s smuga cienia (from Shadow Line ) and jądro ciemności (from Heart of Darkness)? Or is it really Conrad that we owe them to? After all, the latest Polish rendering of the latter book by Jacek Dukaj […] is titled Serce ciemności, where serce means ‘heart,’ whereas jądro, used by the other translators, means ‘core.’ The “responsibility” for jądro ciemności should be thus attributed not to Conrad but to the six translators who had rendered his novella into Polish before Dukaj. (Głaz 2019, p. 241)

In joining this discussion, I will not refer to translations of whole texts (this belongs to the history of literature and to translation studies), but only to the status of expressions (words and their combinations) that in the process of translation are transferred to the recipient language and undergo the process of assimilation. Contrary to Underhill’s suggestion, the reception of Shakespeare’s works is a marginal problem for Poles; more important are translations from Russian or the

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contemporary influx of translations from English (mainly in business and administration), while the reception of the Bible and, more broadly, of Christianity in Polish linguaculture is indeed of historical importance. What is their position in Polish? To what extent do they participate in the formation of the Polish language (or in the ‘Christianisation of Polish linguaculture’), to what extent do they themselves undergo transformation under the influence of its substrate (when and if this leads to a ‘polonisation of Christianity’)? To what extent is their role limited to certain variants of style and register? These are the specific questions addressed in this chapter. First, I will discuss a few general issues concerning the status of foreign elements in the receiving language. Then, I will look at selected examples of borrowings of Biblical elements into Polish, which will serve as an illustration of a broader process of assimilation. I will claim that the notion of linguaculture allows room for the category of ‘domesticated foreignness’ in the speakers’ linguistic awareness.

2 Linguistic Worldview and the Extent of Borrowing into Polish I understand the notion of LWV as a ‘language-entrenched interpretation of reality’ (Bartmiński 2009, p. 23), ingrained in the grammatical structure of a language, in the meanings of its lexical items, as well as in the structure and meanings of texts. Other authors attach more importance to grammar than to the lexicon, that is, to the regularity of word-formation processes (Grzegorczykowa 2019), to grammaticalised meanings that receive obligatory expression (Pajdzińska 2019, in print), or to lexical and grammatical phenomena at the higher level of ‘linguistic conceptualisation’ (Filar and Łozowski 2019). However, we shall stay at the level of individual expressions. The problem of the role of borrowing in shaping the LWV is an important one, given the vast and constantly rising number of foreign elements in Polish. The most recent edition of the Polish Great Dictionary of Foreign Words (WSWO 2005) contains about 40,000

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entries, of which nearly 14,000 appear in that edition for the first time.2 According to some estimates, every fourth word in Polish is a borrowing (Walczak 2014 [1993]). The distinction between native and foreign elements in any language is fuzzy. Languages evolve and are enriched through both internal mechanisms of derivation (creating new words and meanings based on existing ones) and borrowing from other languages: this leads to a multilayered lexical stock. An attempt at a stratigraphic description of contemporary Polish (Bartmiński 2015) reveals several overlapping chronological layers. Indigenous elements are only those that were inherited directly from the communities of Proto-Indo-Europeans and Proto-Slavs—they can be recognised by way of comparative-historical linguistic research. The common Indo-European heritage contains those elements that appear (or have appeared historically) in all the languages investigated. For example, the Polish noun brat has (more or less) close equivalents in all the languages of the Indo-European family: Latin frater, Italian fratello, French frère, Romanian frate, English brother, German Bruder, Danish bror, Swedish bror, Dutch broer, Icelandic bróðir, etc., not to mention the languages of the Slavic branch: Belarusian бpaт, Bulgarian бpaт, Croatian brat, Czech bratr, Russian бpaт, Ukrainian бpaт. According to Ivanov and Gamkrelidze (1984), the common Indo-European lexical repository consists of about a thousand semantic units, such as (in English) will, memory, spirit, wine; heaven, wonder; mother, sister, son; tree, wolf, sheep; sun, gold, etc., including fundamental ethical, religious, and family-related concepts, as well as elements of living and inanimate nature. This legacy was smoothly adopted and enriched by the Proto-Slavic community, from which Polish inherited several thousand words, such as Bóg ‘God,’ czart ‘devil,’ grzech ‘sin’; ojciec ‘father,’ stryj ‘paternal uncle,’ wuj ‘maternal uncle,’ dziad ‘grandfather,’ teść ‘father-in-law,’ gromada ‘community,’ ród ‘family,’ plemię ‘tribe,’ sejm ‘parliament,’ wojewoda

2The blurb on the dictionary says it ‘records words that have relatively recently entered the Polish language […] and those that were borrowed in the past, but still retain their foreign character.’

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‘voivode,’ poseł ‘deputy,’ sąd ‘court,’ sędzia ‘judge,’ pułk ‘regiment,’ broń ‘weapon,’ or twierdza ‘fortress.’ As can be seen, these are designations of various physical properties of people and animals, names of activities and states, working tools, social institutions, and suchlike. According to Lehr-Spławiński, the basis of Proto-Slavic vocabulary was ‘a typical ­culture of a settled, agricultural people, whose social system was based on family and tribal relations’ (Lehr-Spławiński 1951, p. 94).3 Already at this stage, the stage of the formation of the oldest linguacultural communities, the possibility of intercultural (cross-linguistic) borrowing is contemplated. Zbigniew Gołąb (2004, p. 101) points out similarities between Iranian and Slavic socially and culturally important terminology for notions such as ‘god,’ ‘wonder,’ ‘word,’ ‘heaven,’ or ‘shame’).4 Other researchers claim that Proto-Slavs were influenced by Germanic languages (cf. the Polish chełm and contemporary German Helm ‘helmet,’ barwa and Farbe ‘colour,’ waga and Waage ‘scale (for weighing)’); they also indirectly adopted, among others, elements from Latin (cesarz ‘emperor’), Greek (cerkiew ‘Orthodox church’), and Celtic languages (zbroja ‘armour’) (Jagodziński 2017). Already at the stage of the oldest borrowings, it is legitimate to ask what is borrowed: the word itself, the word with the concept, or the thing along with its name and the corresponding concept? Regrettably, I refrain from answering this question in this chapter. As commercial, economic and cultural ties with other cultures developed, the native vocabulary was successively being supplemented with increasingly stronger waves of foreign borrowings. Borrowings into Polish derive from three great cultural circles: Judaeo-Christianity, Greek-Roman Antiquity, and Western European culture, which endowed the Polish language with a distinct Christian and European character.

3However,

it should be emphasised that Proto-Slavic culture was also absorbing linguistic borrowings, especially form Germanic and Iranian languages. 4This also concerns similarities between Aryan and Slavic terms, e.g. for such notions as ‘without,’ ‘smoke,’ ‘black,’ ‘horse’s mane,’ ‘bosom,’ ‘respect,’ ‘hunger,’ ‘slim,’ ‘core,’ and others.

242     J. Bartmiński Table 1  Numbers of words borrowed into Polish until the 1970s Source language

No. and % of borrowings

Latin/Greek (e.g. deklaracja, reguła, akt ) German (blacha, cegła, rynek ) French (aleja, kabaret, plakietka ) artificial loans (kosmodrom, dyktafon, noktowizja ) English (bokser, komfort, dżem ) Italian (kalafior, fontanna, allegro ) Turkish (haracz, kilim, tytoń ) Hungarian (delia, hajduk, kontusz )

4238 (ca. 10% of the sample) 2308 (5.4%) 1857 (4.5%) 685 (1.6%) 410 (0.96%) 361 (0.8%) 48 40

Source Słownictwo (1974–1977)

On the basis of frequency lists from the 1970s covering 600,000 words, language historians established the numbers of words borrowed into Polish, listed in Table 1.5 Similar calculations for the Polish language in the twenty-first century would undoubtedly produce different results, especially with respect to borrowings from English.6 The total proportion of borrowings in contemporary Polish is slightly more than 23% of the basic lexical resources of the language (Walczak 2014 [1993]), p. 535).7 The most abundant source of borrowings for many European languages was Greek and Latin, followed by French, and nowadays mainly English. This led to the emergence of supranational cultural and linguistic areas: linguistic influences are multidirectional and multilateral, rather than bilateral. Poland joined the European cultural and linguistic community in the tenth century, adopting many Pan-European words and concepts, which began to function as determinants of a new supranational identity.8

5A

more synthetic approach is proposed in Kurcz et al. (1990). from Slavic languages (Czech, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian) are less numerous than those from Western languages. They are also more difficult to quantify because of the complex and dynamic situation in and around contact areas (Rieger and Siatkowski 2014 [1993]). 7However, because loan words are used less frequently than native words, the proportion of borrowings in individual texts is smaller than in the entire lexicon. 8Cf. Wandruszka (1990), who compiled lists of common vocabulary items from Romance and Germanic languages related to construction, religion, science, politics, culture, and psychology, thus proving the existence of a European linguistic community. Unfortunately, he omitted Slavic languages. A comparison of word classes by Wandruszka as pan-European with standard 6Borrowings

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Lexical Pan-Europeanisms cover different spheres of social life, culture, and science, including: • politics (in a broad sense): crisis, conflict, catastrophe, asylum seeker, civilisation, nation; • administration: director, region, programme, propaganda; • art: exhibit, unique, pop, fan, disco; • psychology: talent, character, persona; • geometrical, logical, and methodological concepts: point, line, figure, component, fragment, form, organ, rule, program, project, problem, method; • concepts related to religious and spiritual life: cross, angel, pilgrim. An important role is played by expressions that help organise one’s thinking and discursive articulation, such as on the basis of, under the influence of, except for, in comparison with, etc. Pan-Europeanisms have become tools of ‘European thinking’; they have also spread to other cultures and many have acquired the status of internationalisms. In fact, ca. 7% of contemporary Polish lexicon are internationalisms (Maćkiewicz 2014 [1993], p. 559; the estimate does not include phraseological expressions and proverbs, which can be viewed as mini-texts).

3 The Status of Foreign Words in the Receiving Language What is commonly labelled as borrowings in fact comprises an extremely diverse set of expressions, which have variable status along the familiar–foreign cline.9 Something may be more or less foreign; foreign

dictionaries of Czech, Polish, and Russian shows that all of them (e.g., in English, wall and gate; angel and apostle; organ, rule, crisis, conflict, idea, exhibit, talent, enthusiasm, etc.) are also present in Slavic languages as common and derivationally productive words and thus belong to the linguistic worldviews of their users (Bartmiński 2000). 9Cf. Maćkiewicz and Siatkowski (1992), Walczak (2014 [1993]), Rieger and Siatkowski (2014 [1993]), Maćkiewicz (2014 [1993]).

244     J. Bartmiński

elements may also be gradually neutralised until they are completely blurred and blended into the lexical and semantic system of the receiving language.10 Moreover, categories can be converted: what is foreign can be domesticated, and what is familiar can be foreignised. ‘Secondary xenisms’ are created by the use of specific foreign prefixes, such as super-, extra-, trans- etc. (this will be elaborated on below). Five levels are usually distinguished on the scale between the foreign– familiar (native) poles: Level 1: quotes. Words and phrases can be transferred from one language to another in an unchanged graphic and phonetic form, for example the Latin strictly, incognito, Anno Domini; French chargé d’affair; English last but not least; Italian allegro; Russian w drebyezgi, etc. Quotes include exoticisms such as ayatollah or kimono—these are names of elements of foreign cultures that have no native equivalents. They appear as a result of attempts to bring the recipient closer to the foreign culture (cognitive function) and serve the deliberate ‘foreignisation’ of the text. In translations, they are used in order to avoid naturalisation and to remain ‘faithful’ (in a certain understanding of the term) to the original (Lewicki 2000, pp. 133–137). Traditionally, many foreign-language quotes are included in dictionaries of foreign words and even dictionaries of general Polish. This means that despite a clear stigma of foreignness, quotes are not situated outside of the receiving language: on the contrary, they are treated as components of the new linguistic culture. They form a category of their own: their foreignness is intentionally marked, reproduced, and even (artificially) (re-)created. One way of doing so is to stress a syllable other than regularly stressed penultimate syllable in Polish lexemes. For instance, instead of the original pronunciation of the proper names Fitzgerald (English), Vondráčková (Czech), or Lermontova (Russian), Polish speakers say Fitzgerald, Vondráčková, and Lermontowa (the phenomenon is particularly frequent in Russian names, cf. Bartmińska and

10Bartmińska and Bartmiński (1978, pp. 34–36) illustrate the degrees of assimilation of foreign proper names into Polish. In the introduction to the Great Dictionary of Foreign and Difficult Words (WSWOiT 2001), the editors mention several specific cases.

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Bartmiński 1978, p. 39). Another method is to retain foreign sound clusters, for example ti, di, ri, as in timokracja ‘timocracy,’ didaskalia ‘stage directions,’ or riposta ‘repartee’—all this to maintain the memory of the foreign origin of the word. Quotes also function on a higher level: as well-known quotations from various authors, whose names tend to be remembered (cf. Chlebda 2005, p. 47). Level 2: inflectional polonisation. This includes proper nouns and is forced by the inflectional system of Polish.11 Being a weak type of polonisation, inflectional polonisation does not deprive a given item of its foreignness, which is usually preserved in its unmistakably foreign spelling; cf. for example weltschmerz, design,12 hot dog. The process usually assumes the form of assimilation of proper names: powieść Greene’a ‘Green’s novel,’ polityka MacCarthy’ego ‘MacCarthy’s politics/policy,’ Linia Maginota ‘Maginot Line,’ etc. Level 3: derivational polonisation. This is a process of submission of foreign words to Polish derivational processes, for example zapping—zapowanie (action). The process brings the foreign element closer to the system of the receiving language but the basic forms are not assimilated, as is clear in derivatives that come from proper names, for example Darwin > darwinizm ‘Darwinism,’ Marx > marksista ‘Marxist,’ Disney > Disneyowski ‘characteristic of Disney,’ Chomsky > chomskizm ‘Chomsky’s philosophy/approach,’ chomskista ‘follower of Chomsky,’ etc. Level 4: phonetic polonisation. This is the next, higher level of assimilation that is usually superimposed on inflectional and derivational polonisation, for example yuppie > japiszon, jury > juror, camping > kempingowy (adj.), etc. Level 5: orthographic assimilation. This type, whereby the spelling of the foreign element is modified to fit the patterns of the receiving language, completes the formal process of assimilation; for example kolor ‘colour,’ cegła ‘brick,’ krawat ‘tie,’ szkoła ‘school,’ sauce ‘sos’; plus more 11Nevertheless,

a large number of borrowings (common words and proper names) are not inflected: judo, bikini, guru, kakao, confetti, martini, sake, sari, tabu, etc. Their syntactic functions are defined by the context. 12However, the polonised spelling dizajn has recently become more common [editor’s note].

246     J. Bartmiński

recent examples: computer > komputer, design > dizajn, copywriter > kopyrajter, mail > mejl, leader > lider, etc. To sum up, it can be said that a high degree of assimilation is achieved by those foreign words that (i) have complied with the requirements of Polish inflection and (ii) have adapted to Polish derivational rules (by adopting Polish affixes), (iii) pronunciation, and (iv) spelling. From the formal perspective, the process of assimilation ends with spelling even at that stage words often retain their original meanings (dyskusja