Ubiquitous Translation 9781315646480

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
1 Ubiquitous Translation: Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In’t......Page 16
2 Philosophy: Translation as Understanding, Interpretation, and Hermeneutics......Page 49
3 Theology: Translation as Process and a Matter of Faith......Page 80
4 Linguistics: Translation as Meaning, Conceptualization, Construal, and Metaphor......Page 115
5 Anthropology: Translation as an Encounter with Others and Oneself......Page 148
Epilogue......Page 182
References......Page 186
Index......Page 198

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Ubiquitous Translation

In this book, Piotr Blumczynski explores the central role of translation as a key epistemological concept as well as a hermeneutic, ethical, linguistic, and interpersonal practice. His argument is three-fold: (1) that translation provides a basis for genuine, exciting, serious, innovative, and meaningful exchange between various areas of the humanities through both a concept (the what) and a method (the how); (2) that, in doing so, it questions and challenges many of the traditional boundaries and offers a transdisciplinary epistemological paradigm, leading to a new understanding of quality, and thus also meaning, truth, and knowledge; and (3) that translational phenomena are studied by a broad range of disciplines in the humanities (including philosophy, theology, linguistics, and anthropology) using various, often seemingly unrelated concepts that nevertheless display a considerable degree of qualitative proximity. The common thread running through all these convictions and binding them together is the insistence that translational phenomena are ubiquitous. Because of its unconventional and innovative approach, this book will be of interest to translation studies scholars looking to situate their research within a broader transdisciplinary model, as well as to students of translation programs and practicing translators who seek a fuller understanding of why and how translation matters. Piotr Blumczynski is a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting at Queen’s University Belfast. The areas of his research interest and expertise include translation theory and practice, the translation of sacred texts, cognitive semantics, and ethnolinguistics. He is an associate editor of the journal Translation Studies (Routledge).

Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies

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For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

   7 Translation and Linguistic Hybridity Constructing World-View Susanne Klinger    8 The Dao of Translation An East-West Dialogue Douglas Robinson    9 Translating Feminism in China Gender, Sexuality and Censorship Zhongli Yu 10 Multiple Translation Communities in Contemporary Japan Edited by Beverley Curran, Nana Sato-Rossberg, and Kikuko Tanabe 11 Translating Culture Specific References on Television The Case of Dubbing Irene Ranzato 12 The Pushing-Hands of Translation and its Theory In memoriam Martha Cheung, 1953–2013 Edited by Douglas Robinson 13 Cultural Politics of Translation East Africa in a Global Context Alamin M. Mazrui 14 Bourdieu in Translation Studies The Socio-cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt Sameh Hanna 15 Ubiquitous Translation Piotr Blumczynski

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Ubiquitous Translation

Piotr Blumczynski

First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Piotr Blumczynski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Blumczynski, Piotr, author. Title: Ubiquitous translation / by Piotr Blumczynski. Description: New York : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Routledge Advances   in Translation and Interpreting Studies; 15 | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016012571 | ISBN 9781138182417 (hardback :   alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315646480 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Translation studies. | Translating and interpreting. |   Translating and interpreting—Study and teaching. | Interdisciplinary   research. | Interdisciplinary approach in education. Classification: LCC P306.94 .B59 2016 | DDC 418/.02—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016012571 ISBN: 978-1-138-18241-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64648-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

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Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Introductionix 1 Ubiquitous Translation: Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In’t

1

2 Philosophy: Translation as Understanding, Interpretation, and Hermeneutics

34

3 Theology: Translation as Process and a Matter of Faith

65

4 Linguistics: Translation as Meaning, Conceptualization, Construal, and Metaphor

100

5 Anthropology: Translation as an Encounter with Others and Oneself

133

Epilogue167 References171 Index183

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Acknowledgements

Working on this book made me profoundly aware of how lucky—or blessed, if you like—I have been in the last several years. I am indebted to a large group of individuals on three different continents who in various important ways supported me throughout this project. I cannot say that some provided mostly intellectual and others mostly emotional boosts: In truth, both stimulation and encouragement poured towards me from all of the members of my academic and personal circles. I am especially grateful to those—and for those—mentioned below. David Johnston, Elżbieta Tabakowska, Christiane Nord, Magda Heydel, Elżbieta Skibińska, and Doug Robinson—translators, translation scholars, mentors, and friends, all at the same time—were always willing to discuss and debate my ideas at various stages of their germination. My wonderful colleagues from the editorial board of the journal Translation Studies, Valerie Henitiuk and Carol O’Sullivan, in several key moments provided excellent examples and offered valuable pointers. The School of Modern Languages at Queen’s University Belfast granted me a study leave, during which I was able to start working on this book. Several cohorts of MA and PhD students of translation and interpreting at Queen’s were the first to hear and respond to some of my ideas. Beyond my own university, I was given opportunities to engage with several esteemed academic communities. I wish to thank James Maxey, Phil Towner, and Stefano Arduini for the invitation to present at the Nida School of Translation Studies in Misano Adriatico; Lorraine Leeson for inviting me to the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin; Doug Robinson and Robert Nether for giving me the opportunity to speak as part of the Translation Seminar Series at Hong Kong Baptist University; and Meimei Zhang and Mingli Sun for the invitation to share my research with translation and interpreting students at Jilin University in Changchun. All these valued interactions helped me sharpen my thinking and refine my argument and provided the reassurance that I was after something both interesting and important. I thank my mother Krystyna Blumczyńska for introducing me to the spiritual writings of Tomáš Halík, which became such an important part

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viii Acknowledgements of this book, and Tomáš Halík himself for his kind support in what must have seemed like a rather wild project. I am immensely indebted to Jim and Mary Beth Brown who—as so many times before—welcomed me into their home at a time of need and provided not only free room and board, but also encouragement, feedback, and a much-needed challenge to consider things that really matter in life. Last but not least, my heartfelt appreciation and warmest affection go to Lauren MacKenzie and Senan Devlin, who have become my family. *** I gratefully acknowledge the copyholders of the following publications who have granted me permission to use their material: “Translation: A New Paradigm” (in Translation: a transdisciplinary journal) by Stefano Arduini and Siri Nergaard. Copyright © 2011 by Fondazione Universitaria San Pellegrino—Italy. Reprinted by permission. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics by Clifford Geertz. Copyright © 2000 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission. Co Je Bez Chvění, Není Pevné: Labyrintem Světa s Vírou a Pochybností by Tomáš Halík. Copyright © 2002 by Tomáš Halík. Reprinted by permission. Essentials of Cognitive Grammar by Ronald W. Langacker. Copyright © 2013 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission. Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts by Friedrich Schleiermacher, edited by H. Kimmerle. Copyright © 1977 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission. Metaphors We Live by by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Copyright © 1980/2003 by University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission. Modes of Thought by Alfred North Whitehead. Copyright © 1938 by The Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1966 by T. North Whitehead. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Copyright © 2004 by Continuum Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Reprinted by permission.

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Introduction

Paul Ricoeur once remarked that “the practice of translation remains a risky operation which is always in search of its own theory” (2006: 14). I would suggest that the reverse is just as true: The theory of translation remains a risky business that is always in search of its own practice. This book, I think, is a good example of this inextricable dialectic of theory and practice of translation, as well as the risks—but hopefully, also the rewards—of both. It suggests certain theoretical ideas through a practical translational exercise; it is both a translation and a study of translation. This is not surprising if we accept the view that “the cross-lingual and crosscultural study of concepts and discursive practices, including concepts and practices of translation, involves recourse to translative operations. We need to translate in order to study translation” (Hermans 2003: 384). By analogy to the Jakobsonian metalingual function (namely, the capacity of language to speak about itself), a meta-translational relation between translation theory and practice could be postulated: One needs to be translated into the other. But the scope, relevance, and importance of translation extend much further. I see it as truly ubiquitous—and in more ways than one. When we try to theorize translation and reflect on it, we inescapably reflect on much larger issues, such as meaning, sense, and purpose; identity, sameness, and similarity; the relationship between part and whole; between the message and its medium; between ideas; between texts; between individuals; between individuals and texts; between communities; between texts and communities; between different times and places; between what is fixed and what is dynamic; between exercising force and experiencing influence, and so on. Translation takes us into a surprisingly broad range of territories and confronts us with the most fundamental of questions. Or perhaps, it is already somehow present there—as suggested in the title of this book—often under a different name. When the complex, rich, simultaneously nomadic and ubiquitous—and therefore paradoxical—concept of translation is translated into other areas or indeed, discovered in them, it may offer us “a different way of facing the great epistemological questions of what we know and how we know” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 9). This book attempts to demonstrate this epistemological potential of translation. It aspires to a truly transdisciplinary

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x Introduction endeavor in that it draws from and makes connections to various disciplines (including philosophy, theology, linguistics, and anthropology), but also challenges certain distinctions between these areas by pointing to the shared level of their how. Indeed, at the center of my approach is the conviction that when it comes to all things translational, what I prefer to call the how matters no less than the what—and oftentimes, rather more. This strongly qualitative and processual character of the translation concept—its inherent how-ness—provides a much needed corrective to the predominantly declarative, what-centered epistemological model that in many places still prevails as a legacy of substance metaphysics, “the dominant research paradigm in the history of Western philosophy since Aristotle” (Seibt 2013; cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1999). One of the practical consequences of redressing this imbalance between the what and the how is stimulating the migration of qualitative insights across the humanities. In hermeneutic terms, this means applying a translational interpretant (to use Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept recently brought to translation studies by Lawrence Venuti [2012c; 2013]) to insights originally formulated in other areas. By postulating a qualitative link between translation and a range of various concepts in the humanities, I seek to encourage an innovative, meaningful exchange of ideas between translation studies and other fields of study. Whether or not translation studies is still at the “importing” stage of its development (Snell-Hornby 2009: 48), my purpose is not so much to show how it can learn from other disciplines—although I am convinced that it can—but rather to suggest that these disciplines may in some sense be studying translation: in other words, demonstrate its ubiquity. This method of reading, reconceptualizing, and retranslating promises an enriching way of thinking, or—to put it boldly—a new transdisciplinary research paradigm. I believe that “this epistemological potentiality of the concept of translation is an untapped resource” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 14) which can meaningfully inform a broad range of fields in the humanities. There are several different ways in which this qualitative dialogue may be viewed and its importance highlighted. First of all, it can be argued that hermeneutic and epistemological processes are translational in character. Untranslated knowledge remains unaware of its biases and blind spots; translation, on the other hand, not only puts knowledge to the test but is in itself a knowledge-building process. It is only when we start translating something for someone (for example, when we try to explain trigonometry to a high school junior, the importance of honesty to a four-year-old, or the actual sense of an idiomatic expression to a learner of our language) that its meaning becomes clearer to us—but also, perhaps more often than we are willing to admit, we realize with dismay how complex that thing really is and how much we do not understand, or have forgotten, or tend to take for granted. Of course, that in itself is a translated analogy. The language that provides a large part of my conceptual framework, my native Polish, suggests a conflation of the concepts of translation, interpreting,

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Introduction  xi and explanation that remain separate in English: tłumaczenie is either of them—or all. Another argument can be made from an ecological perspective. If we believe in the circulation of ideas and the transferability of knowledge (remember, it’s know-how rather than know-what, that is transferrable), why should good insights remain confined to a single context and not be “recycled” or reapplied elsewhere, even though they were originally developed for a slightly different function? From a metaphysical or spiritual point of view, we could speak about the reincarnation of ideas, the afterlife of insights, or postulate metaphysical prophetic links between certain statements and their subsequent typological fulfillment (thus alleviating the danger of an anachronistic reading). Still another way to approach it is through the idea of serendipity. We know from the history of science that a number of unexpected discoveries were made and useful inventions created by chance while looking for or trying to create something else or simply through experimentation fueled by curiosity. If you know what you are looking for, it is perhaps easier to find it—but also easier to overlook other valuable things that you are not currently watching out for. The reconceptualizations offered here can thus be viewed as an exercise in a series of what ifs whose role is mainly heuristic, that is, aimed at facilitating discovery, as we test the relevance, flexibility, and potential of certain ideas reapplied beyond their original contexts. One test of good research is the extent to which it can yield unexpected results. In this inevitably paradoxical pursuit of “stimulated serendipity” (can you conduct an accident? can you be proud of your humility?), I was reassured by Friedrich Schleiermacher’s insistence that “authors in whose works one finds everything one expects and nothing more are absolutely logical and impersonal. But they are very poor writers. The productive spirit always brings forth something that could not have been expected” (1977: 57). I hope that the approach suggested in this book will offer a good collection of unexpected insights—precisely because it proceeds from a personal, phenomenological, processual, existential, and somatic perspective (which is how I would describe my methodological commitments). By the same token, I have practically excluded from my consideration comments made explicitly with reference to translation. This was a matter of principle: I wanted to claim new territories for translation rather than merely revisit familiar and uncontested grounds. But this was also dictated by my findings. Quite early in my experimental reading, I discovered that many of the authors I read tended to embrace a rather narrow concept of translation (viewed mostly as a philological and textual operation), and their comments on it, rather unsurprisingly, were far less inspirational than ideas emerging from a conceptual re-reading. The reconceptualizations I offer are a form of translation—and translation always has an ethical dimension. I need to stress that it is not my intention to put words in anyone’s mouth or insist that the authors I have re-read

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xii Introduction here had really been theorizing translation. I prefer to think of this project as an intellectual experiment, a creative and innovative translation—and accept the translational responsibility that comes with it. I am willing for my propositions to be analyzed, discussed, improved, refined, criticized, challenged, and resisted—and I am prepared to defend some and amend others. A translation is never finished. A legitimate question would be: What do you really mean by translation? It is a question, however, which I refuse to answer on methodological grounds, precisely because it seeks to reduce the discussion to the what before it even began. Rather, I stand with these theorists who refrain from delimiting translation in recognition of its complexity. I think I am in good company here. Theo Hermans comments that “the term ‘translation’ has no fixed, inherent, immanent meaning” (1999: 144) and that “the most powerful tenet of descriptive translation studies has been that translation cannot be defined a priori, once and for all” (1999: 158–159). Maria Tymoczko notes an interesting paradox “associated with the definitional impulse in translation studies—that as more parameters of translation are identified, more openness is generated in the field instead of closure” (2007: 53). Consequently, she proposes to consider translation as a Wittgensteinian indistinct “cluster concept” which “cannot be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions” (Tymoczko 2014: 107). She views its openness and lack of precise boundaries as an advantage; in her opinion, it is its blurred nature “that makes translation such a fascinating concept to study it its infinite variety and its complicated criss-crossing relationships to language, text, culture, and history” (2007: 90). Stefano Arduini and Siri Nergaard also point to the axiological and ideological dimension underlying the definitional discussion: “While some express concern about an ill-defined and delimited concept, we are of the view that such an approach is a strength and that any premature and a priori definition of the limits and borders of translation prevents us from evolving new theories and changing our assumptions and directions” (2011: 12). A similar position—similar in its what as well as how—is articulated by Clifford Geertz: In moving across places and peoples, restlessly seeking out contrasts and constancies for whatever insight they might provide into any enigma that might appear, one produces less a position, a steady, accumulating view on a fixed budget of issues, than a series of positionings—assorted arguments to assorted ends. This leaves a great deal of blur and uncertainty in place; perhaps most of it. But in this, too, we are following Wittgenstein: One may ask, he writes, ‘is a blurred concept a concept at all?’—Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one exactly what we need? (PI, 71) (Geertz 2000: xiii) Methodologically speaking, I am rather fond of blurred photographs because in their attempt to capture movement they relativize time and space

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Introduction  xiii and therefore highlight processuality. A fast-moving object, photographed using long exposure, appears to simultaneously occupy a series of locations, and in this sense, it approaches ubiquity. This book is a collection of such blurred pictures taken while chasing translation through several different fields; pictures which I believe are somehow truer to a perceived translational experience than razor-sharp images produced using a superfast shutter of the definitional approach. In stressing the importance of how and its accompanying qualitative emphasis, I wanted to be true to my commitment: There is a way in which the medium is the message. Working on this translational project, I experienced a whole range of feelings and attitudes that normally accompany the process of translation: fascination and excitement, but also puzzlement, frustration, a dose of critical distrust, and, above all, an unrelenting sense of anxiety. As a result, this book is paradoxical in several ways. I have tried to follow the paths of rigor and imagination, sound scholarship, and accessibility, believing that they are not in conflict with each other. This appreciation of paradox, I believe, I have learned from translation: from doing it, researching it, and teaching it. I hope that as you read on, you will embrace this broad, somewhat indistinct and blurred, transdisciplinary concept of translation, wrapped around the question of how. Although taking perhaps a more radical approach, I follow in the footsteps of Edwin Gentzler, who in his book under the reassuring subtitle New Directions in Translation Theory, “in addition to studying any text called a translation by given culture, [. . .] also considers translation phenomena that occur but may not be defined as such”, and suggests that “such elements, often covered up, suppressed, or marginalized by that same culture, reveal just as much about translation phenomena as ‘proper’ translation” (2008: 2). I could not agree more: Translational phenomena, though not always recognized as such, underpin key notions in various areas of study and reflection. In my re-readings, I discovered traces of what could be called translational thought everywhere I looked. Lawrence Venuti insists that Translation Changes Everything (2013); to me, translation is—at least potentially—everywhere. This book is structured as follows. Chapter 1 outlines my methodological framework building on a qualitative, how-centered concept of translation that encourages transdisciplinary thinking. In Chapter 2, we turn to philosophy, in particular to the German hermeneutical tradition, to relate translation to understanding, interpretation, and hermeneutics. Chapter 3 takes us to the territories of process thought (in which translation can be considered as process and qualitative succession) and theology (translation as faith, religion, and grace). In Chapter 4, translation is brought to bear on a range of key concepts in cognitive linguistics, including conceptualization, construal, and metaphor. Chapter 5 looks for translation in anthropology, ethnography, fieldwork, and identification. The Epilogue sums up the implications of the ubiquity of translation and suggests further lines of enquiry.

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1 Ubiquitous Translation

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Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In’t

Throughout this book, I argue that translation is ubiquitous; in other words, that translational phenomena underpin key notions in other areas of the humanities, which is why the humanities should care about translation and translation studies. In this chapter, I introduce the key concepts and methods of my approach. Based on a rhizomatic epistemological model founded on translational experience, I argue in favor of processual knowledge and transferability of qualitative insights across the humanities. Indeed, my key methodological point is that quality is how-ness, which yields support to reconceptualization as a practical instantiation of the sharing of know-how (rather than know-what) between various areas of study and reflection.

Hares, Hedgehogs, and Foxes In the opening pages of her book Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002), Mieke Bal offers the following, slightly ironic description of a hypothetical interdisciplinary debate: Let me sketch the situation I have been dealing with. It will be familiar to many. A philosopher, a psychoanalytic critic, a narratologist, an architectural historian, and an art historian, are talking together in a seminar about, say, ‘signs and ideologies’. Eager young scholars, excited, committed. The word ‘subject’ comes up and keeps recurring. With growing bewilderment, the first participant assumes the topic is the rise of individualism; the second sees it as the unconscious; the third, the narrator’s voice; the fourth, the human confronted with space; and the fifth, the subject matter of a painting or, more sophisticatedly, the depicted figure. This could be just amusing, if only all five did not take their interpretation of the ‘subject’, on the sub-reflective level of obviousness, to be the only right one. They are, in their own eyes, just ‘applying a method’. Not because they are selfish, stupid, or uneducated, but because their disciplinary training has never given them the opportunity, or a reason, to consider the possibility that such a simple word as ‘subject’ might, in fact, be a concept. (Bal 2002: 5–6)

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2  Ubiquitous Translation Bal’s thesis is that “interdisciplinarity in the humanities, necessary, exciting, serious, must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than methods” (2002: 5, emphasis in original), and a part of the remedy suggested in her book, as indicated in its title, is to consider certain concepts as nomadic and trace how they travel from one area to the other. In the spirit of Bal’s project, translation could certainly be thought of as a nomadic and traveling concept whose own boundaries, as a result, have been expanding dynamically in the last several decades. This is a view expressed broadly in the field, most notably perhaps by Maria Tymoczko (2007), who discusses the concept of translation as enlarging or, from a more activist perspective, in need of enlargement. In this book, I have adopted a different, though not necessarily opposite premise: that translation is already quite a large concept, indeed, large enough to be considered ubiquitous. Consequently, I suggest that it is not so much the concept of translation that travels through various disciplines of the humanities. It is rather us, both as translators and translation researchers, who travel through these disciplines—only to discover that certain kinds of translational thought and practice are somehow already present in the territories we visit. This situation reminds me of the folk tale about the hare and hedgehog, recorded as number 187 in the famous collection of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1884: 313–316). In a general outline, it goes like this. A hedgehog and a hare meet while taking a walk. The arrogant hare starts ridiculing the hedgehog’s short and crooked legs. The hedgehog takes offense and proposes a wager that he will outstrip the hare in a race. The hare gladly accepts the wager and soon afterwards the contestants meet in a field, in two parallel furrows. The race starts, and even though the hare makes it to the far end of the field in no time, he is greeted there by the hedgehog’s triumphant cry: “I’m here already”. Incredulous, confused, and angry, the hare demands that the race be repeated, but the result cannot be any different because either the hedgehog or his look-alike wife is already there at each end of the furrow. Unable to admit defeat, the hare keeps racing the hedgehog(s) and finally drops dead in the middle of the seventy-fourth lap to the utter delight of the hedgehog couple, who take their winnings and happily walk home. The original moral of the story, stated at the end, is the following: first, beware of arrogance and never underestimate your contestant, and second, make sure to marry a person of a similar standing (presumably, in terms of the social status). But there are also much larger lessons to be learned, not made explicit by the Grimm brothers in their account, which I suggest to consider here. Setting aside, at least for the moment, the ethical dimension and the questionable conduct of both contestants (the hare’s attitude of condescension and the hedgehog’s resort to deception), the story raises a range of broader epistemological and methodological issues. Indeed, all three classical Aristotelian “laws of thought” are at stake here—and it is the dramatic effort to adhere to them that eventually kills the hare. Confused by the law of stable

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Ubiquitous Translation  3 identity (“Whatever is, is” [Danaher 2004]), the hare assumes that the two hedgehogs must in fact be the same individual; the laws of the excluded middle (“Nothing can both be and not be” [Danaher 2004]) and non-­ contradiction (“Everything must either be or not be” [Danaher 2004]) prevent him from recognizing that the hedgehog may be simultaneously present at the opposite ends of the furrow, and in this sense ubiquitous. Rather than pause and re-examine his assumptions in light of his bewildering experience, the hare persists in applying his method, hoping that doing more of the same, running up and down the familiar rut, will finally pay off. Perhaps if he had tried interrogating the two hedgehogs—carefully, critically, and creatively— he would have been able to notice similarities and differences between them. But that would have required, in addition to the aforementioned adverbial triad, an initial openness to ambiguity, paradox, and tension, as well as an ability to resist the impulse to reconcile apparently conflicting data: in short, a completely different epistemological paradigm. That is, however, an attitude that the hare, to his own doom, was not prepared to take. Coming back to the question of interdisciplinary debate, I wish to suggest that a meaningful dialogue leading to true breakthroughs in understanding is served not so much by ever more vigorous movement along the established paths of communication (any more than the quality of the online content is improved by higher broadband rates), but rather, by a willingness first to reflect and then to act—carefully, critically, and creatively—on the experienced similarity and difference, on a conceptual proximity despite a physical, terminological, or disciplinary distance, however paradoxical such experiences could be. So let me now sketch a rather different picture of an interdisciplinary debate. I think it will also be familiar to many. A philosopher, a theologian, a linguist, an anthropologist, and potentially a few more scholars coming from other disciplines are talking together in a seminar about, say, interpretation, meaning, faith, conceptualization, construal, or trust (in a way, the precise topic of the seminar is of lesser importance). The word translation rarely comes up. But something, somehow rings true in the statements originally made in some fields to those who work in others. Things translational are mentioned all the time; the observations made in specific areas are similar in their how. It becomes increasingly clear how artificial some disciplinary boundaries have become; how much they stem from political, ideological, administrative, and financial tensions and divisions; how much certain epistemological positions are shared (though not always explicitly agreed on). But there is something more than an intellectual consent. One can observe visceral reactions around the room: discussants are nodding, shaking their heads, stirring on their chairs, keen to chip in, eyes glowing with excitement. Interestingly, they do not have to agree about every point, but there is a certain how-ness, a combination of commitment, understanding, and experience, that is broadly shared. Participants do not feel threatened by others using a different set of terms. Challenge is welcome,

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4  Ubiquitous Translation disagreement is common, discussion is vital. Everyone is testing and trying to understand the positions of others while also re-examining his or her own. Ideas, experiences, cultural paradigms, concepts, and individuals are being translated back and forth. Despite a somewhat different view of the interdisciplinary debate, my present aim is broadly similar to Bal’s, namely “to offer ideas to those trying to find their way in the labyrinthine land of a humanities without boundaries” (2002: 8). She claims that “[s]uch a land can only unify through travel, through learning foreign languages, through encounter with others” (2002: 8). In short, through translation—though she never states it explicitly. And yet I hear translation strongly resonating in Bal’s comments. Because to me, translation definitely involves travel, learning foreign languages, and encounter with others—but also thinking, feeling, believing, and acting. That is why in my search for translational insights I have decided to turn to philosophy (with special emphasis on hermeneutics), theology (especially process thought), (cognitive) linguistics, and interpretive (mainly Geertzian) anthropology. I do not think I have necessarily inserted translation into the observations coming from these areas as much as found it there in a translational encounter. Like the hedgehog, they are “already there”. Of course, it is not necessarily “the same” hedgehog, but that should not really bother us. A translational methodology such as the one I am proposing here is not preoccupied with sameness; rather, it finds the concepts of similarity, affinity, and proximity much more useful and convincing. What I have sought to explore, theorize, and put to the test in this book is the central role of translation as a key epistemological concept as well as a hermeneutic, ethical, linguistic, and interpersonal practice. My thesis is threefold: (1) that translation provides a basis for genuine, exciting, serious, innovative, and meaningful exchange between various areas of the humanities through both a concept (the what) and a method (the how); (2) that in doing so, it questions and challenges many of the traditional boundaries and offers a transdisciplinary epistemological paradigm, leading to a new understanding of quality, and thus also meaning, truth, and knowledge; and (3) that translational phenomena are discussed using various, often seemingly unrelated terms which nevertheless display a considerable degree of conceptual, qualitative proximity. Each one of these theses will be explained and supported in the following pages, but at this stage, I simply want to stress that the common thread running through all three of these convictions and binding them together is the recognition that translational phenomena are ubiquitous. But we need to bear in mind it is a ubiquity of a “hedgehogian” kind, founded on similarity rather than identity—and similarity is always perceived, relative, and contextual (rather than given, absolute, and inherent). Of course, it could also be argued that I bring this translational framework with me, like a pair of spectacles. This is a problem of the so-called confirmation bias: To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But here again, a translational methodology offers me reassurance. The folk tale about

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Ubiquitous Translation  5 a race between unequal contestants—which is also a tale about the meaning of ubiquity—is itself fairly ubiquitous, found in many unrelated times and places and in many different versions, or indeed translations (see Alishman 2013). In some of them, the weaker party’s success is ensured through ubiquity of a different kind, relative to and inseparable from the position of the faster racer. For example, in a Swiss variant of the folktale (Sutermeister 1873: 188), the snail secretly crawls into the fox’s bushy tail and is carried by him to the finish line. In an African-American version (Parsons 1917: 209), it is the fox who jumps on the lion’s back and thus is able to keep pace with him. If we consider these translations collectively, not only do the roles remain flexible and unassigned to particular animals (the fox, depending on the version, is found in either role), but the end result is closer to a tie and much less dramatic than in the Grimms’ version (nobody dies of exhaustion), and the point is educational rather than retaliatory. The classical laws of thought are challenged once again: Not every contest must have a winner. Ubiquity may mean different things and come in different guises, none of them truer than the others. This is yet another reminder that translation, by its very nature, creates a surplus of meaning or a series of meanings, which, even if mutually conflicted, collectively contribute to a richer and therefore truer sense. We do not have to settle the binary question of whether translation is indeed found everywhere or rather brought there on the back of the researcher. But there is more to the epistemological potential of hedgehogs and foxes. Let us consider the division suggested by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1953), who, referring to the words of the Greek poet Archilochus, “the fox knows many things, the hedgehog one great thing”, argues as follows: [T]hese words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark on of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and often contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes. (Berlin 1953: 1–2)

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6  Ubiquitous Translation The concept and practice of translation, as I propose to understand it, defies this binary distinction. A translational methodology, contrary to the law of non-contradiction, is found in the ways of both the hedgehogs and the foxes. Much as I keep coming back to translation as a concept and phenomenon in terms of which many others—including those used in other disciplines—may be understood and appreciated, I also view it as pursuing many aims, often unrelated and contradictory, as well as following various moral and aesthetic principles. Translation is “hedgehogian” as much as it is “foxian”, centrifugal as well as centripetal. In a similar sense, as “translation changes everything” (Venuti 2013), it is also ubiquitous in both spatial and temporal terms: everywhere and “already there”. Such a translational methodology involves a number of elements that need to be properly introduced and supported. In accordance with my commitment to how-ness (which I will explain in due course), I will be drawing on a broad range of theoretical approaches that are not always in agreement with one another but which collectively provide a set of ideas that I found both stimulating and convincing. These approaches include elements of classical and fuzzy logic, process thought, hermeneutics, cognitive linguistics, and symbolic anthropology—essentially the same areas to which I subsequently turn in Chapters 2 to 5, looking for translational insights. Some ideas are invoked for support, others for a polemical response. I do not imply that they form a coherent and stable system, but rather, that they contribute to a rather complex intellectual environment in which my project situates itself. Whether translation is a nomadic concept or I am a nomadic thinker—most probably, both—we are dealing here with a journey, and I find it important to explain where I am coming from and heading towards.

Primitive Concepts A useful methodological starting point is provided by the logician Alfred Tarski in his Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences: When we set out to construct a given discipline, we distinguish, first of all, a certain small group of expressions of this discipline that seem to us to be immediately understandable; the expressions in this group we call primitive terms or undefined terms, and we employ them without explaining their meanings. (Tarski 1994: 110, emphasis in original) Since my aim and ambition is to construct both translation and translation studies in an innovative way, I am inclined to start by isolating a set of primitive elements that will provide a framework for the following discussion and analysis. Recognizing that translation can be viewed as (re-) contextualization, though understood more broadly than is often the case in

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Ubiquitous Translation  7 translation studies (e.g. House 2006; see the discussion later in this chapter), I suggest to look for these primitives in the context itself and operationalize it into concepts such as what, why, when, where, who, and how. Taking a cue from the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead that in theorizing, “[w]e must be systematic; but we should keep our systems open” (1968: 6), I am postulating an essentially open system: The central conceptual set may be supplemented by other elements (for example, what if or what for), as required by the demands of a particular context. Several important points must be made here. One of the key advantages of building a methodology around this set of primitive concepts is that they are all questions: potential research questions. Whenever I mention the how, who, why or what, why, etc., I intend for these concepts to resonate with a broad range of vibrations: sometimes interrogative and investigative; at other times, inventive and innovative; always, I hope, inviting and inspiring. This reflects my broader epistemological commitment anchored in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s insistence that “the logic of the human sciences is a logic of the question” (2004: 363). I want to encourage the attitude of speculating, formulating hypotheses, and asking questions—something that could have saved the hare’s sanity and, eventually, his life—and refrain from offering preconceived, too quick, definitive answers. In Gadamer’s words, “To ask a question means to bring into the open. The openness of what is in question consists in the fact that the answer is not settled” (2004: 357). This is helped by the fact that concepts such as what, why, when, where, who, and how are indeed open questions, calling for a range of sufficiently problematized responses rather than a binary yes or no, which should be our first major methodological clue. An important issue concerns the difference between concepts and terms— and, as Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer put it, the “the tricky relationship between the quality of concepts and the standardization of terms” (2009b: 2). The relationship is indeed tricky because it is very complex. It proceeds from a number of epistemological assumptions about language, meaning, knowledge, and truth—and also has a number of significant implications. That is why we must devote some attention to considering these foundations. To start with, terms are units of language—a particular language—rather than thought. They are specific words or phrases that are expected to be clear, unambiguous, and stable in meaning. To achieve that, terms must be defined, which typically means specifying the scope of their what and making it the most salient element. Strict terminological logic requires that terms should be unique and exclusive. Therefore, one-to-one correspondence between a term and its designation is sought: One signatum is paired with one signum. As a result, terminologies create an appearance of order, coherence, and finality. They evoke images of systems and structures that are neat and complete, logical, and coherent, in which all elements fit together and no areas are left unaccounted for. More importantly, they also imply a

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8  Ubiquitous Translation model of knowledge construed in accordance with this image and founded on a reductionist principle. That is why terminological thinking is hostile to paradoxes, overlaps (except in the case of hierarchical taxonomies), and fuzzy borders—generally speaking, to indeterminacy. A terminological, what-centered approach relies strongly on the classical laws of thought: The term must mean the same thing every time it is used; nothing should be left un-termed and undefined; you shouldn’t not have different terms referring to the same concept. This, in rough outline, is the impulse behind compiling terminological handbooks such as Delisle, Lee-Jahnke, and Cormier (1999), whose aim is first to define concepts “as rigorously as possible” and then “establish the limits between the different terminological units” in order to “achieve clarity and consistency” based on the explicitly held conviction that “quality teaching is impossible with fuzzy concepts, especially at university level” (Delisle, Lee-Jahnke and Cormier 1999: 109). This terminological pursuit has a strong disciplinary drive. It is meant to reflect the increasing autonomy of translation studies from other subject areas based on the assumption that “there is a strong link between the terminology of a subject field and its stage of development” (Delisle, Lee-Jahnke and Cormier 1999: 110). I do not share these assumptions (in fact, I advocate a radically different approach to the fuzziness of concepts and to the disciplinary status of translation studies) because I find them problematic for a broad range of reasons of linguistic, translational, epistemological, and ethical natures. A terminological impulse seeks to reduce and restrain the natural complexity of language. Words are normally polysemous, which means that they refer to different concepts. For example, the word right in English, when used as an adjective, may refer to the concept of a position defined laterally (as opposed to “left”), which can be metaphorically extended to designate a certain set of political beliefs (as in “right-wing politics”), but also to the concept of factual correctness (as in “I didn’t correct her because she was right”), ethical or moral stance (“I didn’t oppose her because she was right”), appropriateness in terms of taste (“She is still looking for Mr. Right”), or a blend of some of these meanings into a sarcastic sense (“Oh, she is always right . . .”), etc. In each of these context-dependent uses, the concept evoked by the word right is different, sometimes radically so. It is vital not only what word we use, but how we use it. An attempt to reduce the meaning of a word to a particular sense means converting it into a technical term. But such a terminological approach has problematic ethical consequences, as Gadamer points out: For what is a technical term? A word whose meaning is univocally defined, inasmuch as it signifies a defined concept. A technical term is always somewhat artificial insofar as either the word itself is artificially formed or—as is more frequent—a word already in use has the variety and breadth of its meanings excised and is assigned only one particular

Ubiquitous Translation  9

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conceptual meaning. In contrast to the living meaning of the words in spoken language—to which, as Wilhelm von Humboldt rightly showed, a certain range of variation is essential—a technical term is a word that has become ossified. Using a word as a technical term is an act of violence against language. (Gadamer 2004: 415) Using a word as a technical term—or, to put it differently, confusing terms and concepts—is a violent reduction (not just in a descriptive but also an evaluative sense of this word): It falsifies the actual experience by suggesting a lower level of complexity. It also creates an illusion of objectivity (another epistemological commitment of the what-centered approach) by dissociating the what of the term from other contextual considerations. A terminological paradigm claims to be committed to values such as rigor, precision, consistency, clarity, and the like, which regularly appear in its discourse. But it chooses to ignore or at least minimize the inconvenient fact that terminologies are surface manifestations of underlying theories, and attachment to them usually signals theoretical and epistemological sympathies. However strictly we may want to define and delimit the meaning of terms, they always rely on specific conceptualizations, which makes the problem of mapping terms across languages an act of translation, with all challenges that it brings with it. The terminological approach, in my view, is unable to respond to translational challenges because it operates on the problematic notion of sameness. Consider this criticism against the “terminological chaos” of translation studies: “[W]e are constantly referring to the same things with different terms, or mixing up terms from different systems in the same discussion” (Mayoral 2001: 66 in Marco 2009: 66). I do not know how to gauge whether things or discussions are “the same”, but I know that translation, even at the simplest terminological level, does not follow the logic of sameness. Tłumacz in Polish is not “the same” as translator in English for a number of reasons. The Polish word not only embraces both written and spoken modes, but also relies on a very different conceptualization, one based not on transfer (as is the case with translation or Übersetzung) but on explanation, which highlights a number of relevant points. Unlike transfer, which may be automatic (you do not need to understand what it is you are carrying over) and decontextualized, an explanation is always situated contextually and interpersonally. A successful explanation depends not only on what is explained, but also on by and to whom, as well, more than anything, on how it is done. what is vitally affected by other contextual factors. This is one of the basic facts of language. As cognitive semanticists tell us, words are inherently flexible in meaning: On the face of it, and intuitively, word meanings appear to be relatively stable. After all, for language to be effective in facilitating communication, words must have associated with them relatively stable semantic

10  Ubiquitous Translation

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units, established by convention, and hence widely known throughout a given linguistic community. However, words are protean in nature. That is [. . .] they can shift meanings in different contexts of use. (Evans 2009: xi) A failure to admit the protean nature of words is bound to lead to frustration. I cannot help but notice that whenever the champions of the terminological approach, classical logicians, point out that natural language is very poorly suited to fulfilling the criteria of semantic clarity, stability, and unambiguousness—as is expected of terms and terminologies—they do so with a note of disappointment. “Ordinary language is [. . .] a very weak instrument for getting at the truth about something [. . .] because of [its] imprecise nature” (Kilmister 1967: 5); “if we are to have any precision at all, we have to make our language unambiguous” (Hamilton 1978: 1). For the purpose of describing formal systems, logicians need precision and replicability of meaning—and that can only be achieved by enforcing semantic limitations that lead to fixity: A term must mean the same thing and designate the same what (notice, once again, the emphasis on sameness), regardless of where, when, how, and by whom it is used. A terminological approach encourages what-centeredness, decontextualization, and consequently, reductionism. In contrast to terms, concepts are fundamentally components or units of thoughts (Bowker 2009: 286; Lakoff 2002: 4). As such, they are considerably more problematic but also, proportionally, much more useful as building blocks for the kind of theory I have in mind because meaning resides in conceptualization (or cognitive processing) (Langacker 1991: 1; 2008: 31). Indeed, concept is quite an indispensable concept, which is demonstrated by how difficult it is to speak about it in a non-circular way, without resorting to synonyms such as notion or idea. However, if we accept the position (expressed, for example, by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, see Chapter 2) that a circle is not only an inevitable but also a useful mechanism of hermeneutical ventures, then we can define—or, shall we say, translate—concept as “a person’s idea of what something in the world is like” (Dirven and Verspoor 2004: 13). Let us note that this definition is very general and imprecise and therefore nonreductionist. Instead, it refers us to other concepts, such as idea, person, world, or being like, all of them undefined and assumed to be intuitively clear, from which we construct meaning. But even more importantly, it also stresses the personal and necessarily subjective dimension of meaning formation: who, how, where, and when matter just as much as what. There is little expectation, let alone guarantee, that the meaning each person constructs will be “the same”. The only way to make sure that our concepts or ideas are sufficiently close or convergent is to talk and listen to one another. This book is an attempt to do just that: first to listen to others and then talk to them, in order to stimulate a meaningful conceptual exchange.

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Ubiquitous Translation  11 Concepts, like terms, also enter into configurations and form systems. But unlike terminologies, conceptual systems allow for contradictions, conflicts, and paradoxes. They bring with them fluidity, flexibility, and partiality— and a different model of knowledge. The stakes are really high: Underpinning the insistence on terminological precision and clarity is the assumption that this is how “getting at the truth” (Kilmister 1967: 5) is achieved. But the opposite is more likely the case. A focus on clearly defined terms and unambiguous terminologies and embracing their underlying epistemology encourages us to ignore the complexity of the phenomena in question. Now, I need to stress that what, why, when, where, who, and how are used here as concepts rather than terms. Even though we are bound to use some English words to refer to these concepts (how else could we ever discuss them?), we have to remember that they do not map in a straightforward way onto grammatical classes. As you will have noticed so far, I am following a convention broadly established in cognitive linguistics in which small capitals designate concepts rather than actual lexical forms, which in the same theoretical tradition are often referred to as “(phonological) vehicles” (Evans 2009: 63). This metalingual function, the ability of language to refer to itself, allows us to highlight the conceptual content without focusing on the vehicle that carries it, which is very convenient. But this notational convention utilizing the metalingual function also carries with it a certain danger we have to be aware of. It encourages an illusory separation of meaning and form, message and medium, pretending to isolate and capture a “pure idea” independent of the “vehicle” it is communicated by. Of course, the underlying conceptual metaphor in which words are vehicles carrying meaning only perpetuates this illusion. It takes our attention away from the fact that what and how are English words and elevates them to the status of universal, panlingual concepts. A conceptual approach also has an important ethical dimension, highlighted in the recent ethnolinguistic appeals to combat conceptual ethnocentrism, especially Anglocentrism (e.g., Underhill 2009; 2012; Wierzbicka 2006; 2010). It is a common sin among monolingual authors writing in English to mistake terms for concepts and the linguistic and cultural convention for a universal norm. In their critical response to this tendency, the ethnolinguists Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka aptly point out that [o]ften, philosophical and political debates proceed on the assumption that concepts like those designated by English terms such as freedom, equality, justice, and truth are natural and absolute [. . .] But in fact the concept of freedom is not independent of particular languages, but has been shaped by the culture and history of the English-speaking speech community, and differs significantly from comparable notions such Latin libertas and Russian svoboda. (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1995: 49, italics in original)

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12  Ubiquitous Translation This is true not only of words signifying particular lexical concepts (the what), but even those referring to abstract relations (the how). For example, the deceptively simple English word and—which formal logicians are very fond of in their discussions of connectives and syllogisms—is notoriously polysemous and may be used to signal a range of relations (such as conjunction, opposition, complementation, concession, etc.) which in other languages are often expressed by separate lexical or grammatical units. The reverse is also true: “The word ‘but’ (in propositional logic) has the same logical meaning as ‘and’ even though in ordinary English it carries a slightly different connotation” (Kurtz 1992: 2). If we were to propose and and but as concepts, we would have to give up a claim to their universality and admit instead that they belong to the conceptual fabric of English. Readers familiar with recent advances in ethnolinguistics and lexical semantics may find that the set of primitive concepts I am suggesting here as my theoretical framework reminds them of Wierzbicka’s theory called Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and the set of semantic primitives postulated therein (e.g. Wierzbicka 2003; 2006; 2010). While I gratefully acknowledge a significant inspiration by Wierzbicka’s work in conceptual semantics and cross-cultural pragmatics, I also see a number of serious problems with her method and the underpinning theory, which I recently approached critically, drawing on insights from translation studies (Blumczynski 2013). My method differs radically from NSM in several important aspects. First, NSM postulates a finite set of semantic primitives (even though it has been expanding over the years). In contrast, the set of primitive concepts suggested here is open and flexible: In addition to the main group encompassing what, why, when, where, who, and how, it may also, depending on contextual considerations, include other elements, e.g., if, that, as well as their combinations, e.g., what if? Secondly, NSM employs semantic primitives in explications that are meant to be reductive, i.e. that aspire to exhausting the entire semantic content of a word or expression. My theoretical position is radically different: Since words are protean in nature, their semantic contribution will depend on the context, which can never be fully predicted or explicated, which invalidates any attempts of decontextualized semantic explications. Thirdly, NSM claims that the set of semantic primitives is language-independent, that is, translatable into any language without loss or gain; the various language versions of semantic primitives are claimed to be isomorphic. I certainly do not share this axiom of fully reversible equivalence and stress that my set of primitive concepts is inevitably bound to the English language. In fact, I demonstrate that even such apparently simple concepts as who or how are problematic in translation and their understanding is largely connected to the language in which they are expressed. Fourthly, NSM, despite its claims to derive its semantic primitives from natural language, nevertheless uses them in a technical way (namely, as terms) by stripping them of their natural polysemy. I am stressing that they are concepts, prone to interpersonal and contextual variation in interpretation and use.

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Ubiquitous Translation  13 In short, a message cannot be communicated without a medium. No l­anguage—not even a metalanguage, especially one that is claimed to be “natural”—is a neutral, transparent, and sterile tool. The what and how of this book cannot be separated from the fact that it is written in English. Both are also inevitably affected, stylistically as well as conceptually, by the fact that the author is a native speaker of a different language. In my approach, I rely on a conceptual framework operating in English, but also at times engage with it critically from a different conceptual perspective provided by other languages, especially when it comes to explaining the issues of how. Summing up, I am more interested in translating concepts than in defining terms. This may sound like a terminological distinction, but it is a conceptual one. What I am really opposing is the reductionism often involved in defining, and what I am advocating is the problematization that translation often brings with it. At the center is not my attachment to the terms definition and translation as such, but to what and how they mean: Defining in a nonreductionist way would really bring it very close to productive translation; a reductionist method of translating would make is close to unhelpful defining. Here is an example of a broad conceptual agreement despite a terminological discrepancy. Tarski’s “primitive terms” are paralleled by Whitehead’s “ultimate notions”, which “occur naturally in daily life” but remain undefinable because “they are incapable of analysis in terms of factors more farreaching than themselves” (Whitehead 1938: 1). In spite of the terminological difference—terms vs. notions—both thinkers share the assumption that the primitive, fundamental components cannot or should not be defined. There is, of course, a pragmatic component to such an assumption. Any attempts to define and analyze primitive notions would inevitably result in producing explanations more complicated than the things being explained, which would undercut the entire enterprise and lead to infinite regress. More importantly, however, assigning to what, who, how, etc. the status of undefined, primitive concepts is a methodological decision or—to start using this conceptual framework—a question of a certain how. Defining, in both Tarski’s and Whitehead’s view, is a reductionist exercise, and both are in agreement that it would be counterproductive for new disciplines to start from a list of limitations. But the plea to refrain from reductive definitions, a key element of the method I am advocating here, can also be made on translational grounds. If defining is a form of “interlingual translation” (Jakobson 1959: 233), then agreeing on a precise and stable definition of these crucial notions would be just as futile and misguided as insisting on a single, fixed, and ultimate translation of any text. But, at the same time, these primitive concepts are calling for a translation—for a fuller explanation and contextualization—so let me now turn to it.

A Cognitive Linguistics Framework My thesis is that translation offers the concept and method by being centered on the issues of how. But this is a thesis which itself requires translation in the context of this project. I will do this by situating the context-building primitive

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14  Ubiquitous Translation concepts in the framework of cognitive linguistics. I realize that given their complexity as well as the wealth of possible insights, this could be a task worthy of a hefty monograph in its own right. I wish to indicate that my translation is purpose-driven: The purpose is to signal this complexity and fairly quickly proceed to considering its implications rather than account for them in an exhaustive way. Therefore, I will have to assume a basic familiarity with major tenets of cognitive linguistics and its conceptual and terminological framework. Though my intention is to keep the discussion accessible, readers less familiar with the field but interested in finding out more would be advised to consult comprehensive introductions to the field (e.g., Dirven and Verspoor 2004; Evans and Green 2006; Geeraerts 2006; Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003; Langacker 2008; 2013). A legitimate question, of course, is why cognitive linguistics rather than alternative approaches? Unsurprisingly, I am attracted to this theory of language because it appears to me as profoundly translational. It translates the unfamiliar into the familiar, the abstract mental experience into a more concrete mental imagery that can be related to our sensory perception. It offers a rich and complex view of translation as a cognitive process in which the so-called “linguistic aspects” are inseparable from other aspects relating to cognition. Moreover, as Elżbieta Tabakowska (1993) elegantly demonstrated, a cognitive linguistic methodology, because of its philosophical commitments, is capable of integrating historically separate perspectives of linguistics and literary studies. Tabakowska points to the ideological parallels between cognitive linguistics and literary post-structuralism (including intertextuality and deconstruction) in that their basic trends represent an “anti-Aristotelian revolution” and follows a basically processual approach which “considers the text more as a process than as a ready product: a gradually emerging entity” (1993: 15). Product is largely a question of the what; process typically focuses on the how. “While CL [cognitive linguistics] rejects the existence of a clear demarcation line between semantics and pragmatics, deconstruction obliterates sharp distinctions between text and context” (1993: 15). Moreover, cognitive linguistics is particularly wellsuited to analyze certain aspects of translational phenomena because of its insistence that processes of concept formation are situated contextually. Ronald Langacker puts it as follows: “In speaking, we conceptualize not only what we are talking about but also the context in all its dimensions, including our assessment of the knowledge and intentions of our interlocutor” (2008: 29). Here are a few suggestions of how the respective contextual concepts can be situated in the framework of cognitive theory. What is a fundamental cognitive question dealing with categorization. It is indispensable, inevitable, and occurs largely beyond our control. In fact, cognitive scientists argue that categorization is a necessary consequence of embodied life: “Every living being categorizes. Even the amoeba categorizes the thing it encounters as food and non-food, what it moves toward or moves away from” (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 17). “Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization in our thought,

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Ubiquitous Translation  15 perception, action, and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing [. . .], we are categorizing” (Lakoff 1987: 5, emphasis in original). We have to categorize: There is no escape from the what, nor should there be a reason for such an escape because “[w]ithout the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives” (Lakoff 1987: 6). But in stressing the centrality of what and what kind, we must recognize the immediacy and importance of how: “[An] understanding [of] how we categorize is central to any understanding of how we things and how we function, and therefore central to an understanding of what makes us human” (Lakoff 1987, emphasis mine). A crucial element of this how has to do with whether categories have crisp or fuzzy boundaries, which translates into an expectation of discrete or graded category membership (and is related to bivalent or multivalent logic, to which we will come back later). “This world of discrete units and sharp boundaries is definitely attractive. Dividing makes it easier to conquer”, admits Langacker (2013: 13), but immediately adds, “Yet language was not necessarily designed for the convenience or predilections of the analyst”. Therefore, in opposition to the classical, Aristotelian categorization in terms of sufficient and necessary conditions, cognitive linguistics proposes a graded, fuzzy categorization, often organized around prototypes. This is an approach that tolerates ambiguity, uncertainly, and paradox. Moreover, a perception of what normally includes elements of who, where, when, etc. For example, a bluebottle may be categorized as a plant, weed, or flower, depending on the who and where and what for does the categorizing and what his or her “axiologically motivated point of view” (Bartmiński 2009: 47) is. If we agree that “categorization is most broadly describable as the interpretation of experience with respect to previously existing structures” (Langacker 2013: 17), then a processual dimension of categorization becomes evident: Matter cannot be abstracted from time. The what of the present is dictated by reference to previous experience, its when, where, who, why, and how. Who is also concerned with categorization. In English, the distinction between who and what is based on the perception of whether an entity is human-like: whether we are dealing with something or with someone. The criteria, of course, will be to some extent flexible and fuzzy at the edges. But let us note that it is a distinction largely dictated by the grammar of the English language. A categorial decision must be made when introducing a relative clause: We have to choose between who(m) and which. Other languages may have a single form (marked for other categories, e.g. gender or number), but unspecified with regard to the human-like distinction. Who and which in sentences such as, “The waiter who gave me the bill” vs. “The drink which gave me a headache” would be translated into Polish by the same relative pronoun (który). Who (in combination with where and how) is related to the so-called deictic center but also to the distinction between subjectification and objectification (Tabakowska 1993: 43), which reflects the degree to which the human conceptualizer views himself or herself as a part of the conceptualized scene. But the important thing is that

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16  Ubiquitous Translation this distinction is a matter of choice on behalf of the human conceptualizer, reflecting a particular construal, and not a consequence of an objective state of affairs. We can manipulate this distinction to create a certain poetic or rhetorical effect: This is how normally inanimate objects can be personalized or animate entities made to look as if they were things. Where is prototypically the spatial surrounding conceptualized along such dimensions of (visual) imagery as distance, perspective, directionality, point of view, focus, figure, and ground alignment, etc., depending on the particular distribution of attention and the imagined movement, including the source-path-goal schema. When is the temporal surrounding, metaphorically modeled on the spatial one. When applied to temporal relationships, the source-path-goal schema may profile causality: The source often becomes a matter of why, the path of how, and the goal of what for. By now, the complexity of the how concept should be apparent. It can be related to the notion of style and construal, and with it, perspective and directionality (Tabakowska 1993: 41). By virtue of referring to arrangement, it can deal with iconicity and with attitudes, including epistemic and axiological commitment (Tabakowska 1993: 59ff). In short, the category of how covers an extremely broad range of meaning-making devices, and its complexity makes it relevant to all aspects of imagery. We could say that how is ubiquitous—and not only overlaps with all the other contextual elements but is presupposed by them, especially by the what. If we have something to say, we have to say it somehow. But even more importantly, in situations of collision, how often proves to be the decisive criterion. Writing about a similar contextual concept, Dell Hymes observes that “the significance of key is underlined by the fact that, when it is conflict with the overt content of an act, it often overrides the latter (as in sarcasm)” (1977: 58). What Hymes terms “key” is entirely a question of the prosodic how: how loudly, slowly, clearly, or emphatically something is pronounced. A similar realization is expressed by Gadamer when he comments: “The spoken word interprets itself to an astonishing degree, by the manner of speaking, the tone of voice, the tempo, and so on, and also by the circumstances in which it is spoken” (2004: 395). The manner—the how— overrides the matter. The approach can dictate the findings, and this is where our hermeneutic, epistemological, and phenomenological assumptions come to the fore. Eventually, what we conclude about a given phenomenon is largely dictated by how we approach it. This is why I have been stressing the importance of a critical attitude towards the “classical laws of thought”—for they seek to impose a how that I find counterfactual, limiting, and unhelpful.

A Phenomenological Approach The emphasis on how in relation to what leads us to consider several phenomenological points, because phenomenology, as Martin Heidegger (1996: 24) puts it, “does not characterize the ‘what’ of the objects of philosophical

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Ubiquitous Translation  17 research in terms of their content but the ‘how’ of such research”. Göran Sonesson expresses it even more plainly when he writes that “[p]henomenology [. . .] takes as its point of departure the way things make sense to us, that is, how they mean” (2007: 89). A phenomenological approach is strongly contextual and situated; things make sense to us, not just in general or to everyone, and what they mean cannot be separated from how they mean. The first phenomenological point is elegantly summed up in the following comment from the late Martha P.Y. Cheung: It is widely admitted today that knowledge in the humanities is not disinterested or impersonal but situated. In both the processing and the production of knowledge, a researcher is acted upon by contextual pressures, influenced by prevailing intellectual trends, anchored in tradition or torn between traditions, and shaped by his/her own training, by ideology and societal prejudices. (Cheung 2012: 156) When I think about the subjects—in short, the what—to which I was drawn during my academically formative years (first English, then linguistics, then translation), it was often because of who introduced me to them and how. Some people were able to excite me no matter what they presented, simply because of who they were and how they acted. Martha Cheung herself was one such person to me. I remember very well when I first met her at a the Nida School of Translation Studies in the small Italian town of Misano Adriatico and how much she impressed me both with her ideas (her “pushing hands” approach to translation) but also simply by who and how she was. I remember one particular incident when she approached me privately to further discuss a point on which we had expressed conflicting views earlier that week. She was one of the two distinguished professors at that summer school, I was just one of several dozen associates, but this power differential did not matter to her at all: She just wanted to make sure that I knew that she respected my position, but also wanted me to understand hers. The what of our debate, its exact subject, proved less important than how it was approached; as a result, I was led to appreciate the complexity of the issue at hand and adjust my views accordingly. It was the person who discussed it with me and her attitude, not just the arguments she used, that made the difference. A phenomenological approach stresses the situated character of knowledge in the humanities. Situated cognition is described as being “embodied, extended and embedded” (Robbins and Aydede 2009: 3; Halverson 2014: 131ff). Knowledge emerges from a process of a holistic experience and cannot be reduced to a purely intellectual analysis of facts and figures. Therefore, it is more appropriate to speak of phenomena rather than facts. Phenomena are not meaningful “in themselves”; they don’t “exist”

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18  Ubiquitous Translation independently of perception and interpretation. They make sense to us in a particular spatiotemporal, linguistic, social, cultural, and intellectual context. With a phenomenological emphasis, we are led away from an Aristotelian substance-based metaphysics and see the importance of resisting the desire “to represent one’s interpretations not as constructions brought to their objects—societies, cultures, languages—in an effort, somehow, somewhat to comprehend them, but as quiddities of such objects forced upon our thought” (Geertz 2000: 59). Quiddity is a term derived from scholastic philosophy in which it refers to the inherent, unchanging essence of an object; in Latin, quidditas is literally what-ness, and the focus is on quantity. Indeed, quantity is strongly about the what. We should not be confused by the English quantifying expressions how much and how many, which deceptively suggest a focus on how-ness. That is not the case: The dominant emphasis is on quantification, that is, determining the amount of what, and the only relevant dimension is whether the things being quantified are viewed as individual objects or as a mass (whether they are “countable” or “uncountable”, as some grammar textbooks would have it). A reference to another conceptual system will help me demonstrate this English quantitative emphasis. In Polish, the questions “how many?”/“how much?” may be expressed by the phrase “jak wiele?”, which like its English counterparts is profiled for directionality in terms of expectations. We start from the assumption of multiplicity or considerable mass (much, many, wiele) and make the assessment in relation to it. (An opposite direction would be profiled by the questions “how few?”, “how little?”, “jak mało?”, which we normally perceive as stylistically marked). But an easier and more natural way of asking about quantity in Polish is “ile?”, which merges how much/how many into a single concept. The concept of ile does not make the distinction with reference to analyzability and countability and does not imply any expectations. It is a simple, factual question about the concept of ilość, which refers to how much-ness/how many-ness. Of course, a less convoluted way to express this in English would be to simply speak of quantity, which is derived from the Latin equivalent of ile: quantus/quanta/quantum (like its Polish counterpart, inflected for gender). Still, the quantitative paradigm is predominantly focused on the question of what. By contrast, how is a predominantly a matter of quality. Here, again, the argument may be made in the easiest terms on etymological grounds. In Polish and in Latin, the words for quality—jakość and qualitas—are derived, respectively, from the interrogative pronouns jaki/jaka/jakie and quālis/quāle. Their closest equivalent in English is “what kind?”, and the concept of quality in English could be expressed as what kind-ness. But that is again deceptive in suggesting a focus on the what, reminiscent of thinking in terms of “quiddities of objects”. However, jaki and quālis (as well as their inflected forms), at least how I understand them, do not necessarily presuppose a categorial attribution to a certain what. Qualities are not quiddities. That is why in a language such as English, which conceptually opposes this emphasis, I prefer to conceptualize quality simply as how-ness.

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Ubiquitous Translation  19 Let me explain this conceptualization by reference to another grammatical concept: that of an adverb. Some linguists of the generative-­transformational persuasion would argue that adverbs, at least in English, do not really exist as a separate grammatical category, that they are merely inflected adjectives (in other words, that they only concern what in the same theory is called the surface structure, without affecting the concept-level deep structure). Some even call adverbs a dustbin of English grammatical categories that lumps together all these elements that do not fit anywhere else. There is a clear philosophical background to such a position, reminiscent of the classical laws of thought and a terminological inclination, as exemplified by a recent entry on the website of Macmillan Dictionary blog: Nouns are what the world is made of. Verbs are how you put them together. Adjectives are straightforward. And adverbs are . . . monsters. [. . .] Fifteen years ago I attended a talk by a science journalist, who said, out of the blue, ‘an adverb is for the linguistic dwarf unable to reach for the correct verb’. My goodness it stuck. [. . .] Whenever I see ‘surprisingly’ or ‘interestingly’ I always think: surprising to whom? Interesting to whom? (Kilgarriff 2013) That is precisely my point: to whom? Personally, I find the category of adverbs not only useful but also fascinating (much like dustbins and refuse heaps are fascinating research material for archaeologists). how, to me, is an adverbial question and, like all adverbs, it encourages contextual questions that problematize the what in experiential terms. When someone sings beautifully— that is, with a certain how to which I respond—it is of lesser importance to me what exactly they are singing: I can still enjoy songs in languages I do not understand. When we say that something was done elegantly, argued convincingly, presented carefully, or sung beautifully, we do not make an essential attribution, we do not really state anything about the quiddities of the entity at hand. Rather, we comment on the experience—more specifically, our own experience that occurred in time and space. That is why even an otherwise boring issue can be presented interestingly. Though again, boring to whom, we would have to ask? There is enormous variation in what different people find boring or fascinating and how much it changes depending on circumstances. It does not really solve to problem to say that the content was boring but the presentation interesting—because what we do then is merely reify (nominalize) an experience that is lived, dynamic, and occurring in time. More likely, it was the presenter (who) that in certain circumstances (where, when) somehow made the content (what) interesting to someone (another who). Or, conversely, it was the listener who found the presentation interesting. Quality understood as how-ness has a number of implications. It brings with it a whole methodological paradigm that enables transferability of findings.

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A Qualitative Methodology and Its Commitments A decision whether to focus more on the issues of what or rather how dictates further elements of my methodology in that it directly maps onto the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research. In their recent book devoted to exploring the differences between these two research types, Gary Goertz and James Mahoney conceptualize them as alternative cultures, with their own values, beliefs, norms, and procedures. They note that “communication within a given culture tends to be fluid and productive”, while “communications across cultures [. . .] tends to be difficult and marked by misunderstanding” (2012: 1). They argue that this dissonance, miscommunication, skepticism, and frustration are really a result of a clash of cultures and identify what they call “the translation problem” (2012: 140) involved in moving across research cultural paradigms (which is yet another sign of translation’s ubiquity). Applying the concept of culture to the discussion about research methodology allows me focus on values. As I have argued elsewhere (Blumczynski and Gillespie 2016), the concept of culture presupposed shared values which can be understood, in the most general sense, as “core conceptions of the desirable” (Rokeach 1979: 2) or “broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others” (Hofstede 2001: 5). But the evaluative core usually remains invisible: In his onion diagram representing the manifestation of culture at different levels, Geert Hofstede places values at the core, wrapped in the successive layers of rituals, heroes, and symbols. In the following paragraphs, I will try to unwrap the core of my method by fleshing out its values and commitments, many of which may be linked to the axiology of the qualitative research culture. But first I need to stress that it is not my intention to assert a general, inherent, or otherwise decontextualized value of the qualitative paradigm. Such a position—if I were to take it—could perhaps be argued from an activist perspective concerned with addressing a clear power imbalance: It is broadly admitted that “quantitative methods are better known, and the quantitative culture is, no doubt, the more dominant of the two cultures within most social science fields” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 3). This is strongly correlated to a general tendency to prefer quantity over quality, which extends across many aspects of everyday life. It seems to me beyond dispute that contemporary Western culture, overall, has grown to put a greater value on what rather than how, to emphasize matter over manner and product over process. Here are a few examples of this tendency. In business, the size of the capital is generally more important than the manner of its accumulation. In sports, the score is generally more important than how the game unfolds, especially when competition is involved, as is the case with qualifications, tournaments, and bets (note that bets are normally not made on the style of the game, but on the score and other quantifiable elements). Democracy is a political system in which a majority—a purely

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Ubiquitous Translation  21 quantitative concept—gets to decide on the course of events. The quality of the vote does not matter: A random check on the ballot is worth just as much as a fully conscious electoral decision based on research or conviction. Once again, these observations in themselves are not meant to be evaluative: My intention is not to critique the mechanisms in economy, sport, or politics, but to note that in stressing the importance (in some cases, prevalence) of how compared to what, we are often working against the dominant values, norms, and practices. In this project, however, I am not interested in tendencies, trends, projections, average profiles, distribution, and other statistical concepts—relevant as they may be for other kinds of research—but in the issues of quality, in various aspects and dimensions of the how, which are most effectively studied by and within the qualitative culture. What follows is an outline of what I view as its most important values and commitments. Qualitative culture, by definition, values depth more than width. This dictates a more exhaustive, inquisitive, and microscopic approach. Details and nuances matter, and interpretation of their sense is crucial. Qualitative culture “emphasizes making sense of individual cases and the importance of semantics and the meaning embodied in concepts” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 150–151). The focus is on a suitable conceptualization and understanding of data rather than on its size, scope, or measurement. “Not needing numerical data for large numbers of cases, qualitative scholars are freer to debate about concepts and their defining attributes. One hazard of this freedom lies in increasing the complexity of the concept” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 129). Whether or not we view it as a hazard, a commitment to and appreciation of complexity is an unquestionable core value of the qualitative culture. In interpreting and classifying data and matching them to concepts, researchers working in this tradition often tend to take a fuzzy-set approach. This parallels the view of the how of categorization (in particular, graded membership) proposed in cognitive linguistics, based on the idea of a clear center and fuzzy borders. It has been argued that this model is particularly relevant in the humanities. Lotfi Zadeh, credited with proposing the fuzzy mathematics and a range of related concepts, explains it thus: Science has always been and continues to be based on bivalent logic— a logic in which no shades of truth are allowed. Correspondingly [. . .] classes are assumed to sharply defined categories. The brilliant successes of bivalent logic-based science are visible to all. However, the brilliant successes are far more visible in the world of physical sciences than in the world of human sciences—sciences such as sociology, psychology, political science, linguistics and philosophy. There is a reason. The world of physical sciences is the world of measurements, while the world of human sciences is a world of perceptions. Perceptions are intrinsically imprecise, reflecting the bounded ability

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22  Ubiquitous Translation of human sensory organs and ultimately the brain, to resolve detail and store information. As a consequence, in the world of human sciences classes have unsharp boundaries. Bivalent logic is intolerant of imprecision and partiality of truth. Bivalent logic is not the right logic for serving as a foundation for human sciences. What is needed for this purpose is fuzzy logic. Essentially, fuzzy logic is the logic of classes with unsharp boundaries. (Zadeh in Arfi 2010: ix) A transition from bivalent to fuzzy logic in theorizing phenomena from the realm of human sciences has a number of implications. A concept and its negation are not semantic inverses. In fact, for any complex concept there will be multiple semantic inverses, stressing various semantic aspects. Consequently, qualitative researchers often embrace the view dictated by fuzzy logic that “[a]djacent categories in typologies can overlap and not be mutually exclusive (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 167). This realization is of key significance to my project on at least two levels: (1) It confirms a semantic overlap between closely related categories and yields support to the idea of conceptual proximity despite terminological differences; and (2) It challenges neat disciplinary divisions and encourages transdisciplinary thinking. Recognizing the importance of conceptual proximity, the qualitative culture relies on a fundamental principle of semantic transformations that Goertz and Mahoney call the Principle of Unimportant Variation: “There are regions in the data that have the same semantic meaning. Variation in the data does not always translate into differences in the extent to which cases have membership in semantic categories. Two men with different heights could both be equally full members of the category tall man” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 144). In this paradigm, there is no axiomatic imperative to reconcile superficially conflicting data or make definite categorial attributions. Given sufficient conceptual proximity, data in one category may be considered to simultaneously belong to one or more others. A statement on a certain topic may be true with regard to a different one, provided that the two topics are conceptually close or overlapping. The how suggested by fuzzy logic is also “truer” in the sense of being more tolerant to the human experience of the real world. In the qualitative culture, “scholars often start with events that have occurred in the real world and move backwards to ask about their causes” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 42). This causes-of-effects approach leads qualitative scholars to “explanations that simultaneously apply to a group of cases and to each individual case within that group. In the qualitative culture, to provide a convincing general explanation is at the same time to provide a convincing explanation of individual cases” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 46). But precision is no longer the Holy Grail of rigorous and dependable research, especially when complex phenomena are at hand; in fact, an uncritical pursuit of

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precision may lead to dangerous reductions and unhelpful simplifications. Here is Zadeh once again: In general, complexity and precision bear an inverse relation to one another in the sense that, as the complexity of a problem increases, the possibility of analyzing it in precise terms diminishes. Thus it is a truism that the class of problems which are susceptible of exact solution is much smaller than that which can be solved approximately. From this point of view, the capacity of the human brain to manipulate fuzzy concepts and non-quantitative sensory inputs may well be one of its most important assets. Thus, ‘fuzzy thinking’ may not be deplorable, after all, if it makes possible the solution of problems which are much too complex for precise analysis. (Zadeh 1996: 150) A related aspect of this complexity is recognizing the crucial importance of context in both obtaining and interpreting data. “The qualitative approach emphasizes that causal factors are context dependent and operate together as overall packages” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 60) and therefore investigates “the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when” (Mangal and Mangal 2013: 162). Finally, qualitative research culture values creative speculation. It recognizes the value of free thinking, what ifs and how abouts. This is reflected in the reliance on counterfactuals. Qualitative researchers frequently “rerun the history of a case under a counterfactual assumption in order to decide if a given factor played its hypothesized causal role. The results of these counterfactual experiments can strongly influence the findings generated by the cross-case analysis” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 122): In the qualitative culture, the prototypical counterfactual is a claim about a particular [. . .] case. One asks what would have happened for a given outcome, Y, if some cause, X, had assumed a different value in a particular case of substantive interest. The researcher imagines that the causal event did not occur (or occurred in a different way) and explores whether the outcome would still have taken place (or taken place in the same way). (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 119) This imaginative, what if-driven approach requires a fair degree of speculation, which, however, is not wild or unrestrained. Usually, the minimal rewrite rule applies: “[C]ounterfactuals should require changing as little of the known historical record as possible” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 119–120). The counterfactual antecedent must be conceivable and plausible in the individual case; “miracle” counterfactual antecedents should be avoided (Goertz and Mahoney 2012: 120). This is one way to think about the research project

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24  Ubiquitous Translation proposed in this book: What if the thinkers referred to in Chapters 2 to 5 did not theorize, respectively, philosophy, theology, linguistics, and anthropology, but rather translation? Given the how of their insights, which only requires a minimum rewrite, cannot we argue for a qualitative proximity to translational issues? But how do we gauge this proximity? Let me address this question by suggesting a small experiment that will hopefully demonstrate key commitments of the qualitative research culture (focus on concepts, appreciation of complexity, awareness of context, tolerance of fuzzy borders, and fondness of counterfactuals) and also its relation to translation. Consider the following three excerpts from Sarah Tracy’s book Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact, outlining “three core qualitative concepts: self-reflexivity, context and thick description” (2012: 2). My only editorial intervention consists of highlighting certain key concepts by casting them in boldfaced small capitals: Your own background, values, and beliefs fundamentally shape the way you approach and conduct research. The mind and body of a qualitative researcher literally serve as research instruments—absorbing, sifting through, and interpreting the world through observation, participation, and interviewing. These are the analytical resources of our own ‘subjectivity’. (Tracy 2012: 3; emphasis mine) Qualitative research is about immersing oneself in a scene and trying to makes sense of it—whether at a company meeting, in a community festival, or during an interview. Qualitative researchers purposefully examine and make note of small cues in order to decide how to behave, as well as to make sense of the context and build larger knowledge claims about the culture. [. . .] Indeed qualitative researchers believe that the empirical and theoretical resources needed to comprehend a particular idea, or to predict its future trajectory, are themselves interwoven with, and throughout, the context. (Tracy 2012; emphasis mine) Directly related to context is the idea of thick description, according to which researchers immerse themselves in a culture, investigate the particular circumstances present in that scene, and only then move towards grander statements and theories. Meaning cannot be divorced from this thick contextual description. (Tracy 2012; emphasis mine) Now, try to imagine that whenever you read “[qualitative] research” or “[qualitative] researchers”, you interpret these phrases, respectively, as “translation” and “translators”. The first sentence alone raises multiple and

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Ubiquitous Translation  25 complex issues: Your own background, values, and beliefs fundamentally shape the way you approach and do translation. By the way, what you have just done was to perform an act of conceptual translation, something I will be asking you to do throughout this book—though another way of looking at it is to suggest that Tracy’s approach to her subject is somehow translational; that translation underpins her understanding and practice of qualitative research. That is indeed how I prefer to view it, but for the time being, let us hold this thread of the discussion and proceed with our experiment. For comparison, let me recall a few lines from the concluding paragraphs of the article entitled “Text and context in translation”, authored by the esteemed translation scholar Juliane House: Recent conceptions of context have broken away from viewing context as a set of pre-fixed variables statically surrounding stretches of language. Context and text are now increasingly viewed as more dynamically related, and the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic dimensions of communicative events are considered to be reflexive. Linguistic products and the interpretive work they generate in acts of communication and the enacting of discourse are regarded as shaping context as much as context shapes them. (House 2006: 356) So far, so good. House acknowledges the fluidity and complexity of context and its crucial role in the interpretation of meaning. This is a view prevalent in the qualitative research tradition, as evident from Tracy’s comments quoted above. But having stated all this, House hastens to add: I have argued that this view [. . .] is not relevant for translation, because translation operates on written text and can only construct context and enact discourse ex post facto, never on-line. Functional approaches to language [. . .] were given preference over philosophical, psychological, pragmatic, sociolinguistic and conversation analytic approaches because their notion of context was found to be more suitable for written text and thus for a theory of translation as re-contextualization. (House 2006: 356) In her article, House suggests that one think of translation as ­recontextualization—a proposal that is, on the face of it, conceptually rich and potentially appealing. But the how of her approach is really revealed when she defines translation as “the replacement of a text in a source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in a target language” (House 2006: 345) and, consequently, reconceptualization as “taking a text out of its original frame and context and placing it within a new set of relationships and culturally conditioned expectations” (House 2006: 356). House’s idea of recontextualization and the understanding of context on

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26  Ubiquitous Translation which it draws, suggests a subject-less, product-oriented, what-focused concept of translation. It is only very slightly more problematized than the view expressed by John Catford—whose comments House quotes with fondness while discussing “the conceptual heart of translation” (House 2006: 344)— who declared that translation consists of “replacement of textual material in one language [. . .] by equivalent textual material in another language [. . .]” (Catford 1965: 20). Setting aside the contentious concept of equivalence and only focusing on the issue at hand, let me restate House’s point loud and clear: Even though scholars working in other areas—philosophy, psychology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, etc.—are becoming increasingly convinced that the relationship between the reader, text, and context is dynamic, fluid, and reflexive, some translation scholars remain unconvinced and argue that “such a view of context is not useful for translation” (House 2006: 343). So, now you have heard two views: one coming from a social scientist, and another from a translation studies scholar. One was made originally with reference to translation, the other was not, but it was reconceptualized, recontextualized, or—quite simply—translated to refer to it. Which view of context and translation—an actual or a hypothetical one—seems to you more insightful, convincing, or simply truer? This is not a rhetorical question. I am prepared to accept that in the eyes and ears of some of my readers the crucial argument will be what-centered: whether or not the original comment was made explicitly about translation. However, based on qualitative, processual, somatic, and experiential grounds—where borders are fuzzy and how often prevails over what—in this particular case I feel a much stronger affinity with the view on translation expressed hypothetically by the social scientist than actually by the translation studies scholar. This is an example of what I would call qualitative proximity—in simpler words, nearness of the how—between some views and approaches irrespective of their what and where, which includes disciplinary origin. As with all things conceptual, qualitative proximity is largely in the eye of the beholder, and that is why I do not expect it to be recognized universally. My suggestion that translation is largely a matter of the how also works in the opposite direction: a how-centered, qualitative methodology is, somehow, translational. Let us consider the following statement: The strength of qualitative research is its ability to provide complex textual descriptions of how people experience a given research issue. It provides information about the “human” side of the issue—that is, the often contradictory behaviors, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships of individuals. [. . .] [Q]ualitative research can help us to interpret and better understand the complex reality of the given situation. (Mack et al. 2005: 1; emphasis mine) Does not translation consist of just that: providing complex textual descriptions, based on an interpretation of rich, often contradictory “human” data

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Ubiquitous Translation  27 in a specific sociocultural context and rooted in the experiential how? Cannot translation, like qualitative research, “be safely used to gain the necessary insight into people’s attitudes, behaviors, value systems, concerns, motivations, beliefs, opinions, emotions, relationships with others, culture, or life styles” (Mangal and Mangal 2013: 161–162)? Does not translation, like qualitative research, illustrate “how a multitude of interpretations are possible, but how some are more theoretically compelling, morally significant, or practically important than others” (Tracy 2012: 5)? This brings us to really big and important questions. How sensible it is to group theoretical ideas and insights depending on discipline? After all, disciplinary divisions, by definition, are a question of the what, not how. If we focus on the what, the circulation of ideas is impeded. The how, on the other hand, is translatable. In recent years, more and more stress is put on teaching transferrable skills like the humanities. The whole concept is qualitative and indeed translational: It is the know-how rather than the know-what that is transferrable.

Translation as a Concept and Method Let us go back where we began this chapter: Mieke Bal’s image of a hypothetical interdisciplinary debate. Commenting on her own area of research, Bal notes that cultural studies has not been successful “in developing a methodology to counter the exclusionary methods of the separate disciplines [. . .] While the object—what you study—has changed, the method—how you do it—has not” (2002: 6–7; emphasis in original). I agree: A change is needed not so much in what we study and discuss (and what disciplines we invite to a dialogue on translation), but rather how we study, think, and translate. Starting from this shared conviction, I want to enter into a dialogue with Bal’s argument on several important points. The scenario she invokes seems to imply that the interdisciplinary debate would have been more productive if the participants had agreed on the understanding of the central concept, its what. I suggest, conversely, that it is a shared how that promises a fruitful, productive, and truly groundbreaking discussion. The how of Bal’s comments makes my point here: “Cultural analysis does not study culture. ‘Culture’ is not its object. The qualifier cultural in ‘cultural analysis’ indicates, instead, a distinction from a traditional disciplinary practice within the humanities” (2002: 9). In a similar sense, as cultural analysis does not study culture, translation studies does not study translation as its object. That is because translation, as I understand it, is not exclusively an object, but rather a phenomenon and experience; therefore, it is not objective, but phenomenological and experiential. Translation is not just a question of the what but also the how, the manner as well as the matter. In the statement that I have already quoted, Bal insists that “interdisciplinarity in the humanities, necessary, exciting, serious, must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than methods” (2002: 5, original

28  Ubiquitous Translation

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emphasis). Translation, as a qualitative concept, allows us to go beyond this dichotomy: It offers both a concept and a method. It is a method of thinking in terms of the how, and one of its exemplifications is something I have already introduced: a conceptual substitution, reconceptualization, or simply translation. Let us try this method once again, applying it to the following statement from Bal from which I removed two key words, replacing them with dashes. For --------- is a mode, not a genre. It is alive and active as a culture force, not just as a kind of literature. It constitutes a major reservoir of the cultural baggage that enables us to make meaning out of a chaotic world and the incomprehensible events taking place it in. And, not to be forgotten, --------- can be used to manipulate. In short, it is a cultural force to be reckoned with. (Bal 2002: 10) What is Bal writing about here? If we fill in the conceptual blanks with translation, making it our interpretant, her comments point to some of the most exciting areas of research in translation studies: the epistemological, phenomenological, and cultural power of translation, but also its manipulation (and hence links to political and ideological struggles). Now, how disappointed or excited would you be to find that in this passage the omitted word is not translation but actually narrative? To me, it does not matter all that much. In a sense, what she is describing here is less important to me than how she is doing it. When I read Bal’s work, I sense a high degree of qualitative proximity and discover that her concept of narrative is somehow very close to my concept of translation. One way to explain it is to say that translation is ubiquitous, found under many different guises, names, and terms. Don’t insights such as the above make Mieke Bal potentially a translation studies theorist, in a similar way that a range of different thinkers made it into the anthology Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche (Robinson 1997), even though they would hardly have identified themselves as translation studies scholars? Of course, strictly speaking, such an identification would be anachronistic, but the very idea of anachronism follows from a research paradigm that puts chronology over conceptual and qualitative proximity. In a translational, qualitative, how-centered paradigm, temporal precedence is not a decisive criterion. By the same token, I imagine that some of the insights offered by people who identify themselves as translation scholars could be of interest to scholars like Mieke Bal, theorizing concepts such as narrative.

Rhizomatic Transdisciplinarity It is the mention of narrative, which Bal proposes as a transdisciplinary concept (2002: 10), that makes it necessary to explain an important difference, again conceptual rather than terminological. For translation, as

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Ubiquitous Translation  29 I understand it here, is not (just) an interdiscipline (e.g. Snell-Hornby 2006; Snell-Hornby, Pöchhacker and Kaindl 1994: 69ff), but can be meaningfully and productively thought of as a transdiscipline. Interdisciplinarity is based on the idea of multiple what-ness: While it makes connections to and draws inspirations from a range of disciplines, it also, implicitly, gives credibility to disciplinary divisions. In order to boast your ability to cross borders, however boldly or effortlessly, you have to admit—and thus validate—their existence in the first place. Transdisciplinarity, on the other hand—at least as I understand it—is wrapped around the idea of a certain how. It is a how that tolerates and invites paradoxes and ambiguities, tensions, overlaps and discontinuities, and recognizes fuzzy borders. Referring to another useful conceptual distinction, we could say that interdisciplinarity draws on an arborescent epistemological paradigm while transdisciplinarity views knowledge as rhizomatic. Let me put it in a slightly more accessible form. The central concept of the former model is the tree, with roots below, and branches and twigs above. Despite growing out of a convoluted network of roots and branching out into wide crowns, trees normally have singular trunks and remain organically separable from other trees. Interdisciplinarity, as an arborescent concept, enables tracing the migration of ideas from roots to branches and demonstrates how both are entangled with those of other trees in complex configurations. But the movement is nevertheless linear, like a walk through the forest. Transdisciplinarity, by contrast, is rhizomatic. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who have developed this concept in their book A Thousand Plateaus, explain it thus: Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple [. . .] It is not a multiple derived from the One, or to which One is added [. . .]. It is composed not of units but of dimension, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. [. . .] The rhizome is an antigenealogy. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987/2004: 23) Stefano Arduini and Siri Nergaard, in their article “Translation: a new paradigm”, introducing the inaugural issue of translation: a transdisciplinary journal make a strong case for the titular juxtaposition of these two concepts. They argue that “transdisciplinary research cannot follow the linear paths that conceive of structures as trees, but must rather walk along rhizomatic paths” (2011: 9) and propose “a transdisciplinary research field with translation as an interpretive as well as operative tool” (2011: 8). In many ways, my project is a response to their proposal.

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30  Ubiquitous Translation This is not to say that an interdisciplinary approach cannot take us on exciting paths. Let me give just two examples that first come to mind, both from the journal Translation Studies, which convincingly demonstrate the “border thinking” that translation brings with it to the humanities through an interdisciplinary paradigm. In her introduction to the special issue devoted to the “translational turn”, Doris Bachmann-Medick admits the blurring of boundaries between disciplines and “hybrid overlaps between them”, though she consistently speaks of moving “right across” them through “ ‘border’ and ‘in-between’ thinking” in an effort to open up “underexplored interfaces between translation studies and other humanities disciplines” (2009: 4). The proposed “translational turn” is presented as being “born specifically out of the translation category’s migration from translation studies into other disciplinary discursive fields in the humanities” (2009: 3). Similarly, Cyril Belvis (2016), in his poignant and in many ways innovative article, argues that “a helpful way of looking at translation beyond the definitional pothole points to its migratory character” and foregrounds “its potential for ‘border thinking’ ”. But even though interdisciplinary thinking invites us to test borders and push boundaries—tasks that are noble, exciting, often necessary, and usually adventurous—it proceeds in a largely linear, what-centered fashion. By contrast, the transdisciplinary rhizome is “a map not a tracing” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987/2004: 13). The view of translation as a qualitative, mainly how-centered concept does not highlight borders or the movement of concepts (which to me sounds rather suspicious as reminiscent of a transferbased notion of translation). It rather argues that translation is ubiquitous, somehow “already there”, ready to be discovered at multiple entry and exit points of the epistemological map. In my model, it is not so much concepts that travel, but rather theorists and thinkers. The idea of a qualitative concept may be difficult to understand and appreciate because translation offers us not so much a different method, but rather a method of a different kind. I have been trying to demonstrate that a how-centered, qualitative approach challenges not only much of the popular view of translation, but, more broadly, much of the Western idea of knowledge and understanding (which Deleuze and Guattari 1987/2004 describe as prevalently arborescent). The significance of this reorientation must be properly recognized: The acceptance and application of similar assumptions in cognitive linguistics have been hailed as “a ground breaking work that radically chances the tenets of traditional western philosophy” (as stated, in boldfaced font, on the front cover of Lakoff and Johnson 1999). A translational methodology can radically change the way we view, practice, share, and develop knowledge. That is because it offers us “a different way of facing the great epistemological questions of what we know and how we know” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 9, emphasis mine). “To speak of transdisciplinarity is not to propose that we create new relationships between closed disciplines; rather, transdisciplinarity opens up closed

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Ubiquitous Translation  31 disciplines and inquiries into translational features that they have in common or toward translational moments that transcend them” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011). I suggest that these features are better understood as qualities (how) rather than quiddities (what). Taking translation as an interpretive as well as operative tool (in other words, relying on it as both a concept and a method), I have selected four areas in the humanities—philosophy, theology, linguistics, and a­ nthropology— and in each one of them identified some key concepts that seemed to me qualitatively close to my understanding of translation. Perhaps to some of my readers, this selection will at first seem startling or strange. But that too is a part of the transdisciplinary approach: “To be rhizomorphous is to produce stems and filaments that seem to be roots [. . .] but put them to strange new uses” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987/2004: 17). Rhizomes are inherently radical; after all, Latin for “root” is radix. The new use consists of reconceptualizing each of these key concepts (for example, understanding, faith, metaphor, and fieldwork) in terms of translation and reflecting on the resulting reorganized conceptual content. It is my hope that through what is essentially a translational exercise, “new objects called translation will emerge, letting the already existing ones take a different shape and value” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 11).

The how of This Book Finally, let me add a few words on lesser methodological and technical points, all dealing with the how. It has been proposed that “good qualitative scholarship is rigorous, interesting, practical, aesthetic, and ethical” (Tracy 2012: xiv). Given the qualitative focus of this project and my concept of translation, I am determined to honor these key qualities. The pursuit of rigor is demonstrated in my commitment to argue, convince, and persuade—even if only for the sake of a hypothetical scenario—rather than simply state and take for granted. In my comments and reflections, I will engage with a broad range of existing theoretical frameworks and ideas to which I want to give a fair representation. I will every time explain and support my selection of particular concepts to be re-thought in translational terms in an effort to offer a theoretically sound proposition: “a notion about actualities, a suggestion, a theory, a supposition about things” (Whitehead 1967: 244). This brings me to the second quality, because Whitehead insists that “[i]t is more important that a proposition be interesting than it be true” (Whitehead 1967: 244). This premise is strongly qualitative in several ways. It stresses the necessarily subjective character of the particular propositions dictated by individual research interests (“interesting” is a highly contextual category), but also provides encouragement to hypothesize and theorize not on the basis of probability (which is a strongly quantitative concept anyway), but rather, the potential to capture imagination. Whitehead admits

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32  Ubiquitous Translation that “a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one”—not every hypothesis is worth formulating—but he concludes that “after all this explanation and qualification, it remains true that the importance of the proposition lies in its interest” (Whitehead 1967: 244). The following pages, I hope, will bring a broad range of interesting propositions that might not be entirely consistent or systematic. They certainly do not aspire to be fully developed or consistent theoretical positions. Conceptual translations will always yield partial insights—in both senses of this word. I view them more as nuggets, glimpses, invitations for further reflection, often provisional. My goal is not to offer a systematic theory (I am rather skeptical of neat systems), but to offer a new approach to study and problematize the concept of translation. The commitment to practicality has several dimensions. As I indicated in the Introduction, a theory must be translatable into practice and vice versa. The hope behind exploring new, sometimes radical notions and ideas is that they will help us better understand the phenomena we experience—and that is their real test. In my case, the experiential dimension extends over three areas: practice, teaching, and research. Two decades of work as a translator and interpreter and more than a decade as a researcher and trainer in two quite different academic systems have exposed me to translation in a variety of professional situations. This adds to my approach a practical, professional, experiential, and indeed existential level: For many years, translation was the bread and butter of my life (often in a very literal sense). But I would be very far from any attempt to universalize my experience. That is why, throughout my work on this project, I have been asking my colleagues and friends, seasoned, trustworthy, and reflective translators, for their insights and reactions, in the hopes of sketching a fuller, richer, and truer picture. Another practical aspect overlaps with the question of ethics. I have made every effort to avoid the impression of putting words in other people’s mouths: The material to which I apply a translational interpretant is always presented as it appeared originally, the only intervention being the block form of the quotation and boldface small capitals for the relevant ­concepts—both techniques aimed at focusing and guiding the flow of attention. Now, for aesthetics. If, as I argue, the medium is largely the message, and this book aspires to a radical and original contribution, then I must honor my own epistemological commitment and express my message accordingly, which involves occasional departures from established academic conventions. One such departure is greater than usual reliance on the first person pronoun and unwillingness to hide behind passive and impersonal constructions. Another is thematic organization: The discussion of the (re)circulation of ideas will often be circular itself. Rather than explore a certain theme (for example, process or identity) once and for all, drawing from the insights from various fields, I prefer to introduce it from the perspective of one area,

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Ubiquitous Translation  33 then pass on to other topics debated in that field, and only then revisit these insights when traveling through other territories, as if adding subsequent layers to the onion. Academic monographs are normally expected to be linear, thematic, and systematic in their manner of presentation, as is typical of the focus on the what and the underlying arborescent model. This one will often thwart this expectation. I believe that reflection, learning, and theorizing, more often than not, is not linear but rather circular or spiral (hence my fondness of the hermeneutical circle—see Chapter 2), and that is why it calls for a different how. Some ideas need to sink in before they can be productively elaborated further. So much for methodological provisos and disclaimers. Let us start reading, listening, and translating. Let the journey in search of ubiquitous translation begin.

2 Philosophy

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Translation as Understanding, Interpretation, and Hermeneutics

The first area to which I decided to turn for insights about translation is philosophy, and in particular, hermeneutics. The three key concepts in the hermeneutical writings considered in this chapter are understanding, interpretation, and hermeneutics itself. For the first two, translation is a hyperonym: It entails both understanding and interpretation and is predicated on them. George Steiner famously makes the case for understanding as translation in the first chapter of his book After Babel, arguing that “[a]ny thorough reading of a text out of the past of one’s own language and literature is a manifold act of interpretation” (1998: 18). At the experiential level, “the process [of translation] remains freighted with anxiety, mired in contingency, but that is exactly what it has in common with the processes of interpretation and understanding” (Johnston 2016: 258). When translation is reconceptualized in relation to hermeneutics, it acquires a strongly philosophical note and becomes a phenomenon, a field, a mode of being, a way of thinking, a manner of representation, close to its meaning in the phrase “translation studies”. Any approach to very basic, fundamental philosophical questions runs the risk of slipping into banality. That in itself need not be a bad thing; after all, “[f]or translation theory, banal messages are the bread of life” (Quine 1960/2013: 63). Still, because I am more interested in exploring new territories than in revisiting old ones, in my selection of hermeneutical statements for re-reading I have tried to avoid clichés and quite obvious statements, but rather to focus on the lesser-known comments. Of course, obviousness is not a universal category but a highly contextual one; much depends on previous exposure and reflection. Knowing that the what cannot be separated from the how and who, I have allowed myself to use personal discretion and admit that something speaks to me (or not) and to find certain remarks inspirational or convincing without overly hedging such statements. My own perspective is strongly processual, sometimes romantic and often existentialist, as can be seen from the selection of philosophers I have read and decided to include in this discussion: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. They seemed to offer the kind of thinking—the how—that appealed to me

Philosophy  35

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most in what I wanted to hear and say about translation. The indisputable challenge of engaging with these venerable German thinkers, the “founding fathers” of ­hermeneutics—most of the time in the English translation, which adds another layer to the chain of interpretation—turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

The why of Translation In my search for hermeneutic material to be reconceptualized in terms of translation, I am inclined to begin with Friedrich Schleiermacher and his Hermeneutics: the handwritten manuscripts (originally compiled between 1805 and 1833). One reason is chronological: Much of later hermeneutics depends on or refers to Schleiermacher, and his writings provide the easiest point of entry into this circle of ideas. But there is also another reason. Because of the nature of these handwritten notes, Schleiermacher’s statements are often short, crisp, and aphoristic in character and are therefore ideally suited for an introductory exercise in conceptual translation. Here is one that I decided to take as our starting point: Hermeneutics is a part of the art of thinking, and is therefore philosophical. (Schleiermacher 1977: 97; emphasis mine) Now, imagine that instead of hermeneutics, this statement refers to translation. What does it mean that translation “is a part of the art of thinking”? Most attempts to describe translation begin from relating it to contact and communication, either between individuals or between groups. “Translation exists because men speak different languages”, writes Steiner (1998: 51), and even though he immediately calls this a truism, most theorists take it as an implicit starting point. One approach—let’s call it semiotic-­communicative— focuses on utterances, messages, exchanges, texts, languages, and codes, stressing that “although translation has a central core of linguistic activity, it belongs most properly to semiotics” (Bassnett 2014a: 24) and that “translation is communication [. . .] Translators decode the message contained in the text of the original and reformulate (encode) in their own language” (Levý 2011: 23). Another one takes a collective perspective—and thus may be termed sociocultural—and highlights “the importance of translation for [. . .] culture and society” (Cronin 2013: 3), in particular its role in facilitating “intercultural relations and the transmission of [. . .] knowledge” (Robinson 2012: 1) which includes “internationalizing literary relations” (Venuti 2013: 5). It is against this background—in which translation is a means to a more worthy end—that I find Schleiermacher’s reconceptualized statement refreshing, inspiring, and stimulating. In my re-reading, translation—like hermeneutics—is the part of the art of thinking; perhaps even an indispensable part. It is not just useful for another

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36  Philosophy end but is an end in itself. This realization gives translation—the phenomenon, practice, process, product, and concept—inherent value. Translation to be worthwhile does not need to serve any specific purpose or fulfill any further function—any more than thinking, becoming aware, reasoning, or understanding need any purpose beyond themselves. Sure enough, both thinking and translation will lead to certain developments, actions, decisions, consequences, and so on—some of which we will consider in due course—but however valuable or useful these may be, they do not provide its raison d’être. Translation is part of the art of thinking—and art does not need a purpose for being. This insight is quite clearly in conflict with the central claim of functional approaches to translation which classify it as “action” (e.g. Reiss and Vermeer 2013; Vermeer 1989/2012), that is something to which an aim (called skopos) can potentially be attributed in response to the question what for? The main reason of this conflict is a much more traditional, indeed strictly textual notion of translation in functional theories: “Translational action always involves a previously produced text and the production of a target text for another culture” (Reiss and Vermeer 2013: 17). But in a broader, philosophical sense of translation, which I am testing here, translation is rather wrapped around the why question. Now, what for? and why? are clearly not the same question, though they are often confused. “Why did you do that?” is not really answered by “Because I wanted to achieve a certain purpose”—the real question is why you deem that particular purpose worth achieving, or the means of its pursuit acceptable, or the manner, time, and place appropriate, etc. If we consider the temporal dimension, why is retrospective, what for is prospective. Why is causal, what for is intentional. Why is centered on the phenomenological, what for is concerned with the utilitarian. Why is more about values, what for more about gains. In this sense, thinking—and translation as part of its art—is really skoposless or potentially all-skoposful (which is, I suppose, two ways of saying the same thing). In a hermeneutical account of translation, skopos does not really matter because translation is not a part of any action—it predates and precedes action. The why question has no one answer. It may have no answer at all. But it is still worth asking—although, paradoxically, I must admit I cannot easily explain why. The closest I can get to understanding it is through an analogy. One of the things I enjoy most is sailing. It is to me a realization of childhood dreams and the opportunities of adulthood. In sailing, knowledge, experience, skill, and instinct come together; so do planning and carrying out the plans; the feeling of harnessing the elements and the awareness of being at their mercy; trying to steer a certain course and being carried along by wind or tide or both (at other times, being stuck with no control over it). It is a mixture of exhilaration and fear; the limits of the deck, the limitlessness of the ocean, and the liminality of the experience. Sailing these days—though I have a good reason to suppose that, at least to some, it has always been

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Philosophy  37 something more than just a means of transportation—is not primarily about getting from one point to another and certainly not by the shortest possible route. Sailing has its own logic, not always apparent to those watching from the shore and oftentimes not shared—indeed, vigorously challenged—by other sailors. The fact that sailing is often viewed as an elite pastime is irrelevant to my point because it is not owning a boat that makes one a sailor. It is rather a question of being or becoming a certain who who thinks and does things in a certain how without being entirely sure why (what, where, and when often matter to a much lesser extent), not just at sea, but in all sorts of situations. This existential experience of sailing captures for me rather well the ultimate inexplicability of why that is also true of translation. I find that much of what appeals to me in sailing I also find in translation, and vice versa. I get restless when I do not sail for a period of time, much as I do as when I do not translate. After a while of intensive sailing and translating, I get enough of it—but then I start to miss it almost as soon as I finish my cruise or my translation (which signals interesting circularity, more on this later). Both can be really pleasant and really painful, even at the same time. (“Translation can be very tiring, even a burden at times, but I can’t help myself. Sometimes I really wish I could”, confesses the literary translator Judith Sollosy [2010]). It is difficult these days to live off either (I have so far tried with one but not yet the other). Both let me deploy my skills and constantly remind me of my limitations. Both are extremely rewarding and stimulating. Both inevitably put me in contact with other people and remind me that I am a part of a larger whole: ecologically, technologically, socially, culturally, etc. Both are experiential and existential. Both push me to the limits and beyond. Probably the only good answer to the why of sailing—I hope the readers will excuse the pathos of this slogan—is that navigare necesse est. Well then, perhaps transferre necesse est? Perhaps there is something in or about translation that touches a very sensitive point that we do not yet fully understand? Perhaps translation yields itself to existential and metaphysical discussions? With this thought in the background, let us return to the Schleiermacher’s statement and reimagine it again as referring to translation. What does it mean that translation is philosophical (bearing in mind that one can hardly expect a stronger expression of praise from a philosopher)? Here is my reading of this statement. While reflecting on translation, we inescapably reflect on much larger issues, such as meaning, sense, and purpose; identity, sameness, and similarity; the relationship between part and whole; between the message and its medium; between ideas; between texts; between individuals; between individuals and texts; between communities; between texts and communities; between different times and places; between what is fixed and what is dynamic; between exercising force and experiencing influence; between what, who, when, where, how, why, etc., etc. Translation is centered on the fundamental questions of immanence and transcendence. Is meaning hidden in texts, in actual linguistic

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38  Philosophy forms, waiting to be discovered (exegesis), or is it brought to the text by the reader who applies his or her own interpretant (eisegesis)? Can texts— and their ­translations—produce senses not anticipated or not intended by their authors and translators? If so, are there any limits to interpretative and translational license? Is translation always benign, beneficial, and positive, or can it turn into a sinister, malign, and ethically dubious activity? Is translation indispensable or expendable? Is it a necessary evil and a constant reminder of our limitations or rather a powerful way of enlarging our understanding and experience? Can people and lives be translated? Is translation an end in itself or a means to an end? Why do we translate (not just what for)? These are but a few questions that come to mind when thinking about translation from a philosophical perspective—and even though I pose some of them in a binary form, it is by no means my intention to suggest false dichotomies. Translation means thinking about and taking a position in regard to all these things and many others. Applying a translational interpretant to philosophical texts can offer us valuable insights into these questions and inspire new ones. But what about the other direction of exchange in this relationship? If translation, as I have argued above, is ultimately a matter of why, no wonder it is central to philosophy. Translation is philosophical much as philosophy is translational. As Jacques Derrida (1985: 120 in Gentzler 2001: 147) puts it, “the origin of philosophy is translation or the thesis of translatability”. Berman likewise claims that “no modern philosophy can really escape the encounter with translation” (2009: 65). I cannot help but wonder to what extent this may be true of other fields. Surely, as the boundaries of the notion of translation have expanded, so has the range of disciplines into which translation studies may and should feed. If indeed, the kinds of questions addressed by translation studies are so central, the following assertion, coming from another German hermeneuticist, Wilhelm Dilthey, provides promising material for reconceptualization: Seen in the context of the theory of knowledge, of logic, and the methodology of the human studies, the theory of interpretation becomes an essential connecting link between philosophy and the historical disciplines, an essential component in the foundation of the human studies themselves. (Dilthey and Jameson 1972: 244; emphasis mine) Given the range and kind of problems studied by it, could it be that translation studies really belongs at the center of the human studies themselves? That is a hypothesis which I have put to test in this book. I believe that we need to devote more attention to the philosophical question of why because this is where the most illuminating and important insights may emerge. Sure enough, why is an overwhelming and terribly difficult question which is, quite possibly, ultimately unanswerable in other terms than “necesse est”.

Philosophy  39 But, in proportion, it is also more interesting and rewarding to pursue than the less difficult ones. So, why do we translate?

Translation as a Response to an Address

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In a broad, aphoristic statement, Hans-Georg Gadamer tells us that Understanding is the original characteristic of the being of human life itself. (2004: 250; emphasis mine) This is not an isolated comment, but a position broadly held in the Western philosophical tradition. In much the same vein, Heidegger has characterized understanding ontologically as “a basic feature of human existence” (Habermas 1984: 107). But it is not only philosophers who situate the pursuit of understanding at the core of human life. The cognitive scholars George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999: 7) claim that “one of the most common and natural of human activities is asking philosophical questions”. The economist Manfred Max-Neef (1991: 17) lists understanding as one of fundamental human needs, alongside subsistence, protection, affection, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom. On one level, the drive for understanding is instinctive and cognitive. In this sense, it is not very far removed from other impulses, drives, or instincts (however we choose to call them) for survival, reproduction, belonging, or self-expression. Humans are largely rational and naturally curious beings living in the shadow of multiple whys, wheres, whens, and whos, big and small. We cannot help but try and understand, make sense of the world and its workings, of our experience, of our own actions and reactions as well as those of others. The world—especially the world of human ideas, texts, and artifacts—is not given but must be understood, interpreted, translated: From stones and marble, musical notes, gestures, words and letters, from actions, economic decrees and constitutions, the same human spirit addresses us and demands interpretation. (Dilthey and Jameson 1972: 232; emphasis mine) Setting aside the notion of the “human spirit”, rather typical of German romantics and permeated with a certain political ideology I am not going to consider here, let us focus on the final element in that statement, a century later echoed by Gadamer’s observation that “understanding begins when something addresses us” (2004: 298). Indeed, both understanding and interpretation are responses to an address. They are to some extent perceptual and thus not fully under our control. Note that in both Dilthey’s and Gadamer’s statements, human agency and volition are kept in the background: It is not that we begin to understand, but that understanding

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40  Philosophy begins, as if independently of us. “Understanding or its failure is like an event that happens to us”, says Gadamer elsewhere (2004: 385). There is something instinctive and experiential about understanding. A good illustration is provided by the semantic distinction between seeing and looking, hearing and listening. We can choose what we look at or listen to, but we cannot fully control what we see or hear; the best we can do is to block our perception channels (which is rather difficult: We can close our eyes but cannot really than shut our ears or switch off tactile receptors without external aid). As long as they remain open, what we perceive—and to a large extent, understand and interpret—is not entirely in our power. Some contextual elements of understanding are beyond our control: a certain where or when, a certain who or how uniquely come together to produce a gradual emergence or a sudden flash of understanding. Understanding, in one sense, is like hearing or seeing, simply remaining open and perceptive. We may strive to understand something and put a real effort into it, but that does not always guarantee success, at least not immediately. We reach understanding as much as understanding reaches us, dawns on us. This idea is not easily reconcilable with the typically Western insistence on agency, power, control, and self-determination of the thinker, hermeneutist, interpreter, and translator. But perhaps this is one of the blind spots that reconceptualization may help us overcome? Gadamer insists that Understanding begins when something addresses us. (2004: 298; emphasis mine) Perhaps translation also begins when something addresses us? If this suggestion sounds somewhat romantic, that is hardly surprising, because the origins of this insight can be traced to a poet and philosopher of early German Romanticism: Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known by his pseudonym Novalis (1772–1801). It was he who, in a letter to another German romantic poet, August Wilhelm Schlegel, wrote of ­Übersetzungstrieb—a “translation drive” or “impulse to translate” (Berman 2009: 58). Picking up on this notion, Antoine Berman calls the translator “a subject caught by the translation drive” and goes on to say: It is the drive to translate that makes the translator a translator: what pushes him in to translation, what pushes him in the space of translation. This drive may arise of its own or be awakened by another person. What is this drive? What is its specificity? We don’t know yet. (Berman 2009: 58) We may not know yet, but let me suggest some possible directions where to look for insights. One such area is something—or, in conceptual terms, predominantly the what—as indeed suggested by Gadamer in the first place. The focus is on the ideas, concepts, statements, and texts that appeal

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Philosophy  41 to us, rather than us finding them appealing. This reversal of agency is key to understanding the aspect of translation we are considering here. Some texts appeal to us, others do not—and we cannot always tell why. A number of translators, particularly of literature, have attested that certain texts called for translation in a hardly explicable, almost sensual sense, often over a long period of time. Italo Calvino (1967: 266), the translator of Raymond Queneau’s novel Les fleurs bleues into Italian, speaks of it as “tugging at the hem of his jacket”, urging him to translate it.1 Likewise, Judith Sollosy, who translates into English contemporary Hungarian authors, makes the following comment: [T]ranslation for me is a matter of nerves; when I come across a fine piece of literature, I can’t pretend I didn’t see it. I can’t walk past it, making like it never happened. I need to answer the challenge, interiorize it, gobble it up, make it mine. This is what translation means to me, this is why I do it. (Sollosy 2010) One way to account for this address in philosophical terms is through an aesthetic analogy, as Gadamer does in the following statement: Someone who understands is always already drawn into an event through which meaning asserts itself. So it is well founded for us to use the same concept of play for the hermeneutical phenomenon as for the experience of the beautiful. When we understand a text, what is meaningful in it captivates us just as the beautiful captivates us. (Gadamer 2004: 484; emphasis mine) Let us carefully consider the image resulting from re-reading this passage with a translational interpretant. Translators are (passively) drawn into an event: They experience the meaningful and are captivated by it. At the same time, meaning (actively) asserts itself and captivates us. We are not fully in control. The initiative is not really on our side. Translation—as understanding and like understanding—is a largely instinctive response. Could it be that some texts choose their translators, much as certain rings choose their bearers (Lord of the Rings), wands their wizards (Harry Potter), and flying banshees their riders (Avatar)? Put this way, it is a rather naïve image that personifies texts, something that seems to belong more in the domain of popular culture than serious scholarship. However, when we look closely into some areas of contemporary translation theory, we find there the recurrent idea of translation as a response to an address, as something partially beyond our control. Douglas Robinson (2012: 62), who embraces a holistic, psychosomatic perspective on translation, highlights this instinctive dimension of the translational process by relating it to the first element in the Peircean triad instinct-experience-habit

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42  Philosophy in which instinct is a “general unfocused readiness to act”. Translation begins from an attitude of perceptiveness and responsiveness—a certain how—to a certain what that addresses us and cannot be ignored. “Experience of the world is powerfully there, it hits one full in the face”, writes Robinson (2012: 62), again stressing this paradoxical agency. This also brings to mind the deconstructionist perspective that “the translated text writes us and not we the translated text” (Gentzler 2001: 146). What I hear in statements like these is a healthy dose of translational humility, a recognition of being carried along rather than steering the course, an awareness that in both understanding as well as translating, we respond rather than initiate: Hermeneutics [. . .] is not ‘knowledge as domination’—i.e., an appropriation as taking possession; rather, it consists in subordinating ourselves to the text’s claim to dominate our minds. (Gadamer 2004: 309–310; emphasis mine) Once we have responded and seen a certain sense in a text or a certain image in a picture—once our mind has been dominated by it—it is very difficult to take a hermeneutic step back and approach it afresh and anew. Edgar Johnson Goodspeed, the author of An American Translation of the New Testament (1923), confesses in his memoirs that “the most difficult thing [. . .] was to forget the old translations, King James and especially the Revised Versions [. . .] The familiarity [. . .] with the English Bible was my greatest obstacle” (1953: 164). Despite this difficulty, the impulse to translate—and retranslate—is always there. Paul Ricoeur observes that “it is in retranslation that we most clearly observe the urge to translate, stimulated by the dissatisfaction with regard to existing translations” (2006: 7). But focusing on one of the possible interpretations to the exclusion of others is just one facet of this hermeneutic dimension of translation. There is also another implication, just as radical and profound. Because of its instinctive character, understanding, once it starts, cannot be easily stopped. That is the beauty and the danger of it. That is the reason why education, i.e. organized and systematic propagation of understanding, is such a powerful means of intellectual, social, and economic development. That is also why learning and its elements—including reading and writing skills, as well as access to recorded knowledge—were for centuries guarded by privileged groups and subjected to institutional control. Understanding is not really reversible—and nor is translation. Once you have understood, seen, or heard something, you cannot un-understand, un-see, or un-hear it; with short or otherwise limited exposure, your perceptual recollection may fade with time, but is potentially retrievable—for better or for worse. Once something has been translated, it cannot be untranslated. The flash of understanding released by translation cannot be undone. A mind, a group, a community that opens cannot easily come back to its former closed condition.

Philosophy  43 Understanding brings with it a certain mindset, as certain attitude, or as Gadamer would call it, “consciousness”:

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Understanding consciousness acquires [. . .] a genuine opportunity to change and widen its horizon, and thus enrich its world by a whole new and deeper dimension. (Gadamer 2004: 391; emphasis mine) A person trying to understand a text is prepared for it to tell him something. That is why a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity. (Gadamer 2004: 271–272; emphasis mine) Translation as a sensitizing activity is also a powerful means to open minds, broaden horizons, raise awareness, etc.—or at least start doing so. But the focus on the what is not enough. David Johnston, an eminent theatre translator, comments that “[u]nderstanding, and the characterizations that arise from that understanding, cannot be divorced from who we are and what we have lived” (Johnston 2015: 10). If translation is [like] understanding, we need to consider its contextual embeddedness.

Towards the who, how, when, and where Hermeneutical statements lead us beyond the mere what of translation: In interpretation it is essential that one be able to step out of one’s own frame of mind into that of the author. (Schleiermacher 1977: 42; emphasis mine) Translation—and interpreting perhaps to an even greater extent—is an interpersonal experience involving multiple whos. As we get involved in this process, we are often required to step out of our own conceptual frameworks and thought-worlds, out of our own comfort zones, and venture into unfamiliar territories: the words, thoughts, and ideas of others—often dealing with the who and how rather than just with the what. This stepping out of and into involves a certain liminal experience, a point of destabilization, of challenge, of estrangement towards both our own and the other’s frames of mind. We emerge transformed from this experience, and we need it to overcome ethnocentrism. “Without the test of the foreign, would we be sensitive to the strangeness of our own language?” asks Ricoeur rhetorically (2006: 29). At the same time, translation is an encounter—a profound meeting between at least two whos, I and Thou, Ich und Du (as another German-speaking thinker, Martin Buber, would describe it)—which potentially challenges and destabilizes the status quo for all sides, including the translator.

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44  Philosophy Reconsidered along these lines, Schleiermacher’s statement becomes adequately problematized and far from trivial. In fact, it could be argued that there is a strong conceptual link between Schleiermacher’s essential requirement of stepping out of and into a frame of mind and one of the most innovative among contemporary theoretical accounts of translation, Robinson’s somatic theory (Robinson 1991; Zhu 2012: 142ff). In a sense, when Robinson insists that “imaginative, identificatory self-projection into the body of a native speaker is a primary requirement for the good translator” (1991: 17), he simply takes Schleiermacher’s idea a step further by postulating an embodied mind. Stepping out of and stepping into is something more than just an abstract mental experience. Translation and interpreting often take us to places and among people that we would not otherwise visit or encounter. But parallels between Schleiermacher’s and Robinson’s ideas run further and deeper. Both authors stress that this is a projection and not identification, always partial and incomplete. To both, language is in some sense somatic: “[A] speaker is regarded [. . .] as the organ of language” (Schleiermacher 1977: 85); “part of learning a language well is watching what native speakers’ bodies do when they speak” (Robinson 1991: 16). Both make a similar point of counterbalancing the what of the language with the who of the author/speaker: The success of the art of interpretation depends on one’s linguistic competence and on one’s ability for knowing people. (Schleiermacher 1977: 42; emphasis mine) In fact, it might even be argued that self-projection into the body of a native speaker is a more crucial requirement for the good translator than a comprehensive understanding of the source language. (Robinson 1991: 17) In his recent monograph, Robinson argues that the basis on which Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics rests is “the situated phenomenology (Gefühl or feeling) of an actual living, breathing, embodied human being in a spoken dialogical encounter with another living, breathing, embodied human being” (Robinson 2013: 12). This is how Schleiermacher elaborates on the relationship between the what of the language and the who of the speaker or writer (note the idea of the dialectic movement, to which we will turn later in this chapter): Just as every act of speaking is related to both the totality of the language and the totality of the speaker’s thoughts, so understanding a speech always involves two moments: to understand what is said in the context of the language with its possibilities, and to understand it as a fact in the thinking of the speaker. (Schleiermacher 1977: 97–98; emphasis mine)

Philosophy  45 Like understanding, translation is not merely about the what. It vitally matters who said or wrote something. The relationship between these elements is dialectical if not indeed circular and involves a certain paradox:

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One must already know a man in order to understand what he says, and yet one first becomes acquainted with him by what he says. (Schleiermacher 1977: 55 emphasis mine) These insights stressing the inevitable entanglement of the what and the who are strongly supported by evidence from translational experience and practice. Interpreters who work in public service settings, such as courtrooms, police stations, or hospitals, much as they may strive for impartiality in rendering the what, often find that their personal likes and dislikes—in short, the who—exert no small pressure on the how of their performance; in fact, this is precisely why agencies put in place codes of ethics for interpreters. In contexts less dominated by the regime of impartiality, translators routinely admit that they find translating some authors easier or simply more pleasant than others. In a sense, we do not translate literature and poetry, but writers and poets. Some translators describe this relationship in quite intimate terms, as Julian Tuwim, a celebrated Polish poet from the earlier part of the twentieth century, who insists that “in order for a translation to come across well, there must be some sort of ‘sexual selection’ between the author of the original and the translator” (in Balcerzan and Rajewska 2007: 156; translation mine). This imagery brings us back to a point we touched on in the previous section when discussing the impulse to translate. Elżbieta Skibińska, an eminent Polish translation scholar and critic as well as a French-Polish translator, in reply to my question about this urge interestingly responded in a metonymic way, relating this impulse to people rather than texts: If you want a specific and a metaphysical example, here it is: when I read Kawafis, he demands that I should translate him for myself, without looking at Kubiak, Miłosz, Libera, Kania, Yourcenar or other [French translators]; no one else has ever wanted this from me; I don’t know why this one does :-) (Skibińska 2014, personal email; translation mine) Now, Skibińska is not exactly a romantic poet. She has published highly regarded, incisive, critical, formidable analyses of translation in qualitative and quantitative terms. But as a reader and translator, in the end she can only smile—note the emoticon at the end of her email—admitting like Berman (2009: 58) that we do not know what the translator’s drive is and where it is coming from, but that translation surely goes beyond something, beyond the what, towards the who and how. At this point, I cannot fail to mention the idea of simpatico, a special bond between the translator and the author. The concept has been broadly

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46  Philosophy introduced to translation studies—and instantly rejected—by Lawrence Venuti, who presents it as an imagined identity that enables the translator to “participate vicariously in the author’s thoughts and feelings” and effectively transforms the translation process into a “veritable recapitulation of the creative process by which the original came into existence” (Venuti 2008: 237–238), producing an “illusion of transparency” (Venuti 2008: 249) which Venuti so vehemently fights against. Yet in his description of simpatico, despite references to the author (potentially the who) and the process (potentially the how), the emphasis—at least to my ear—is still predominantly on the what: thoughts, feelings, participation, and recapitulation. Simpatico, as Venuti understands and ridicules it, is a relation of identity in which the who of the translator is erased by blending with the imagined author—and even then, mostly with his or her thought world, the domain of the what. This sounds very close to Schleiermacher’s idea of stepping out of one’s own and into another’s frame of mind, and it is where this insight needs to be nuanced further. As Anna Strowe convincingly argues: Rather than deriving from an empirical and repeatable identity, simpatico in its most workable form is based on the subjective, possibly metonymic, context-based experience of similarity. [. . .] Rather than being a relationship of identity, simpatico becomes a relationship of what Chesterman terms ‘convergent similarity’ (Chesterman 1996: 161): a similarity drawn between two separate entities (the translator and the author) between which someone, in this case the translator, sees some relationship. (Strowe 2011: 55) Strowe captures what I consider the most important element of simpatico when she defines it as “a perceived affinity between translator and author” (Strowe 2011). It is a living relationship—not a static configuration—that is perceived, i.e. is phenomenological and not ontological, subjective and not objective, context-bound and not stable. The emphasis on the experiential and perceptual dimensions is quite remarkable: The translator sees (rather than looks for) the similarity and experiences it (rather than recognizes its objective existence). It is a similarity of whos rather than whats, the Buberian encounter that results not in an erasure, but rather in a heightened awareness of self and the Other and the experience of affinity with someone. In the context of this relationship, Strowe (2011: 57) recalls Michel Foucault’s abolishment of the role of the author and Mieke Bal’s (2009: 16–17) distinction between the historical and implied author—which I am perfectly happy to acknowledge because it only reinforces my point. In some translational contexts, particularly in consecutive and liaison interpreting, we encounter a real, physical person, a certain “historical author” (regardless of whether this person speaks for himself or herself or on behalf of

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Philosophy  47 others: an organization or a group, which indeed problematizes the issue of authorship), who affects us and our translation not just by what he or she says, but who he or she is and how he or she behaves and relates to us. In my interpreting career I have declined assignments from certain speakers—and have gladly accepted the prospect of working with others—not because of what they were going to say, but how they had related to me on previous occasions and how they made me feel as their interpreter; in other words, who they were to me on an interpersonal level. We have to acknowledge that the who and how matter. Translation is an inevitably interpersonal endeavor, if only because it relies on language—and language by definition is a collective entity that binds people together: Thanks to the verbal nature of all interpretation, every interpretation includes the possibility of a relationship with others. There can be no speaking that does not bind the speaker and the person spoken to. This is true of the hermeneutic process as well. (Gadamer 2004: 399; emphasis mine) In the translation of written texts, this authorial person often becomes implied, constructed though our interpretation of a text, but is still irreducible to the what: It is true that a text does not speak to us in the same way as does a Thou. We who are attempting to understand must ourselves make it speak. But [. . .] this kind of understanding, ‘making the text speak’, is not an arbitrary procedure that we undertake on our own initiative. (Gadamer 2004: 370; emphasis mine) Once again, we are not fully in control. Some people—and not just their texts and their ideas—speak to us more powerfully than others. But the context, as we would expect, is even more complex. There are other contextual considerations to which neither Venuti nor Strowe pay much attention. The relationship between the author and translator—regardless of whether we call it simpatico or something else—may be considered not just in personal (the who) but also in spatiotemporal terms (the where and when). Someone may potentially be the right person—in terms of knowledge, sensitivity, and experience—to translate a certain writer or interpret a certain speaker, but the time or place may not be right for them. How often do we return to texts we first read years ago, for example, in high school or at university, only to discover that we did not really understand or appreciate them back then the way we do now? Harry Eyres in his book Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet in a highly personal way describes how “the very thing that almost deadened me—that is classical education and literature epitomized by Horace”—some years later “turned out to be a secret savior, a way of orienting myself back to myself, to some kind of sanity” (2013: 9).

48  Philosophy

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For sure, the reverse is also true: Some people and ideas that we once found fascinating after some years appear to have lost their appeal to us. Once again, matter cannot be abstracted from time. Recognizing the role of the where and when, is it not justified to expect that in order to understand— and translate—some authors and texts, we first have to mature and develop a certain approach to them, find a certain way to crack them, in a word: a certain how? This existential dimension is key because Interpretation is existentially based in understanding. (Heidegger 1996: 139; emphasis mine) Likewise, translation is not just a matter of gaining access to information, but also coming to grips with it, positioning oneself against its what as well as the whos involved: those it is coming from or going to as well as those whom it concerns. From a philosophical perspective, this means that translation has an ethical dimension. Contrary to the conceptualization entrenched in the dominant terminology found in a range of European languages (translation, Überzetzung, traduction, przekład, etc.), translation is never an objective, depersonalized, neutral act of transfer. As we will see more fully in Chapter 4, translation necessarily involves an epistemological and axiological commitment (e.g. Langacker 2008; Tabakowska 1993). The text, its sense, and its impact are not given once and for all. As in any act of understanding, what is seen in the text depends on who looks at it, when, where, and how. With this in mind, let us turn to Schleiermacher once again: The art of interpretation is not equally interested in every act of speaking. Some instances fail to spark its interest, while others engage it completely. Most, however, fall somewhere between these two extremes. (Schleiermacher 1977: 101–102; emphasis mine) This leads us yet a little further. “Sparking interest” is a very contextual category: It is not an inherent property of the text but rather a reaction to it in a certain where and when by a certain who. But here is an ethical conundrum: Perhaps not everything is worth translating. Translation is an act of selection, of raising status, of immortalization. By the same token, non-translation is a powerful means of marginalization and annihilation. This aspect is focused on in the post-colonial tradition of translation studies, in which non-translation is viewed as an act of exclusion. Translators, in their action or inaction, always subscribe to a certain hierarchy of v­ alues— and they should be aware of it and open about it. I can attest to several situations from my own professional experience in which I declined certain jobs for ethical reasons, putting myself in the role of a gatekeeper. I realize, of course, the potential risk of this role and the power presupposed by it. Who is to determine whether something deserves translation? In our digital, globalized, and highly quantitative world, attention is often tantamount to

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Philosophy  49 recognition. By the same token, obscurity and a low profile lead to oblivion. Against this ethical dilemma of recognition-as-endorsement, maybe translation is not a right, but a privilege? Maybe this privilege must be earned? It seems to me that certain things may not deserve reflection, discussion, and translation—but then again, who is there to judge it? If this discussion demonstrates anything, it is the organic relationship between thinking, speaking, and translating. There are big and important questions with which translation powerfully confronts us. We have to be aware of them and struggle with them because they problematize the notion, the process, and the practice of translation. A simplified, depersonalized, and decontextualized view of what translation is and how it works is not only inadequate and naïve, but also dangerous. We have to be aware of the power we wield as translators and interpreters—and the power that translation wields over us. I realize that by now we have reached a high level of abstraction. I hope I have been able to show that reconceptualization is a promising and inspiring method to consider translation from a newly problematized perspective. In the following section, I would like to demonstrate that reconceptualized insights from hermeneutics may also take us on unexpected trajectories when it comes to less abstract and more practical phenomena. From some general and aphoristic statements, let us progress to more specific ones. What else can German hermeneutists can tell us about translation?

Three Levels of Translation Here is Schleiermacher once again: Many, perhaps most, of the activities which make up human life may be carried out at one of three levels. One level is almost spiritless and entirely mechanical; the second is based on a wealth of experiences and observations; and the third is artistic in the true sense of the term. (Schleiermacher 1977: 175) Let us note the strong emphasis on the how. The activity itself does not become something else when taken to a new level. It is how it is carried out—mechanically, consciously, or artistically—that distinguishes between levels. As Schleiermacher indicates in this opening sentence, his observations are applicable to a range of activities. However, let us imagine them as referring specifically to translation: It seems to me that interpretation, too, is marked by these three levels [. . .]. The first and lowest level we encounter daily, in the market place and in the streets [. . .], and the language is tossed back and forth as a ball. (Schleiermacher 1977: 175; emphasis mine)

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50  Philosophy In our highly digital world, translation at the first level is probably even more mechanical that Schleiermacher himself would have predicted, for example, when we switch a menu in a smartphone to a different language or install another language version of a piece of software. Such translation is typically fully reversible and bi-directional because it is based on artificially produced, isometric systems. There is no room for interpretation online because the two systems have been neatly mapped onto one another. To a large extent, this level of translation is offered by bilingual dictionaries, printed or electronic. The work of interpretation has already been performed by the lexicographer in pairing entries from both languages; therefore, very little of it remains for the reader: at the most, choosing from between several options provided. I find it notable that Schleiermacher locates this first level “in market place and in the streets”—because this is precisely the most popular, commercial, market-driven idea of what translation is and how it works. Living in the increasingly globalized, digital world, we are more than ever likely to reduce translation to this level and to fall prey to the illusion of natural, fully reversible equivalence. Contrary to Pym’s suggestion of “the relative demise of equivalence as a concept” due to “the electronic technologies by which contemporary texts are constantly evolving” (2014: 21), these technologies presuppose and fuel the demand for equivalence. Faced with multilingual versions of websites and apps, our clients assume and expect it, not necessarily in the crudest version built on a one-to-one ­correspondence—the various language versions do not always sound “natural”—but in the sense of structural commensurability. The structure of a smartphone menu or an app remains unchanged regardless of the language version; a menu item cannot be left blank whenever a good equivalent is lacking, nor can items be combined or subdivided. There are also formal limitations, as words have to fit in the assigned slots. At the first level, translation can be performed almost mechanically, without much interpretive effort, using a bilingual dictionary or online translation software—but there is also some awareness that in this process things can go terribly wrong (as evidenced by a flood of Internet jokes on bad automated translations). That is why a high-quality translation requires expertise, which leads us to the next level: Most of the time we seem to operate at the second level. This sort of interpretation is practiced at our schools and universities [. . .]. Even so, juxtaposed to this wealth of information we often find instances where difficult passages are given wild and arbitrary explanations and where some of the most beautiful passages are carelessly overlooked or foolishly distorted because of the interpreter’s pedantic lack of sensitivity. (Schleiermacher 1977: 175; emphasis mine) Translation at the second level—as taught at schools and universities, including many translation studies programs—is informed by knowledge and experience. Unlike at the first level, it is clearly directional: A source

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Philosophy  51 text cannot be reconstructed from its translation because a translation does not give us back the source text, but merely one of its possible readings. Multiple and different translations of a single text correspond to the differences in knowledge, experience, and interpretation between translators and their contexts. There can be better and worse translations, depending on the range and quality of knowledge involved in their making (which may also become the criterion of their quality assessment). A translation may always be improved, according to the translator’s expanding knowledge and experience. These two may build and complement one another, but they may also be separate: knowledge as purely theoretical and experience as purely practical. Thus, we can have theorists of translation who have the knowledge but do not test it in practice (much like literary critics who do not write fiction themselves) and practitioners who claim that they simply translate and do not need theory for that (even though they rely on implicit assumptions, effectively amounting to a theory)—as well as a range of options between these two extremes. Knowledge is required to recognize allusions, cultural references, intertextual links, and stylistic effects—so there is again a very strong emphasis on the what, corresponding to the declarative, factual, academic knowledge. Experience, on the other hand, difficult as it is to theorize, tends to include a broader range of contextual elements, including who, when, and how. It seems to me that this second level is how far most translators go in their reflection, satisfied with the instrumental theory of meaning and a search for a semantic invariant. That is not very surprising. After all, Schleiermacher himself admits not only that most of the time we operate at this level, but also that some readings are “wild” and “arbitrary”—which suggests that others are perhaps “natural”, “correct”, and “justified”. Knowledge, experience, and sensitivity are needed to discern the semantic invariant. But how to account for the fact that different, knowledgeable, and experienced translators see different senses in the same source text? Could another level explain that? Could it be that translation at the highest level, conceived of as art, consists of making sense—rather than finding or discovering it? This is what Schleiermacher is indeed saying elsewhere: Understanding [. . .] does not require art until in encounters something that does not make sense. (Schleiermacher 1977: 49; emphasis mine) Saying that translation, like understanding, is an art is of course one of the best-known clichés that I promised not to focus on—and I do mean to keep this promise by not focusing on the evaluation that is at the heart of this cliché, but let me say a few words about the underlying assumptions. Typically, calling something art is a predominantly evaluative act, drawing on the distinction between art and craft, which in turn is to a significant extent underpinned by other evaluative dichotomies: spirit vs. letter, noble

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52  Philosophy vs. common, sacred vs. profane, etc. This evaluation is both categorial and categorical: It denies the possibility of traversing across the divide. The letter can never fully capture the spirit any more than a commoner can be completely transformed into a nobleman—at least not a “real” or “true” one. This brings to mind Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of expressions such as “a real man”, “real courage”, or “a real masterpiece”—in which he points out that “in all these examples, the word ‘real’ implicitly contrasts the case under consideration to all other cases in the same category, to which other speakers assign, although unduly so (that is, in a manner not ‘really’ justified) this same predicate” (Bourdieu 1987: 206). It is again categorization— the what-question—that is at stake here. No wonder that in this evaluative sense, translation classified as art has a classical, Aristotelian ring to it. It leads us towards thinking about to the true essence and outward appearances of the translational activity. This sort of thinking—the what-­thinking—I find strongly ideological and not really stimulating. It takes us back to the futile discussions concerning faithful and free translations underpinned by unexamined assumptions about meaning and sense—just as discussions of “objective beauty” or “artistic value” only disclose implicit adherence to certain aesthetic conventions. But the hermeneutical insistence on translation as art can also be read descriptively, as trying to capture the prototypical characteristics of the phenomenon in question rather than its ontological essence defined in terms of the necessary and sufficient conditions. Let me introduce another useful notion. Art is a good example of an “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1956), which means that almost everything about it—including its definition and scope of reference—is open to debate. However, one of the very few things that seem to me to be beyond debate is that art cannot be reduced to the what. A pianist’s concerto is different from a toddler’s fiddling with the piano not in terms of what is happening—since both, in essence, press the keys of the instrument—but who is doing it and how. I am not questioning the capacity of toddlers to be creative, inventive, and indeed artistic in their play—in fact, quite the contrary. But there is a difference between playing the piano and playing with the piano (except in some kinds of experimental music, which brings us back to the essential contestability of the notion of art: One can always think of a counterexample that challenges a carefully developed classification). Anyway, categorizing translation as art—­ somehow paradoxically, since categorization is the what-question—means going beyond the what and broadening the scope of translation studies accordingly. This brings to mind the position of descriptive translation studies on equivalence, understood not by reference to certain necessary characteristics but in purely descriptive (in the sense of “non-evaluative”) terms: Something is equivalent to something else if there is someone who considers it as such. It is the who that determines the what. Well then, maybe translation is more usefully theorized in terms of other contextual concepts, especially the who and how.

Philosophy  53 Let us try this approach. How is translation at the third level different from the first two? A helpful insight comes from Gadamer, who says that

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Hermeneutics is an art and not a mechanical process. (Gadamer 2004: 190; emphasis mine) As you recall, “entirely mechanical” is how Schleiermacher described the how of the first, lowest level of any human activity (potentially including translation). A mechanical process is characterized by pre-programming based on anticipation and a purposeful design of the outcome. Unless it goes wrong, a mechanical process cannot produce anything that it was not designed to produce. It is about predictability, precision, and efficiency. The key element of a mechanical process is following rules, not questioning them, whereas Understanding [. . .] remains ‘art’ because it cannot be turned into a mechanical application of rules. (Gadamer 2004: 189; emphasis mine) Could it be that one of the central elements of translation is its questioning, destabilizing potential? Could it be that translation—at least at the third, highest level—is more about asking questions than offering answers? Another insight takes us precisely in this direction: The hermeneutical task becomes of itself a questioning of things and is always in part so defined. (Gadamer 2004: 271) Thus, we have come full circle to Schleiermacher’s opening statement about hermeneutics—and therefore translation—being a part of the art of thinking. Translating is thinking—and thinking is asking questions: A person who thinks must ask himself questions. Even when a person says that such and such a question might arise, this is already a real questioning that simply masks itself, out of either caution or politeness. This is the reason why understanding is always more than merely re-creating someone else’s meaning. Questioning opens up possibilities of meaning. (Gadamer 2004: 368; emphasis mine) Translation opens up new and often unexpected readings. When we compare several translations of a single source text, we find that they tend to highlight different elements of its interpretative potential that would not be noticed otherwise. Different whos, in their individual hows, will see and give expression to different whats. “Instead of translations fixing the same meaning, translations can also allow further room to play, extend boundaries, and

54  Philosophy open up new avenues for further difference” (Gentzler 2001: 160–161). That is why understanding—and translation—is creative and original rather than reproductive and derivative, as repeatedly stressed by Gadamer:

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The understanding of something written is not a repetition of something past but the sharing of a present meaning. (Gadamer 2004: 391; emphasis mine) Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity. (Gadamer 2004: 296; emphasis mine) The horizon of understanding cannot be limited either by what the writer originally had in mind or by the horizon of the person to whom the text was originally addressed. (Gadamer 2004: 396; emphasis mine) The real meaning of a text, as it speaks to the interpreter, does not depend on the contingencies of the author and his original audience. It certainly is not identical with them, for it is always co-determined also by the historical situation of the interpreter. (Gadamer 2004: 296; emphasis mine) Let us relate this theoretical discussion of the three levels of translation to a concrete scenario. The first level involves an entirely mechanical process, as when CAT software signals to its user that a given segment of a text looks identical or very similar to one that has been translated before and brings up that translation as a suggestion. Up until this moment, no reasoning or interpretation is involved, just a mechanical comparison of data that was previously aligned, i.e. brought into correspondence. A translator enters the second level when he or she, based on his or her knowledge and experience, makes a decision whether to accept the rendition suggested by the CAT tool and adapt it somehow or reject it altogether and develop a new translation from scratch. Let us remember that this is the level at which we typically operate, relying on our knowledge and experience. This is the bread and butter of most translators most of the time, especially when it comes to non-literary texts, which make up the bulk of the total translational output. The third level is thus in some sense exceptional, either because it is in some sense elitist (only achieved or achievable by a minority) or otherwise difficult to inhabit permanently. Perhaps it is when the translator has a flash of genius, an epiphany, a brilliant idea (that is often triggered contextually, by a specific when or where, and must be captured there and then, otherwise it goes away and cannot be easily recalled). That would explain why this level is only reached only so often: These moments of brilliance are beyond our control.

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Philosophy  55 But there is also another possible explanation. At the third level, translation becomes about questions, including philosophical ones. Questions not just about the meaning or the most appropriate translation of a certain text, but about the sense of the entire endeavor, about the ethical aspects of working on this particular project or for that particular client, about the content we are dealing with and its effect on us, whether inspiring or disturbing. For practical reasons, we cannot really stay at this level permanently and successfully continue in the profession. This also reminds me of situations in which a translator starts researching a term or a concept and finds himself or herself an hour later in a completely different domain, jumping from one source to another, unable to stop in the curiosity and thirst for knowledge, no longer relevant to the original research question but simply too fascinating to terminate it. This level of (self-)awareness must be temporary because it would be cognitively unbearable and professionally untenable if it were to last on a continuous basis. There has to be a point when a translation is handed in or interpretation is uttered. Translators who never get anything actually translated are not good translators. The process must lead to a product. One of many paradoxes of translation is that it is both expanding and delimiting. The Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid once said that “poetą się nie jest, poetą się bywa”—and here I am, struggling to convey the grammar of my language into English. For a poet, it is a very grammatical distinction, based on the contrast between the perfective and the iterative aspect. The closest I can get to is something like: “Nobody is a poet; you get to be one every now and then”. Maybe the same is true of translators at the third level?

The Translational Circle Finally, in our exploration of the circulation of hermeneutical ideas, we come to one fundamental concept, which is, not surprisingly, circular. In his original formulation, Schleiermacher theorizes that “complete knowledge always involves an apparent circle, that each part can be understood only out of the whole to which it belongs, and vice versa” (1977: 113). The notion of the hermeneutic—in our case, translational—circle is so well-known and broadly discussed that I can allow myself the comfort of standing back and listening to the dialogue between the hermeneutists and only occasionally interject a comment about the import of their reconceptualized statements for translation. The concept of the circle as a fundamental cognitive mechanism—and translational principle—has indeed a broad range of significant implications. Schleiermacher postulates it as central and indispensable to the practice of hermeneutics (and, I would suggest, translation): Just as the whole is understood from the parts, so that parts can be understood only from the whole. This principle is of such consequence

56  Philosophy for

and so incontestable that one cannot even begin to without using it. (Schleiermacher 1977: 196; emphasis mine)

hermeneutics

interpret

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To which Gadamer comments: Schleiermacher follows [. . .] the whole hermeneutical and rhetorical tradition when he regards it as a fundamental principle of understanding that the meaning of the part can be discovered only from the context— i.e., ultimately from the whole [. . .] Fundamentally, understanding is always a movement in this kind of circle, which is why the repeated return from the whole to the parts, and vice versa, is essential. (Gadamer 2004: 189; emphasis mine) I find the image of translation as movement very insightful and appealing. The circle here is a symbol of this movement, of constant turning and grinding. The wheel that facilitates movement across space—which we can call “progress” in both the physical and figurative sense of the word—is essentially a circle. What I hear emerging from the above statements first of all is that the translation process does not progress in a linear fashion. In translating, we do not proceed orderly from beginning to end, traversing along the horizontal axis. Rather, like a point on the circumference of a rotating wheel, we move forward—and backward—as much as up and down. From a professional point of view, this insight is very reassuring and helps us deal with unrealistic expectations. My own experience confirms that progress in translation is far from stable and linear. It normally goes through jerks, bolts and false starts, through periods of apathy and excitement, through a series of approximations, additions and deletions, revisions and refinements. At times, the final version is not very far removed from the initial draft, even though it is only reached after a range of different options has been explored. From a strictly economic point of view, this may seem like a waste of time and effort—but the end result cannot be separated from the process that has produced it: the what only comes through the how. The simplistic law of maximum efficiency (sometimes applied by translation agencies in their questionnaires: What is your daily turnover?) cannot and does not govern the translation process. What may look like going in circles is often just gaining momentum. The movement between the whole and the parts is indeed cyclical, but this dialectic is not founded on symmetry. The translational circle is not ideally round and unbroken; it has a point of entry. That this circular movement ultimately begins at the macro- rather than the micro-level is quite clear from the following statement: The

of a particular is always conditioned by an underof the whole. (Schleiermacher 1977: 59; emphasis mine)

understanding

standing

Philosophy  57 And even though the reverse is also true, Schleiermacher goes further and insists that By its very nature the

hermeneutical

operation dictates that the

inter-

preter begin by considering the overall organization of the work. herme-

must begin with an overview of the whole. This first step is frequently omitted as interpreters start off by considering the author’s peculiar way of using language. (Schleiermacher 1977: 166–167; emphasis mine)

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neutics

Now, I find this observation a little uncanny, as if Schleiermacher stood right behind me and looked over my shoulder. I often start translating in my mind as soon as I lay my eyes on the text (remember, translation is to some extent instinctive) and then realize that I must make a note of my emerging version lest I will forget it—and suddenly, before I know it, I am focused on the parts without first considering the whole. I also admit that I am not very apologetic about this practice in today’s fast-paced professional environment. Few of us can allow ourselves the luxury of thoroughly digesting the texts before we get down to translating them; commercial translation is inevitably time-bound. Still, as many translation trainers (especially of the functionalist persuasion) will tell us, we should be translating with a purpose, the skopos, the “bigger picture”, in mind, adjusting the sense of the smaller elements to the overall sense or direction of the text. That the whole rather than the parts is the starting point of the circular translational process stresses the prevalence of complexity over simplicity, increasingly foregrounded in recent research in translation studies (for an excellent example, see Marais 2014). This recognition is philosophically important because it prepares us to expect difficult answers to (deceptively) simple questions, rather than look for simple and reductionist solutions to complex problems. However, once the translational circle is set in motion, its initial position no longer matters. The up and down become relative, and from then on [t]he movement of understanding is constantly from the whole to the part and back to the whole. (Gadamer 2004: 291; emphasis mine) There is a constant tension and dialogue between the micro- and macrolevels, a constant search and probing for options. To use a different metaphor, translation is less like panning and more like zooming, in and out. We move between the bigger picture and its details, constantly readjusting our focus. Translation, like all hermeneutical processes, is inherently contextual: Any set of sentences, large or small, can be understood correctly only in terms of the whole to which it belongs. And just as the shorter sets

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of sentences are conditioned by larger sets, so, too, these larger sets are conditioned by still larger ones. Thus the obvious conclusion is that any part can be completely understood only through a whole. (Schleiermacher 1977: 198; emphasis mine) We recall the hermeneutical rule that we must understand the whole in terms of the detail and the detail in terms of the whole. [. . .]. It is a circular relationship in both cases. The anticipation of meaning in which the whole is envisaged becomes actual understanding when the parts that are determined by the whole themselves also determine this whole. (Gadamer 2004: 291; emphasis mine) But that is just the beginning. We cannot forget that context is not reducible to co-text, as Gadamer aptly points out: Moreover, this circle is constantly expanding, since the concept of the whole is relative, and being integrated in ever larger contexts always affects the understanding of the individual part. (Gadamer 2004: 189; emphasis mine) It seems to me, then, that the translational circle has something of the fractal structure—if you come close enough or take a few steps back from it, if you zoom in or out, you will see smaller circles within it and larger ones without. Those larger circles, I would suggest, are built of our awareness, knowledge, experience, previous exposure to other texts, people, and ideas, and a host of other elements; in short, the whole contextual bundle of what, where, how, who, how, etc. We are not tabulae rasae. We approach a new text, event, or person already equipped or prejudiced and bring to translation, volens nolens, the totality of our experience, not knowing how exactly it might affect the process and its outcome. This is a dimension of the hermeneutic circle that its theorists are very emphatic about: The understanding of a given statement is always based on something prior, of two sorts—a preliminary knowledge of human beings, a preliminary knowledge of the subject matter. (Schleiermacher 1977: 59; emphasis mine) The interpretation of something as something is essentially grounded in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Interpretation is never a presuppositionless grasping of something previously given. When the particular concretion of the interpretation in the sense of exact text interpretation likes to appeal to what ‘is there’, what is initially ‘there’ is nothing else than the self-evident, undisputed prejudice of the interpreter. (Heidegger 1996: 141; emphasis mine)

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Philosophy  59 Where the bigger and smaller circles—the text, the translator, and his or her broad context—intersect, the interaction between them is also circular. The context, fore-understanding, and fore-projection affect the translation of the text, but the text (as a whole and as individual parts) and the translation (again, both at micro and macro-levels) feed back into the translator’s context: his or her knowledge, experience, ideas, attitudes, convictions, and emotions. The circles are always rotating and setting in motion other circles, back and forth: A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. Working out this fore-projection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there. This description is, of course, a rough abbreviation of the whole. The process that Heidegger describes is that every revision of the foreprojection is capable of projecting before itself a new projection of meaning; rival projects can emerge side by side until it becomes clearer what the unity of meaning is; interpretation begins with fore-conceptions that are replaced by more suitable ones. This constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation. (Gadamer 2004: 269; emphasis mine) Because of this constant movement, translation in one sense is always provisional and never complete. The process of meaning-making does not stop when the translation is published or handed back to the client or when the interpreter renders the speaker’s words. Some translational problems— and my provisional solutions to them—still bug and haunt me, years after the publication of the texts in which they originated. As the circle of my knowledge and experience expands, I become painfully aware of the incompleteness of my earlier grapplings. That is something that a professional translator and interpreter must learn how to live with; we have to embrace the paradox between the pursuit of perfectionism, often identified with completeness, and the constant expansion of the hermeneutic and translational circles, which cannot be contained. When we consider the task of interpretation with this principle in mind, we have to say that our increasing understanding of each sentence and of each section, an understanding which we achieve by starting at the beginning and moving forward slowly, is always provisional. It becomes more complete as we are able to see each larger section as a coherent unity. But as soon as we turn to a new part we encounter new uncertainties and begin again, as it were, in the dim morning light. It is like

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starting all over, except that as we push ahead the new material illuminates everything we have already treated, until suddenly at the end every part is clear and the whole work is visible in sharp and definite contours. (Schleiermacher 1977: 198; emphasis mine) The end of this process, as Schleiermacher describes it, sounds perhaps a little idealistic, though based on my experience I can definitely attest to the “epiphany effect” that sometimes occurs, almost out of nowhere, after I have pursued a number of possible trails. There are translations that need not so much hammering out as testing and perhaps maturing—when they finally reach that stage, things fall into place and the parts start fitting into the whole at last. But even then the translational circle does not stop rotating: With time, the contours become less sharp and definite. Translation as an interpretative act presupposes a certain residual uncertainty and indeterminacy. This constant dynamism of the translation process is further highlighted when Gadamer, following another German thinker and theologian, Rudolf Bultmann, describes the interaction between the translator and the text in terms of a living relationship: Bultmann himself points out that all translation understanding presumes a living relationship between the interpreter and the text, his previous connection with the subject matter it deals with. He calls this hermeneutical requirement fore-understanding, because it is clearly not something to be attained through the process of understanding but is already presupposed. (Gadamer 2004: 327; emphasis mine) Fore-understanding is always there, whether or not we are aware of it: Yet this presupposition is not something that makes understanding easier, but harder, since the fore-meanings that determine my own understanding can go entirely unnoticed. (Gadamer 2004: 271;) What interpretation and translation do is bring these preconceptions to the surface: What is held in the fore-having and understood in a ‘fore-seeing’ view becomes comprehensible through an interpretation [. . .] An interpretation has always already decided, finally or provisionally, upon a definite conceptuality; it is grounded in fore-conception. (Heidegger 1996: 141; emphasis mine) A translation often says more about the translator and his or her conceptual and interpretative framework than about the source text and its alleged

Philosophy  61

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“semantic invariant”. This is what Venuti has in mind when he rejects the instrumental model of translation in favor of the hermeneutic model, which views translation as an interpretive act (2013: 2–5). As you could expect from a hermeneutist, Gadamer, in a reconceptualized reading, not only admits but actually celebrates the realization of the translator’s conceptual and contextual entanglement, placing it at the center of translation: To try to escape from one’s own concepts in interpretation is not only impossible but manifestly absurd. To understand means precisely to bring one’s own preconceptions into play so that the text’s meaning can really be made to speak for us. (Gadamer 2004: 398; emphasis mine) The text does not just speak: It speaks to us. But for a text—or a person—to speak to us, we must listen and be ready to re-examine and adjust our preconceptions in this circular interaction: We cannot stick blindly to our own fore-meaning about the thing if we want to understand the meaning of another. Of course this does not mean that when we listen to someone or read a book we must forget all our fore-meanings concerning the content and all our own ideas. All that is asked is that we remain open to the meaning of the other person or text. But this openness always includes our situating the other meaning in relation to the whole of our own meanings or ourselves in relation to it. (Gadamer 2004: 271; emphasis mine) At this point, the statements about the translational circle start reverberating with the echo of some of the earlier insights: that translation is a response to an address and hence not fully under our control; that it is situated and interpersonal; that it requires receptiveness and openness to difference, etc. These ideas are in constant circulation themselves.

Pulling Together the Threads It is time to pull together all the threads I have been spinning so far. Back in 1993, Andre Lefevere diagnosed translation studies as an emerging discipline with two childhood diseases: “not reading what other people have written” and “always reinventing the wheel” (1993: 229). I hope I have demonstrated that the first disease is no longer a danger, but let me discuss two elements of the latter one, both involving the idea of circularity. Concerning the wheel in the abstract sense, we can agree that it does not have to be reinvented. But there are various practical instantiations of this general idea, different kinds of wheels: solid, wired, spoked, and tired. How the rim is connected to the hub (and how the hub is then fitted on the axle to ensure

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62  Philosophy rotation, stability, and comfort) is not as obvious as it may seem, and the only limits are human imagination and the available technology. A recent project on Kickstarter, an online fundraising platform, has attracted over 150% of its goal for launching the production of patent-protected “loopwheels” for small-rimmed bicycles. The inventor Sam Pearce admits that “lots of people had tried this idea before, especially in the early 20th century. But the materials that were available then just weren’t good enough for the idea to be made to actually work successfully” (2013). Some whats can only work successfully in certain whens—and that is why things, including specific kinds of wheels, have to be reinvented. And yet in Lefevere’s opinion, the activity of reinventing—probably anything, not just the wheel—is evaluated negatively. There is an implicit preference of product rather than process; once again, the focus is definitely, if not exclusively, on the what. What good is there in reinventing something that already exists? Is it not a wasteful expenditure of energy that could be invested otherwise? Should not invention be about progress—and if so, how can progress be achieved by returning to sites visited earlier? As we briefly noted before, progress itself, imbued with positive valuation, is prototypically imagined as linear motion, as moving forward. Reinvention, on the other hand, is conceptualized as circular motion, viewed as repetitive and therefore really uninventive and usually attributed to either ignorance or arrogance or both. In this logic, circulation—and reinvention as one of its manifestations—is futile and unproductive: It does not take us anywhere. Yet what this image ignores is the fact that circular motion, somewhat paradoxically, generates the propelling force. We should know better, even from just looking at the cars we drive and the airplanes we fly. In combustion engines, the linear motion of the piston in the cylinder is converted into the rotation of the shaft that turns the wheels; it’s the rotating blades of the jet turbine that propel the aircraft forward. Circularity, far from being the opposite of progress, actually enables it. Progress depends on circularity. Moreover, reinvention is not about producing more of the same what. Created by a different who in a different how, where, and when, it will be a different what. Here is an illustration based on a rather celebrated example. It is now broadly admitted (e.g. Eves 1969: 340) that calculus was invented—or, if you like, discovered—independently by two great thinkers, Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibnitz, around the same time, namely in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Even though both inventors arrived at similar results—similar enough to sparkle a long and nasty controversy over alleged plagiarism—they did so without being aware of each other’s work. Crucially, they thought of the fundamental concepts in very different ways: “For Newton the calculus was geometrical while Leibniz took it towards analysis” (Sem and Agarwal 2015: 73). In other words, each one of them approached the what of the calculus in a different how. Arguably, if Leibnitz had relied on Newton’s approach, rather than inventing one himself, our understanding of calculus would not be what it is—and how

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Philosophy  63 it is. It would definitely be less clear because it was Leibnitz’s formal notation, his how, that turned out to be better suited for a number of generalized uses and ultimately prevailed. As the mathematician Mark Tomforde (2007) puts it, “the creation of calculus was not a careful march down a wellcleared highway, but rather a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often got lost and many wrong turns were taken”. Once again, we are reminded that progress as a process is rarely linear. There is processual value in traveling (to me, particularly in sailing), in exploration, revisiting, and taking turns, however wrong in strictly linear terms. One of the most important insights from the hermeneutists we have reread in this chapter is that circular processes—re-reading and (re)translation included—are positive, productive, and creative. In short, [t]he circle of understanding is not a vicious circle. (Heidegger 1996: 143; emphasis mine) Gadamer takes this insight a step further when he remarks that “the point of Heidegger’s hermeneutical reflection is not so much to prove that there is a circle as to show that this circle possesses an ontologically positive significance” (2004: 269). Here is how I understand this statement. A rotating wheel produces centrifugal force which leads to the expansion and furthering of boundaries. If, as George Steiner maintains, “there is a centrifugal impulse in language” (1998: 32), the same must be true of translation, which as a hermeneutical process is inherently circular: The movement of understanding is constantly from the whole to the part and back to the whole. Our task is to expand the unity of the understood meaning centrifugally. (Gadamer 2004: 291; emphasis mine) The centrifugal force of translation generated through its circular movement results in the expansion of knowledge, awareness, sense, and meaning. Translation is never about mere replication or transfer. It discloses, discovers, opens, unlocks, brings to the surface, and sets in motion. As an interpretive process, it leads to a fuller understanding and therefore can be identified with it: We shall call this development of understanding interpretation. (Heidegger 1996: 139; emphasis mine) This echoes Schleiermacher’s earlier statement: The development of all knowledge depends on both speaking and understanding.

(Schleiermacher 1977: 97; emphasis mine)

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64  Philosophy Knowledge, in order to develop, demands speaking, verbalization, commitment to language—otherwise, it remains an inner mystical experience. But it also calls for translation: for re-verbalization, retelling, probing for understanding, critical engagement, interrogation, transplantation into new contexts and applications. Untranslated knowledge remains ethnocentric and unaware of its limitations, simplifications, biases, and blind spots. Reading German hermeneutists with a translational interpretant, we learn that translation, far from being a necessary evil, is a necessary good. It has ontologically positive significance. This leads us to the consideration of translation in terms of its axiological status, as well as its relationship with language and culture. In the subsequent chapters, we will turn to theologians, linguists, and anthropologists for more insights about translation.

Note 1 I am very grateful to Carol O’Sullivan for bringing this example to my attention.

3 Theology

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Translation as Process and a Matter of Faith

Turning to theologians for reconceptualized insights about translation may at first seem like an odd choice. Is not theology—etymologically, the study of the divine, holy, and sacred—concerned with an altogether different subject matter? The connection becomes perhaps a little clearer when we consider that for millennia, translation has been thought of and evaluated in terms of fidelity, which Daniel Gile calls the “most fundamental and probably most widely discussed component of translation quality” (2009: 52). Fidelity, etymologically, is “keeping faith”—and faith, after all, is a central theological concept. In recent decades, the increasing problematization of the underlying notion of equivalence has led to a spectacular demise of the crude idea of fidelity in translation theory and has pushed it to the realm of popular and rather unsophisticated forms of translation criticism. I am happy to see it go: Translational fidelity is a very suspect notion that in my view has done more harm than good to reflection on translation by pretending to be objective, natural, and descriptive while actually being subjective, arbitrary, and evaluative. At the same time, I do not think that abandoning this notion has really affected the connection between translation and theology (more broadly, metaphysics). Much in translation, as I see it, involves faith and belief, though of course not necessarily in a religious or spiritual sense. That is why theology—being nothing less that “hermeneutics of faith, its intellectual self-reflection” (Halík 2012: 106)—may contribute a valid and valuable perspective to thinking about translation. I follow John B. Cobb (2007: 165) in understanding theology as “any coherent statement about matters of ultimate concern that recognizes that the perspective by which it is governed is received from a community of faith”. The kind of theology I have in mind deals with matters of ultimate concern but cannot and does not claim monopoly on them. Instead, it recognizes that these matters, whatever they might be, are studied and reflected on from other points of view—philosophical, linguistic, historical, sociological, psychological, artistic, translational, to mention just a few—and indeed oftentimes ventures into grounds shared with these disciplines, as will become clear in the subsequent pages. Consequently, “theology cannot be distinguished by its

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66  Theology subject matter from all other ways of thinking” (Cobb 2007: 166) because it shares the what with them. Rather, it is the how that distinguishes it and which I find interesting, inspiring, and useful. The theological how consists of stressing that, in contrast to disciplines striving for “objectivity” in their explanatory pursuits, a reflection on matters of ultimate concern is ultimately a matter of faith. Indeed, faith is such a central concept in theological thinking that much of this chapter will explore its various aspects as potentially relevant to translation. Before then, however, we need to consider a certain “community of faith”—dealing more broadly with phenomenology and metaphysics—which offers a foundation for more specific theological ­ insights. This intellectual tradition, often described as process thought or “ontology of becoming”, was developed by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and has since provided a conceptual platform to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchanges, especially between philosophy and the sciences (as could be expected based on Whitehead’s dual background). Its potential is precisely in crossing, indeed challenging, disciplinary divides and upsetting assumptions that have long been accepted as self-evident axioms. To my knowledge—and surprise—process thought has not yet been broadly applied to translation studies (the special issue of Target, “Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting Process Research” [2013] does focus on process but in a rather different sense than I am exploring here); what follows may then be considered as a preliminary attempt to do so. What exactly does process thought contribute? Its central stress on becoming over being—and thus occurring over existing—leads to considering the world as composed of events and processes. This effectively challenges much of Western philosophy and theology—as well as certain views on translation—founded on the concept of substance and presupposing not only stability but also a-temporality. “In contrast to the substance-­ metaphysical snapshot view of reality, with its typical focus on eternalist being and on what there is, process philosophers analyze becoming and what is occurring as well as ways of occurring” (Seibt 2013; emphasis in original). In other words, the focus here is being shifted from the what towards the how, when, and other contextual elements. “Process thought points to the flow of experience through time” (Cobb 2012); therefore, rather than think in terms of static systems, we are encouraged to study fluid relationships, influences, and experiences, always situated contextually. This alone augurs well for a new theoretical perspective on translation that vitally depends on its context. At the same time, I find process thought compelling because it does not proceed from epistemological arrogance. Quite the contrary: It is characterized by epistemological humility in asking more questions than offering answers. It often follows the ancient apophatic theological tradition of the via negativa, recognizing that in the metaphysical domain we are ultimately

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Theology  67 reduced to negations—statements on how things are not—and thus constantly must admit the limits of our understanding. Consequently, many of our reconceptualized insights will be negative in form; they will seek to destabilize and challenge some traditionally accepted convictions, but without replacing them with new ones to be held as unshakable. True faith, as I will demonstrate, must be accompanied by true doubt. How do we start applying process theology to translation? Translation, of course, may be understood and described as a process—an activity, emergence, becoming. So, when process thinkers speak about processes in general, might they be asserting something fundamentally important about translation? How can translation studies be stimulated and enriched by process thought? In my attempt to address these questions, I will begin with Whitehead’s general metaphysical insights and subsequently turn to John B. Cobb, Jr., one of preeminent followers of Whitehead in the area of theology. Tracing their thinking and relating it to translation will not always be an easy journey; process thought is often quite dense and conceptually demanding, but I believe that the benefits of its contribution outweigh the necessary processing effort. In opposition to much of Western intellectual and academic tradition, process thought is committed to embracing paradox rather than a pursuit of clarity, which quite often proves to be reductionism in disguise. It fact, process thought argues that clarity, the Holy Grail of the Western style of argumentation, is also a matter of faith or, to be precise, superstition. As Whitehead notes: In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember, that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions. (Whitehead 1967: 72) This, paradoxically, is a rather empowering thought. Maybe it is wrong to expect too much clarity from observations that seek to acknowledge the perplexities of translation. Maybe translation, in its practice and its theory, cannot be abstracted from paradox, conceptual tension and a sense of mystery. Maybe this is where faith comes in. I must admit I have found it liberating to think in terms of what ifs, in terms of propositions unrestrained by the fear of their improbability or mutual incompatibility. Experimentation, in order to be successful in its identification of what is new and untested, must enjoy a sufficient amount of freedom—including the freedom to grasp at straws, float on gossamers, and occasionally make a leap of faith. I hope that the subsequent paragraphs offer a good number of interesting ­propositions—if not always entirely “clear”—that will refresh and expand reflection on translation.

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Translation as Process and Process as Translation At first sight, process thought is easily applicable to translation theory, which often distinguishes between translation as a product and a process. Soon enough, however, we come up against a paradox which both acknowledges and challenges this distinction: Even as product, translation is processual. Not only is production a process—that is obvious enough—but a product is also subsequently perceived, experienced, and used in the process or event of reception, experience, and use. There is a necessary temporal dimension; in other words, matter cannot be abstracted from time: There is a rhythm of process whereby creation produces natural pulsation, each pulsation forming a natural unit of a historic fact. [. . .] The Newtonian description of matter abstracts matter from time. It conceives matter ‘at an instant’ [. . .] If process be fundamental such abstraction is erroneous. (Whitehead 1968: 88–89; emphasis mine) According to Whitehead, a unit of a historic fact—such as a written text or spoken utterance—is characterized by natural pulsation; “natural” in the sense of normal, obvious, and inevitable, proceeding from the very “nature of things”. If translation, as Steiner (1998) puts it, involves hermeneutic motion, and German hermeneutists elaborate on the first, adjectival element of this concept (which we considered in the previous chapter), then process thinkers stress the second, nominal element. Whitehead insists that “ ‘[e]xistence’ (in any of its senses) cannot be abstracted from ‘process’. The notions of ‘process’ and ‘existence’ presuppose each other” (1968: 96). Now, let us stop to consider the full extent of this assertion because it is radically opposed to much of what is normally held (or, shall we say, believed?) in translation theory. Here is a rather representative passage from a relatively recent volume that seeks, according to its title, to outline the “perspectives of an emerging discipline” (namely, translation studies): Regarding both interpretation and translation, I want to call attention to the difference between the activity itself and resulting product of this activity. Obviously, from interpretation as the activity of interpreting we can distinguishing interpretation as a finished object resulting from the interpreting activity. This object is a text which is presented orally or in a written form. Analogously we can distinguish between translation as an activity and translation as the result of the activity of translating. (Bühler 2002: 58) According to process thought, such distinctions are anything but obvious. Not only that: They are, in fact, mistaken and misleading. They perpetuate and reinforce the illusion that there exists an objective, stable, self-sustaining

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Theology  69 text that “contains” certain “content”, easily distinguishable from when, how, and by whom it is perceived—in short, from its context. Process thought considerably problematizes the notion of contextualization. Still, it is not unusual in translation studies to view recontextualization simply as “taking a text out of its original frame and context and placing it within a new set of relationships and culturally conditioned expectations” (House 2006: 356). But who does this taking and placing? How is the text affected by the removal from its original frame and placement in the new set of relationships and expectations? Who recognizes these expectations, and how does he or she decide whether and to what extent comply with them? Otto Kade (1968: 35) distinguishes translation from interpreting by pointing out the fixity of the translation situation; in his view, “a source language test is permanently available and repeatable at libidum into a target language text than can be corrected and repeated any time” (Hebenstreit 2009: 22). However, a processual perspective leads us to reject such a view as naïve and counterfactual. The text is never “the same text”, even to the same reader; and the absurdity of such an assumption emerges even more clearly in an era of electronic communication which challenges the stability of texts. Anyone who has suffered a loss of an email message but still managed to respond to it or was asked to translate material from or for a live website would have to disagree. A static understanding of the source text completely ignores the hermeneutic dimension. Most of the time, we see in a text what we expect to see, not what “is there”. Intersubjective differences aside, even the same person does not always react to the same text in the same way. If that was the case (that is, if texts simply generated responses in their readers), CAT (computer-assisted translation) tools would be unnecessary because the chance of variation would be minimal. A printed text may be permanent, fixed, and eternally available (though, in reality, it is not), but the translator is not the same person from one moment to the other. He or she will be affected by a whole range of contextual factors: by being focused or distracted, hungry or full, relaxed or stressed, and even by what he or she read, heard, or experienced since the previous exposure to the text. In fact, that is precisely why translators do research when confronted with a difficult and partially intelligible text: They want to be transformed and better equipped when they return to it. They do not want to approach the text with the same how as when they first saw it; they do research hoping for a better, fuller how. From a processual perspective, a distinction between translating and interpreting based on the alleged “permanent availability of the written text” makes little sense: Even if texts are to some extent fixed, translators are not. Process thought rejects the notion of a static, a-temporal, and decontextualized existence. To be—in whatever sense—is always to occur, move, and pulsate. This natural pulsation of translation as a creative process is experienced both by the translator (interpreter) and by his or her readers (listeners). We touched on the translator’s experience in the previous chapter when

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70  Theology we considered the circular character of the translation process. Now, for a moment, let us take the perspective of the recipient, user, client, and critic (who may or may not be the same person). According to Whitehead, abstracting matter from time, and product from process, is ­erroneous— and yet a large part of translation criticism, both professional and popular, is still guilty of this abstraction. It mistakes a published or otherwise communicated text for the “ultimate version”, for the pinnacle of the translator’s ability and competence, as if he or she had all the time in the world to digest the source text or mold the translation (think again of Kade’s ideas of permanent availability of texts and unlimited repeatability of translation), as if no residual doubts remained. This is most acutely seen in interpreting, when a recording of a live simultaneous interpretation posted online, and in this sense decontextualized, is subsequently judged by self-proclaimed experts against standards of written language as factually of linguistically deficient—especially when they have access to the text of the original speech, which often turns to be read aloud, rather than delivered spontaneously. (Here’s a little detour into interpreting practice: It is a nightmare to provide a simultaneous interpretation of a paper that is being read and not spoken because it is intersemiotic, that is, it involves a change of medium, with all its characteristics. Somehow counterintuitively, speakers make their interpreters’ lives easier and facilitate the quality of the interpretation not by “just sticking to the text” read from the page, but rather by presenting its content spontaneously, in authentic spoken language.) But the product of translation, and simultaneous interpreting as its special case, cannot be abstracted from the process and its spatiotemporal, contextual embedding. As we said, even as a product it has a processual nature: What in retrospect and against the standards of written language is an allegedly deficient rendition often proves to have been perfectly adequate in the opinion of the recipients in situ. There and then, in the actual communicative situation, it functioned well and served its purpose successfully. The same is true when we reverse the direction of the intersemiotic exchange: Subtitling is very different from simply producing a translation of a transcribed dialogue list. Abstracting it from the context in which it is provided, considering it as a mere “product” to be judged against some universalized standards is methodologically absurd and ethically unfair; it is nothing short of changing the rules not just during the game, but when the game is over. Whitehead as a mathematician observes that “the discovery of mathematics, like all discoveries, 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: 93) This erroneous thinking, I am afraid, extends beyond the sciences and well into the humanities. “The doctrine of form” prevails in much of traditional and popular thinking about translation. Yet translation is not a lifeless, motionless, a-temporal form, but a complex, pulsating event. It resists attempts of reduction to

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simpler elements. In his recent proposal of theorizing translation from the perspective of complexity theory, Kobus Marais argues that translation cannot be reduced to any one of its constituent phenomena or any combination of these. Translation is inherently a complex phenomenon caused by factors too complex to compute. Furthermore, the influence of translation, that is, its effects, is also too complex to compute. Translation is both caused by a complexity of phenomena and causes complex phenomena; that is, it is an emergent phenomenon. (Marais 2014: 10) Considering translation as an emergent phenomenon demonstrates remarkable convergence of these two intellectual currents: Both complexity theory and process thought move away from “linear logic towards paradoxical or non-linear or complex logic to be able to do justice to the complexity of reality” (Marais 2014: 17) in its wholeness and interrelatedness. In both approaches, reality is to be explained not just by an analysis of stable and discrete ­elements—by their what—but rather “by the way in which they relate to one another or by the way in which they are becoming” (Marais 2014: 18), that is, the how. In this account of reality, translation is thoroughly processual.

Potentiality The recognition of translation as process—in a Whiteheadian understanding of the concept (signaled by the absence of the indefinite article: process, not just a process)—leads us to considering several related notions, the first of which is potentiality. In order to properly appreciate the import of this notion, we have to take a little excursion into the history of ideas. The dichotomy between actuality and potentiality goes back to Aristotle, who used the respective terms energeia (or entelecheia) and dunamis, stressing the priority of the former over the latter: Actuality is to potentiality, Aristotle tells us, as ‘someone waking is to someone sleeping, as someone seeing is to a sighted person with his eyes closed, as that which has been shaped out of some matter is to the matter from which it has been shaped’. (Cohen 2012) This could be—and, in fact, has been—one way of thinking about the metaphysics of translation. One could argue that a text understood as matter has in itself a certain potentiality that may or may not be actualized through translation. This actualization, a translation—indeed, any of its possible translations—is already potentially contained in the original text, as something dormant waiting to be awaken, or as a statue to be carved from a block of marble. By the same token, a thing cannot become something that

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72  Theology it has no potentiality for becoming without forfeiting its essence. An acorn may (or may not, here is one difference between potentiality and actuality) grow into an oak—but certainly not into a birch. It has the potential to grow into a range of forms of oak trees, frail or strong, as affected by environmental circumstances, but each of them will be an oak. The tree form is potentially there in the matter of the acorn. This kind of thinking, when applied to translation, presupposes an organic, essential (“essence” in the sense of the metaphysical matter) relationship between the source and target texts. Whatever the translation becomes and whatever it achieves, it is only the actualization of the original’s potential. That does not mean that a translation is necessarily inferior to its original—as we said, in Aristotle’s view, actuality is to be preferred over potentiality (as “real” is preferred to merely “possible”)—but it is always essentially derivative. A translation is expected to convey the “sense” of the original, be faithful to its “spirit” or communicate its “semantic dominant” (Stanisław Barańczak’s [1994: 21] term); if this link is somehow broken and a translation becomes in some sense autonomous, its status is put to question. It becomes, at best, an overly loose adaptation or, at worst, a mistranslation that perverts the essence (sense, impact, effect, etc.) of the original text and does not actualize its potentiality. According to Aristotle, potentiality was indefinable and the idea could only be grasped from a consideration of cases (Cohen 2012); in other words, it did not lend itself easily to a theoretical explanation. Likewise, the closest we have come to the theorization of ideas such as “the spirit of the original”, “faithful translation”, or “semantic dominant” is through the vague and largely intuitive concept of equivalence, which ultimately is “a belief structure” (Pym 2014: 37). Theo Hermans sums it well: Equivalence [understood as] equality in value and status, is not a feature that can be extrapolated on the basis of textual comparison. Rather than being extracted from texts, equivalence is imposed on them through an external intervention in a particular institutional context. [. . .] [E]quivalence is proclaimed, not found. (Hermans 2007: 6). Indeed, equivalence is proclaimed—very much like a gospel. Do we need a better argument for the relevance of theology (more broadly, metaphysics) to the theoretical reflection of translation than the fact that one of traditionally central translational concepts, namely equivalence, is actually a matter of faith and a subject of proclamation? But let us return from this discussion of potentiality in the classical, Aristotelian sense, to a Whiteheadian understanding of this concept to see if this can offer us stimulating insights on translation: [I]f we start with the process as fundamental, then the actualities of the present are deriving their characters from the process, and are

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bestowing their characters upon the future. Immediacy is the realization of the potentialities of the past, and is the storehouse of the potentialities of the future [. . .] The potentialities in immediate fact constitute the driving force of process. (Whitehead 1968: 99–100; emphasis mine) A processual concept of potentiality is temporal rather than material. Whitehead speaks of “potentialities of the past and future”; to him, they do not reside in the matter or the “true essence” of things. Let me try and unpack this assertion. A text or an utterance is not a timeless “substance” (reduced to its what), but a present “immediacy” in which past and future potentialities converge. This convergence is profoundly contextual, i.e., uniquely embedded not just in the spatiotemporal setting (the where and when), but also in subjective and individual terms (the who and how). The driving force in translation—the whether and why—proceeds from the “potentialities of immediate fact” which are in no way reduced to the what of the text’s static, Aristotelian potentiality. A text can be interpreted, translated, used in a completely new and unexpected way, unwarranted by its source text, depending on who, where, when, how, and why does it. Let us note that in this approach, potentialities are thought of in the plural. Time is conceptualized not as a one-dimensional line (which leads to a very simplified view of sequentiality and causality), but as three-dimensional space in which potentialities emerge non-sequentially, parallel to one another. How a certain text is translated is influenced by a range of factors going well beyond “what is in the text”. These factors, of which we can think as potentialities themselves, include the translator’s reliance, conscious or not, on other texts (intertextuality); his or her sensitivity shaped by personal history (subjectivity); presently experienced interferences, inspirations, and pressures; in short, all that can be subsumed under the complex “spur of the moment”. The same holds for the translation’s reception. The process of translation will have its stamp on the resultant text (in the sense that one translation will naturally differ from others), but it will not determine its interpretation or use because that is something that belongs to a different process altogether. A translation is not predestined to become something—or restricted from becoming ­something—by the immanent properties (understood as quiddities) of the source text and the extent of their preservation. Potentialities, both past and future, are potentially infinite. “Where it surpasses the original, the real translation infers that the sourcetext possesses potentialities, elemental reserves as yet unrealized by itself” (Steiner 1998: 318). Such a perspective has a strong parallel not only in the already mentioned complexity theory (e.g. Marais 2014), but also in insights offered by deconstruction, which, based on a similar anti-essentialist stance, challenges the ideas of stability of meaning but instead sees translation as a form of transformation (for a concise discussion, see, e.g., Pym 2014: 105ff). Viewed in this light, the radical claims of deconstructionists no longer seem so radical; they are foreshadowed by process thought.

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74  Theology At this point, however, we can ask the question: Are we really still talking about translation? If we abandon the kind of thinking based on the concepts of substance and transfer, if potentialities realized by translation do not proceed from the original, then what is translation, after all? How is it different from creative activity not directly following from any other entity or event but simply embedded in a multi-layered web of various influences, reaching both into the past and into the future? I suppose few artists would claim absolute creative and aesthetic autonomy (in the sense of not being influenced at all by anyone else’s art), but yet, we do not typically call their work translations: Why not? If, as Lawrence Venuti (2012b: 4) argues, “the key concept in any translation research and commentary is [. . .] the relative autonomy of translation”, don’t we need the relative component, a relation to something else, in order to prevent the utter erosion of the concept? Is there anything that distinguishes translations from (other) autonomous texts? Why are some processes, including texts, called translations and others are not? I believe that at least a partial answer to these and similar questions may be found in the concepts of identity and causality, as developed by process thought. Again, we must be aware that both of them will occasionally differ from the classical or common understanding.

Identity Since at the core of process thought is flow of experience through time, it is hardly surprising that identity is construed in predominantly temporal terms. Identity, first of all, is self-identity; it is the sustained continuity of being itself or oneself. Apart from the notion of time, the concept of identity becomes meaningless because there is nothing (or no one) that a given entity (or person) should be the same as or—in the strict sense of the word—identical to. In speaking about identity, we assert a temporal continuity of existence. However, this existence is understood not as being but as occurring—in short, as process—and therefore identity cannot simply be conceived of as a static, uninterrupted relationship with itself or oneself “from a different time”. Even that would be problematic, as we can see in the exploration of this motif in fiction. Stanisław Lem’s Dzienniki Gwiazdowe (Star Diaries) (1957) offers a relevant thought experiment when the protagonist, Ijon Tichy, during the seventh voyage falls into a series of time vortices and comes up against several copies of himself, different “himselves” from the few adjoining days, both past and future. From the perspective of an external observer, the reader, this experience seems hilarious (indeed, Lem is there at his comical best), but Tichy’s predominant feeling is that of alienation towards himselves from different days, quickly turning into impatience, annoyance, and outright hostility. An entity, a person, or a thing from a different time is in some senses similar but in others different to itself, herself, or himself. In process thought, identity is as fluid, unstable, and dynamic as is existence. Process thinkers stress that even at the

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Theology  75 molecular level, we cannot meaningfully speak of a static identity. Matter is in constant movement: From one nanosecond to another, material objects, including our bodies, are not static collections of the same atoms and cells. In short, “there is no absolute self-identity through time” (Cobb 2007: 35). How useful, or at least interesting, is the concept of identity to a theory of translation? In one sense, a strong connection is already there, especially when identity is considered as a sociocultural and not merely metaphysical notion. A more extensive discussion must be postponed until Chapter 5, in which we will take a more sociocultural perspective. At this stage, I simply want to state that translation touches identity in a powerful way because both are concerned with the tension between identity preservation and change. Let us have a closer look at several statements made from a processual point of view and try to reconceptualize them in terms of translation. Though they seem to evoke an origin in a historical past with which they continue to correspond, actually identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being. (Hall 1996: 4; emphasis mine) To my ear, this statement resonates with two insights. The first of them basically follows the lines of Venuti’s (2008) well-known argument, so I will only state it briefly. Translations, like identities, often involve an illusion of correspondence to something “objective”, to a historical text, utterance, or setting. In fact, it is much more than correspondence; the underlying conviction is that an identity-based translation is really a perpetuation of a prior existence of the original. There is a metaphysical link ensuring a unity of essence. In accordance with this illusion, the relative autonomy of a translation is frequently downplayed and minimized. Many translations, not only of literary but also commercial and technical texts, are almost transparent in formal, stylistic, and linguistic terms, that is, practically indistinguishable from indigenous texts produced in the receiving context, which makes the translator “invisible” (Venuti 2008). Ironically, the more transparent and readable (in Venuti’s terms: more fluent) a translation is, the stronger is its reliance on the resources of the target language and culture—and, in this sense, the greater its autonomy from the source text, embedded in an altogether different context. The most fluent translations—like the most monolithic identities—are in a sense the least “true” in presenting a totally domesticated representation of its origin. Translational identity understood as correspondence, as uninterrupted continuity, as unity of essence, is an illusion. Luckily, the hermeneutic model helps dispel this illusion quite successfully by stressing that understanding is construed contextually by the hermeneutist. The second thought is less popular and therefore, perhaps, more interesting: Translation is a question of becoming rather than being. In a sense, it says more about its own context and its use of the resources of its history,

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language, and culture than about the source to which it claims to correspond. Moreover, this correspondence cannot be understood in an essentialist way: Directly contrary to what appears to be its settled semantic career, this concept of identity does not signal a stable core of the self, unfolding from the beginning to end through all the vicissitudes of history without change; the bit of the self which remains always-already ‘the same’, identical to itself across time. (Hall 1996: 3; emphasis in original) Here is a classical example of the via negativa: We learn that identity does not really involve a stable core that would require preservation. Now, taking into account this negative observation, could we still hypothesize that what holds between the source and the target text is a relationship of identity? Let us consider sworn translation (also referred to as authenticated or certified translation, setting aside some terminological nuances). Possibly no other form of translation is so radically different from and at the same time similar to its original text. The language of sworn translations is often extremely foreignized because it seeks to reproduce the peculiarities of the original text and context; it allows no syntactic alterations or cultural adaptations. Where the original document has an actual impression of a seal, the translation has a description (“an impression of a national emblem in red ink, with the following inscription in the circumference, etc.”), an illegible signature is not meticulously reproduced by the translator but simply called “illegible”. A certified translation is presented as such: It is required to signal its status clearly in the header or footer of the page (e.g. “Certified translation from the original French”), carry a unique reference number recorded in the translator’s official register, and be duly stamped and signed by the translator. It is so markedly different that no one could possibly mistake it for its original document, and yet for legal purposes, it is considered “authentic”, i.e., identical to the original—so much so that it can be used in its place as evidence. This assertion of identity is based not on formal resemblance, but on the translator’s authority formally delegated by the state. A sworn translator is effectively a government officer who, having passed the required examinations, is ceremoniously sworn in—shall we say, anointed?—not unlike a notary public or a judge. From now on, the who and how matter no less than the what. In terms of their legal validity, an original document and its certified translation are identical; in nearly all other aspects, they are distinctly different. Insights from process thought are directly relevant here: Complete self-identity can never be preserved in any advance to novelty. The only question is, as to whether the loss is relevant to the purposes of the argument. The baby in the cradle, and the grown man in middle age, are in some senses identical and in other senses diverse. (Whitehead 1968: 107)

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Theology  77 Now, could the relationship between a source text and its translation be compared to that between a baby and the grown woman or man the baby will become? This is certainly an interesting thought. Why do we consider both the same person? Bearing in mind the vast scope covered by the concept of identity, let us for a moment set aside all its other dimensions (e.g. psychological, cultural, etc.) and focus on just one aspect, namely the identity of the material body. As we said, at the molecular level, there is no strict identity: The atoms that make up both entities at any given point in time are not the same atoms. At higher levels of organization, this becomes rather more complicated. Even though a human body is constantly replacing old cells with new ones, various kinds of tissues do it at different rates. For example, fat calls are replaced at the rate of about 10% per year (Spalding et al. 2008), but for some brain cells, hippocampal neurons, the annual turnover rate is just about 1.75%, and only one-third of them are subject to exchange (Spalding et al. 2013). Thus, at the level of brain cells, we can only speak of relative identity: We are born with some of the same cells that remain a part of us until we die. But aside from this turnover of cells, which would seem to challenge the idea of uninterrupted individual identity, there is also the genetic level of identity that DNA tests can establish: Different samples of biological material can be found to come from one organism, with a probability so high that it approximates certainty. There is a certain unique pattern, a certain sequence of nucleotides, DNA building blocks, that both samples have in common, which leads to assuming the identity of their source. It might seem that in this discussion, we have drifted quite far from the issue of translational identity, but that is not the case—in fact, the idea of DNA sampling has a rather close parallel in corpus-based translation studies. Research in stylometry has demonstrated that frequency analysis of the most popular words (in English: the, to, and, of, I, a, in, that, etc.) can be successfully used in authorial attribution for both original texts and their translations. In a recent study, Jan Rybicki examined a number of corpora of literary translations using Burrows’s Delta stylometric distance method to find that “except for some few highly adaptative translations, the method [. . .] usually fails to identify the translator and identifies the author of the original instead” (2012: 231). This means that translations largely preserve some stylometric properties of their source texts—to the extent of being attributable to their original authors. According to Rybicki, the “fingerprint” manifested in the use of most frequent words enables a high success of not just authorial, but also the generic and chronological attribution of literary texts (2014: 68–73), while stylometrically speaking, translators usually remain more or less “invisible” (2014: 83). Stylometry suggests that the “relative autonomy” of the translation, at least at one linguistic level, is indeed severely limited, and the relationship between texts and their translations can be theorized as involving a certain kind of identity. This qualification (“a certain kind”) serves as a reminder that style cannot be reduced to word frequencies, and while identity may be a helpful

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concept in theorizing translation, it must be is sufficiently appreciated in terms of its complexity. Even in strictly biological terms, the identity of an organism is a complicated issue, combining fixity and change. If translations involve identity, they will always “preserve” something and “change” something (I put these verbs in quotes to signal their nonessentialist sense) because this is exactly what identity does. It is never complete: The planets, the stones, the living things all witness to the wide preservation of identity. But equally they witness to the partiality of such preservation. Nothing in realized matter-of-fact retains complete identity with its antecedent self. This self-identity in the sphere of realized fact is only partial. It holds for certain processes. It dominates certain kinds of processes. But in other sorts of processes, the differences are important, and the self-identity is an interesting fable. For the purpose for inheriting real estate, the identity of the man of thirty years with the former baby of ten months is dominant. For the purpose of navigating the yacht, the differences between the man and the child are essential; the identity between them sinks into a metaphysical irrelevancy. (Whitehead 1968: 94–95) The question of whether identity in translation is dominant and essential or perhaps “sinks into metaphysical irrelevancy” is to me an open one. Whether a translation is to be considered as somehow identical with its original is a matter of purpose and perspective, but also faith. For certified translations, legal identity is vital and can be secured through strict adherence to certain conventions (which, interestingly, does not preclude the existence of conflicting versions), but in the end, it is vouchsafed by the authority of the translator. In most other contexts, it must be stressed that we always deal with a (not the) translation situated in a specific hermeneutic situation. From an ethical perspective, highlighting the perceived identity of the translation with the original may lead to the erasure of the translator and his or her role. That is why discussions of translational fixity have to be counterbalanced by a recognition of translational fluidity. There is much more to be said of this tension and its underlying paradoxes; in Chapter Five, we will return to the concept of identity and take this discussion a little further. But now, let us turn to another closely related processual concept that may aid us in the exploration of translational whats and hows.

Causation, Occasion, Conditioning, and Qualitative Succession Admitting the notion of process as fundamental leads us to the consideration of temporal relationships. As we said, identity—especially in its

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Theology  79 prototypical form, self-identity—is about the diachronic relationship with oneself or itself. But what about the relationship with other entities? This is the question that is addressed by the concept of causation, which in many ways seems more adequate for our purposes. Regardless of the extent of a translation’s “relative autonomy” to its original text, it is beyond doubt that they are arranged in a chronological sequence. A translation, by definition, occurs after what it proclaims to translate. Some terms actually highlight this temporal succession. This is the case with anuvad, “a Sanskrit and Hindi term for written translation that basically means [. . .] ‘repeating’ or ‘saying later’ ”; according to this conceptualization, translation is “a constant process of updating and elaborating” (Pym 2014: 2). But there is more to this. To simply identify translation with effect, and original (or source text) with cause, would be missing the point. Causation is such a promising theoretical concept because it concerns both relata (a quick terminological reminder: A relatum is one of the objects between which a relation holds). True, the term “causation” in English conceptualizes the process from the point of view of the prior relatum, the cause, from which the notion takes its name. If we were to take the opposite perspective, the process would then be conceptualized as “effectation”. What we have to remember is that regardless of our selected conceptualization, we are looking at the entire process, the relation between the cause and effect, viewed from either end. With that in mind, let us apply Cobb’s statement about causation to translation: The occasion that is felt is always in the past of the occasion that feels it. Cause always precedes effect [. . .] In other words, there is no causal relation between contemporary occasions. (Cobb 2007: 6–7) Likewise, there is no translational relation between contemporary occasions, or to put it in positive terms: A translational relation only holds between subsequent events. The temporal succession is key, but the perspective of the cause should not monopolize the perception of the entire process. Both kinds of relata are important. Effects need causes, but causes also need effects (otherwise, they would not be causes, but singular isolated events); one concept presupposes the other. In the same way, a text only becomes an original when it is translated; prior to translation, the concept of an original is meaningless. In practical terms, this means that we need to tread with caution and be flexible in our reconceptualizations. Translation may be substituted for causation to signal the causal relationship involved, but that does not automatically replace cause with the original or source text. Process thinkers speak of events, occasions, and occurrences as causes; reducing them all to texts would suppress their processual nature and trivialize the potentially rich insights that originate when translation is reconceptualized as causation (understood in a way that goes beyond the etymology of the

80  Theology term). With that caveat in mind, let us join Whitehead in the following hypothetical reflection on translation as causation:

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Consider our notion of causation. How can one event be the cause of another? In the first place, no event can be wholly and solely the cause of another event. (Whitehead 1968: 164; emphasis mine) No translation is wholly and solely derived from or driven by its original. Translation always involves exegesis (reading out) as well as eisegesis (reading in). As we noted in the previous chapter, what we bring to the translation process cannot be confined to the what of the source text: No event can be wholly and solely the cause of another event. The whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion. (Whitehead 1968: 164; emphasis mine) But causation is a complex concept (and so is translation, which is one of the reasons why they can be mutually illuminating). This complexity means that in this particular passage, “a new occasion” can be interpreted and reconceptualized in different ways. Causation is not always a simple binary relationship. An effect may become a cause of another effect. In some circular configurations, isolating cause from effect is virtually impossible. Translation is certainly a new occasion, but so is a source text. Following Whitehead, we can assert that the whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new translation—but also a new source text. When, where, how, and why something becomes a new source text for translation is an extremely complex question. Think of the sudden surge in translations of newly announced—and previously lesser known—laureates of literary awards. For example, it is hardly accidental that all translations of Orhan Pamuk’s novels into Polish (and, I suppose, into a range of other languages) were commissioned and published after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006 (some of them in a matter of days after the award was announced). What is selected for translation (and when) is normally influenced by market demand or fashion (which is often the same thing), by personal taste and interest, by previous experience, or sometimes by speculation on the part of those who commission it: publishers, editors, authors, sometimes translators themselves. The decontextualized merits of the text are not nearly as vital as its current topicality and political import, the real drivers of its marketing potential. Contrary to what one may think from reading some academic studies, translations typically do not just appear in recognition of some literary genius or as a result of some unstoppable migration of ideas; rather, they are commissioned for personal, political, or simply profit-driven reasons. Amongst a multitude of possible

Theology  81 causes—the complex conspiring of the whole antecedent world—there is typically one dominant factor:

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Some one occasion in an important way conditions the formation of the successor. (Whitehead 1968: 164; emphasis mine) With this comment, we pass from causation to conditioning, which thus becomes another candidate for a conceptual substitution. Whitehead carries on: How can we understand this process of conditioning? The mere notion of transferring a quality is entirely unintelligible. (Whitehead 1968: 164; emphasis mine) The model of translation based on transfer and the underlying conduit metaphor for communication, which until recently practically monopolized the Western reflection on translation, have done much to obscure the relevant phenomena. It is easy to understand why: The notion of transfer presupposes a dominant substance-based metaphysics with all its blind spots, the most glaring of which is its exclusive preoccupation with the what to the exclusion of other contextual elements. Contrary to what that model suggests, meaning is not really “encoded” by the sender, “carried” by words in the form of sound waves or markings on the page, and subsequently “decoded” by the recipient. If communication and translation were based on transfer, then source texts should disappear from their original contexts the instant they are translated into a new environment. The essence of meaning cannot be preserved when the container of form is changed; indeed, the whole content vs. container dichotomy is fundamentally flawed. What is translated is not what the texts objectively “say”. Meaning-making and translation (which are largely the same thing) are always situated contextually and influenced by a range of personal, social, institutional, political, cultural, historical, and other factors. That is why we have different reactions, interpretations, and translations. That is why translation is never finished, complete, or final. But let us go back to the question: How can causality and conditioning help us understand translation? In doing so, we need to evoke once again the concept of a “relative autonomy” of translation. Indeed, this autonomy must be relative and not absolute: Suppose that two occurrences may be in fact detached so that one of them is comprehensible without reference to the other. Then all notion of causation between them, or conditioning, becomes unintelligible. There is—with this supposition—no reason why the possession of any quality by one of them should in any way influence the possession of that quality, or of any other quality, by the other. With such a doctrine

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the play and interplay of qualitative succession in the world becomes a blank fact from which no conclusions can be drawn as to past, present or future, beyond the range of direct observation. Such a positivistic belief is quite self-consistent, provided that we do not include in it any hopes for the future or regrets for the past. (Whitehead 1968: 164–165; emphasis mine) It is clear that this supposition of complete interpretive and creative ­ etachment—which some advocates of the translator’s autonomy and origid nality come close to suggesting—actually moves us away from any reasonable theory of translation. For translation, at least how as I understand it, is precisely concerned with—in fact, driven by—hopes for the future and regrets for the past. It is about relations and relationships, many of them temporal in nature, and that is why its theory yields itself to the idea of causation. When we assume a causal (i.e. translational) relation between occurrences (i.e. texts or utterances), we can indeed account for it in terms of “qualitative succession”, a reproduction of, above all, the how. Quality, as I proposed in Chapter 1, is how-ness. Adding to the spatial model a temporal dimension—in other words, abandoning substance metaphysics is favor of process thought—opens up new theoretical perspectives. Perhaps certain qualities of the original are not “transferred” to its translation, but rather “reborn”, “manifested”, and “recreated” in it? But how could we account for this in theoretical terms? Let us turn to Whitehead again: The only intelligible doctrine of of immanence.

causation

is founded on the doctrine (Whitehead 1968: 165)

Indeed, philosophical reflection on the metaphysics of causation typically starts from considering the issue of immanence. One of the first questions is whether relata are concrete and located in space-time (i.e. immanent) or abstract and non-spatiotemporal (i.e. transcendent). “If the relata are transcendent, then they are facts. If they are immanent, then they are events, or one of the other candidates such as features, tropes, or situations” (Schaffer 2014). Faced with this choice, Whitehead insists that the concept of causation (and we may add: translation) only makes sense if founded on immanence. Relata in causational (and translational) relationships are events, features, tropes, and situations. As we remember from our discussion of hermeneutical insights, texts do not “speak” to everyone in the same way, not even to the same person at different times. Texts and their translations— generally speaking, relata—are not abstract, objective facts, but rather experiences of the perceiving subject, spatiotemporal “occasions” (which leads us to another reconceptualization): Each occasion presupposes the antecedent world as active in its own nature. This is the reason why events have a determinate status relatively

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to each other. Also, this is the reason why the qualitative energies of the past are combined into a pattern of qualitative energies in each present occasion. (Whitehead 1968: 165; emphasis mine) Well then, perhaps the relationship between originals and their translations (as well as between authors and their translators and, subsequently, readers or listeners) is more helpfully understood in terms of energy flow? Isn’t what Whitehead calls “a pattern of qualitative energies”, simply the power of the how? Perhaps that is what translation is all about in the first place. When I think of translations coming from unfamiliar linguistic and cultural contexts and which I find striking, fascinating, or sometimes disconcerting, it is not only because of what they say, but also how. Is not one of the central translational controversies, the foreignization vs. domestication debate, also centered on the question of how to represent otherness and difference? This takes us to another conceptual distinction.

Inclusion and Exclusion The translational process is one involving creation; therefore, “creative” can be re-read as “translational” in the following passage: The whole world conspires to produce a new creation. It presents to the creative process its opportunities and its limitations [. . .] [A]ll the elements of a complex whole contribute to some one effect, to the exclusion of others. The creative process is a process of exclusion to the same extent as it is a process of inclusion. In this connection ‘to exclude’ means to relegate to irrelevance in the aesthetic unity, and ‘to include’ means to elicit relevance to that unity. (Whitehead 1926: 113) If translation is ultimately about choice, then it necessarily entails leaving something behind as deselected. “Translation is a profoundly ambiguous operation” that juxtaposes “phases of openness” with “phases of closure” (Cronin 2013: 74). This is relevant not only to the semantic and aesthetic dimensions but also the ethical one: Every translation highlights something while hiding something else. The most pertinent illustration of this point has indeed much to do with inclusion and exclusion. In the area of Bible translation, it is often argued that the Jewish and Christian sacred texts originated in a male-dominated culture, and therefore, many passages in the original languages, Hebrew and Greek, are male biased and in this sense, gender exclusive. In an attempt to eliminate this prejudice offensive to women, some Bible translators choose to pluralize the problematic singular references to make them gender neutral. Here is one example to illustrate the point. The New King James Bible translates the opening verse of Psalm 1 as follows: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

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84  Theology nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful”. Against such a male-biased image, the New Revised Standard Version offers this rendition: “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers”. However, this technique while solving one problem creates another: The use of plural forms to bypass gender exclusivity changes the perspective from individual to collective, sometimes introducing a different doctrinal nuance. In fact, one particularly vocal commentator argues that this specific pluralization results not only in “a loss of the picture of the moral courage of a solitary righteous man standing against plural sinners” but, more importantly, in “a shift away from the Bible’s emphasis on the relationship between God and individual persons to a greater emphasis on groups” as well as “a loss of any possibility of seeing this ‘blessed man’ in the Psalms as a foreshadowing of Christ, the truly righteous Man” (Grudem 2005). To what extent these comments are exegetical or indeed eisegetical is not my concern here. What I want to illustrate is the inevitable dilemma of translation as a hermeneutic act: Selecting one interpretation means not only leaving others unselected, but actually making them more difficult to discern, pushing them away from the limelight. This is indeed a process in which “all the elements of a complex whole contribute to some one effect, to the exclusion of others” (Whitehead 1926: 113). This particular example and the discussion around it (revolving around theological, ideological, and intertextual objections) demonstrate that translation is always involved, always partial, always taking sides, even by merely deselecting and un-choosing. I cannot fail to notice that Whitehead repeatedly speaks of how the entire world “conspires” to produce a new “creation” (1926: 13) and “occasion” (1968: 164), which I suggest to re-read as “translation”. This means that the process is not entirely transparent, but rather proceeds through subterranean currents, persistent obstacles, and power struggles. Translation has a sinister or uncanny side, maybe because we cannot fully account for it and explain it away. There is a certain element of mystery that remains undisclosed— and perhaps this is another characteristic that makes translation what it is. A mystery—unlike a problem—does not call for an immediate solution, but rather for deeper reflection, for humility, for appreciation of paradox. It is here that theology can help enrich the reflection on translation.

Translation as Faith Thus we have come to the second major theme of this chapter: the question of faith. From metaphysics, we move towards mysticism and existentialism. As we leave the philosophical branch of process thought represented by Alfred North Whitehead and John B. Cobb to proceed towards its theological or, better still, spiritual offshoot, our perspective will also change from abstract and universal towards personal and existential. Speaking about faith—especially one’s own—is an act of vulnerability. From the

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Theology  85 relatively safe space of philosophical deliberations (how many of us would be personally touched or offended by discussions of immanence, causality, or conditioning?), we come to the sensitive space of personal belief and spiritual experience, often felt as painfully incommunicable. In the Western world, faith is increasingly considered as something very intimate, personal, and private. I want to respect this attitude. In my subsequent reflections of translation conceptualized as various aspects of faith, I recognize that what speaks to me as inspiring and convincing may not appeal to everyone in the same way, and that is only to be expected. By focusing on questions of faith, we are entering the domain of feeling, experience, and inspiration, not coldheaded persuasion and irrefutable arguments. I will draw comments for reflection and reconceptualization chiefly from the writings of two theologians, the Czech Catholic priest Tomáš Halík (b. 1948)—who is also a psychotherapist and a philosopher—and the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945). They cannot be considered as representatives of process theology in the strict sense (though they often sound very sympathetic to some of its central claims), but I feel a strong experiential and intellectual affinity with both of them. To start with, there is an undeniable geopolitical and partly personal connection: With Bonheoffer, I share the city of birth (prior to the Second World War, Wrocław was a part of the German Reich), and with Halík, the broad cultural background (viewed from anywhere else other than Eastern Europe, the cultural distance between Poland and the Czech Republic becomes almost negligible). But how exactly have I come to read their spiritual writings as relevant to translation theory? In Halík’s case, one reason is the sheer breadth of his notes, which combine a philosophical, theological, spiritual, historical, political, social, and psychological perspective (and possibly several others). Given my view of translation as a transdiscipline, it is only natural to expect numerous points of convergence with such a broad approach. However, in many cases, I cannot explain precisely why I find a certain thought inspiring or interesting; the real reason must simply be the how of Halík’s thinking. When I first came across his theological and spiritual reflections, I was struck by their truth and depth—and immediately felt that much of his approach to the question of faith is paralleled in my own thinking about translation. The best testimony of this affinity is that the opening line of Halík’s recent book—when we substitute translation for faith—ideally captures the approach I have tried to follow in mine: The faith spoken of throughout this book (and which gave rise to it) is paradoxical in nature. One must therefore use paradoxes to write about it honestly and not superficially, one can only live it—honestly and not superficially—as a paradox. (Halík 2012: 1) In Halík’s appreciation of the crucial role of paradox in all things spiritual (and, potentially, translational) but also the ethical impulse to write about

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86  Theology them in a honest way—which, I believe, includes a personal and existential perspective—I can sense a kindred spirit hovering comfortably over the disciplinary boundaries. In this case, that kinship is also manifested practically: Unlike with other authors re-read here, I have to rely on my own translation of Halík’s insights because the book I have found most relevant, Co je bez chvěni, není pevné (“What does not sway is unstable”) has not yet been published in English. This means that the reflections that follow are additionally prone to bear the stamp of my personal translational interpretation. In considering translation as (an act of) faith, the complex and paradoxical nature of both most strongly comes to the fore, and we often find ourselves following the via negativa. Let us then start by suggesting what faith is not. Faith is not a collection of explicitly held convictions. It is not based on pure reasoning, dispassionate calculation, or intellectual acceptance of objective facts. It cannot be reduced to a set of statements (that would be doctrine), sociocultural practices (that would be piety or religion), or indeed psycho-emotional states (that would be mysticism); it is not anything specific that one could think, feel, say, or do. Rather, it operates on an altogether different level which concerns the way we approach the world around us. Faith, as Halík puts it, is “a specific sort of attitude to reality” (2012: 13), which I suggest can be summed up in one central concept: Faith is really about the how. This is what makes it profoundly relevant to the reflection on translation. Like faith, translation is neither pure mysticism nor pure activism. Translation is not merely an intellectual exercise, a thought experiment, or an emotional response. It necessarily involves something very practical—an act of communication, an actual encounter—but it cannot be reduced to a specific textual, verbal, or social activity. In the words of one biblical writer, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2: 17, NIV), but, by the same token, not all works are the fruit of faith, either. Both faith and translation involve thinking, feeling, and acting. Both have an introspective, relational, and (usually) verbal or textual aspect. Let us see what can be gleaned from reconceptualizing translation as faith and how we can speak of it “chiefly in terms of a specific sort of attitude to reality” (Halík 2012: 13).

“What Does Not Sway Is Unstable” As I see it, the fundamental tenet in Halík’s theology—somewhat surprisingly and definitely contrary to the popular view—is that true faith is not unwavering. This reveals a strong processual emphasis in his thought, but also a noteworthy engagement with biblical teaching. Taking the scriptural insistence that faith must be alive to its logical conclusion, Halík argues that it cannot be fixed, static, or—his favorite term—unshakable: “That our heart is not unshakable means also that it is not made of stone; that our faith (in the broadest possible meaning of this word) is not unshakable may simply mean that it is alive” (2002: 12; translation mine). Life implies

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motion. What is stable is usually dead. But there is also a pragmatic and ethical dimension to this insight: The world we live in is swayed and shaken by changes and transformations. Perhaps those who have not taken a fixed position but instead allow all quakes and eruptions of the era to pulsate inside them—and at the same time are constantly trying to look for a point of balance— perhaps those will not collapse so easily. The instability I have in mind is not the result of cowardly fear, though it is often underpinned by anxiety and concern. It seems to me that this movement is really the pulse of life itself [. . .] which prevents us from becoming fossilized, internally stiffened and desensitized. Here’s how the poet put it and I cannot express it better: What does not sway is unstable. (Halík 2002: 14; translation mine) In the dominant religious discourse in the West, instability of faith is to be explicitly condemned or at least be embarrassed of. It is a symptom of spiritual weakness, if not indeed disease. While one of America’s leading televangelists, Charles Stanley, repeatedly preaches on “Unshakable Faith for Uncertain Times” and “Developing Unshakable Faith” (www.intouch.org), Halík’s revolutionary and rather unorthodox message is quite the contrary: A healthy, true, and real living faith is inseparable from doubt, its “sister” (2002: 13, 48). Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin. Maintaining a healthy balance requires flexibility, the ability to redistribute mass and readjust the center of gravity—keeping an unwavering posture guarantees collapse. Therefore, a living faith is inherently shakable and constantly swayed. If translation is like this kind of faith, it must be affected by sway. I find it rather providential that this very term—and concept—has been recently introduced to translation theory by Douglas Robinson in his book Translation and the Problem of Sway (2011). Of course, as Robinson himself admits, the realization that the translator is swayed by textual and cultural forces is nothing new: “[F]or more than two millennia translation has been thought to proceed under the sway of at least the source text, or the source author, or even the entire source culture” (2011: 17). Robinson’s contribution consists of proposing sway as a superordinate category that encompasses both norms and biases and refers to “the forces, pressures, channels of guidance that influence the production and reception of translations” (2011: x). Sway is to be understood in a descriptive and non-evaluative sense: not only as “disruption of rationality” but also “a source of rationality”, not just as “a disorganization of thought, a failure of thought, but [as] a primary collective channel for the successful and effective organization of thought as well” (2011: 11). In Robinson’s view, as far as I understand it, sway is something that inevitably accompanies translation—and thus in some sense defines it.

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88  Theology Theological reflection, however, brings a slightly different angle to the problem of sway. If translation is like faith, we can go further than merely acknowledge sway as an inevitable element of translation. Rather, it is something to be cherished and appreciated as a reminder that translation involves the heart and not just the mind. What strikes me in reconceptualized theological insights is a healthy amount of translational humility and responsibility based on the awareness that translation is intertwined with much greater things. This humility pervades the Halík’s comments: My faith is not unshakable—on the contrary, it constantly sways. [. . .] It is swayed by my awe for the Mystery, by my embarrassment of big words which I find I can’t do without after all [. . .] [I]t is swayed by a fear of a danger coming from those who ‘own the truth’. It is swayed by the thought of its own feebleness and unworthiness in the face of what had spoken to me. (Halík 2002: 13; translation and emphasis mine) If we apply this insight to translation, much as we may shun the thought of some great mystery and be embarrassed of big words, the truth is that, as translators, we often find ourselves at the center of religious, scientific, or political debates revolving around certain representations that we cocreate and fuel. There is a responsibility that comes with it. Translations have the power to influence the perception and, consequently, the attitude of those who rely on them—that is why it is so vitally important how they represent similarity and difference (a point to which we will return later). But acknowledging the unstable nature of translation—its “feebleness”, as Halík calls it—does not provide a license to treat research, pursuit of knowledge, or indeed theorization any less seriously. In fact, translation is one of those professions that demand constant development and expansion of knowledge. In my work as translator and interpreter, I have been to places that I would not otherwise have had a chance or a mind to go and have been confronted with questions I had not been aware of before. To translate is to ask questions, to look for answers, to learn and to develop. In translation, as in faith, we cannot simply give up attempts of finding answers, either on the high theoretical level, or the concrete and practical one. These answers, of course, will always remain insufficient; and the task of doubts is to expose this insufficiency and resist the complacency of false c­ ertainties— because absolutization of our answers and imaginations would lead to our faith becoming trivialized and fossilized. (Halík 2002: 47; translation and emphasis mine) Once again, we are reminded that translation is a process, becoming rather than being, and its greatest enemy is self-satisfaction and complacency with

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the ultimate, solid, unshakable solution. If we are honest about translation being a hermeneutical act, we have to admit the possibility and legitimacy of alternative interpretations and renditions, and some residual indeterminacy of our own, however committed to it we may be. Translation must stop short of blindly proclaiming one final version to the definite exclusion of others. Otherwise, we face the danger of dogmatism and fossilization, which Halík is quick to expose and warn against: I fear people of unshakable convictions—in the sphere of religion, scholarship and politics. I have often experienced personally that people whose thinking is black-or-white and whose faith is ‘unshaken’ [. . .] quickly and intuitively sense that [. . .] I have nothing in common with them [. . .] Yes, I fear and avoid ‘the unshaken ones’ because I can sense in them a chill of death and hostility towards life, its movement, warmth and diversity; I avoid them because I simply do not believe in the certainty of their faith, as they proclaim it. (Halík 2002: 12–13; translation and emphasis mine) Unshaken certainty in translation—as is faith—extinguishes its life, dynamism, and warmth. If we insist that the translational process is somehow alive, that it is characterized by natural pulsation and processual becoming, it means that, like living faith, it “has always the form of a question” (Halík 2002: 22; translation mine). There is a sense in which translation raises more questions that it gives answers. A living translation is more about opening than closing, stirring up rather than settling down, shaking rather than stabilizing—like faith, “it needs to be constantly woken up, animated and bothered by critical questions” (Halík 2002: 27; translation mine). This strongly echoes the hermeneutic insights we discussed in the previous chapter, according to which the hermeneutical—and translational —task “becomes of itself a questioning of things and is always in part so defined” (Gadamer 2004: 271). Indeed, the constant pulsating presence of these questions is what defines translation understood as faith: The anxiety of this questioning is the pulse of our life here on earth; nothing here can put it to rest [. . .]; any attempts to stop this pulse [. . .] mean leaving the path of faith. Can faith without this constant searching and questioning remain alive—can it remain faith? (Halík 2002: 22; translation and emphasis mine) Translation-cum-faith must always examine the context of its production and be attuned to the context of its reception, willing to make adjustments in order to best communicate its message. Translations, more than any other texts, have to be open to and indeed encourage revised and improved editions. A healthy dose of anxiety and humility in translation is not just commendable and desirable: It is necessary. Translational arrogance is lethal in

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90  Theology a very real sense: It stifles the processual pulse, because if translation is like faith, it “does not only consist of conquering and eliminating doubts but also of the ability to bear and endure them” (Halík 2002: 40; translation mine). Writing from the perspective of complexity theory, Marais argues that “living translation” requires an “insurmountable, nonequilibrium tension” (2014: 43). But here is an interesting thing. This tension and the presence of doubts do not prevent us from taking concrete translational positions and defending them. The constant awareness of critical questions does not imply that we should only produce lukewarm, non-offensive, politically correct and safe translations: By defending ‘faith with doubts’ I do not in any case want to defend or promote any ‘half-measure faith’ that, in biblical terms, ‘reels from one side to the other’. (Halík 2002: 41; translation and emphasis mine) But if translation is inevitably and unapologetically partial, we are confronted with yet another paradox that concerns quality and equality.

The Problem of (E)quality The question is this: How can we reconcile the inevitable hermeneutic indeterminacy and translational humility with the need, desire, or simply necessity to take a stand in translation? If translation is never a neutral and objective process, but always proceeds from a certain perspective and towards a certain purpose, are there any grounds on which we could evaluate these perspectives and purposes? Or perhaps we are forced to admit that all translations are equally valid and valuable? This problem has an obvious parallel in theology and religious studies: Are all faiths and religions essentially the same and equally valid? Is interreligious dialogue possible without relativizing, eroding, and effectively depreciating one’s own beliefs? Can one believe strongly in something without being dogmatic about it? Does recognition of differences mean abolishing all attempts of evaluation? These are some of the questions that theology—especially of a humble, dialogical, and non-dogmatic sort that we are drawing on here—wrestles with and therefore could offer us some insights through reconceptualization. As you read the following statements, try substituting translation for both faith and religion. I have explained the conceptual grounds for the former substitution; with regard to the latter, it would perhaps be sufficient to point out that religion in some of its senses may function as a synonym of faith, as when we speak of professing a certain faith or religion. This semantic overlap is not complete, of course, as is the case with all complex concepts (for example, one can imagine a religion without faith and faith without religion), but what enables substituting translation for religion is

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that they both share a representative function. Both claim to represent a certain ­reality—be it textual, cultural, or spiritual—that is not directly accessible, but is rather experienced, imagined, and constructed. Both can be conceptualized as re-reading: The word religio is sometimes explained as derived from re-legere, to read anew. Yes, faith is a re-lecture [. . .]: we read [. . .] anew from a new angle, in a broader context, with a sense of distance, from above and with a deeper understanding. (Halík 2002: 20; translation and emphasis mine) Isn’t it what translation really does: provide a new angle, a different perspective, a broader view? So let us try to explore our paradox a little further. On the one hand, means overcoming the fixation on oneself, means openness— including, of course, openness to others. (Halík 2002: 197; translation and emphasis mine)

faith

In view of the insistence that faith—and translation—should be accompanied by constructive, self-examining doubt, this is only to be expected. When we translate, we (ideally) become open to others—those in the source and in the target culture—and as we confront their worlds with ours, our ethnocentric focus begins to widen: We always remain in our ‘fore-understandings’ but we can break away from them [. . .] in a confrontation with others. Only a dialogue with [. . .] our neighbors, indeed above all with the ‘foreign ones’ who differ from us, is able to shake our self-confidence and give us this fantastic amazement, when at least for a moment we can see the world—and ourselves—through the eyes of those other ones. It is then that our horizon becomes sharper and starts expanding, ‘objectivity’ is slowly born, and there emerges a mutually recognized sphere in which our worlds intersect. (Halík 2002: 119; translation mine) Here is the foundation of a dialogue, respectful recognition of difference, and appreciation of diversity. True, translation may be an eye-opener, but exposition to differences, especially those incompatible with what seems natural, normal, usual, traditional, logical, important, beautiful, or otherwise approved in the eyes of a given community leads to comparisons that involve an evaluative component, explicit or implicit, conscious or not. Faiths, religions, and translations differ from one another; those who endorse and promote them hardly view these differences as neutral. Indeed, as we know painfully well, the history of inter-religious relations is a record

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of estrangement, rejection, subjugation, hostility, and open conflict. It would seem that the only way to avoid it is to proclaim universal equality and refrain from any value judgments. This is indeed what is effectively attempted in some forms of ecumenical dialogue when similarities are highlighted and differences ignored or minimized. However, perhaps surprisingly, that is rather far removed from the position taken and advocated by Halík: I reject with absolute firmness the statement so popular nowadays that ‘all religions are actually the same, and equally valid’. [. . .] The more I study religions, the more I am aware, on the contrary, of their differences, their variety, their plurality, and their incomparability. As my awareness of their diversity grows, so also does my humility and restraint when it comes to expressing any judgement about their validity, even if my intention were to sound good-natured and bring them all down en masse to the same level. They are not the same, and our feeling that they are ‘similar’ stems largely from our badly focused lenses and the poor standard of the telescopes we use to view them. And the question of whether their value is more or less equal (measured in respect of what?), which is ‘more’, which is ‘less’, is—I repeat—a question humans cannot answer. (Halík 2012: 105; emphasis mine) That is a rather daunting perspective for those humans whose job description includes a regular assessment of the absolute value of translations—and I say this only partially tongue-in-cheek. In fact, marking translations is among the least enjoyable elements of my academic job. I thoroughly enjoy discussing the various translations with students and colleagues, exploring and testing various options—but only as long as it does not involve putting a mark on them because that means objectifying my ultimately subjective judgment. Training institutions try to mitigate the effects of this subjectivity by double-marking, but that cannot eliminate the source of the problem. Neither can specifying assessment criteria—they are a helpful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. The question of whether a translation demonstrates “very good comprehension of the passage” and handles problems “resourcefully, resulting in an English version that reads clearly and convincingly with no mistranslations or awkwardness of style” (to quote a marking descriptor used at a respectable university in the UK) quite openly appeals to the assessor’s taste and a context of reception he or she imagines to evaluate clarity, convincingness, or awkwardness. If translation is a representation, then it cannot be abstracted from a range of contextual factors that effectively make it incomparable with other representations. But if we were to stop at this conclusion, I suppose that a number of translators, users of translations, and—above all—translator trainers would not find it entirely satisfying against their common sense, experience, and

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Theology  93 sense of justice. We may not believe in complete or perfect equivalence (or indeed any equivalence at all), we may admit the complexities of the hermeneutical process and the theoretical multiplicity of interpretations as well as the instability of meaning, but in the end, we tend—and those of us who work as trainers, examiners, or reviewers, have a professional o ­ bligation— to compare competing translations and pass evaluative judgments on them. Relative evaluation is somewhat easier than absolute; when there is a clear qualitative spread, ranking the translations from best to worst is less problematic, though in the end, we often find ourselves relying on what is ultimately a subjective response based on our own hierarchy of values. Sure enough, when dealing with several remarkably good (or remarkably bad) translations, we may agree that it is impossible to establish which is the best (or the worst); we are then happy to acknowledge that they are all comparably good (or bad), though simply in a different, non-evaluative way. But how to distinguish between good and bad translations, and how to theorize this distinction? Here again, there are potential lessons—both positive and negative—that can be gleaned from theology and religious studies. When a qualitative call must be made, for example, in pedagogical and professional settings, the problem of evaluation is often solved by introducing an authority: lecturers and professors—the anointed priests of ­academia— as well as external examiners or reviewers, who by the power vested in them by the appointing institution make qualitative pronouncements, give marks, pass or fail, and their judgments are more or less final. There is no theoretical base for such a solution other than the general commonsensical assumption that expertise comes with experience. A weak point of this system is that it is naturally predisposed against innovation and unconventionality. Authority-based structures are typically traditional, conservative, and unwilling to recognize genuine merits of non-standard cases because these are potentially threatening to the existence of the structure itself. If quality can be achieved beyond the walls of academia—and salvation beyond the walls of the temple—does it not render these walls unnecessary in the end? Even in conservative confessional settings, the doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”), proclaimed for centuries, is now becoming increasingly problematized. As one Orthodox bishop puts is, “if anyone is saved, he must in some sense be a member of the Church; in what sense, we cannot always say” (Ware 1993: 248, emphasis in original). That is again a potent reminder of the importance of the how against the what—and the eternal problem of rules and exceptions, which can only be settled by admitting yet another paradox: An exception not only does not invalidate the rule, but in fact proves it. Naturally, this quandary is not unique to religion or translation, but is encountered in any approach that challenges the existence of a universal yardstick and admits a healthy degree of relativism. Contrary to simplistic objections formulated by some fundamentally minded extremists, such relativism does not mean that “anything goes”. Disbelief in the existence or achievability of an absolute does not

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equalize all attempts to pursue it—or, as Ronald Langacker puts it (1987: 14), “from the fact that nothing is perfect it does not follow that everything is equal”. Rather, “deconstructive non-judgementalism needs to be supplemented [. . .] with the hermeneutics of practical wisdom which might help us better discern between justice and injustice” (Kearney 2003: 72). Very much in this vein, insights from theology confirm that [t]he world of religions and cultures has always been, is and probably until the end will remain pluralistic, composed of many colors and shapes. Any attempt to reduce it to ‘a common denominator’ comes at the cost of losing something important in looking at religion. (Halík 2002: 92; translation and emphasis mine) Much the same thing could be said about translation, and “something important” that must not be lost has to do with representing others and understanding ourselves.

Cheap Translation The question of valorization of similarity and difference is at the core of both translation theory and practice. What is ethical translation? How to represent otherness without reducing it to familiarity? Does not the expectation of complete translatability (and the underlying assumption of equivalence) trivialize and effectively erase differences? Here, too, theology may offer us helpful insights. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously writes of “cheap” and “costly” grace. His comments are focused on Christian (more specifically, Protestant) soteriology and are therefore not amenable to immediate reconceptualization, but are nevertheless worth quoting here to illustrate his main thought: Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares [. . .] Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance [. . .], absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross [. . .] Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods [. . .] Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. (Bonhoeffer 1995: 43–45) To Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is “a doctrine, a principle, a system” (1995: 43)—and this is what makes it relevant to our discussion. It is a way of thinking and acting that assumes not only simple answers to complex questions, but also a reward without a real effort, a treasure bought as a bargain.

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Theology  95 When we relate this idea to translation, and especially to the representation of otherness, we can reconceptualize it as cheap understanding and cheap translation. A translation is cheap when it requires no real effort, no contradiction, no self-denial; when it does not confront us with uncomfortable questions or upset our stability and complacency—like faith that does not sway. A cheap translation produces an illusion that others are essentially like us, and their languages, cultures, ideas, values, and concepts are no more than clothes that can be changed. This kind of thinking, again, proceeds from substance-based metaphysics according to which form can be separated from sense. All linguistic, cultural, or conceptual differences are reduced to mere accidents that do not affect the common, shared essence. Such a view is superficially appealing because it passes for tolerance. On this Halík makes an excellent point: The slogan of religious tolerance is definitely attractive but it can also be a symptom of cheap courtesy without a real interest in either seeking the truth or the otherness of the other. (Halík 2002: 81; translation and emphasis mine) “Cheap tolerance”, he adds, “pretends to be noble but in fact is only a mask covering indifference and distrust” (Halík 2002: 81; translation mine). But superficially erased differences do not stop bothering us; on the contrary, they create an even stronger tension between what is declared and what is felt. (Could it be a reason why the policy of multiculturalism in Western Europe is increasingly recognized as having failed—maybe it was based on “cheap tolerance” masking indifference and distrust?). “But there is also ‘costly tolerance’, a difficult road of a patient dialogue without expecting full compatibility; a gradual removal of prejudice; willingness to accept the other with his or her otherness” (Halík 2002: 81; translation mine). This, however, as the name indicates, comes at a real cost: the cost of patience, humility, and uncertainty. Admitting irreducible otherness is an act of courage, an act of faith. In this context, Halík recalls another spiritual thinker, Emmanuel Levinas, who speaks of the face of the other, this most naked and vulnerable sphere, as a constant challenge to go beyond one’s egocentrism. If we do not try to transform ‘different’ into ‘the same’, into the already familiar, if we resist the temptation to absorb the uniqueness of the other, if we respect his or her freedom to be themselves, we are then ‘righteous’ [. . .] [T]the mutual recognition of uniqueness is a surer road to a safe and authentic co-existence than absorbing emotional friendliness. (Halík 2002: 119–120; translation mine) This thought at first seems to echo the famous idea of a foreignizing translation championed by Venuti, who advocates it as a highly desirable “strategic

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96  Theology cultural intervention in the current state of world affairs, pitched against the hegemonic English-language nations and the unequal cultural exchanges in which they engage their global others” (2008: 16). However, if we listen more closely, it becomes clear that these are very different appeals in terms of their how. Venuti writes as an interventionist engaged in strategies and operations—political, cultural, and literary—who through foreignizing translation seeks to address the problems of “ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism in the interests of democratic geopolitical relations” (2008: 16) He clearly knows where he is going and how to get there, how to diagnose the problem and how to solve it. He takes the safe collective perspective of “English-language nations” vs. their “global others”. The “ethnodeviant pressure” he wants to see exerted on his own dominant American culture somehow does not affect him because he distances himself from those elements of that culture that in his view need upsetting (like the “regime of fluency”). In his call, he admits to no personal doubt, instability, or vulnerability, but speaks with a strong, confident, unwavering tone. Once again, it is not so much what is said but how that matters. The theological perspective exemplified by Halík, Bonhoeffer, and Levinas strikes me as very different from Venuti’s. What translation confronts us with is not a problem to be solved, but rather a mystery to be experienced: The impenetrability of a mystery differs radically from a pressing immediacy of a problem: a problem carries with it a burning need of solution while a mystery is soothing in its boundlessness and inexhaustibility. A problem directs a person’s attention beyond itself, to a solution which is supposed to overcome it and get rid of it. A mystery retains a sense in itself; it does not lead us outside but rather inside, it [. . .] allows us to experience that knowing is not to be found at the end—there is no end—but at every step of the road. Indeed, the road is the purpose and the purpose is the road. (Halík 2002: 268; translation mine)

Road and Pilgrimage This mention of the road takes us to the final point to be considered in reconceptualizing translation as faith. In theological writings, a common metaphor for faith is being on a journey, on a pilgrimage, on the road— which I find very relevant because it brings together several aspects of translation that we have encountered in our discussion so far. A journey—and specifically a pilgrimage—is a prototypically processual concept. Setting out on a journey is often initiated by a sense of restlessness, by curiosity, by a need for adventure, challenge, and change. Like in the sailing metaphor outlined in the previous chapter, translation has—and is—its own imperative, irreducible to other causes or purposes. The purpose of a pilgrimage is not simply to reach its destination; rather “the road is the purpose and the

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purpose is the road” (Halík 2002: 268; translation mine). Faith, pilgrimage, and translation are all processes rather than the end result, the destination, the final product. Translation-as-faith never offers an ultimate, unshaken, uncritical solution. Quite the contrary: We would severely reduce and deface the reality of faith if we were to identify it only with the moment of the ultimate victory over doubts. Faith is not the same as ‘visio beatifica’ [. . .] which the tradition attributes to the saints in heaven. (Halík 2002: 40; translation and emphasis mine) True, the process of translation sometimes involves moments of epiphany, a sudden revelation, but more often than not, it proceeds by hard work and disciplined effort, or indeed by trial and error. Despite its abstract aspects that elevate it to near-heavenly heights—representation of otherness, recognition of alterity, etc.—translation, like faith, “is an earthly reality and belongs to the condition of pilgrims. An inseparable element of this condition [. . .] is its vulnerability and a range of obstacles that all people encounter along the way, including the constant presence of pressing questions [. . .] and doubts” (Halík 2002: 40; translation mine). This is a point at which grand theory becomes painful practice. Questions and doubts may be philosophically justified and theologically c­ ommendable— but at the experiential and existential levels, they are usually unpleasant, unsettling, and uncomfortable. Oftentimes, in exposure to otherness and others encountered on the journey, we find ourselves “radically assaulted and denuded, stripped of [our] interpretations” (Kearney 2003: 80–81)—much like the central (though not titular) character in the biblical Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10, v. 30–37), who was attached on the road and found himself stripped of his clothing, wounded and half dead. And so— Can we honestly speak of the lofty issues of faith without saying that faith, above all, is a road? Can we be silent about the gloomy and dry sections of this road on which one has to endure so many nagging questions and doubts? Can we speak credibly of these things at all except by trying to share something of our own personal experience? (Halík 2002: 16; translation and emphasis mine) This last thought, in my view, is among the most valuable potential contributions of theology to translation studies. Maybe translation is one of those phenomena that elude merely theoretical, abstract, depersonalized accounts. Perhaps in order to say something meaningful and credible about translation, we have to relate it to personal experience. When I think of translation theorists who speak to me as insightful and believable, I indeed find that all of them practice translation themselves—and this practice comes at a cost, which they openly admit. A real translation, like a real pilgrimage and

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real faith, is not cheap. It is not an effortless trip in which one covers long distances in a short time and comfortable conditions—that would make it costly in a very different sense—but it carries with it very real risks, dangers, burdens, and discomforts. Some of them are found outside but others, possibly the hardest ones, inside. If translation is a pilgrimage, it is a journey within as much as without: What journeys [. . .] brought me is not just a kaleidoscope of impressions; indeed, they could not left untouched my inner life and my way of thinking [. . .] In many cases they were ‘pilgrimages’ with everything that this word designates in the spiritual tradition, namely: the courage to leave the familiar circle, to accept the full risk that my horizons will become uncertain and expand; the patience necessary to perceive and listen to things that at first seem foreign and rather unclear; the humility required to learn; and finally, the amazement—not over the ‘world’ itself but over one’s home area, which on return is seen with different eyes, in a broader context. (Halík 2002: 10–11; translation and emphasis mine) Here is perhaps a partial answer to the question of quality, valorization, and discernment that we considered earlier. The experience of translational pilgrimage enables us to appreciate not only the ideas and values of others, but also those that are our own. Translation, like pilgrimage, is a journey into foreign and unfamiliar territories, but just as well a journey into oneself. In this sense, it is an act of courage, something increasingly stressed in translation studies (e.g. Nord 2014). It confronts us with the self-other relation that we find inside, as long as we are honest with ourselves. One can hardly fail to recognize a parallel to the following passage from Julia Kristeva’s Strangers to Ourselves: It is through unraveling transference—the major dynamics of ­otherness, of love/hatred for the other, of the foreign component of our psyche— that, on the basis of the other, I become reconciled with my own ­otherness-foreignness, that I play on it and live by it. Psychoanalysis is then experienced as a journey into the strangeness of the other and of oneself, towards and ethics of respect for the irreconcilable. (Kristeva 1991: 182) Translation takes us on a paradoxical pilgrimage. We become more familiar with what is different, other, and foreign, but also become distanced and estranged from what is—or, as we often find, in some sense used to be—our own. Indeed, translation changes everything (Venuti 2013), and we who practice it are no longer what, who, and how we used to be. We discover that “foreignness is within us: we are our own foreigners, we are divided” (Kristeva 1991: 181). As we try “to truly embrace the other as our

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stranger”, we also “accept a certain decentering of the ego which opens the self to the other, the incongruous and the unexpected” (Kearney 2003: 77). This is precisely what translation—conceptualized as pilgrimage and even more broadly, as faith—is all about: To believe means to abandon the templates of familiar thinking, the ‘mental web’, and instead courageously and creatively open oneself to that which transcends everything that can be described. (Halík 2002: 93; translation and emphasis mine) This is what we may learn from some theologians about translation. If it is true that “the hermeneutic approach, the art of interpreting a text in a proper context, sets apart solid theology from fundamentalism and harmful amateurishness” (Halík 2002: 84; translation mine), the same approach brings this “solid theology” remarkably close to the positions advocated by philosophers (like Gadamer, Kearney, or Whitehead) or linguists and literary scholars (like Langacker and Kristeva). This convergence does not surprise me—after all, is the how that really matters in thinking, believing, speaking, writing, and translating.

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Translation as Meaning, Conceptualization, Construal, and Metaphor

Translation—in the most traditional and prototypical sense of this term—is obviously and inevitably bound to speaking, to using language. But we can also put it the other way round: Language is necessarily and profoundly translational. If we accept that “when we learn to speak, we are learning to translate” (Paz 1992: 152) and that “to speak is already to translate (even when one is speaking one’s own native language or when one is speaking to oneself)” (Jervolino 2004 in Kearney 2006: xv), then understanding how speech (more generally: language) works should help us understand—and theorize—translation. But the relationship between translation studies and linguistics, like most long-term relationships, is quite complicated. It could be described as “a love-hate relationship [. . .] marked by an irresistible attraction [. . .] which has at time turned into mutual dislike” (Rojo and Ibarretxe-­ Antunano 2013: 3). That there is a lot of shared ground between them has never been seriously disputed; what has been debated is whether one discipline really encompasses the other (cf. Malmkjær 2005). Some early methodologies for studying translation were developed around linguistic analyses (e.g. Catford 1965; Nida 1964; Nida and Taber 1982; Vinay and Darbelnet 1995, to mention the most influential ones), which in some circles fueled the perception that translation studies was just one area of applied linguistics. Some scholars still hold on to that view: In a recent publication (despite its title, Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach) Juliane House presents translation as “an increasingly important field in applied linguistics” (2014: 13). But this is no longer a broadly shared conviction. In fact, as the new field grew and its horizons expanded—which was reflected in the continued enlargement of the notion of translation as well as in the successive “turns” (cf. Snell-Hornby 2006)—the scope of relevant linguistic research seemed to shrink. It was only retrospectively that a “linguistic turn” was postulated to describe those approaches to translation that predated the subsequent reorientation towards the broader questions of culture, identity, power, interdisciplinarity, and the complex role of the translator. Needless to say, such a linguistic turn has a negative ring to it—and linguistics, consequently, has a rather bad reputation among some translation scholars who are suspicious

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Linguistics  101 of linguistics-oriented approaches, viewing them as stilting and counterproductive or, at best, only marginally relevant to a meaningful exploration of translational phenomena. Here is one example of this tendency. The journal Translation Studies in the description of its aims and scope promotes a discussion on new conceptual frameworks inside the field—but linguistics is quite prominently absent among the disciplines invited to join the forum (which include “literary theory, sociology, ethnography, philosophy, semiotics, history and historiography, theology, gender studies, postcolonialism, and related fields”.1 Ironically, the same journal is classified by the publisher as falling in the area of linguistics for the purposes of the impact factor.) Such distrust ignores the fact that much of contemporary linguistic research has become broadly interdisciplinary, as evidenced by the prefixes ethno-, neuro-, psycho-, or socio-, redefining the broader sense of linguistics as well as its scope of enquiry. In short, linguistics—much like translation studies— is not a clearly delineated discipline anymore. There are multiple overlaps and points of convergence between these two broad areas.

Translation and Grammar To begin with, linguistics—and particularly its prototypical core, the study of grammar—is often subjected to the same set of prejudices that plague translation. Does not the complaint that “in foreign-language classroom, grammar is often presented through mechanical exercises” (Langacker 2013: 3) ring a bell to teachers of translation? Is not translation presented and practiced in the same classroom as a merely mechanical exercise, consisting of substituting words and grammatical structures between languages? Is not it often reduced to back-translation, to a convenient instrument for checking comprehension? This, of course, encourages a very simplistic understanding of the process and fosters the idea that there is one correct or desired translation that the teacher has in mind and which has to be discovered by the student. No wonder this caricature is neglected or indeed despised as simple, dull, and unimaginative. Having recognized this parallel, let us proceed to testing our first reconceptualization in this chapter and try reading “CG” (cognitive grammar) as “translation”: From a limited exposure to cg, many people receive the impression that it is ‘easy’, apparently basing their assessment on relative naturalness, its focus on meaning, [. . .], and the seeming absence of constraints. I agree at least in part: it is quite easy to do cg badly, and not so hard to do it indifferently. To do it well is obviously much harder. (Langacker 2013: 12; emphasis mine) Few things annoy translators—and translator trainers—more than the broadly held assumption that all that translation requires is knowledge of two languages; once this criterion is met, everything should go easily from

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102  Linguistics there. The reality, of course, is much harsher. Yes, at times translation comes “naturally”, but that is usually because of a lot of experience. Yes, it is focused on meaning, but that is precisely what makes it difficult—as does the apparent absence of rigid rules and constrains, which highlights its interpretive and ethical dimensions. Translation, more often than not, is about taking a stand, both interpretive and ethical; it is about getting involved and abandoning the convenient attitude of indifference because it is a hermeneutic act with sociocultural implications. Doing translation badly—and commissioning bad translations—means ignoring the required experience, effort, and responsibility in pursuit of easy, quick, and cheap solutions. A mature theory of translation and a cognitive theory of language are on the same page here. Just as translation involves far more than a mechanistic and indifferent substitution of words for other words, so the kind of grammar postulated by quite a few contemporary linguists covers much more than what is traditionally associated with this concept: Perhaps surprisingly—given its stereotype as being dry, dull, and purely formal—grammar relies extensively on imaginative phenomena and mental constructions. (Langacker 2013: 4) This chapter surveys some of these imaginative phenomena and mental constructions, seeking to achieve more cross-fertilization through reconceptualization. Once again, I have been unapologetically subjective in my selection of particular authors and works, looking mainly for richness, courage, and innovativeness of approach. It is not very surprising that all linguists whom I chose to re-read from a translational perspective—Ronald W. Langacker, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Zoltán Kövecses, and Elżbieta ­Tabakowska—advocate a cognitive theory of language. As I have been arguing all along, in theorizing, the how is just as important as the what—and cognitive linguistics, in my opinion, has a lot of interesting how to offer (e.g., Halverson 2003; 2010; 2013; 2014; Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antunano 2013). It is markedly different from rival linguistic theories not just in what it asserts about language, but also in its broader epistemological awareness, recognizing that how we pose a question will affect the kind of answer elicited by it.

Principles of Theorizing [Translation] It strikes me as interesting that Ronald W. Langacker, one of the most influential theoreticians (or shall I say, apostles?) of cognitivism, discussing it against competing theories tends to slip into religious imagery. He claims, for example, that cognitive grammar is “a decidedly nonstandard view for which orthodox training in linguistics gives little preparation” (2013: 3, emphasis mine) and is often critical of “standard linguistic doctrine” (2013: 19; emphasis mine). These allusions to the domains of belief and religion are

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Linguistics  103 too systematic to be ignored, even if they are used humorously or ironically. They highlight the critical importance of epistemological paradigms in all reflection, linguistic or otherwise. In fact, cognitive linguistics—and especially Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar—offers us several such “doctrines” or philosophical principles to guide our subsequent reflection. The first among them is “the principle of integration [which] favors inclusiveness and unification. It stresses the importance of considering and reconciling information from multiple sources (within a language, across languages, and across disciplines)” (Langacker 2013: 14). This principle is indeed at the heart of the approach followed in this book as I seek to integrate insights from other disciplines and relate them to translation. It fits into a broader commitment to an integrative model of knowledge founded on the recognition of the transferability of the how. Insights and observations, especially those that are more philosophical—and therefore less ­context-specific—can be successfully reapplied elsewhere, with a good chance of retaining their innovative and illuminating character. This emphasis on integration is followed by [t]he principle of naturalness [which] maintains that language—when properly analyzed—is by and large reasonable and understandable in view of its semiological and integrative functions, as well as its biological, cognitive and sociocultural grounding. [. . .] Virtually everything in language is motivated in such terms (even if very little is strictly predictable). (Langacker 2013: 14; emphasis mine) Even though it may not be possible to theorize translation (like language) in the same way as we theorize a physical or natural phenomenon—that is, to anticipate the characteristics of its future occurrence—a range of translational phenomena can still be explained and understood, even if only retrospectively, in terms of their motivation. Indeed, motivation and its focus on the why is a key concept in cognitive linguistics, which sets it apart from earlier approaches. Structural and generative-transformational linguistics are not really committed to exploring the why; in fact, one of its underlying assumptions is the famous Saussurean postulate of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Yet, when you think about it, calling something arbitrary is really shorthand for admitting a lack of knowledge or of interest—or both. It comes quite close to saying, “Just because” or “That’s just the way it is” or simply “There is no reason, won’t you stop asking”, which sounds like the reaction of some parents when they get tired of the relentless “but why?” of their children. However, if you have ever made a true effort to talk to a three-year-old in an honest and non-patronizing way, you know how wonderfully stimulating and upsetting some of his or her questions can be, simply because they refuse to take things for granted (a skill we develop as we grow older). Cognitive linguistics abandons this convenient patronizing

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104  Linguistics approach and instead explores the “biological, cognitive and sociocultural grounding” (in other words, the context) in an attempt to understand the why. If translation (studies), as I have been arguing so far, is wrapped around the why and the how, is must consider all these areas. Sociocultural aspects of translation have attracted quite a lot of attention in recent decades, but the biological and cognitive—in short, somatic—dimensions of translation are still seriously understudied, and this is one of the directions in which cognitive linguistics is pushing us (more on that later). Finally, [a] third principle, patience, amounts to the admonition that one should not put the cart before the horse. An example of patience is the withholding of judgement on questions that are probably premature [. . .] Another is practice of delaying efforts at formalizations until we have a basic conceptual understanding of what is going on. This principle does not imply a reluctance to make strong claims and working hypotheses, however. (Langacker 2013: 14) Good and meaningful theorizing—theorizing of translation included— requires quite a few virtues. The need for courage and humility, emphasized in previous chapters by philosophers and theologians, is repeated here by linguists who challenge “the attitude of smugness and scientific certainty often detectable in the dismissive comments of [. . .] theorists” (Langacker 2013: 93). Of course, these virtues do not have to be understood in a strictly moral or ethical sense. Rather, they stress the importance of attitudes and reactions that do not happen “naturally” or are not typically “easy”—the way that jumping to conclusions, making sweeping generalizations, or expecting immediate gratification (or immediate illumination) all are. Summing up, it takes humility, courage, and patience—as well as possibly other virtues—to admit that some questions in translation theory may still be premature and any answers to them are, at best, provisional. But again, that does not imply that we cannot make strong claims and formulate working hypotheses, so let us now turn to them.

Reorientation Armed with these guiding principles, we are ready to set out on our quest. As Sandra Halverson has recently argued, “one of the most interesting and promising, though potentially controversial, consequences of cognitive approaches to translation is that they will [. . .] lead to a reconceptualization of our object of study and a fundamental reorientation in the study of translational phenomena” (2014: 117). This reorientation may involve focusing our attention and research on, for example, somatic or emotive factors that may well underpin much of what happens in translation but what has hitherto been marginalized or taken for granted. But whatever the actual

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direction of this reorientation, it must begin, once again, from admitting the complexity of the phenomena involved. Despite the fact that most of us use language competently without putting much effort or energy into it, neither speaking nor translating is simple or straightforward. On the contrary, Talking is a complex activity, so ultimately [. . .] Language must be viewed dynamically, as something people do rather than something they have. (Langacker 2013: 216; emphasis mine) This insight strongly resonates with our earlier observations. Even though we often speak of language—and translation—as if it were an object, this involves a “conceptual reification” (Langacker 2013: 95), which is potentially misleading and unhelpful. Language is not a mere instrument that can be utilized without affecting the user. We do not simply have language or just use it. There is a way in which our language defines us. Wittgenstein’s proposition that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (1922: 74) is echoed in Heidegger’s realization that we do not speak language, but rather, “language speaks us” (Pym 2014: 95; cf. Guignon 1983: 127). This is indeed a major reorientation and reversal of the usual perspective. We do not have translations but do them, regardless of whether we are involved in producing or receiving them. Translations are not set on the page but rather happen as processes—which explains the broad range of responses to “the same” translation by various people and/or at various times. Even as texts, they do not simply exist; rather, they are processual in nature. They guide us along a certain path (cognitive linguists speak of compositional paths) which we can follow or diverge from. We do translation, but it does something to us as well. It can push us out of our comfort zones and challenge our understanding of the world, ourselves, and others, what is “normal” and “natural” and what is not. What can be heard in Wittgenstein’s realization is not only the recognition of confinement but also of enablement. Perhaps if someone’s world is broad, that is largely because of how far the horizon of his or her translation extends? But this horizon does not just involve things, ideas, and theories. We must remember that translation, though involving an inner cognitive experience, is never a socially isolated act. We always translate between ourselves and others, or between various individuals and groups, which brings translation close to talking: talking can [. . .] be characterized as socioculturally grounded cognitive activity. Like any complex activity (e.g. building a house, running a business, or playing baseball), it draws on a wide array of resources and requires an elaborate set of general and specific abilities. (Langacker 2013: 216; emphasis mine)

What cognitive linguistics can contribute to our reflection is its complex and yet integrated view of language—and of translation. Language is postulated

106  Linguistics to involve a physical (indeed, biological) as well as cultural, social, ethical, textual, and many other dimensions—and so does translation. Consequently,

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[i]t is pointless to ask whether language is cognitive or sociocultural in nature, for it is obviously both. (Langacker 2013: 218; emphasis mine) In this and the next chapter, we will survey precisely these two areas through further reconceptualizations. In the first area of cognition, we will be listening to what linguists say about meaning, signification, symbolization (symbols, in Peircean typology, being a sub-category of signs), as well as the more specific mechanisms of making-meaning: conceptualization, construal, and metaphor. Let us then proceed to considering the most general statements and relate translation to meaning.

Meaning Is Translation, Translation Is Meaning Both translation studies and linguistics revolve around the central questions of meaning and sense. Cognitive linguistics in particular “accepts the centrality of meaning and tries to say something both substantive and psychologically plausible about it” (Langacker 2013: 11). This typically starts from adopting a semiotic perspective. Texts and utterances are (composed of) signs: They are not only themselves, but they stand for, represent, communicate, convey—in short, signify—something else than just themselves. This relationship between the sign and its reference (often described, after Saussure [1986: 67ff], as signifiant and signifié) may be called signification or simply meaning. However, explaining this relationship—and hence theorizing meaning—is very difficult: Is it arbitrary or motivated? Systematic or idiosyncratic? Fixed or fluid? Construed individually or intersubjectively? Interestingly, these and very similar questions are also often asked in relation to translation. Could it be that the signifying relationship is somehow translational in nature? Can the complex notion of meaning be understood through the concept of translation? This is precisely what Roman Jakobson proposed in his essay “On linguistic aspects of translation” back in 1959: For us, both as linguists and as ordinary word-users, the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign, especially a sign ‘in which it is more fully developed’, as Peirce, the deepest inquirer into the essence of signs, insistently stated. (Jakobson 1959: 233–234; emphasis mine) Now, that is a far-reaching observation. Not only does translation consist of meaning-making, not only does it communicate meaning, but it

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actually is meaning. We can take this thought even further: If meaning needs ­translation—if meaning is translation—then there is no meaning without translation of some sort. Kirsten Malmkjær suggests that [t]he connection between translation and meaning may not be all one way: perhaps it is not just that translation can be defined in terms of meaning; perhaps if we are to make sense of the concept of meaning, that concept must in turn be connected to the translation phenomenon. (Malmkjær 2011: 109) Given this two-way relationship between translation and meaning, insights from translation studies should be able to inform linguistic theory—and that is indeed the case. Research in translation corpora has confirmed Peirce’s and Jakobson’s claims: One of the almost universal properties of translation is explicitation, that is, spelling out meaning rather than leaving it implicit (cf. Olohan 2004; Olohan and Baker 2000). Against the dominant popular view that meanings typically get “lost in translation” (as demonstrated by the prevalence of this cliché in popular culture), we see something quite opposite: Translations provide a “more fully developed” meaning, they create a surplus of meaning by opening up horizons of possibilities. (Here’s a glimpse of discussion of translation and metaphor later on in this chapter: “Metaphoric thought creates an excess of meaning that can neither be fully retranslated to the literal meaning nor drained by a literal paraphrase” [Guldin 2010: 182]). But that does not happen automatically or universally. One critical condition for this surplus of meaning to occur is the interaction of the what with the how, where, when, and who. This interdependence of the message and its context, the contextual entanglement of the what, is something repeatedly stressed by cognitive linguists: When uttered in context, a sentence may invoke or convey considerably more than it actually says. Owing to the previous discourse, to interpretive abilities, as well as to general and interpretive knowledge, its full understanding may be far more elaborate than anything derivable from the meanings of overt elements. (Langacker 2013: 39) This means that translation is synergetic rather than summative; it transforms rather than transfers. A “full” translation can only be understood as an open pool of all potentialities that are never realized in a single text. If translation is a (semantic) representation, it is always partial and incomplete. That is precisely what cognitive linguists assert about representation: No semantic representation [. . .] is ever considered exhaustive [. . .] Complete semantic representations cannot realistically be envisaged.

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Any actual description must limit itself to facets of the total meaning that are either central or relevant for a specific immediate purpose. (Langacker 2013: 11; emphasis mine) This insight again stresses the fluid, dynamic, and context-dependent— in short, subjective—character of meaning and translation. The translation process is inevitably selective and produces just one of many possible versions: A[n] [. . .] item does not have a fully determinate meaning. Instead, its semantic value resides in conventional paths of access (some welltrodden, others less so) to open-ended domains of knowledge. (Langacker 2013: 42; emphasis mine) This is where the translational value of a text—as well as the value of translation in general—resides. Translation provides paths of access to ­knowledge—but it can also eliminate certain paths and thus annihilate some modes and forms of knowledge, as amply demonstrated by Karen Bennett’s (2007; 2013) research on epistemicide. It is important to stress that all these paths are to a certain extent conventional; otherwise, we would not recognize them as paths at all. But some of them are indeed very well-trodden: established, canonical translations confirm and reinforce our ideas of the foreign, often leading to complacency resulting from a sense of familiarity. That is one effect of domestication—a term so broadly used in translation studies that it has lost much of its edge and itself become familiarized. But the powerful image behind this term can still be revived. I prefer to think of domestication in its original application to living creatures. Domestication implies initial distrust, wildness, and uncontrollability on the part of the animal undergoing it. Species that are not really wild do not have to be domesticated. It is not the same as taming, which has to do with a single individual trained to tolerate human presence against its natural fear. Domestication, by contrast, affects entire populations over the lifespan of several generations and, even more importantly, is aimed to produce a change that accentuates features desirable to the cultivator. There are good reasons for domestication to receive so much attention in translation studies. To start with, the whole concept is predicated on the asymmetry of power and a desire to dominate: It is the stronger and more developed species that subjugates and domesticates the more vulnerable one. At the same time, domestication produces a long-lasting and perhaps even permanent effect, suited to meet the needs of the domesticator. Domesticated texts and contexts are so strongly pre-interpreted that very little space is left to register the original fear and distrust felt in an encounter with a (once) wild beast potentially capable of dangerous behavior. Consequently, what we access through well-trodden paths and domesticated translations is conventional, established knowledge, polished off and made more palatable

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Linguistics  109 to our expectations. It is not radically new, shocking, uncomfortable, or uneasy. It will not hurt us, but it will not shake us, either. But there are also other paths of access, less conventional and less welltrodden, requiring more effort to follow, as one has to hack his or her way through the bush. Translations that inspire a sense of adventure by mixing anxiety with discomfort and fear of a real danger. The domains of knowledge accessed through these translations are indeed open-ended. It is not clear at all times what turns the path will take, how steep it will get, and where it may eventually lead us.

Balancing It Out Now, let me stress that I do not advocate one approach over the other, or necessarily argue the ethical superiority of foreignization over domestication. I am inclined to admit that a happy life involves a degree of balance between extremes. Excessive stability carries with it a risk of stagnation and boredom; excessive volatility deprives us of a necessary amount of security, without which life becomes a frantic struggle for survival. A world in which all beasts were wild would be hardly inhabitable; one in which all were domesticated would be rid of challenges that stimulate our development and creativity. The same is true in the social dimension: We need both friends and strangers (perhaps even foes?) who each offer us different experiences and challenges, much like visiting familiar places gives us a sense of relaxation and security while exploring new ones provides a thrill of adventure. Moreover, what is well-trodden or what is not is, of course, relative and highly contextual. Let me contextualize these somewhat general comments. I am writing these words during a stay in China, a country whose language(s) I do not speak, which makes me rely on translation all the time, both in the form of written notices and interaction in English, but also in terms of my own interpretation of signs and situations. Yet, despite the frequent feeling of frustration over my linguistic limitations and the embarrassment that I cannot properly articulate myself, I also experience satisfaction and excitement when I manage to communicate with just a few words (no doubt terribly mispronounced) and when my semantic hunches are confirmed (when they are not, the excitement is even stronger, though of a different kind). But the fact that, overall, I am enjoying this experience rather than resenting it is in some degree due to the fact that this is not my first visit here. I partly know what to expect and partly hope to be surprised. Perhaps this is the how of enjoyable translations and indeed any epistemological experience: a happy combination of the familiar and the unexpected, a balance between comfort and shock. This discussion of balance leads us to the next related issue. A fundamental contribution of cognitive linguistics is its philosophical and epistemological position, what Langacker calls “a conceptualist view”. It is a view that

110  Linguistics underpins the how of our theorization, but whenever we apply, it we have to bear in mind that

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A conceptualist view of meaning is not as self-evident as it might first seem and has to be properly interpreted. (Langacker 2013: 28; emphasis mine) Such a proper interpretation consists of balancing this view against the alternative positions, some of which are rather widespread and often held to be “self-evident”. Here is one of them: [T]he objectivist position—still prevalent in philosophy, logic and formal semantics—identifying the meaning of the sentence with a set if conditions under which it is true. These ‘truth conditions’ pertain to what the world is like objectively, irrespective of how it might be conceptualized. (Langacker 2013: 28; emphasis mine) Now, the problem with this position, when applied to translation, is not that it is entirely wrong, but rather, that it is only partially right. After all, not everything in translation is fluid and open to a difference of opinion. While I am reluctant to acknowledge the existence of “perfect” or “true” translations, I have no doubts that there exist mistranslations: texts and utterances that for some reason provide unacceptable, mistaken, or “untrue” representations. Some “truth conditions” and their potential violations are indeed irrespective of conceptualization: It is beyond debate that translations, if considered in their textual manifestations, may at times contain factually wrong information (e.g., incorrect numbers or dates, mistaken attributions, erroneous chronology, etc.). By the same token, translations that do not contain such errors can be considered “correct” in these respects. But the objectivist position in its extreme form results in the simplistic assumption that just one kind of entity counts as ‘the of an expression. (Langacker 2013: 29; emphasis mine)

meaning’

On the objectivist view of meaning, the symbols used in thought get their meaning via correspondence with things—particular things or categories of things—in the world. (Lakoff 1987: xiv; emphasis mine) This assumption, though widespread because it is proceeding from the venerable concept of equivalence, is easily refuted. Translation does not reveal one truth, one timeless correspondence, but rather discloses potentialities. The “correctness” of a translation, more often than not, is not a question of its inherent properties, but rather, the degree to which it is aligned with certain

Linguistics  111 expectations regarding its role and function (hence the use of quotes throughout this passage). In view of the serious problems with the objectivist position, [m]ore reasonable thus is the interactive alternative [in which] [. . .] are seen as emerging dynamically in discourse and social interaction. Rather than being fixed and predetermined, they are actively negotiated by interlocutors on the basis of the physical, linguistic, social, and cultural context. (Langacker 2013: 28; emphasis mine)

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meanings

The position articulated thus is much closer to what is usually postulated in translation theory and pedagogy, especially of the functional persuasion. Translations, like meanings, are not fixed or finished and need to be actively negotiated depending on the multifaceted context. This echoes the earlier perspectives on translation as understanding and interpretation (Chapter 2) as well as process (Chapter 3). Meaning is always meaning-making and as such is inevitably contextualized, which is why most of the time it cannot be reduced to a compliance with a set of truth conditions. But this interactive view can also be taken to the extreme—and extremes are something that Langacker warns us against: At one extreme is the notion that there is no flexibility whatever: a lexical item has a fixed, invariant meaning, and the meaning of a sentence is completely predicted by rules of semantic composition. Cognitive semantics explicitly rejects this notion. At the opposite extreme is the view that nothing at all is conventionally established: an element’s meaning is negotiated from scratch every time it is used, with no prior expectation whatever about its possible value. (Langacker 2013: 30; emphasis mine) Maybe there is a corrective to a total rejection and indeed deconstruction of any “semantic invariant” (however understood), as recently advocated by Lawrence Venuti. First of all, the semantic element does not have to be entirely “invariant”, as rhetorically suggested by this false dichotomy. Maybe a discernible tendency (even defined statistically) is enough. As a translator trainer, I routinely discuss texts and their translations with students. But despite a variety of opinions and a range of specific comments (regarding, e.g., some aspects and properties of the text that some notice and others ignore, or regarding the evaluation of these properties, their extent, role, function, etc.), there is generally a high level of agreement that a given text is generally about something and is probably meant to serve a certain purpose. Of course, any text can be put to an artistic use—but that is precisely because (and not in spite of) a certain interpretative tendency that such a use challenges and subverts. In short, we do not have to postulate the absence of any “semantic invariant” in order to challenge an instrumental,

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112  Linguistics essentialist idea of translation. As Langacker reminds us, “from the fact that nothing is perfect it does not follow that everything is equal” (1987: 14). Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Having thus recognized the faults of total conventionality and total innovativeness, we have to steer some middle course. This, however, goes beyond the rather trivial observation that new and unfamiliar meanings are always positioned in relation to familiar ones and that even the most foreignizing translations must employ a degree of domestication; otherwise, they would be incomprehensible. In this middle course, we also have to recognize other dimensions flanked by extremes, some of which have been signaled before: internality and externality, potentiality and actuality, activity and passivity: We must [. . .] distinguish between, on the one hand, the various circumstances that create the potential for meaningful interaction and, on the other hand, the actual mental experience of an individual engaging in such an interaction. (Langacker 2013: 29; emphasis mine) This is a key distinction. Translation is neither fully external nor fully internal, neither fully under our control nor fully beyond it. One has to actively engage in translation—as in any other form of interaction—but the results of this engagement go beyond our control because they depend on what could be called “translational potential”, which Langacker would situate externally: Countless aspects of our surroundings do carry meaning potential [. . .]. It would not be unreasonable to describe the relevant circumstances as ‘imbued with meaning’ or as ‘part of the meaning’ an expression has in context. (. . .) It thus incorporates a speaker’s apprehension of the circumstances, and exploits the meaning potential they carry, but cannot be identified with these circumstances. (Langacker 2013: 29; emphasis mine) Translation happens when a translational potential is first apprehended and then exploited. We may of course wonder whether this potential is objectively there, that is, for everyone to see, or is it rather in the eye of the beholder? As could be expected, it is a question that cognitive linguists refuse to address in such a binary form. It can hardly be debated that part of being a good translator involves an ability to recognize the translational potential in a text, situation, or configuration. Good translators may see this potential in places that others would not—but does that mean that they create it? Actuality needs potentiality to proceed out of, but a potentiality that is not actualized remains non-factual and in this sense, non-existent. In the words of another cognitive linguist: Not all ‘things’ exist in the material world. Some, perhaps most, are only results of human conceptualizations. Things such as friendship,

Linguistics  113 love, mathematics, tragedy, motherhood, and a host of others [. . .] do not exist outside human experience as entities independent of human conceptualization. (Krzeszowski 1997: 23–24)

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Could translation be considered one of those things? Here’s an invitation to another conceptual re-reading.

Translation as (Re)conceptualization It was quite inevitable that considering translation as meaning would bring us here, because “meaning resides in conceptualization” (Langacker 2008: 31). Speaking of translation as conceptualization, of course, is not radically new. The cognitive linguist Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk proposes that “communication in general and translation particularly involves a number of cycles of reconceptualization of an original SL message, expressed eventually in the TL” (2010: 107). It is important that reconceptualization be understood not in the static sense as recasting or as a final product of the process of translation, but rather, as a series of dynamic interpretive acts that starts with an exposure to the original message: “Originating with a SL author, the message is accepted and reconceptualized by SL recipients, each with an individual life experience, different background knowledge, in a number of possible contexts. A translator is one of them” (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010: 108). But classifying translation as a subcategory of reception is far too modest a claim. I would in fact suggest reversing this classification. Reception is translational in nature. Receiving a message, i.e., understanding it, really consists of translating it for oneself. All those who are engaged in ­communication—even only as recipients of messages—in a very real sense do and experience translation via conceptualization: At any given moment, we engage in conceptualizing activity at different levels of awareness and in varied domains of mental experience. It draws on many types of abilities (perceptual, motor, intellectual) and vast stores of knowledge (particular and general, physical, social, and cultural; individual, conventional, and contextual) [. . .] Accompanying the production or understanding of any linguistic expression is a complex and multifaceted stream of conceptualization. (Langacker 2013: 36; emphasis mine) In short, to think and to speak is to translate. Of course, Admitting that meaning resides in conceptualization does not in itself solve anything but merely lets us formulate the problem. What do we actually mean by conceptualization? (Langacker 2013: 31; emphasis mine)

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In my reluctance to define translation and narrow down its sense, I am encouraged by the example of cognitive linguists who seem just as averse towards making definitive terminological pronouncements when it comes to conceptualization and related notions (such as construal or mental image), which they often use interchangeably. Yet at the same time, Langacker presses a very fine-grained distinction: one between concept, conception, and conceptualization: Conception neutralizes the distinction between concept, which suggests a fixed or static notion, and conceptualization, which suggests dynamicity. However, since every conception is dynamic if viewed on a small enough time scale, conceptualization is also employed as a fully general term. (Langacker 2013: 46) At first sight, this complicates our endeavor of re-reading these insights with a translational interpretant, but let us try it nevertheless: Meaning is not identified with concepts but with conceptualization, the term being chosen precisely to highlight its dynamic nature [. . .] [E]ven if ‘concepts’ are taken as being static, conceptualization is not. (Langacker 2013: 30; emphasis mine) We can re-read this passage substituting translations for concepts and translation for conceptualization, but English is not particularly well suited to express the nuances at hand because the key difference here is not grammatical (i.e., contrasting the plural with the singular), but indeed conceptual. In Chapter 3, we considered translation as process—not merely a process—and something very similar emerges from our present consideration of linguistic insights. Translation, like conceptualization, is not something we have, but rather something we do and experience: Therefore, it is “dynamic in the sense that it unfolds through processing time” (Langacker 2013: 32). Indeed, conceptualization is inherently dynamic—not something that statically exists, but rather something that happens. It resides in mental processing (or neurological activity) and therefore occurs through time [. . .] Every conceptualization requires some time span of processing time for its occurrence [. . .] [D]ynamicity pertains to how a conceptualization develops and unfolds through time, especially on larger time scales where its consequences are introspectively accessible. (Langacker 2013: 79; emphasis mine)

In viewing translation as conceptualization, we indeed reconceptualize it (I hope you will excuse this terminological entanglement, which I can hardly get around) and begin to understand it in a fundamentally new way. In this new understanding, translation-cum-conceptualization “should be seen as

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a primary means of engaging the world” (Langacker 2013: 29). Our access to the world is not unmediated, but translated. This statement rings with a strong caution against dogmatism: What we have access to is our translation of the world, not the world itself. A translation gives us back a version of the source text, not the source text as such. The process of concept formation necessarily involves and epistemic and axiological set-up: the conceptualizer’s constant commitment to a particular set of beliefs and values. [. . .] [E]pistemic and axiological aspects should be seen as integral elements of conceptualization. (Tabakowska 1993:59; emphasis mine) Engaging the world through translation—and there is no other way of engagement—confronts us with phenomenological, epistemic, and axiological anxiety. Did I see or hear it clearly enough? Do I really know what it means? Is there another way to understand it? Could someone else make a different sense of it? And above all: Does my translation make sense? Does it sound and feel right? These are the usual questions that good translators find constantly asking themselves, whether or not in a fully conscious manner. Langacker suggests that Conceptualization is broadly defined to encompass any facet of mental experience. (Langacker 2013: 30; emphasis mine) Much as I am reserved about definitions (for the philosophical reasons stated before), if I were pinned down and had to offer a single definition of translation, I would approach it along very similar lines. Translation is found at every level of our thought and mental experience; thinking itself, as we said earlier, is translational in character. But the terrain covered by translation extends even further: It is truly ubiquitous. That is because “mental experience” in the cognitive view of language does not mean “mentalist,” i.e., restricted to the abstract domain of the intellect. In fact, quite the contrary: Though it is a mental phenomenon, conceptualization is grounded in physical reality: it consists of the activity of the brain, which functions as an integral part of the body, which functions as an integral part of the world. (Langacker 2013: 4; emphasis mine) There is a dialectical interplay between the internal and external: The conceptualizations we entertain are undeniably internal, in the sense of taking place in the brain, yet reach beyond it in the sense of being conceptualizations of some facet of the world. (Langacker 2013: 28–29; emphasis mine)

116  Linguistics As a result,

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conceptualization [. . .] is understood as subsuming [. . .] not just ‘intellectual’ notions, but sensory, motor and emotive experience as well. (Langacker 2013: 30; emphasis mine)

When applied to translation, this sounds like quite a radical insight, maybe even deserving to be called a paradigm shift. If we take it seriously, we must agree that translation should be studied not only by linguists, philosophers, and other explorers of what is often called the mind, but also by neurobiologists, medics, psychologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, theologians, and many other specialists investigating the full range of human experience. Indeed, we may have here some indication of new and promising areas of research in translation studies. But is this recognition of a need for an integrated approach really that new? Here is an argument in support of interdisciplinary dialogue and, in more philosophical terms, the transferability of the how. As early as in 1991, in his book The Translator’s Turn, Douglas Robinson proposed “an alternative paradigm for the study of translation—one that is not mentalist but explicitly and completely physicalist” (1991: ix–x), relying on a “model more complexly true to human realities than the mentalist/cybernetic one favored by some recent translation theorists” (1991: xi). In his book, as far as I can see, Robinson makes no reference to cognitive linguistics (though he discusses issues of cognition on almost every page), nor does he mention the (then early) work of Langacker or Lakoff (though he critically engages with Saussure, Chomsky, Lyons, and several others linguists)—yet in his observations on the somatics of translation, he is making an excellent case for possibly the most outrageous postulate of cognitive linguistics, namely that the mind, and therefore language, is fundamentally embodied. This integrationist view of language as inseparable from other faculties is what cognitive linguists pride themselves in as something that sets them against rival theorists who tend to study language in a modular, isolationist fashion, following the classical mind-body dualism and this disregarding the role of emotional and somatic responses. In 1999, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published their Philosophy in the Flesh, whose subtitle rather well captured its key point: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. But almost a decade earlier, Robinson, quite unknowingly, appears to have championed their case from a translational perspective through claims such as this: ‘Mind’ is, at any case, as recent neurophysiologists have argued, only one rather specialized and (in the West) greatly overrated function of the body—or, to put it in more technical terms, the analytic selectivity of the cerebral cortex, which we are all pleased to call ‘thought’, ‘intelligence’, ‘reasoning’, ‘logic’, and so on, is only one rather specialized function of the nervous system. The visceral processes of the limbic

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system, particularly the ‘emotional’ (i.e. various motor and autonomic) responses constitute another function of the nervous system that has been systematically deprivileged in the mentalist, idealist, logicalist intellectualist tradition of the West. (Robinson 1991: x) Could this be one of those points where practice (of translation) puts theory (of language) to shame for only now recognizing something that has been quite obvious all along? Those who actually do translation, rather than just try to theorize it, can testify that it is not just an intellectual exercise limited to a dispassionate linguistic analysis. Far from it! Translation operates largely on the basis of instinctive responses and gut reactions, in short: truly somatic experiences. Good translators and interpreters do not choose words or phrases based on solely and strictly semantic criteria; in fact, they often remain unconvinced by dictionary definitions or suggestions offered by thesauruses. Rather, they chase words that look, sound, or feel—some would even say: taste and smell—right (cf. Robinson 1991: xii), even though they cannot always explain what that means. Let me stress once again that from the point of view of translation practice, this is nothing radically new. Descriptions of translators agonizing over words and looking for those that would feel right seem nothing short of clichés—translation is an unending and often only partially successful quest. However, historically observations of this kind were dismissed by intellectually minded theoreticians as impressionistic, unsystematic, or simply “unscientific”—in much the same vein as some cognitive linguistic analyses are often questioned by those still adhering to the strictly mentalist paradigm (for an exposition of this tendency, see, e.g., Kuźniak 2004; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Against concerns of sheer impressionism, idiosyncrasy, and haphazardness, Robinson insists that “we do have shared linguistic norms—but they are neither cognitive nor transcendental; they are somatic and situational” (1991: 14). This is partially confirmed and partially contested by ­Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, who considers translation primarily as a discursive act whose nature is “cognitive and interactional, that is both mental and situational” (2010: 109). (Or perhaps there is no real contradiction if both authors understand the term “cognitive” in slightly different ways?) On the one hand, “there are always body responses that are purely idiosyncratic, that arise from our specific experiences—experiences that we have had, nobody else” (Robinson 1991: 15). That is why “the translator’s production [. . .] will be affected by the particulars of her personal linguistic history and of the task at hand” (Halverson 2014: 123). But on the other hand, “a large part of the somatics of our personal language use is not originally personal, but collective: it is conditioned, with greater or lesser success, into all members of the society” (Robinson 1991: 14). In theorizing translation as conceptualization, we must somehow balance the individual and collective perspectives. This problem is faced by all

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118  Linguistics linguistic theories. At all levels of language, there is remarkable variation between speakers. To consider just the phonological level, not only do no two people speaking the same language pronounce the same word in exactly the same way in terms of specific prosodic features (measurable in their physical characteristics), attributable to dialectal, sociolectal, stylistic, and simply idiosyncratic variation, but there are also very substantial individual and contextual differences in the realization of communicative functions through prosody (see, e.g,. Peppé, Maxim, and Wells 2000). Put simply, each of us has a very peculiar way of speaking—and yet our speech is sufficiently similar not only to enable successful communication (as long as we speak intelligibly, even if with a foreign accent), but also the development of highly effective digital applications utilizing speech recognition. The same is true when it comes to language considered at the syntactic or semanticpragmatic levels. Each of us speaks an idiolect rather than a language; could it be, then, that what we call language is simply a reification of what our idiolects have in common? Clearly, despite diversity, there is enough similarity to allow certain generalizations, both practical and theoretical. That is what enables extrapolation from a linguistic (and translational) experience of a single individual and finding something about the workings of language (and translation) in general. That is why analyses of single translations and practices applied by translators—in short, case studies—still have a valid place in theorizing translation but they should not monopolize it: We cannot just rely on intuition or introspection [. . .] [E]ngaging in conceptualization is not the same as knowing how it works, any more than seeing is knowing how vision works. (Langacker 2013: 85; emphasis mine) Considering translation as conceptualization yields a wealth of insights, the most fundamental of which is that translation occurs dynamically and involves a full spectrum of mental and somatic experience. In fact, if “the mind is inherently embodied” (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 3), the question of what is mental and what is somatic—and even the need to make this ­distinction—becomes irrelevant. Consequently, if translation is (like) conceptualization, it is absurd to confine it to static relationships of equivalence and stagnant equilibrium. Rather, translation occurs in and through phenomena such as understanding, interpretation, process, identification, potentiality, causation, qualitative succession, faith, pilgrimage, and ­meaning-making in general. But there are also other more specific conceptual links to be considered if we agree that Various other imaginative phenomena prove essential to conceptualization [. . .]. A primary means of enhancing and even constructing our mental world is metaphor. (Langacker 2013: 36; emphasis mine)

Linguistics  119 This is where will go from here: to speak first of construal and then of metaphor.

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Construal The how-ness of translation as process as well as a particular text is captured by the concept of construal. Cognitive linguists recognize and repeatedly stress that An expression’s meaning is not just the conceptual content it evokes— equally important is how that content is construed. (Langacker 2013: 55; emphasis mine) Truth be told, the concept of translation could well be used to explain what is meant by construal because that is exactly what translation does: It presents and structures a certain what in a certain how. Translation does not just consist of providing information but also framing it, expressing an attitude towards it, contextualizing it. If meaning, “most broadly [. . .] consists of both conceptual content and a particular way of construing that content” (Langacker 2013: 43), then construal refers to our manifest ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways. (Langacker 2013: 43; emphasis mine)

It is highly telling that construal is regularly discussed as alternate (“alternate/alternative construals” is a well-established collocation in cognitive linguistics research [see, e.g., Croft and Cruse 2004: 60; Kövecses 2006: 227ff; Langacker 1987: 117; 1991: 13, 61; Wąsik, Czajka, and Szawerna (eds) 2012]). Here is a rather typical description: “Often there are several different ways of conceptualizing the same ‘thing’. We call such different ways of conceptualizing the same thing alternative construal. Alternative construal may be achieved by means of a variety of cognitive operations” (Kövecses 2006: 227). The direct relevance of the notion of construal to translation is obvious. If construal, in an abstract sense, “is a way of understanding an aspect of the world” (Kövecses 2006: 227), we can then also speak about a particular construal, reflecting just one of the countless ways of conceiving and portraying the situation in question. (Langacker 2013: 4; emphasis mine) Now, isn’t this a great epistemological and hermeneutic reminder? Translation by definition is open to plurality and alternative representations. But this reconceptualization—translation as construal—allows us to go beyond general statements and look into the finer details of these

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120  Linguistics alternatives. Construal is postulated to involve several dimensions that jointly make up quite an effective tool set for use in translation analysis, assessment, and criticism. For example, I would suggest that rather than refer to the vague concept of equivalence, it would be more illuminating and useful to discuss translations is terms of their (1) specificity, (2) focus, (3) prominence, and (4) perspective—the four aspects of construal postulated by Langacker (2013: 55). Alternatively, translational operations could be discussed as having to do with (1) attention, (2) judgment and comparison, (3) perspective, and (4) overall structure (Kövecses 2006: 227). Apart from indicating a more reasonable philosophical position, there is also a practical and pedagogical advantage. We can help our students develop translational sensitivity if we encourage them to ask questions such as these: How do these texts and representations differ in terms of their level of detail provided? What do they focus on respectively? What are their most prominent elements? What perspectives are embraced in them? Of course, responses to these questions will largely depend on individual perception rather than on some objective linguistic or textual properties—and that is the whole point. Cognitive linguists stress over and over again that construal is “a conceptual phenomenon, inhering in our apprehension of the world, not in the world per se” (Langacker 2013: 72–73). Theorizing and analyzing translation as construal brings to the fore issues of choice, creativity, and responsibility—and thus undermines objectivist illusions. Construal, like translation, is hardly separable from interpretation and conceptualization: Construal is a way of understanding an aspect of the world [. . .] it is used here in the sense of interpretation and conceptualization. When we say that an entity or a situation is construed in a particular way, what we mean is that it is interpreted or conceptualized in some ways. (Kövecses 2006: 227; emphasis mine) The linguistic analysis of construal is so useful in practical terms because it relies on perceptual (mainly visual) phenomena that have a concrete psychological reality—and this is how differences in the responses felt between various texts and various recipients can be meaningfully accounted for. Let us briefly discuss each of the four dimensions of construal and consider their relevance to translation. Specificity deals with “the level of precision and detail at which situation is characterized” (Langacker 2013: 55). Decisions in this sphere are dictated by audience considerations because Particular construals [. . .] depend not only who says something when and where but also on how much knowledge we assume the hearer to have about the situation. (Kövecses 2006: 237; emphasis mine)

Linguistics  121 In other words,

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What counts is how a situation is construed, which involves general and contextual knowledge as well as our full range of imaginative and interpretive abilities. (Langacker 2013: 88; emphasis mine) Whatever we as translators assume in this regard, we make a call and become responsible for it. In fact, the easiest solution, namely, assuming that there is no change in the extent and kind of knowledge between the recipients of the source and target texts, seems the most absurd—and yet it is often expected under the misguided concept of fidelity to the original message. Translation always involves a degree of assessment and judgment, which is perhaps most clearly visible in the next dimension of construal having to do with prominence and focus and including figure-ground and trajector-landmark relationships. In this area, Many kinds of asymmetries lend themselves to the metaphoric description as foreground vs. background [. . .] We can reasonably speak of background and foreground for any case where one conception precedes and in some way facilitates the emergence of another [. . .] In this broad sense, we can say that expressions invoke background knowledge as the basis for their understanding. (Langacker 2013: 58) Sure enough, translations can be analyzed in terms of the background knowledge presupposed by them (which is related to the concept of explicitation, cf. Blum-Kulka 2000: 300ff; Carston 2002: 366; Olohan and Baker 2000: 142; Vinay and Darbelnet 1995: 8). But at another level, the foreground/background distinction may also be employed in the discussion of the relationship between translations and their source texts, as well as between various translations of the same text. Traditionally and popularly, it has often been held that “the source domain has a kind of precedence vis-à-vis the target domain” (Langacker 2013: 58), that translations should emanate from their originals and be verified against them. At the same time, it was typically assumed that translations belong to the target culture and do not really affect the source one. But that is an illusion that the consideration of construal effectively exposes. The notion of the background only becomes meaningful if there is foreground that contrasts with it. Even though typically, “the source domain provides a conceptual background in terms of which the target domain is viewed and understood” (Langacker 2013: 58), viewing the latter against this background “results in a hybrid domain, or blended space” (Langacker 2013). Parallels to the well-known notions of hybridity and third space, theorized by Edward Said (2003) and Homi Bhabha (2004), are only too obvious. Source texts and contexts are

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122  Linguistics not unaffected by translation. Even an act of viewing involves interpretation, and as such, carries with it an “observer’s paradox” recognized and described in the area of linguistics (Labov 1972: 209). Therefore, in view of this mutual influence, it is more reasonable to conclude that “that the source and target domains jointly constitute the background from which the blended conception emerges” (Langacker 2013: 58). Despite the unfortunate choice of terminology (namely, the source-target metaphor), this idea of blended space actually challenges a linear understanding of translation as proceeding from the source to the target context in a unidirectional fashion. The source context after an act of translation is not the same as before (which is frequently demonstrated by marketing information placed on covers of later editions of certain source texts, heralding their previous translation into so many languages). Translations may in fact contribute to re-discovering source texts in their original contexts and to increasing their visibility; after all, a text is not thought of as “an original” until it is translated. But what will figure prominently or be foregrounded in and through translation is not given, but comes from choice, judgment, and comparison: We may ask what figure-ground alignment has to do with judgment/ comparison. The simple answer is that in every situation we unconsciously decide which element is the figure and which one is the ground [. . .] As a result of comparison and judgment, we conceptualize a situation in a particular way (with the proper figure-ground alignment). (Kövecses 2006: 235; emphasis mine) As an aside, we may note that the language of spatial relations (figure vs. ground; trajector vs. landmark, etc.) is quite pervasive in theorizing abstract phenomena that involve language, communication, and translation. The polysystem theory, for example, is founded on an extended spatial metaphor, that of center and periphery. We routinely speak of overlapping semantic fields, closest equivalents, and conveying meaning; we conceptualize intellectual and cultural zones and territories and map them onto geographical locations (e.g., Apter 2006; Cronin and Simon 2014; Koskinen 2014; Simon 2006; 2012); in general, we discuss “how one entity is positioned with respect to another entity, how an entity moves in relation to another entity, and so on” (Kövecses 2006: 234), even if we have highly abstract entities (for example, ideas, meanings of cultural practices) in mind. All that is presupposed in the rich notion of construal. Finally, construal involves perspective. Cognitive linguists stress the somewhat obvious fact (which is, however, frequently suppressed in rhetorically charged debates) that every act of viewing presupposes a vantage point: If conceptualization (metaphorically) is the viewing of a scene, perspective is the viewing arrangement [. . .] One component of the viewing arrangement is a presupposed vantage point. The same objective

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situation can be observed and described from any number of different vantage points, resulting in different construals which may have overt consequences. (Langacker 2013: 73–75; emphasis mine) If translation is understood as conceptualization and construal, it necessarily consists of adopting a vantage point. This fact highlights the contextual and ideological positioning of the agents, including the author, translator, the client, the recipient, and critic, and has profound implications for the ethics of translation. Commissioning (or not), translating (or not), accepting (or not), and reviewing (or not) a certain text coming from a certain author, at a certain time and place, etc. is both indicative and supportive of a certain position. The translator cannot shake off this responsibility by claiming to have preserved the vantage point of the author—doing so is already his or her choice because “the vantage point assumed for linguistic purposes,” including translational ones, “need not be the speaker’s actual location” (Langacker 2013: 76). In fact, We can easily adopt a fictive vantage point and imagine what the scene would look like from there [. . .] This capacity to fictively adopt or at least accommodate a nonfactual vantage point enables us to describe a situation from the perspective of the hearer or some other individual. While the term suggests space and vision, vantage point is a useful descriptive construct for other domains as well, notably time. (Langacker 2013: 76) This recognition opens exciting possibilities for translators, in both empathetic and creative terms, as long as we have the courage to admit our own perspective and stop hiding behind the apparent authority of the source text and original author. Given the inevitability of perspective and its highly personal and individual aspects, perhaps we should be less surprised (or outraged) by translations in which the vantage point is changed, in which the story is narrated from a different location, both spatially and temporally, viewed by a different set of eyes and coming out of a different mouth. After all—truth be told—by being narrated by and for someone else, at a new time and place, in a new culture and language, it already is a different story, whether or not we are willing to admit it. Linguists are content to recognize and appreciate this fact without passing value judgments, without questioning the integrity of the speaker or lamenting the betrayal apparently involved in adopting a different vantage point—isn’t it high time that some translation scholars and critics also moved on, leaving behind the unexamined and unhelpful concepts of equivalence and fidelity? But that would, of course, require a substantial revision of the broadly held assumptions and expectations towards translation as a phenomenon and practice and translations as texts.

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124  Linguistics The richness and complexity of the concept of construal is remarkably useful when applied to translation. Numerous aspects of translation can be discussed in terms of their how-ness. Here is one more example. The question of a significant theoretical and practical import in translation studies is whether translators should only—or at least preferably—work into their native language (for a good summary of the debate, see, e.g., Pokorn 2000 and 2004). Usually, the arguments advanced in favor of this view draw on the difference between a passive and active knowledge of language, but also on implicit assumptions about what a good translation should sound like. Peter Newmark, for example, argues that the translator “usually knows that he cannot write more than a few complex sentences in a foreign language without writing something unnatural and non-native” (1981: 180), and therefore, “translators rightly translate into their own language” (1981: 189). I am not going to reopen the usual can of worms (domesticating vs. foreignizing; naturalness vs. otherness, etc.) or even discuss the problematic notion of the native speaker, but simply point out that assertions of this sort implicitly force the translator into membership of the target language and culture community—and that is, of course, far more complicated than simply being able to speak or write in a natural and native-like manner. After all, native language fluency, when we think about it, is rather a crude predictor of anyone’s cultural, ideological, or political sympathies, not least because it is statically tied to the place of one’s birth. But what about translators living and working outside their native linguistic community, sometimes in political, ideological, or economic exile? What about bilingual or multilingual translators? In opposition to simplified conclusions and pronouncements, considering translation as (involving) construal highlights the importance of examining the point of view, perspective, distance, attitude, etc. of the translator vis-à-vis his or her complex relationship with the source and target communities, the commissioner, the subject matter of the text, etc., and—above all—the phenomenological and fluid nature of any such relationships.

Metaphor If some themes are underexplored or neglected in translation studies, metaphor is surely not one of them. Looking only at the publications from the last decade, there is hardly a respectable Encyclopedia (e.g., Baker and Saldanha 2009), Handbook (e.g., Gambier and Doorslaer 2009; Malmkjær and Windle 2011; Millán and Bartrina 2013), Companion (e.g., Berman and Porter 2014; Munday 2009) or Reader (e.g., Baker 2010a; Venuti 2012a) that would not in one way or another discuss metaphor. It seems that almost every translation theorist, aspiring or established, at some point feels compelled to write a paper or at least a few paragraphs on metaphor in or of translation; I am, alas, no exception to this widespread indulgence (Skibińska and Blumczynski 2009). In etymological terms, translation is

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Linguistics  125 derived from metaphor: It is the Greek metaphora translated into Latin and then into a range of other European languages. But leaving the question of its etymology aside, translation as a complex and multi-aspectual phenomenon and practice yields itself to a wealth of metaphorical representations, some well-known, like undressing and redressing (e.g., Van Wyke 2010), others quite innovative, like squeezing a jellyfish (Henitiuk 2010). There are, of course, benefits of “defining the concept of translation in particular contexts” through “the examination of contemporary metaphors related to translation” (Tymoczko 2014: 167), but I am not concerned with them here (for a basic bibliography of relevant publications, see, e.g., St. André 2010 or indeed the index of any of the volumes mentioned above). Rather, I am interested in exploring how the concepts of metaphor and translation can be related to each other at a meta-theoretical level in order to realize their mutually illuminating potential. I am aware of just two similar attempts made so far, namely, Rainer Guldin’s monograph Translation and Metaphor (2016) and his earlier essay, in which he traces the “theoretical career of the two concepts and their parallel notional implications,” arguing that “throughout history [. . .] shifts in the appraisal of metaphor have very often found their echo in corresponding reappraisals within translation studies (2010: 162). He highlights “the effectiveness of a reading of translation theory in terms of metaphor theory” (2010: 165), noting that “translation theory [. . .] seems to have neglected, unfortunately, its theoretical debt to metaphor theory so far” (2010: 188). In the following pages, my purpose is to contribute to settling this debt by reconceptualizing translation as metaphor using statements coming from cognitive linguists—but also to look at the other direction of this relationship. The potential of this mutual exchange has been recognized by, e.g., Christina Schäffner, who suggests that by describing the strategies chosen by translators in dealing with metaphors and explaining the effects a specific solution has had on readers and cultures (or predicting its potential effect), the discipline of translation studies can provide a valuable contribution to the study of metaphors. (Schäffner 2004: 1257ff) —but, at the same time, “the cognitive approach to metaphor [. . .] can contribute new insights into translation as well” (Schäffner 2004: 1257). A promising background for the analysis of conceptual links between metaphor and translation lies in the fact that in the twentieth century, “both concepts were radically redefined [. . .] in ways that suggest a subterranean, implicit convergence,” passing from “a dualistic vision to a new dynamic concept focusing on action, transformation and creativity” (Guldin 2010: 163–164). The first point of this convergence that augurs well for a closer analysis is a remarkable conceptual ambiguity on both sides. The term metaphor is

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126  Linguistics routinely used in a dual sense, abstract and concrete, based on a metonymic identification of a mechanism and its effects: a process and its product. Even though every now and then, some linguists mention the need “to distinguish conceptual metaphor from metaphorical linguistic expressions” (Kövecses 2010: 4); quite often, they refrain from making this distinction in their theoretical statements (some of which we will consider below). But this is not because of intellectual sloppiness or lack or scholarly rigor; on the contrary, the unwillingness to disentangle the concrete from the abstract or the rule from its exemplification is a direct consequence of the radical philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of cognitive linguistics. There are no longer pure Platonic ideas that could be distilled from their embodiments, no abstract metaphor that would be clearly separable from specific metaphorical images and expressions. Nothing can be said of the metaphor per se that would not be true of at least some of its instantiations. (This follows from another foundation of cognitive linguistics: prototype-based categorization, as opposed to the classical, Aristotelian view of categories, which we discussed in some detail in Chapter 1, hence only a brief comment here). Consequently, in much of the theoretical discussion of metaphor(s), the distinction between the form and meaning, the medium and the message, the abstract and the concrete, and even the process and the product, is called into question. In my view, such a holistic consideration of the mental and the material, the abstract and the specific, is what characterizes the most creative and promising ways of thinking. That is the reason why, most of the time, in my reflections on translation I do not specify whether I mean the abstract phenomenon or the actual product, be it a written text, spoken utterance, or just some concrete mental experience. Truth be told, it could often be either one or all of these. The notion of a fixed and finite text, separated from the process of its production and reception but still meaningful “in itself”, is untenable and absurd. Even to speak of production and reception is misleading because both of these metaphorical concepts presuppose metaphysics based on the metaphor of substance. Yet, texts as messages are not “produced” in the same way as, say, shoes or clocks—nor are they “received” as material objects. Rather, they are vitally affected by the process of their “production” and are radically transformed in the process of their “reception”. You will note that in the course of just several lines, I have switched to using quotes to indicate my suspicion towards the images suggested by these two concepts (“production” and “reception”)—but that is the most I can do to challenge the metaphors inherent in them. We could perhaps try and find other concepts that would better capture the flow of communication—though, of course, this attempt would be doomed from the start because the ideas of “capturing”, “flowing”, and “communicating” are also conceptual metaphors. In fact, we probably cannot conceive of a way of speaking and thinking about translation that would not, in one way or another, be metaphorical. There is just no escape from metaphor as

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Linguistics  127 a basic conceptual device, and surely not when abstract and complex phenomena are involved. This is indeed one of the first claims of the most influential theory of metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Far from being a matter of poetic choice or stylistic ornamentation, metaphors are something “we live by”, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson insist in the title of their 1980 book and throughout their subsequent work. Metaphor is literally indispensable in making sense of our experience and structuring our understanding: It is a fundamental and pervasive cognitive mechanism. As I argue, so is translation. If we to a large extent think metaphorically and if translation is conceptually so close to metaphor, than much of what Lakoff and Johnson say about metaphor—and how they say it—should yield insights relevant for translation but also find validation in translational experience and practice. Above all, the central claim of their theory is paralleled by the key proposition put forward in this book: that translation, like metaphor and as metaphor, is truly ubiquitous: metaphorical

thought is normal and ubiquitous in our mental life. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 244)

But equating metaphor—and translation—with a normal and ordinary element of mental life is not something that is commonly recognized or admitted. The old, traditional, narrow concepts of both metaphor and translation still linger in popular perception and everyday discourse: Metaphor is for most people [. . .] a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought and action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 3) The same could be said of translation; but do we even realize how much of our everyday life benefits from and depends on it? Even at the most mundane level—and based on the narrowest, interlingual understanding of the concept—we have little idea how much translation must have happened and is constantly happening to enable the relatively free movement of persons, goods, and services that we enjoy in many parts of the globe. Think of the thousands upon thousands of contracts, certificates, invoices, manuals, applications, approvals, appeals, etc. that change hands and languages every day—and what happens when this process comes to a grinding halt or gets derailed by, say, a fault in quality. And what about the more abstract level—and a broader concept of translation—at which ideas are circulated (or not) and knowledge is shared (or jealously guarded)? How much of knowledge transfer consists not just of distribution of content, but also of

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simplification, elaboration, adaptation, explanation, and contextualization across different languages, cultures, and media—in short: of intralingual and intersemiotic translation? On the flip side, think of to what extent a lack of translation may be a powerful obstacle in this process. The relevance and importance of translation-cum-metaphor can hardly be overestimated: How we think metaphorically matters. It can determine questions of war and peace, economic policy, and legal decisions, as well as the mundane choices of everyday life. Is a military attack ‘rape’, ‘a threat to our security’ or ‘the defence of a population against terrorism’? The same attack can be conceptualized in any of these ways with very different military consequences [. . .] Drastic metaphorical differences can result in a [. . .] conflict. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 243; emphasis mine) Recent research has provided ample evidence for these insights when considered in relation to translation. Mona Baker admits that “translation and interpreting are part of the institution of war and hence play a major role in the management of conflict” (2006: 1–2). Moira Inghilleri calls translators “pivotal players in global events” (2008: 212; cf. Baker 2010b). Vicente Rafael explores the weaponization of language and translation in a range of geographical and historical contexts, including the Philippines (2015b), Habsburg Spain, and the modern United States (2009; 2015a; 2016). The stakes in translation are infinitely higher than “just” matters of language. Or, to put it differently, matters of language (and translation) go far deeper than previously recognized or commonly admitted: Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action [. . .] If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 3; emphasis mine) The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue, on the contrary, that human thought processes are largely metaphorical. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 6; emphasis mine) In short, metaphor is a natural phenomenon. Conceptual metaphor is a natural part of human thought, and linguistic metaphor also is a natural part of human language. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 246; emphasis mine)

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Building on this analogy, we could say that linguistic translations, namely texts and messages, are possible because conceptual translation happens in our minds and brains. But what does this ubiquitous and inevitable translation really consist of? How can metaphor help us understand and explain it? Let us turn to Metaphors We Live by once again: The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 5) Is not this definition beautiful in its simplicity and at the same time powerful in capturing the central movement of not just metaphor but also translation, both in its abstract and specific sense? Translation is about understanding and experiencing (note the holistic emphasis!) one kind of thing (note the qualitative emphasis: not just “one thing” but “one kind of thing”!) in terms of another. Translation brings together several “things”—languages, texts, conventions, cultures, sets of values and beliefs, practices, etc.—in a complicated relationship that involves a simultaneous assertion of similarity and difference, familiarity and alterity, and lets us understand (mentally) and experience (somatically) the how-ness of one “thing” through that of another. There is conflation, but also separation of the two because metaphorical structuring [. . .] is partial, not total. If it were total, one concept would actually be the other, not merely be understood in terms of it. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 12–13; emphasis mine)

Translational and metaphorical mappings are always partial in both senses of the word: They are non-complete and non-neutral. Their power lies in “a dynamic transaction revealing new dimension of reality” (Guldin 2010: 183) and in defining “new points of view from which familiar thoughts and meanings can be reappraised” (Guldin 2010). That is the bright side of translation, resulting in an enlarged and enriched epistemological experience. But the brighter the light, the more blinding its effect. Stronger illumination casts darker shadows. This is something we have to be aware in all things metaphorical and translational because The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another [. . .] will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept [. . .] a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with this metaphor. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 10; emphasis mine) By virtue of its metaphorical power, translation may be just as obscuring as it is revealing. “Translations are inevitably partial; meaning in a text is

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overdetermined, and the information in and meaning of a source text is therefore always more extensive than a translation can convey” (Tymoczko 2000: 24). But this involves far more than merely a “translational loss”: This partiality is not merely a defect, a lack, or an absence in a ­translation—it is also an aspect that makes the act of translation partisan: engaged and committed, either implicitly or explicitly. Indeed partiality is what differentiates translations of the same or similar works, making them flexible and diverse, enabling them to participate in the dialectic of power, the ongoing process of political discourse, and strategies for social change. (Tymoczko 2000: 24; original emphasis) There is something uncomfortable in this assertion that defies the popular opinions and expectations. Are not translations supposed to be impartial, to provide access to the original and reflect it? Against such simplistic expectations of translational identity, sameness, transparency, and faithful reproduction, as well as the resulting idea of a necessary loss, we often like to present translation as something inherently positive: as breaking barriers, pushing limits, spreading knowledge, and so on. One of the most widespread metaphorical clichés for translation is building bridges. But could translation have a dark side as well? Michael Cronin reminds us that “[t]ranslation is never a benign process per se and it is misleading to present it as such” (2003: 142). Guldin agrees; to him, “translation is not so much about building bridges between unmoving and unmovable entities; it is more about shock, displacement and disarticulation” (2010: 187). Bringing two “things” together in metaphor and in translation often happens with a bang, as does bringing violently together two physical objects. This shocking, upsetting, and scandalizing effect is probably one of the main reasons why we enjoy vivid metaphors and creative translations. There is something disturbing in and about them—which Guldin captures so well in the following passage: Metaphor and translation represent a rift, an internal and an external split, respectively, and, simultaneously, the very solution to overcome it. Metaphors open up a dangerous space between signifier and signified. Translations, on the other hand, question the representational identity and unity of languages, disclosing the arbitrariness of the relationship between words, things, and ideas: translational transactions show that words are finally only metaphors for things. The scandal of metaphor resides in its destabilizing effect within a single language and points to the fact that no language is at peace with itself. The scandal of translation, on the other hand, has to do with the undeniable existence of a plurality of languages that cannot ultimately be reduced to a single universal one. (Guldin 2010: 177)

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Linguistics  131 Here we are again at the ruins of the tower of Babel, unsure if we should curse it or celebrate it. Conceptualizing translation as metaphor along the lines suggested by cognitive linguistics helps us recognize and appreciate this paradoxical duality. Finally, the insistence on centrality and profundity of metaphor and on its power to guide or mislead our actions leads to recognizing areas of contestation and resistance that seem also very relevant for translation. If the stakes are high, this means that someone has much to lose. In the lengthy afterword to the third edition of Metaphors We Live by, written from the perspective of the more than two decades that have elapsed since its first publication, Lakoff and Johnson sound surprisingly polemical as they expose and try to counter the broad extent of the opposition brought against their findings and claims. In particular, they identify four major historical barriers to understanding the nature of metaphorithought and its profundity, and these amount to four false views about metaphor. In the Western tradition, they all go back at least as far as Aristotle. The first fallacy is that metaphor is a matter of words, not concepts. The second is that metaphor is based on similarity. The third is that all concepts are literal and none can be metaphorical. The fourth is that rational thought is in no way shaped by the nature of our brains and bodies. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 244; emphasis mine)

cal

With a slight conceptual adjustment, this could well be a fairly comprehensive catalogue of persistent misconceptions and fallacies about translation, namely (1) its merely linguistic dimension divorced from conceptual (and therefore also ideological, political, ethical, and other) considerations; (2) requirements for similarity, faithfulness, or equivalence (all rather problematic, especially if used in an unexamined and evaluative way); (3) its optional and derivative (rather than ubiquitous and inevitable) character; and (4) its decontextualization and dissociation from the broadly conceived somatic experience. We have dealt with the first three issues quite extensively before, so let me here only focus on the last one. Reconceptualized insights from a cognitive theory of metaphor suggest that translation-cummetaphor “is a neural phenomenon” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 256), which means, in simple terms, that “some of the same parts of our brains are active in imagining as in perceiving and in doing” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 256). Now, here is a pointer towards what seems to me a hugely promising area waiting to be explored by cognitive scientists, neurolinguists and psycholinguists, and translation studies scholars. Not everything can be solved in the comfort of the theoretician’s armchair because “questions about the nature of meaning, conceptualization, reasoning and language are questions requiring empirical study; they cannot be answered adequately by mere a priori philosophizing” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 246).

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132  Linguistics Translation also belongs in that category. For example, what areas of the brain are active when we translate? What if we discovered that these are largely the same areas as are active when we solve crossword puzzles or fall in love? When we experience pain or pleasure? When we are relaxed or tense? When we hesitate or analyze? When we believe or doubt? When we meet friends or confront strangers? These are, of course, only wild guesses and hypotheses, but they are meant to illustrate the anxiety behind a crucial question: What would be the implications of finding some potential correlations? Surely that would require “large-scale revisions” of the way we understand “not only metaphor but concepts, meaning, language, knowledge, and truth as well” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 245–246). How we conceptualize and understand translation has profound influence on a range of other spheres interlocked with it—and that is one of the main reasons why translation studies matter. Even though Lakoff and Johnson’s research is classified (for example, in library cataloguing systems) as belonging primarily to linguistics, their claims extend well beyond the area of language. Well then, maybe those of us who practice, study, and theorize translation should also be braver in asserting a broader relevance of what we do and find. For example, could the following statement be reconceptualized with translation in mind? Bringing the metaphorical thought into the limelight [. . .] [reveals] the need to rethink some of the most fundamental ideas in the study of the mind [. . .] [and has] far-reaching implications in field after field—not just linguistics, cognitive science, and philosophy, but also literary studies, politics, law, clinical psychology, religion, and even mathematics and the philosophy of science. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 243; emphasis mine) I am convinced that translation is at least as powerful and ubiquitous concept as metaphor, and bringing it into the limelight reveals the need to rethink just as broad a range of fundamental issues. We have seen that the how of reflective translation, especially when drawing on a holistic, somatic approach, meshes very well with the kind of theorizing prevalent in cognitive linguistics. This is the reason why many of the reconceptualized insights discussed in this chapter—even those quite specific in character—sound, at least to my ear, very natural and convincing. The survey of the linguistic concepts related to translation has demonstrated how they cannot be separated from epistemic and axiological commitment, how meaning cannot be abstracted from form—and, at a larger level, how fictitious and deceptive strict disciplinary divisions really are.

Note 1 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope& journalCode=rtrs20 (accessed 27 January 2016).

5 Anthropology

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Translation as an Encounter with Others and Oneself

In the previous chapter, we considered translation in relation to language, noting that both are cognitive and sociocultural in nature, although we mainly explored the former dimension. It would be easy to stop there and—like many theorists before—not go far beyond the discussion about the cognitive, processual, or textual aspects of translation. However, even though “[t]ranslation theorists, like their colleagues in the other so-called human sciences, like to talk about texts, intertextualities, structures of correspondence, and the like—all hypostatized abstractions [. . .] the reality of translation and all human communication is people” (Robinson 1991: 21; original emphasis). In this final chapter, I propose to take a thoroughly people-oriented, anthropological perspective and ask the following question: What would happen if translation were not approached and conceptualized primarily from a linguistic and textual angle, but from a social constructivist standpoint? What if translation were, in the first place, an interpersonal relation? What if our idea of translation came from the experience of encountering someone who is not us and in many respects not like us and from having to come to grips with this encounter? An encounter that would give rise to a whole range of different feelings, thoughts, and responses: from fascination, to camaraderie, to suspicion, to outright conflict and hostility, or conversely, to bond and commitment? If then some account, either spoken or written, were to be made of such a meeting, how would we treat it? Most probably as something auxiliary rather than central or integral. The distinction between “firstorder” and “second-order” text or creation would become quite irrelevant; all texts would be secondary compared to the core interpersonal experience, which would not necessarily have to involve verbal exchanges. In fact, I am sure that if our first and primary conceptualization of translation were precisely that of an inter-human contact and relation, ripe with a rich spectrum of feelings and reactions on all sides, then texts—either specific spoken utterances or markings on the page—would hardly be the center of attention anymore. In many cases, the who and how would overshadow the what, leading to a very different understanding of translation. The description of a hypothetical meeting between a “native” and a “linguist” offered by Willard V. Quine in his book Word and Object

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134  Anthropology (1960/2013: 23ff) is a good starting point to begin to imagine this sort of encounter—but it also demonstrates how limited many such discussions have been so far. Quine considers the indeterminacy of the linguist’s account of a native informant’s utterance, showing how much we do not know and therefore (have to) assume, but only focuses on the abstract and dispassionately intellectual level, at the same time presupposing a clear hierarchy between the two parties. But let us try to expand this picture. First of all, an anthropologist’s or ethnographer’s meeting with others whose intentions, motivations, and weapons he or she does not know need not be so unbalanced in his or her favor. Maybe it is the anthropologist who is (also) studied and examined without realizing it. Secondly, what if, beyond the will to exchange information or gain knowledge (a very abstract and decontextualized scenario), there is also some common goal: survival, getting out of a danger zone, building a shelter, joining forces in hunting or preparing food, joining voices in a song? What if there is a sexual attraction between the two who meet? In such a scenario, the Other is no longer just a mentalist construct, but a human being of flesh and blood who looks, moves, speaks, and smells in a very distinctive way—maybe familiar, maybe intriguing, maybe repulsive, maybe all of these things at once. Moreover, I would suggest that Quine’s description, and perhaps much of his theorization, would look rather different if the meeting pictured was not between a savage and a civilized man (note the gender!) exchanging dispassionate comments on the subject of rabbits (or whatever gavagai really means), but between two women, or a man and a woman, sharing the better morsels of the said rabbit by a campfire—or accidently running into one another at a café in one of the world’s bustling metropolitan centers. Please note how, in the latter scenario, removing the civilizational imbalance and introducing gender difference have radically changed our perceptions about the dynamics of the interaction. An even richer image of an encounter and subsequent co-existence comes from Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi (2001), when in the aftermath of a shipwreck, an Indian boy and a Bengal tiger end up on a lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean and both struggle for survival. Who is a danger to whom? Who subdues whom? How does the dynamic between the boy and the tiger constantly evolve and change, depending on various circumstances? If their relationship were to be considered as profoundly translational, what would it tell us about translation? Of course, considering translation in relation to anthropology, ethnography, and sociology has a long and established tradition (e.g. Asad 1986; Bachmann-Medick 1997; 2006a; 2006b; Hanna 2015; Niranjana 1992: 47–86; Severi and Hanks 2015; Simeoni 1995; Wolf and Fukari 2007). The view of translation as, above all, a social practice and the attention paid to the agents involved in the process of translation—and especially the power relations between them—is what defines the so-called “sociological turn” that has been taking place in the last three decades or so

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(Angelelli 2014: 1; cf. Wolf 2014). As Cristina Marinetti and Margaret Rose point out, The success of the recent sociological and ethnographic turn in translation studies is partly due to a desire to go beyond definitions of translation as a historical, cultural and textual practice and look at its social dimension. [. . .] Reflections on translation within ethnography and anthropology [. . .] have helped develop a more dynamic concept of translation as cultural encounter which is at the same time dialogic and transformative [. . .] offering translation studies a more sophisticated set of tools to explore the multiple cultural dimensions in which translation operates. (Marinetti and Rose 2013: 140) The conceptual and theoretical exchange goes both ways. For many anthropologists and ethnographers, translation is a necessary instrument of crosscultural encounter, description, and interpretation, and often becomes a metonymy or a metaphor for that engagement: Numerous books and articles in social sciences deal with the “translatability of cultures” (e.g., Beidelman 1971; Pálsson 1993), and one of the best-known collections of anthropological essays is entitled Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz 1973). It is increasingly admitted that “translation is constitutive [. . .] for all cultures and culture as such” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 12) and that “[c]ultures constitute themselves in translation and as translation” (­Bachmann-Medick 2006b: 37, original emphasis). In this way, “the category of translation gains a new emphasis, inasmuch as anthropological practice itself can be understood as a creative process of translation that synthesizes, and this virtually ‘invents’ united cultural entities” (Bachmann-Medick 2006b: 36). And finally there is, of course, the concept of cultural translation, the idea that cross-cultural contact is somehow translational in nature, even when no specific texts or uterrances are involved. The relationship between the concepts of translation and culture is now being reversed: Translation of and between cultures is no longer the central concept, but culture itself is now being conceptualized as a process of translation. As a result, translation can be defined as a dynamic term of cultural encounter, as a negotiation of differences as well as a difficult process of transformation. (Bachmann-Medick 2006b: 33) This is precisely how I propose to approach translation in this chapter: as an encounter, both at the individual and collective levels. Let us then start at the broadest point and relate translation to the study of humans, their interactions, and relationships. My chief guide along the twisted paths of anthropology will be Clifford Geertz, whose work I found fascinating and

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136  Anthropology inspirational long before I thought of applying it to translation. At this point, I should signal that in this chapter, as in the previous ones, I want to explore new territories, and that is why I will not focus on those among Geertz’s ideas that have already been incorporated into translation theory. The best known of them is probably the concept of “thick description” (1973: 3–30) adopted into “thick translation” (cf. Appiah 1993; Hermans 2003). It does not take much imagination to consider Geertz as a translation studies scholar: Many of his insights have a strong translational potential. In terms of his intellectual position, Geertz could perhaps best be described as an “essential non-essentialist” (Shweder 2000: 1511). But for me, the key factor, once again, is the how of his research and his writing, which strike me as rigorous and yet highly imaginative and personal, permeated by a finely balanced sense of confidence and humility, best exemplified by his statement that “it is not necessary to know everything in order to understand something” (1973: 20). Geertz, to me, has been one of those writers who, to quote his own words, “seem to us finally to be saying what we feel we have long had on the tip of our tongue but have been ourselves quite unable to express, those who put into words what are for us only inchoate motions, tendencies, and impulses of mind” (2000: xi). So, how would Clifford Geertz go about thinking about translation and translation studies?

Translation Studies as Anthropology But first, a terminological caveat. Throughout this chapter, anthropology will be considered as broadly synonymous with ethnography—a conflation admitted by Geertz as “common to the point of being standard” (1988: v) despite its inexactness. If we decided to be more precise, we could say that the former term denotes the discipline and the latter refers to the method. That, however, would also be problematic because quite a few forms of study (e.g., archaeology, comparative linguistics, and physical anthropology) are not ethnographically based but still “have as valid a claim to be included in the ‘anthropology’ rubric as does ‘ethnography’” (Geertz 1988: v). I am not troubled by or worried about this terminological fuzziness. In fact, I am highlighting it here to make a vital starting point which recurs in much of Geertz’s work: the inherent difficulty of delineating boundaries in the study of humans and their culture. The historian James Clifford (onomastically connected to Clifford Geertz, whose middle name was James, with an almost cabalistic link), in his essay on “Rearticulating Anthropology” decides to leave “important disagreements unresolved while arguing that such disputes are constitutive of anthropology’s shifting borders and intellectual alliances” (2005: 24). To define a discipline by its shifting borders seems nothing short of a paradox, yet this is precisely what we find

Anthropology  137 here. Geertz’s reflections on his field, when reconceptualized and applied to my own, strike home:

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The illusion that ethnography is a matter of sorting strange and irregular facts into familiar and orderly categories [. . .] has long since been exploded. What it is instead, however, is less clear. (Geertz 1988: 1; emphasis mine) Let us first consider this insight in relation to translation practice. Anyone who has done any translation and reflected on it knows the feeling of anxiety it is accompanied by. To expect that translation will sort “strange and irregular facts into familiar and orderly categories” so that nothing is left unaccounted for is to chase an illusion. If anything, it will have the opposite effect on reflective and perceptive minds: It will create more questions and doubts by confronting us with strangenesses and irregularities that cannot be easily explained away. We will return to this thought in due course. And what about the discipline as such? What translation studies really studies—or, to reverse the question, what it excludes—is also far from clear. Its scope cannot be straightforwardly outlined, nor its area definitively charted. Despite frequent and mostly enthusiastic references to James Holmes’s pioneering exploration into “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” (1972/2000; cf. Gentzler 2001: 93; Munday 2012: 15ff; SnellHornby 2006: 3), his “map” fails to adequately represent the field, which is constantly mutating and encroaching on increasingly more areas—and not only because, as Holmes himself remarks, “the map [. . .] is not the territory” (2000: 174). The problem, as I see it, is with the aspiration, rather than the volatile nature of data or the dynamism of the situation. It seems to me that both Holmes’s taxonomy and, to even an greater extent, Gideon Toury’s (1995: 10) well-known diagrammatical representation of it, may have been doomed from the start as attempts to sort “strange and irregular facts into familiar and orderly categories”, whereas translation, by its very nature, resists such neat categorizations. In the last several decades, translation has outgrown its definition. It is a constantly expanding (meta)concept rather than a stable or shrinking one. But how do we feel about this indefiniteness? Here is Geertz’s position: One of the advantages of anthropology as a scholarly enterprise is that no one, including its practitioners, quite knows exactly what it is. (Geertz 2000: 89; emphasis mine) Whether we as practitioners of translation view its similarly volatile status as an advantage is, I suppose, an open question. In several, mostly practical aspects, we tend not to: surely not when it comes to awarding academic degrees or applying for research funding, when we often find ourselves at

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138  Anthropology a disadvantage compared to those working in more clearly delineated and established areas. But that is the risk and cost of transdisciplinarity: If you challenge and upset the traditional academic and administrative structures, you cannot reasonably expect to benefit from them at the same time. Still, in my view, the pros of the fuzzy boundaries of translation studies far outweigh the cons of academic under-appreciation and administrative marginalization. At this point, I will mention just one weighty aspect. Translation being such a broad, under-defined, and ever-growing concept offers a remarkable amount of conceptual freedom, methodological diversity, and practically limitless opportunities for research. It is a great area for those restless academics who always need to scout new territories in order to escape boredom. That is no trivial thing because the how and what will dictate the who, and vice versa. Whether a field is viewed unstable or well defined is both affected by and reflected in what kind of people it attracts and, consequently, how it is charted and explored. And so, what sort of students and researchers does translation studies attract? What do they find appealing in it? What was is about anthropology that Geertz found irresistible? Or, taking this question a step further: If he had practiced and studied translation, what would have attracted him to this field in the first place?

Rough Ground and Fieldwork In the preface to his collection of essays offering, as its subtitle has it, “Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics” (2000), Geertz recalls his own indebtedness to “the Later Wittgenstein”, whom he acknowledges as one of his masters. He quotes the following passage from Philosophical Investigations as having profoundly influenced his own approach: We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense conditions are ideal but, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground! (2009: 51e) Then he proceeds to make the following personal comment: The notion that anthropology is exploring the rough ground on which it is possible for thought [. . .] to gain traction is for me not only a compelling idea in itself; it is the idea, unfocused and unformulated, that led me to migrate into the field, in both senses of ‘field’, in the first place. (Geertz 2000: xii; emphasis mine) Now, this is something that I have long had at the tip of my tongue in relation to my own area of research. What I have always found compelling about the process of translation (and, consequently, the field of translation studies) is

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Anthropology  139 precisely this rough ground we tread and rough seas we sail. Translation as a phenomenon and as practice provides a much-needed reminder that theorization cannot be endlessly floating up in the air, hermetically isolated in the bubble of ideal, sterile, and decontextualized conditions. As translators and interpreters, we cannot merely speculate on or despair over the existence of communicative hurdles: We have to do something to try get over them, however insufficient and unsatisfactory our attempts may be, in our own view or that of others. We invest our energy and put our minds, mouths, and hands to work in order to produce something—an utterance, a text, a performance—to be subsequently received, used, criticized, or praised by other people. A translation is an artifact—something actually made, not just conceived of or imagined. “It is important to say something and not just threaten to say something” (Geertz 2000: 18)—and “saying something” is precisely what translation does. This inherent tangibility is demonstrated in how the translation concept has been appropriated elsewhere, for example, in political discourse or biomedical publications. When politicians declare that ideas, knowledge, or commitment must be “translated into actions”—and secretly hope that their support, as indicated in polls, will “translate into votes”—translation is viewed as something that enables the desirable and necessary passage from abstraction to concreteness, from theory to practice. This positive valuation is even more vivid in the dazzling career of all things translational in recent biomedical publications. In a comment that brings to mind Geertz’s view on the advantages of anthropology being largely undefined, the editors of one medical journal admit that “although there is no universal agreement on what the word ‘translational’ really means [. . .], there is no denying that translational research is the buzzword of the moment” (Fang and Casadevall 2010: 563). Translational research and translational medicine aim to close the “translational gap” that exists between scientific discovery, its practical application, and the accessibility of actual treatment options. Researchers, medics, and healthcare managers increasingly recognize that they have a responsibility to “translate basic biological knowledge into tangible advances for individuals and societies around the world” (Zerhouni 2009: 1). In these uses, the power and value of translation—a concept that has expanded well beyond issues of language and culture—is in its ability to deliver. Whatever needs translation—ideas, principles, commitment, support, knowledge, scientific discovery, innovations, etc.—is essentially good but somehow not good enough. Only when translated does it become useful, beneficial, and fit for purpose. But, as I noted elsewhere, [T]his is not just a question of pragmatism. There is something fundamentally ethical about this process. Untranslated commitment and untranslated knowledge are ethically suspect and dangerously close to empty (that is, effectively broken) promises. Translation fulfils the ethical task of delivering promises, going beyond lip service and making

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actual change. Translation does something important and ethically desirable. (Blumczynski 2016: TBC; original emphasis) Translation takes us “back to the rough ground” in more ways than one. Translators and interpreters get their hands dirty and their feet wet, sometimes in a very real sense—as when they work in doctor’s surgeries, in areas afflicted by natural disasters, or at construction sites. Only on the rough ground of real interpersonal, intercultural, and interlinguistic contact can a certain kind of thought get traction because we are there confronted with actual communicative problems, quite a few of which remain invisible from behind a theoretician’s desk. In fact, if in translation studies, “consideration of concrete case studies [. . .] often permit the contours of new theories to emerge” (Tymoczko 2010: 18), then new theories vitally depend on concrete case studies—and these can only come from the “ground”. Translators— like anthropologists—do not work in the comfort of the laboratory but on the ground, where the conditions are far from ideal and difficulties abound. Like anthropologists, “in moving across places and peoples” (Geertz 2000: xiii), they encounter many of the same moral anxieties inherent in having to relate to the what, who, and how. In these encounters, practical dilemmas are entangled with ethical ones. Reflection on ethical pressures is something that anthropology can contribute to, having long studied the relationships on which fieldwork—and translation, we might add—depends. These can be considered in two main areas. First, translation is (like) fieldwork in collecting and interpreting data, and the translator is to his or her author as the researcher is to his or her informant; secondly, translation is (like) anthropology in interpreting and presenting results of fieldwork, and a relationship holds between the translator and those who rely on his or her translation. Moreover, in certain fieldwork situations, e.g., qualitative research interviews conducted in a language unfamiliar to the researcher, the translator (or more likely, interpreter) may also be viewed as “an informant in an ethnographic sense” (Bragason n.d.: 7) who because of his or her cultural awareness can play an invaluable role in the interpretation and clarification of what is said (see also Bujra 2006; Freed 1988). But regardless of the place occupied by the translator in this network of relationships, Geertz draws our attention to the pressure [which] springs from the inherent moral asymmetry of the field-work situation [. . .] [being] not wholly avoidable but [. . .] part of the ethically ambiguous character of that situation as such. (Geertz 2000: 33; emphasis mine) Having approached this statement with a translational interpretant, we may wonder what is so ethically ambiguous in the translation situation. In the traditional and popular discourse, which often assumes a relative stability

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Anthropology  141 of meaning, if there is moral asymmetry between the author and translator, it is normally tilted in favor of the former. It is the author’s intentions, purposes, and style that are normally supposed to prevail over the translator’s; it is the author who should have the final word as the owner of his or her meanings and the manner of their expression. A good example of this view is Milan Kundera’s insistence, in his essay devoted to exposing the transgressions of the French translators of Kafka, that “[f]or a translator, the supreme authority should be the author’s personal style” (1995: 110; original emphasis). In this universe, with authorship comes authority—­including authority over translators who are supposed to be skilled, efficient, and mostly invisible servants subjected to discipline for any misbehavior. This instrumental treatment of the translator quite obviously raises a range of ethical problems: Is he or she really just a translating machine, a transparent pane of glass, a neutral, passive, and innocent conveyer that should carry over the meanings of their master and blindly follow the instructions of the commissioner? When viewed from a more hermeneutically conscious and “activist” position, however, this asymmetry appears to be leaning to the opposite side. Authors no longer own their meanings, and translators are awarded a much broader scope of interpretive autonomy. In this universe, authors are often reduced to mere providers of some original stimulus, which is then uniquely responded to, processed, and transformed into a new entity whose relationship with the original one is quite complex and problematic. Authority—somewhat against the etymology of the term—in now largely in the hands of the translator, who decides whether and how to represent the authorial stimulus, how to perform in response to it. This is much closer to the position taken by theoreticians like Quine, to whom “stimulation” and “stimulus meaning” are elements of standard vocabulary describing the clearly asymmetrical meeting of the linguist-ethnographer with his informer (1960/2013: 27ff). It also means that what translators-cum-ethnographers provide are representations, versions, impressions, and performances—­ various results of the translator’s interpretation and intervention—but neither unmediated access to nor an unadulterated reproduction of the original. Overall, especially in recent decades, translation studies has been much more comfortable in the second universe than in the first. Geertzian anthropology certainly leads us in this direction, though not without some concerns and qualifications, which we will soon consider. The subtitle of the 1988 collection of Geertz’s essays, The Anthropologist as Author, is echoed in the titles of publications in our own field: The Translator as Author (Buffagni, Garzelli, and Zanotti 2011; Silence 2010) and The Translator as Writer (Bassnett and Bush 2006; Sulaibi 2012). We speak of The Translator’s Turn (Robinson 1991), discuss Translation and Creativity (Perteghella and Loffredo 2006), and are busy Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators (Tymoczko 2007), while arguments about “[t]he translator as non-author and I am sorry about that” (Pym 2010) seem to be less prevalent

142  Anthropology and definitely less popular, in both senses of the word. But this trend raises a set of ethical issues having to do with trust.

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Trust As we noted, translation studies in the last several decades has generally been progressing toward a somewhat hierarchical understanding of the translator-author relationship, along the lines of investigator-subject. In ethnography, “the hierarchical relationship between the two worlds places the ethnographer and his readers at the top” (Niranjana 1992: 83). Likewise, “translation usually takes place between unequal societies” (BachmannMedick 2006b: 36), and translational relationships are often structured hierarchically. Historically, it was the translator who we felt needed to be empowered; could it be that the pendulum has now swung so much the other way that it is the author who may occasionally be rendered powerless? If so, then in Geertz’s view, one thing to watch out for is the inherent moral tension between the investigator and his subject. (Geertz 2000: 37; emphasis mine) This tension comes from the fact that the participants in the a­ nthropological—and translational—situation are entangled in “a complex of claims and concessions only dimly recognized” (Geertz 2000: 36). Here are some of the possible questions that an informant, in a moment of reflection or doubt, may be asking himself or herself. What does this anthropologist really want from me? What is he or she getting out of this deal? What am I getting out of it? What if I don’t agree with or simply don’t like the interpretation of my culture as presented by the anthropologists? How can I correct them when I fear that they got something wrong, that they did not understand what I was trying to describe to them but simply forced my comments to align with their preconceptions? Do I even own the information I passed on to them, or has it now become theirs? Are they free to use and interpret what they heard from me in any way they like? How comfortable am I knowing that their words now represent mine? These profound and troubling questions demonstrate the ethical concern inherent in the informant-investigator relationship—a concern that can only be alleviated by a feeling of gain, when the less powerful party is getting something worthwhile from this interaction, and by a sense of trust: I may not fully understand the what of is happening or being said, but I can rely on the who. Of course, translation, unlike anthropological fieldwork, is in many cases subjected to copyright law, which specifies very clearly who owns the rights to certain texts and what that entails in terms of their use and reproduction. But the problem of representation remains, which means that the relationship between the translator and the author—or, more broadly, between

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Anthropology  143 the translator and the members of the source culture—still requires a fair amount of trust. If the author belongs in the first kind of universe outlined above, he or she may be inclined to be protective of their work and unwilling to entrust it to anyone else without carefully watching over their shoulder. A very accomplished Polish translator, Elżbieta Tabakowska, who I asked to share with me some insights about how she understood trust in translation, recalled a situation in which another highly regarded translator felt offended when, before being commissioned for a major task, she was asked for credentials: a translation sample, a list of her published translations, and a reference letter from the publisher. Wasn’t it precisely a lack of trust that the translator found offensive and unacceptable? Probably so. Interestingly, however, my interlocutor felt that such a strong reaction of her colleague was rather unreasonable: She remarked that no responsible parent would entrust their child to a babysitter without first obtaining positive references. This parental metaphor provides a rather telling image of a common perception of the author’s position in the translational situation. But if the author feels more comfortable in the second kind of universe, then, some parental feelings notwithstanding, he or she will realize that once children grow up and leave home, they can no longer be controlled—rather, they still be trusted to take care of themselves and hang out with the right company. As long as the specific expectations about the nature, role, function, and process of the translation are not openly articulated and mutually agreed upon, there is considerable room for misunderstanding. And when things go wrong and this brittle network of vaguely conceived claims and concessions breaks, the relationship between the author and translator—as that between the anthropologist and his or her informant— either gradually expires in an atmosphere of futility [. . .] and generalized disappointment or [. . .] collapses suddenly into a mutual sense of having been deceived, used and rejected. When this happens the anthropologist sees a loss of rapport: one has been jilted. The informant sees a revelation of bad faith: one has been humiliated. And they are shut up once more in their separate, internally coherent, uncommunicating worlds. (Geertz 2000: 34; emphasis mine) A similar network of claims, concessions, and expectations—strongly connected to trust—holds between the translators and those who rely on their work. Reflective readers and listeners will be asking themselves questions such as these: How do I know that the translation or interpretation is reliable? Is that really what the author wrote or the speaker said? If it sounds really familiar, how can I tell that the translator or interpreter is not manipulating it to maximize its appeal? How do I know I am not being secondguessed in terms of what I am capable of understanding and appreciating?

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144  Anthropology How can I be sure that the translator is not pushing his or her own agenda or, worse still, acting in someone else’s interest? When trust is shattered, then what has until now been a cooperative endeavor—first between the author/speaker and the translator/interpreter, then before the latter and his or her readership/audience—collapses and the sense of deception, rejection, and abuse creeps in. If translation is an interpersonal relationship, it can neither come into being nor survive very long without trust: that vulnerability or ignorance will not be taken advantage of, and that power will not be abused. Both fieldwork and translation need ethics, integrity, and a sense of responsibility, but in the end, their success vitally depends on trust, one of the most fundamental attitudes in human interactions. For Steiner (1988), trust is the starting point of the hermeneutic motion, the first step of the translational circle. I would suggest belief or faith as a more fitting concept to describe it (cf. Blumczynski 2014) because trust, as I understand it, is an attitude towards a person rather than an idea. (In a similar way, Christiane Nord [1989; 1991; 1997: 123ff] distinguishes the interpersonal notion of loyalty from the unhelpful concept of textual faithfulness.) But regardless of whether we call the initial belief in the value of the source text trust or something else, Chesterman (1997: 180) is right to point out that “there is more to translational trust than this”. Indeed, as he argues, trust is necessary in all dimensions of the translational situation: The translator also needs to trust the original writer, and also the commissioner of the translation: there must be a trust that the translation itself is worth doing. Translators must also trust that their readers will read the translation in good faith, that their readers in turn will trust that there is ‘something there’ in the translation that makes it worth reading. It is, in fact, not only the translator who must trust, but also the other parties to the translating act: readers, plus of course the commissioner of the translation, the publisher, and also the original writer (if still alive, of course). Translational trust works both ways. (Chesterman 1997: 180) But how is this trust built and maintained? The reaction of the translator mentioned above who took a request for credentials as a symptom of unacceptable initial distrust would indicate that she viewed trust as a prerequisite for the translational relationship and indeed a right rather than a privilege. Chesterman (1997: 181) also insists that “[t]ranslators, in order to survive as translators, must be trusted by all parties involved, both as a profession and individually”. This dual perspective—collective vs. individual, professional vs. personal—highlights two dimensions of trust that are intertwined but remain partially contradictory to one another. Are translators entitled to be trusted, or do they have to earn this trust? Chesterman admits that, on the one hand, they must “work in such a way as to create and maintain

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Anthropology  145 this trust”, but at the same time suggests that normally “trust is deemed to exist unless something happens to dispel it. Trust is typically lost rather than gained” (1997: 181). Whether that is indeed typical or not depends on how much is at stake. In cooperative rather than contested situations, having secured the consent of all interacting parties, it is sometimes possible to develop “a short-cut to establishing trust” in the form of “a shared belief in the translator’s or interpreter’s commitment to neutrality” (Kelly and Baker 2013: 155–156), though this is also problematic, as we shall see soon enough. But when there is potentially much to lose, the default attitude is distrust. That is why in sensitive diplomatic encounters, it is customary for each party to be accompanied by their own interpreter: One provided by the other party, regardless of his or her professional credentials, simply could not be trusted. Writing about the collaboration of military personnel with interpreters during the peace operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, Kelly and Baker (2013: 150) note that Trust, in practice, consisted of much more than formal accreditation or certification; it was built also through repeatedly being able to observe a linguist’s reliability, and through a satisfactory informal knowledge exchange [. . .] It would be conveyed through personal experience of communicating through a particular interpreter or in personal recommendation from a colleague, often the interpreter’s military supervisor or one’s outgoing counterpart. (Kelly and Baker 2013: 150) A curious thing about trust as an interpersonal attitude is that it is, to a large extent, transferrable: We often trust those who are trusted by those we trust. Credentials and references are only as good as our trust in the people who provide them: Their value is less in what exactly is said and more in who says it. Kelly and Baker (2013: 155) report that a belief in the reliability and accuracy of the translation was only one factor in establishing trust; just as important was the rapport based on personal experience of working with the translator or interpreter, but also the perception of his or her “loyalty to one’s own group rather than to the Other” (Kelly and Baker 2013: 155). Now, it seems that translators are trusted as long as they remain committed to their neutrality and impartiality but also demonstrate a sense of loyalty to their commissioner. Can these conflicting requirements for trust be reconciled? Let me restate the problem in slightly broader terms and do so from the translator’s ethical perspective. How to deal with our own opinions, attitudes, and feelings that arise in response to meanings and behaviors that must be represented in our description, translation, or interpretation? Should we merely observe and relay without getting involved? But wouldn’t that be a naïve illusion anyway? Observation and translation, being ­hermeneutical processes, cannot of course claim objectivity or complete

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146  Anthropology detachment, but isn’t there an ethical obligation to strive for it nevertheless? We are precisely at a point where “questions of impartiality and loyalty to professional codes meet questions of justice and individual conscience”— and so “the principles underlying a translation ethics become particularly significant” (Inghilleri 2008: 219). At such sites and moments, one is not faced with a mere binary choice whether or not to “get involved”—whatever that might mean—but with a broad spectrum of contextual, ethically complex questions having to do with when, how, to what extent, on whose behalf, why, etc. As we ponder these issues, let us turn to Geertz’s insights on the rough ground and try to relate them to translation: I don’t know much about what goes on in laboratories; but in anthropological fieldwork, detachment is neither a natural gift nor a manufactured talent. It is a partial achievement laboriously earned and precariously maintained. (Geertz 2000: 39; emphasis mine) What is noteworthy here is not so much the theoretical admission that full detachment is impossible to achieve, but rather the presupposition that a certain measure of it should be striven for. This throws us right into the center of one of the hottest debates about translation, as its partial and partisan character is either celebrated or lamented. On the one side of the debate, Lawrence Venuti for over two decades has been urging translators to become involved in cultural and ideological struggles (for his “call to action”, see 1995: 307–313; 2008: 267–277). Michael Cronin (2003: 134) similarly insists that “[t]here must be an activist dimension to translation which involves an engagement with the cultural politics of society and national and international levels”. In her introduction to the collection of essays entitled Translation, Resistance, Activism, Maria Tymoczko stresses that “translation always has a potentially radical and a activist edge, that it is driven by ethical and ideological concerns, and that it participates in shaping societies, nations, and global culture in primary ways” (2010: 19–20) and praises “the initiative, resourcefulness, responsibility, and courage of translators, their willingness to put themselves on the line for social change” (2010: 19). The detachment that Geertz is postulating seems to situate him on the opposite side of the divide, along with those who insist that translators and interpreters should be “impartial, remain outsiders to the situation, and do not let their personal attitudes or opinions affect their work” (to quote the Code of Ethics for Community Interpreters approved by the Finnish Sign Language Interpreter Association). That seems rather surprising for the thinker who, in the words of one critic, “is weary of most of the old oppositions (subjective vs. objective, humanities vs. science, universals vs. particulars) that fuel academic debate” and “prefers to dwell in the ambiguous middle” (Shweder 2000: 1511).

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Anthropology  147 Indeed, despite the ideological tension between these two options, they are mutually exclusive only when considered in their extreme forms—in which both are just as absurd. On one end of this maximally stretched spectrum, anthropologists would have to become missionaries looking for converts rather than informants; as such, they would seek to profoundly affect the beliefs and practices of the community they study rather than just try to understand and describe it. But the other end of this spectrum, pursuing complete impartiality and detachment would be as utopian as it would be troubling because “[t]he popular stereotype of the white-coated laboratory technician, as antiseptic emotionally as sartorially, is but the expression of a general notion that such detachment consists in a kind of neurotic affectlessness put to use” (Geertz 2000: 38–39). Now, as far as translation is concerned, it definitely does not involve “neurotic affectlessness”—especially if one is convinced (as I am) of its profoundly somatic nature. Translators as human beings follow certain principles, cherish certain values, and experience certain emotions that cannot and should not be denied, repressed, or ignored. Therefore, rather than dwell on this false dichotomy of wild hyperactivism vs. neurotic detachment, we should perhaps get more comfortable in the Geertzian “ambiguous middle” and reconcile ourselves to a tension involved in navigating between these two extremes: The anthropologist inevitably remains more alien than he desires and less cerebral than he imagines [as he or she struggles to] [. . .] combine two fundamental orientations toward reality—the engaged and the analytic—into a single attitude. It is this attitude, not moral blankness, which we call detachment or disinterestedness. (Geertz 2000: 40; emphasis mine) That is a rather unusual but definitely refreshing idea of what professional detachment or disinterestedness really is, and what it is not. Translators and interpreters—like anthropologists—are entitled to emotions, opinions, and reactions arising from their professional practice. Geertz is as farthest as possible from suggesting that a good anthropologist (or translator, we might add) should be dispassionate and affectless “like an eunuch in a harem” (2000: 38). On the contrary: he sees a real and serious danger in “an insensibility to subcerebral (often called ‘human concerns’)” (2000: 39). Consequently, he concludes that “[w]hat little disinterestedness one manages to attain comes not from failing to have emotions or neglecting to perceive them in others, nor yet from sealing oneself into a moral vacuum,” but rather from “personal subjection to a vocational ethic” (Geertz 2000: 39). Here is how the two perspectives—individual and collective, personal and professional—come together. Translation shares with anthropological fieldwork a participatory dimension which makes it a form of conduct, as

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indeed recognized by various professional organizations prescribing appropriate codes to be observed. Now, [t]he outstanding characteristic of anthropological fieldwork, as a form of conduct is that it does not permit any significant separation of the occupational and extra-occupational spheres of one’s life. On the contrary, it forces their fusion. (Geertz 2000: 39; emphasis mine) This is an important point, though one rarely noticed and discussed in translation studies. Even in his “Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath”, preceded by a discussion of several different models of translation ethics and their blind spots, Chesterman is compelled to make (in my opinion, a rather desperate) distinction between “someone ‘who is a translator’ and someone ‘who does translations (sometimes)’ ” (2001: 146), between the practitioner and the practice, between the who and the what/when—and decides to only focus on the former. This, at first sight, seems odd. It would certainly be easier to prescribe a certain behavior (which is what codes of conduct do, after all) than mandate a certain quality, who-ness or how-ness. Perhaps so—but we intuitively feel that it would also somehow miss the point. No code of ethics that I am aware of makes a distinction between translators or interpreters “on duty” and “off duty”; indeed, even an intimation of such a distinction would be sending the wrong message, suggesting that one can act ethically without being ethical. On the contrary, some codes of conduct testify of this fusion of occupational and extra-occupational spheres by articulating expectations that stretch beyond the strictly professional contexts. For example, the Institute of Translation & Interpreting in the UK expects its members to act “in all cases [. . .] in accordance with the high standards appropriate to a professional body”, “assist each other in every practical way”, and “conduct themselves loyally towards their fellow members and the Institute”, which in particular means that they must “refrain from public attacks on the competence, reputation and honor of other members of the Institute or of a professional body of equivalent standing”—and that is whether on or off duty, which is implied. Somewhere between the lines is a firm conviction that you cannot be a trustworthy translator but a corrupt person, or conversely, an otherwise ethical person, except for your questionable translational conduct. The who dictates the how, which results in the what. The relevance of Geertz’s insights on the questions of trust and the tension between the engaged and the analytic attitudes towards reality is strongly confirmed by translation practice. Reporting on Stahuljak’s (2010) study of civilian linguists from Croatia who volunteered to work for the European Community Monitoring Mission in 1991–92, Kelly and Baker observe that quite a few of them rejected the impersonal idea of the interpreter as conduit, instead considering themselves as activists advocating a Croatian cause to an

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institution that positioned itself as politically neutral. Although not holding to the concept of the interpreter as emotionally uninvolved, on the microlevel of the language encounter itself they nevertheless respected the organization’s norms and refrained from intervening in the translation. (Kelly and Baker 2013: 156) As this example demonstrates, one’s emotional and personal investment need not jeopardize accuracy and reliability as a translator; in fact, it may authenticate them. The Geertzian ideal of the integration of the personal and professional life is attested by practitioners. When asked for a comment on translational trust, Magda Heydel, the award-winning Polish translator of an impressive range of authors and poets (including Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, and Virginia Woolf) has shared the following thoughts with me: Translation is not only a creative practice for me but also a life practice. By this I mean that my work as translator forms an important part of my existence and I could never see it as something outside the ‘real life’ I live. I work mainly at home and my study is in the very center of the house so that when my family is around they inevitably enter into my work-scape. I do not mind this when I translate. Also, they take part in my work as readers and on some occasions as helpers. Some of my most important relationships outside my family stemmed from the translation practice. I have an archive of letters exchanged with the translator-friends who either helped me, sought help from me or were my co-translators. This is a fascinating material on professionalcum-interpersonal links. There is also much to say about the editors and readers. These relationships are very intensive and—again—I could never think of them as purely professional: impersonal, limited, devoid of any traces of a true inner involvement. I cannot imagine working on a translation with someone I do not have a good emotional contact with or whom I do not trust. I am writing all this to make it clear that translation is an activity that engages a person, not a social function. As such it is entangled in a web of affects. I strongly believe that to describe the process of translation in any felicitous way one has to look into the relations it engages. (Magda Heydel, personal email 2015) That is why an anthropological, interpersonal, relational perspective is so important in capturing the real movements of translation. If translation is becoming “a concept of relationship and movement” (Bachmann-Medick 2006b: 40), this confronts us with another broad spectrum of ethical questions related to similarity and difference and their respective value.

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The Value of Diversity Among the ethical dimensions of fieldwork, Geertz mentions “the imbalance between the ability to uncover problems and the power to solve them” (2000: 37). Could the same be said of translation? There is no denying that translation has a remarkable ability to uncover—or perhaps create?—­ problems it cannot always solve. Many of them we have alluded to already in this and previous chapters. They mostly have to do with the uncomfortable realization that things are more complex than they seem; that familiar thought patterns, categories, and practices are less common than we thought and rather far from universal; that many things that seem obvious and natural cannot simply be taken for granted; but also that people we once deemed foreign and strange now appear to share with us more than we ever expected (or would have liked). In short, how do we react to and deal with similarity and difference? Or, to put it in ethical terms, how ought we to react to it? In considering these questions, I will take cue from Geertz’s essay “The Uses of Diversity”, originally presented in 1985 at the University of Chicago as the Tanner Lecture in Human Values. That is a clue in itself: In much of what follows, we will find that values hold a central place, though that is not always explicit. Geertz begins by stating that one of the central problems of anthropology over the whole course of its history has been to come to grips with the immense variety of human life and its manifestations. At some points, anthropologists have sought to deal with that diversity by taking a universalizing approach and looking for commonalities and patterns, while at others, they have stressed particularity, idiosyncrasy, and incommensurability (Geertz 2000: 68). We may add that these responses have every time been driven by values, according to the ideological trends of the day. At the risk of some simplification, it could be said that the first approach values convergence and similarity, and the second, divergence and difference. Behind the first of these approaches is “the [. . .] tendency to see diversity as surface and universality as depth” (Geertz 2000: 59), with its accompanying axiological dimension. Let us consider several concepts evaluated in accordance with this scale. For example, when we talk about comments and observations, surface is bad, depth is good (compare This comment is barely scratching the surface and There is a lot of depth to this observation). When we look at the adjectives, this is even more so: Superficial and deep are predominantly evaluative rather than descriptive concepts. However, when we start talking about differences, the poles on this scale are swapped (compare It is only a superficial disagreement and The divisions between us run deeper than we thought), which only confirms the negative evaluation of differences that forces this reversal. In the axiological perspective exposed by examples such as these, differences are like wounds (and unlike comments, observations, or commitments): the more superficial, the better. Deep divisions and ­differences— like deep wounds—are viewed as threatening and potentially mortal.

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Anthropology  151 Now, do not similar axiological assumptions about difference underpin a significant part of discourse about translation in both the popular and professional domains? Isn’t translation often understood as aimed at reducing difference in pursuit of understanding? How many times have we heard the belief—expressed, for example, in calls for papers or themes of academic conferences, but also all kinds of political slogans—that translation is about building bridges, crossing borders, overcoming barriers, mediating between strangers, enabling smoother communication, and so forth? Chesterman’s idea of translation as being aimed at reducing “communicative suffering” (1997: 186) expresses a strong evaluative position; after all, what good could there be in pain? In Schleiermacher’s famous dilemma between bringing the author home or sending the reader abroad (not a real dilemma, of course; he is very clear about which option is preferable), the question of whether (and why) these two should be brought closer together is not really an issue—only how to do it best. In his book Values in Translation, Galit Sarfaty suggests that divergent approaches to the issue of human rights require “ ‘translators’ who move between disciplinary communities and can bridge interpretive gaps” (2012: 20). The concept of translational research in biomedical sciences that we mentioned above is also predicated on the imperative of closing “the translational gap” whose existence is evaluated negatively; in an ideal world, no such gaps should be left. A bridge is one of the most clichéd images of what translation is supposed to achieve precisely because of the prevalence of this underlying evaluation. It appears that the value of translation is in its integrating, reconciling power, in bringing people and ideas together, in advancing mutual understanding and helping reduce differences, in sealing rifts, etc. But are there not some suspect assumptions being made in the background about the inherent value of unity, similarity, and convergence? And at the same time, is not something important being overlooked, something that belongs to a different axiological order? Doris Bachmann-Medick suggests that “it is not cultural translation’s successes but its failures that offer the greater and more interesting challenge for cultural anthropology” (2006b: 36). And so, what if we accepted “an agonistic conception of translation, which runs directly counter to the beatific visions of universal understanding [. . .] and takes as a basic premise the incomprehensibility of the other” (Cronin 2009: 219)? Isn’t there inherent value in divergence, diversity, and irreducible difference—a value that anthropology can help us recognize and appreciate? It is enough to leave behind the popular and unsophisticated discourse on translation to find that almost anywhere we look, diversity and difference secure important long-term gains. In farming, monoculture radically diminishes soil fertility. Inbreeding, resulting from a lack of genetic diversity, generally leads to decreased biological fitness of a population, affecting its ability to reproduce healthily and survive. Links between biological and cultural diversity and the common threats of their loss have been increasingly pointed out in the last several decades, at least since 1988, when the

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152  Anthropology International Society of Ethnobiology issued the Declaration of Belem, which affirmed the existence of an “inextricable link” between cultural and biological diversity (Maffi 2005: 602). The resulting concept of biocultural diversity is broadly affirmed as desirable and in need of preservation. The recent report Biocultural Diversity: Threatened Species, Endangered Languages commissioned by World Wide Fund for Nature to examine the “extinction crisis” facing both biological and cultural diversity concludes with the following remarks: [T]he world is already losing its extraordinary biocultural diversity, as the findings of this report demonstrate. No doubt the global economy would continue to grow just as well, or even better, with just a few world languages and cultures. It is even possible that global ecosystems could continue to provide basic life support functions—although probably not as well—with less biodiversity, and humanity would still survive. But this is not just a question of survival, or even global economic productivity. A diverse world is a culturally and naturally richer world. With less diversity, humanity is poorer. It is a question of the kind of world we want to live in. (Loh and Harmon 2014: 48) Whether we want it or not, this impoverishment is quickly becoming a reality. Loh and Harmon’s (2014) analysis indicates that at least a quarter of the world’s languages are threatened with extinction. Likewise, anthropologists point out that the variety of cultural practices “is rapidly softening into a paler and narrower spectrum. We may be faced with a world in which there simply aren’t any more headhunters, matrilinealists, or people who predict the weather from the entrails of a pig” (Geertz 2000: 68). This in itself does not necessarily mean that those who feed on cultural and linguistic differences are doomed to starvation. Anthropologists—as well as translation scholars—will simply have to adjust the granularity of their sieve and become more attentive to subtler differences. But “this process of the softening of the cultural contrast”, says Geertz, “raises a broader issue, moral, aesthetic, and cognitive at once, that is much more troubling” (2000: 68). This central problem, I suggest, is shared by translation. It is a question of the how—namely, how we seek to preserve diversity and difference—and the reason why it is troubling is the approach suggested by some authoritative figures in anthropology. Geertz is specifically challenging the views of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who sees ethnocentrism as a natural, inevitable, and— most importantly—rather healthy position that allows one to preserve his or her own cultural distinctness and therefore contributes to maintaining greater diversity. Here is Lévi-Strauss’s argument in favor of ethnocentrism: It may even be the price to be paid so that the systems of values of each spiritual family or each community are preserved and find within

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Anthropology  153 themselves the resources necessary for their survival. If [. . .] human societies exhibit a certain optimal diversity beyond which they cannot go, but below which the can no longer descend without danger, we must recognize that, to a certain extent, this diversity results from the desire of each culture to resist the cultures surrounding it, to distinguish itself from them—in short to be itself. Cultures are not unaware of one another, they even borrow from one another on occasion; but in order not to perish, they must in other connections remains somewhat impermeable toward one another. (Lévi-Strauss 1985: xiii) So far, this does not sound particularly troubling. Of course, if you are to remain yourself, that is, to preserve your identity, you cannot completely yield to all external influences. However, if we have to cover our ears in order to resist the appeal of foreign values, that says something about our own and the reasons why we cling to them. Curiously, Lévi-Strauss goes on to argue that this healthy impermeability towards others implies just that: “a certain deafness to the appeal of other values, even going as far as to reject them if not denying them altogether. For one cannot fully enjoy the other, identify with him, and yet at the same remain different” (1985: 23). Lévi-Strauss clearly suggests that full enjoyment of the other requires elision of difference. Therefore, if diversity is to be preserved, the other must remain somehow alienated and estranged, and that is why a healthy dose of ethnocentrism and a certain cultural deafness or closure is beneficial. Geertz strongly opposes this position, arguing that cultural selfcenteredness comes dangerously close to “relax-and-enjoy-it approach to one’s imprisonment in one’s own cultural tradition” (2000: 72) and that “an easy surrender to the comforts of merely being ourselves, cultivating deafness and maximizing gratitude for not being born a Vandal or an Ik” (2000: 74), is fatal to cultural diversity. In Geertz’s view, “what ethnocentrism does and is designed to do [. . .] is to cut us off from [. . .] the possibility of quite literally, and quite thoroughly, changing our minds” (2000: 78). The debate really boils down to the question of how we should react to difference once we have acknowledged it: learn to ignore it and become deaf to it so that we can remain who and what we are, or open up to it, even at the risk of experiencing a chance to change our minds and reassess our positions. But, again, are we really “left with a choice between an openness without diversity and a diversity without openness?” (Cronin 2003: 167). The answer to this question, I believe, is in translation, which by its nature not only resists false dichotomies but also is vitally concerned with the complex issues of protecting diversity and preserving identity. This aspect of it is especially visible when the unequal linguistic and cultural exchanges are considered. In one of the fullest treatments of the topics of translation and globalization—his book under this very title—Michael Cronin observes that

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“the situation of translation in the culture of a minority language is [. . .] highly ambiguous” (2003: 147) because translators in minority languages are [. . .] placed in a classic double bind. If they allow the full otherness of the dominant language to emerge in their translation [. . .] then the language into which they translate becomes less and less recognizable as a separate linguistic entity capable of future development and becomes instead a pallid imitation of the source language in translatorese. On the other hand, if they resist interference and opt for target-oriented communicative translation that domesticate the foreign text, the danger is one of complacent stasis. (Cronin 2003: 147) But regardless of this ethical ambiguity as well as the risks and dangers involved, the question is not whether or not but how to translate. Translation is at the heart of the debate around diversity—so much so that Geertz’s case on its value and uses could have been argued even more persuasively from the perspective of translation (studies). I will demonstrate this claim by recalling some statements made by translation theorists—most notably Michael Cronin in Translation and Globalization—and relating them to some of Geertz’s own insights, both original and reconceptualized. A close affinity to Geertzian thought is evident throughout Cronin’s book as he advances his argument “in favor of a new translation ecology which attaches due importance to particularism and place without a reactionary retreat to ethnocentric smugness” (2003: 6). The suggestion that an ethnocentric mindset is plagued with smugness, complacency, self-satisfaction, and superiority instantly brings to mind Geertz’s warnings against cultural deafness and moral narcissism. But it is only in the closing paragraphs of his book, as he summarizes and restates his main argument, that Cronin makes the following explicit reference to “The Uses of Diversity”: “Clifford Geertz has remarked that ‘imagining difference (which of course does not mean making it up, but making it evident) remains a science of which we all have need’ [. . .] If translation is a science of anything, it is a science of difference, for without difference there would be no translation” (Cronin 2003: 169). Of course, the discipline that Geertz had in mind as pursuing the science of imaging difference was (a certain kind of) anthropology—but I am sure it could just as well have been (a certain kind of) translation, the science of difference par excellence. I say “a certain kind”, stressing the how-ness of both, because that is the crucial element of this equation. Translation is a double-edged sword that can bring liberation as much as destruction, depending on who wields it, how they do it, and what cause they serve. But it definitely has power and potential, though its role is still misunderstood and its impact underappreciated. For example, the report Biocultural Diversity: Threatened Species, Endangered Languages (Loh and Harmon 2014), which I mentioned above, completely ignores the role of translation

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Anthropology  155 in both perpetuating and countering the crisis. In his book, Cronin (2003) refers to earlier publications by Harmon (1996; 2001) but the favor is not returned, even a decade later: Loh and Harmon (2014) do not reference a single work concerned with translation. Clearly, Biocultural Diversity makes perfect sense without translation. But does it really? Cronin argues that “[a] human ecology which excludes translation seriously compromises its chances for survival” (2003: 74) as he makes the following case for the threefold “potential translation offers for genuine biocultural diversity in the contemporary world” (2003: 73): Firstly, there is the relationship between translation and diversity itself. Drawing on the work on William Jones, David Harmon argues that the ability to recognize diversity is constitutive of our humanity [. . .] [W]e can only recognize the figure of sameness against the background of diversity. If everything was the same, there would be no such thing as sameness [. . .] Hence, to find what humans have in common, you have to begin by establishing what separates them: ‘[t]he paradox is that we can only grasp what is universal by first recognizing what is different’ (Harmon 2001: 54). Translation contributes to diversity because it expands the range of texts and cultural experiences available to any given individual in a language (so making the individual aware of the existence of other cultures and languages) and because it is a classical language maintenance mechanism, expanding the range and possibilities of a language. Dispense with translation and diversity is seriously threatened [. . .] Diversity universalizes, uniformity provincializes. (Cronin 2003: 73–74) I have no doubt that statements such as these would have strongly resonated with Geertz, “one of the world’s most effective proponents of cultural, moral, and scientific pluralism” (Shweder 2000: 1511), who repeatedly stressed that [i]n science, as in life, securing universal agreement about what is good, true, beautiful, or efficient is rarely possible. Even more importantly, the ecumenical impulse to value uniformity (convergence in belief) over variety and to overlook, devalue, or eradicate ‘difference’ is not a good thing. Culture is not icing, writes Geertz. Biology is not cake. Differences are not necessarily shallow. Likeness is not necessarily deep. (Shweder 2000: 1511) Translation provides ample support for the value of difference and plurality, as can been seen throughout Cronin’s threefold argument: Secondly, translation is an important way of keeping our cultural options alive and available. [. . .] Different languages provide humans

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156  Anthropology with access to many different kinds of understanding and these are likely to be the basis for more complex, flexible responses to challenges and opportunities [. . .] Failure to translate, then, leads inevitably to what V. Shaiva has called ‘monocultures of the mind’ [. . .] Such monocultures lack the resources to creatively overcome the cultural blind spots which prevent cultures from effectively dealing with problems—societal, psychological, aesthetic—which beset them. (Cronin 2003: 74) What we find here is reiteration and reinforcement of Geertz’s point about the blinding effects of ethnocentrism: “[t]he trouble with ethnocentrism is not that it commits us to our own commitments”, but that “it impedes us from discovering at what sort of angle [. . .] we stand to the world; what sort of bat we really are” (2000: 75). It is not a question of manners, good or bad, but of cognition and recognition. The ethnocentric position is not merely discourteous or insensitive towards those who stand at a different angle to the world; more dangerously, it prevents us from recognizing “that there is something that it is like to be a bat” (Nagel 1974: 438) whose way of perceiving the external world (in this case, through echolocation) is so radically different from our own. Bats may be proverbially blind, but to them, we must be profoundly deaf. Translation makes us aware of alternative ways of experiencing and making sense of the world. As Gadamer puts it, 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 travelers we return home with new experiences. Even if we emigrate and never return, we still can never wholly forget. (Gadamer 2004: 445) Thirdly, as Cronin argues, translation facilitates diachronic diversity through its ability to reach into the past: A third translation dimension to the conservation of diversity is the role of memory [. . .] Translation allows us to remember what has been done and said and thought before in other languages and in our own. Without it, we are condemned to the most disabling form of cultural amnesia. (Cronin 2003: 74). This sounds almost as serious as the famous words of George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (1922: 284). There is hardly a nobler and more important task. But there are also several other aspects of translation in relation to difference and diversity that are not highlighted in Cronin’s discussion, but only

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Anthropology  157 come to the surface through a closer engagement with Geertz’s insights, whether considered directly or through reconceptualization. Even though Cronin mentions “cultural experience”, he focuses predominantly on the intellectual, mentalist, and cognitive dimensions, as if translation only involved the reason (recognition of difference, admission of variety, retention of memory, etc.). The cultural amnesia he cautions us against is related to ignorance, which consists of shortage or loss of knowledge. Insightful as it is, his distinction between translation as reflection (unconscious submission to the invasive influence of the dominant language) and translation as reflexion (“the second-degree reflection or meta-reflection which should properly be the business of translation scholars and practitioners” [2003: 141]) also valorizes the conscious and rational over the instinctive and intuitive. In short, he claims that “[p]eople find it difficult to value what they have no hope of understanding or to experience a sense of loss if they have not possessed a knowledge of that which they are said to be losing” (2003: 168). To Cronin, the reaction to difference and the attitude to diversity seem to be matters of cool reason. Reflexion is an intellectual exercise. However, when we turn to Geertz as a hypothetical translator and translation theorist, there is a much greater sense of psychological, emotional, and somatic investment. Difference is not merely registered (or not) as an abstract cognitive stimulus; it is often perceived as uncomfortable and upsetting. Consequently, the task Geertz attributes to anthropologists—which we could here extend to translators—goes well beyond the intellectual impact: We have, with no little success, sought to keep the world off balance; pulling out rugs, upsetting tea tables, setting off firecrackers. It has been the office of others to reassure; ours is to unsettle [. . .] [W]e hawk the anomalous, peddle the strange. Merchants of astonishment. (Geertz 2000: 64) But most importantly, in this process, we—and that is a very inclusive “we”, incorporating members of the source and target communities, authors, readers, and translators alike—find that it is our own world that is off balance, wavering, and shaking; that rugs are pulled out from under our feet, and our own tea tables are upturned. The anomalous, strange, and astonishing may at first be noticed in others, but when we observe them and interact with them long enough, trying to translate their experience into ours and ours into theirs, we begin to notice our own strangeness. We need “an imaginative entry into (and admittance of) an alien turn of mind” (Geertz 2000: 82), but also a reminder that “foreignness does not start at the water’s edge but at the skin’s” (Geertz 2000: 76)—that we are all strangers, even to ourselves, as Kristeva insists. The key discovery is “what sort of bat we really are” (Geertz 2000: 75, emphasis added), not so much what sort of bats we recognize others to be. Consequently, the task of the translator—modeled on Geertz’s description of the ethnographer, “the connoisseur par excellence of alien turns of

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mind”—is “dramatizing oddness, extolling diversity, and breathing broadmindedness” (2000: 82–83), while one of the primary tasks of translation, considered in ethical terms, could be modeled on that of ethnography: The job of ethnography, or one of them anyway, is indeed to provide, like the arts and history, narratives and scenarios to refocus our attention; not, however, ones that render us acceptable to ourselves by representing others as gathered into worlds we don’t want and can’t arrive at, but ones which make us visible to ourselves by representing us and everyone else as cast into the midst of a world full of irremovable strangenesses we can’t keep clear of. (Geertz 2000: 84; emphasis mine) Paradoxically and contrary to popular views, then, the job of translation is not just to allow us to see others but to make us visible to ourselves. If it were not for translation, for an encounter with someone who is unlike us, our self-awareness and self-perceptiveness would be seriously impaired, if not entirely impossible. We only learn to understand ourselves through understanding others—and that primarily means recognizing and acknowledging differences, “imagining” them, as Geertz would have it. In this sense, translation, like fieldwork, “is an educational experience all around. What is difficult is to decide what has been learned” (Geertz 2000: 37)—and that is largely so, once again, because the lessons often go beyond the domain of pure reason. If translation is an interpersonal encounter, it can offer us a full spectrum of experience that is not reducible to exclusively conscious and intellectual reactions. The strangenesses exposed by translation are truly irremovable; we cannot hope to rationalize them to a point where they will disappear or stop bothering us altogether. All we can do is to learn how to live with them. If translation is understood as profoundly and predominantly experiential, it has less to do with facts (accounted for in terms of equivalence, fidelity, correspondence, etc.) or just with the manner in which they are presented (fluently, smoothly, elegantly, clearly, etc.), but rather with a different sort of how-ness: the believability of the lived experience. This is precisely what Geertz would assert if his comments on anthropologists were to be applied to translators: The ability of anthropologists to get us to take what they say seriously has less to do with either a factual look or an air of conceptual elegance that it has with their capacity to convince us that what they say is a result of their having actually penetrated (or, if you prefer, been penetrated) by another form of life, of having, one way or another, truly ‘been there’. (Geertz 1988: 4–5; emphasis mine) Similarly, the mark of excellent translators (as well as translations) who are taken seriously is that they are convincing, that is, somehow true and

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Anthropology  159 authentic, rather than simply “right” or “correct”. That is because the concepts of rightness and correctness draw on the paradigm of objectivity and are therefore resistant to pluralism. Normally, there is only one “right” way to do something—“the right way” (note the definite article!)—and “correct” solutions must likewise be relatively few. But trueness and authenticity are not threatened by plurality; on the contrary, they thrive on diversity. A world in which everyone is true and authentic to himself or herself may well be utopian, but it is not conceptually incongruent. This authenticity is a quality—how-ness, if you like—that cannot be laboriously fabricated or faked, much like imagining difference “does not mean making it up, but making it evident” (Geertz 2000: 85). Likewise, it is extremely difficult to capture, define, or theorize. Geertz is notably vague in his description of what it means to “truly have been there”. Agency and control in this transformational encounter with “another form or life” remain unspecified (having penetrated? having been penetrated?), the specific manner is also unstipulated (“one way or another”); all we can say with certainty is that it involves an intimate experience. This is what translation needs to provide in order to matter and be taken seriously. But it is Geertz’s final point in “The Uses of Diversity” that, to me, speaks most powerfully of translation and its ubiquity. He suggests that “we have come to such a point in the moral history of the world [. . .] that we have are obliged to think about such diversity rather differently than we had been used to thinking about it” (Geertz 2000: 85)—and that is because the diversity formerly found between societies is now increasingly found within them. Consequently, translation as the science of difference becomes truly ubiquitous: “Understanding a mindset different from one’s own is no longer the specialist skill of the ethnographer but an everyday lifeskill of the urban dweller” (Cronin 2003: 169). We all have to translate as we navigate the various culturally diverse sites—and never before has this been more true than now, in 2016, when hundreds of thousands of migrants from culturally diverse backgrounds are flooding Europe, forever changing its sociocultural setup. This change of focus from the inter-cultural to the intra-cultural relations inevitably moves the discussion from the collective onto the individual level: Translation upsets not only ethnocentrism, but also egocentrism. Geertz insists that “we are living more and more in the midst of an enormous collage” (2000: 85). This is the real heart of the argument about the value and risk of difference and therefore, translation. We need to develop a new approach to the reality around us because “[c]onfronting landscapes and still lifes is one thing; panoramas and collages is another” (Geertz 2000: 85). A landscape is a static composition arranged in a linear perspective, presented from a definite vantage point, depicted in natural colors and creating an overall coherent, instantly recognizable impression. Landscapes and still lifes normally presuppose a certain viewing angle in order to fully appreciate the internal illumination and perspective of the composition that create an illusion of

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160  Anthropology reality. But we no longer live in a world like that, insists Geertz. Rather, we should think of ourselves as living in a collage: a composition of various materials and different objects—old and new, original and borrowed, of similar or contrasting colors, textures and sizes—not blending into one another but juxtaposed in a creative tension. A collage combines smaller, often relatively self-contained elements to create some larger impression, some “big picture”, which, however, remains internally complex. A collage is synergetic (it is more than the total sum of its constituent parts) and viewing it is a dynamic experience which requires not only interpretive effort but also physical movement: taking a few steps back and forth, and trying various angles, none if which is definitive, final, or even optimal. In a collage, differences are not elided but preserved, and yet somehow come together to create an artistic effect that is often unexpected and that challenges earlier standards of beauty and composition. This metaphor, I think, is particularly insightful when applied to translation. Interestingly, Geertz does it himself when he admits that this collage “is also an enormous explosion of translation, good, bad or indifferent, from and to languages [. . .] previously regarded as marginal and recondite” (2000: 85). The plurality of perspectives that translation brings with it is a good thing, though it may also be problematic because, despite the pressures coming from political correctness, they are not all equally appealing to everyone. But there is no reason why we should expect them to be. “ ‘Understanding’ in the sense of comprehension, perception and insight needs to be distinguished from ‘understanding’ in the sense of agreement of opinion, union of sentiment, or commonality of commitment” (Geertz 2000: 87). We do not have to become like the Other in order to understand him or her, and nor does the Other have to become like us to be understood. Geertzian collage-based understanding implies neither the utopia of universal brotherhood garnished with a Pan Am smile nor self-depreciation and doubt in the value of our own identity. In other words, one can be parochial without being provincial, to refer to the distinction originally made by Patrick Kavanagh and recently recalled by Susan Bassnett. Provincialism is accompanied by insecurity that stems from the anxious awareness of one’s marginality, whereas parochialism “is never in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish” (Kavanagh 2003 in Bassnett 2014b: x). It takes courage to stand by one’s own style and ideas, a courage that does not need to become deaf to the ideas and values held by others. Let us turn to Geertz for a few concluding thoughts in this part: To live in a collage one must in the first place render oneself capable of sorting out its elements, determining what they are (which usually involves determining where they come from and what they amounted to when they were there) and how, practically, they relate to one another, without at the same time blurring one’s own sense of one’s own location and one’s own identity within in [. . .] We must learn to grasp what we cannot embrace.

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Anthropology  161 The difficulty in this is enormous, as it has always been. Comprehending that which is, in some manner of form, alien to us and likely to remain so, without either smoothing it over with vacant murmurs of common humanity, disarming it with to-each-his-own indifferentism, or dismissing it as charming, lovely even, but inconsequent, is a skill we have arduously to learn, and having learnt it, always very imperfectly, to work continuously to keep alive; it is not a connatural capacity, like depth perception or the sense of balance, upon which we can complacently rely. (Geertz 2000: 87) Recognizing, understanding, and grasping difference, without either uncritically accepting it or automatically dismissing it, and coming from this experience with a sense of identity both reinforced and challenged, is what translation may help us achieve.

Identity and Identification, “Translatity” and Translation “Identity is often invoked as the protector of diversity: [. . .] we are open to diversity, because we respect everyone’s identity, just as we expect everyone to respect ours” (Verschueren 2006: 148). But how is this identity to be understood, and how may it help us understand translation? How much does our language and culture, and the contact with those of others, make us into who and what we are? What happens when we change our cultural environment—or when it changes around us, as is increasingly the case today, in the era of globalization and mass migration? Those confronted with such questions—amounting to nothing short of an “identity crisis”—by a radical change in their linguistic or sociocultural environments often choose to conceptualize the complex process of their identity (trans)formation in translational terms, as they “describe having to translate behavior, values, thoughts, beliefs, even emotions” (Pas 2013: 64). In short, “translation is a metaphor for hybrid identity formation” (Gentzler 2008: xii; see also Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 8). Interestingly, this conceptualization characterizes not only the experience of immigrants (e.g., Besemeres 2002; Hoffman 1998; Robin Suleiman 1998) but also bilinguals (e.g., Besemeres and Wierzbicka 2007; de Courtivron 2003; Cutter 2005) and indeed, learners of a second language (e.g., Pavlenko 1998). In the opening lines of his book Translation and Identity, Michael Cronin asserts that “translation must be at the center of any attempt to think about questions of identity in human society” (2006: 1). But perhaps the reverse is true as well. What if we used the concept of identity, as developed by social scientists, and applied it back to translation? The first obvious point of contact is the ubiquity of both. “No other aspect of contemporary life, it seems, attracts these days the similar attention of philosophers, social scientists and psychologists [. . .] One may say

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that ‘identity’ has become by now a prism through which other topical aspects of contemporary life are spotted, grasped, and examined”, remarks Zygmunt Bauman (2001: 121). Elsewhere, I have made a very similar comment on the concept of translation, tracing its remarkable career over the last several decades: We increasingly speak and hear about the need and pressure to translate various—mostly abstract—things: ambitions, theories, discoveries, reactions, even ourselves. When we’ve had enough, we feel we must translate our anger into some sort of action. [. . .] Clearly, translation must be a powerful and appealing idea if it is used so broadly—and increasingly so—to conceptualize a range of various phenomena. (Blumczynski 2016: 328–29) But the parallels run much deeper. In his earlier essay “From Pilgim to ­Tourist—or a Short History of Identity”, Bauman notes the remarkable transition in the understanding of this concept between modernity and postmodernity: “[I]f the modern ‘problem of identity’ was to construct an identity and keep it solid and stable, the postmodern ‘problem of identity’ is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open” (1996: 18; original emphasis). When we consider translation, much of this observation rings true as well: While the modern era delighted in establishing all things translational—taxonomies, correspondences, equivalences, strategies, techniques, and methods—postmodernity is much fonder of upsetting, deconstructing, and challenging them. In social sciences, this transition has been reflected in a noteworthy change in terminology. Several authors to whom I turned preferred to speak of identification rather than identity in order to stress its constructivist, fluid, and non-essentialist nature. Identification is something we do or experience rather than something we have or even receive. Erich Fromm’s wellknown distinction between having and being comes to mind: The difference between these two modes proceeds from “a society centered around persons and one centered around things” (Fromm 1997/2008: 16). Identification belongs much more comfortably in the first society than in the second. Much in this spirit, Bauman concludes his essay “Identity in the Globalizing World”, (2001: 129) with the following suggestion: Perhaps instead of talking about identities, inherited or acquired, it would be more in keeping with the realities of the globalising world to speak of identification, a never-ending, always incomplete, unfinished and openended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged. (Bauman 2001: 129; emphasis in original) At this point, I would like to suggest a half-serious mental experiment that involves a conceptual neologism. If identification is a concept preferable to identity, then, by analogy, translation would be preferable to the hypothetical

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Anthropology  163 concept of translatity. Even though this may sound like an argument from silence, I believe it is still worth making to demonstrate the potential of the translation concept and the contribution of translation studies to other fields. For translation studies did not need to make the transition mirroring the identity-to-identification shift at all. It has always been concerned with subjectively situated translations and not timeless translatities—except in some contexts where the texts in question would probably deserve that name to distinguish their unique character from actual translations. For example, some religious groups insist that the King James Bible of 1611, also known as the Authorized Version, “has been, and continues to be, the only accurate English translation of the inspired, inerrant, infallible, and preserved original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Words of God for the English-speaking people”.1 But translation, like its conceptual counterpart identification, by definition is an “incomplete, unfinished and open-ended activity” (Bauman 2001: 129)—and so, if something is complete, finished, and close-ended, it is not a translation and requires coining a different term. Incomplete, unfinished, and open-ended translations are not exceptions—they are the rule. With this realization in mind, let us consider the following comment drawn from Stuart Hall’s essay “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”: In common sense language, identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation. (Hall 1996: 2; emphasis mine) When applied to translation, this insight brings us back to the focus on this chapter, namely, its social dimension. Solidarity and allegiance—unlike, for example, equivalence—are interpersonal and social concepts and relations; they rest on the recognition of characteristics or values shared with somebody else. We translate what we understand, what appeals to us and addresses us (see Chapter 2). By the same token, what we do not understand, do not agree with, or simply do not recognize as worthwhile, we find hard to translate and appropriate. All these whats, however, crucially depend on the who. In an important sense, a successful translation—one that all parties involved accept and feel good about—is predicated on the translator’s “moments of empathetic alignment” (Throop 2010: 771–772) with another person, be it the author of the text, the commissioner of the translation, or even its user. This alignment is quite frequently conceptualized and discussed in terms of identity. For example, Moira Inghilleri, in her exploration of the social, ethical, and political pressures experienced by soldier-linguists (as translators and interpreters are typically referred to in the military) working in the contexts of Guantánamo and Iraq, studied the accounts of some who “played a pivotal role in the interrogations of the prisoners, participating fully either as translators or in order to physically and verbally insult and

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164  Anthropology mock prisoners in their own language” (2008: 216). She found that pervading many of these accounts was “violence of identity politics which seeks to make names stick” (Shapiro 1999: 80). Identity thus construed is who and what you are, no matter what you do or say—which rather closely approximates the philosophical concept of essence that we considered earlier (see Chapter 3). From a political and rhetorical perspective, identity is a useful concept that allows you to clearly brand and essentialize your friends (and enemies) as liberals, democrats, communists, Muslims, or Christians. But the reality of translation and its ethics does not uphold this essentialist, naturalist, and political illusion in which identities and characteristics are viewed as something inherent and static. For one of the female U.S. soldierlinguists in Iraq, it was precisely the realization of “the political and ethnic identity of the prisoner [. . .] that [disturbed] her ethical responsibility” (Inghilleri 2008: 218, italics in original) and ultimately lead to her withdrawal from further interrogations. For others serving at Guantánamo, it was the problem of religious identity uncritically “inscribed in the political field” (Inghilleri 2008: 220) that troubled their sense of ethics. In the end, Inghilleri’s analysis of the clashes between the translators’ ethical subjectivities and “the violence of identity politics” leads her to suggest, following Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992: 49), a translation ethics that is “guided by the nature of the ethical encounter itself where ‘the right thing to do’ cannot be calculated or predetermined, but can only ever be decided in the event itself” (2008: 222). If recognition of identity occasionally results in “moments of empathetic alignment”, that is because empathy—like identity—“is never an all or nothing affair. It is, instead, a process that is arrayed through time. In fact, empathy cannot be adequately understood [. . .] without close attention to its temporal unfolding” (Throop 2010: 772). This focus on the temporal unfolding is nothing else than the interpersonal and discursive situatedness against the who, how, when, where, and what. If identity is to be theoretically convincing and practically useful in understanding translation, it must be construed as something profoundly processual (see Chapter 3). Once we have made this adjustment, much of what social scientists say about identity—and, even more so, identification—becomes very true of translation: [T]he discursive approach sees identification as a construction, a process never completed—always ‘in progress’. It is not determined in the sense that it can always be ‘won’ or ‘lost’, sustained or abandoned. Though not without its determinate conditions of existence, including the material and symbolic resources required to sustain it, identification is in the end conditional, lodged in contingency. Once secured, it does not obliterate difference. (Hall 1996: 2–3; emphasis mine) Translation, like identification, emerges from and occurs in contact, encounter, and dialogue with others whose identities are not fixed, monolithic, or

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Anthropology  165 singular. But, as we noted above, it also proceeds from and consists of an encounter with oneself. One of the best illustrations of this dual encounter—as well as the entanglement of the rich concepts of translation and identity—is Eva Hoffman’s autobiography Lost in Translation (1989/1998). In a sense, her whole autobiographical project is translational in nature: It is a translation of experience into text in an attempt to tell the story of her bilingual life in one language. Her main goal is to achieve “a mending of fractured linguistic identities” in a process that “requires a fundamental translation of what one understands as identity” (Pas 2013: 65). However turbulent, this translation process is invaluable in its integrating and therefore soothing effect: It finally allows Hoffmann to achieve “a form of therapeutic healing of the anxieties connected with living between two cultures” (Karpinski 1996: 127). To quote her own words: [I]f I’m not to risk a mild cultural schizophrenia, I have to make a shift in the innermost ways. I have to translate myself. But if I’m to achieve this without being assimilated—that is, absorbed—by my new world, the translation needs to be careful, the turns of the psyche unforced. [. . .] A true translation proceeds by the motions of understanding and sympathy; it happens by small increments, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase. (Hoffman 1989/1998: 211; emphasis added) Translation as an identity-building mechanism has therapeutic power: It allows one to avoid cultural schizophrenia, retain sanity, and achieve a sense of internal integrity. But this is not accomplished by simply eliminating strangeness and discomfort. Translation is not about assimilation or domestication; it is not about replacing or overriding one identity with another. Rather, it involves the paradoxical experience of remaining yourself and yet undergoing a profound, innermost change in the process of a contingent, conditional, and emergent articulation of your identity. This strongly echoes Stuart Hall’s insights: Identification is, then, a process of articulation, a suturing, an overdetermination not a subsumption. There is always ‘too much’ or ‘too little’—an over-determination or a lack, but never a proper fit, a totality. Like all signifying practices, it is subject to the ‘play’ of différance. It obeys the logic of more-than-one. (Hall 1996: 3) In Hoffman’s view, translation is the only way to experience and preserve one’s integrity while acquiring a new, hybrid cultural identity. Translation makes her whole again. At the same time, a true translation is delicate, gradual, and incremental—in short, processual—something that unravels the convoluted psyche without rupturing it. It is powerful but subtle; voluntary

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but irresistible; radical but soothing. It is a way to understanding yourself, thus leading to a new sense of wholeness: For me, therapy is partially translation therapy, the talking cure a ­second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: [. . .] a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward [. . .] It’s only when I retell my whole story, back to the beginning, and from the beginning onward, in one language, that I can reconcile the voices within me with each other; it is only then that the person who judges the voices and tells the stories begins to emerge [. . .] [I]n my translation therapy, I keep going back and forth over the rifts, not to heal them but to see that I— one person, first-person singular—have been on both sides. (Hoffman 1989/1998: 271, 273) Translation is about explaining yourself to yourself; it brings self-­knowledge, self-understanding, and therefore self-transformation. Translating backward means understanding your past and becoming reconciled to it. Its power lies in the fact that in order to be yourself you do not have to give up your old identity and uncritically embrace your new one. Translation ­tolerates—indeed, encourages—discontinuities, tensions, and paradoxes. But at the same time, this heuristic role of translation extends into the realm of interpersonal relationships. In order to be known and understood, you have to translate yourself for the other person. This is how Hoffman describes the development of her romantic relationship with a certain Texan: We keep talking strenuously, attentively, hoping that we can translate ourselves for each other, and a tenderness grows up between us in the very effort of the enterprise . . . But the strangeness remains, and it’s not just the strangeness of discovering another person’s ineradicable separateness. It is, ironically, in the smallest, quietest phrases, when we’re nearest those soft and vulnerable crevices where intimacy is lodged, that my Texan and I know most poignantly that we don’t speak exactly the same language. (Hoffman 1989/1998: 189–190) There is no intimacy without translation. When you translate yourself for others, you invite them to your world and become vulnerable as your soft crevices are exposed, but you also enter their world and try to relate to it—and experience both intimate understanding and “ineradicable separateness”. Translation is bittersweet; when we are translated—for ourselves and for others—we experience both frustration and relief.

Note 1 From the description of The Defined King James Bible (2000), as advertised on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/The-Defined-King-James-Bible/dp/ B000LRFJMG; last accessed on 12 September 2015).

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Epilogue

“Translation is, above all, an introduction into unsuspected complexity”— notes, quite aphoristically, Michael Cronin (2009: 218). But a mere recognition of that complexity is not enough; he argues elsewhere that we can get those working in other areas to develop interest in ours “not by telling them how complex translation is (which it is) but why it matters”—and this can only be achieved by demonstrating “that translation engages with questions that are of real importance for the past, present and future of humanity” (Cronin 2003: 3). However ambitious or idealistic it sounds, that is the real remit of translation studies understood as a rhizomatic transdiscipline. This remit requires a sufficiently open, indeterminate, and “fuzzy” concept of translation, one which resists finality and encourages conceptual experimentation. “Reconceptualizing translation”, writes Martha Cheung, “is a permanent intellectual endeavor” that “takes us to the beyond—to the world of ideas pertaining not only to the nature of translation and the nature of language, but also to the very nature of change itself” (2011: 15). Throughout this book, I have been engaging in this reconceptualizing endeavor in order to demonstrate that qualitative, how-centered insights in the humanities can relatively freely and meaningfully move between different disciplines, often suggesting original, innovative ideas capable of providing both reassurance and provocation. Of course, that is just one way of looking at this translational phenomenon: to view the respective areas of study as relatively independent, potentially separable—even if the precise borders between them are fuzzy—and generally stable; what moves in this picture are the concepts and ideas that “travel” or “migrate” from one discipline to the other (e.g., Bal 2002). Translation studies itself is often described as one such moving concept, as highlighted by the somewhat clichéd image of the successive “turns” (e.g., Bachmann-Medick 2006a; 2009; Gentzler 2013; Snell-Hornby 2006; 2009; 2010). I do not propose to discard this conceptualization, but emphasize its arborescent structure while suggesting a rhizomatic alternative that problematizes and challenges the ideas of origin, trajectory, and location of specific concepts, including translation itself. There is no need, in my view, to replace one paradigm with the other, but rather to recognize the plurality of available epistemological models, along with their potential as well as limitations. This appreciation

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168 Epilogue of plurality and contingency, but also responsibility, comes from my engagement with translation: its practice, pedagogy, and theoretical reflection. The experience of this engagement leads me to consider translation as a paradoxical phenomenon that involves both movement and ubiquity. That is precisely what makes it a promising conceptual and methodological fabric for a transdisciplinary model of knowledge and research. What I am suggesting as resulting from this model is not an enthusiastically uncritical blend of various areas of study into a shapeless amalgam of the “humanities” (as currently attempted by some universities: officially in pursuit of improved cross-disciplinary integration, actually in service of the regime of business efficiency). Conceptual, methodological, and organizational centers, hubs, and clusters are important and needed, if only for practical reasons, which should not be belittled. Rather, I am proposing a dose of critical distrust towards (inter-)disciplinary classifications and an awareness of their arbitrariness. Believing with Geertz that “it is not necessary to know everything in order to understand something” (1973: 20), I wish to challenge the opinion that the most insightful discussions of philosophy should be left to philosophers, theology to theologians, history to historians, and translation to translators (or translation studies scholars). Translation has a philosophical, theological, linguistic, anthropological, political, historical, social, and ethical dimension (as well as many others); by the same token, all these (and numerous other) fields involve and vitally depend on translation, which is a matter of the how rather than just the what. This signals a range of further directions in which the translational project presented in this book may be developed. If translation is both nomadic and ubiquitous, and if translational phenomena underpin various key concepts across the humanities, then translation studies scholars need to pay attention to conceptual discussions taking place in other fields. Some researchers suggest that across the humanities “an implicit focus on translation processes” has become increasingly prevalent (Bachmann-Medick 2009: 2); others go so far as to insist that “new and enriching thinking on translation must take place outside the traditional discipline of translation studies” (Arduini and Nergaard 2011: 9). ­Disciplinary—even interdisciplinary—thinking and what-focused approaches will no longer suffice. I have no doubt that many more interesting and true insights about all things translational are yet to be formulated or discovered in areas where they would not normally be expected. Here is one final example, which, for the time being, concludes this discussion and at the same time opens another one. Pat Metheny, a jazz guitarist and composer, in an interview given several years ago made the following comment: “The guitar for me is a translation device. It’s not a goal. And in some ways jazz isn’t a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination—a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition” (quoted in Ratliff 2005: 15).

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Epilogue  169 Music is what happens at the fingertips of the guitarist. It is where ideas, impressions, and intuitions become sounds and harmonies; where the mind, the soul, and the body contrive. Music cannot happen without the fingers actually touching the strings—sometimes gently and delicately, sometimes passionately or aggressively—and in this sense is profoundly somatic, unlike some platonic, disembodied abstraction. The guitar is not yet music: It is a device, a tool, an instrument—a necessary one, but an instrument nevertheless. It is, strictly speaking, a musical instrument: an artifact that gives an audible, recognizable, and analyzable form to music. The guitar is instrumental to music; music itself is experiential and processual in the Whiteheadian sense: It occurs rather than exists. It does not surprise me at all that Metheny (for nearly three decades one of my favorite musicians, I hasten to add) describes what happens between the musician, instrument, and music as “translation”; in fact, I can think of no better way to describe it. Translation is only ever important and inspiring when it is concerned with something else than itself. I have reasons to believe that if Pat Metheny theorized translation—even in a narrower, traditional, interlingual sense—he would never reduce it to textual relationships. To him, and no doubt others who subscribe to a similar how, it is obvious from the start that translation is inseparable from “all kinds of stuff about the human condition”.

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Index

activism 2, 20, 86, 141, 146 – 8 actuality 31, 71 – 2, 112 Agarwal, R.P. 62 Alishman, D.L. 5 Angelelli, C.V. 135 anthropology x, xiii, 3 – 4, 6, 24, 31, 64, 116, 133 – 43, 146 – 52, 154, 157 – 8,  168 anxiety xiii, 34, 87, 89, 109, 115, 132, 137, 140, 160, 165 Appiah, K.A. 136 Apter, E.S. 122 Archilochus 5 Arduini, S. vii – x, xii, 29 – 31, 135, 161, 168 Arfi, B. 22 Aristotle x, 2, 14, 15, 18, 52, 71, 72, 73, 126, 131 Asad, T. 134 authenticity 70, 76, 95, 159 authority 78, 93, 123, 141, 152, autonomy 8, 72, 74 – 5, 77, 79, 81 – 2, 117, 141 Aydede, M. 17 Bachmann-Medick, D. 30, 134 – 5, 142, 149, 151, 167 – 8 Baker, C. 145, 148 – 9 Baker, M. 107, 121, 124, 128 Bal, M. 1 – 2, 4, 27 – 8, 46, 167 balance x, 20, 78, 87, 109, 117, 134, 136, 150, 157, 161 Balcerzan, E. 45 Barańczak, S. 72 Bartmiński, J. 15 Bartrina, F. 124 Bassnett, S. 35, 141, 160 Bauman, Z. 162 – 3 Beidelman, T. O. 135

Belvis, C. 30 Bennett, K. 108 Berlin, I. 5 Berman, A. 38, 40, 45 Berman, S. 124 Besemeres, M. 161 Bhabha, H.K. 121 Blumczynski, P. 12, 20, 124, 140, 144, 162 Blum-Kulka, S. 121 Bonhoeffer, D. 85, 94 Bourdieu, P. 52, 164 Bowker, L. 10 Bragason, E. H. 140 Buber, M. 43, 46 Buffagni, C. 141 Bühler, A. 68 Bujra, J. 140 Bultmann, R. 60 Bush, P. 141 Calvino, I. 41 Carston, R. 121 Casadevall, A. 139 categorization 14, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 52, 110, 126, 137 Catford, J.C. 26, 100 causation 16, 23, 36, 73 – 4, 78 – 82, 85, 118 Chesterman, A. 46, 144, 148, 151 Cheung, M.P.Y. 17, 167 Chomsky, N.A. 116 circularity 32 – 3, 37, 45, 53, 55, 61 – 3, 70, 80; see also hermeneutic circle circulation 27, 32, 35, 55, 62, 127 clarity 8 – 11, 67, 92 Clifford, J. 136 Cobb, J.B. 65 – 7, 75, 79, 84 Cohen, M.S. 71 – 2

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184 Index complexity ix – x, xii, 6 – 9, 11, 14, 16 – 17, 21 – 6, 29, 47, 57, 70 – 1, 73, 78, 80 – 1, 83 – 4, 86, 90, 93 – 4, 100, 105 – 6, 113, 116, 124 – 5, 127, 141 – 2, 146, 150, 153, 156, 160 – 1,  167 conceptualization x, xi, xiii, 1, 3, 9 – 10, 14 – 16, 18 – 21, 25 – 6, 28, 31, 34 – 5, 38, 40, 48 – 9, 55, 61 – 2, 65, 67, 73, 75, 79 – 80, 82, 85 – 6, 88, 91, 94, 96, 99 – 102, 104, 106, 110, 112 – 20, 122 – 3, 125, 128, 131 – 3, 135, 137, 154, 161, 163, 167 conditioning 25, 56, 58, 69, 78, 81, 85, 117 consistency 8 – 9, 30, 32, 129 construal xiii, 3, 16, 100, 106, 114, 119 – 24 context xi, 4,6 7, 8 – 10, 12 – 14, 16 – 20, 23 – 7, 31, 34, 38, 40, 43 – 9, 51 – 2, 54, 56 – 9, 61, 64, 66, 69 – 70, 72 – 3, 75 – 6, 78, 80 – 1, 83, 89, 91 – 2, 95, 98 – 9, 103 – 4, 107 – 9, 111 – 13, 118 – 19, 121 – 3, 125, 128, 134, 146, 148, 163 contingency 34, 54, 164 – 5, 168 Cormier, M. 8 Croft, W. 119 Cronin, M. 35, 83, 122, 130, 146, 151, 153 – 7, 159, 161, 167 Cruse, D.A. 119 Cutter, M. 161 Cuyckens, H. 14 Czajka, P. 119 Danaher, J. 3 Darbelnet, J. 100, 121 de Courtivron, I. 161 Deleuze, G. 29 – 31 Delisle, J. 8 Derrida, J. 38 detachment 81 – 2, 146 – 7 difference ix, 3, 5, 7, 13, 20, 22, 51 – 2, 54, 61, 68, 72, 78, 83, 88, 90 – 5, 110, 114, 118, 120, 123 – 4, 128, 129, 134 – 5, 149 – 61,  164 Dilthey, W. 34, 38 – 9 Dirven, R. 10, 14 diversity 76, 89, 91 – 2, 118, 130, 138, 150 – 9,  161 domestication 75, 83, 108 – 9, 112, 124, 154, 165 Doorslaer, L. van 7, 124 doubt 67, 70, 87 – 8, 90 – 1, 96 – 7, 132, 137, 142, 160

empathy 123, 163 – 4 encounter 4, 14, 38, 43 – 4, 46, 49, 51, 59, 86, 97, 108, 133 – 5, 140, 145, 149, 158 – 9, 164 – 5 epistemology ix, x, 1 – 5, 7 – 9, 11, 16, 28 – 30, 32, 48, 66, 102 – 3, 109, 119, 126, 129, 167 equality 11, 72, 90 – 2, 94, 142, 153 equivalence 12, 18, 25 – 6, 50, 52, 65, 72, 93 – 4, 110, 118, 120, 122 – 3, 131, 148, 158, 162 – 3 ethics xi, 2, 4, 8, 11, 31 – 2, 38, 45, 48 – 9, 55, 70, 78, 83, 87, 94, 98, 102, 104, 106, 109, 123, 131, 139 – 42, 144 – 50, 154, 158, 163 – 4,  168 ethnocentrism 11, 43, 64, 91, 96, 152 – 4, 156,  159 ethnography xiii, 101, 134 – 7, 140 – 2, 157 – 9 ethnolinguistics 11 – 12 Evans, V. 10, 11, 14 Eves, H.W. 62 exclusion 27, 42, 48, 81, 83 – 4, 89, 137, 155 Eyres, H. 47 faith xiii, 3, 31, 65 – 7, 72, 78, 84 – 91, 95 – 9, 118,  144 Fang, F.C. 139 fieldwork, translation as xiii, 31, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150 Finnish Sign Language Interpreter Association 146 foreignization 76, 83, 95 – 6, 109, 112, 124 Freed, A.O. 140 Fromm, E. 162 Fukari, A. 134 fuzziness 6, 8, 15, 21 – 4, 26, 29, 136, 138, 167 Gadamer, H-G. viii, 7 – 10, 16, 34, 39 – 43, 47, 53 – 4, 56 – 61, 63, 89, 99, 156 Gallie, W.B. 52 Gambier, Y. 7, 124 Garzelli, B. 141 Geeraerts, D. 14 Geertz, C. viii, xii, 4, 18, 135 – 43, 146 – 50, 152 – 61,  168 Gentzler, E. xiii, 38, 42, 54, 137, 161, 167 Gile, D. 65

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Index  185 Gillespie, J. 20 Goddard, C. 11 Goertz, G. 20 – 3 Goodspeed, E. J. 42 Green, M.C. 14 Grimm, J. 2, 5 Grimm, W. 2, 5 Grudem, W. 84 Guattari, F. 29 – 31 Guignon, C.B. 105 Guldin, R. 107, 125, 129 – 30 Habermas, J. 39 Halík, T. vii – viii, 65, 85 – 92, 94 – 9 Hall, S. 75 – 6, 163 – 5 Halverson, S. 17, 102, 104, 117 Hamilton, A.G. 10 Hanks, W. F. 134 Hanna, S. 134 Harmon, D. 152, 154 – 5 Hebenstreit, G. 69 Heidegger, M. 10, 16, 34, 39, 48, 58 – 60, 63,  105 Henitiuk, V. vii, 125 Hermans, T. ix, xii, 72, 136 hermeneutic circle 10, 33, 55 – 63, 144; see also circularity hermeneutics viii, x, xiii, 4, 6, 10, 16, 33 – 6, 38, 40 – 4, 47, 49, 52 – 3, 55 – 61, 63 – 5, 68 – 9, 75, 78, 82, 84, 89 – 90, 93 – 4, 99, 102, 119, 141, 144 – 5 Hoffman, E. 161, 165 – 6 Hofstede, G. 20 Holmes, J.S. 137 Horace 47 House, J. 7, 25 – 6, 69, 100 Humboldt, W. von 9 hybridity 30, 121, 161, 165 Hymes, D. 16 Ibarretxe-Antunano, I. 100, 102 identification xiii, 28, 44, 67, 118, 126, 161 – 5 identity ix, 3 – 4, 32, 27, 39, 46, 74 – 9, 100, 130, 153, 161 – 6 inclusion 83, 103 indeterminacy 8, 60, 89 – 90, 134, 167 Inghilleri, M. 128, 146, 163 – 4 Institute of Translation and Interpreting 148 interdisciplinarity 1 – 4, 27, 29 – 30, 66, 100 – 1, 116,  168 interpretant x, 28, 32, 38, 41, 64, 114, 140

interpretation xiii, 1, 3, 12, 15 – 16, 18, 21, 23 – 9, 31, 34 – 5, 38 – 51, 53 – 61, 63, 68 – 70, 73, 80 – 2, 84, 86, 88 – 9, 93, 97, 99, 102, 107 – 11, 113, 118, 120 – 2, 135, 140 – 5, 151,  160 interpreting vii, x, 32, 43 – 7, 49, 59, 66, 69 – 70, 88, 117, 128, 139 – 40, 144 – 9,  163 Jakobson, R. ix, 13, 106 – 7 Jameson, F. 38 – 9 Jervolino, D. 100 Johnson, M. viii, x, 14, 30, 39, 102, 116 – 18, 127 – 9, 131 – 2 Johnston, D. vii, 34, 43 Kade, O. 69 – 70 Kaindl, K. 29 Karpinski, E.C. 165 Kavanagh, P. 160 Kearney, R. 94, 97, 99 – 100 Kelly, M. 145, 148 – 9 Kilgarriff, A. 19 Kilmister, C.W. 10 Koskinen, K. 122 Kövecses, Z. 102, 119 – 20, 122, 126 Kristeva, J. 98 – 9, 157 Krzeszowski, T.P. 113 Kundera, M. 141 Kurtz, D.C. 12 Kuźniak, M. 117 Labov, W. 122 Lakoff, G. viii, x, 10, 14 – 15, 30, 39, 102, 110, 116 – 18, 127 – 9, 131 – 2 Langacker, R.W. viii, 10, 14 – 15, 48, 94, 99, 101 – 16, 118 – 23 Lee-Jahnke, H. 8 Lefevere, A. 61 – 2 Leibnitz, G. 62 – 3 Lem, S. 74 Levinas, E. 95 – 6 Lévi-Strauss, C. 152 – 3 Levý, J. 35 Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. 113, 117 linguistics, cognitive x, xiii, 4, 6, 11, 13 – 15, 21, 24, 30 – 31, 100 – 6, 109, 116, 119, 126 – 7, 131 – 2 Loffredo, E. 141 Loh, J. 152, 154 Lyons, J. 116 Mack, N. 26 Maffi, L. 152

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186 Index Mahoney, J. 20 – 3 Malmkjær, K. 107, 124 Mangal, S. 23, 27 Mangal, S.K. 23, 27 Marais, K. 57, 71, 73, 90 Marco, J. 9 Marinetti, C. 135 Martel, Y. 134 Maxim, J. 118 Max-Neef, M. A. 39 Mayoral, R. 9 meaning ix, xii – xiii, 3 – 12, 16, 21 – 2, 24, 25, 28, 34, 37, 41, 51 – 6, 58 – 61, 63, 73, 81, 86, 93, 100 – 2, 106 – 8, 110 – 14, 118 – 19, 122, 126, 129 – 32, 141, 145 metaphor xiii, 8, 11, 16, 31, 57, 81, 96, 100, 106 – 7, 118 – 19, 121 – 2, 124 – 32, 135, 143, 160 – 1 Millán, C. 124 Munday, J. 124, 137 mystery 67, 84, 88, 96

phenomenology xi, 16 – 18, 27 – 8, 36, 44, 46, 66, 115, 124 philosophy x, xiii, 4, 18, 21, 24, 26, 30 – 1, 34, 38, 66, 101, 110, 132, 168 Pöchhacker, F. 29 Pokorn, N.K. 124 Porter, C. 124 potentiality x, 71 – 4, 107, 110, 112, 118 processuality x – xiii, 1, 4, 6, 14 – 15, 17, 26, 32, 34, 56 – 60, 63, 66 – 76, 78 – 86, 88 – 90, 96 – 7, 105, 111, 114, 118 – 19, 133, 164 – 5,  169 pulsation 68 – 70, 87, 89 – 90 Pym, A. 50, 72 – 3, 79, 105, 141

Nagel, T. 156 Nergaard, S. viii –  x, xii, 29 – 31, 135, 161, 168 Newmark, P. 124 Newton, I. 62, 68 Nida School of Translation Studies vii, 17 Nida, E.A. 100 Niranjana, T. 134, 142 Nord, C. vii, 98, 134

Rafael, V.L. 128 Rajewska, E. 45 Ratliff, B. 168 Reiss, K. 36 religion xiii, 65, 86 – 95, 132, 163 – 4 rhizomatic model 1, 29 – 31, 167 Ricoeur, P. ix, 42 – 3 Robbins, P. 17 Robinson, D. vii, 28, 35, 41 – 2, 44, 87, 116 – 17, 133,  141 Robin Suleiman, S. 161 Rojo, A. 100, 102 Rokeach, M. 20 Rose, M. 135 rough ground 138 – 40, 146 Rybicki, J. 77

occasion 78 – 84 Olohan, M. 107, 121 otherness 46, 83, 94, 95, 97 – 8, 124, 134, 145, 154, 160 Pálsson, G. 135 paradox ix, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 8, 11, 15, 29, 36, 42, 45, 52, 55, 59, 62, 67, 68, 71, 78, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 93, 98, 122, 131, 136, 155, 158, 165, 166, 168 Parsons, E.C. 5 Pas, J.M. 161, 165 Pavlenko, A. 161 Paz, O. 100 Pearce, S. 62 Peirce, C. S. x, 41, 106 – 7 Peppé, S. 118 Perteghella, M. 141

qualitative approach x, xiii, 1, 20 – 8, 30 – 1, 45, 82 – 3, 93, 129, 140, 167 qualitative proximity x, 4, 22, 24, 26, 28 Queneau, R. 41 Quine, W.V.O. 34, 133 – 4, 141

Said, E.W. 121 Saldanha, G. 124 Santayana, G. 156 Sarfaty, G. A. 151 Saussure, F. de 106, 116 Schaffer, J. 82 Schäffner, C. 125 Schleiermacher, F. viii, xi, 10, 34 – 5, 43 – 5, 48 – 51, 53, 55 – 8, 60,  63 Seibt, J. x, 66 Sem, S.K. 62 serendipity xi Severi, C. 134

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Index  187 Shapiro, M. J. 164 Shweder, R. A. 136, 146, 155 Silence, A. 141 Simeoni, D. 134 similarity ix, xii, 2 – 4, 37, 46, 62, 74, 88, 92, 94, 118, 129, 131, 149 – 51 Simon, S. 122 simpatico 45 – 7 Skibińska, E. Vii, 45, 124 Snell-Hornby, M. x, 29, 100, 137, 167 Sollosy, J. 37, 41 somatic approach xi, 26, 41, 44, 104, 116 – 18, 129, 131 – 2, 147, 157, 169 Sonesson, G. 17 Spalding, K. 77 Stahuljak, Z. 148 St. André, J. 125 Steiner, G. 34 – 5, 63, 68, 73, 144 Strowe, A. 46 – 7 Sulaibi, D. 141 Sutermeister, O. 5 sway 86 – 8,  95 Szawerna, M. 119 Tabakowska, E. vii, 14, 15, 48, 102, 115, 143 Taber, C. 100 Tarski, A. 6, 13 theology x, xiii, 4, 24, 31, 65 – 7, 72, 84 – 6, 90, 93 – 4, 97, 99, 101, 168 Throop, J. C. 163 – 4 Tomforde, M. 63 Toury, G. 137 Tracy, S.J. 24 – 5, 27, 31 transdisciplinary approach ix – x, xiii, 4, 22, 28 – 31, 138, 168 transferability xi, 1, 19, 103, 116 translation: cheap 94 – 5, 97 – 8; costly 94 – 5, 98; as meaning 100, 106 – 8, 110 – 12, 119; as pilgrimage 96 – 9; as qualitative succession 82, 118; as road 96 – 9; therapeutic role of 165

translational research (medicine) 139, 151 translatity 161 – 3 trust 3, 142 – 5, 148 – 9 Tuwim, J. 45 Tymoczko, M. xii, 2, 125, 130, 140, 141, 146 ubiquity of translation ix – x, xiii, 1 – 2, 4 – 6, 20, 28, 30, 33, 115, 127, 129, 131 – 2, 159, 161, 168 Underhill, J.W. 11 understanding xiii, 3 – 4, 12, 15, 21, 25, 27, 30 – 31, 34, 36, 38 – 45, 47 – 8, 51, 53 – 4, 56 – 60, 62 – 4, 67, 69 – 72, 75, 91, 94 – 5, 105, 107, 111, 114, 118 – 22, 127, 129, 131, 151, 156, 158, 160 – 1, 165 – 6 Van Wyke, B. 125 Venuti, L. x, xiii, 6, 35, 46 – 7, 61, 74, 75, 95 – 6, 98, 111, 124, 146 Vermeer, H.J. 36 Verschueren, J. 161 Verspoor, M. 10, 14 Vinay, J.-P. 100, 121 Wacquant, L. D. 164 Ware, T. 93 Wąsik, Z. 119 Wells, B. 118 Whitehead, A. N. viii, 7, 13, 31 – 2, 66 – 8, 70 – 3, 76, 78, 80 – 4, 99, 169 Wierzbicka, A. 11 – 12, 161 Wittgenstein, L. xii, 105, 138 Wolf, M. 134 – 5 Zadeh, L. 21 – 3 Zanotti, S. 141 Zerhouni, E.A. 139 Zhu, L. 44