A premise. As can be inferred from Siri Nergaard’s essay, I have been interested in translation for some time, translating Queneau, checking other people’s translations in the twenty years or so I spent working for a publishing house, and, above all, discussing my books with translators. But my interest in translation theory was born when, under my supervision, Siri Nergaard wrote her degree thesis (at that time the Italian degree course was longer than a bachelor’s degree and involved writing a fairly demanding thesis) and, later, her Ph.D. thesis. In the meantime, she had published an invaluable two-volume anthology of texts on translation from classical to modern times.1 I therefore owe it to Siri Nergaard that I went on to develop my reflections on translation and together we published the entry “Semiotic Approaches” in Mona Baker’s edited collection, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.2
Nonetheless, as also emerges from this essay, Nergaard has always focused her attention on the various translation theories while I (as she explains clearly) have always been wary of theorists who talk about translation without ever having translated anything, and I have preferred to develop my own thoughts starting from my own concrete experiences. That said, even though Nergaard has done a good job of reconstructing my position, it seems evident from her essay that on some points we have different ideas (and it would be a sad day if a former student of mine had stopped at my past ideas without having worked out her own personal position). So I shall respond to Nergaard’s essay only on those points in which she makes some objections, not in order to criticize her position, but to clarify my own.
For example, citing a text of mine where I say “interpreting means making a bet on the sense of a text, among other things. This sense that a translator must find—and preserve, or recreate . . . — is just the outcome of an interpretative inference that can or cannot be shared by other readers,” Nergaard comments: “This means that there is no hidden ‘real’ sense that the translator can find—his or her translation is, rather, a result of an interpretive bet.” I would not like these words to be taken in a deconstructive sense. As I have explained in my autobiography, right from a book such as The Open Work I insisted that the freedom of an interpretation is exercised on a text, as the title of the book suggests. If there is a work to be interpreted, the interpretation must find a meaning that the work authorizes it to recognize, and therefore freedom of interpretation always requires a form of faithfulness to the text to be interpreted. The meaning of the text can also not be the one understood by the empirical author, but, as I have explained in books such as The Role of the Reader and The Limits of Interpretation, it is the one desired by a model author who identifies not with the intention of the empirical author but with the intention of the text. Naturally, two different interpretations can identify different meanings of the text, but, as I have always maintained, even if a text authorizes manifold interpretations there are others that the text refuses.
Translators have often told me that a certain term I have used could mean two different things. Occasionally I realized that I had inadvertently used an ambiguous term and that the intention of the text was one alone, and so I asked translators to avoid the ambiguity. Indeed, when I later edited a second edition of the book in Italian I used another term that did not lend itself to misunderstandings.
Alternatively, there have been cases in which, even though I had used a term unthinkingly, the resulting ambiguity was textually interesting. I have often written that a text is sometimes more intelligent than its author. So I asked translators to keep the ambiguity because I thought that the “meaning” of the text was that of requiring the reader, and not the translator, to make an interpretive effort. Finally, at times I explicitly wanted to be ambiguous and in this case too I asked the translator to respect the intention of the text, which was that of arousing an interpretation that swung between two alternatives.
In conclusion, I wish to insist on the fact that a translation is always an act of interpretation but also an attempt to keep faith with the intention of the text. This point is clear to Nergaard, too, when she observes that “[Eco] gives maximum freedom to the translators if they stay inside certain parameters defined by the author,” even though, rather than “by the author,” I would say “by the text.”
I agree with the way Nergaard summarizes my ideas about effect, which frequently becomes so important as to oblige the translator to give up on a literal translation. How is one to preserve an effect and, at the same time, to respect what the author has written? I would like to give an example concerning my translation of Nerval’s Sylvie—showing at the same time how other good translators had the same concerns. Sometimes it is important to read and reread a text aloud in order to perceive rhythms, assonances, and so on. Before translating Sylvie I had read and reread it over at least forty years. In spite of this it was only when I started my translation that I realized that, in certain scenes with a powerful dreamlike quality, Nerval inserts verses, sometimes complete Alexandrines, sometimes hemistichs, and sometimes hendecasyllables. It is not important if the readers are aware of them or not; their function is to engender a sort of subliminal fascination. For instance, in the second chapter (the dance on the lawn in front of the castle) there are at least sixteen lines. For example, one hendecasyllable (J’étais le seul garçon dans cette ronde), Alexandrines (such as Je ne pus m’empêcher / de lui presser la main), and various hemistichs (such as La belle devait chanter or Les longs anneaux roulés). I wanted to respect the rhythms that gave the text its dreamy charm but I felt involved in a process of losses and compensations since Italian did not always allow me to produce a verse in the same position in the syntactic string as Nerval’s. Thus, when I lost the possibility of reproducing a verse where Nerval put it, I did my best to invent a verse immediately after, or before, to salvage the general effect and to get an equivalent number of verses for every paragraph.
Let me quote only three examples, comparing the English translations of Halévy, Aldington, and Sieburth.3 In the following quotations I shall put these lines in bold type to make them evident. In chapter 3, when the Narrator (half asleep) evokes the vision of Adrienne we find:
Fantôme rose et blond / glissant sur l’herbe verte, à demi baignée de blanches vapeurs.
One can miss every opportunity to save the rhythm, as Halévy does with his A rosy and blond phantom gliding over the green grass that lay buried in white vapour. One can miss the first verse and recuperate later, as Aldington does: A rose and gold phantom gliding over the green grass, / half bathed in white mists. Or one can give the translation an additional verse, as I did (with a double line of six syllables), as Sieburth did too:
Eco: Fantasma rosa e biondo / lambente l’erba verde, / appena bagnata / di bianchi vapori.4
Sieburth: A phantom fair and rosy / gliding over the green grass / half bathed in white mist.
These are not two cases of excessive generosity. Translators are frequently aware of having missed a chance or being on the verge of missing one, and try to recoup their losses. Another example:
Aimer une religieuse / sous la forme d’une actrice!. . . / et si c’était la même?—Il y a de quoi devenir fou! c’est un entrainement fatal où l’inconnu vous attire comme le feu follet—fuyant sur les joncs d’une eau morte.
There are two Alexandrines and two hemistichs. Halévy does not seem to have been sensitive to the rhythm since he puts lines at random and not at strategic points, I think. Probably his lines are a result of the hazards of literal translation:
To love a nun in the form of an actress!—and suppose it was one and the same! It was enough to drive one mad! It is a fatal attraction when the Unknown leads you on, like the will-o’-the-wisp that hovers over the rushes of a standing pool.
Aldington does not make any effort and his only hemistich is due to the fact—as was the case with the other translators—that English probably has nothing better for feu follet:
To love a nun in the shape of an actress . . . and suppose it was the same woman? It is maddening! It is a fatal fascination where the unknown attracts you like the will-o’-the-wisp moving over the reeds of still water.
Sieburth capitalizes with two Alexandrines and two hemistichs:
To be in love with a nun / in the guise of an actress! . . . and what if they were one and the same! It is enough to drive one mad—the fatal lure of the unknown drawing one ever onward / like a will o’ the wisp / flitting over the rushes of a stagnant pool.
I went further, finding three complete Alexandrines:
Amare una religiosa sotto le spoglie d’una attrice! . . . e se fosse la stessa? / C’è da perderne il senno! / è un vortice fatale / a cui vi trae l’ignoto, / fuoco fatuo che fugge / su giunchi d’acqua morta . . .5
Perhaps I went too far but I loved this “singing” feel. Sieburth, however, gets his revenge in chapter 14, where we find these splendid closing lines:
Telles sont les chimères / qui charment et égarent / au matin de la vie. J’ai essayé de les fixer sans beaucoup d’ordre, mais bien des coeurs me comprendront. Les illusions tombent l’une après l’autre, / comme les écorces d’un fruit, et le fruit, c’est l’expérience. Sa saveur est amère: elle a pourtant quelque chose d’âcre qui fortifie.
Nerval conceals in the text two Alexandrines, a hendecasyllable, and two more hemistichs. I tried to translate in this way:
Eco: Tali son le chimere / che ammaliano e sconvolgono / all’alba della vita. Ho cercato di fissarle senza badare all’ordine, ma molti cuori mi comprenderanno. Le illusioni cadono l’una dopo l’altra, come scorze d’un frutto, / e il frutto è l’esperienza. Il suo sapore è amaro; e tuttavia esso ha qualcosa di aspro che tonifica.6
But Sieburth does his best to put the verses more or less where Nerval put them. This time his performance is better than mine. Chapeau.
Sieburth: Such are the chimeras / that beguile and misguide us / in the morning of life. / I have tried to set them down without much order, but many hearts will understand me. Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, / and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, / but there is fortitude to be found in gall . . .
When I say that we need to respect the effect and be faithful to the text at the same time, I mean to say that in a page where there were sixteen verses, in my translation, although I sometimes put the verses at another point in the text, I respected the presence of sixteen subliminal effects, and in this sense I think I have been faithful to Nerval.
With these examples I think I have also clarified my concept of “negotiation,” which Nergaard explains very well.
I would like to attempt to clear up another two points. Nergaard writes that “an empirical author who assesses what the intentio auctoris wants the intentio operis to be might actually represent a problem, at least in principle.” I agree, and if this problem did not exist there would be no theories of translation. But this happens when the author is alive and can discuss matters with his translator. But Nergaard also introduces another question, when she wonders: “Presenting the different solutions found by the translators, Eco shows how a translator can recreate a similar effect in a different linguistic, cultural, and intertextual universe. One suspects that such freedom is possible only because the author himself authorizes it. Is it so clear that a commonsensical rule or convention would permit translators these freedoms if it had not been for the author’s authorization?”
My reply is that in order to understand what a text wanted to say it is not necessary to have at our disposal a living author. Otherwise it would be impossible to translate Homer. I believe that a translator of Homer has in mind all the Homeric interpretations that have followed one another over the centuries and, in light of those interpretations, she can—so to speak—“put herself in Homer’s shoes” and try to understand how he thought. Naturally, this too is a matter of interpretation, but I maintain that it is possible for a translator to understand what Homer would not have ever thought and what he could not have thought. It is evident that, if we compare three translations of the Odyssey, we see that three translators have come up with different hypotheses but it is comforting to notice that there are three translations of the Odyssey. Faced with the problem of translation I always console myself by thinking that ninety-five percent of readers of the Bible have not read it in Hebrew and yet humankind has been able to read, discuss, and confute the Bible while maintaining that both Saint Jerome’s and Luther’s translations talk about the same thing—or almost the same thing, through losses and compensations, but nonetheless knowing that we are reading the same text. In my Dire quasi la stessa cosa (Saying almost the same thing) I compare various translations of the passage from Ecclesiastes that, according to the Latin tradition (the so-called Vulgate), talks of vanitas vanitatum, the vanity of vanities. Different translators today try to interpret in different ways the Hebrew term that Jerome had translated as vanitas, not least because by now the terms equivalent to vanity have taken on many other meanings in various languages. Nonetheless, in comparing different translations we are always aware that we are reading interpretations of Ecclesiastes and not of another book of the Bible.
Naturally, I know that there are fewer problems with the translation of an essay than with that of a poem, and sometimes we have to admit that many translations of poetry are forms of rewriting, or recreation.
But I would like to point out that in 1960 T. S. Eliot, writing to the Italian translator of his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, reminded him that in the Swedish and German translations the translators had invented names for the various cats that were different from the English ones. It is no accident that Old Possum’s Book begins with “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,” and the names of cats such as Macavity, Growltiger, Gumbie Cat, Jennyanydots, Griddlebone, Rum Tum Tugger, Jellicle Cat (and so on) might mean nothing to the Italian (or German or Swedish) reader and therefore lose their comic or nonsensical characteristics. So Eliot asked the Italian translator to invent names that produced the same effect in his language.
Let me now come to another point. Frankly I find curious the polite astonishment with which Nergaard remarks that “Eco is focusing on the translation of single terms” and observes that “the particular attention given to single terms may seem somewhat obsolete when compared to current translation studies.” I could object that this is a good reason for being dissatisfied with many translation studies. I think that the meaning of single terms is absolutely fundamental for a faithful translation.
Maybe this disregard for single terms is due to certain target-oriented theories during the 1980s and 1990s that focused on the impact of translations on the receiving cultures—and which, according to Nergaard, are not dominant today. But she admits that “there has been a progressive movement away from the word’s microlevel to macrolevels that put emphasis on text, context, and culture.”
I have just mentioned the question of how to translate the Hebrew term that for Saint Jerome was vanitas. For certain modern translators, making a decision about this point is fundamental in order to understand the biblical text. Naturally, as many translation theories maintain, it is important to see how a translation has influenced and changed the “target” language, and certainly it is a relevant cultural problem to ascertain to what extent Jerome’s choice has influenced the way in which the Western world has read the Bible. But even admitting that Jerome’s choice was a case of “bad” translation, the fact that a bad translation has influenced our Western culture has surely to do with cultural studies but nothing to do with the concept of a “good” translation. A good translation is obliged to take into serious account the meaning of single terms.
Closely linked with the problem of the meaning of single terms is the question whether lexical entries have a literal meaning. I see that Nergaard expresses some perplexities on this point.
Nergaard gives a correct account of my position regarding the differences between translation proper as opposed to rewording, adaptation, and intersemiotic transfer. This is something that became clear to me in the course of seminars held in Bologna at the beginning of the 1990s, during which I found myself in complete opposition to many of the participants, who used the concept of translation to cover many phenomena that did not strike me as attributable to translation. Even though Nergaard seems to consider my position “restrictive,” I have no intention of changing it. It may be that in future all human beings will be produced by cloning, whereas following the traditional method will be judged restrictive or conservative; in that case I would be glad to consider myself a conservative.
In any case I do not wish to discuss the conclusions of Nergaard’s paper, as she has the right to express her doubts, and I shall certainly reflect further on the questions she puts to me. My conclusion is that I wish to thank her for the accuracy and the passion with which she has tried to explain my ideas on translation.
U.E.
NOTES
1. Siri Nergaard, ed., La teoria della traduzione nella storia (Milan: Bompiani, 1993); Nergaard, ed., Teorie contemporanee della traduzione (Milan: Bompiani, 1995).
2. Umberto Eco and Siri Nergaard, “Semiotic Approaches,” in Mona Baker, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 1997): 218–22. [Ed.]
3. Gérard de Nerval, Sylvie, trans. Ludovic Halévy (London and New York: George Routledge and Sons, 1887); trans. Richard Aldington, in Aurelia (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932); trans. Richard Sieburth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995).
4. A literal translation of Eco’s translation is: “A rose and blonde phantom / gliding over the green grass, / newly bathed / by white mist.” [Tr.]
5. “To love a nun in the guise of an actress! . . . and supposing she were one and the same? / It could drive a man mad! / it is a fatal maelstrom / into which the unknown drags you, / a will o’ the wisp fleeing / over the reeds of a stagnant pool.” [Tr.]
6. “Such are the chimeras / that bewitch and perturb us / in the dawn of life. I have tried to set them down without troubling about order, but many hearts will understand me. Illusions fall one after another, like the rinds of a fruit, / and the fruit is experience. Its flavour is bitter; and yet it has a hint of tartness that invigorates.” [Tr.]