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I have been told that in Egyptian Arabic every word means itself, its opposite, and something to do with a camel. The same might almost be said about theories of translation, although it is not always easy to show their relevance to camels. If we start from the assumption that translations should be accurate, we shall discover at once that many of the finest translations (for example, Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat) are wildly inaccurate. If we say that a translation should be integral, neither more nor less than the original author wrote, we are made aware that translations which follow this prescription are often unreadable, while the best translators are constantly adding to or subtracting from the texts of faltering masters. If we say that a translation should read naturally, giving no impression of foreignness, we may be stopped short by the remembrance of, say, how much more memorable Motteux's "Curious Impertinent" makes that episode from Don Quixote than "The Man Who Knew To Much For His Own Good" of a more recent version.

The conclusion we may draw from these enigmas of translation is that rules are not meant for translators of genius. If the reader perusing these lines happens to be such a translator, he may break all the rules with impunity. Ugly ducklings will turn into swans and swans into phoenixes beneath the keys of his feather-touch typewriter. Even for the more humanly endowed translators rules or suggestions can at best help confirm him in his good habits; they will hardly make an admirable translator out of a bad one. The following remarks are no more than reflections based on my own experiences as a translator. I urge anyone who remains unconvinced to consider their opposites, or possibly their dromedarian implications.

The chief requirement of a person who would translate from any foreign tongue into English is, I feel sure, a love for the English language and a sensitivity to its possibilities and limitations. These must be maintained despite his knowledge and love for the foreign language from which he is translating, and despite his painful awareness of how much inevitably is being lost. A phrase of wonderful rightness in the original Finnish or Fijian may sound hopelessly wooden in English. The translator who has before him a text employing the fourteen commonly distinguished levels of politeness in Korean will run up against the deadly democracy of the English language, where we use the same verb and level of politeness for "God is," "water is," and "that dirty dog is." The tender love scene where the lovers almost imperceptibly shift from vous to tu becomes that much the less tender when both parties say "you" all the way through. The lack of the distinction in English between the verb endings used by men and women makes it necessary to supply all the "he saids" and "she saids" which a Japanese novelist normally omits. The list could easily be prolonged, and each instance is the source of heartache to the conscientious translator.

Indeed, he might well form the impression that real translation is impossible. The despair-making Italian phrase traduttore, traditore, invariable quoted in such circumstances, will confirm the translator in his gloom. But, despite our knowledge that much is incommunicable in translation, we should not prefer that despair paralyze the hands of the translators. Let people quarrel, say, with Constance Garnett's Dostoevsky, let them point out the howlers and the falsifications, and all that has perished of the beauty of the original Russian, but who can forget his first reading of Crime and Punishment in her translation? Someday, perhaps, we may have a perfect translation of Dostoevsky, but we know in advance that it will not be the same experience as reading it in the original. It will be, for one thing, in English, a language very dissimilar to Russian, and the translator will have had to resign himself to sacrificing what the English language does not permit. Any translator who attempts to "expand" English with the constructions or expressions of another language exposes himself and, more important, his text to ridicule. "Little grandfather," for example, surely does not seem as cute to a Russian as to ourselves, and "Where is the august umbrella of my honorable father?" is no closer to the Japanese original than Gilbert and Sullivan to the Mikado. The English language is not to be improved by these means: "grandpa" and "where is Father's umbrella?" are close enough.

The translator must not, however, belittle the possibilities of the English language. Its richness sometimes makes it feasible for a translator actually to improve on the original. Arthur Waley's translation of the great eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji is a case in point. The translation is that of a master of English prose, and I for one in going from the translation back to the original miss something. Certain subtle expressions are lost in English, it is true, but it is not altogether surprising that twentieth-century English has a greater variety of nuances of meaning than the Japanese of almost a thousand years ago. Indeed, it is sometimes a challenge to the translator to choose which English equivalent of a given Japanese term best fits a particular context. This is still true today. For example, the Japanese words kusukusu warau can be rendered in English by such verbs as "giggle," "chuckle," "titter," and "snicker." The translator who always chose the same equivalent each time kusukusu warau appeared would have plenty of precedents on his side, but surely it makes a great difference in English what kind of person performs the mirthful act. One might test the translator with a matching exercise.

It should be apparent from the cast of characters in the right-hand column that the choice of an inappropriate mode of laughing would be unfortunate. What makes it possible for the translator to hit on precisely the appropriate variety of laughter when translating kusukusu warau is, of course, his sensitivity to English. He will know without having to look it up in the dictionary that Santa Claus does not titter and that Madame Butterfly could never emit a chuckle.

A translator's awareness of the overtones of English words must also keep him from setting off the wrong train of associations in the reader's mind. I remember one version of the Analects of Confucius which contained the memorable "One day when Confucius was seated at the harpsichord." The musical instrument before which Confucius actually sat was one which has no exact equivalent in the West, and rather than call it by its Chinese name and leave everybody mystified, the translator properly chose a Western instrument. But he chose the wrong one; Confucius at the harpsichord immediately becomes an eighteenth-century gentleman in a powdered wig bouncing up and down on his chair as he performs the Turkish March of Mozart. Call it a lyre, and Confucius this time emerges as Orpheus in a white peplos. Arthur Waley, as usual, came up with a winner: he called it a "zithern," and by using this word, at once immediately intelligible and yet slightly remote, he managed to avoid unfortunate and misleading overtones.

The overtones are not connected only with meaning. Consider this verse:

Night begins to come
and the darkness falls at once
In the groves of plum.

Obviously the word "plum" is a disaster. The poem should portray an orchard of white plum-blossoms standing against a darkening sky, but the use of the rhyme "plum" makes the night fall with a leaden thud. Here not only the overtones of meaning (plumb, plum pudding) but the overtones of sound destroy the translation.

In brief, the translator must have an acute sensitivity to English words. This might sound like a prescription for all writers, not only translators, but the translator's command of English is constantly being threatened by the original with which he is working. A poet who was not translating a foreign language would never have wanted to write a verse concluding with "plum." He would have known instinctively that English usage and sound does not tolerate such an expression. But once a man is obliged to translate, his knowledge of the beauty of the original can often persuade him that the most awkward rendering will somehow come across. In some ways it is more difficult to make a first-rate translation from a language relatively close to English than from a remote language. The latter presents far fewer (if any) temptations to use cognate words or expressions with meanings almost but not quite the same as in English. I imagine that it is a sound principle when translating from the French or any other Romance language to avoid words of Latin origin in one's English, but when translating from the Germanic to use the maximum possible. In other words, it is a good idea to attempt to keep the original language at a good arm's length away so as to avoid contagion. In translating from a remote language like Japanese there is less a danger of contracting an infection unwittingly than of the translator deliberately desiring to "capture" something of the feeling of the original. This is particularly true when the translation is a joint effort, with one person translating from Japanese into English and another, more gifted literarily, polishing the English. The polisher generally has a strong idea of what is "truly" Japanese and twists the literal versions to this bed of Procrustes. One recent example I know was of a lady polisher who was convinced, it would seem, that everything Japanese was leafy or mossy, and even poems utterly unconnected with leafiness or mossiness were saddled with these adjectives. Other polishers become intrigued with such traditional props of Japanese fiction as the tear-soaked sleeve and, though the old literature is by no means deficient in these sleeves, the polishers multiply their appearances with gusto.

Collaboration is often suggested as an ideal solution to the problem of translating from obscure languages, but I can scarcely think of a successful example. What usually happens is that a strong-willed polisher imposes herself (or himself) on the gentle Oriental translator, and over his faint little protests sets to work bringing out the exquisite charm of the original which she believes she has instinctively detected. Collaboration need not be such an unequal partnership, of course, but I am convinced that it can never be as good an arrangement as a single translator who himself experiences the original and who summons up from his store of English words the right equivalents. He will know whether or not the characters in a Persian or Chinese story are really exquisitely charming, or whether their dialogues are not in fact coldly realistic. He will recognize the rare moment when it is appropriate to have the Chinese gentleman say, "My heart is ten parts content" or "I am ashes heart," and when this variety of pidgin English is completely inappropriate.

This would suggest the necessity of finding more people who are literarily gifted and are willing to learn difficult languages. I do not know how many young writers are prepared to devote two or more years of their lives to an exclusive and intensive study of Tamil or Chinese or Japanese, but I believe that those who do will find it to have been an eminently worthwhile expense of their time. To make a good translation from any language is a satisfying experience, but this satisfaction is all the greater when the success of the translation depends heavily on the ability of the translator to make an alien age and civilization seem immediate and important.

To make the past come alive, to bring distant places close—these must be very close to the heart of translation. An archaic or exotic flavor is rarely an asset, though many translators have devoted a great deal of trouble to achieving these effects. This is true even in small details. The use of "thou" for example offends most readers; it is hard for them to believe that anybody who gets called "thou" has much in common with themselves. I remember my first reading of the Iliad in a translation sometimes called a classic. It evoked no sonnet from me, though Chapman's Homer might have; on the contrary, I found the battle scenes particularly soothing and sleep producing at the close of a long day. No doubt Homer's Greek was also archaic, and certain passages must have seemed rather remote even in Periclean days, but I refuse to believe that Homer's nods were meant to be contagious.

The translator is entitled to resort to every legitimate means at his disposal in order to keep the work he is translating immediate and alive. What is "legitimate" depends of course a good deal on the audience he has in mind—whether a small body of scholars unlikely to be excited in any case or vibrant young readers waiting to be set vibrating. If the latter, he is entitled to cut a work whenever he feels an author has weakened the effect of the whole by an inept or (for an English-reading public) otherwise unacceptable phrase or paragraph. For example, in a Japanese play I once translated there was a description of a beauteous young maiden. In my translation one sentence goes, "Her face was like an hibiscus flower, and her brows were willow leaves." Unfortunately, the original had one additional phrase, "Her face was like an hibiscus flower with a nose and mouth attached." The line was not intended to be humorous, and I think therefore that fidelity to the original at this point would actually have been to betray the author. Sometimes the objectionable phrases are much longer; when I translated another play I had to discard a whole scene, which had for its only justification a series of thirty-six puns on the names of the thirty-six Buddhist temples of Osaka. Even if I had attempted to translate these puns, no one could have derived pleasure or amusement from them, and an otherwise engrossing play would have been seriously flawed.

Critics unfamiliar with the originals sometimes chide translators honest enough to note that they have omitted parts of a book. This is the risk the translator must take. The alternatives are either to bore and exasperate the critics or else to expose the whole of the translated work to ridicule by attaching noses, mouths, and whatever else the errant fancy of the alien author devised. An opposite problem also plagues translators—when to expand a text in order to make for smoother reading. There are people who profess that they feel closer to a text if made aware of every word supplied by the translator. The Biblical example often quoted is, "And they saddled him an ass." Specialists in philology who know no foreign languages may indeed be grateful, but people who read for pleasure find it irritating to have their attention called to minor words by italics, brackets, footnotes, and the like. As a matter of fact, readers are far less tolerant of translated works than of those in English. Any obscurity in a work translated from, say, the Chinese is laid to the workings of the mind of the inscrutable Oriental or to the failings of the more scrutable translator; obscurities in English works are quickly leapt over and taken for granted. If the translator has to deal with a work which is ambiguous in the original and susceptible of varying interpretations, it is probably best, except in the rare instances when the original ambiguity is easily transferred into English, to choose one of the possible meanings and state it plainly.

In simple translation problems where explanations might be needed, such as the name of a plant, item of clothing, comestible, or the like, I think it best to choose whichever course is the least conspicuous. A flower which blossoms close to the ground early in the spring and is of a purplish hue may safely be called a violet, even if it eats small animals—provided, that is, its carnivorous activities are not in question. There is no harm either in a work of prose if a few words of explanations are silently intruded. On the other hand, it is better to say "She ate some sushi" and let the reader guess what sushi is, rather than to interpolate "She ate a lump of cold rice molded in the fingers to an ovoid shape, coated lightly with horseradish, and topped with a small piece of raw fish." Footnotes can be helpful, but some publishers seem to be convinced that a book marred by even a single footnote is destined to be classed as a scholarly publication.

Another problem faced by the translator seeking vividity is the advisability of using language which is either datable (like slang) or restricted as a dialect to one part of the English-speaking world. I think that most people would agree that to translate into Southern U.S. parts of a novel in which a southern Italian dialect was used, would be ludicrous. At the first "you-all" the reader would be engulfed in a wave of associations which have nothing to do with Napoli. Dialects should be rejected, except in very unusual cases. One is tempted to reject slang for much the same reasons, but what is one to do then when translating a book about French gangsters or about ragamuffins in the streets of Tokyo? Slang is certainly the form of speech used by gangsters and street urchins everywhere, and to translate their conversations by "neutral" words might be almost as bad as to suggest the sidewalks of New York in a Burmese setting. Here again the sensitivity of the translator to the overtones of words is the only guide. There is no great harm if in a story about French students in the thirties one of them says "That's swell!" but if used of a student in 1890 it would certainly strike us as peculiar. If one has to translate the Parisian or Tokyo slang of now or the past, I think that the best plan is to choose a vigorous, racy English which is not specifically slang. If, for example, the tough young man in the original rudely tells someone to leave, "Get the hell out of here!" is better than "Scram!"

The resolution of all problems of acceptability and legitimacy in translation depends finally, as I have suggested, on the English style and the general culture of the translator. This is true not only of the choice of words or of knowing when to make deletions or explanations, but of the even more basic matter of what is to be translated. The translator can expect advice from his publisher or friends before he begins working on a French or German novel, but a person translating from an Asian language generally must decide for himself without any help from others what will be suitable for an American audience. An error of judgment can lead to an immense waste of labor if a man spends months on the translation of a book which nobody will publish. The translator's knowledge of literature and his estimation of what may successfully be translated into English should normally protect him against such a misfortune.

It will probably seem strange that thus far I have failed to mention what is usually considered to be a translator's first qualification-proficiency in the language he translates. This ability may in fact be all that is needed when the translation is not of a literary nature, but it takes only third place after ability in English and general cultural background when the translation is of a work of artistry. Even the best translators make lamentable mistakes, and one need not be a great scholar to find them. The possibilities of making mistakes, particularly when translating from a difficult language, are infinite. A mistake arising from ignorance may often be condoned, but one resulting from the translator's carelessness is unpardonable. The translator, needless to say, should be accurate, and the kind of accuracy expected of him is even more demanding than that expected of a scholar. It does not suffice for him any more than it does for a violinist to hit a close approximation of the right notes. Exactly the right note, at exactly the right intensity of loudness or softness, and exactly matched to the notes before and after: that is what is demanded. Not all translators can attain these lofty standards, but anyone who has tried to live up to them will certainly have experienced the excitement of translation, and his work will probably be good.

I like to think of the translator's profession as a noble one. The slander of the Italian "translators, traducers" has gone too long unchallenged. I suggest instead a Japanese pun of my own invention, yakusha wa yakusha, or "translators are actors," a suitably obscure phrase to be interpreted as meaning that our profession also is a second oldest.

© 1971

Posted with the author's permission

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