The Misery and the Splendor

José Ortega y Gasset (1937)

The Misery and the Splendor of Translation

(Rainer Schulte, John Biguenet eds, Theories of Translation)

1. The Misery

"Isn't the act of translating a necessarily utopian task?"

"Among intellectual undertakings, there is no humbler one."

"What will (the translator) do with the rebellious text? Isn't it too much to ask that he also be rebellious, particularly since the text is someone else's? He will be ruled by cowardice, so instead of resisting grammatical restraints he will do just the opposite: he will place the translated author in the prison of normal expression; that is, he will betray him. Traduttore, traditore."

"I have based the utopianism of translation on the fact that an author of a book (...) is a writer in a positive sense of the word. This is to imply that he has used his native tongue with prodigious skill, achieving two things that seem impossible to reconcile: simply, to be intelligible and, at the same time, to modify the ordinary usage of language. This dual operation is more difficult to achieve than walking a tightrope. How can we demand it of the average translator?"

"Translation is the permanent literary flou, and since what we usually call nonsense is, on the other hand, but the flou of thoughts, we shouldn't be surprised that a translated author always seems somewhat foolish to us."

2. The Two Utopianisms

"Both the bad and the good Utopians consider it desirable to correct the natural reality that places men within the confines of diverse languages and impedes communication between them. The bad Utopian thinks that because it is desirable, it is possible. Believing it to be easy is just moving one step further. With such an attitude, he won't give much thought to the question of how one must translate, and without further ado he will begin the task. This is the reason why almost all translations done until now are bad ones. The good Utopian, on the other hand, thinks that because it would be desirable to free men from the divisions imposed by languages, there is little probability that it can be attained; therefore, it can only be achieved to an approximate measure. But this approximation can be greater or lesser, to an infinite degree, and the efforts at execution are not limited, for there always exists the possibility of bettering, refining, perfecting: 'progress,' in short."

3. About Talking and Keeping Silent

"Since our thought is in great measure attributable to the tongue—although I cannot help but doubt that the attribution is absolute, as it is usually purported to be—it turns out that thinking is talking to oneself and, consequently, misunderstanding oneself and running a great risk of becoming completely muddled."

"Remember what happens to you when you have to speak in a foreign language. Very distressing! It is what I am feeling now when I speak in French: the distress of having to quiet four-fifths of what occurs to me, because those four-fifths of my Spanish thoughts can't be said well in French, in spite of the fact that the two languages are so closely related."

"The fact is that the stupendous reality, which is language, will not be understood at its root if one doesn't begin by noticing that speech is composed above all of silences. A person incapable of quieting many things would not be capable of talking. And each language is a different equation of statements and silences. All peoples silence some things in order to be able to say others. Otherwise, everything would be unsayable. From this we deduce the enormous difficulty of translation: in it one tries to say in a language precisely what that language tends to silence. But, at the same time, one glimpses a possible marvelous aspect of the enterprise of translating: the revelation of the mutual secrets that peoples and epochs keep to themselves and which contribute so much to their separation and hostility; in short—an audacious integration of Humanity."

4. We Don't Speak Seriously

"The fact is that the world surrounding Man has never been definable in unequivocal articulations. Or said more clearly, the world, such as we find it, is not composed of 'things' definitively separated and frankly different. We find in it infinite differences, but these differences are not absolute. Strictly speaking, everything is different from everything else, but also everything looks somewhat like everything else. Reality is a limitless continuum of diversity."

"Languages separate us and discommunicate, not simply because they are different languages, but because they proceed from different mental pictures, from disparate intellectual systems—in the last instance, from divergent philosophies. Not only do we speak, but we also think in a specific language, and intellectually slide along preestablished rails prescribed by our verbal destiny."

"Our languages are anachronisms."

5. The Splendor

"According to Schleiermacher, a translation can move in either of two directions: either the author is brought to the language of the reader, or the reader is carried to the language of the author. In the first case, we do not translate, in the proper sense of the word; we, in fact, do an imitation, or a paraphrase of the original text. It is only when we force the reader from his linguistic habits and oblige him to move within those of the author that there is actually translation."

"Translation is not a duplicate of the original text; it is not—it shouldn't try to be—the work itself with a different vocabulary. I would say translation doesn't even belong to the same literary genre as the text that was translated. It would be appropriate to reiterate this and affirm that translation is a literary genre apart, different from the rest, with its own norms and own ends. The simple fact is that the translation is not the work, but a path toward the work."

"I imagine, then, a form of translation that is ugly, as science has always been; that does not intend to wear literary garb; that is not easy to read but is very clear indeed (although this clarity may demand copious footnotes). The reader must know beforehand that when reading a translation he will not be reading a literarily beautiful book but will be using an annoying apparatus."

"What is imperative is that, in translating, we try to leave our language and go to the other—and not the reverse, which is what is usually done. Sometimes, especially in treating contemporary authors, it will be possible for the version to have, besides its virtues as translation, a certain aesthetic value. That will be icing on the cake."

"It is clear that a country's reading public do not appreciate a translation made in the style of their own language. For this they have more than enough native authors. What is appreciated is the inverse: carrying the possibilities of their language to the extreme of the intelligible so that the ways of speaking appropriate to the translated author seem to cross into theirs."

© Jan Rybicki 2005