What Should Translation Look Like? To Surmise a Summary

Today I jump head first into theory and then next post get straight to the practice. I won’t get bogged down in jargon. I’ll try here to simplify everything. I will begin with one of the most important questions: Should a translation look like a translation?

It is a key question within Translation Studies, namely how much a translation should or should not appear to be a translation. In other words should a translation read like it is a translation? This question penetrates to the core of what it means to translate, and how one answers the question tends to align with one of the two sides of the paradox of translation itself (its possibility/impossibility).

At one extreme, is the view that a translation should aim to appear as if it were not a translation at all – it should instead appear to be an origin composition. So if we are thinking in terms of an English Bible translation the question from this extreme basically says: if Paul had written to the saints in Rome in English how then might he have put his whole letter ‘To the Romans’ in English? (if the Romans were English?) The obvious problem with this approach is the fact that Paul did not speak English because English did not yet exist and consequently neither did many of the cultural aspects that make a language a cultural phenomenon. Is there really a way to know how someone unfamiliar with a particular culture might speak if they had been familiar with that culture? To some degree the question is unanswerable. But the ramifications are significant. Do we expect that someone can understand a foreign text (and a foreign culture) without learning the language? (And yet this would be expected, to varying degrees, of an English reader reading a biblical text in English).

Therefore we come to the other extreme viewpoint, that is, what a translator should ideally be doing is to try to avoid eliminating the foreign aspects of the text, in other words, try not to make it appear to be an original composition (in our case, not make it resemble a composition made in English). From this perspective, it is considered dishonest or deceptive to make a translation that doesn’t look like a translation.

However, how can translators always detect when they are accidentally ‘domesticating’ the foreign text and eliminating essential elements that should not be eliminated? But if all foreign elements are left intact (and the text remains in its foreign language) then translation has not even occurred!

So the question about how much a translation should appear to be a translation brings us to the heart of the paradox of translation: translation remains impossible but remains possible. In other words: (complete) translation is not possible but (some) translation is obviously possible (it has been occurring for millennia!).

I want now to point out two things. What I notice about the nature of both sides is that each position is basically self-fulfilling. That is, the view that translation is by nature impossible or the view that believes translation should not eliminate the foreign by nature makes sure that the foreign remains foreign. Conversely, the view that believes translation is possible (and seeks to replace the foreign with what’s not foreign) is naturally destined to replace everything that is foreign.

At this point I notice something of further interest, namely that each extreme position is united in its purpose of having to work hard to determining when something is or is not foreign. Let me explain.

The hard work within the ‘domesticating’ perspective is working to detect every single element from the foreign language that can or should be translated (and then deciding how successful it has been in putting this into practice within its ‘replacement’ text). Conversely, for the view that the foreign should not be eliminated, the hard work there is in working to detect any kind of domestication of the foreign altogether (then working out how successful it has been in putting this into practice within its resulting ‘foreignizing’ text).

Notice that the work of both positions actually depends on the same goal: successful identification of what counts as a foreign element in the first place. Further to this goal is the fact that they both then have to work out to what degree the desired result (practice) has been achieved in the new text (translation).

In the next post I will discuss a Bible example. The example suggests that neither the domesticating approach nor the foreignizing approach are yet proficient at determining what counts as foreign.