middotc JM I n77 6-- ISgt i) I Iii 5 4vi) C egt-euro s

-13 t Vf1 tJ76

Thinking through Translation with Metaphors

Edited and with an Introduction by

JAMES ST ANDRE

St Jerome Publishing Manchester UK amp Kinderhook (NY) USA

Published by St Jerome Publishing InTrans Publications 2 Maple Road West Brooklands P O Box 467 Manchester M23 9HH UK Kinderhook NY 12106 USA Telephone +44 (0) 161 973 9856 Telephone (518) 758-1755 Fax +44 (0) 161 905 3498 Fax (518) 758-6702 kenstjeromepublishingcom httpwwwstjerome couk

ISBN 978-1-905763-22-1

copy James St Andre 2010

All rights reserved including those of translation into foreign languages No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means

or otherwise without either the prior written _ restricted copying issued

90 Tottenham Court Road North America registered users may contact the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) 222 Rosewood Drive Danvers MA 01 USA

Printed and bound in Great Britain T J International Ltd Padstow Cornwall UK

Typeset by Delta Typesetters Cairo Egypt Email hilali 1945yahoocouk

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data Thinking through translation with metaphors edited and with an introduction by James St Andre

p cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978--905763-22-1 (pbk alk paper) Translating and interpreting 2 Metaphor 1 St Andre James P306T4552010 41802--dc22

2009043113

mston David (ed) (1996) Stages oTranslation Bath Absolute Press hn Thomas (1979) Metaphor in Science in Andrew Ortony (ed) Metaphor and Thought Cambridge Cambridge University Press 409-19

koff George and Mark Johnson Metaphors We Live By Chicago University

of Ch icago Press 1980 Guin Ursula (1974) The Dispossessed NY Harper amp Row publishers da Eugene (1959) Principles ofTranslation as Exemplified by Bible Transshy

lating in Reuben Brower (ed) On Translation Cambridge MA Harvard

University Press 11-31 ___ (1964) Toward a Science oTranslating With Special Reference to Prinshy

ciples and Procedures Involved in Bible Transating Leiden E J Brill ___ and Charles R Taber (196911982) The Theory and Practice oJTranslation

(Helps for Translators 8) Leiden United Bible Societies 2nd reprint rtony Andrew (ed) (1979) Metaphor and Thought Cambridge Cambridge

University Press eddy Michael J (1979) The Conduit Metaphor - A Case of Frame Conflict

in Our Language about Language in Andrew Ortony (ed) Metaphor and Thought Cambridge Cambridge University Press 284-324

jordan Roger and Tozo Takayanagi (1896) Sunrise Stories A Glance at the Literature ojJapan London Kegan Paul Trench TrUbner amp Co Ltd

~ound Nicholas (2005) Translation and its Metaphors The (N+ 1) Wise Men 1and the Elephant Skase Journal of Translation and Interpretation 1 ( )

47-69 chon Donald A (1979) Generative Metaphor A Perspective on Problem-

Setting in Social Policy in Andrew Ortony (ed) Metaphor and Thought

Cambridge Cambridge University Press 254-83 nell-Hornby Mary (1988) Translation Studies An Integrated Approach

Amsterdam amp Philadelphia John Benjamins iteiner George (1975) After Babel Aspects oj Language and Translation

London amp New York Oxford University Press Tymoczko Maria (1999) Translation in a Postcolonial Context Early Irish

Literature in English Translation Manchester S1 Jerome Vinay Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet (1958) Stylistique comparee duJranqais

et de langlais Methode de traduction Paris Didier

(1

Imitating Bodies and Clothes Refashioning the Western Conception ofTranslation

I l~BENVANWYKE

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) USA

Abstract The concepts of translation and metaphor are intishyi

mately connected inthe West Not only do they share a common 1

etymology in many European languages but both have been Idesignated as secondary forms of representation in the PlashyII tonic tradition Consequently translation and metaphor have undergone similar revisions in contemporary post-Nietzschean l philosophy which has given them positions ofprimary imporshytance One metaphor that has frequently been used to describe translation is that of dressmaking - meaning is viewed as a body and the translator sjob is to redress this meaning in the clothes of another language Using this common metaphor I will highlight a common thread in our conception oJtranslation that has basically remained unchanged throughout the ages a thread that can be tied directly to Plato stheory ojrepresentation Nietzsche radically placed into question this Platonic model beginning with a reformulation of the traditional relationship between metaphor and truth After examining the implications ofhis critique ofPlatonism I will turn to Nietzsche sown use of the metaphor ofdress which will help us recast our conception of translation by focusing on elements that have traditionally been left out oJthe picture

Clothes make the man Naked people have little or no influence on society

Mark Twain

The concepts of translation and metaphor are intimately connected in the West Not only do they share a common etymology in many European lanshyguages but both have suffered a similar fate in the Western Platonic tradition

in which they have been designated as secondary forms of representation

Consequently translation and metaphor have undergone similar revisions in contemporary post-Nietzschean philosophy which has given them posishy

tions of primary importance Many projects in translation studies over the

last twenty years or so have greatly benefited from theory inspired by

post-Nietzschean thought such as deconstruction postcolonial studies

18

and gender studies theorists like Barbara Johnson Rosemary Arrojo Lawrence Venuti Douglas Robinson Vicente Rafael Annie Brisset and Sherry Simon among many others have radically rethought the traditional notion oftranslation inherited from the Platonic tradition In vein with these projects I would like to take a step back and illustrate via metaphor the extent to which our conception of translation has been fundamentally shaped by Platos theory of representation and in light of this what Nietzsches critique of Platonism means for our conception of translation

After a brief introduction to metaphor and its relationship to translation I will examine one particular metaphor that because it is so closely wrapped up with our general notion of(naked) truth will provide a perfect image with which to consider the relationship between Platonic thought and the most basic notion of translation The metaphor of translation as the redressing of a body of meaning in the clothes of another language will allow us to touch upon many of the fundamental concerns that have dominated Western discourse on translation and thus highlight a common thread in our conshyception that has basically remained unchanged throughout the ages a thread that can be tied directly to Platos theory of representation In this context I can also show some of the basic implications that Nietzsches critique of Platonism has for our conception of translation Nietzsche formulates metaphor very differently from the tradition inherited from Aristotle and with Nietzsches work we can enrich our discussion on two levels In the first place as metaphor and translation hold much in common his revision of the former will help us begin to rethink the latter In addition although we will first see the metaphor ofdress as an illustration ofPlatos theory of representation we can also find it in Nietzsche but used in a way that clearly illustrates his subversion of the Platonic model Following Nietzsche we will be able to recast our conception oftranslation by focusing on elements that have traditionally been left out of the picture

1 Metaphor and Translation

The word for translation in English as well as in many other European languages comes from the Latin transatio which is a translation of the Greek metaphora the word from which English derives metaphor In anCIent Greek metaphora was used in the sense that we employ the word metaphor today as well as for translation from one language into anshyother Thus related in this way translation and metaphor both imply the notion of carrying over or transferring meaning from one word or phrase to another

lf

Aristotle Platos most famous disciple is credited with one of the

which he gives in his Poetics amidst classhysifications ofdifferent words and parts of speech and which SH Butcher translates asmetaphor is the application ofan alien name by transference from one category to another by analogy (XXI) Because metaphors employ words that are alien to what they denote they are not proper Arshyistotle defines current or proper words as those which [are] in general use among a people and contrasts them with strange words which are those in use in another country (ibid) Elsewhere he equates strange words with unusual (or rare) words metaphorical lengthened any-

in short that differs from the normal idiom (PoeticsXXIl) The proper (which comes from the idea of ones own) is bound to what is considered to be a kind of shared domestic normalcy while metaphors together with strange and unusual words are marked by their deviashytion from this norm a category that includes (or indeed is defined by) languages spoken in other countries I Translation traffics between the elements of a similar opposition as it attempts to say in a language in use in another country something that was originally said in the comshymon language of a different people Eric Cheyfitz points out that with Aristotles definition metaphor and translation are both founded on a kind of territorial imperative in a division between the domestic and the foreign since both attempt to transfer an alien name into a familiar context (199736)

In this scenario there is an explicit hierarchy as the proper is considered to be closer to truth than tropes such as metaphor Aristotle states the clearest style is that which tlses only current or proper words (Poetics XXII) Proper words are clearer because they allegedly deal literally with what they denote and present an unequivocal truth Metaphor is considered an ornament and while certainly a useful tool for poetic expression it is seen as secondary to proper forms of representation A metaphor cannot provide access to truth on its own because its parts must be substituted with proper ones or as Aristotle says if we take a strange ( or rare) word a metaphor or any similar mode ofex pression and replace it by the current or proper term the truth ofollr observation will be manifest (ibid) In this sense metaphor is always deemed to some extent improper because it has to be translated into proper terms before its truth is to be seen

at~~h~r is seen as a secondary form ofrepresentation Aristotle

I Eric Cheyfitz points out that xenikos which Buchner translates as unusual also means foreign (199736)

20 21

praises it proper use of metaphor is the mark ofgenius for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances (ibid) This eye for resemshyblances is fundamental for the Platonic model to function because as we will see the very basis for discovering truth and essences is founded on the ability to draw similarities Platos is after all a philosophy of sameness

Aristotle sees the use of metaphor as a question of style and style for him wavers between perspicuity obtained by using ordinary and common words and distinction resulting from uncommon usage (ibid) To properly use metaphor one must observe propriety avoid being grotesque and always use moderation (ibid) The notion of proper and improper ways of forming metaphors highlights once again the hierarchy with which we are dealing Not only is metaphor by definition opposed to the proper but the latter is also the standard for how the (always imshy

proper) practice of metaphor is to be conducted We can now begin to introduce our particular metaphor of study Aristoshy

tle associates metaphors with riddles because the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations something that cannot be done by any arrangement of ordinary words (ibid) By investigating translation as redressing we can uncover some elements that have been considered the true facts of translation in the West Before delving into the bodies and clothes that make up this metaphor however I would like to return to an aspect of the domesticforeign dichotomy mentioned above and the properimproper binary it implies Translators are often seen as mediators between domestic and foreign contexts and much of the discourse regarding the proper and improper ways of performing this task calls for privileging one of these two contexts Friedrich Schleiermshyacher sums up all approaches to translation with this dichotomy saying that ultimately there are just two reader-to-author (which favours the foreign) and author-to-reader (favouring the domestic) (2002229) He proclaims in Douglas Robinsons translation that these are the only two translation methods with a clearly defined goal there is no third In

fact no other approach is possible (ibid) Schleiermacher is not alone in believing this is the case and in a sense many of the other dichotomies associated with translation - word-for-wordsense-for-sense content form and the currently more fashionable domesticationforeignization _ can be linked to this opposition The metaphor ofdress will help us see these oppositions in action and witness how it has assisted translators in dealing with the question of how they are to transport foreign bodies

into their own languages

2 The BodyClothes

In this section I will trace a thread through the history of translation disshy

course by examining remarks that revolve around the metaphor of dress

employed by many translators to describe their craft I will call this metashy

phor the bodyclothes and although it takes on many appearances in

all of them we can see the same underlying assumption ie that language

consists of a core of meaning that is contained inside the words used to

represent it This structure is found in many other container metaphors such as vessels or boxcars (Cf Nida 1975 190) but I will focus primarily on those that deal with bodies and the objects that represent them which are generally described as clothes although we will also see them take the form of other things we use to present ourselves such as hairstyles or

manners of speaking By reflecting upon the conception highlighted by the bodyclothes

we can also begin to appreciate translation in its broader relationship to metaphor and truth a reflection facilitated by the fact that this metaphor is intertwined with countless other metaphors we Lise to discuss tfLIth ones that are so ingrained in our language that we probably do not even

consider them metaphors 2 For example we unveil and unmask appearances to discover and recover that which embodies the naked truth

We can introduce the bodyclothes with what may be considered a

common sense view of translation In 1791 Alexander Tytler summarizes some expectations of what translators must do to successfully perform their task After thoroughly comprehending the sense of the author he says a translator must discover the true character ofthe aLithors sty Ie

and ascertain with precision to what class it belongs (2002210) These

characteristic qualities must then be rendered equally conspicuous in the translation as in the original and ifnot done properly the translator

will present [the author] through a distorting medium or exhibit him in

a garb that is unsuitable to his character (ibid) Fashion is indeed very

serious business especially when as in the cases of the translator-tailors I will be discussing the authors being dressed are some of the greatest celebrities imaginable such as Homer Montaigne and even God

~ See Lakoff and Johnson (1980) for an in depth look at how metaphors an integral

albeit often overlooked role in shaping our reality

2 shy

21 Undressing and Redressing

In a translation by Harris Rackman Cicero says that he is well aware that his project oftranslating Greek philosophy attempting as it does to present in a Latin dress subjects that the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek is sure to encounter critishy

cism from different quarters (2002 I 0)3 We have here an early example of the narrative we will follow throughout this section In the first place

Cicero illustrates the classic belief in a split between content and form in language allowing one to imagine translation as an act that attempts to keep the same body of meaning while merely changing its representation While different languages are said to have different ways of expressing the same things everyone knows especially the translator that a translation cannot reproduce the body of the original in its totality but this is not really Ciceros concern Like so many after him he sees translation as a way of affirming his language showing that the fabric of Latin is capable of expressing the same kinds of complex subject matter as Greek Thus translation allows Cicero to showcase his budding language and at the same time it gives him the opportunity to introduce modes of expression previously absent

in Latin by coining words and idioms by analogy provided only they [are] appropriate (20027) in a manner reminiscent ofAristotles call for

the proper fonnation ofmetaphors Several hundred years later Saint Jerome defending himself from acshy

cusations of practicing improper translation asks us to consider a comment made by the translator Evagrius in a preface which we can do via Paul Carrolls translation a literal translation from one language into another conceals as with a coat4 the original sense just as an exuberance of grass

3 Cicero does not actually use any word that refers to dress in this passage although the image implied is similar to the one suggested by the bodyclothes A more literal translation of this fragment might be I will deliver over into Latin letters that which the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek Rackmans choice seems to reflect how commonplace this metaphor is in our

culture to illustrate the split between content and form 4 Jerome uses a form of the verb operiiJ which means to cover conceal bury as well as clothe The clarification as with a coat in the translation is unnecessary but Carroll perhaps for some of the same reasons Rackman decided to clothe Cicero with this metaphor opted to reference both senses of this word All of the remaining translations of the quotes related to our metaphor already use literal renderings of the words in the originals that refer to bodies and clothes and 1 will not therefore comment

any further on the originals

ZS

strangles the crops (200226) Literal or word-for-word translation as anyone who has tried their hand can verify creates awkward phrases because one cannot match up words from two languages that simply do not match While Cicero remarks that texts can be redressed Jerome tells us that not all clothes are equal and some are unfortunately fashioned in a way that covers up or even kills the body of the original

Jumping ahead some 1200 years we can introduce two contemporaries John Denham and John Dryden who provide us with examples that most explicitly label the pieces of the bodyclothes In the preface to his translashytion of Virgils Destruction of Troy Denham writes as speech is the apparel of our thoughts so are there certain garbs and modes of speaking which vary with the times the fashion ofour clothes being not more subject to alteration than that ofour speech (2002 156) Dryden has a similar take on fashion in the preface to his translations of Ovids Epistles He mainshytains that when languages match gracefully one should certainly translate literally But this is seldom the case and what is beautiful in one is often barbarous nay sometimes nonsense in another (2002 173) Words are outward ornaments and though they sometimes may be so ill chosen as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress and to rob it ofits native luster (ibid 174) the ultimate duty of the translator-tailor is to vary but the dress not to alter or destroy the substance (ibid 173)

Considering such remarks how should one dress these foreign bodies to keep their native luster After condemning clothes that strangle the sense Jerome promotes an equally aggressive stance praising Hillary the Confessor who did not bind himself to the drowsiness ofliteral translation or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture but like some conqueror he marched the original text a captive into his native language (200226) An inadequate culture would be one that does not have its own (proper) way of dressing foreign ideas and would thus need to copy the original words literally More than a millennium later Thomas Drant describes his redressing of Horace by making a reference to the Bible verse Jerome might have had in mind (Deuteronomy 21 11-14)

when he complimented Hilarv the Confessor

First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful1 have shaved offhis hair and pared offhis nails that is I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter 1 have EngJished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety but of his own vuiar tongue have pieced his reason eked and mended

2Y

his similitudes mollified his hardness prolonged his cortall kind of speeches changed and much altered his words but not his sentence (Cited in Chamberlain 2000318)5

Not only does Drant redress Horace but he even chops offhis hair and nails The appearance ofthe translation does not resemble the originals since he has changed and much altered his words but because the body he has captured can be separated from its representational elements he can still

leave Horaces sentence untouched This separation of content and form proposed at least since Cicero allows translators to commit inappropriate

acts against the foreign appearance of the original while maintaining the

belief that they are leaving its body untouched

Not everyone however has felt we have to talk about importing foreign

bodies in such violent terms In 1603 John Florio equates his translations

of Montaignes Essays with children taken out of the head of the author then adopted and raised in the setting of the target language He says I yet at least a fondling foster-father having transported it from France to England put it in Eng ish clothes taught it to talk our tongue (though many times with ajerk ofthe Frenchjargon) would set it forth to the best service I might (2002 131-132) Montaignes thoughts are his children and Florio fosters them by dressing and schooling them like elegant children of his own time One does not have to look far for examples ofothers who express the same wish to have a translation read as if it were originally written in that language Denham for example writes if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation but as a man ofthis age (2002 156) For his part Dryden in his Dedication of the Aeneis says I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in England and in this present (2002174)

The now (in)famous expression les belles irifideles often represents an

extreme type of domestic redressing It was originally coined to describe the work of Nicholas Perrot dAblancourt who gives us a variation of the

bodyclothes metaphor when describing his redressing ofthe Assyrian writer Lucian in French David Ross translates him as saying

5 The gendering oftranslation is woven into many metaphors used to describe this activshyand the bodyclothes is no exception Especially considering that it is a metaphor

that so explicitly deals with handling and taking over naked bodies it would be easy to draw a parallel study ofthe gendering process it often involves For the moment though I refer readers to Lori Chamberlains essay from which this quote was taken for an insightful account of the interface between gender and metaphors of translation

laquo)

I do not always bind myself either to the words or to the reasonshying of this author and I adjust things to our manner and style with his goal in mind Different times demand different reasoning as well as different words and ambassadors are accustomed for fear of appearing ridiculous to those they strive to please to dressing themselves according to the fashion of the country where they are sent (2002 58-159)

Foreign texts are like visitors ambassadors who adopt the fashions of their

host culture in order to please the target readership Examples abound of how clothes vary across cultures in the way they relate to the bodies

cover and represent Much of the wardrobe used by US college students

would be seen as inappropriate in say Saudi Arabia and likewise a woman

wearing a hijab in many parts ofthe US would stand out rather than blend

in like she would in Saudi Arabia D Ablancourt gives us several concrete

examples of how he tailors words to fit meaning When translating Lucian he notices that all similes having to do with love speak of that of boys

which was not strange to Grecian morals and which is horrifying to our own and he decides simply to omit them (2002 158) In addition Lucian makes constant references to Homer something that was commonplace to the ancient audience but would nowadays be pedantic thus producshying an impression on the French readership that would be quite contrary

to [Lucians] intention for we are talking here about elegance and not about erudition (ibid) His radical redressing of Lucian is by no means

an insult to the author for in D Ablancoutss view this is the only way to rr ensure the proper transfer of the body It was thus necessary to change

all that in order to have a pleasing result otherwise it would not be Lucian (2002 158)

As we know the expression les belles inideIes implies that a translation cannot be both beautiful and faithful However because he holds beauty and elegance as the most important qualities of the texts he translates DAblancourt considers that his infidelities towards the appearance of the original are necessary to properly (and faithfully) reproduce its essence His is a faithful brand of infidelity not altogether different from the impropriety

w exhibited by Hillary the Confessor and Drant when they enslaved texts for

own good

We have been looking at the bodyclothes as a metaphor that shows transshylation as a process in which some kind of body of meaning is slipped out of its original clothes and redressed in others that are intended to represent

the same thing in another language Although the translators in this section

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

18

and gender studies theorists like Barbara Johnson Rosemary Arrojo Lawrence Venuti Douglas Robinson Vicente Rafael Annie Brisset and Sherry Simon among many others have radically rethought the traditional notion oftranslation inherited from the Platonic tradition In vein with these projects I would like to take a step back and illustrate via metaphor the extent to which our conception of translation has been fundamentally shaped by Platos theory of representation and in light of this what Nietzsches critique of Platonism means for our conception of translation

After a brief introduction to metaphor and its relationship to translation I will examine one particular metaphor that because it is so closely wrapped up with our general notion of(naked) truth will provide a perfect image with which to consider the relationship between Platonic thought and the most basic notion of translation The metaphor of translation as the redressing of a body of meaning in the clothes of another language will allow us to touch upon many of the fundamental concerns that have dominated Western discourse on translation and thus highlight a common thread in our conshyception that has basically remained unchanged throughout the ages a thread that can be tied directly to Platos theory of representation In this context I can also show some of the basic implications that Nietzsches critique of Platonism has for our conception of translation Nietzsche formulates metaphor very differently from the tradition inherited from Aristotle and with Nietzsches work we can enrich our discussion on two levels In the first place as metaphor and translation hold much in common his revision of the former will help us begin to rethink the latter In addition although we will first see the metaphor ofdress as an illustration ofPlatos theory of representation we can also find it in Nietzsche but used in a way that clearly illustrates his subversion of the Platonic model Following Nietzsche we will be able to recast our conception oftranslation by focusing on elements that have traditionally been left out of the picture

1 Metaphor and Translation

The word for translation in English as well as in many other European languages comes from the Latin transatio which is a translation of the Greek metaphora the word from which English derives metaphor In anCIent Greek metaphora was used in the sense that we employ the word metaphor today as well as for translation from one language into anshyother Thus related in this way translation and metaphor both imply the notion of carrying over or transferring meaning from one word or phrase to another

lf

Aristotle Platos most famous disciple is credited with one of the

which he gives in his Poetics amidst classhysifications ofdifferent words and parts of speech and which SH Butcher translates asmetaphor is the application ofan alien name by transference from one category to another by analogy (XXI) Because metaphors employ words that are alien to what they denote they are not proper Arshyistotle defines current or proper words as those which [are] in general use among a people and contrasts them with strange words which are those in use in another country (ibid) Elsewhere he equates strange words with unusual (or rare) words metaphorical lengthened any-

in short that differs from the normal idiom (PoeticsXXIl) The proper (which comes from the idea of ones own) is bound to what is considered to be a kind of shared domestic normalcy while metaphors together with strange and unusual words are marked by their deviashytion from this norm a category that includes (or indeed is defined by) languages spoken in other countries I Translation traffics between the elements of a similar opposition as it attempts to say in a language in use in another country something that was originally said in the comshymon language of a different people Eric Cheyfitz points out that with Aristotles definition metaphor and translation are both founded on a kind of territorial imperative in a division between the domestic and the foreign since both attempt to transfer an alien name into a familiar context (199736)

In this scenario there is an explicit hierarchy as the proper is considered to be closer to truth than tropes such as metaphor Aristotle states the clearest style is that which tlses only current or proper words (Poetics XXII) Proper words are clearer because they allegedly deal literally with what they denote and present an unequivocal truth Metaphor is considered an ornament and while certainly a useful tool for poetic expression it is seen as secondary to proper forms of representation A metaphor cannot provide access to truth on its own because its parts must be substituted with proper ones or as Aristotle says if we take a strange ( or rare) word a metaphor or any similar mode ofex pression and replace it by the current or proper term the truth ofollr observation will be manifest (ibid) In this sense metaphor is always deemed to some extent improper because it has to be translated into proper terms before its truth is to be seen

at~~h~r is seen as a secondary form ofrepresentation Aristotle

I Eric Cheyfitz points out that xenikos which Buchner translates as unusual also means foreign (199736)

20 21

praises it proper use of metaphor is the mark ofgenius for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances (ibid) This eye for resemshyblances is fundamental for the Platonic model to function because as we will see the very basis for discovering truth and essences is founded on the ability to draw similarities Platos is after all a philosophy of sameness

Aristotle sees the use of metaphor as a question of style and style for him wavers between perspicuity obtained by using ordinary and common words and distinction resulting from uncommon usage (ibid) To properly use metaphor one must observe propriety avoid being grotesque and always use moderation (ibid) The notion of proper and improper ways of forming metaphors highlights once again the hierarchy with which we are dealing Not only is metaphor by definition opposed to the proper but the latter is also the standard for how the (always imshy

proper) practice of metaphor is to be conducted We can now begin to introduce our particular metaphor of study Aristoshy

tle associates metaphors with riddles because the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations something that cannot be done by any arrangement of ordinary words (ibid) By investigating translation as redressing we can uncover some elements that have been considered the true facts of translation in the West Before delving into the bodies and clothes that make up this metaphor however I would like to return to an aspect of the domesticforeign dichotomy mentioned above and the properimproper binary it implies Translators are often seen as mediators between domestic and foreign contexts and much of the discourse regarding the proper and improper ways of performing this task calls for privileging one of these two contexts Friedrich Schleiermshyacher sums up all approaches to translation with this dichotomy saying that ultimately there are just two reader-to-author (which favours the foreign) and author-to-reader (favouring the domestic) (2002229) He proclaims in Douglas Robinsons translation that these are the only two translation methods with a clearly defined goal there is no third In

fact no other approach is possible (ibid) Schleiermacher is not alone in believing this is the case and in a sense many of the other dichotomies associated with translation - word-for-wordsense-for-sense content form and the currently more fashionable domesticationforeignization _ can be linked to this opposition The metaphor ofdress will help us see these oppositions in action and witness how it has assisted translators in dealing with the question of how they are to transport foreign bodies

into their own languages

2 The BodyClothes

In this section I will trace a thread through the history of translation disshy

course by examining remarks that revolve around the metaphor of dress

employed by many translators to describe their craft I will call this metashy

phor the bodyclothes and although it takes on many appearances in

all of them we can see the same underlying assumption ie that language

consists of a core of meaning that is contained inside the words used to

represent it This structure is found in many other container metaphors such as vessels or boxcars (Cf Nida 1975 190) but I will focus primarily on those that deal with bodies and the objects that represent them which are generally described as clothes although we will also see them take the form of other things we use to present ourselves such as hairstyles or

manners of speaking By reflecting upon the conception highlighted by the bodyclothes

we can also begin to appreciate translation in its broader relationship to metaphor and truth a reflection facilitated by the fact that this metaphor is intertwined with countless other metaphors we Lise to discuss tfLIth ones that are so ingrained in our language that we probably do not even

consider them metaphors 2 For example we unveil and unmask appearances to discover and recover that which embodies the naked truth

We can introduce the bodyclothes with what may be considered a

common sense view of translation In 1791 Alexander Tytler summarizes some expectations of what translators must do to successfully perform their task After thoroughly comprehending the sense of the author he says a translator must discover the true character ofthe aLithors sty Ie

and ascertain with precision to what class it belongs (2002210) These

characteristic qualities must then be rendered equally conspicuous in the translation as in the original and ifnot done properly the translator

will present [the author] through a distorting medium or exhibit him in

a garb that is unsuitable to his character (ibid) Fashion is indeed very

serious business especially when as in the cases of the translator-tailors I will be discussing the authors being dressed are some of the greatest celebrities imaginable such as Homer Montaigne and even God

~ See Lakoff and Johnson (1980) for an in depth look at how metaphors an integral

albeit often overlooked role in shaping our reality

2 shy

21 Undressing and Redressing

In a translation by Harris Rackman Cicero says that he is well aware that his project oftranslating Greek philosophy attempting as it does to present in a Latin dress subjects that the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek is sure to encounter critishy

cism from different quarters (2002 I 0)3 We have here an early example of the narrative we will follow throughout this section In the first place

Cicero illustrates the classic belief in a split between content and form in language allowing one to imagine translation as an act that attempts to keep the same body of meaning while merely changing its representation While different languages are said to have different ways of expressing the same things everyone knows especially the translator that a translation cannot reproduce the body of the original in its totality but this is not really Ciceros concern Like so many after him he sees translation as a way of affirming his language showing that the fabric of Latin is capable of expressing the same kinds of complex subject matter as Greek Thus translation allows Cicero to showcase his budding language and at the same time it gives him the opportunity to introduce modes of expression previously absent

in Latin by coining words and idioms by analogy provided only they [are] appropriate (20027) in a manner reminiscent ofAristotles call for

the proper fonnation ofmetaphors Several hundred years later Saint Jerome defending himself from acshy

cusations of practicing improper translation asks us to consider a comment made by the translator Evagrius in a preface which we can do via Paul Carrolls translation a literal translation from one language into another conceals as with a coat4 the original sense just as an exuberance of grass

3 Cicero does not actually use any word that refers to dress in this passage although the image implied is similar to the one suggested by the bodyclothes A more literal translation of this fragment might be I will deliver over into Latin letters that which the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek Rackmans choice seems to reflect how commonplace this metaphor is in our

culture to illustrate the split between content and form 4 Jerome uses a form of the verb operiiJ which means to cover conceal bury as well as clothe The clarification as with a coat in the translation is unnecessary but Carroll perhaps for some of the same reasons Rackman decided to clothe Cicero with this metaphor opted to reference both senses of this word All of the remaining translations of the quotes related to our metaphor already use literal renderings of the words in the originals that refer to bodies and clothes and 1 will not therefore comment

any further on the originals

ZS

strangles the crops (200226) Literal or word-for-word translation as anyone who has tried their hand can verify creates awkward phrases because one cannot match up words from two languages that simply do not match While Cicero remarks that texts can be redressed Jerome tells us that not all clothes are equal and some are unfortunately fashioned in a way that covers up or even kills the body of the original

Jumping ahead some 1200 years we can introduce two contemporaries John Denham and John Dryden who provide us with examples that most explicitly label the pieces of the bodyclothes In the preface to his translashytion of Virgils Destruction of Troy Denham writes as speech is the apparel of our thoughts so are there certain garbs and modes of speaking which vary with the times the fashion ofour clothes being not more subject to alteration than that ofour speech (2002 156) Dryden has a similar take on fashion in the preface to his translations of Ovids Epistles He mainshytains that when languages match gracefully one should certainly translate literally But this is seldom the case and what is beautiful in one is often barbarous nay sometimes nonsense in another (2002 173) Words are outward ornaments and though they sometimes may be so ill chosen as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress and to rob it ofits native luster (ibid 174) the ultimate duty of the translator-tailor is to vary but the dress not to alter or destroy the substance (ibid 173)

Considering such remarks how should one dress these foreign bodies to keep their native luster After condemning clothes that strangle the sense Jerome promotes an equally aggressive stance praising Hillary the Confessor who did not bind himself to the drowsiness ofliteral translation or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture but like some conqueror he marched the original text a captive into his native language (200226) An inadequate culture would be one that does not have its own (proper) way of dressing foreign ideas and would thus need to copy the original words literally More than a millennium later Thomas Drant describes his redressing of Horace by making a reference to the Bible verse Jerome might have had in mind (Deuteronomy 21 11-14)

when he complimented Hilarv the Confessor

First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful1 have shaved offhis hair and pared offhis nails that is I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter 1 have EngJished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety but of his own vuiar tongue have pieced his reason eked and mended

2Y

his similitudes mollified his hardness prolonged his cortall kind of speeches changed and much altered his words but not his sentence (Cited in Chamberlain 2000318)5

Not only does Drant redress Horace but he even chops offhis hair and nails The appearance ofthe translation does not resemble the originals since he has changed and much altered his words but because the body he has captured can be separated from its representational elements he can still

leave Horaces sentence untouched This separation of content and form proposed at least since Cicero allows translators to commit inappropriate

acts against the foreign appearance of the original while maintaining the

belief that they are leaving its body untouched

Not everyone however has felt we have to talk about importing foreign

bodies in such violent terms In 1603 John Florio equates his translations

of Montaignes Essays with children taken out of the head of the author then adopted and raised in the setting of the target language He says I yet at least a fondling foster-father having transported it from France to England put it in Eng ish clothes taught it to talk our tongue (though many times with ajerk ofthe Frenchjargon) would set it forth to the best service I might (2002 131-132) Montaignes thoughts are his children and Florio fosters them by dressing and schooling them like elegant children of his own time One does not have to look far for examples ofothers who express the same wish to have a translation read as if it were originally written in that language Denham for example writes if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation but as a man ofthis age (2002 156) For his part Dryden in his Dedication of the Aeneis says I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in England and in this present (2002174)

The now (in)famous expression les belles irifideles often represents an

extreme type of domestic redressing It was originally coined to describe the work of Nicholas Perrot dAblancourt who gives us a variation of the

bodyclothes metaphor when describing his redressing ofthe Assyrian writer Lucian in French David Ross translates him as saying

5 The gendering oftranslation is woven into many metaphors used to describe this activshyand the bodyclothes is no exception Especially considering that it is a metaphor

that so explicitly deals with handling and taking over naked bodies it would be easy to draw a parallel study ofthe gendering process it often involves For the moment though I refer readers to Lori Chamberlains essay from which this quote was taken for an insightful account of the interface between gender and metaphors of translation

laquo)

I do not always bind myself either to the words or to the reasonshying of this author and I adjust things to our manner and style with his goal in mind Different times demand different reasoning as well as different words and ambassadors are accustomed for fear of appearing ridiculous to those they strive to please to dressing themselves according to the fashion of the country where they are sent (2002 58-159)

Foreign texts are like visitors ambassadors who adopt the fashions of their

host culture in order to please the target readership Examples abound of how clothes vary across cultures in the way they relate to the bodies

cover and represent Much of the wardrobe used by US college students

would be seen as inappropriate in say Saudi Arabia and likewise a woman

wearing a hijab in many parts ofthe US would stand out rather than blend

in like she would in Saudi Arabia D Ablancourt gives us several concrete

examples of how he tailors words to fit meaning When translating Lucian he notices that all similes having to do with love speak of that of boys

which was not strange to Grecian morals and which is horrifying to our own and he decides simply to omit them (2002 158) In addition Lucian makes constant references to Homer something that was commonplace to the ancient audience but would nowadays be pedantic thus producshying an impression on the French readership that would be quite contrary

to [Lucians] intention for we are talking here about elegance and not about erudition (ibid) His radical redressing of Lucian is by no means

an insult to the author for in D Ablancoutss view this is the only way to rr ensure the proper transfer of the body It was thus necessary to change

all that in order to have a pleasing result otherwise it would not be Lucian (2002 158)

As we know the expression les belles inideIes implies that a translation cannot be both beautiful and faithful However because he holds beauty and elegance as the most important qualities of the texts he translates DAblancourt considers that his infidelities towards the appearance of the original are necessary to properly (and faithfully) reproduce its essence His is a faithful brand of infidelity not altogether different from the impropriety

w exhibited by Hillary the Confessor and Drant when they enslaved texts for

own good

We have been looking at the bodyclothes as a metaphor that shows transshylation as a process in which some kind of body of meaning is slipped out of its original clothes and redressed in others that are intended to represent

the same thing in another language Although the translators in this section

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

20 21

praises it proper use of metaphor is the mark ofgenius for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances (ibid) This eye for resemshyblances is fundamental for the Platonic model to function because as we will see the very basis for discovering truth and essences is founded on the ability to draw similarities Platos is after all a philosophy of sameness

Aristotle sees the use of metaphor as a question of style and style for him wavers between perspicuity obtained by using ordinary and common words and distinction resulting from uncommon usage (ibid) To properly use metaphor one must observe propriety avoid being grotesque and always use moderation (ibid) The notion of proper and improper ways of forming metaphors highlights once again the hierarchy with which we are dealing Not only is metaphor by definition opposed to the proper but the latter is also the standard for how the (always imshy

proper) practice of metaphor is to be conducted We can now begin to introduce our particular metaphor of study Aristoshy

tle associates metaphors with riddles because the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations something that cannot be done by any arrangement of ordinary words (ibid) By investigating translation as redressing we can uncover some elements that have been considered the true facts of translation in the West Before delving into the bodies and clothes that make up this metaphor however I would like to return to an aspect of the domesticforeign dichotomy mentioned above and the properimproper binary it implies Translators are often seen as mediators between domestic and foreign contexts and much of the discourse regarding the proper and improper ways of performing this task calls for privileging one of these two contexts Friedrich Schleiermshyacher sums up all approaches to translation with this dichotomy saying that ultimately there are just two reader-to-author (which favours the foreign) and author-to-reader (favouring the domestic) (2002229) He proclaims in Douglas Robinsons translation that these are the only two translation methods with a clearly defined goal there is no third In

fact no other approach is possible (ibid) Schleiermacher is not alone in believing this is the case and in a sense many of the other dichotomies associated with translation - word-for-wordsense-for-sense content form and the currently more fashionable domesticationforeignization _ can be linked to this opposition The metaphor ofdress will help us see these oppositions in action and witness how it has assisted translators in dealing with the question of how they are to transport foreign bodies

into their own languages

2 The BodyClothes

In this section I will trace a thread through the history of translation disshy

course by examining remarks that revolve around the metaphor of dress

employed by many translators to describe their craft I will call this metashy

phor the bodyclothes and although it takes on many appearances in

all of them we can see the same underlying assumption ie that language

consists of a core of meaning that is contained inside the words used to

represent it This structure is found in many other container metaphors such as vessels or boxcars (Cf Nida 1975 190) but I will focus primarily on those that deal with bodies and the objects that represent them which are generally described as clothes although we will also see them take the form of other things we use to present ourselves such as hairstyles or

manners of speaking By reflecting upon the conception highlighted by the bodyclothes

we can also begin to appreciate translation in its broader relationship to metaphor and truth a reflection facilitated by the fact that this metaphor is intertwined with countless other metaphors we Lise to discuss tfLIth ones that are so ingrained in our language that we probably do not even

consider them metaphors 2 For example we unveil and unmask appearances to discover and recover that which embodies the naked truth

We can introduce the bodyclothes with what may be considered a

common sense view of translation In 1791 Alexander Tytler summarizes some expectations of what translators must do to successfully perform their task After thoroughly comprehending the sense of the author he says a translator must discover the true character ofthe aLithors sty Ie

and ascertain with precision to what class it belongs (2002210) These

characteristic qualities must then be rendered equally conspicuous in the translation as in the original and ifnot done properly the translator

will present [the author] through a distorting medium or exhibit him in

a garb that is unsuitable to his character (ibid) Fashion is indeed very

serious business especially when as in the cases of the translator-tailors I will be discussing the authors being dressed are some of the greatest celebrities imaginable such as Homer Montaigne and even God

~ See Lakoff and Johnson (1980) for an in depth look at how metaphors an integral

albeit often overlooked role in shaping our reality

2 shy

21 Undressing and Redressing

In a translation by Harris Rackman Cicero says that he is well aware that his project oftranslating Greek philosophy attempting as it does to present in a Latin dress subjects that the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek is sure to encounter critishy

cism from different quarters (2002 I 0)3 We have here an early example of the narrative we will follow throughout this section In the first place

Cicero illustrates the classic belief in a split between content and form in language allowing one to imagine translation as an act that attempts to keep the same body of meaning while merely changing its representation While different languages are said to have different ways of expressing the same things everyone knows especially the translator that a translation cannot reproduce the body of the original in its totality but this is not really Ciceros concern Like so many after him he sees translation as a way of affirming his language showing that the fabric of Latin is capable of expressing the same kinds of complex subject matter as Greek Thus translation allows Cicero to showcase his budding language and at the same time it gives him the opportunity to introduce modes of expression previously absent

in Latin by coining words and idioms by analogy provided only they [are] appropriate (20027) in a manner reminiscent ofAristotles call for

the proper fonnation ofmetaphors Several hundred years later Saint Jerome defending himself from acshy

cusations of practicing improper translation asks us to consider a comment made by the translator Evagrius in a preface which we can do via Paul Carrolls translation a literal translation from one language into another conceals as with a coat4 the original sense just as an exuberance of grass

3 Cicero does not actually use any word that refers to dress in this passage although the image implied is similar to the one suggested by the bodyclothes A more literal translation of this fragment might be I will deliver over into Latin letters that which the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek Rackmans choice seems to reflect how commonplace this metaphor is in our

culture to illustrate the split between content and form 4 Jerome uses a form of the verb operiiJ which means to cover conceal bury as well as clothe The clarification as with a coat in the translation is unnecessary but Carroll perhaps for some of the same reasons Rackman decided to clothe Cicero with this metaphor opted to reference both senses of this word All of the remaining translations of the quotes related to our metaphor already use literal renderings of the words in the originals that refer to bodies and clothes and 1 will not therefore comment

any further on the originals

ZS

strangles the crops (200226) Literal or word-for-word translation as anyone who has tried their hand can verify creates awkward phrases because one cannot match up words from two languages that simply do not match While Cicero remarks that texts can be redressed Jerome tells us that not all clothes are equal and some are unfortunately fashioned in a way that covers up or even kills the body of the original

Jumping ahead some 1200 years we can introduce two contemporaries John Denham and John Dryden who provide us with examples that most explicitly label the pieces of the bodyclothes In the preface to his translashytion of Virgils Destruction of Troy Denham writes as speech is the apparel of our thoughts so are there certain garbs and modes of speaking which vary with the times the fashion ofour clothes being not more subject to alteration than that ofour speech (2002 156) Dryden has a similar take on fashion in the preface to his translations of Ovids Epistles He mainshytains that when languages match gracefully one should certainly translate literally But this is seldom the case and what is beautiful in one is often barbarous nay sometimes nonsense in another (2002 173) Words are outward ornaments and though they sometimes may be so ill chosen as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress and to rob it ofits native luster (ibid 174) the ultimate duty of the translator-tailor is to vary but the dress not to alter or destroy the substance (ibid 173)

Considering such remarks how should one dress these foreign bodies to keep their native luster After condemning clothes that strangle the sense Jerome promotes an equally aggressive stance praising Hillary the Confessor who did not bind himself to the drowsiness ofliteral translation or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture but like some conqueror he marched the original text a captive into his native language (200226) An inadequate culture would be one that does not have its own (proper) way of dressing foreign ideas and would thus need to copy the original words literally More than a millennium later Thomas Drant describes his redressing of Horace by making a reference to the Bible verse Jerome might have had in mind (Deuteronomy 21 11-14)

when he complimented Hilarv the Confessor

First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful1 have shaved offhis hair and pared offhis nails that is I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter 1 have EngJished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety but of his own vuiar tongue have pieced his reason eked and mended

2Y

his similitudes mollified his hardness prolonged his cortall kind of speeches changed and much altered his words but not his sentence (Cited in Chamberlain 2000318)5

Not only does Drant redress Horace but he even chops offhis hair and nails The appearance ofthe translation does not resemble the originals since he has changed and much altered his words but because the body he has captured can be separated from its representational elements he can still

leave Horaces sentence untouched This separation of content and form proposed at least since Cicero allows translators to commit inappropriate

acts against the foreign appearance of the original while maintaining the

belief that they are leaving its body untouched

Not everyone however has felt we have to talk about importing foreign

bodies in such violent terms In 1603 John Florio equates his translations

of Montaignes Essays with children taken out of the head of the author then adopted and raised in the setting of the target language He says I yet at least a fondling foster-father having transported it from France to England put it in Eng ish clothes taught it to talk our tongue (though many times with ajerk ofthe Frenchjargon) would set it forth to the best service I might (2002 131-132) Montaignes thoughts are his children and Florio fosters them by dressing and schooling them like elegant children of his own time One does not have to look far for examples ofothers who express the same wish to have a translation read as if it were originally written in that language Denham for example writes if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation but as a man ofthis age (2002 156) For his part Dryden in his Dedication of the Aeneis says I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in England and in this present (2002174)

The now (in)famous expression les belles irifideles often represents an

extreme type of domestic redressing It was originally coined to describe the work of Nicholas Perrot dAblancourt who gives us a variation of the

bodyclothes metaphor when describing his redressing ofthe Assyrian writer Lucian in French David Ross translates him as saying

5 The gendering oftranslation is woven into many metaphors used to describe this activshyand the bodyclothes is no exception Especially considering that it is a metaphor

that so explicitly deals with handling and taking over naked bodies it would be easy to draw a parallel study ofthe gendering process it often involves For the moment though I refer readers to Lori Chamberlains essay from which this quote was taken for an insightful account of the interface between gender and metaphors of translation

laquo)

I do not always bind myself either to the words or to the reasonshying of this author and I adjust things to our manner and style with his goal in mind Different times demand different reasoning as well as different words and ambassadors are accustomed for fear of appearing ridiculous to those they strive to please to dressing themselves according to the fashion of the country where they are sent (2002 58-159)

Foreign texts are like visitors ambassadors who adopt the fashions of their

host culture in order to please the target readership Examples abound of how clothes vary across cultures in the way they relate to the bodies

cover and represent Much of the wardrobe used by US college students

would be seen as inappropriate in say Saudi Arabia and likewise a woman

wearing a hijab in many parts ofthe US would stand out rather than blend

in like she would in Saudi Arabia D Ablancourt gives us several concrete

examples of how he tailors words to fit meaning When translating Lucian he notices that all similes having to do with love speak of that of boys

which was not strange to Grecian morals and which is horrifying to our own and he decides simply to omit them (2002 158) In addition Lucian makes constant references to Homer something that was commonplace to the ancient audience but would nowadays be pedantic thus producshying an impression on the French readership that would be quite contrary

to [Lucians] intention for we are talking here about elegance and not about erudition (ibid) His radical redressing of Lucian is by no means

an insult to the author for in D Ablancoutss view this is the only way to rr ensure the proper transfer of the body It was thus necessary to change

all that in order to have a pleasing result otherwise it would not be Lucian (2002 158)

As we know the expression les belles inideIes implies that a translation cannot be both beautiful and faithful However because he holds beauty and elegance as the most important qualities of the texts he translates DAblancourt considers that his infidelities towards the appearance of the original are necessary to properly (and faithfully) reproduce its essence His is a faithful brand of infidelity not altogether different from the impropriety

w exhibited by Hillary the Confessor and Drant when they enslaved texts for

own good

We have been looking at the bodyclothes as a metaphor that shows transshylation as a process in which some kind of body of meaning is slipped out of its original clothes and redressed in others that are intended to represent

the same thing in another language Although the translators in this section

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

2 shy

21 Undressing and Redressing

In a translation by Harris Rackman Cicero says that he is well aware that his project oftranslating Greek philosophy attempting as it does to present in a Latin dress subjects that the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek is sure to encounter critishy

cism from different quarters (2002 I 0)3 We have here an early example of the narrative we will follow throughout this section In the first place

Cicero illustrates the classic belief in a split between content and form in language allowing one to imagine translation as an act that attempts to keep the same body of meaning while merely changing its representation While different languages are said to have different ways of expressing the same things everyone knows especially the translator that a translation cannot reproduce the body of the original in its totality but this is not really Ciceros concern Like so many after him he sees translation as a way of affirming his language showing that the fabric of Latin is capable of expressing the same kinds of complex subject matter as Greek Thus translation allows Cicero to showcase his budding language and at the same time it gives him the opportunity to introduce modes of expression previously absent

in Latin by coining words and idioms by analogy provided only they [are] appropriate (20027) in a manner reminiscent ofAristotles call for

the proper fonnation ofmetaphors Several hundred years later Saint Jerome defending himself from acshy

cusations of practicing improper translation asks us to consider a comment made by the translator Evagrius in a preface which we can do via Paul Carrolls translation a literal translation from one language into another conceals as with a coat4 the original sense just as an exuberance of grass

3 Cicero does not actually use any word that refers to dress in this passage although the image implied is similar to the one suggested by the bodyclothes A more literal translation of this fragment might be I will deliver over into Latin letters that which the philosophers of consummate ability and profound learning have already handled in Greek Rackmans choice seems to reflect how commonplace this metaphor is in our

culture to illustrate the split between content and form 4 Jerome uses a form of the verb operiiJ which means to cover conceal bury as well as clothe The clarification as with a coat in the translation is unnecessary but Carroll perhaps for some of the same reasons Rackman decided to clothe Cicero with this metaphor opted to reference both senses of this word All of the remaining translations of the quotes related to our metaphor already use literal renderings of the words in the originals that refer to bodies and clothes and 1 will not therefore comment

any further on the originals

ZS

strangles the crops (200226) Literal or word-for-word translation as anyone who has tried their hand can verify creates awkward phrases because one cannot match up words from two languages that simply do not match While Cicero remarks that texts can be redressed Jerome tells us that not all clothes are equal and some are unfortunately fashioned in a way that covers up or even kills the body of the original

Jumping ahead some 1200 years we can introduce two contemporaries John Denham and John Dryden who provide us with examples that most explicitly label the pieces of the bodyclothes In the preface to his translashytion of Virgils Destruction of Troy Denham writes as speech is the apparel of our thoughts so are there certain garbs and modes of speaking which vary with the times the fashion ofour clothes being not more subject to alteration than that ofour speech (2002 156) Dryden has a similar take on fashion in the preface to his translations of Ovids Epistles He mainshytains that when languages match gracefully one should certainly translate literally But this is seldom the case and what is beautiful in one is often barbarous nay sometimes nonsense in another (2002 173) Words are outward ornaments and though they sometimes may be so ill chosen as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress and to rob it ofits native luster (ibid 174) the ultimate duty of the translator-tailor is to vary but the dress not to alter or destroy the substance (ibid 173)

Considering such remarks how should one dress these foreign bodies to keep their native luster After condemning clothes that strangle the sense Jerome promotes an equally aggressive stance praising Hillary the Confessor who did not bind himself to the drowsiness ofliteral translation or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture but like some conqueror he marched the original text a captive into his native language (200226) An inadequate culture would be one that does not have its own (proper) way of dressing foreign ideas and would thus need to copy the original words literally More than a millennium later Thomas Drant describes his redressing of Horace by making a reference to the Bible verse Jerome might have had in mind (Deuteronomy 21 11-14)

when he complimented Hilarv the Confessor

First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful1 have shaved offhis hair and pared offhis nails that is I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter 1 have EngJished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety but of his own vuiar tongue have pieced his reason eked and mended

2Y

his similitudes mollified his hardness prolonged his cortall kind of speeches changed and much altered his words but not his sentence (Cited in Chamberlain 2000318)5

Not only does Drant redress Horace but he even chops offhis hair and nails The appearance ofthe translation does not resemble the originals since he has changed and much altered his words but because the body he has captured can be separated from its representational elements he can still

leave Horaces sentence untouched This separation of content and form proposed at least since Cicero allows translators to commit inappropriate

acts against the foreign appearance of the original while maintaining the

belief that they are leaving its body untouched

Not everyone however has felt we have to talk about importing foreign

bodies in such violent terms In 1603 John Florio equates his translations

of Montaignes Essays with children taken out of the head of the author then adopted and raised in the setting of the target language He says I yet at least a fondling foster-father having transported it from France to England put it in Eng ish clothes taught it to talk our tongue (though many times with ajerk ofthe Frenchjargon) would set it forth to the best service I might (2002 131-132) Montaignes thoughts are his children and Florio fosters them by dressing and schooling them like elegant children of his own time One does not have to look far for examples ofothers who express the same wish to have a translation read as if it were originally written in that language Denham for example writes if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation but as a man ofthis age (2002 156) For his part Dryden in his Dedication of the Aeneis says I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in England and in this present (2002174)

The now (in)famous expression les belles irifideles often represents an

extreme type of domestic redressing It was originally coined to describe the work of Nicholas Perrot dAblancourt who gives us a variation of the

bodyclothes metaphor when describing his redressing ofthe Assyrian writer Lucian in French David Ross translates him as saying

5 The gendering oftranslation is woven into many metaphors used to describe this activshyand the bodyclothes is no exception Especially considering that it is a metaphor

that so explicitly deals with handling and taking over naked bodies it would be easy to draw a parallel study ofthe gendering process it often involves For the moment though I refer readers to Lori Chamberlains essay from which this quote was taken for an insightful account of the interface between gender and metaphors of translation

laquo)

I do not always bind myself either to the words or to the reasonshying of this author and I adjust things to our manner and style with his goal in mind Different times demand different reasoning as well as different words and ambassadors are accustomed for fear of appearing ridiculous to those they strive to please to dressing themselves according to the fashion of the country where they are sent (2002 58-159)

Foreign texts are like visitors ambassadors who adopt the fashions of their

host culture in order to please the target readership Examples abound of how clothes vary across cultures in the way they relate to the bodies

cover and represent Much of the wardrobe used by US college students

would be seen as inappropriate in say Saudi Arabia and likewise a woman

wearing a hijab in many parts ofthe US would stand out rather than blend

in like she would in Saudi Arabia D Ablancourt gives us several concrete

examples of how he tailors words to fit meaning When translating Lucian he notices that all similes having to do with love speak of that of boys

which was not strange to Grecian morals and which is horrifying to our own and he decides simply to omit them (2002 158) In addition Lucian makes constant references to Homer something that was commonplace to the ancient audience but would nowadays be pedantic thus producshying an impression on the French readership that would be quite contrary

to [Lucians] intention for we are talking here about elegance and not about erudition (ibid) His radical redressing of Lucian is by no means

an insult to the author for in D Ablancoutss view this is the only way to rr ensure the proper transfer of the body It was thus necessary to change

all that in order to have a pleasing result otherwise it would not be Lucian (2002 158)

As we know the expression les belles inideIes implies that a translation cannot be both beautiful and faithful However because he holds beauty and elegance as the most important qualities of the texts he translates DAblancourt considers that his infidelities towards the appearance of the original are necessary to properly (and faithfully) reproduce its essence His is a faithful brand of infidelity not altogether different from the impropriety

w exhibited by Hillary the Confessor and Drant when they enslaved texts for

own good

We have been looking at the bodyclothes as a metaphor that shows transshylation as a process in which some kind of body of meaning is slipped out of its original clothes and redressed in others that are intended to represent

the same thing in another language Although the translators in this section

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

2Y

his similitudes mollified his hardness prolonged his cortall kind of speeches changed and much altered his words but not his sentence (Cited in Chamberlain 2000318)5

Not only does Drant redress Horace but he even chops offhis hair and nails The appearance ofthe translation does not resemble the originals since he has changed and much altered his words but because the body he has captured can be separated from its representational elements he can still

leave Horaces sentence untouched This separation of content and form proposed at least since Cicero allows translators to commit inappropriate

acts against the foreign appearance of the original while maintaining the

belief that they are leaving its body untouched

Not everyone however has felt we have to talk about importing foreign

bodies in such violent terms In 1603 John Florio equates his translations

of Montaignes Essays with children taken out of the head of the author then adopted and raised in the setting of the target language He says I yet at least a fondling foster-father having transported it from France to England put it in Eng ish clothes taught it to talk our tongue (though many times with ajerk ofthe Frenchjargon) would set it forth to the best service I might (2002 131-132) Montaignes thoughts are his children and Florio fosters them by dressing and schooling them like elegant children of his own time One does not have to look far for examples ofothers who express the same wish to have a translation read as if it were originally written in that language Denham for example writes if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation but as a man ofthis age (2002 156) For his part Dryden in his Dedication of the Aeneis says I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in England and in this present (2002174)

The now (in)famous expression les belles irifideles often represents an

extreme type of domestic redressing It was originally coined to describe the work of Nicholas Perrot dAblancourt who gives us a variation of the

bodyclothes metaphor when describing his redressing ofthe Assyrian writer Lucian in French David Ross translates him as saying

5 The gendering oftranslation is woven into many metaphors used to describe this activshyand the bodyclothes is no exception Especially considering that it is a metaphor

that so explicitly deals with handling and taking over naked bodies it would be easy to draw a parallel study ofthe gendering process it often involves For the moment though I refer readers to Lori Chamberlains essay from which this quote was taken for an insightful account of the interface between gender and metaphors of translation

laquo)

I do not always bind myself either to the words or to the reasonshying of this author and I adjust things to our manner and style with his goal in mind Different times demand different reasoning as well as different words and ambassadors are accustomed for fear of appearing ridiculous to those they strive to please to dressing themselves according to the fashion of the country where they are sent (2002 58-159)

Foreign texts are like visitors ambassadors who adopt the fashions of their

host culture in order to please the target readership Examples abound of how clothes vary across cultures in the way they relate to the bodies

cover and represent Much of the wardrobe used by US college students

would be seen as inappropriate in say Saudi Arabia and likewise a woman

wearing a hijab in many parts ofthe US would stand out rather than blend

in like she would in Saudi Arabia D Ablancourt gives us several concrete

examples of how he tailors words to fit meaning When translating Lucian he notices that all similes having to do with love speak of that of boys

which was not strange to Grecian morals and which is horrifying to our own and he decides simply to omit them (2002 158) In addition Lucian makes constant references to Homer something that was commonplace to the ancient audience but would nowadays be pedantic thus producshying an impression on the French readership that would be quite contrary

to [Lucians] intention for we are talking here about elegance and not about erudition (ibid) His radical redressing of Lucian is by no means

an insult to the author for in D Ablancoutss view this is the only way to rr ensure the proper transfer of the body It was thus necessary to change

all that in order to have a pleasing result otherwise it would not be Lucian (2002 158)

As we know the expression les belles inideIes implies that a translation cannot be both beautiful and faithful However because he holds beauty and elegance as the most important qualities of the texts he translates DAblancourt considers that his infidelities towards the appearance of the original are necessary to properly (and faithfully) reproduce its essence His is a faithful brand of infidelity not altogether different from the impropriety

w exhibited by Hillary the Confessor and Drant when they enslaved texts for

own good

We have been looking at the bodyclothes as a metaphor that shows transshylation as a process in which some kind of body of meaning is slipped out of its original clothes and redressed in others that are intended to represent

the same thing in another language Although the translators in this section

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

2(P use their tailoring license to varying degrees they all suggest that adequate translation requires changing the proper language of the original for the proper language of the target culture (which unfortunately will always be to some degree improper with respect to the original) Fidelity in this context involves recovering the body at all costs often at the expense of the fashion in which it was originally portrayed

22 Keeping your Eyes on the Clothes

The German Romantics objected to the vision of translation we have been laying out thus far because it obscures what they consider to be one of the most enticing characteristics of the originalits foreignness This does not imply that the German Romantics subscribe to the kind of literal approaches that the translators in the previous section scorn or that they are in direct opposition to all those employing the bodyclothes (with the exception perhaps of0Ablancourt) However whereas our metaphor has illustrated an author-to-reader approach up to this point what distinguishes this next group of translators is that they utilize the bodyclothes to advocate for a reader-to-author view of their craft

Around 1766 almost as if addressing our present discussion Johann Gottfried von Herder uses the bodyclothes metaphor in his essay translated by Douglas Robinson as The Ideal Translator as Morning Star to ridicule the kind of approach 0Ablancourt exemplifies par excellence

The French too proud of their national taste assimilate everything to it rather than accommodating themselves to the taste of another time Homer must enter France a captive clad in French fashion lest he offend their eye must let them shave of his venerable beard and strip off his simple attire must learn French customs and whenever his pleasant dignity still shines through be ridiculed as a barbarian We poor Germans on the other hand lacking as we do a public a native country a tyranny ofnational taste - just want to see him as he is (2002208)

Herder lambastes many ideas we saw surface earlier with the bodyclothes such as those suggested by the captive metaphor put forth by both Hillary the Confessor and Drant Dryden Denham and 0Ablancourt all caution that what may be beautiful in one language can be barbarous in another and should be amended and 0Ablancourts examples of how he eradishycated the barbarous in his translations make him the epitome of what

21shy

Herder understands as the French who are too proud to see the author as he is

A few decades later HerderS contemporary August Withem von Schlegel extends a similar criticism to other Europeans claiming they are incapable ofentering deeply into a uniquely foreign mode of being (trans Douglas Robinson 2002217)

The fact that [our fellow Europeans] have among them so many supposed lovers of classical antiquity should not fool us how many of them must first mentally dress a Greek or Roman up in some modish attire before they can find him attractive Whereas the German inclination is unquestionably to read the ancients in their own sense

These Europeans dress up the foreign authors in disguises that more reshysemble themselves than the authors they purportedly translate By merely seeking equivalences from one culture and language to another their readers will only see reflections of their own cultures and miss the enriching pos~ sibilities of the foreign As a result Schlegel writes they are stuck with either domestic poverty or domestic wealth (2002217) Although national pride is not always regarded as a good thing as is evident in Herders atshytack on the French much of the discourse on translation produced by the German Romantics is underlined by a similar kind of patriotism Echoing Herders comments Schlegel remarks there is in the spirit ofour language as in the character of our nation - if indeed the two are not one and the same thing - a most versatile malleability (2002216-7) This malleabilshyity he feels coupled with the disposition of his countrymen allows them to truly embrace reproduce and read the foreign on its own terms He is proud of the German passion to know the foreign truly and deeply the German willingness to enter into the most exotic thought patterns and the most outlandish customs [and] the ardor with which Germans embrace authenticity of content no matter how unusual the garb in which it apshypears (ibid 217)

Herder sees his praise of the Gennan public and language as distinct from the kind of nationalism he claims the French exhibit The French are too proud of their national taste to see beyond themselves Their customs and literary fashions become the filters through which they see everything and thus they only have access to a very distorted version ofthe original His fellow Germans on the other hand lack a public a native country a tyranny of national taste and are thus more capable of as Schlegel puts

i

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

27 ~

it read[ing] the ancients in their own sense (ibid) It seems that the German Romantics generally posit a national character that is marked by a shared lack of a dominant tradition that would veil their contact with the foreign They are proud that their pride is mitigated though I must point out that the German Romantic tradition that grew from their work is also a veil or a filter through which the foreign is handled We will return to this idea shortly but for the moment we can end here with one more imshyage that illustrates a difference between how the two approaches we have been examining understand their role in presenting foreign bodies While D Ablancourt gives us the image of the diplomat dressing to the tastes of the host country Herder says that the translator should act as a tour guide who brings the readers to the foreign place Speaking for the German readshyership he writes we will gladly make this journey with the translator if only he would take us with him to Greece and show us the treasures he has found (2002208)

23 Back and Forth Between Bodies and Clothes

Reader-to-author and author-to-reader approaches have no doubt highlighted different aspects of the translation process On the one hand we are shown that in the process of translating a text from one language into another the clothes will always be different and if there is not a certain degree of conformity to domestic fashions the original may not be understood On the other hand those translators who have discussed their craft like the Romantics did make us reconsider our relationship to differshyence and our search for sameness in translation by reminding us that the original is also defined by its foreign modes of expression

We cannot however really separate these two approaches into such neat categories For all the passionate condemnation of literalism expressed by the translators in the first section they still demonstrate that a literal approach is actually the first one they try and is desirable if they do not find the result awkward Though DAblancourt flaunts his radically domesshyticating approach he writes that there are many places that [he] translated word for word and he did so whenever possible at least as much as can be done in an elegant translation (2002 159) Jerome the champion of sense-for-sense translation even posits that a word-for-word approach should be adhered to when translating the Bible which as we know is his most important translation project For his part Schlegel admits that while it is desirable to adapt the target language to the original every language

has certain establ ished bounds that cannot be overstepped without translator] being quite rightly accused of speaking no true language at all (2002218) One must always filter the foreign through domestic structures regardless of how much the domestic culture wants to emulate the foreign All ofthe translators we have seen no matter how dramatically they argue for one approach over another hint at the fact that translation always involves both bringing readers to authors and vice versa

The opposition of content and form has been implicit in much of our discussion and appropriately the bodyclothes has been used directly in conjunction with this dichotomy Eugene Nida notes that the content of a message can never be completely abstracted from the form and form is nothing apart from content but we must give priority to one side or the other depending on the text (2000 127) For example with the Sermon on the Mount the importance of the message far exceeds considerations of form On the other hand some of the acrostic poems of the Old Testashyment are obviously designed to fit a very strict formal straight jacket (ibid) Nida a Bible translator is generally concerned with transmitting a certain clear message and more often than not he privileges the content because too much adherence to the letter kills the spirit (ibid 131) Or to say it again with our metaphor Nida quotes William Cooper a translashytor of Goethe who says it is better to cling to the spirit of the poem and clothe it in language and figures entirely free from awkwardness of speech and obscurity of picture (ibid 131) Although he says that they are ultishymately inseparable he treats content and form as two separate sides of a gradient suggesting that translators will have to focus more or less on one side or the other But how do we decide which texts should be placed in a straight-jacket of form and which ones are allowed a little more room for the message to move around Is there anything inherent in the text that tells us which or do we decide what side of the dichotomy to lean towards based on our literary tradition (or in Nidas case church doctrine)

Let us put aside the question as to whether one should privilege bodies or clothes content or form domestic or foreign elements and focus on what all

the bodyclothes users have in commonultimately their goal is to produce

a textual attire that will most fulIy allow the original body to shine through

In this scenario we can easily make associations to the classic metaphor of the translators (in)visibility as translators have been expected to fashion a text that appears as ifit were not there so that only the truth of the original is seen The essential core imparted by the author must remain intact Few would argue for example with Schlegels vague claim that truth must

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

so be the translators highest indeed virtually his only mandate (2002217

emphasis) Or that in order to comply with this mandate we are as Dryden notes bound to the authors sense (2002 175) which generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable (ibid 173) D Ablancourt while boasting of his beautifully unfaithful exploits still claims to have pershymitted [Lucians] opinions to remain completely intact because it would not otherwise be a translation (2002 158) For their part the Romantics wanted simply to see Homer as he is Waiter Benjamin according to Harry Zohns translation believes that a real translation is transparent it does not cover the original does not block its light but allows the pure language as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original more fully (200081) This is directly related to many of our metaphors of truth We use seeing to mean knowing and must look through all those layers of words to what is believed to be inside them Whatever is found inside whether it be the authors sense opinions or purpose it is this truth that translators must simultaneously discover and recover in a way that their work appears as if it were not there

Ofcourse translation cannot disappear A translation can never simultashyneously copy both the originals content and form all its words and sense or make the foreign into the same nor can it ever complete the one goal with which it has been charged total reproduction Thus it will always be marked by a difference or deviation from the original All of the translators we have been examining no matter how much they praise their translashytions or translation itself affirm the secondary status of the work they do Schlegel for example says the translator is so greatly at a disadvantage to the author (2002218) and that it goes without saying that in the end even the finest translation is at best an approximation to an indeterminable degree because it is impossible to achieve precisely the same results with totally different tools and means (ibid220) Florio calls his translation this defective edition delivered at second hand (2002 131) Dryden accepts that the wretched translator is the authors servant saying that B he who invents is master of his thoughts and words and therefore slaves we are and labour on another mans plantation (2002175)

Denham offers some of the most self-effacing remarks and flagellates himself with the bodyclothes to show he has tried his best to express the true Homer

If this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) fit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may

rI

become him better than that fools-coat wherein the French and Italian have oflate presented him at least 1 hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life (I having made it my principal care to follow him ) Neither have 1 anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his (2002 156)

Naturally he also solemnly swears I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original (ibid) When his expression is not as full as the original he accepts the blame (it is not a defect of the original) and where his translations are fuller he rejects the credit saying it is ultimately the authors doing if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the result of them (ibid)

The common conception of translation we have unfolded with the bodyclothes - as a process of relentless pursuit to recover an essence although it can never realize this goal exhibits characteristics that are strikingly similar to what Socrates terms imitation in Book X of The Republic In the next section I will present an overview of Socratess view of representation which will help us situate the bodyclothes within this larger conceptual tradition

3 Translation at the Third-Remove

Every imitator is by nature third from the king and the truth GMA Grube translates Socrates as saying to his friend Glaucon while the two discuss what and whom to include in their utopian Republic (Republic597e) As is well known Plato posits that everything in this world is a representation of an ideal form a perfect and eternal essence that embodies the truth of what is being represented Carpenters for example model their beds on the idea of the true bed which is why it is recognizable as such and conshyversely the forms are acquired based on rationally examining individual particulars (ibid 596a)

Whereas some representations are modelled after their correspondshying forms imitations are modelled on other representations and are thus

secondary modes of presenting truth A carpenter fashions a bed in the image of the ideal Bed but painters look to physical beds as their models

producing secondary imitations that merely reflect the appearance of a bed The imitation is far removed from the truth Socrates says for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is itself only an

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

3lt image (ibid 598b) Each representation is like another layer over the truth of what it represents obscuring each time a little more of the essence

Socrates sees underneath Poets are similar to painters in that they merely supply us with images

of the physical world6 Poems are third remove from that which is are easily produced without knowledge of the truth (since they are only images not things that are) (ibid598e-599) In addition it is clear to Socrates that poets know nothing of truth suppose that if [the poet] truly had knowledge of the things he imitates hed be much more serious about actions than about imitations ofthem (ibid599b) Poets are only interested in aesthetic reactions and Socrates believes that iftheir verses are stripped of adornments poems have no substance to show for themselves

(ibid 60 I b) Imitation is mentioned throughout the Dialogues and Socrates even

condemns Platos medium to the third remove as the latter writes the former into history Writing Socrates contends is like a painting because neither can answer for itself When one asks questions of texts they go on telling you just the same thing forever (Phaedrus275d-e trans R Hackforth) Socrates compares written texts to children who cannot defend themselves and often need their creator-parents to come to their aid (ibid275e) Socratess interlocutor Phaedrus calls writing dead discourse and says that living speech [is] the original of which the written discourses may

fairly be called a kind of image (ibid276a) Plato who left us with well over a thousand pages of writing does

not perhaps fully agree and today we certainly do not treat his oeuvre as mere dead discourse For Socrates the ideal form is the true original to be represented but today texts written by authors are generally considered original works and their essence is treated with a reverence similar to that which Socrates shows towards forms The notions of the original and authorship have changed throughout the ages7 and although the comparison may not be completely parallel the traditional view of translation we have seen in the bodyclothes follows a pattern that is similar to Socratess notion of imitation The original essence of a text is believed to stem from the authors thoughts which are comparable to the first remove These thoughts

6 Although I will refer to poets and poetry the word used in Greek poiesis does not refer to what we now consider poetry but instead to creation in general and literary

creation n particular 7 See for example Foucaults essay What is an Author for an interesting discussion

on the historically constructed figure we call the author

j)

give rise to the original text (second remove) which is the basis for the translation (third remove imitation) Ifwe were to follow what Socrates has said of writers we would have to say that translation is a fourth-remove form of representation however I am focusing here on the common notion that translations only provide us with representations of the original texts authors create to represent their thoughts The translation is but an image of the original because it is created without a direct link to truth One might say a translator is as Glaucon says ofthe painter an imitator ofwhat othshyers make (Republic597d) Many of the cliches related to translators and translation resonate with the comments Socrates makes about imitators As a reflection perhaps of his claim that it is better to make the thing imitated than its image and that anyone who could do both would choose the former (ibid 599a-b) translators are often called frustrated writers who would write originals if only they could In the Platonic tradition we are also continually reminded that something is always lost in translation and more will go missing with each (re)move away from the origin

Imitation is not only considered an inferior form of representation but it is also seen as potentially dangerous because it easily deceives When discussing poetry Socrates declares the most serious charge against imitation is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people (ibid 605c) Poetry corrupts because instead of appealing to reason it stirs up the emotions clouding ones ability to ascertain truth Regarding the painter who can only make images Socrates warns ifhe is a good painter and displays his painting of a carpenter at a distance he can deceive children and foolish people into thinking that it is truly a carpenter (ibid 598c) Socrates tells us we need to recognize imitations for what they are always remembering their secondary place in relation to that which they imitate All of the translators we have discussed express implicitly and often explicitly their subservience to the original maintaining that it is in fact the glorious original that ultimately contains the authors truth They seem to be reassuring readers in the Platonic tradition that their work is indeed secondary and hail the original as their forever-unattainable goa

Socrates acknowledges the usefulness of imitation if it is created and received in the right conditions Music and poetry for example can help produce a moderate and good character in the citizens of the Republic by instilling them with a sense ofgrace and harmony (ibid40 I a) He then selects the kind of poetry and music he would allow in his Republic pershymitting only that which mimics and will instil the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life (ibid39ge) Luckily for Plato

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

3~

Socrates also tolerates writing Even though a text drifts all over the place

and runs the risk offaIling into the hands of those who will misunderstand

it (Phaedrus275d-e) Socrates never prohibits writing like he eventually

does with poetry He does though establish some guidelinesthe author

must have full knowledge about what is being written and write in the

clearest manner possible (ibid 277b-c) In the Western tradition there has

been a constant background echo oftraduttore traditore but the necesshy

sary evil of translation has generaIly been tolerated provided that it too

above all seeks to re-present the original truth Whereas Socrates tolerates

poetry in Book III of The Republic in Book X he sees it as sufficiently dangerous to ban it altogether Similarly the history of translation in the West is fraught with cases in which it has been prohibited especiaIly when the originals are considered to contain a whoIly important truth that cannot

run the risk of being misrepresentedWe all know from the biographies of Bible translators such as Etienne Dolet and William Tyndale that breaking

this ban or circulating what is considered mistranslations of the Word can

have serious consequences

Although the traditional conception oftranslation clearly views the task

as one ofthird remove representation when people are not speaking directly about it by name they often do what Socrates forbids and consider translashy

tions as second-remove representations Texts and authors are consumed all over the world in translation debated and picked apart word by word with

hardly any mention that what is being attributed to the author is often in fact a product of its translation Examples can be found everywhere We only need to look at the way translations have traditionally been marketed or as Lawrence Venuti has shown the way world literature is taught to find practices that attempt in a sense to ignore the presence of translation (see for example Venuti 199889-95) The international news media conshystantly quotes from world leaders whose words shape our global political discourse but pays I ittle attention to the fact that the sound bites it throws around might not reaIly be what was saids So much of what we call truth is based upon translated texts that according to our dominant philosophy of truth are mere images shadows of the originals we are trying to read

and decipher Through this third-remove practice we have constructed

8 Aian illustration see Juan Coles detailed commentary on the often-repeated quote attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he allegedly threatens to wipe Israel off the map Cole who makes it explicit that he is by no means a supshyporter of Ahmadinejad convincingly shows that the quote is not only the result of a mistranslation but it has also been taken out of its original context to support a certain agenda that is attempting to demonize the Iranian state

5

our beliefs on everything from the nature of beds and souls to our view of the language we use to discuss them Ifwe are to believe that we have the

ability to attain truth it is necessary to forget that much of what we know

comes to us through translation something that by definition cannot give us the whole truth

It is with the notion of forgetfulness that we can begin to introduce the work of Friedrich Nietzsche According to him the aforementioned forshy

getfulness is part and parcel of the Platonic model of truth In his critique 1 of Plato Nietzsche attacks some of the most basic notions that sustain the

system of truth we have seen underlying the bodyclothes At first glance it will seem that this attack renders our metaphor an impossible model for a post-Nietzschean conception of translation However a fundamental aspect of NietzscheS work is the reversal of the relationship between metaphor and truth and this will allow us to revitalize the metaphor that seems to have been killed by him and rethink what we call translation

4 Removing the Focus on Removes

Socrates claims that we hypothesize a single form in connection with many things to which we apply the same name (Republic596a) and Nietzsche begins his attack at this basic level If we hypothesize forms based on their particular representations then not only do we base essences on imshy

0 perfect representations but in order to attain them we must forget all the

5 differences between things of the same name Contrary to how Socrates discusses beds in his essay translated by Daniel Breazeale as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense9 Nietzsche writes

Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things Just as a certain leaf is never totally the same as another so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects This awakens the idea that in addition to the leaves there exists in nature the Ieafthe original model according to which all leaves were perhaps woven sketched measured colored curled and painted - but by incompetent hands so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct trustworthy and faithful likeness of the original model (199983)

9 I will focus on this essay which was written early in Nietzsches career but remained unpublished in his lifetime because it provides a succinct overview ofmany of the basic themes he would develop in his later work

~f

There are certainly differences between organic leaves and human-made beds but Socrates would say that the basic structure is the same regarding the form (the true Bed or Leaf) and its temporal and imperfect representashytions (beds and leaves) (see Repubic596c) Plato can only hypothesize forms ifhe begins with the belief that they exist and proceeds to discover them by noting similarities among individual particulars He attributes differences to imperfections since nothing in this physical world can be a perfect embodiment of its form For Nietzsche however differences run deep and when we equate unequal things our eyes merely glide over the surface ofthings and see forms (199980) In a sense we find what we are looking for ignoring that which might not confirm our vision of an ideal form

Likewise we create categories ofknowedge and see the world through them For example we establish the traits for the category mammal and when we encounter a camel and verify that it exhibits these particular charshyacteristics we are overjoyed believing we have discovered something about the essence of the camel (ibid 85) Categories of knowledge do not tell us anything about the thing itself but only reflect our own constructions of the ways in which we envision the world All that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them Nietzsche writes and ifwe are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing

but these forms (ibid87) Nietzsche argues that we have no access to forms and essences 10 What

we call truth is not some fixed form or stable core inside the representational removes that orbit (and hopefully point towards) it Truth is

a movable host of metaphors metonymies and anthropomorphisms in short a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified transferred and embellished and which after long usage seem to a people to be fixed canonical and bindshying Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions they are metaphors that have become wom out and have been drained of sensuous force coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer coins (ibid84)

10 Whereas Nietzsche generally indicates that he believes that there are no essences he says we have no way of knowing whether they exist or not and in this essay he implies that even if they do we could not access them A scientific category for example is a human creation and does not originate in the essence of things although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond to the essences of things that would of course be just as indemonstrable as its opposite (199983-84)

if

Metaphorical expression here is not secondary to proper representations of truth it is the very material with which proper truth is constructed The conceptual is itself metaphorical because it relies on abstraction and comparison We only need to look at proper definitions in dictionaries to see that this is the case II Translation cannot be defined without recourse to metaphors of transporting solid objects (and often literally transportshying bodies) from one place position or condition to another We can never describe translation proper without recourse to that improper form of representation metaphor 12

Not only does Nietzsche believe that concepts and thoughts are metashyphorical but also that the language in which they are formulated was born in metaphor In the beginning a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image first metaphor The image in turn is imitated in a soundsecond metaphor (ibid 82) and from there a movable host of metaphors has been built up around these first metaphors evolving into the languages we speak At the same time we expect language to name some proper truth outside of itself Here is where forgetfulness comes to the fore In order to maintain the traditional notion of truth it is necessary to forget that deep down everything we know is constructed with material that has historically been deemed improper since it is foreign to what it represents

These insights have several important implications for our study In the first place NietzscheS attack on Platonism shakes the foundations upon which we have seen the bodyclothes constructed This metaphor has exshy

emplified and reinforced certain Platonic notions and if we cannot talk of discovering a solid body that is re-represented in removes then it may seem that this metaphor is inadequate for describing translation in the postshyNietzschean context However the bodyclothes has participated along with a host of other metaphors in creating what we consider to be translation (and truth) and because our traditional conceptions are so intertwined with many of the Platonic notions that surfaced with our metaphor of study to

According to the Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary (McKechnie 1965) to translate means among other things to change from one place position or condition to another to transfer specifically to convey to heaven originally without death to transfer (a bishop) from one see to another to move (a saints body relics etc) from one place of interment to another

12 Although we cannot avoid metaphor in the Platonic tradition there has been a constant attempt to repress metaphorical representation in favor of proper forms especially in losophy for example Paul de Man (1979) Jacques Derrida (1982) or Sarah Kofman (1993) who all show that despite the efforts ofmany philosophers to subdue metaphor they cannot help but make recourse to this trope in their condemnation of it

sv rid ourselves of it would be to lose the vocabulary with which our thoughts have been fashioned We cannot create a new conception out of nothing Nietzsche writes that the only way in which the possibility ofsubsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms (ibid90) For the present study this means we must persist with the bodyclothes revisitshying the relationship between the bodies we all have and the ways in which

we represent them (us)

41 BodyClothes Refashioned

We can begin by looking at Nietzsches own recourse to the bodyclothes which illustrates his reversal of the Platonic conception of truth and repshyresentation that we have been associating with this metaphor In The Gay Science he summarizes much ofour earlier discussion ofhis work by saying

(in Walter Kaufmanns translation)

What things are called is incomparably more important than what they are The reputation name and appearance the usual measure and weight ofa thing what it counts for originally almost always wrong and arbitrary thrown over things like a dress and altogether foreign to their nature and even to their skin - all this grows from generation unto generation merely because people believe in it until it gradually grows to be part of the thing and turns into its very body What at first was appearance becomes in the end almost invariably the essence and is effective as such (1974 122 authors emphasis)

Ifwe do not have access to the essence of things and if the language we use to denote truths is foreign to their being then there is no possibility of the kind of objectivity assumed by many who claim to espouse unveiled truths free from dissimulation and spin or free from the histories that have named them We cannot discover what things are with language we can only inquire into what they are called and by whom If language is wrong and arbitrary with respect to essences it is anything but a neutral representation of truth and is consequently often not at all arbitrary in regards to a certain truth one wants to convey

This is very pertinent to translation because in this scenario not only will a translation act as another veil but it will be based in part on the many other veils that participate in naming the original Once again the

f7

Bible provides a good illustration because it has such a long history of intershypretations and translations that highlights the impossibility of determining some ahistorical truth Jeromes Vulgate for example may have been first accused of being inaccurate13 but through the power invested in it by the Holy Roman Empire his version became the authentic word of God not

as the source text for many subsequent translations but also as the ultimate authority for the foundation of much of the early church doctrine It is now impossible to separate this translation of the Bible (and all the other ones) from the way in which we read the original even if we do so in its original languages 4 The history of Bible translation shows how these versions thrown over the Bible like dresses have accumulated over the generations turning into its very body If we follow tradition with its incessant search for essences or in this case the unmitigated Word then translation is problematic because each version adds another layer over what we are trying to see But translation is not necessarily problematic If we do not concede that words are veils over some original meaning we are seeking then translation does not add yet another veil that separates us further from naked truth The truth is in the veils We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn we have lived too much to believe this Nietzsche writes and almost prudishly continues today we consider it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked (197438) Since it is impossible to attain naked truth Nietzsche believes our time would be better spent deciphering how and by whom these veils are named truth

Regardless ofwhether this unattainable naked Truth exists or not we do have literal bodies that are associated with an identity we clothe to present ourselves to the world The metaphors are many to describe where identity might reside inside usin the blood heart gut brain or more out of reach places such as the soul or the unconscious But even if one of these places is designated as the location of our true identity this identity is never suffishyciently stuffed away inside to be kept safe from its external representations We have all heard the cliche the clothes make the man (which has also

13 See Augustines letter to Jerome in which the fonner explains to the latter how his translation provoked an uproar in a church because it did not conform to the version people already knew (cited in Venuti 199978-79) 14 Nobody in our time is a native speaker ofAncient Greek Hebrew or Aramaic and there is a good chance that most people who learn these languages do so in order to read the

of this book with which they already feel they are quite acquainted They will read the originals in light of the Bibles they already know and in a sense read them as translations of the texts through which they have come to know them

4

been used since the time of Cicero) and along these lines Virginia Woolf observes in Orlando that there is much to support the view that it is clothes

that wear us and not we them we may make them take the mould of arm

or breast but they mould our hearts our brains our tongues to their liking (1928 188) All of our clothes are costumes and as we put them on we

tend to become what we think they mean This is more obvious in cases where there are official uniforms like in the military or in a court of law but I would say that it is not very different from the many cases when the codes are not so explicitly formulated such as when one adopts the dress

a hippie punk or business executive on vacation Do we then choose our clothes and follow them around And where do these clothes that wear us or we them begin and end

When we take the fabric skin and stand there naked we are still confronted with something that we often try shaping and sculpting to presshyent ourselves to the world Though we may spend a lot of money and time to do so we generally feel that our bodies are still reflections of something more profound that resides within them However this core cannot always determine the appearance of our bodies which age and malfunction against our will and much of what is associated with our bodies exteriority no doubt shapes the identity said to be inside them These outward appearances can even come to dominate peoples entire conception ofthemselves Alma Grund a character in Paul Austers The Book ofIllusions for example has a birthmark across one side of her face and she explains to the protagonist how it has shaped her identity Inspired as a young girl by another character with a similar mark from Nathaniel Hawthornes story The Birthmark Alma has come to realize

Other people carried their humanity inside them but I wore mine on my face This was the difference between me and everyone else 1 wasnt allowed to hide who I was Every time people looked at me they were looking right into my sou I [I] knew that I would be defined by that purple blotch on my face (2002 121)

How we with our bodies certainly varies from person to person and culture to but we can concede that our identity is not established

from within ourselves reducible to something that exists free from all the changing things we use to present (but that also seem to get in the way of) our true identities It is impossible to draw a line between identity and its many representations because they are both simultaneously shaping each other Formulating an identity is always a changing process

ifl

but nevertheless we still generally look inward for that true self at the core of all these things that cannot quite represent us correctly a core that seems to continually elude a final designation

A good illustration of the difficulty of arriving at a true self can be found in a fragment from the poem The Tobacco Shop by Alvaro de

Campos one of the many heteronyms used by the Portuguese poet Fershynando Pessoa In the middle of the poem the poetic I (Alvaro for the sake of simDlicitv) wrestles with his clothes in the interminahle quest for

I made myself into something I did not And what I could have made of myself I did not The carnival costume I was wearing was all wrong

Soon they took me for someone I wasnt and I didnt disown it and I lost myself When I tried taking off the mask It was stuck to my face

When I finally peeled it off and took a look in the mirror Id grown older

I was drunk and J didnt know now how to wear the costume I hadnt taken off

I threw the mask away and went to sleep in the dressing room Like a stray dog the management tolerates Because hes harmless

And Im going to tell this story to show Im sublime (Pessoa 1974365 my translation)

Alvaro becomes something unexpected out of Iine with whom he thought

he should be His appearance does not adequately express him but before

he can change it others come to know him through this faulty dress What

is more Alvaro cannot get the mask off at first because it has grown to

be part of his face When he finally manages he sees he is no longer who he was before

What Alvaro experiences is the process we all go through as we de-

the fashions with which we present ourselves to the world A child

is dressed by its parents according to the way they think it should look to the world (both in the sense of looking at the world and being seen

and this first relationship with clothes will have an impact on how the child

views fashion in the future Thinking once again ofclothes as language we

can relate the enculturation we receive from fashion to the role language

L1

plays in the construction of our identity as seen by psychoanalysis One of Jacques Lacans translators Bruce Fink summarizes a basic Lacanian notion of language

We are born into a world ofdiscourse a discourse or language that precedes our birth and that will live on after our death Long before a child is born a place is prepared in its parents linguistic universe the parents speak ofthe child yet to be born try to select the perfect name for it prepare a room for it and begin imagining what their lives will be like with an additional member of the household The words they use to talk about the child have been used for decades if not centuries and the parents have generally neither defined nor redefined them despite many years of use (19955)

Children are taught how to use the language and clothes that will define them in accordance with long established traditions that are external to them although I would also argue that we are constantly participating to some extent in redefining what different clothes and words mean Our language like our dress is a collection of signifiers that are read with the end of discovering the identity presumably inside them We are born into and raised in a particular heritage of representation but just like texts we go out into the world where we will be read in many different ways and acquire new meanings beyond the scope ofour parents control The readshyings others make of us certainly have a profound impact on how we end up viewing ourselves as our internal identities must contend with how others view our external appearances

Similar to the way we struggle to establish our identity and represent it a texts identity is constantly being formed by its interaction with the world which includes the new forms it acquires through translation Socrates would say that a key difference between texts and human children is that the former do not have a life inside them in the sense that our bodies do In other words they do not have a life inside that can explain what they mean Of course we often designate the voice behind the text as the father-authors but common sense tells us that parents are not always the best authorities when it comes to the identity of their children Just as there are infinite varieties of relationships established and developed between children and parents there are infinite relationships between texts and authors which have had differing impacts on the resulting identities of the children-texts Likewise texts are separate entities from their parents and will go out and circulate in the world where authors cannot control the identities

13

others create for them which in some cases may playa more influential role than that of the parents 15

In the context of post-Nietzschean philosophy texts can only have life insofar as they are read and discussed They need people constantly explaining them in other words than the ones they say literally and in a sense they depend on the possibility of being translated because they can only be meaningful when we relate them somehow to ourselves and our language If texts forever said the same thing regardless of context or hisshytory there would be for example no quarrelling over which word or words in the Bible do or do not warrant designations of second-class citizenship Just as a child dressed a certain way will look very different to one adult than another the original will be read differently across its diverse readshyership We cannot discover and recover essences but instead add veils that depending on how they are received may grow into part of the body we are simultaneously trying to unveil Because what we call truth does not come from an inherent essence we can begin to rethink the relationshyships from which it is derived For more than two millennia the discourse revolving around translation has mirrored the Platonic pursuit of unveiling and representing essences which could be free from the interference of interpretations that do not properly belong to the texts in question In this scenario the appropriate behavior for translators has been to refrain from taking part in creating the body under the clothes Nietzsches work has great implications for translation studies because in the absence of neutral and objective truth translators are endowed with a responsibility that goes beyond the traditional expectations that they could simply repeat what the original says and we cannot ignore their agency as co-creators of the texts whose identity they are helping to name

15 We have seen this is the case with the Bible and we could also consider translations such as for example the many versions of The Arabian Nights which have had a fundamental role in the creation ofwhat this text has become (cf for example Borges 2000) Or we could think how to the dismay ofmany much ofthe standard tenninolshyogy used in psychoanalysis is more a product of the English Standard Edition than Freuds original words (cf Kirsner 2007)

4~

Works Cited

Aristotle (2000) Poetics trans S H Butcher The Internet Classics Archives httpclassicsmiteduJAristotlepoeticshtmI accessed 4 October 2000

Auster Paul (2002) The Book ofIllusions New York Faber amp Faber Borges Jorge Luis (2000) The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights

trans Esther Allen in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 34-48

Chamberlain Lori (2000) Gender and the Metaphorics ofTranslation in Lawshyrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 314-30

Cheyfitz Eric (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism Translation and Colonizashy

tionfrom The Tempest to Tarzan Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

Cicero Marcus Tullius (2002) Translating Greek Philosophy into Latin trans Harris Rackman in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 10-12

Cole Juan (2006) Informed Comment httpwwwjuancolecom200605

hitchens-hacker-and-hitchenshtml accessed 3 May 2006 D Ablancourt Nicolas Perrot (2002) To Monsieur Conrart trans David

G Ross in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 157-59

De Man Paul (1979) The Epistemology ofMetaphor in Sheldon Sacks (ed) On Metaphor Chicago The University of Chicago Press 11-28

Denham John (2002) Preface to The Destruction ofTroy in Douglas Robshyinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 156

Derrida Jacques (1982) White Mythology in Margins ofPhilosophy trans Alan Bass Chicago The University of Chicago Press 207-71

Dryden John (2002) The Three Types of Translation in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchesshyter St Jerome 172-75

Fink Bruce (1995) The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Jouissance Princeton Princeton University Press

Florio John (2002) The Epistle Dedicatory in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester StJerome 131-33

Foucault Michel (1979) What is an Author trans Josue Harari in Josue Harari (ed) Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism Ithaca Cornell University Press 141-60

Jerome (2002) The Best Kind of Translator trans Paul Carroll in Douglas

1gt

Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 23-30

Kirsner Douglas (2007) Fresh Freud No Longer Lost in Translation in Psychoanalytic Psychology 24(4) 658-66

Kofinan Sarah (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor trans Duncan Large Stanford Stanford University Press

Lakoff George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By Chicago University of Chicago Press

McKechnie Jean L (ed) (1965) Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary ofthe English Language Unabridged New York The World Publishing Company Second edition

Nida Eugene (1975) Language Structure and Translation Stanford Stanford University Press

------ (2000) Principles of Correspondence in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 126-40

Nietzsche Friedrich (1974) The Gay Science trans Walter Kaufman New York Random House

------ (1999) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense in Daniel Breazeale (edltrans) Philosophy and Truth New York Humanity Books 79-97

Pessoa Fernando (2005) Obra Poetica Rio de Janiero Editora Nova Aguilar Plato (1980) Phaedrus trans R Hackenforth in Edith Hamilton and Huntingshy

ton Cairns (eds) Collected Dialogues Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 19th edition 475-525

------ (1992) The Republic trans GMA Grube Indianapolis Hackett Pubshylishing Company

Robinson Douglas (ed) (2002) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome Publishing

Schleirmacher Friedrich (2002) On the Different Methods of Translating trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 225-38

Tytler Alexander Frazer (2002) The Proper Task of a Translator in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 209-12

Twain Mark (1992) Collected Tales Sketches Speeches amp Essays 1891-1910 vol 2 New York Literary Classics of the United States

Venuti Lawrence (1998) The Scandals ofTranslation New York Routledge ------ (ed) (2000) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge Von Herder Johann Gottfried (2002) The Ideal Translator as Morning Star

trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 207-08

Von Schlegel August Wilhelm (2002) Poetic Translation an Imperfect Apshy

sv rid ourselves of it would be to lose the vocabulary with which our thoughts have been fashioned We cannot create a new conception out of nothing Nietzsche writes that the only way in which the possibility ofsubsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms (ibid90) For the present study this means we must persist with the bodyclothes revisitshying the relationship between the bodies we all have and the ways in which

we represent them (us)

41 BodyClothes Refashioned

We can begin by looking at Nietzsches own recourse to the bodyclothes which illustrates his reversal of the Platonic conception of truth and repshyresentation that we have been associating with this metaphor In The Gay Science he summarizes much ofour earlier discussion ofhis work by saying

(in Walter Kaufmanns translation)

What things are called is incomparably more important than what they are The reputation name and appearance the usual measure and weight ofa thing what it counts for originally almost always wrong and arbitrary thrown over things like a dress and altogether foreign to their nature and even to their skin - all this grows from generation unto generation merely because people believe in it until it gradually grows to be part of the thing and turns into its very body What at first was appearance becomes in the end almost invariably the essence and is effective as such (1974 122 authors emphasis)

Ifwe do not have access to the essence of things and if the language we use to denote truths is foreign to their being then there is no possibility of the kind of objectivity assumed by many who claim to espouse unveiled truths free from dissimulation and spin or free from the histories that have named them We cannot discover what things are with language we can only inquire into what they are called and by whom If language is wrong and arbitrary with respect to essences it is anything but a neutral representation of truth and is consequently often not at all arbitrary in regards to a certain truth one wants to convey

This is very pertinent to translation because in this scenario not only will a translation act as another veil but it will be based in part on the many other veils that participate in naming the original Once again the

f7

Bible provides a good illustration because it has such a long history of intershypretations and translations that highlights the impossibility of determining some ahistorical truth Jeromes Vulgate for example may have been first accused of being inaccurate13 but through the power invested in it by the Holy Roman Empire his version became the authentic word of God not

as the source text for many subsequent translations but also as the ultimate authority for the foundation of much of the early church doctrine It is now impossible to separate this translation of the Bible (and all the other ones) from the way in which we read the original even if we do so in its original languages 4 The history of Bible translation shows how these versions thrown over the Bible like dresses have accumulated over the generations turning into its very body If we follow tradition with its incessant search for essences or in this case the unmitigated Word then translation is problematic because each version adds another layer over what we are trying to see But translation is not necessarily problematic If we do not concede that words are veils over some original meaning we are seeking then translation does not add yet another veil that separates us further from naked truth The truth is in the veils We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn we have lived too much to believe this Nietzsche writes and almost prudishly continues today we consider it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked (197438) Since it is impossible to attain naked truth Nietzsche believes our time would be better spent deciphering how and by whom these veils are named truth

Regardless ofwhether this unattainable naked Truth exists or not we do have literal bodies that are associated with an identity we clothe to present ourselves to the world The metaphors are many to describe where identity might reside inside usin the blood heart gut brain or more out of reach places such as the soul or the unconscious But even if one of these places is designated as the location of our true identity this identity is never suffishyciently stuffed away inside to be kept safe from its external representations We have all heard the cliche the clothes make the man (which has also

13 See Augustines letter to Jerome in which the fonner explains to the latter how his translation provoked an uproar in a church because it did not conform to the version people already knew (cited in Venuti 199978-79) 14 Nobody in our time is a native speaker ofAncient Greek Hebrew or Aramaic and there is a good chance that most people who learn these languages do so in order to read the

of this book with which they already feel they are quite acquainted They will read the originals in light of the Bibles they already know and in a sense read them as translations of the texts through which they have come to know them

4

been used since the time of Cicero) and along these lines Virginia Woolf observes in Orlando that there is much to support the view that it is clothes

that wear us and not we them we may make them take the mould of arm

or breast but they mould our hearts our brains our tongues to their liking (1928 188) All of our clothes are costumes and as we put them on we

tend to become what we think they mean This is more obvious in cases where there are official uniforms like in the military or in a court of law but I would say that it is not very different from the many cases when the codes are not so explicitly formulated such as when one adopts the dress

a hippie punk or business executive on vacation Do we then choose our clothes and follow them around And where do these clothes that wear us or we them begin and end

When we take the fabric skin and stand there naked we are still confronted with something that we often try shaping and sculpting to presshyent ourselves to the world Though we may spend a lot of money and time to do so we generally feel that our bodies are still reflections of something more profound that resides within them However this core cannot always determine the appearance of our bodies which age and malfunction against our will and much of what is associated with our bodies exteriority no doubt shapes the identity said to be inside them These outward appearances can even come to dominate peoples entire conception ofthemselves Alma Grund a character in Paul Austers The Book ofIllusions for example has a birthmark across one side of her face and she explains to the protagonist how it has shaped her identity Inspired as a young girl by another character with a similar mark from Nathaniel Hawthornes story The Birthmark Alma has come to realize

Other people carried their humanity inside them but I wore mine on my face This was the difference between me and everyone else 1 wasnt allowed to hide who I was Every time people looked at me they were looking right into my sou I [I] knew that I would be defined by that purple blotch on my face (2002 121)

How we with our bodies certainly varies from person to person and culture to but we can concede that our identity is not established

from within ourselves reducible to something that exists free from all the changing things we use to present (but that also seem to get in the way of) our true identities It is impossible to draw a line between identity and its many representations because they are both simultaneously shaping each other Formulating an identity is always a changing process

ifl

but nevertheless we still generally look inward for that true self at the core of all these things that cannot quite represent us correctly a core that seems to continually elude a final designation

A good illustration of the difficulty of arriving at a true self can be found in a fragment from the poem The Tobacco Shop by Alvaro de

Campos one of the many heteronyms used by the Portuguese poet Fershynando Pessoa In the middle of the poem the poetic I (Alvaro for the sake of simDlicitv) wrestles with his clothes in the interminahle quest for

I made myself into something I did not And what I could have made of myself I did not The carnival costume I was wearing was all wrong

Soon they took me for someone I wasnt and I didnt disown it and I lost myself When I tried taking off the mask It was stuck to my face

When I finally peeled it off and took a look in the mirror Id grown older

I was drunk and J didnt know now how to wear the costume I hadnt taken off

I threw the mask away and went to sleep in the dressing room Like a stray dog the management tolerates Because hes harmless

And Im going to tell this story to show Im sublime (Pessoa 1974365 my translation)

Alvaro becomes something unexpected out of Iine with whom he thought

he should be His appearance does not adequately express him but before

he can change it others come to know him through this faulty dress What

is more Alvaro cannot get the mask off at first because it has grown to

be part of his face When he finally manages he sees he is no longer who he was before

What Alvaro experiences is the process we all go through as we de-

the fashions with which we present ourselves to the world A child

is dressed by its parents according to the way they think it should look to the world (both in the sense of looking at the world and being seen

and this first relationship with clothes will have an impact on how the child

views fashion in the future Thinking once again ofclothes as language we

can relate the enculturation we receive from fashion to the role language

L1

plays in the construction of our identity as seen by psychoanalysis One of Jacques Lacans translators Bruce Fink summarizes a basic Lacanian notion of language

We are born into a world ofdiscourse a discourse or language that precedes our birth and that will live on after our death Long before a child is born a place is prepared in its parents linguistic universe the parents speak ofthe child yet to be born try to select the perfect name for it prepare a room for it and begin imagining what their lives will be like with an additional member of the household The words they use to talk about the child have been used for decades if not centuries and the parents have generally neither defined nor redefined them despite many years of use (19955)

Children are taught how to use the language and clothes that will define them in accordance with long established traditions that are external to them although I would also argue that we are constantly participating to some extent in redefining what different clothes and words mean Our language like our dress is a collection of signifiers that are read with the end of discovering the identity presumably inside them We are born into and raised in a particular heritage of representation but just like texts we go out into the world where we will be read in many different ways and acquire new meanings beyond the scope ofour parents control The readshyings others make of us certainly have a profound impact on how we end up viewing ourselves as our internal identities must contend with how others view our external appearances

Similar to the way we struggle to establish our identity and represent it a texts identity is constantly being formed by its interaction with the world which includes the new forms it acquires through translation Socrates would say that a key difference between texts and human children is that the former do not have a life inside them in the sense that our bodies do In other words they do not have a life inside that can explain what they mean Of course we often designate the voice behind the text as the father-authors but common sense tells us that parents are not always the best authorities when it comes to the identity of their children Just as there are infinite varieties of relationships established and developed between children and parents there are infinite relationships between texts and authors which have had differing impacts on the resulting identities of the children-texts Likewise texts are separate entities from their parents and will go out and circulate in the world where authors cannot control the identities

13

others create for them which in some cases may playa more influential role than that of the parents 15

In the context of post-Nietzschean philosophy texts can only have life insofar as they are read and discussed They need people constantly explaining them in other words than the ones they say literally and in a sense they depend on the possibility of being translated because they can only be meaningful when we relate them somehow to ourselves and our language If texts forever said the same thing regardless of context or hisshytory there would be for example no quarrelling over which word or words in the Bible do or do not warrant designations of second-class citizenship Just as a child dressed a certain way will look very different to one adult than another the original will be read differently across its diverse readshyership We cannot discover and recover essences but instead add veils that depending on how they are received may grow into part of the body we are simultaneously trying to unveil Because what we call truth does not come from an inherent essence we can begin to rethink the relationshyships from which it is derived For more than two millennia the discourse revolving around translation has mirrored the Platonic pursuit of unveiling and representing essences which could be free from the interference of interpretations that do not properly belong to the texts in question In this scenario the appropriate behavior for translators has been to refrain from taking part in creating the body under the clothes Nietzsches work has great implications for translation studies because in the absence of neutral and objective truth translators are endowed with a responsibility that goes beyond the traditional expectations that they could simply repeat what the original says and we cannot ignore their agency as co-creators of the texts whose identity they are helping to name

15 We have seen this is the case with the Bible and we could also consider translations such as for example the many versions of The Arabian Nights which have had a fundamental role in the creation ofwhat this text has become (cf for example Borges 2000) Or we could think how to the dismay ofmany much ofthe standard tenninolshyogy used in psychoanalysis is more a product of the English Standard Edition than Freuds original words (cf Kirsner 2007)

4~

Works Cited

Aristotle (2000) Poetics trans S H Butcher The Internet Classics Archives httpclassicsmiteduJAristotlepoeticshtmI accessed 4 October 2000

Auster Paul (2002) The Book ofIllusions New York Faber amp Faber Borges Jorge Luis (2000) The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights

trans Esther Allen in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 34-48

Chamberlain Lori (2000) Gender and the Metaphorics ofTranslation in Lawshyrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 314-30

Cheyfitz Eric (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism Translation and Colonizashy

tionfrom The Tempest to Tarzan Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

Cicero Marcus Tullius (2002) Translating Greek Philosophy into Latin trans Harris Rackman in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 10-12

Cole Juan (2006) Informed Comment httpwwwjuancolecom200605

hitchens-hacker-and-hitchenshtml accessed 3 May 2006 D Ablancourt Nicolas Perrot (2002) To Monsieur Conrart trans David

G Ross in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 157-59

De Man Paul (1979) The Epistemology ofMetaphor in Sheldon Sacks (ed) On Metaphor Chicago The University of Chicago Press 11-28

Denham John (2002) Preface to The Destruction ofTroy in Douglas Robshyinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 156

Derrida Jacques (1982) White Mythology in Margins ofPhilosophy trans Alan Bass Chicago The University of Chicago Press 207-71

Dryden John (2002) The Three Types of Translation in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchesshyter St Jerome 172-75

Fink Bruce (1995) The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Jouissance Princeton Princeton University Press

Florio John (2002) The Epistle Dedicatory in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester StJerome 131-33

Foucault Michel (1979) What is an Author trans Josue Harari in Josue Harari (ed) Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism Ithaca Cornell University Press 141-60

Jerome (2002) The Best Kind of Translator trans Paul Carroll in Douglas

1gt

Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 23-30

Kirsner Douglas (2007) Fresh Freud No Longer Lost in Translation in Psychoanalytic Psychology 24(4) 658-66

Kofinan Sarah (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor trans Duncan Large Stanford Stanford University Press

Lakoff George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By Chicago University of Chicago Press

McKechnie Jean L (ed) (1965) Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary ofthe English Language Unabridged New York The World Publishing Company Second edition

Nida Eugene (1975) Language Structure and Translation Stanford Stanford University Press

------ (2000) Principles of Correspondence in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 126-40

Nietzsche Friedrich (1974) The Gay Science trans Walter Kaufman New York Random House

------ (1999) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense in Daniel Breazeale (edltrans) Philosophy and Truth New York Humanity Books 79-97

Pessoa Fernando (2005) Obra Poetica Rio de Janiero Editora Nova Aguilar Plato (1980) Phaedrus trans R Hackenforth in Edith Hamilton and Huntingshy

ton Cairns (eds) Collected Dialogues Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 19th edition 475-525

------ (1992) The Republic trans GMA Grube Indianapolis Hackett Pubshylishing Company

Robinson Douglas (ed) (2002) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome Publishing

Schleirmacher Friedrich (2002) On the Different Methods of Translating trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 225-38

Tytler Alexander Frazer (2002) The Proper Task of a Translator in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 209-12

Twain Mark (1992) Collected Tales Sketches Speeches amp Essays 1891-1910 vol 2 New York Literary Classics of the United States

Venuti Lawrence (1998) The Scandals ofTranslation New York Routledge ------ (ed) (2000) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge Von Herder Johann Gottfried (2002) The Ideal Translator as Morning Star

trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 207-08

Von Schlegel August Wilhelm (2002) Poetic Translation an Imperfect Apshy

4

been used since the time of Cicero) and along these lines Virginia Woolf observes in Orlando that there is much to support the view that it is clothes

that wear us and not we them we may make them take the mould of arm

or breast but they mould our hearts our brains our tongues to their liking (1928 188) All of our clothes are costumes and as we put them on we

tend to become what we think they mean This is more obvious in cases where there are official uniforms like in the military or in a court of law but I would say that it is not very different from the many cases when the codes are not so explicitly formulated such as when one adopts the dress

a hippie punk or business executive on vacation Do we then choose our clothes and follow them around And where do these clothes that wear us or we them begin and end

When we take the fabric skin and stand there naked we are still confronted with something that we often try shaping and sculpting to presshyent ourselves to the world Though we may spend a lot of money and time to do so we generally feel that our bodies are still reflections of something more profound that resides within them However this core cannot always determine the appearance of our bodies which age and malfunction against our will and much of what is associated with our bodies exteriority no doubt shapes the identity said to be inside them These outward appearances can even come to dominate peoples entire conception ofthemselves Alma Grund a character in Paul Austers The Book ofIllusions for example has a birthmark across one side of her face and she explains to the protagonist how it has shaped her identity Inspired as a young girl by another character with a similar mark from Nathaniel Hawthornes story The Birthmark Alma has come to realize

Other people carried their humanity inside them but I wore mine on my face This was the difference between me and everyone else 1 wasnt allowed to hide who I was Every time people looked at me they were looking right into my sou I [I] knew that I would be defined by that purple blotch on my face (2002 121)

How we with our bodies certainly varies from person to person and culture to but we can concede that our identity is not established

from within ourselves reducible to something that exists free from all the changing things we use to present (but that also seem to get in the way of) our true identities It is impossible to draw a line between identity and its many representations because they are both simultaneously shaping each other Formulating an identity is always a changing process

ifl

but nevertheless we still generally look inward for that true self at the core of all these things that cannot quite represent us correctly a core that seems to continually elude a final designation

A good illustration of the difficulty of arriving at a true self can be found in a fragment from the poem The Tobacco Shop by Alvaro de

Campos one of the many heteronyms used by the Portuguese poet Fershynando Pessoa In the middle of the poem the poetic I (Alvaro for the sake of simDlicitv) wrestles with his clothes in the interminahle quest for

I made myself into something I did not And what I could have made of myself I did not The carnival costume I was wearing was all wrong

Soon they took me for someone I wasnt and I didnt disown it and I lost myself When I tried taking off the mask It was stuck to my face

When I finally peeled it off and took a look in the mirror Id grown older

I was drunk and J didnt know now how to wear the costume I hadnt taken off

I threw the mask away and went to sleep in the dressing room Like a stray dog the management tolerates Because hes harmless

And Im going to tell this story to show Im sublime (Pessoa 1974365 my translation)

Alvaro becomes something unexpected out of Iine with whom he thought

he should be His appearance does not adequately express him but before

he can change it others come to know him through this faulty dress What

is more Alvaro cannot get the mask off at first because it has grown to

be part of his face When he finally manages he sees he is no longer who he was before

What Alvaro experiences is the process we all go through as we de-

the fashions with which we present ourselves to the world A child

is dressed by its parents according to the way they think it should look to the world (both in the sense of looking at the world and being seen

and this first relationship with clothes will have an impact on how the child

views fashion in the future Thinking once again ofclothes as language we

can relate the enculturation we receive from fashion to the role language

L1

plays in the construction of our identity as seen by psychoanalysis One of Jacques Lacans translators Bruce Fink summarizes a basic Lacanian notion of language

We are born into a world ofdiscourse a discourse or language that precedes our birth and that will live on after our death Long before a child is born a place is prepared in its parents linguistic universe the parents speak ofthe child yet to be born try to select the perfect name for it prepare a room for it and begin imagining what their lives will be like with an additional member of the household The words they use to talk about the child have been used for decades if not centuries and the parents have generally neither defined nor redefined them despite many years of use (19955)

Children are taught how to use the language and clothes that will define them in accordance with long established traditions that are external to them although I would also argue that we are constantly participating to some extent in redefining what different clothes and words mean Our language like our dress is a collection of signifiers that are read with the end of discovering the identity presumably inside them We are born into and raised in a particular heritage of representation but just like texts we go out into the world where we will be read in many different ways and acquire new meanings beyond the scope ofour parents control The readshyings others make of us certainly have a profound impact on how we end up viewing ourselves as our internal identities must contend with how others view our external appearances

Similar to the way we struggle to establish our identity and represent it a texts identity is constantly being formed by its interaction with the world which includes the new forms it acquires through translation Socrates would say that a key difference between texts and human children is that the former do not have a life inside them in the sense that our bodies do In other words they do not have a life inside that can explain what they mean Of course we often designate the voice behind the text as the father-authors but common sense tells us that parents are not always the best authorities when it comes to the identity of their children Just as there are infinite varieties of relationships established and developed between children and parents there are infinite relationships between texts and authors which have had differing impacts on the resulting identities of the children-texts Likewise texts are separate entities from their parents and will go out and circulate in the world where authors cannot control the identities

13

others create for them which in some cases may playa more influential role than that of the parents 15

In the context of post-Nietzschean philosophy texts can only have life insofar as they are read and discussed They need people constantly explaining them in other words than the ones they say literally and in a sense they depend on the possibility of being translated because they can only be meaningful when we relate them somehow to ourselves and our language If texts forever said the same thing regardless of context or hisshytory there would be for example no quarrelling over which word or words in the Bible do or do not warrant designations of second-class citizenship Just as a child dressed a certain way will look very different to one adult than another the original will be read differently across its diverse readshyership We cannot discover and recover essences but instead add veils that depending on how they are received may grow into part of the body we are simultaneously trying to unveil Because what we call truth does not come from an inherent essence we can begin to rethink the relationshyships from which it is derived For more than two millennia the discourse revolving around translation has mirrored the Platonic pursuit of unveiling and representing essences which could be free from the interference of interpretations that do not properly belong to the texts in question In this scenario the appropriate behavior for translators has been to refrain from taking part in creating the body under the clothes Nietzsches work has great implications for translation studies because in the absence of neutral and objective truth translators are endowed with a responsibility that goes beyond the traditional expectations that they could simply repeat what the original says and we cannot ignore their agency as co-creators of the texts whose identity they are helping to name

15 We have seen this is the case with the Bible and we could also consider translations such as for example the many versions of The Arabian Nights which have had a fundamental role in the creation ofwhat this text has become (cf for example Borges 2000) Or we could think how to the dismay ofmany much ofthe standard tenninolshyogy used in psychoanalysis is more a product of the English Standard Edition than Freuds original words (cf Kirsner 2007)

4~

Works Cited

Aristotle (2000) Poetics trans S H Butcher The Internet Classics Archives httpclassicsmiteduJAristotlepoeticshtmI accessed 4 October 2000

Auster Paul (2002) The Book ofIllusions New York Faber amp Faber Borges Jorge Luis (2000) The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights

trans Esther Allen in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 34-48

Chamberlain Lori (2000) Gender and the Metaphorics ofTranslation in Lawshyrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 314-30

Cheyfitz Eric (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism Translation and Colonizashy

tionfrom The Tempest to Tarzan Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

Cicero Marcus Tullius (2002) Translating Greek Philosophy into Latin trans Harris Rackman in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 10-12

Cole Juan (2006) Informed Comment httpwwwjuancolecom200605

hitchens-hacker-and-hitchenshtml accessed 3 May 2006 D Ablancourt Nicolas Perrot (2002) To Monsieur Conrart trans David

G Ross in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 157-59

De Man Paul (1979) The Epistemology ofMetaphor in Sheldon Sacks (ed) On Metaphor Chicago The University of Chicago Press 11-28

Denham John (2002) Preface to The Destruction ofTroy in Douglas Robshyinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 156

Derrida Jacques (1982) White Mythology in Margins ofPhilosophy trans Alan Bass Chicago The University of Chicago Press 207-71

Dryden John (2002) The Three Types of Translation in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchesshyter St Jerome 172-75

Fink Bruce (1995) The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Jouissance Princeton Princeton University Press

Florio John (2002) The Epistle Dedicatory in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester StJerome 131-33

Foucault Michel (1979) What is an Author trans Josue Harari in Josue Harari (ed) Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism Ithaca Cornell University Press 141-60

Jerome (2002) The Best Kind of Translator trans Paul Carroll in Douglas

1gt

Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 23-30

Kirsner Douglas (2007) Fresh Freud No Longer Lost in Translation in Psychoanalytic Psychology 24(4) 658-66

Kofinan Sarah (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor trans Duncan Large Stanford Stanford University Press

Lakoff George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By Chicago University of Chicago Press

McKechnie Jean L (ed) (1965) Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary ofthe English Language Unabridged New York The World Publishing Company Second edition

Nida Eugene (1975) Language Structure and Translation Stanford Stanford University Press

------ (2000) Principles of Correspondence in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 126-40

Nietzsche Friedrich (1974) The Gay Science trans Walter Kaufman New York Random House

------ (1999) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense in Daniel Breazeale (edltrans) Philosophy and Truth New York Humanity Books 79-97

Pessoa Fernando (2005) Obra Poetica Rio de Janiero Editora Nova Aguilar Plato (1980) Phaedrus trans R Hackenforth in Edith Hamilton and Huntingshy

ton Cairns (eds) Collected Dialogues Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 19th edition 475-525

------ (1992) The Republic trans GMA Grube Indianapolis Hackett Pubshylishing Company

Robinson Douglas (ed) (2002) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome Publishing

Schleirmacher Friedrich (2002) On the Different Methods of Translating trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 225-38

Tytler Alexander Frazer (2002) The Proper Task of a Translator in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 209-12

Twain Mark (1992) Collected Tales Sketches Speeches amp Essays 1891-1910 vol 2 New York Literary Classics of the United States

Venuti Lawrence (1998) The Scandals ofTranslation New York Routledge ------ (ed) (2000) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge Von Herder Johann Gottfried (2002) The Ideal Translator as Morning Star

trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 207-08

Von Schlegel August Wilhelm (2002) Poetic Translation an Imperfect Apshy

L1

plays in the construction of our identity as seen by psychoanalysis One of Jacques Lacans translators Bruce Fink summarizes a basic Lacanian notion of language

We are born into a world ofdiscourse a discourse or language that precedes our birth and that will live on after our death Long before a child is born a place is prepared in its parents linguistic universe the parents speak ofthe child yet to be born try to select the perfect name for it prepare a room for it and begin imagining what their lives will be like with an additional member of the household The words they use to talk about the child have been used for decades if not centuries and the parents have generally neither defined nor redefined them despite many years of use (19955)

Children are taught how to use the language and clothes that will define them in accordance with long established traditions that are external to them although I would also argue that we are constantly participating to some extent in redefining what different clothes and words mean Our language like our dress is a collection of signifiers that are read with the end of discovering the identity presumably inside them We are born into and raised in a particular heritage of representation but just like texts we go out into the world where we will be read in many different ways and acquire new meanings beyond the scope ofour parents control The readshyings others make of us certainly have a profound impact on how we end up viewing ourselves as our internal identities must contend with how others view our external appearances

Similar to the way we struggle to establish our identity and represent it a texts identity is constantly being formed by its interaction with the world which includes the new forms it acquires through translation Socrates would say that a key difference between texts and human children is that the former do not have a life inside them in the sense that our bodies do In other words they do not have a life inside that can explain what they mean Of course we often designate the voice behind the text as the father-authors but common sense tells us that parents are not always the best authorities when it comes to the identity of their children Just as there are infinite varieties of relationships established and developed between children and parents there are infinite relationships between texts and authors which have had differing impacts on the resulting identities of the children-texts Likewise texts are separate entities from their parents and will go out and circulate in the world where authors cannot control the identities

13

others create for them which in some cases may playa more influential role than that of the parents 15

In the context of post-Nietzschean philosophy texts can only have life insofar as they are read and discussed They need people constantly explaining them in other words than the ones they say literally and in a sense they depend on the possibility of being translated because they can only be meaningful when we relate them somehow to ourselves and our language If texts forever said the same thing regardless of context or hisshytory there would be for example no quarrelling over which word or words in the Bible do or do not warrant designations of second-class citizenship Just as a child dressed a certain way will look very different to one adult than another the original will be read differently across its diverse readshyership We cannot discover and recover essences but instead add veils that depending on how they are received may grow into part of the body we are simultaneously trying to unveil Because what we call truth does not come from an inherent essence we can begin to rethink the relationshyships from which it is derived For more than two millennia the discourse revolving around translation has mirrored the Platonic pursuit of unveiling and representing essences which could be free from the interference of interpretations that do not properly belong to the texts in question In this scenario the appropriate behavior for translators has been to refrain from taking part in creating the body under the clothes Nietzsches work has great implications for translation studies because in the absence of neutral and objective truth translators are endowed with a responsibility that goes beyond the traditional expectations that they could simply repeat what the original says and we cannot ignore their agency as co-creators of the texts whose identity they are helping to name

15 We have seen this is the case with the Bible and we could also consider translations such as for example the many versions of The Arabian Nights which have had a fundamental role in the creation ofwhat this text has become (cf for example Borges 2000) Or we could think how to the dismay ofmany much ofthe standard tenninolshyogy used in psychoanalysis is more a product of the English Standard Edition than Freuds original words (cf Kirsner 2007)

4~

Works Cited

Aristotle (2000) Poetics trans S H Butcher The Internet Classics Archives httpclassicsmiteduJAristotlepoeticshtmI accessed 4 October 2000

Auster Paul (2002) The Book ofIllusions New York Faber amp Faber Borges Jorge Luis (2000) The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights

trans Esther Allen in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 34-48

Chamberlain Lori (2000) Gender and the Metaphorics ofTranslation in Lawshyrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 314-30

Cheyfitz Eric (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism Translation and Colonizashy

tionfrom The Tempest to Tarzan Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

Cicero Marcus Tullius (2002) Translating Greek Philosophy into Latin trans Harris Rackman in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 10-12

Cole Juan (2006) Informed Comment httpwwwjuancolecom200605

hitchens-hacker-and-hitchenshtml accessed 3 May 2006 D Ablancourt Nicolas Perrot (2002) To Monsieur Conrart trans David

G Ross in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 157-59

De Man Paul (1979) The Epistemology ofMetaphor in Sheldon Sacks (ed) On Metaphor Chicago The University of Chicago Press 11-28

Denham John (2002) Preface to The Destruction ofTroy in Douglas Robshyinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 156

Derrida Jacques (1982) White Mythology in Margins ofPhilosophy trans Alan Bass Chicago The University of Chicago Press 207-71

Dryden John (2002) The Three Types of Translation in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchesshyter St Jerome 172-75

Fink Bruce (1995) The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Jouissance Princeton Princeton University Press

Florio John (2002) The Epistle Dedicatory in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester StJerome 131-33

Foucault Michel (1979) What is an Author trans Josue Harari in Josue Harari (ed) Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism Ithaca Cornell University Press 141-60

Jerome (2002) The Best Kind of Translator trans Paul Carroll in Douglas

1gt

Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 23-30

Kirsner Douglas (2007) Fresh Freud No Longer Lost in Translation in Psychoanalytic Psychology 24(4) 658-66

Kofinan Sarah (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor trans Duncan Large Stanford Stanford University Press

Lakoff George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By Chicago University of Chicago Press

McKechnie Jean L (ed) (1965) Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary ofthe English Language Unabridged New York The World Publishing Company Second edition

Nida Eugene (1975) Language Structure and Translation Stanford Stanford University Press

------ (2000) Principles of Correspondence in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 126-40

Nietzsche Friedrich (1974) The Gay Science trans Walter Kaufman New York Random House

------ (1999) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense in Daniel Breazeale (edltrans) Philosophy and Truth New York Humanity Books 79-97

Pessoa Fernando (2005) Obra Poetica Rio de Janiero Editora Nova Aguilar Plato (1980) Phaedrus trans R Hackenforth in Edith Hamilton and Huntingshy

ton Cairns (eds) Collected Dialogues Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 19th edition 475-525

------ (1992) The Republic trans GMA Grube Indianapolis Hackett Pubshylishing Company

Robinson Douglas (ed) (2002) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome Publishing

Schleirmacher Friedrich (2002) On the Different Methods of Translating trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 225-38

Tytler Alexander Frazer (2002) The Proper Task of a Translator in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 209-12

Twain Mark (1992) Collected Tales Sketches Speeches amp Essays 1891-1910 vol 2 New York Literary Classics of the United States

Venuti Lawrence (1998) The Scandals ofTranslation New York Routledge ------ (ed) (2000) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge Von Herder Johann Gottfried (2002) The Ideal Translator as Morning Star

trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 207-08

Von Schlegel August Wilhelm (2002) Poetic Translation an Imperfect Apshy

4~

Works Cited

Aristotle (2000) Poetics trans S H Butcher The Internet Classics Archives httpclassicsmiteduJAristotlepoeticshtmI accessed 4 October 2000

Auster Paul (2002) The Book ofIllusions New York Faber amp Faber Borges Jorge Luis (2000) The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights

trans Esther Allen in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 34-48

Chamberlain Lori (2000) Gender and the Metaphorics ofTranslation in Lawshyrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 314-30

Cheyfitz Eric (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism Translation and Colonizashy

tionfrom The Tempest to Tarzan Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

Cicero Marcus Tullius (2002) Translating Greek Philosophy into Latin trans Harris Rackman in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 10-12

Cole Juan (2006) Informed Comment httpwwwjuancolecom200605

hitchens-hacker-and-hitchenshtml accessed 3 May 2006 D Ablancourt Nicolas Perrot (2002) To Monsieur Conrart trans David

G Ross in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 157-59

De Man Paul (1979) The Epistemology ofMetaphor in Sheldon Sacks (ed) On Metaphor Chicago The University of Chicago Press 11-28

Denham John (2002) Preface to The Destruction ofTroy in Douglas Robshyinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 156

Derrida Jacques (1982) White Mythology in Margins ofPhilosophy trans Alan Bass Chicago The University of Chicago Press 207-71

Dryden John (2002) The Three Types of Translation in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchesshyter St Jerome 172-75

Fink Bruce (1995) The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Jouissance Princeton Princeton University Press

Florio John (2002) The Epistle Dedicatory in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester StJerome 131-33

Foucault Michel (1979) What is an Author trans Josue Harari in Josue Harari (ed) Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism Ithaca Cornell University Press 141-60

Jerome (2002) The Best Kind of Translator trans Paul Carroll in Douglas

1gt

Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 23-30

Kirsner Douglas (2007) Fresh Freud No Longer Lost in Translation in Psychoanalytic Psychology 24(4) 658-66

Kofinan Sarah (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor trans Duncan Large Stanford Stanford University Press

Lakoff George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By Chicago University of Chicago Press

McKechnie Jean L (ed) (1965) Webster sNew Twentieth Century Dictionary ofthe English Language Unabridged New York The World Publishing Company Second edition

Nida Eugene (1975) Language Structure and Translation Stanford Stanford University Press

------ (2000) Principles of Correspondence in Lawrence Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge 126-40

Nietzsche Friedrich (1974) The Gay Science trans Walter Kaufman New York Random House

------ (1999) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense in Daniel Breazeale (edltrans) Philosophy and Truth New York Humanity Books 79-97

Pessoa Fernando (2005) Obra Poetica Rio de Janiero Editora Nova Aguilar Plato (1980) Phaedrus trans R Hackenforth in Edith Hamilton and Huntingshy

ton Cairns (eds) Collected Dialogues Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 19th edition 475-525

------ (1992) The Republic trans GMA Grube Indianapolis Hackett Pubshylishing Company

Robinson Douglas (ed) (2002) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome Publishing

Schleirmacher Friedrich (2002) On the Different Methods of Translating trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 225-38

Tytler Alexander Frazer (2002) The Proper Task of a Translator in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 209-12

Twain Mark (1992) Collected Tales Sketches Speeches amp Essays 1891-1910 vol 2 New York Literary Classics of the United States

Venuti Lawrence (1998) The Scandals ofTranslation New York Routledge ------ (ed) (2000) The Translation Studies Reader New York Routledge Von Herder Johann Gottfried (2002) The Ideal Translator as Morning Star

trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 207-08

Von Schlegel August Wilhelm (2002) Poetic Translation an Imperfect Apshy

tff

proximation trans Douglas Robinson in Douglas Robinson (ed) Western Translation Theory From Herodotus to Nietzsche Manchester St Jerome 216middot19

Woolf Virginia (1928) Orlando A Biography New York Harcourt Inc

rforming Translation

BENSHALOM ofTranslation and Comparative Cultural Studies

ofWarwick UK

Abstract Translators are similar to actors they both assum~ altered identities in an effort to modify a sign system and represhysent it in front ofan audience They are both praised for being creative but also blamed for being technicians treated as sershyvants oftruth but also as masters ofdeceit This paper aims at developing the metaphor oftranslation as performancefurther by isolating specific issues dealt with by actors and theatre scholars and reviewing their relevance to translation practice One ofthese issues is the question oftime concept translators used to revising their work when they wish mlY still benefit from strategies developed by performers who cannot go back in time and correct their errors Another issue involves impersonation Performance scholars like Diderot and Stanislavski have dealt with the question whether practitioners who imitate a persona should perfect their external performances or change their internal natures The conclusions they draw mlY be relevant to translators The limilS ofthis metaphor can be pushed even further by adapting additional performance issues to the realities oftranslalion The acting metaphor thus exemplifies thefertility ofinteraction between translation studies and other disciplines and contributes to the status oftranslation as an art

Introduction

t 1 An Attractive Pair

Five years ago I was working on one of my first literary translations a satirical play called Reading Hebron written in English in 1996 by the Canadian playwright Jason Sherman This dark yet hilarious work contained no less than sixty-four characters each with his or her own background agenda and linguistic register The characters were all speaking shouting whispering or chattering using unique voices Translating the play into Hebrew gradually became a very vocal process I was shouting whispershying and chattering along with my characters looking for the best way to