their - The University of Texas at Dallas

VOICES AND ECHOES: THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF RUT, LA
QUE HUYÓ DE LA BIBLIA
By Deborah Dougherty
C
ontemporary translation studies reflect a growing
recognition of, and interest in, those elements of
literary translation that fall beyond the bounds of
fluency and transparency, once esteemed as hallmarks
of acceptability. 1 As Susan Bassnett, well-known
writer on translation and culture, points out: “Just as
postmodernist literary theory subverted the tyranny of
authorial intention by celebrating a notion of plural
reading, so Translation Studies rejected the dominance
of the original and sought instead to explore
translation as a creative act of interpretation.” 2
Whereas formerly, the success or value of a
translation could then be measured only reductively,
by figuratively weighing the translation against the
original and accounting for what had been “lost”; as if
a perfectly rendered translation paired against its
original might strike an exact balance on a scale of
linguistic equivalence, implicit to this understanding
of the field is the concurrent exploration of cultural
and literary, as well as linguistic, criteria. 3 Susie Jie
Young Kim, translator of Asian poetry, equally rejects
this traditional “discourse of equivalence” in terms of
both its mechanistic view of the translation process
and its perception that translation is inherently
reductive. 4 These writers express a postmodernist
critical perspective that translation may in fact be
expansive, a creative and interpretive act in itself. As
Kim exhorts in her reproach of assumed linguistic
equivalence, the expectation is absurd that a translator
might be able to “suppress all the experiences she
would normally bring to a text so as to be a sterile
medium through which this mechanical process can
take place.” Arguably, such sterility would be no less
artistic in the work of a translator than in that of the
author, given the developing critical stance that in
many ways, literary translation parallels the writing
process itself. Literary translator Peter Bush notes:
“Translation is a continuation of what Jean
Genet called the adventure of writing as
opposed to the familiar and prosaic bus
journey, and it cannot but include subjective,
imaginative transformation.” 5
One obvious difference between writing and
translating, however, is that rather than striking out
across virgin territory, the translator must follow a
path forged by the author. Nevertheless, as is the case
in any journey, the nuances of the experience may
differ even among companion travelers. In discussing
the obligations and contributions of the translator,
Bush asserts:
[translation] is a subjective process, but hardly
a runaway or irresponsible one, because it is
driven by a desire — its raison d’être — to
initiate a form of communication between the
forceful voice of the original, and an unknown
potential readership that simply lacks the
language in which that original is written.
Personal resonances, aroused by the words of
the original text, remain embedded in the
process of translation and largely hidden in
the finished — translated — work. (11)
The processes of translating Rut, la que huyó de la
Biblia, maintaining and recreating the voices of the
Spanish-speaking characters presented the greatest
source of creative satisfaction in bringing this novel to
an English-speaking audience. Literary translator
David Constantine articulates the nature of this
interpretive and artistic process beautifully as he
reflects on the relationship between translator and
text:
… “dialogue” is not an adequate word for the
dealings that go on between you and the text in any
translation. Every word in the passing over comes
with a penumbra or, better, a whispering, of
associations, and every word from your own tongue is
similarly laden, or much more so. There is a most
peculiar interdealing of times, languages and places.
You are where you are, a text on your left, a white
sheet of paper on your right, a pen in your hand to
effect the transfer, acutely and precisely you are there.
And yet you are not there, you are elsewhere, in
another human being’s foreign language, questioning
him, answering him with your own. (15)
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