Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

EDITORIAL: TRANSLATION AND THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE
By Rainer Schulte
T
he essential function of English Departments and
certainly also of Modern Language Departments
is to provide students with techniques and
methodologies for meaningful and enjoyable
interpretations of texts. However, fashions of criticism
have greatly endangered the close reading of literary
and humanistic works. Articles meant to illuminate
literary texts have removed themselves considerably
from a work under consideration, and they frequently
lapse into an academic jargon that builds a wall
between the reader and the poem or the fictional work.
Some decades ago, English departments
introduced creative writing programs to revitalize the
act of reading and to reconnect students with the
dynamics of words on the page. I venture to say that
the primary goal of creative writing workshops was
not to train each participant to become a major writer,
but rather to make the reading of literary works an
enjoyable experience for students. As a parenthetical
observation, I might add that creative writing courses
are not part of the curriculum in European universities.
Yet, the academic world has accepted creative writing
as a viable educational pursuit. However, translation is
rarely considered an essential component of literature
departments. Many deans and chairs of literature
programs fail to recognize the importance of
translation as a major force to reinvigorate the study of
literature and the humanities. Scholars who work
either as translators of literature or as scholars of
translation studies are often not recognized by the
established literature departments, and they certainly
don’t get credit for their work when it comes to
academic promotions.
The time has come to reverse these prejudices.
The philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer states that
“reading is already translation.” Octavio Paz contends
that when we read a text, we must translate it into our
present sensibility. It follows that reading and
interpreting a text within the same language is itself a
translation. An investigation of the translator’s
methods can shed light on the process of
interpretation. The translator’s starting point — and
here resides the important link with the act of
interpretation — must be anchored in what translators
have to face and comprehend in the foreign text. If we
transfer this idea to the act of reading within the same
language, then each word must be considered a
“foreign” entity. The reader must approach each word
as if it were a word in a foreign language. A writer
manipulates words, often modifies and enhances their
established connotations, creates new fields of
meaning through the interaction with other words, and
builds a universe of feelings and emotions that
enlarges the reader’s and interpreter’s way of seeing
and understanding a world view. Practically speaking,
the reader as translator continuously raises the
question: what kind of research must I undertake in
order to do justice to the text I am reading, whether I
choose to translate it from a foreign language into my
own or whether I translate it into my present
sensibility within the same language
For a moment, it will be helpful to contemplate on
the nature of words. The reading process has to start
with the assumption that each word reflects an
inherent uncertainty, both as an isolated phenomenon
and as a semiotic possibility of a sentence, a
paragraph, or the context of the entire work. The
rediscovery of that uncertainty in each word
constitutes the initial attitude that the reader has to
bring to the text. Reading becomes the making of
meaning and not the description of already-fixed
meanings. From the translation point of view, the
conceptual frame of interpretation should be changed
from “What does a text mean” to “How does a text
come to mean” The latter reaffirms that there is no
such thing as the definitive interpretation of a text, just
as there is no definitive translation of any foreign
work.
To place these concepts into a tangible practice, I
outline two exercises that should illustrate how
translation methods can intensify the act of
interpretation. The first one is concerned with the
research area and the second one with the notion of
multiple translations and therefore multiple
interpretations.
Words have an etymological and a philological
existence. If we take, for example, the first line of
Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Studies,” which reads,
“Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for
ability,” then the immediate research will have to
focus on what meanings were attributed to delight,
ornament, and ability in the respective century. The
Oxford English Dictionary will be the best tool to
determine their etymological origin. Tracing these
words throughout the century to the present moment
will provide the reader with the changes those words
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