Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

loques bien lessivées inventaient sur la guitare cesmélodies alertes, qui, au temps du carnaval,descendraient des hauteurs et envahiraient la villeavec eux (97).Poverty perched on the hill-tops, where the blackpopulation lived in rags; only at carnival-time wouldthey come swarming down into the city proper withthe tunes they had picked (R, 62).The poor were perched high up on the hillsides, in favellas,where a population of Negroes clad in well-washedrags composed lively guitar-melodies which, at carnivaltime, came down from the hills and invaded the town,together with their inventors (W, 87/88).To John Russell: One would assume that Lévi-Straussnever knew of the blatant omission of favellas, Rio’srenowned shantytowns. The poor Russell depicts a formlessmass living in rags (an image of dirt), unable toinvent their own music. The Weightmans, in turn,describe “Negroes clad in well-washed rags” (populationde noirs vêtus de loques bien lessivées, and faithfullytranslate while creatively interpreting Lévi-Strauss, withone alliteration credit going to Lévi-Strauss and a secondto the Weightmans. I have one problem: why did theWeightmans opt for “Negroes” in the early 70s instead of“Blacks,” which would have been more in tune with thetimes?Chapter XIUn esprit malicieux a défini l’Amérique comme unpays qui a passé de la barbarie à la décadence sansconnaître la civilisation. On pourrait, avec plus dejustice, appliquer la formule aux villes du nouveaumonde (LS, 106).The cities of the New World have one characteristicin common: that they pass from first youth todecrepitude with no intermediary stage. (R, 100).Some mischievous spirit has defined America as acountry which has moved from barbarism to decadencewithout enjoying any intermediary phase ofcivilization. The formula could be directly applied tothe towns of the new world. . . (W, 95).Here, Russell omits L.S.’s “mischievous spirit,”which adds a touch of biting wit to a far-reachinghypothesis. And why “first youth” instead of barbarism?And if the word civilization has an element of abstractionfor Lévi-Strauss, why do both translators pinpointthis hypothesis by inserting an intermediary stage, therebyexpressing an unsolicited point of view?Race et HistoireC’est une étrange chose que l’écriture. Il sembleraitque son apparition n’eut pu manquer de determinerdes changements profonds dans les conditions d’existencede l’humanité (LS, 342).Le monde a commencé sans l’homme et il s’acheverasans lui (LS,478).Writing is a strange thing. It would seem as if itsappearance could not have failed to wreak profoundchanges in the living conditions of our race (R, 291).The world began without the human race and it willend without it (R,397).Writing is a strange invention. One might supposethat its emergence could not fail to bring about profoundchanges in the conditions of human existence(W, 298).The world began without man and will end withouthim (W, 413).In 1952, Lévi-Strauss published Race et histoire, dealing,among others, with the diversity of cultures, the fallacyof ethnocentrism, i.e., considering one’s own cultureas being superior to all others. Race had long been anissue, and events such as the founding of the Sociétéd’anthropologie de Paris in 1859 was a mirror image ofan ongoing debate. Russell’s use of “race” has an exclusionaryovertone, no doubt anathema to Lévi-Strauss.The term has become free-floating. And the translator?As George Steiner expressed it so well, “On the personallevel, immersion in translation, the voyage out and back,can leave the translator unhoused.” 2On the Term “Anthropologizing”A São Paulo, on pouvait s’adonner a l’ethnographiedu dimanche (LS,101).There was a certain amount of Sunday-anthropologizingto be done in São Paulo (R,111).28 Translation Review