The following is the transcript of my speech entitled "Turning without distortion" at the Embassy of Iceland, Saturday, November 21, 2010.
"What are the translators? Their job is to rewrite, mostly in their native language, a work that an author has read a foreign language. Framing the thing seems extremely simple. may disappoint many people, a translator is not a writer, he recreated the texts, he rewrites are not born of her imagination, yet he spends much of his life immersed in a paradox: it assembles Words that are solely his own and at the same time, equally belong exclusively to another ... It is the shadow of that other, a ghost tries to transfer a work written in another language, a text produced in a mental universe and cultural context and, if they do not reflect, remain inaccessible to a wider audience.
"What are the translators? Their job is to rewrite, mostly in their native language, a work that an author has read a foreign language. Framing the thing seems extremely simple. may disappoint many people, a translator is not a writer, he recreated the texts, he rewrites are not born of her imagination, yet he spends much of his life immersed in a paradox: it assembles Words that are solely his own and at the same time, equally belong exclusively to another ... It is the shadow of that other, a ghost tries to transfer a work written in another language, a text produced in a mental universe and cultural context and, if they do not reflect, remain inaccessible to a wider audience.
It is not surprising that under such conditions, the activity of the translator is often perceived as very useful. As important as suspicious. A man of experience for which I have as much affection and admiration I was once warned: There's something in the translation Vice , sonny, "he warned. Vice ... Did he mean perhaps a special form of masochism developed by translators or referred it to the formula translator betraying Traduttore tradittore that lends to the Italians? Indeed, what confidence can we give to people who spend their time writing without actually doing? In individuals who engage assiduously in an activity when in reality they do nothing, or almost, than repeating almost the same something that someone else has already said. Are we in a modernized version of the emperor's new clothes where the looms were replaced by computers? Or perhaps do we here the final solution of "I is another"? The translators have they, too, for that matter, the gift of invisibility? Specifically, the most precious praise we can send them is that which is to say that their text seems to have been written in the target language directly, without intermediaries. "Your translation is very beautiful, it is not at all your work! "Well, thank you for this well-turned compliment, ma'am, sir! For a while, you might wonder if we did not also lost between the pages of Alice in Wonderland: Do cats eat bats gold bats eat cats do?
way, how would you translate this simple sentence from English into French? I offer: cats they eat bats or bats eat cats they? But, you say, this quote from Lewis Carroll does means anything, it is a British and English are the English, is not it? The translation that I propose here is quite accurate compared to the original: it means nothing in French either, for some, one is tempted to add a footnote stating that the page is of English humor, synonymous with Hermeticism and that would be played. But then, what about the repetition of near-homophones: cats and bats ? And the "poetic function of language" so that it happened? We're still not wring his neck: this is why the proposal I have advanced is not honest. You see, I'm not a translator for nothing! The major flaw of the French version is that it does not respect the spirit of the original. I would much prefer the following wording: "Is it cats that eat rats or rats that eat cats? " or "Cats they eat rats or rats they eat cats? "This version contains then certainly a major misunderstanding about the term " beats," which is not equivalent to " rat" in English and yet it seems much better than the first because it does not betray the spirit of Alice in Wonderland. To what extent can we or should we remain faithful to betray? How much loyalty can it be treason? Hven Aer drepur madura hvenær ekki og mann (1) ?
way, how would you translate this simple sentence from English into French? I offer: cats they eat bats or bats eat cats they? But, you say, this quote from Lewis Carroll does means anything, it is a British and English are the English, is not it? The translation that I propose here is quite accurate compared to the original: it means nothing in French either, for some, one is tempted to add a footnote stating that the page is of English humor, synonymous with Hermeticism and that would be played. But then, what about the repetition of near-homophones: cats and bats ? And the "poetic function of language" so that it happened? We're still not wring his neck: this is why the proposal I have advanced is not honest. You see, I'm not a translator for nothing! The major flaw of the French version is that it does not respect the spirit of the original. I would much prefer the following wording: "Is it cats that eat rats or rats that eat cats? " or "Cats they eat rats or rats they eat cats? "This version contains then certainly a major misunderstanding about the term " beats," which is not equivalent to " rat" in English and yet it seems much better than the first because it does not betray the spirit of Alice in Wonderland. To what extent can we or should we remain faithful to betray? How much loyalty can it be treason? Hven Aer drepur madura hvenær ekki og mann (1) ?
Precisely, let a little Iceland is an interesting country where there is not as glaciers, geysers, volcanoes and banking crises pranksters. It happens mostly when air these volcanoes with unpronounceable names are not their own and if you're lucky enough to land there eventually reprinted in the long glass corridor overlooking fields washing rainy and melancholy among the various advertisements, the two following inscriptions: Velkomin heim and Welcome to Iceland. By the way, how do you say Iceland in Icelandic? Uh ... heim? And probably most importantly, without a capital. Amazing, no? I grant you. The problem is that the word heim in many contexts refers to something other than Iceland, but in this case, it can mean something other than, precisely, Iceland. This does not he remind you something? Yes we're back at Alice. If the phrase was translated word for word into English, we would have: Welcome home, Welcome home, welcome to the country : What disappoint more than a tourist in search of scenery ... No, authorities airport Keflav ik have not committed a gross mistranslation, Velkomin Heim means Welcome to Iceland, Iceland Welcome to , but registration is for Icelanders in Icelandic and simply wish them a safe return to countries. This little case raises quite well, I think he, the problem of the necessary contextualization of any translation at the same time as that of adaptation. Each language operates under specific rules and constraints, those of the French are not identical to those of Iceland, I seem to push a door open by saying it.
For example, French is very uncomfortable with repetition, which is not prohibitive in Icelandic. It is common that in the dialogues, an author is content to use the verbs " segja, svara spyrja and, say, and respond ask." The thing is simply inconceivable that in French we will use verbs as varied that question, reply, retort, adds, slide, stop, turn, whisper, mumble, mumble, regret, cry, cry, shout loudly, scream, cry out, guffaw ... according to the tone of the situation or the expression of the speaker. Not that the Icelandic lack of vocabulary. Just look at the snow for which there are plenty of terms. Here, Icelanders do not just vague approximations, for reasons we will seize easily. In a country where one can become stuck in a storm several days and in less time than it takes to say, he agrees that the language is precise. We therefore snj gold skafrenningur, Krap, slydda, Hrid, Fonn, mjöll, FOL, stórhríð, neðanbylur, etc. skafl . To transfer these terms in French, one can only resort to various circumlocutions. The phrase Fol var á Jordu will become A thin veil of snow covered the ground , and I do not suggest that either the translation, but only ONE possible version, essay, a proposal.
It should be emphasized that no translation is both good literary quality and perfectly accurate. What what matters most is respect for the spirit of a text and the culture that created it, not the letter, there are beautiful, very beautiful and poetic translations that reach to make the atmosphere of a work, but the reader must beware of believing that it reads exactly the same text as written by the author: this is not the same words, the same pace, the same sounds , the same music, the same language games: this is not the same language. There is always some loss in relation to networks meaning, phrasing and pace appropriate to try to rebuild. Sometimes, conversely, some passages from a translation beyond as the ' original work. For example, c ' is true of the the pastor Jón Thorlaksson made of Paradise Lost Milton as specified ó J n Kalman Stefánsson in Between Heaven and earth (2) .
I would add that reading the same book, no reader never reads the same work as its neighbor, each player, as the translator interprets the text through the prism of its sensitivity, it is projected or not, sometimes attached to points which neither the author nor the translator are given equal importance and, conversely, ignoring others, capital for the author or have required significant research work in lexical translator. Do not forget that the translator is caught between a rock and a hard place: knowing that the result will never fully lives up to its expectations or desires, it attempts to adapt the source text without destroying or disfiguring the whole endeavor and this to blend in with the customs of his own language with which it constantly negotiates its own language that it sometimes must push, not too rough treatment, the grammatical and semantic. Meanwhile, he often has to make some adjustments to cultural and has no real choice but to betray sometimes a little letter to remain faithful to the spirit. I assert that we should obviously not going to translate hákarl and brennivín (3) by foie gras and cognac or snails and calvados pretext that the former terms refer to a reality typically the last to Icelandic and French cuisine, which is World Heritage Site by Unesco, and is obviously an integral part of French culture. This would still be going a bit far in adaptation. The translator must seek to transform and move without deforming too: in fact it does not say the same thing, but almost. This is certainly a almost, but as stated Jón Kalman Stefánsson the beginning of Heaven and Earth when he said "We are almost entirely composed of darkness" is in the space provided by this almost lies the key. It was in this lodge that almost light and words, those of the author, carried by the voice of the translator ...
Eric BOURY
[1] "When does one kill and when a man does not kill does not it? Or, "There's a man to kill and kill a man." We find this phrase in the Bell of Iceland, Halldor Laxness, translated by Régis Boyer.
[2] Published by Gallimard, translated by Eric Boury.
[3] hákarl The shark is gamy, as it were rotten and the brennivín, water spirits Icelandic : one as the Both have a specific taste that like it or not.
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