Translation

Translation is pretty invisible, but not as invisible as editing. People are now more aware that the words in a translation are not the author’s ones. Of course people have always known that the translator is not the author, but they possibly didn’t follow through the logic of that premise, because they would say such things as “Dostoyevsky is an interesting writer, but I don’t like his style,” without considering that such a judgement cannot be made on the basis of having read translation – and in fact it is only possible if you have mother-tongue knowledge of the source language. It also demonstrates the huge responsibility the translator takes on when translating a work of literature.

I have written about translation before, but usually in terms of what it means for readers and writers in the target language. Here I would like to write briefly about what it means for the translator. I have been thinking about this a great deal in recent times, because I am now over half way through my second book translation this year, and it will be the twenty-sixth that I have translated. If I hadn’t gone into publishing, the number would be much higher. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that there’s a tinge of regret in that thought.

The great thing about a translation is that each book teaches you something new, just as every person you meet teaches you something new.

And just as every bad or even mildly unpleasant person you meet teaches something by negative example, so every bad book teaches you something by negation. For example, I translated a book called Politics as Religion,* which attracted me as a subject. I had often noted that there appear to be parallels between politics and religion, but by the time I had translated it, I was convinced that politics and religion are in fact very different. Politics and religion are of course human activities, so it is quite natural that they both produce a number of similar social and behavioural phenomena, and that is all the book was: a collection of quotes by various thinkers using analogies and observations that suggest a similarity. Those similarities do not a reveal a structural affinity, which is what I was looking for. In fact, there was no theoretical speculation in the book at all.

Even good books can dissuade the translator of the principal thesis. One of my favourite authors translated by myself wrote an essay on progress. It was a finely balanced argument, as he admitted, but eventually he came down on the side of progress. Unintentionally he had triggered a thought process that led me somewhere else, which I won’t go into here (for lack of space).

What I am saying is that the relationship between a translator and a book is very different from the relationship between a reader and the same book.

I often told the authors I’d translated that no one reads their books except their translators, which is of course an exaggeration, but then the process of translating a book over a period of months and analysing each sentence very carefully must eventually enforce a high degree of familiarity. After a bit I stopped saying this, but only because I became bored with it: it remains true or as true as its part of the truth.

Book translators produce huge amounts of text, probably even more than journalists. This is why most writers in other languages are also translators – particularly the best. Oscar Wilde said, “What does he know of England who only England knows?” And we could respond to that rhetorical question, by adding, “What does anyone know of English who only English knows?” We understand things by distinguishing between them, and that was how languages were created, but we also gain from distinguishing between languages themselves. In the Steven Pinker school of linguistics all languages are the same, but some people have speculated that he is in fact a monoglot. It is hard to believe that anyone even with a limited knowledge of languages could not know how very different they are.

Every day I get up, and only a cup of coffee separates me from my desk where I can immerse myself in that process of understanding, translating and then reshaping to fit the syntactical and stylistic requirements of English – the target language. It is solitary but highly enjoyable and fulfilling work, which gradually becomes instinctive. Initially with each book, you have to search out the right tone for that particular prose, and you can’t decide on this until you start to translate. After that you gather speed and confidence.

* If you look for this book by Emilio Gentile, you’ll find that the translator is George Staunton, a pseudonym I have used only twice when I was forced to make changes I disapproved of.

Allan Cameron, Glasgow, August 2020