From linguistic monument to social memory: translation strategies in Philip Polack's version of Espriu's 'Primera historia d'Esther.'(Salvador Espriu)(Critical Essay)

Philip Polack's translation of Salvador Espriu's Primera historia d'Esther is of the kind that could convince us that there is no such thing as an untranslatable text. (1) In arguing for its success I will neither rely on what could be termed the negative theoretical justification nor unquestioningly accept the criteria commonly advanced as indispensable for good translation, such as as accuracy and fidelity.

I can deal with the negative argument briefly because its rationale is so uncompromisingly clear-cut. Georges Mounin suggests that developments in contemporary linguistics reveal that translation is a dialectic process that by its nature guarantees at least relative success:

La traduction peut toujours commencer, par les situations les plus claires, les messages les plus concrets, les universaux les plus elementaires. Mais il s'agit d'une langue consideree dans son ensemble--y compris ses messages les plus subjectifs--a travers la recherche de situations communes et la multiplication des contacts susceptibles d'eclairer, sans doute la communication par la traduction n'est-elle jamais vraiment finie, ce qui signifie en meme temps qu'elle n'est jamais inexorablement impossible. (2)

George Steiner arrives at a similar conclusion, albeit from a different route. He claims that language is not and never can be a science, and continues:

Language is, at vital points of usage and understanding, idiolectic. When an individual speaks, he is effecting a partial description of the world. Communication depends on a more or less complete, more or less conscious translation of this partiality, on a matching, more or less perfunctory, with other 'partialities'. A 'complete translation', i.e. a definitive insight into and generalization of the way in which any human being relates word to object would require a complete access to him on the part of the interlocutor. The latter would have to experience a 'total mental change'. This is both logically and substantively a meaningless notion. It could never be shown to have taken place. (3)

Implicit in both writers is the sense that translation is not a finite activity, hence Mounin's concept of the 'unfinished' and Steiner's of the 'incomplete'. Consequently it will always be theoretically possible because it does not have to be measured against an attainable absolute.

On the practical level that still leaves us with the matter of differing degrees of success (or failure, if one prefers the pessimist's formulation). J. C. Catford argues that there are two kinds of untranslatability: linguistic and cultural. Linguistic untranslatability is due to differences in the Source Language (SL) and Target Language (TL) requiring syntactical and/or morphological adjustment, while cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the TL culture of a relevant situational feature for the SL text. (4) His use of the term 'untranslatability' is in fact somewhat misleading as he demonstrates how both types are readily accommodated. Unlike Mounin and Steiner, he envisages the translation process as a series of challenges that can be overcome by appropriate strategies rather than as an unattainable goal. Indeed, Susan Bassnett criticizes him for understating the complex issues involved in cultural translation. (5)