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

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-OCT-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Modern Humanities Research Association

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)

It is common knowledge that when translators embark upon their tasks they are painfully aware of the reality of untranslatability; more specifically, they recognize in their activity a succession of states that range between the extremes of translatability and untranslatability. We could identify the character of the solutions achievable within these extremes by expanding upon Catford's linguistic and cultural categories:

Translatability [right arrow] Untranslatability Linguistic: Transliteration [right arrow] Paraphrase Cultural: Transplanting [right arrow] Transposing

The first term in each division represents the mode of solution to the simpler kind of problem, while the recourse, or, precisely, the frequency or degree of recourse, to the second acknowledges the extent of the translator's difficulty. The terms I employ for linguistic translatability are more or less self-explanatory, but those used to distinguish the gradations of cultural translatability require some comment. They are drawn from other areas of human activity, and as such are chosen for their metaphorical aptness. 'Transplanting' (I prefer the gerund rather than noun form in order to emphasize the act itself rather than the result of the act) is a horticultural and, more recently, a surgical concept, involving removal without alteration of an object from one location to another. 'Transposing' I employ in accordance with the musical practice of changing from one key to another in order to make the composition easier or more comfortable for the performer.

I readily acknowledge both the limitations of Catford's theory and the blurring oversimplicity of my expansion of it. But the scheme, as I have formulated it, provides a working model by which to assess the translatability of Espriu's text in Polack's hands, especially because of its distinctive 'strangeness', its peculiar blend of styles, linguistic as well as representational, poetic as well as theatrical. When I use the term 'strange' I am thinking of Octavio Paz's notion that all texts are translations, and, paradoxically, both unique and at the same time a translation of another text:

Ningun texto es enteramente original porque el lenguaje mismo, en su esencia, es ya una traduccion: primero, del mundo no-verbal y, despues, porque cada signo y cada frase es la traduccion de otro signo y otra frase. Pero ese razonamiento puede invertirse sin perder validez: todos los textos son originales porque cada traduccion es distinta. (6)

I have elsewhere made use of the terms 'strange' and 'foreign' to distinguish between the translation process that yields the source text (strange) and that which turns it into the target language (foreign); (7) the difference is better registered in the Romance languages with their cognate formulations of these concepts, as in the Spanish 'extrano' and 'extranjero'. I have also indicated what could be a pitfall for the translator involved in the latter operation. Foreignness, by involving a single step from SL to TL, can be acquired by default or by dictionary. The translation of strangeness with its extra step into TL, however, needs more thought if not necessarily action. Perhaps the difficulty of translation resides in the vulnerability or elusiveness of this strangeness. It can be subsumed in the bland acceptance of foreignness and it can also be eliminated in a disproportionate adjustment to it, when the effect is to neutralize the strange.

Let us now examine the raw materials that constitute the basis for the distinctive strangeness of Espriu's text. The biblical source relates how Esther, a Jewish woman living in Persia, becomes the wife of King Ahasuerus. On the encouragement of her uncle, Mordecai, she foils a plot by the king's chief minister, Haman, a bitter enemy of Mordecai, to exterminate all the Jews in the kingdom. The book is most probably fictional: written to sustain the faith of Hebrew people suffering under an alien oppression, perhaps that of Antiochus Epiphanes or, at a later date, that of Rome. It is notable for the lack of references to God, although subsequently rabbinical scholars supplied theological interpretations for certain passages. While he adheres to the essential details of the tale, Espriu also embellishes...

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