Response paper on Antoine Berman’s “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”
In his article entitled “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, Berman focuses on the “deformations” that occur in translations of literary prose, especially of novels. He analyzes twelve “deforming tendencies” which form “a systematic whole” (288), intends to explain via the “analytics of translation” the reasons behind these tendencies and proposes a solution to “neutralize” them.
The purpose of this response paper is not to analyze or criticize all the “deforming tendencies” Berman elaborates, but to offer a general criticism to his concept of “deformation”, to reflect on the possibility of his solution to prevent these “deformations” and on how his work can contribute to Translation Studies (TS) in general.
Berman begins his article with a highly common approach to translation, shared by many scholars in TS, by defining translation as the “the trial of the Foreign” in two senses: First, because it “opens up a foreign work in its utter foreignness” and second, “the foreign work is uprooted from its own language ground” (284). What he mainly problematizes here, is the opposite assumption that translation is rather the “acclimation”, “negotiation” or “naturalization” of the Foreign, than its “trial” (285). Especially in case of literary translation.
Berman’s focus is centered on literary translation because it does not limit itself with plain semantic and instrumental transfer of the content (as non-literary translation does) but it is:
concerned with works, that is to say texts so bound to their language that the translating act inevitably becomes a manipulation of signifiers, where two languages enter into various forms of collision and somehow couple. (285)
Then, he explains why he concentrates on literary prose, especially on “the novel” and “the essay” as:
Literary prose collects, reassembles, and intermingles the polylingual space of a community. It mobilizes and activates the totality of “languages” that coexist in any language. (…) Hence, from a formal point of view, the language-based cosmos that is prose, especially the novel, is characterized by a certain shapelessness, which results from the enormous brew of languages and linguistic systems that operate in the work. (287)
Berman cites some contemporary claims on literary prose, which defines novel as “not a producer, but a consumer of style” (Broch in Berman, 287), a “bad writing”, an “enormous linguistic mass”, which “in its multiplicity and rhythmic flow, can never be entirely mastered” (287). Afterwards, Berman asserts that “the principal problem of translating the novel is to respect its shapeless polylogic and avoid an arbitrary homogenization” and also that “the deformations of translation are more accepted in prose,” because “the novel is considered a lower form of literature than poetry” (287).
Why translation cannot be the “trial of the Foreign” but the “negotiation” of it? Berman’s first answer to this questios is a psychoanalytic approach to the translator and the act of translation itself. Translation is assumed to be a “largely unconscious system, present as a series of tendencies or forces that cause translation to deviate from its essential aim” (286). Every translator, he asserts, is “exposed to the play of [deforming] forces” and these “unconscious forces form part of the [his/her] being, determining the desire to translate” (286). Berman considers that via the “analytic of translation”, these forces can be discovered. His purpose is not to find a way to access to the black box of the translator, but to see the traces of his/her unconsciousness in the product of his/her translation, where these forces or deformations are “practiced” in the target text (TT) (286).
Berman points out that deformations are also related to “the ethnocentric structure of every culture, every language” (286). Still, he distinguishes “analytics of translation” from “the study of norms” (296) because norms “apply (…) to any writing practice whatsoever” (296) including the production of ST. But the analytics of translation focus on “the universals of deformation inherent in translating” (ibid).
As a final and summarizing criticism, Berman offers a general explanation on the main inclination of Western literary translation which can be described as the “restitution of meaning” (296). This aim has a double reason: First, it is because Western translation (in relation with the Western way of thinking) is “based on the typically Platonic separation between spirit and letter, sense and word, content and form, the sensible and the non-sensible” (296). Second, and perhaps the main reason of this aim, is because “all translation is, and must be, the restitution of meaning” (297). His concern is that this restitution results in a TT which is full of “more”s, such as “more elegant”, “more clear”, “more fluent” or even “more pure” than ST (297). Because, “only languages that are ‘cultivated’ translate, but they are also the ones that put up the strongest resistance to the ruckus of translation. They censor” (286).
After asserting such criticism, he proposes a solution another “figure of translating” which is “literal translation” or a translation “attached to the letter” (297). He explains that “labor on the letter in translation is more originary than restitution of meaning” (297) because it “restores the particular signifying process of works” and then “transforms the translating language” which allows translation to “play [its] formative role” (297). Western translation, on the contrary, prevents translation to play this formative role.
Needles to say, Berman’s approach to translation is highly source oriented and his negative approach is strictly inductive. What concerns him the most is the “deformations” (not even “shifts”) occured in the TT compared to the ST. Even though, from a strictly etymological point of view, the term “deformation” could be understood as an objective, even neutral term, it is hard claim that in Berman’s article. Deformation here, as he put in many parts of his article, goes along with concepts such as “destruction”, “annihilation”, “obscuring”, “muffling”, “loss”, “asystematization”, “injury”, “ridiculing”, even “effacement” and “impoverishment” as kinds of deforming tendencies themselves. All these concepts can be part of various criticisms and have solid grounds, but putting them as the only possible types of tendencies in translation is going too far in negative criticism, even being stuck in it.
Every “deforming tendency” Berman sites offers a valuable insight and aid to translation scholars, translations critics or editors to consider what kind of deformations, or in Popovic’s terms, what kind of “shifts” occurred in the TT, how they can be categorized and why they could occur. Still, as he admits, Berman’s formulations are “provisional” and based on his “experiences as a translator (286). This is why, the twelve “deforming tendencies” he elaborated constitute only a part of a larger universe of tendencies. But there is something Berman never said, or maybe never even considered: All these “deformations” appears to be the consequence of some tendencies, mainly unconscious ones. Could such a thing be possible?
Berman, in the introductory part of his article, as mentioned above, considers that the unconsciousness of the translator can be “neutralized” by submitting his/her practice to “analysis” (286). Still, during the development part and towards the end of his work, he does not return to this idea of psychoanalysis. His work’s focus limits itself in analyzing the TT and consider the deformations. It is quite comprehensible, because it is not reasonable enough to relate all possible “deformations” or “shifts” to some unconscious tendencies. As an intellectual human being, the translator makes some decisions. In his explanations on “Rationalization”, “Clarification”, “Expansion”, “Ennoblement” and many others, it is quite surprising to see that he never mentions an awareness on behalf of the translator. “Clarification” or “ennoblement” can easily be planned considering a given audience. “Qualitative impoverishment” is sometimes inescapable because it is impossible to find same sonority of every source language word in the target language, not even via literal translation. Can one claim that literal translation can be an absolute solution to the “Destruction of expression and idioms”? Berman puts the translator in such a position that s/he appears to be a simple agent who is cannot be the master of his/her own language, of the foreign language s/he is dealing with, nor of his/her own profession as translator.
The general approach of the article to translation is mostly philosophical. Berman cites many “deforming tendencies”, as concrete problems, but puts too few examples which concretize them. In order to answer or reflect on some necessary questions such as “How to establish a general theory of literal translation?” or “How it can be expected from every translator to follow a strategy of literal translation for any literary work?”, some concrete examples or propositions could help to a better understanding.
All negative criticism ahead, Berman opens up a fertile way of thinking on translation and on many themes such as the philosophy of literary translation, the relation between literary theory and translation, interculturality, the foreignness of the source text, the unconscious in translation and other ramifications of it. Many scholars like Venuti, Toury or Spivak, in their works, offered valuable insights, elaborated various concepts and proposed different reflections concerning the questions above.
REFERENCES
Berman, Antoine (1985) “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, translated by Lawrence Venuti, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader, pp. 284-297, London: Routledge, 2000.
Popovic, Anton (1970) “The Concept ‘Shift of Expression’ in Translation Analysis” in The Nature of Translation: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation, ed. James S. Holmes, pp. 79-87, Bratislava: Slovak Adacemy od Sciences, 1970.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1992) “The Politics of Translation”, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader, pp. 397-416, London: Routledge, 2000.
Toury, Gideon (1978 / revised 1995) “The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation”, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader, pp. 198-211, London: Routledge, 2000.
Venuti, Lawrence (1995). The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation, London and New York: Routledge.
