Swati Sharma
We’ve all seen Marvel’s Loki, the unlikely Avenger, spending centuries time-slipping and mastering theoretical physics to fix the ‘Temporal Loom’, realise that all these parallel timelines in the multiverse can survive and thrive only through ‘He who remains’. He fuses all the timelines onto him, creating a third space where his loved ones and all their stories, in all the timelines, survive for eternity. That’s kind of what translators have been doing for centuries, creating third spaces between languages, geographies, and cultures so multiple stories in parallel timelines can flourish in another one.
In the multiverse of human storytelling, translation has offered not just an understanding of the overlap of human experience, but also rendered humility through connection far beyond one’s physical existence. Experiencing this strategic incursion into a text and drawing out its manifestation into a new language makes humour, idioms and cultural intent acquire meanings that are foreign to a language, an unsettling exposure that may precipitate unintended effects. The ones creating this crossover bridge, the translators, navigate through multiple conflicts of exactness versus meaning, pragmatics versus semantics, tonality versus etymology, and creating comfort versus introducing disruption.
Not just due to this danger of ill-received disruption, but given the certainty of embarking on something one knows is impossible to achieve, an examination of human motivations for translation becomes important. Historically, translations of sacred texts have always caused social uproar and have been accused of personal interpretation. Negotiations between kingdoms and international traders have been replete with gaps in linguistic comprehension.
Fast forward to today’s time, translation economics and translation engineering are doing their part in closing these gaps and extending the human reach into the possibilities of expressing a thought inherent to a language into another one. However, the mountainous endeavour of creative translation continues to remain traditionally close to the venture of being human.
While Saint Jerome translated the Bible to strengthen the Western Church’s scholarly and spiritual authority, while Martin Luther translated and printed the Bible to revolt against ecclesiastical tyranny and authority. The primary objectives of these translations, though, were opposite to each other, but they were similar in their motivations of stimulating mass conscience and inciting social revolutions. While the preservation of the ‘actual’ and the ‘original’ was the main focus, opening the hitherto concealed vault of knowledge in common language for common people was as profound and mutinous as it is today.
Translation, hence, came to be seen as the most noble and critical venture that a community of people or a person could undertake. Once the world became more connected and access to knowledge from a different language became necessary, translation became an inseparable part of the literary pursuit of many authors and philosophers. However, literary translations done during later ages were driven by different motives. Exposing novel ideas and philosophies to a different mass of people was one of the main reasons many translators took on long-term projects. Chinese medicine, Indian spirituality, South American legends, or Russian philosophy, translators introduced a wealth of ideas to new readers. International trade flourished, and new lands were discovered.
This led to the establishment of language hierarchy. Colonialism ensured widespread understanding of colonisers’ language, as well as translation, documentation, and interpretation in languages like English and French. This continued to control the pipeline of what is chosen to be translated and distributed throughout the world in the post-colonial times as well. English is the most preferred language of translation because it opens the doors to the world for a text and an author. One of the positive results of this concentration of knowledge in a single language is the creation of an ever-growing third space that allows movement of meaning and reinterpretation of meaning through time.
Nobel Laureate and classicist translator Anne Carson has multiple times insisted that she considers texts as living and moving entities and not as static monuments that need to be preserved word for word. In her paper ‘Screaming in translation: Elektra of Sophokles‘, Carson says, “A translator is someone trying to get in between a body and its shadow. Translating is a task of imitation that faces in two directions at once.” So it is safe to deduce that one of the human motivations of translation, specifically of classical texts, consists of renewal of meaning and consistency of relevance through ages. Numerous existing translations of classical literature have been challenged by new observations, interpretations and inclusions, which have shone a new contemporary light on ancient works. This has brought the writing closer to the new reader.
A translator has the agency to omit, include, read between the lines and leave a cultural specificity as is, leaving something for the readers to mull over. The cognitive satisfaction drawn from enhancing in-depth understanding of more than one language and continuing to find common threads between them is one of the best rewards of having translated. This is the great power that comes with the great vulnerability of never being able to achieve a complete crossover into a new language or being misunderstood. Mankind’s desire to decipher, understand, and profit from something outside his/her immediate circle of knowledge has fueled the translation industry. Beyond the politics of economy and the whirlwind of technological advancements, where the future of purely human motivation to translate lies remains to be seen. Until then, translators shaking the foundations of human comprehension of past, present and future on a regular Tuesday is my favourite genre.
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Swati Sharma is a poet, translator and a journalist.
swatisharma.mails@gmail.com
