By: Cole Grennen
TRADUTTORE, traditore. To translate is to betray. Translator and journalist Robert Bethune translated the old Italian saying, literally: “translator, traitor.” The saying highlights that translation betrays the intention of the original text. An audience reading a translation will never understand the meaning and the intention of the original. Translators inevitably alter a text, despite even the best of intentions, putting their own words into the author’s mouth.
A famous example is the 1901 Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). It was over a century later, in 2014, that scholars realized that the long-accepted translation was instead erotic fanfiction of the classic Gothic novel. While Makt Myrkranna (1901) was reportedly well-written and well-loved — more so
than the original, in some cases — it is an extreme case of a translator taking liberties with their responsibilities.
This being said, it is unfair to withhold any liberties from translators. Translation is not an exact science, and it can never be. Translation is an art. The way language and culture coalesce to create unique connotation and give significance to words and phrases means that translators have to choose between staying true to the source material or remaining faithful to its meaning. The letter of the law, versus the spirit.
How does one choose between the literal meaning and intention? When no middle ground exists, the choice lies with the translator. Do we hem and haw and find a direct translation, or take artistic license? When translating novels from Mandarin to English, certain honorifics —terms of address — don’t have direct equivalence without losing their cultural significance. Terms like gege and meimei, literally translated as ‘big brother’ and ‘little sister,’ are rooted between the familial and romantic. They’re commonly used as terms of endearments between romantic couples and have lost the familial connotation in recent generations due to China’s one child policy — despite the literal meaning being unchanged. A direct translation might confuse readers who only speak English, as calling a romantic partner “big brother” may be off-putting to those unfamiliar with the cultural nuance behind the terms.
Translators have the difficult job of balancing authenticity with cultural understanding. That being said, some purposefully use specific words and phrases that change the meaning of the story in order to fit their own narrative. These translators effectively silence the original story, erasing the narrative in favor of one they prefer to tell.
When all is said and done, who gets to tell your story? Who gets to say what is taken out, or inserted, in order to appease the conscious of the hoi polloi? When our records are found in a hundred years, a thousand, and language has evolved beyond our understanding, who will stand for the truth as you have written it? Story telling is the innate sentient need to understand, and to be understood. What happens to your memory when your story is mistold?
It is important to engage with all literature, but especially translations, intentionally. Using radical self-critique, consider the intentional choices the translator has made. Why are the Danes damned to hell, when Pagan cultures generally do not believe in its existence? Why are the women in the story referred to as sub-human, with slurs and crass language? Just as the author and translator were intentional in their word choice, so must the reader be intentional in their critique.
Cross-Cultural Translation:
When translators look on the host culture as less than, or perhaps disdain their culturally specific practices, they may make intentional choices that frame the host culture in a negative light. Western Anglophonic societies have a long history of this. It goes hand in hand with conquest — colonization.
The earliest example comes from Beowulf. Beowulf is the oldest piece of English literature scholars have recovered. Written sometime between 975 and 1025 A.D., it is a 3,182-line epic poem about the Geatish hero, Beowulf. The story takes place several centuries before it was written, among the pagan Danes. The author of Beowulf, unknown, translated this pagan story to a context with which their Christian audience and self could relate (Heaney).
The author adding Christian themes to a pagan poem erases the culture of the Danes and the Geats. Though this is the earliest example, it is certainly not the last. Look at Christian rap — the ways that white Christian Evangelicals use Black culture for profit, while vilifying that same culture in the process. Christian culture has a long history of cannibalizing other cultures and converting that culture into something palatable for Christian audiences.
Beowulf is an intentional silencing of the pagan cultures that the poet was writing about. Seamus Heaney says in the introduction to his Beowulf translation: “As a consequence of his doctrinal certitude, which is as composed as it is ardent, the poet can view the story-time of his poem with a certain historical detachment and even censure the ways of those who lived in illo tempore:
Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed
Offerings to idols, swore oaths
That the killer of souls might come to their aid
And save the people. That was their way,
Their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts
They remembered hell. (ll. 175-80)” (xvi)
Silencing is the deliberate act, while silence is the inevitable consequence. Perhaps inevitable is the wrong word. There is always a choice for the original speaker to fight for their voice to be heard, but often the original speaker has the stones of history stacked against them. The original authors of Beowulf were long dead when the poem was translated into Old English, and then again into our modern vernacular. What can they say in protest from beyond the grave? Although not all silence stems from silencing, nearly every act of silencing produces silence.
This rhetoric pervades throughout the poem, labeling the Danish culture as hell bound. By expressing such disdain, the author effectively silences the Danes, as they erase any nuance said culture might have in favor of a Christian lens. The erasing of cultures is an authoritarian tool of oppression, and it has proved effective. The first step of discrimination is dehumanization.
Shari Stenberg, in her essay, Cultivating Listening: Teaching from a Restored Logos, defines two opposing practices as hunting and cultivating. She says, “To cultivate rather than hunt— that is, to capture and destroy— another’s words or ideas is to rethink entrenched academic practices that value critique at the
expense of assent (Booth and Elbow) and that position disciplinary members in agonistic relation to one another.” (252). In this way, the author of Beowulf became a hunter, rather than a cultivator. Hunting is single-minded, focused only on the outcome. Cultivation, then, is to work in community with other scholars to develop one’s conclusion over time.
The author of Beowulf did not care for the culture of the Danes or the Geats, the very people they were composing this epic about. They were single-minded in their assurance that their worldview was the correct one and labeled the Danes as heathens. They hunted the concept of the Danes, and in effect, erased them. Rather than appreciating the distinct culture of the Danes and the Geats, they silenced
them in favor of their own worldview. Though their practices and mythologies have long been lost to time, we know they had an oral tradition. We know they named their swords. We know they lived communally. What else has been lost, due to invasion and the impenetrable tread of time?
This intentional silencing was due to the cultural disparity between the author and the subject. The author could not conceive of the Danish culture as something worth commemorating. They enclosed the story of Beowulf inside of their own values and effectively silenced their subjects.
Gendered Translation:
Gender plays a significant role in the language choices of translators. The Odyssey, traditionally translated by men, had been reinterpreted countless times before a woman translated it into English for the first time. In 2018, Emily Wilson, a British classicist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, took on the task, making intentional linguistic choices that often challenged those of her predecessors, offering a fresh perspective on the text.
One notable passage is near the end of the text, after Odysseus has returned from his voyage. Odysseus had wandered for ten years, being chronically unfaithful to his wife — Penelope — who fended off suitors vying for the throne for all that time. Those suitors took other women to bed in their time camped out in
Odysseus’ palace — often enslaved girls in their teens. Odysseus killed the suitors once he returned to Ithaca and commanded his son — Telemachus — to kill the enslaved women who had slept with them.
The widely accepted translation of Telemachus’ speech goes:
“No clean death for the likes of them, by god! / Not from me — they showered abuse on my head, my mother’s too! / You sluts — the suitors’ whores!” (Fagles 378).
While Wilson chose different language:
“I refuse to grant these girls a clean death, since they poured down shame on
me and Mother, when they lay beside the suitors.” (Wilson 378)
When comparing these two translations, there is a clear distinction in the gendered language. Fagles leans heavily into disrespectful language, calling the enslaved young women “sluts” and “whores.” He doesn’t grant them the dignity of referring to them as human beings. His language choices frame their execution as justified, reinforcing Telemachus and Odysseus’ perspective. By denying these women personhood, the translation downplays the brutality of their fate — they were raped over the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence and then murdered for it.
This language erases the deeper meaning of the text. The girls were slaves, and like many cases throughout history, were not in a position to say ‘no’ to these powerful men. Through her intentional language choices, Wilson grants the girls the dignity of their circumstances, acknowledging their position and their lack of power. She gives voice to a story that has long been silenced.
Fagles’ word choices represent instrumental listening. Instrumental listening is defined by hunger. The listener consuming the rhetoric to further their own agenda. Andrea Lunsford and Adam Rosenblatt describe instrumental listening as the instances “where the reporter listens not to know a person or to form a relational connection through listening but to obtain that person’s objectified experience,
which in some ways then no longer belongs to him or her.” (133). Fagles took the original text and chose the translation that best subscribed to the narrative that he wanted to tell. He put the weight of morality on the shoulders of the girls, instead of Odysseus.\
Likewise, this is an example of the Seer position. Melissa Ianetta drew three perspectives from her analysis of Aspasia’s silence and Edgar Alan Poe’s The Purloined Letters. She says:
“… each position can be summarized in terms of the “glance” the subject
position casts upon the signifier: The first is based on a glance that sees nothing: the King. . . . The second is based on a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deceives itself into thereby believing to be covered what it hides: the Queen. . . . The third is based on a glance which sees the first two glances leave what must be hidden uncovered to whomever would seize it: the [thief ]. In other words, Poe’s tale presents us with three distinct yet interrelated perspectives— the blind, the seer, and that actively seeing position, here termed the seeker.” (Ianetta 27)
The Seer — the second position — is when the analyst draws a conclusion based on an initial glance, without further investigation. They use instrumental listening to draw the easiest conclusion, nominally based on the provided evidence. Often times, the Seer constructs their conclusion around the verdict they approve of and gather their evidence around that conclusion.
Fagles either didn’t care about the story of the slave girls, or he felt they were unnecessary to the story. The context of who the girls were, and why they slept with the suitors, wasn’t a priority for him to analyze or include in his translation. As a Seer, he translated the conclusion that he wanted audiences to come away with, which was that the slave girls were “whores” (378) that deserved their fate. In doing this, he silenced the truly haunting choice that Odysseus made.
The Greek’s were a notoriously misogynistic society, so I can’t speak for authorial intent, but I can say that Fagles choice to demean the women of The Odyssey betrays and silences the original story. In Wilson’s translation, Odysseus’ choice to execute the slave girls was hypocritical and villainous, and she was intentional in that choice. Fagles, of course, couldn’t villainize his hero, and thus chose words
that would make his choice justified.
Translators have many reasons to change the meanings of the original authors — be they cultural, gendered, religious, or something else. Whatever reason they may have, their intentional choices silence the voices of their authors. This silencing leads to gaps in the scholarship and erases the effort that authors put into their work.
This is not to say that all translators are intentional in their bias. Even unconscious bias can, and does, affect the outcome of the translation. It is important for readers to be aware of how bias can affect translation. In order for them to do so, they must be critical of the translator’s choices and must engage with the translation prepared for “radical self-critique” (Lunsford and Rosenblatt 143). Rhetorical listening is the most effective tool when evaluating the bias of any translation.