Das Erlöschen der Natur: European Revolutionary Discourse in th 19 Century Tagalog Translation (A study of Jose Rizal's translation of Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell) Dissertation Zur Erlangung der Würde des Doktors der Philosophie der Universität Hamburg vorgelegt von RAMON GUILLERMO aus Manila, Philippinen Hamburg 2005 Ramon Guillermo 2 1. Prof. Dr. Rainer Carle (1. Gutachten) 2. PD Dr. Arndt Graf (2. Gutachten) 3. Prof. Dr. Nilo Ocampo (3. Gutachten) Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 15.09.2005 Ramon Guillermo 3 CONTENTS pages Abbreviations, Lists of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements .......... ..4 Acknowledgments ................................................................................. .. 5 1. Jose Rizal's Translation of Wilhelm Tell ……………………………….. 6 2. Reconstructing Structures of Textual Cohesion…………………….. 28 3. Reconstructing Structures of Textual Coherence..…………………… 86 4. The Problem of Translating "Natur"…………………………………... 173 5. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………… 215 6. Bibliography …………………………………………………………….. 219 Ramon Guillermo 4 ABBREVIATIONS ST Source Text TT Target Text SL Source Language TL Target Language WT Wilhelm Tell (Schiller) GT Guillermo Tell (Rizal) LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Comparison of WT and GT Wordlists Table 2: Significant High Cohesion Words in WT and GT Table 3: Various occurrences of the key word (Natur) in context Table 4: Intercalated texts from the original and the translation LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: First Page of Rizal's Guillermo Tell Manuscript Figure 2: Last Page of Rizal's Guillermo Tell Manuscript (with ancient Tagalog script) Figure 3: Common Word-forms in Rizal's original and Ponce's edition Figure 4: Combination of Methodological Approaches Figure 5: Vocabulary Flow Graphs of WT using different scan lengths Figure 6: Vocabulary Flow Graphs of GT using different scan lengths Figure 7: Comparison of Vocabulary Flow Graphs of WT and GT Figure 8: Comparison of Hapaxa Graphs of WT and GT Figure 9: WT Repetition Matrix Figure 10: GT Repetition Matrix Figure 11: Comparison of Cohesion Patterns of WT and GT Figure 12: Relevant GT and WT clusters Fig. 13: "Ibinalik mong laban sa akin..." Fig. 14: "Nagbabalik ang matandang lagay..." Fig. 15: "Walang loob na anak ng Suisa..." Fig. 16: "Gulu! Suay! revolucion!" Fig. 17: Comparative Distribution of Semiological Polarities Figure 18: Lexical Diversification of "Natur" Figure 19: Distribution Graph of "Natur" and its Equivalents Figure 20: Homology between types of economic exchange and modes of translation Figure 21: Translating "Natur" according to the two translational modes Figure 22: Translational Transformations from "Natur" to "loob" I Figure 23: Translational Transformations from "Natur" to "loob" II Ramon Guillermo 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and of the Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas (DFPP) at the Kolehiyo ng Arte at Literatura (KAL), Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Many thanks are due to my dissertation advisers Prof. Dr. Rainer Carle (Uni- Hamburg) and Prof. Dr. Nilo Ocampo (UP) for their unwavering support and unstinting faith in the value and progress of the work. For their insights and valuable comments, I would like to thank the members of the examination committee Dr. Arndt Graf PD and Dr. Martina Heinschke. I would also like express my gratitude to the friends, teachers and co-students who have contributed so much in more ways than one to the completion of this project: Dr. Robert Martens, Divina Martens, Dami Toda, Achim Kehlenbach, Joko Mirwan Muslimin, Kim Lim Hui, Agustiana Maryajani, Dina Apriani, Portia Reyes, Lawrence Coronel and the members of PHILSTUD. For their sharp critical comments and kind words of encouragement, I am grateful to Zeus Salazar, Caroline Hau, Atoy Navarro and Benedict Anderson. For being always with me through thick and thin, my unending gratitude goes to Gelacio Guillermo, Alice Guillermo, Sofia Guillermo and my Laarni. Ramon Guillermo Hamburg, 2005 Ramon Guillermo 6 Chapter 1: Jose Rizal's Translation of Wilhelm Tell Not many know that Jose Rizal (1861-1896), the Philippine national hero and author of the novels Noli me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891), had among other things also translated Friedrich Schiller's (1759-1805) Wilhelm Tell (1804) direct from German into the Tagalog language as Guillermo Tell (1886).1 Rizal took up the study of the German language during his stay in Germany (1886-1887) and worked on some other translations aside from Wilhelm Tell. Among the writings he translated or attempted to translate from German into either Spanish or Tagalog were the scientific ethnological writings by the scholars Ferdinand Blumentritt2 (1853-1913), Theodor Waitz3 (1821-1864), Fedor Jagor's (1817-1900) Reisen in den Philippinen4 (1873) and five children's stories in German translations by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.5 Why in the first place did Rizal choose to translate Schiller's Wilhelm Tell6 into the Tagalog language? Rizal explained to his Austrian friend Blumentritt that his countrymen (specifically his brother) had requested him for a Tagalog translation of this work by Schiller. Rizal wrote his friend Blumentritt from Leipzig on Oct. 2, 1886, 1 Further information on Rizal's stay in Germany can be found in Hermogenes E. Bacareza, "Rizal, the Initiator of Philippine-German Cultural relations," in Jose Rizal in Germany (Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1986), 11-33. More on Rizal from the German point of view can be read in Bernhard Dahm, Jose Rizal: der Nationalheld der Filipinos (Gottingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1988). A translation of his first novel in German is also extant: Jose Rizal, Noli me tangere, trans. A. del Cueto-Mört (Frankfurt: Insel-Verlag, 1987). 2 This work was Blumentritt's "Bericht über die Ethnographie der Insel Mindanao." The finished Spanish translation was sent by Rizal from Berlin on November 28, 1886 to Blumentritt. More on Blumentritt in Harry Sichrovsky, Der Revolutionär von Leitmeritz. Ferdinand Blumentritt und der philippinische Freiheitskampf (Wien, 1983). 3 Rizal attempted to translate the fifth volume of Theodor Waitz's Anthropologie der Naturvolker which was especially devoted to the study of Malays. He probably started the translation on 29, Nov. 1886 (Letter to Blumentritt dated November 28, 1886) and finished up to a third of it by December 1886. But he wrote in another letter to Blumentritt dated April 24, 1887 that he had not yet been able to finish it. Cf. Jose Rizal, The Rizal-Blumentritt Correspondence. Vol. 1 (1886-1889) (Manila: National Historical Institute). 4 He expressed his intent to Blumentritt to translate this work into "Tagalisch" on 26, January 1887, Berlin. 5 Cf. Nilo Ocampo, May Gaua Caming Natapus Dini: si Rizal at ang Wikang Tagalog (Quezon City: OVCRD, 2002), 474-515. 6 The original manuscript of Rizal's translation in 82 large manuscript pages is available at the Philippine National Library in the Mariano Ponce Collection. Schiller's original Wilhelm Tell was first published in 1804. Cf. Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, vol. 10, Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Siegfried Seidel (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980), 129-277. Ramon Guillermo 7 Ich bitte Sie um Entschuldigung weil ich versäumt habe, Ihren wie immer freundlichen Brief zu beantworten: ich war und bin noch sehr beschäftigt, denn meine Landsleute haben mir tagalische Übersetzungen von Schiller's Werken verlangt. Wie schwer muss diese Arbeit für mich seindass können Sie sich leicht einbilden, da Sie manche von den Eigentümlichkeiten unserer Sprache kennen, welche eine sehr verschiedene Ausdruckart als die deutsche hat. Ich muss eine Phrase lange besinnen und betrachten, und dann suche ich den entsprechende Ausdruck auf Tagalisch, die Umschreibungen und die germanismos sorgfaltig vermeidend [sic]. Ich tröste mich mit dem Gedanke dass ich die Ehre haben werde den grossen Schiller den Philippinen in Tagalisch vorzustellen.7 (I ask you for forgiveness that I did not answer your friendly letter immediately. I was and still am very busy because my countrymen have asked me for Tagalog translations of Schiller's work. You can easily imagine how difficult this work for me is since you know some of the characteristics of our language which has a very different style of expression from the German. I have to think over a phrase long and hard and then I attempt to look for a corresponding Tagalog expression and to avoid circumlocutions and germanisms. I comfort myself with the thought that I will have the honor of introducing the great Schiller to the Filipinos in the Tagalog language.) Rizal pointed out in his letter to Blumentritt that the latter surely knew the great difficulties a translator from German to Tagalog would face, since Blumentritt knew from his ethnolinguistic studies the "peculiarities" (Eigentümlichkeiten) of the Tagalog language which 7 Cf. The Rizal-Blumentritt Correspondence. Vol. 1, 15. Ramon Guillermo 8 possessed a "very different mode of expression" ("sehr verschiedene Ausdruckart") from the German language. In further letters to Blumentritt (December 24 and 30 of 1886),8 Rizal sheds light on his views regarding translational "correspondence" and accuracy at the level of individual words. His opinions can be derived from his sustained effort to discover translations of key terms from German into the Spanish language. For example. Rizal thought it inappropriate to fashion a technical neologism