Self-Translation, the Bilingual Edition and Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry
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Eadar Dà Chànan: Self-Translation, the Bilingual Edition and Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry By Corinna Krause For the Degree of PhD The University of Edinburgh School of Celtic and Scottish Studies 2007 Contents Declaration vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Gaelic Scotland – A Postcolonial Site? 7 1.1 Gaelic Literature and Postcolonial Theory 9 1.1.1 Historical Background 9 1.1.2 Exclusion of European Minority Literatures from a Postcolonial 11 Corpus: On Political Grounds 1.1.3 Gaelic in Scotland: Decline in Language Use 12 1.1.4 Exclusion of European Minority Languages from a Postcolonial 14 Corpus: On Linguistic Grounds 1.1.4.1 The Importance of Language or the Postcolonial Paradox 16 1.1.5 Post-Colonially Conditioned vs. Postcolonial Discourse 19 1.1.6 (Post-)Colonial Subject Matter within Gaelic Poetry: 21 The Hybrid 1.1.6.1 The Subversive Hybrid vs. the Inevitable Hybrid: Towards 24 Heteroglossia 1.1.7 Translation as a Tool towards the Revitalisation of the Target 26 Language 1.1.8 Writing and Translating Gaelic Poetry: Literature in the Contact 27 Zone 1.1.9 Translation as Intercultural Communication 30 1.1.9.1 Translation and Asymmetric Power Relationships between 31 Cultures 1.1.9.2 Postcolonial Translation Studies: As Exclusive as Postcolonial 32 Literary Studies? 1.2 The Study of Translation and Minority 33 1.2.1 What is Minority? 33 1.2.2 Minority Translation: A Double Edged Sword 35 1.2.3 Invisibility of Minority 36 1.2.4 The Role of the Translator 38 1.3 The Study of Endangered Languages 39 1.4 Diversity: Theoretical Implications 43 1.4.1 ‘Self’ versus ‘Other’ in a Gaelic Context 44 1.4.2 Diversity and Ethnocentrism 46 1.4.3 Loss of Language Diversity: What is Lost? 47 1.4.4 Diversity: Understanding through Difference 50 1.4.5 Diversity and Translation 51 1.5 Concluding Remarks 52 2 Gaelic Poetry and Translation 55 2.1 Gaelic Poetry Publication Practices since 1940 57 2.2 Gaelic-Related Debate on the Translation of Poetry 65 2.2.1 Writing in Gaelic: Implications for Authors, Audience and 66 Gaelic as Literature and Language 2.2.1.1 The Bilingual Existence of Authors and Readerships 75 2.2.2 The Early Debate 78 2.2.3 An Leabhar Mòr 83 2.2.4 Gaelic Poetry and Translation: The Chapman Debate 87 2.2.5 Gaelic Poetry and Self-Translation 92 2.2.6 Translation vs. Version 99 2.3 The Questionnaires 101 2.3.1 Authors’ replies 102 2.3.2 Reasons for Translating into English 105 2.3.2.1 Financial Considerations 105 2.3.2.2 Ideological Considerations 108 2.3.3 Reasons for Self-Translation 110 2.3.4 Bilingual Publication Format: Poetry versus Prose 111 2.3.5 The Gaelic and the English in the Self-Translated Poetry Pair 112 2.3.6 Considering an Audience 113 2.3.7 Translatability and the Impact on the Source Corpus 114 2.3.8 Self-Translation and the Bilingual Edition: Concerns 115 2.4 Concluding Remarks 116 3 Translating Poetry: A Translation Studies Perspective 119 3.1 Poetry and Translation 123 3.1.1 The Writing that is Poetry vs. the Writing that is Poetry 123 Translation 3.1.2 The Death of the Author: A Literary Criticism Perspective 126 3.1.2.1 The Death of the Author and the Coming into Being of Meaning 128 3.1.2.2 The Death of the Author: A Translation Studies Perspective 130 3.1.3 The Notion of Equivalence: Equivalence vs. Difference 132 3.1.4 Difference between Writing and Translating 137 3.1.4.1 Poetry Translation: ‘Transplanting the Seed’ 138 3.2 Skopos Theory of Translation 140 3.2.1 Skopos Theory of Translation: A General Translation Theory 141 3.2.2 Evaluation of Skopos Theory for the Present Study 142 3.2.3 Skopos Theory and the Demand for Stating Translation Strategies 146 3.3 Concluding Remarks 146 4 Self-Translation 149 4.1 Literary Bilingualism 150 4.1.1 Bilingual Reality Reflected in Literary Bilingualism 152 4.1.2 Literary Bilingualism: A Problematic Phenomenon? 153 4.1.3 Literary Bilingualism and Exile 156 4.1.4 Literary Bilingualism: A Phenomenon of Many Faces! 159 4.2 Self-Translation: A Phenomenon of Many Faces 160 4.2.1 Reasons for Self-Translation 164 4.2.2 Hatred of Self-Translation 165 4.3 Is the Author the Ideal Translator of His/Her Work? 167 4.4 The Status of the Original and the Self-Translation 170 4.4.1 The Retrospectively Incomplete Original 173 4.5 Self-Translation: Wholeness vs. Difference 175 4.6 Towards the Reception of Self-Translation 177 4.7 Concluding Remarks 179 5 Dialogism: The Quest for Meaning 182 5.1 Dialogism: Communication as Two-Sided Act 184 5.1.1 Language as Productive Force 188 5.1.2 Language and the Social 189 5.2 Encratic versus Acratic Discourse 190 5.2.1 Writing in Gaelic: The (Para)Doxical Nature 193 5.2.2 Does Art Have to be Political? 195 5.2.3 A Comparative View: Voices from the Irish, Welsh and Gaelic 197 Literary Worlds 5.2.4 Writing as Private Space 209 5.2.5 The World Republic of Letters and Literary Prestige 211 5.2.6 The Lure of the Foreign 213 5.3 Skopos Theory of Translation and the Format 215 of Literary Publications 5.3.1 Paratext 216 5.3.2 Location of Meaning with Bilingual Gaelic/English Poetry 218 5.3.2.1 Stroop Effect 220 5.3.2.2 Location of Meaning: A Postcolonial Studies Perspective 222 5.3.2.3 Reading Patterns with Bilingual Gaelic/English Poetry Editions 223 5.4 Difference 227 5.4.1 Self-Translation and Difference 228 5.5 Concluding Remarks 230 6 Contemporary Gaelic Poetry and Translation: A Comparative 232 Reading of the Self-Translated Text Pair 6.1 Gaelic Poetry Publishing Today: An Interpretative View 234 6.2 Gaelic/English Self-Translation: Finding the Poem in the 238 Gaelic/English Contact Zone 6.2.1 Translation Loss 238 6.2.2 Gaelic/English Self-Translation and Interlingual Interference 245 6.2.3 Gaelic/English Self-Translation and Prosody 249 6.2.4 Gaelic/English Self-Translation and Imagery: The Two Versions 251 Going Separate Ways 6.2.5 The Gaelic Text in the Gaelic/English Poetry Pair 252 6.3 Beyond the Gaelic/English Contact Zone: 255 Gaelic Poetry in Germany 6.4 Future Research: Heteroglossia and Postcolonial Traces in 267 Contemporary Gaelic Poetry 6.5 Concluding Remarks 270 Conclusion 273 Appendix A – Questionnaire Participants 281 Appendix B – Close Reading Session Participants 283 Appendix C – Publications 284 Appendix D(a) – Author Questionnaire 285 Appendix D(b) – Editor Questionnaire 288 Appendix D(c) – Publisher Questionnaire 289 Bibliography 291 Declaration I declare that this thesis is all my own work and composition. Some arguments and notions presented in this thesis have developed from an MSc dissertation entitled ‘Translator’s Task, Translator’s Trial – translating Scottish Gaelic Poetry’, submitted to the University of Edinburgh in 2001. ..................................................... Corinna Krause vi Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisors Prof Donald Meek and Dr Charlotte Bosseaux for advice and encouragement. Especially, I would like to thank my Principal Supervisor Dr Wilson McLeod for his invaluable support and direction. I also wish to acknowledge the tremendous support from authors, editors and publishers of Gaelic poetry who kindly spent time and thought in replying to my questionnaires. Special thanks to Mary Anne MacDonald, William MacDonald and Chrissie McCuish for taking the time to comment on samples of bilingual Gaelic/English poetry in close reading sessions. I am grateful to the peer-reviewers of the online arts journals eSharp and Forum as well as to Maria Filippakopoulou, Paschalis Nikolaou and Maria-Venetia Kyritsi for helpful commentary on aspects of this research and its presentation. Thanks furthermore to Corinne Scheiner, Konstanze Glaser and Moray Watson for providing me with copies of their PhD theses, Verena Jung for sending me her dissertation, Rainer Guldin and Michaela Wolf for sending me copies of their articles. Finally, I would like to thank Christopher Whyte and John Storey for their time and insights expressed in numerous personal communications. vii Introduction Self-translation has become a firmly established translation practice in connection with contemporary Scottish Gaelic poetry, so much so that the corpus of contemporary Gaelic poetry might be more realistically understood as referring to a bilingual corpus of Gaelic originals and their English translations provided by the author.1 This was of course not always the case. Rather, today’s situation has to be seen as the result of a steady development over the past sixty years or so which began with initial attempts by Gaelic authors such as Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) and Derick Thomson (Ruaraidh MacThòmais) to enter into a professional dialogue with others involved with literary writing and appreciation in Scotland and beyond. During the 1930s and 1940s, working most intensely towards the publication of his renowned poetry collection Dàin do Eimhir, MacLean had close friends in Hugh MacDiarmid, Douglas Young, Robert Garioch and other influential Scottish poets, all of them highly aware of the importance and potential of the linguistic diversity within Scottish society. As a result, we find some of MacLean’s poetry translated into Scots by his literary friends and colleagues. Dàin do Eimhir, which was finally published in 1943, could well have been published with a selection of Young’s translations into Scots.