Frantz Fanon: Retrieving a Lost Voice
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Number SevTenty-rOnae • n2006 slation Review The University of Texas at Dallas TRANSLATION REVIEW No. 71, 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial: Translation and the Teaching of Literature ...................................................................................................... 1 Rainer Schulte Frantz Fanon: Retrieving a Lost Voice.............................................................................................................................. 3 A conversation between Celia Britton and Richard Philcox on the latest translation of Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés De La Terre (The Wretched of the Earth) When Translation Fails: The Ethics of Not Translating and the Linguistic .................................................................... 8 Weaponry of Argentina’s Dirty War Clare E. Sullivan Losing Signified in Translation: Kotzwinkle’s “The Fan Man” ................................................................................... 15 Robert E. Kohn Translation Across Cultures: The Challenges of Rendering an African Oral Poetry in English ................................. 19 Akíntúndé Akínyemí Middlesex and the Translation of Ambiguity................................................................................................................... 31 Anton Pujol Translation and the Individual Talent: The Splendid Isolation of our ......................................................................... 37 Retranslators of Russian Classics Timothy D. Sergay Betrayals and Fidelities of Literary Translation: Montaigne and Neruda.................................................................... 41 Kenneth Lloyd-Jones Kukutis and K.B.: The Archaic and the Post-Modern in the Work of the Lithuanian Poet Marcelijus Martinaitis... 47 Laima Sruoginis How Translating Makes Me a Better Creative Writing Teacher ................................................................................... 59 Steven Stewart The “New Original” English Translation of Vicente Huidobro’s “Altazor” ............................................................... 61 Justin Read Book Reviews A Tomb for Anatole, by Stéphane Mallarmé.................................................................................................................... 67 Translated by Paul Auster. Daniela Hurezanu, Reviewer A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and other Stories By Victor Pelevin .............................................................. 70 Translated by Andrew Bromfield. Nina Serebrianik, Reviewer Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico................................................................................................................... 73 A Bilingual Anthology. Editor, Luis Cortés Bargalló. Translation Editor, Forrest Gander. Rainer Schulte, Reviewer EDITORIAL: TRANSLATION AND THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE By Rainer Schulte he essential function of English Departments and as if it were a word in a foreign language. A writer T certainly also of Modern Language Departments manipulates words, often modifies and enhances their is to provide students with techniques and established connotations, creates new fields of methodologies for meaningful and enjoyable meaning through the interaction with other words, and interpretations of texts. However, fashions of criticism builds a universe of feelings and emotions that have greatly endangered the close reading of literary enlarges the reader’s and interpreter’s way of seeing and humanistic works. Articles meant to illuminate and understanding a world view. Practically speaking, literary texts have removed themselves considerably the reader as translator continuously raises the from a work under consideration, and they frequently question: what kind of research must I undertake in lapse into an academic jargon that builds a wall order to do justice to the text I am reading, whether I between the reader and the poem or the fictional work. choose to translate it from a foreign language into my Some decades ago, English departments own or whether I translate it into my present introduced creative writing programs to revitalize the sensibility within the same language? act of reading and to reconnect students with the For a moment, it will be helpful to contemplate on dynamics of words on the page. I venture to say that the nature of words. The reading process has to start the primary goal of creative writing workshops was with the assumption that each word reflects an not to train each participant to become a major writer, inherent uncertainty, both as an isolated phenomenon but rather to make the reading of literary works an and as a semiotic possibility of a sentence, a enjoyable experience for students. As a parenthetical paragraph, or the context of the entire work. The observation, I might add that creative writing courses rediscovery of that uncertainty in each word are not part of the curriculum in European universities. constitutes the initial attitude that the reader has to Yet, the academic world has accepted creative writing bring to the text. Reading becomes the making of as a viable educational pursuit. However, translation is meaning and not the description of already-fixed rarely considered an essential component of literature meanings. From the translation point of view, the departments. Many deans and chairs of literature conceptual frame of interpretation should be changed programs fail to recognize the importance of from “What does a text mean?” to “How does a text translation as a major force to reinvigorate the study of come to mean?” The latter reaffirms that there is no literature and the humanities. Scholars who work such thing as the definitive interpretation of a text, just either as translators of literature or as scholars of as there is no definitive translation of any foreign translation studies are often not recognized by the work. established literature departments, and they certainly To place these concepts into a tangible practice, I don’t get credit for their work when it comes to outline two exercises that should illustrate how academic promotions. translation methods can intensify the act of The time has come to reverse these prejudices. interpretation. The first one is concerned with the The philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer states that research area and the second one with the notion of “reading is already translation.” Octavio Paz contends multiple translations and therefore multiple that when we read a text, we must translate it into our interpretations. present sensibility. It follows that reading and Words have an etymological and a philological interpreting a text within the same language is itself a existence. If we take, for example, the first line of translation. An investigation of the translator’s Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Studies,” which reads, methods can shed light on the process of “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for interpretation. The translator’s starting point — and ability,” then the immediate research will have to here resides the important link with the act of focus on what meanings were attributed to delight, interpretation — must be anchored in what translators ornament, and ability in the respective century. The have to face and comprehend in the foreign text. If we Oxford English Dictionary will be the best tool to transfer this idea to the act of reading within the same determine their etymological origin. Tracing these language, then each word must be considered a words throughout the century to the present moment “foreign” entity. The reader must approach each word will provide the reader with the changes those words Translation Review 1 have accumulated during their travel from the past to to be reentered and rethought from that perspective. the present. Even though these words still have the Each reading engages the reader in reconstructing the same spelling in the present, their semantic poem from a different perspective. In its original environment has changed, which forces the reader to visualization, translation fosters the practice of reevaluate their connotations in the Bacon essay. To establishing relationships within a given text. Words, further show the nature of interpretation, it might be images, and expressions are linked by reinforcing helpful to take a few sentences from the Bacon essay similar directions of thinking. Translation and have those translated into contemporary American methodologies refocus our attitude toward the English. The internal workings of the act of reading interpretation of literary works and activate in us, the and interpretation will become obvious. readers, the faculty of associative thinking. The Another example to introduce the reader to the pleasure of reading as translation creates in the reader internal structure and movement of a poem is the use a never-ending dialogue between reader and text. We, of multiple translations. If we take Rainer Maria the readers, constantly explore how a text comes to Rilke’s poem “The Panther” and the various mean. translations that are available to us, we gain insights It is time for professors of literature to make into the interpretive process. translation workshops an integral part of their teaching The first two words of the poem are “Der and for chairs of literature departments to consider Blick….” Many translators have rendered this poem translation research and translation methods an into English. The choices brought by the translators to important innovation to bring the pleasure back to the “Blick” are amazing: gaze, vision,