UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES Facultad de Derecho Maestría en Traducción e Interpretación Literary Translation in the Digital Age Preparado por Frances Riddle Buenos Aires, Argentina 2014 1 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….………….3 THEORHETICAL FRAMEWORK…………………..……………………….……………6 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………..………..46 CORPUS ANALYSIS………………………….………………………………………….53 CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………………..82 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………87 APPENDIX I: CORPUS………………………………………………………….………96 2 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age INTRODUCTION Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, depreciated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organizations. Translation is treated so disadvantageously, I want to suggest, partly because it occasions revelations that question the authority of dominant cultural values and institutions. And like every challenge to established reputations, it provokes their efforts at damage control, their various policing functions, all designed to shore up the questioned values and institutions by mystifying their uses of translation (Venuti, 1997:1). What is now infamously known as the “Three Percent Problem” describes the fact that only three of every one hundred books published in the U.S. and Great Britain annually are works in translation from another language. Some experts say that 3% is an overestimate and that the number of translations published each year in English may actually be less than 1% of the total. The U.S. exports its cultural products on a massive scale through television series, movies, music and books, but assimilates foreign cultural artifacts at a rate that pales in comparison. The fact that the U.S. has ideologically closed its borders to any outside influence has been called cultural suicide by some. Whatever the consequences for U.S. culture may be, the implications for literature in translation to English are clear: translations hold a markedly subordinate position in a publishing industry that largely ignores works of foreign literature. The few titles that are chosen for translation generally adhere to the aesthetics of the domestic market and stereotyped notions of the source culture. The secondary status of foreign literature in the U.S. goes hand in hand with the subordinate position of the translator and Translation Studies as a whole. In her introduction to the third edition of Translation Studies, Susan Bassnet states that the field, in 2002, was still considered “merely a minor branch of comparative literary study, a 3 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age specific area of linguistics” (Bassnet, 2002:1). Echoing Bassnet’s affirmations, Lawrence Venuti states: Translation is rarely considered a form of literary scholarship, it does not currently constitute a qualification for an academic appointment in a particular field or area of literary study, and, compared to original compositions, translated texts are infrequently made the object of literary research. The fact of translation tends to be ignored even by the most sophisticated scholars who must rely on translated texts in their research and teaching. And when translation isn’t simply ignored, it is likely to suffer a wholesale reduction to linguistic correctness, especially by foreign language academics who repress the domestic remainder that any translation releases and so refuse to regard it as a conveyor of literary values in the target culture (Venuti, 1997: 32). If literary translators are underpaid and unrecognized the world over, with few exceptions, this is especially true for translators of any language into English, where any small trace of the translator’s intervention in the text is considered negative and the translation is made to read as fluently as possible in order to ensure easy consumption by a mass audience. Target-driven translation, also called fluent or domesticizing translation, is not seen as a problem for many translators and editors who happily seek “naturalness” in the translations they work with. If this model is not simply accepted at face value however, a deeper look shows that domesticized translations help to maintain the subordinate position of translated literature. The fluency model directly contributes to the gross underrepresentation of foreign literature within the U.S. publishing industry and perpetuates U.S. society’s general disinterest in foreign cultures. This model also furthers a lack of respect for the art of translation and justifies the meager rates afforded to literary translators. 4 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age It is difficult for a translator to break with the prevailing translation norms of their time because doing so often results in criticism or rejection. The introduction to “Translation, History and Culture, A Sourcebook,” states: If translators do not stay within the perimeters of the acceptable as defined by the patron (an absolute monarch, for instance, but also a publisher’s editor), the chances are that their translation will either not reach the audience they want it to reach or that it will, at best, reach that audience in a circuitous manner. (…) To make a foreign work of literature acceptable to the receiving culture, translators will often adapt it to the poetics of that receiving culture (Lefevere, 1990: 6). The fluency model of literary translation to English has dictated the work of the translator for many decades but there is evidence to suggest that these norms may be shifting. As Michael Henry Heim states, “The current concern among translators to convey cultural difference stems from postmodernism’s concern with alterity, its tendency to highlight, indeed to privilege the ‘other’” (Heim, 2008). The main objective of the present study is to analyze the current practices in the translation of literature from Spanish to English. I would like to examine the state of affairs in the U.S. publishing industry with specific emphasis on how globalization and the emergence of the Digital Age may be inciting changes in literary translation. It is undeniable that translation plays a major role in globalization but it could also be argued that globalization has an influence on translation. As each new generation is born into an increasingly globalized world, individuals are more aware of what lies beyond the political borders of the nation in which they reside. Today young adults and teenagers in the U.S. may watch a cartoon from Japan, a viral music video from Sweden, and a telenovela from Brazil, all within the space of an hour without standing up from their computer terminal. As Ben Rosenthal, editor at an educational publishing house in the U.S. stated in an article for Publishing Perspectives: The need for diverse, international perspectives should always be a priority, and it only becomes more important with the rise of digital publishing and the breakdown 5 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age of territorial borders. The future of publishing might see territories disappear. Publishing successful authors from other countries will make a publisher all that more attractive worldwide (Rosenthal, 2013). The exploration of recent trends in Translation Studies which emphasize the role of the translator in the representation of the source culture are best studied through the perspective of literary translation due to the wealth of cultural elements expressed in literary forms of writing. This study will examine nine works of short fiction in translation from Spanish to English. I have selected my corpus from three digital publications which are all dedicated to literature in translation. I hope to determine whether more recent translations, published in journals committed to furthering diversity in English language literature, will adhere to the model of domesticized translations, or instead favor a source- oriented approach. The nine translations selected will be compared to their corresponding source texts to form a bilingual corpus of eighteen texts. I would like to analyze the ways in which the digital revolution in publishing and the increased contact between cultures facilitated by the Digital Age, among other factors, may be working to undermine the predominance of the fluency model of translation to English. THEORHETICAL FRAMEWORK Defining Culture When we speak of “a culture” or “the receiving culture,” we would do well to remember that cultures are not monolithic entities, but that there is always a tension inside a culture between different groups, or individuals, who want to influence the evolution of that culture in the way they think best (Lefevere, 1990: 6). Within the context of Spanish language literature in translation to English, the present study will examine one of the most disputed issues in Translation Studies today: the maintenance 6 Riddle – Literary Translation in the Digital Age of the source culture in a work of translation. The term “culture” will be used a lot in this paper as we discuss the challenges faced by translators in communicating certain terms and concepts across languages. The original use of “culture” was applied to things that were constructs of man, in opposition to something organic or found in nature. In the mid-1800s, as anthropologists began to study indigenous societies, the definition of the word shifted to become more synonymous with the term “civilized.” A cultured person was someone versed