Translation: Free or Faithful?

By K. VISWANATHAM, M. A.
(Reader in English, Andhra University)

There is a movement in the country to have translations of foreign classics made into the regional languages. In the famous Inaugural, Arnold pointed out that we should compare or perish. To know how we stand, we have to note how others stand.

There is a widespread belief that translation means free translation and free translation means applying the scissors, according to one’s own rasikatva (taste), to the original, excising, adding, changing in many ways. The original is adjusted to the translation on which of course the translator is a redoubtable Achilles. The expression ‘the art of translation’ is used by the champions of free translation as a critical talisman, a lethal weapon to destroy an opponent. This is a dangerous license. Translation is translation, nothing more, nothing less. Free translation is a contradiction in terms; a free translation is no translation; the adjective ‘free’ is an awareness of it. My submission is that it may be better than the original. Only one should not call it a translation. A translator’s first and last duty is doglike devotion to the original. The champions of free translation argue casuistically that their faithfulness is to the spirit and not to the letter. This is a false dichotomy. In translations the spirit killeth and the letter lives. If one is not faithful to the original in letter, one is never faithful to the spirit. And who is to decide the spirit of the original? The free translator himself of course, who is Sir Oracle. Let students of literature note that in poetry it is wrong to draw a line between the thing said and the way of saying things. This is an old error which dies hard.

Translation, though not so respected as original composition, is more difficult than the original. The original is the privileged, chartered libertine of imagination: the translation is bound hand and foot–of course a self-imposed ‘imprisoned absence of liberty’ in Shakespeare’s compressed phrase. Translation is not our problem alone; it is everybody’s problem and everywhere a problem. In the Loeb Classical Library we have scholarly translations of Greek and Roman classics. Under the editorship of E. V. Rieu we have translations of the classics in the Penguin Series. Arnold’s lectures on translating Homer is a classic discussion. Shakespeare’s plays are translated into various European languages. The great Russian novels are ‘Englished.’ Burton, Tawney, Waley, Ruckert are unperishing translators of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’, the ‘Kathasaritsagara’, of Chinese classics and ‘Gita Govinda,’ ‘The Sacred Books of the East’ is a monumental tribute to Max Muller and others. Out of this casual list one can extract a number of problems:

i.                     Should a translation be free or faithful?
ii.                   Should it be in verse or prose?
iii.                  How does the translation of a novel differ from that of a poem?
iv.                 How does the translation of, say, The Prince, a political classic, differ from that of Kreutzer Sonata (short stories)?
v.                   Is translation into a related language easier than one into an unrelated language?
vi.                 Is translation a successful method after all? or

Can two languages exchange Ideas? How are we to reconcile conflicting ‘sampradayas’ (traditions)?

I shall discuss these views in the reverse order, and go last to the first problem–the crux of the whole discussion.

Great linguists, philosophers, poets and critics like Sapir, Croce, Shelley and Richards say that all translation is vanity. In the nature of things it is like making a rope of sand. Shelley writes: “Hence the vanity of translation. It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from the seed or it will bear no flower–this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.” Croce is equally firmly convinced of the futility of translation. Richards writes on p. 23 of his ‘Meaning of Meaning’: “On the other hand the more the emotive functions are involved the less easy will be the task of blending several of these in the vocabularies. And further, the greater the use made in the original of the direct effects of words through rhythm, vowel quantity, etc., the more difficult will it be to secure similar effects in the same way in a different medium.” One cannot easily recall to mind a translation worthy of the original.

Translation from one language into another which belongs to the same family, we think, is easy. Translation from Sanskrit into Telugu should not be as difficult as translation from English into Telugu. Roughly, Sanskrit and Telugu have the same vocabulary and frame of reference and association. English and Telugu have not. For instance, we despair of an equivalent for ‘godson’. We have no godson in the Telugu world-picture and hence no word picture of it.

But what is synonymity? Like Pontius Pilate’s greater question, this waits for no answer because there is none. A. L Basham confesses: “I have not been able to reproduce the untranslatable incantation of the original. In most cases they are not literal translations, since the character of Indian classical languages is so unlike that of English that literal translations are at the best dull and at the worst positively ridiculous. In places I have taken liberty with the originals in order to make their purport clearer to the Western reader, but in all cases I have tried to give an honest interpretation of the intention of their authors as I understand them.” (The Wonder that was India, viii.)

Richards points out that translation in a related family of languages is also futile: “How can one compare a sentence in English poetry with one (however like it) in English prose? or indeed any two sentences or the same sentence in two different settings?” (Speculative Instruments, p. 20) It is evident that Basham has not thought as acutely as Richards about the behaviour of words. Basham’s paragraph is an excellent epitome of the confused views on translation:the futility of translation, the non-approval of literal rendering, the small respect to the original, the self-stultification of the translator, etc.

It is easier to translate The Price or Dharma Sastra or Principia Mathematica than Oedipus Tyrannus or Mrichchakatika or Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, for example. Hence Sapir suggests two levels in a work of art: the linguistic and the non-linguistic. At the linguistic level translation is as futile as to translate Sanskrit dharma or English ‘home.’ “The murmuring of innumerable bees,” is an untranslatable use of language. Collins’s

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song

defies the translator’s art as much as Kalidasa’s

Toyotsarga-drutatara-gatis tatparam vartma tirnah

with their fine alteration on t. A language sufficiently mathematized never suffers loss.

Short stories and novels do not suffer any loss, like scientific or didactic or philosophical works which are purely factual or informative. Bethel has drawn a persuasive distinction between novel and poetry, that the former is ideational and the latter verbal. Hence in translation the novel does not abort whereas poetry suffers a sea-change into something poor and petty. Of course there are novels and novels. A novel of Dumas can put on any linguistic shirt but a novel of Virginia Woolf is more or less like a lyric and hence fails to convince us in a translation.

Even among poems the Gita is only ‘less than archangel ruined’ even in a mediocre translation; the majesty of thought buoys it up above the salt sea waves. But the poems of verbal wizardry appear like magicians who fail to bring off the trick, in another dress. Poetry is a Solomon’s carpet of irreplaceable words; synonyms do not create a poem. As a matter of fact there are no synonyms at all in language. Poetry is like idiom in language; it can breathe, be alive and kicking in that atmosphere only. Otherwise it is sad like Ruth amidst alien corn. Who can translate ‘Tell it to the Horse Marines’? Only a man of Gotham.

If all translation is vanity, a distorting mirror, how are we to get a knowledge of other cultures and literatures? Of course by mastering the language of the originals. If that is not possible, hear what Arnold says: “To understand the grand style of the Greeks, read Milton.” On the face of it, it is just like saying that to get a taste of the Indian curry one has to help himself to English pudding. Can we get an idea of Kalidasa by studying Virgil, if we do not know Sanskrit? There is keen insight in that profound remark of Arnold; it is implied that all translation is futile. A supreme creative work in one language is the genuine translation of another supreme creative work in another, when both are founded on the same canons. A Gandhiji is a genuine translation of a Christ, though one was a Hindu and the other the founder of Christianity. The grand style of Aeschylus is in the English Milton, not in some translation of Aeschylus into English.

But if no way is open to a reader–the way of mastering the language of the original nor the ability to recognise a spiritual rebirth or reincarnation of that soul–translation is inevitable. Rationing is better than starvation. If translation is an inescapable infirmity, shall it be in verse or prose? The original may be in verse or prose; that is immaterial to a translator. Of course writers feel that verse in the original should be recast in verse only in a translation, and prose in the original should not be versified. Today nobody in his senses will say that poetry is the opposite of prose; verse is the opposite of prose, and poetry is in both. Hardy’s novels are tragedies. In the words of Virginia Woolf, the death of a hay-trusser in a lonely hut on the Egdon Heath is as tragic as the death of Ajax, the king of Salamis; Mother Cuxsom’s elegy takes its place beside Lycidas and Synge’s dramas are poetic dramas though written in prose. This point needs no labouring. Sober critical opinion has to incline to a prose translation, because it is less harmful to the original than verse translation. Versifiers may lament that the splendour of poetry is diluted into greyish neutral tints. But a prose translation may approximate closer to the original.

A verse translation of Goethe or Shakespeare is out of court, says Arnold. He would rather read Shakespeare in the French prose translation than in Tieck’s and Schlegel’s verse translation. A verse translation leads to inevitable padding; metre necessitates. A very fine example is seen in Sri K. Veeresalingam Pantulu’s translation of The Merchant of Venice into Telugu: Act I, Sc. i

Solanio: Why, then you are in love.
S: Atulaina neevu kamagniche nokka kutilakuntalakayi kunduchunnavu.

Antonio: Fie, fie!
A: Nenemiyu nerunga. Nindagattakumu.

(Re-translated into English this reads: “So you are vexing yourself in the fire of love for a lady of ringleted hair.” “I know nothing. Don’t make me an object of scandal.) Such inaccuracies, saw treacheries to the original are detected in Pope’s Homer. Call it Pope’s Iliad, not Homer’s Iliad. Keats found deep browed Homer in Chapman but Chapman is full of un-Homeric rhetoric, it is said. There are numerous translations of Meghasandesam into Telugu. Has anyone the stamp and superscription of the original? Is not Homer the despair of translators? A prose translation is like the skin; verse translation is like a singing robe; it may become a muffling and smothering cloak too. If metre is insisted upon, who can discover the metrical equivalent of ‘manda kranta’ in English or of the Greek hexameter in Telugu? Verse translation may capture something, but what is gained in the swings is lost on the rounds. Perhaps a prose translation is a safe business. Where there is no hope raised, there is no disappointment felt.

In the light of the foregoing, the question of free translation does not arise. Free translation is a contradiction in terms. Either we are faithful to the original or we are not translating. A free translation is as good as a new creation. Free translators arrogate to themselves the snail-horn perception of a poet’s beauty; they are the sole judges of omission and commission; they apply the scissors or bring in the glue pot as their sahrdayatva dictates. Let translation be translation. The free translators say: “Translation is an art; it is not word for word synonym-hunting affair.” Nobody says that translation is not an art; it is truly a rebirth of the original, in a way, more arduous of achievement than the original itself. By calling it an art we should not forget our duty and push the original this side and that; that is being discourteous to the original.

What are our expectations from a translation?

The reader who does not know the language of the original should get a complete view of the poet’s world picture, barring of course the wizardry of language which is incommunicable.

The free translators laugh at the faithful ones with an anecdote: “A copyist was asked to copy a file; on a page he found the dead body of a fly; faithful to the task he caught a fly, killed it and glued it to the page.” This is better than tearing off the page on the ground that it affects our aesthetic sense.

The translation in no sense should represent faithlessly the original. Sri Vavilala Vasudeva Sastri translated Julius Caesar and provides a telling example of this error. ‘Cobbler’ is translated by the Telugu word which means ‘pariah’. One such howler is enough to taint the whole attempt. In Rome there were cobblers, of course, but there were no pariahs.

No translation should ever tamper with the metaphor, the imagery, the ideas of the original. The only thing that is bound to be changed and has to be changed is the syntax, as sentence construction in Telugu is different from that in English. Students of language know what any language can assimilate from other languages and what it cannot so easily. English can absorb ‘avatar’ but cannot incorporate Telugu accidence and syntax. Sometimes we find that if the translation sticks to the sampradaya of a language, the idea in the original is distorted. Loyalty to the original goes clean against sampradaya. A crucial instance is the sentence ‘My wits begin to shake.’ In English, the plural ‘wits’ is used; there are five wits as we have five indriyas or senses, and forcefully suggests the total breakdown of Lear. Suppose in Telugu, we use the singular ‘buddhi’, as we ought to, we have falsified Shakespeare’s world of ideas. The singular in the translation cannot make the reader understand that ‘wits’ were five in number. Suppose we used the singular of ‘indriyas’; how absurd it is! If Oak is in English, we should not translate it by a word meaning ‘Banyan’ on the ground that we do not have oaks and oaks go against our Sampradaya.

A literal Telugu translation of ‘Tom is a-cold’ suggests ‘Tom is dead ‘. ‘Seek your life’ literally translated reads absurdly in Telugu, as ‘Go with us’ will be, unless changed into ‘Come with us’.

One who distorts the original sins against the light, commits a dark crime. To misrepresent a poem is to kill it. As Milton pointed out, to kill a person is to kill one, but to kill a book is to kill the human mind itself. Barring the aforesaid hurdles let us be scrupulously faithful. One language’s meat is another’s poison. In the same language ‘potion’ in one context is ‘poison’ in another. A translation is not an opportunity for one to show off one’s pratibha but an occasion to explain the original with all the limitations and restrictions. A daring coup d’ etat in one language may be a forlorn hope in another. Paladins in one are pariahs in another. The Hindi equivalent of Telugu kukka (dog) is an unprintable and unpronounceable word. Further a living language goes on changing and ‘sampradayas’ which incited last ditch ding-dong fights are broken chariot wheels.

Any translation is read by two ‘reading publics’–one which knows the language of the original, another which does not. And it has to be stated (against the commonly and widely held view) that the first public alone has the right to judge the translation. A Telugu scholar who does not know English cannot say: “What do I care what the language of the original is. It is translated into my tongue and I shall judge it so.” Arnold has put the matter definitively: (‘On translating Homer’ Lecture I, p. 247) “Let not the translator then trust to his notions of what the ancient Greeks would have thought of him. He will lose himself in the vague. Let him not trust to what the ordinary English reader thinks of him; he will be taking the blind for his guide. Let him not trust to his own judgment of his own work; he may be misled by his individual caprices. Let him ask how his work affects those who both know Greek and can appreciate poetry.” That is why Arnold pronounces that even Keats had no competence to judge Chapman because he was ignorant of Greek. In the light of Arnold’s judgment a translation from English into Telugu can be competently judged by one who knows English and can appreciate poetry, not by one who knows Telugu alone though it is meant for him.

The Bible is a masterpiece of translation and an exception to the general verdict. A free translation is an adaptation tantamount to a new creation. Who has the courage to say: This is a translation of Sakuntalam or the Iliad which challenges the original? The free translation arrogates to itself the sole privilege of understanding the author; it is like the interpretation of Shakespeare. Each interpreter paints Shakespeare, in his own likeness. We get a Coleridgean Shakespeare, a Bradleyan Shakespeare, a Senecan Shakespeare. The free translator is like the wood-carver who carved the figure of a horse without the legs and said that it was his idea of the spirit of a horse. ‘Base football player’ in a play, if literally rendered, gives us an insight into the Elizabethan world of sports and language and Shakespeare’s ideas too. The translator who takes liberties with the original is thinking more of his reaction to the original than of the original itself. Tat tvam asi–isnot realized by him; the mist between him and the original has not defecated to a pure transparency. The Elizabethan translators, says Arnold, could not forbear so much of their own that they changed the character of the original.

Arnold shows that a free translation distorts the original; a word for word schoolboy translation is still-born. Translation should neither be literal nor free but faithful. Translation is fresh knowledge, not a new creation. If it is both, it is a divine event. Arnold’s own attempts at certain passages in Homer mayor may not be better than other translators’ efforts. What is important is the right method. Failure on the right lines is perhaps more helpful than success on wrong lines and the competent critic who can decide success or failure is as rare as a competent translation. Success and Failure are the hasty coin of petty minds and do not belong to the world of human effort.