Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

THIRTY-ONE Sameness, Likeness, and Match: Truths About Translation

For a repeated utterance in a different natural language to count as a translation of the source, it must give the same information and have the same force. It may make explicit information that is unstated in the source (by inserting it into the text or by adding footnotes); and it may also, but less frequently, omit information because it is assumed to be too widely known among intended readers to merit the same prominence given to it in the source. But within these areas of tolerance, sameness of information and force is a widely respected norm for the translator’s art.

It’s worth remembering that these are not the only features of an utterance that could in principle be preserved in a repetition of it in some other tongue. It would not be hard to reproduce the exact pattern of commas and periods when moving a text between, say, English and French, but nobody bothers to do that. (I did once work briefly with an author who insisted that his punctuation was an inalienable feature of his style, but this only confirmed my initial impression that he was slightly mad.) A competent translator with a lot of time on her hands could easily preserve the word and character count of a source by paragraph, sentence, or line, but these kinds of sameness are not considered relevant to the translator’s task.[178] Nor does the notion of sameness extend to the selection or distribution of the letters of the source—though there is an exception in Douglas Hofstadter’s replacement of the title of Françoise Sagan’s La Chamade by That Mad Ache. In the translation of poetry and song lyrics, sameness in the syllable count, line by line, may be accepted as a constraint, and approximate sameness in length of script is a requirement for strip cartoon legends, for road signage, and for museum and exhibition captions. But these are all regarded as special cases. Everywhere else, the requirement of sameness stops at information and force.

In speech translation, tone, pitch, gestures of the face and hands, and the stamping of feet are thrown to the winds, even though they transmit major clues as to how the speech is to be understood.

In all the many other dimensions and levels of an utterance in speech or writing the criterion of translation is not to be the same but to be like.

A is like B only in respect of C. This is a way of saying that when a thing is compared with some other thing, the act of comparing rests on a third term that is neither A nor B. What makes soupe de poisson like “chowder”? The comparator (called ter-tium comparationis in the old rhetoric) could be “soup” (but that would be a poor kind of likeness), or “seafood” (that’s richer, both are soups made from fish), or the fact that they are both eaten hot, or that they are both available in cans, or that there are cans of both on that shelf. The “likeness” of soupe de poisson and “chowder” is a variable, and its value varies in accordance with the comparator used or implied in any given context of use.

The dimensions of an utterance where likeness is the relevant criterion of translation are of many different kinds. Register, tone, rhythm, style, and wit can only ever be said to be like one another in respect of something external to the text itself. For example, to judge that writing iambic pentameters in English is like Racine’s use of the twelve-syllable line is to base likeness on the social and cultural values of poetic forms in two different environments. In both English and French verse, these are the commonest, most frequently used forms, and thus like each other in that respect. But they are not like each other in any other way. Writing twelve-syllable lines in English to represent French verse, on the other hand, is like the original only in respect of the number 12, but quite unlike it in respect of the underlying rhythms of English, which is a stress-timed language, and of French, which is not.

By choosing which dimensions to connect in a relationship of likeness and the extent to which the likeness is made visible, a translation hierarchizes the interlocking, overlaying features of the original. To that extent at least, translations always provide an interpretation of the source. It’s more obvious in literary texts with relatively few practical constraints, but the same underlying situation holds for all acts of translation between languages.

The nub of the question is this: Given that a translation preserves the information and the general force of the original, in what respect is it possible to say that its manner or style or tone is like those features of its source?

Georges Perec wrote in a wide variety of styles, but a characteristic feature of all his writing is that important information is placed at the very end, making you realize that up to that point you hadn’t understood the main import of the sentence or paragraph—or even the novel. At the level of sentences and paragraphs it is easier to do this in French than in English literary prose, which typically introduces new information in a different manner. Nonetheless, by exploiting the notorious flexibility of English sentence structure and bending it a fair bit, I respected Perec’s “late release” technique as far as I could. By the very fact of doing so I offered an interpretation of Perec’s style, but the likeness of my prose to his is a tightly focused and fragile thing. Because I had to take greater liberties with English than he did with French, my writing is not “like” Perec’s at all in respect of linguistic norms.

No translation is the same as its source, and no translation can be expected to be like its source in more than a few selected ways. Which dimensions are selected depends on the conventions of the receiving culture, the nature of the field involved, or even the whim of the commissioner of the translation. But any utterance is such a multidimensional and many-faceted thing that no translator is ever short of a little elbow room. To put it the other way around, no set of social, practical, linguistic, or generic constraints ever determines completely how a translation is to be done.

If meaning and force are kept the same and if in a limited set of other respects a translation is seen to be like its source, then we have a match. Translators are matchmakers of a particular kind. It’s not as simple as the marriage of content and form. Just as when we match faces and portraits, we rely on multiple dimensions and qualities to judge when a translation has occurred.

Children’s puzzle books exploit and psychologists study our ability to recognize and manipulate the distinct but overlapping relations I’ve called same, like, and match.

Translators use that ability in the specific fields of speech and writing in a foreign tongue. Not all of them are great at their job, and not many have the time and leisure to wait for the best match to come. But when we say that a translation is an acceptable one, what we name is an overall relationship between source and target that is neither identity, nor equivalence, nor analogy—just that complex thing called a good match.

That’s the truth about translation.