[Discussion] The Mysteries of Translation

[Paksoy, Hb]

 The Mysteries of Translation
By WENDY LESSER

>From the issue dated CHESeptember 27, 2002

I am an avid reader, but a shockingly monolingual one. The English =
language
is the golden prison I inhabit: richly and divertingly adorned, but =
with all
the exits closed off, preventing me from making my escape to French or
Russian or Italian or Chinese. Only the Spanish door is slightly ajar, =
but
its opening is just barely wide enough for me to peek through =
longingly.
That is, I can read a novel in Spanish if I'm desperate, but I will get =
far
more out of it if I read the same thing rendered in someone else's =
English.

Because of this handicap, I am heavily dependent on the work of =
translators;
they are the social workers, you might say, who bring essential =
luxuries to
my cell. I could dispense with these do-gooders, I suppose, if I chose =
to
read only works written originally in English, and I did so choose, =
during a
brief period of callow youthfulness. But even the great outpouring of
19th-century English fiction can seem insufficient and tedious after a
while, and if you start venturing into the 20th century, particularly =
the
late 20th century, you will soon find yourself in need of foreign
companionship.

So rather than resent my helpers, my crutches, I have come to feel a =
deep
affection for these selfless workers, these brilliant shadows, these =
people
whose highest aim is to remain at the very margin of visibility. No
translator wants his achievement stolen or denied; yet just as =
certainly, no
translator wants her voice to overpower that of her source author. It's =
a
very careful balance: However well the disappearing act is done, =
something
of the translator's own sensibility invariably enters into the work =
we're
given in English.

This is not to say that a Margaret Jull Costa translation of the =
Portuguese
novelist Jos=E9 Saramago sounds like a Margaret Jull Costa translation =
of the
Spanish novelist Javier Mar=EDas -- not at all. If it did, Costa would =
have
failed in her primary aim, to let us hear the writer's voice as she =
herself
hears it in the original language. But it does mean that a Margaret =
Jull
Costa translation of Javier Mar=EDas sounds slightly but noticeably =
different
from an Esther Allen translation of Javier Mar=EDas. He is recognizably =
the
same author in both cases: witty, self-aware, elaborately eloquent,
fascinated by sex and violence, immersed in movies and television, =
drawn to
Anglo-American culture, but with a saving distance that makes him seem
totally unlike anything we could have produced. (That, after all, is =
why we
go to foreign writers, why we need them.) Still, Allen's Mar=EDas is =
not quite
Costa's Mar=EDas. The difference is so subtle it's hard to define: =
something
to do with Allen's receptive American ear, something to do with Costa's
uncanny ability to locate Anglo-Saxon equivalents for Latinate terms. =
If I
were pressed, I would say that Allen's Mar=CCas sounds more like a =
Spaniard,
Costa's more like a native English speaker. Which is preferable? I =
suppose
it depends on what kind of reader you are -- or, more likely, on which
translation you encountered first.

Priority, perhaps, is what accounts for my allegiance to Michael Hulse =
as
the translator of W.G. Sebald. My discovery of Sebald came first =
through The
Rings of Saturn and then through The Emigrants, both in Hulse's =
marvelously
poetic translations -- translations that seemed to me to be works of =
English
literature in themselves. This was especially true of The Rings of =
Saturn, a
book built around a walking tour of England and containing numerous
references to the English author Sir Thomas Browne, a favorite of =
Sebald's.
The Germanness of the book's narrator was impossible to miss, but it =
had
been transmuted, in Hulse's sinuous sentences, into an Anglo-German
melancholic sensibility. So when I came to Austerlitz, translated =
instead by
Anthea Bell, I was startled. I suspect that on some level Bell's =
translation
is as good as Hulse's, but it was nonetheless a barrier I felt I had to
overcome, a new voice added to "Sebald's" old one. (My "Sebald," that =
is,
had consisted of Sebald plus Hulse.) And there was again the shock of a
change when I moved to Michael Hamburger's elegant, attentive =
translation of
Sebald's posthumously published After Nature. This time, though, I =
realized
what was happening and was able to brace myself against the unexpected.

Also, in the case of After Nature -- a book-length unrhymed poem, set =
out on
the page in broken lines -- I was alert to the way in which the
transformation of genre would inevitably mean a transformation of =
voice.
This, I subsequently reasoned, had also been true for Austerlitz, which =
is
Sebald's closest thing to a real novel, a sequential story featuring a
fictional character other than the narrator. So what I took as a shift
attributable to the translators might well have been just as much, or
instead, a shift in Sebald's own writing style. Anyway, despite the
differences I was sensing, Sebald remained essentially Sebald, for =
great
writers can never escape themselves, whether through translation or =
through
their own development or even through death.

My most intense experience with translation, thus far, has involved a
Japanese author. Like Javier Mar=CCas and W.G. Sebald, Haruki Murakami =
is a
writer who is intimately acquainted with Anglo-American culture even as =
he
remains outside it. (I think writers of this kind may well make the =
most
interesting test cases for translation; at any rate, I find myself
repeatedly drawn to them.) Murakami, who has translated Raymond Carver, =
F.
Scott Fitzgerald, and Paul Theroux into Japanese, is quite attached to =
the
Beatles, jazz, Scotch whiskey, Marx Brothers movies, and many other =
products
of Western culture. He repeatedly injects something akin to an American
sensibility -- a rebellious, non-salaryman's sensibility -- into his =
hapless
fictional protagonists. Yet the novels are written in Japanese and set, =
for
the most part, in Japan, so when we read them in English, we get (as =
with
Mar=EDas and Sebald) a strange sensation of foreignness mixed with
familiarity, of worlds collapsing in on each other.

The first three novels I read by Murakami -- A Wild Sheep Chase, =
Hard-Boiled
Wonderland and the End of the World, and Dance, Dance, Dance -- were =
all
translated by Alfred Birnbaum. When I finished the books, I was mildly
curious to know more about Murakami; I was desperate to know more about
Birnbaum. Who was this guy who could come up with two completely =
different
kinds of English, an old-fashioned fairy-tale diction and a sharp-edged
modern idiom, to render the two intertwined plot strands of Hard-Boiled
Wonderland? How did he manage to do that weird, youthful, but never
annoyingly with-it voice in which Murakami's narrator-protagonists =
spoke to
themselves? How, in short, could he make a Japanese writer sound so
remarkably American without losing any of his alien allure? All I could =
find
out, from the jacket notes, was that Birnbaum was born in Washington, =
D.C.,
in 1957, grew up in Japan, and lived at various times in Los Angeles, =
Tokyo,
London, and Barcelona.

Then The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle came out. This may still be Murakami's
best-known novel in America; it was his first crossover book, the one =
that
signaled his emergence from the ghetto of Kodansha to the classy =
precincts
of Knopf. I started the first chapter as soon as the book was =
available, but
right away I sensed that something was wrong. Turning to the front of =
the
book, I noticed the name of a new translator: Jay Rubin. What had =
happened
to my beloved Birnbaum? I called Kodansha, Knopf, the Society of =
Translators
-- no answer. Nobody knew anything about the missing Birnbaum. He had
apparently completed the transformation required of the Ideal =
Translator and
become a figment, a ghost, an invisible man.

But then I remembered some additional evidence of his corporeality, or =
at
least of his presence as a translator. Before publishing his novel with
Knopf, Murakami had given that same publisher a collection of short =
stories
called The Elephant Vanishes, and the first story in the book consisted =
of
the opening section of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I checked my copy of =
the
book, and yes, my memory had not deceived me -- that story, that =
beginning,
had been translated by Alfred Birnbaum. So the two translators of =
Murakami,
the two alternate realities, existed side by side.

Here, submitted as Exhibit A, are the opening sentences of the Rubin
translation:

"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of =
spaghetti and
whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The
Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

"I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was =
nearly
done, but because Claudio Abbado was bringing the London Symphony to =
its
musical climax."

Not bad, eh? Perfectly good English sentences presented by a reasonably
interesting narrator. But now listen to Exhibit B:

"I'm in the kitchen cooking spaghetti when the woman calls. Another =
moment
until the spaghetti is done; there I am, whistling the prelude to =
Rossini's
La Gazza Ladra along with the FM radio. Perfect spaghetti-cooking =
music.

"I hear the telephone ring but tell myself, Ignore it. Let the =
spaghetti
finish cooking. It's almost done, and besides, Claudio Abbado and the =
London
Symphony Orchestra are coming to a crescendo."

And there he is, my Birnbaum -- or rather, my voice-in-the-ear version =
of
Murakami, my Birnbaum-inflected Japanese narrator, my unemployed
cosmopolitan wastrel who loves jazzy rhythms and thinks of his life in =
the
present tense. Even the tiny details (the Italian rendering of the =
Rossini
title, the use of the term "crescendo" rather than "musical climax") =
seem to
me crucial to the smart but strangely innocent voice. In this =
translation,
the logic of cause-and-effect English sentence structure has been =
jettisoned
in favor of some other mode, and it is that mode -- the intrusion of =
the
surprising and the foreign and the unknowable into the mundane regime =
--
which marks the world of a Haruki Murakami novel.

I adapted, eventually, to Jay Rubin's perfectly good translations, and =
even
to the slightly more whimsical voice of Philip Gabriel, who did the =
English
for Murakami's latest novel, Sputnik Sweetheart. But all along, the =
Birnbaum
passion simmered. So you can imagine how the flame leapt up when I =
finished
the Rubin translation of Norwegian Wood (Murakami's first huge best =
seller
in Japan, published there in 1987 but not brought out in America until =
2000)
and read a reference in the Translator's Note to "Alfred Birnbaum's =
earlier
translation of Norwegian Wood, which was produced for distribution in =
Japan
... to enable students to enjoy their favorite author as they =
struggled with
the mysteries of English." We should not, the note enjoined us, try to
obtain this bootleg version, for "the present edition is the first =
English
translation that Murakami has authorized for publication outside =
Japan."
Aha!, I thought. So Murakami (or Murakami-plus-Rubin) is indeed running =
away
from Birnbaum, consciously suppressing him, attempting to do away with =
this
shadow self.

Naturally I sought out the bootleg version immediately. Thanks to the
Internet, such things are now readily available, if at a shocking =
price: The
two little paperbacks of the Kodansha English Library edition cost me =
over
$100. Not surprisingly, I found that the Birnbaum version was better, =
in
exactly the way his opening sentences of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle =
were
better. But I have yet to read the whole of the Alfred Birnbaum =
Norwegian
Wood. I am saving them for a rainy day, those two cunningly =
miniaturized
volumes, a red one and a green one, each encircled with a band of =
metallic
paper covered in Japanese writing. They're like a souvenir brought back =
from
a country I've never visited -- a strange, hard-boiled wonderland of =
wild
sheep and vanished elephants, a place that never existed except in the
imaginary terrain inhabited jointly if briefly by Haruki Murakami and =
Alfred
Birnbaum.

But let me not end on such an elegiac note. If you can lose an author
through a change in translators, you can also gain one in the same way. =
I
found this out with Dostoyevsky, who has already benefited from a =
century of
good translation into English, and whose latest incarnation is the work =
of
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

It seems to me that you are bound either to love Dostoyevsky or to hate =
him.
Some people love him when they are young and hate him when older, but I =
have
always loved him. I first loved him in Constance Garnett's =
translations, but
then I loved him at least as much in David Magarshack's. Dostoyevsky's =
own
obsessions are so strong that he dominates any translator, to the point
where the specifics of diction hardly seem to matter.

It wasn't until I read Pevear and Volokhonsky, though, that I detected =
an
element I had been missing up to then. To date, these two have =
translated
The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes From Underground,
Demons, and The Idiot. (They've also started in on Tolstoy, with Anna
Karenina, but I haven't sampled that yet.) What I found when I read =
their
Demons -- the novel that, in earlier translations, was usually called =
The
Possessed -- was that I understood, for the very first time, the source =
of
the unease in a Dostoyevsky novel. We are kept off balance not only by =
the
characters and their dilemmas, not only by the horrifying situations =
and
social messes, but also by that very strange narrator who is both there =
and
not there, who comes in when the author needs him and quietly =
disappears
when he doesn't. Pevear and Volokhonsky have done something with
Dostoyevsky's language -- I don't know exactly what or how -- so that =
you
can actually hear that ingratiating, whiny, gossipy, unreliable, =
all-seeing
fellow who conveys the story to you.

Once you have had your ears opened to this, you can go back to the
Magarshack or the Garnett and hear it in them as well. The narrator, it
turns out, was there all along, but it took these new translators to =
make us
aware of him. In giving us their own insightful version of this great
Russian novelist, Pevear and Volokhonsky have magically enriched all =
the
previous versions. Perhaps it takes a writer as large and multivoiced =
as
Dostoyevsky to make room for all these translators at once. Or perhaps =
it
takes someone who has been dead for over a hundred years, so that =
several
generations of interpreters are required to convey him to us. But =
either
way, it gives me hope. As long as a literary work is there in its =
original
language, however inaccessible to me, there remains the possibility =
that it
will eventually be given a new voice with which to speak its old lines. =
The
prison of language is only temporary, that is, and someday a merciful =
guard
-- the perfect translator -- will come along with his keys and let us =
out.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Wendy Lesser is the editor of The Threepenny Review. Her most recent =
book is
Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering (Houghton Mifflin,
2002).