*my comments
“The Translator’s unconscious”
William Weaver
- translating as an unreflective process
- translator’s choices are “unconscious”
- many choices are linguistic and cultural values
- rules of translation process as unconscious too
The irreducible differences in translation
- There are differences in ST & TT before a translator translates
- Goal for Translation Studies: ultimately ethical one of developing a practice that describes, explains, and takes responsibility for the differences that translation inevitably makes
Derrida’s body of the ST
- To relinquish materiality – that is the driving force of translation
- translation creates another signifying chain proliferates semantic possibilities
- translation as recontextualizing (domestication)
compensation – A translator may decide to vary the form and meaning of ST because the differences are so prominent and do not occur at the same points in the ST
- a remainder may be unconscious on translator’s part, but highly significant in relation to the ST and the target culture
- Bass’s misconstrue of the passive and active voices
- meaning is still retained
- why the error?
- it reveals what we can call the “translator’s dream” that a translation will restore the ST in it entirety, in its materiality, without loss or gain, that the translation will establish such a similarity to the ST as to overcome the irreducible differences between languages and cultures”
- The translator’s unconscious can emerge through variations on linguistic and discursive structures through a remainder
MISSING PAGES IN VENUTI’S TEXT ????
Neruda’s poem translated by Walsh
- close to Spanish
- standard dialect of English
- Walsh wanted to be insignificant during translation process
- his practice/translation contradicts his intention
(Missing pages on Walsh’s translation of Neruda)
The unconscious motivation of false cognates
- False cognates can potentially show a slip or desire in the translator’s unconscious
- False cognate – a translating-language word that closely resembles a source-language word in form, often because of a shared etymology, but that nonetheless signifies a very differentt meaning between the two languages that have undergone different historical developments
- Usually unexperienced translators make this mistake
(Missing pages on false cognates)
The Translator, the Name-of-the-Father, and the Mother Tongue
- Oedipal Triangle
- lies at heart of Freudian psychoanalysis
- For Lacan, “Name-of-the-Father” is used to designate the symbolic function that the father comes to assume in the chain of signifiers constitutive of the subject
- Translator is placed between
- the Name-of-the-Father in the form of a source author and text
- the mother tongue and the translation produced in it
- Law of translation is the source author and text
- The translating process may reveal the translator’s repressed desire to challenge the source authority by releasing an unconscious remainder
- How much of a translation do we make our own unconsciously because we, the translators, want to be visible?
Some Conclusions
- Similarity in translation
- between ST & TT
- between TT & values in target culture
- the irreducible differences in translation motivate the reductive search for such similarities, even with hoping to show the differences
- Advocating for foreignization strategy
- A cause of irreducible differences in translation is the translator’s unconscious
- Is there a difference between the male and female translator’s unconscious?