Guy Tiphane
Dr. Davaran
EN 202
April 22, 2003
The Semantic Autonomy
of Translated Text
In Interpretation Theory, Paul Ricoeur talks about the “semantic autonomy of the text, which results from the disconnection of the mental intention of the author from the verbal meaning of the text, of what the author meant and what the text means” (30). This disconnection becomes even more pronounced when the text is transmitted across generations and languages, involving translators and editors to produce a new text read by readers from another time and culture. Semantic autonomy takes a new dimension as it results from a collaborative, albeit serial, effort to adapt the original work to the requirements of a new audience.
Stendhal wrote (or it is said he dictated) The Charterhouse of Parma in 1830, and attempted a revision after Balzac published in 1840 a laudatory review criticizing its lack of rigor which would have caused readers to lose interest in it. Balzac preferred his second reading and speculated that there would be an issue of accessibility of the text: readers would stumble on grammar and details. But his review praised the meaning of the book, “a work which can be appreciated only by minds and men that are truly superior” (trans. Howard, 511). In his response letter, Stendhal wrote “I shall correct the style of the Chartreuse, since it offends you, but I shall have great difficulty” (520) and that how rewriting it in the expected style would make it much longer. The rewriting of the book was never completed, but we could wonder if any modern writer could write a comparable book in 52 days and send it directly to the publisher with no revisions. Nowadays, the publisher would be concerned about selling enough copies of the book, and therefore require editing to be performed. Text is adapted to its intended audience: even Harry Potter is edited for an American readership from its British original.
The Charterhouse of Parma has been translated several times into English, and more effort has been put into translating the text than in writing the original[1]. At issue with the work of translation would be to create an effect on the reader that is as close as possible to the effect on the reader of the original version. With a difference in language and time, this would be a colossal undertaking, and the temptation for translator’s license must be great. The translator needs to be a reader of the original text and the author of the new text, needing to put himself in the author’s mind and historical context, and to adopt the characters and events of the novel. The translator becomes a re-author with extraordinary constraints.
Figure 1 illustrates the path from the author’s expression to the reader’s perception, through the work of the translator. The author’s ideas expressed in the text in his own context (time and place, mindset, etc.) are reworked by the translator in another context, producing the new text. The reader, in a third context, makes his own ideas which are most likely different from Stendhal’s or Balzac’s.
With The Charterhouse of Parma we have access to many different translations, so it is a worthwhile exercise to illustrate their effects. The following paragraph is from the original French version:
Ce
ne fut qu’à dix lieues par-delà le Pô que le prisonnier se réveilla tout à
fait, il avait une épaule luxée et force écorchures. La duchesse avait encore des façons si
extraordinaires que le maître d’une auberge de village, où l’on dîna, crut avoir affaire à une
princesse du sang impérial, et allait lui faire rendre les honneurs qu’il
croyait lui être dus, lorsque Ludovic dit à cet homme que la princesse le
ferait immanquablement mettre en prison s’il s’avisait de faire sonner les
cloches. (393)
A 1924 translation by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff of the same paragraph reads:
It was not until
they were ten leagues beyond the
The same paragraph in a 1999 translation by R. Howard reads:
It was only when
they were some ten leagues beyond the
We must refrain from critiquing each translation, because as readers aware of the original text, we could find inaccuracies ad infinitum. However we would also not be able to find the perfect translation, the one that would guarantee to have the same effect the French text had on a French reader (not counting the cultural and temporal differences). We have to accept the text as re-authored, and the fact that the two languages do not intersect at times.
How acceptable is such re-authoring to a reader? Probably as acceptable as new revisions by an author of his own work. As Ricoeur said “what the text means now matters more than what the author meant when he wrote it” (30). Not only do we not have access to the author to explain the text, we live in a different century, in a different place, and in a different culture. The small differences in language between translations become insignificant when compared to the impact of the culture shock experienced by new readers. It would make sense to the publisher to follow Balzac’s advice and to make sure that the reader does not stumble on grammatical issues, because the modern reader will have difficulty understanding the characters of the novel and what they do.
No translation
is perfect, especially when the distance between languages and cultures
increases. Meaning is lost in
translation, as well as in the passage of time.
But this very fact illustrates the importance of translating because
otherwise more meaning would be lost.
Notice that there is a fine line between translation and adaptation,
where the text and the ideas are modernized to make it more accessible to a
wider audience. As we do not know a good
measurement method of effect, other
than popularity (itself highly dependent on context), it is not possible to
judge whether or not adaptation is good practice.
One does not need to know a foreign language to appreciate the difficulties of translation: it suffices to know that there are words, expressions, concepts and objects that do not exist in other cultures or that will be lost in future generations. For example, in Raymond Carver’s story “Cathedral,” the protagonist shakes “onion skins” from a paper bag. At the time Carver wrote the story, “onion skin” was also a kind of paper commonly used on a typewriter (which the author used to type his stories). That meaning may be lost to the modern reader with no knowledge of the artifact. In turn, a translator would have to choose between naming the vegetable and naming the paper, faced with the impossibility of using the metaphor and the certainty of losing meaning.
Finally, a parallel can be drawn with the musical world. A composer’s (e.g. J.S. Bach) musical piece (e.g. the Goldberg Variations) written in musical notation can be interpreted and performed by several musicians at different times and using different instruments. The listeners can attach new meanings (moods, choreography) to the piece that had not been foreseen by the composer. Such a perspective would make the case in the literary world for more translations and interpretations to achieve a wider range of meanings, and a wider audience which, after all, is good.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” In Cathedral. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the
Surplus of Meaning.
Stendhal. La Chartreuse de Parme.
---. The Charterhouse of
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