A Real Dichotomy?

Sometimes, I think equivalence is impossible in languages (see my previous post for a short discussion of that), and sometimes I think it is possible. I do think that it is up to us as translators (and I would add that as non-translators as well of a linguistic community) to convey meaning in the same or in a similar sense as to what we thought was being communicated in the original. But that leaves so much subjectivity, doesn’t it?

So I won’t bore you with traditional discussions of equivalence or non-equivalence, and instead, I’d like to talk about the vibrancy and potential of translation. What I mean by this is that in understanding another culture, (or better said, trying to understand another culture because we will never fully understand cultures other than our own, and even with respect to our own, we may not have a full understanding of it), we ought to try to create new meanings. That is why I think translation is (or should be) a creative act. It is (or should be) not merely transferring the meanings of one language to another. That is supremely boring (in my opinion)!

The act of transferring meanings should be able to be done by a machine (and alas, it is being done by machines!)

So, my thesis here is just that translation ought to be creative. There is a sense in which translations have become commonplace, and so it is normal to view translation as a transfer of meaning. I am not saying that this kind of translation is not useful. I am just saying it does not interest me as a translator and/or linguist.

Of course, there exist a myriad of situations in which exaction and equivalence is not just preferred, it is mandatory. Take, for example, communications with legal and/or political implications. Of course, if the President of the USA is saying something publicly, we don’t want to, as translators (and intepreters), convey the wrong message. But even this admits of so much subjectivity. There is so much subjectivity in the act of translation and interpretation that it is very difficult to define what a proper translation is. And it is difficult to define whether a proper translation is even desirable, even if we assume we can define what it is.

But it also can be said that if we were to take the previous example, as in the President of the USA saying something publicly, we could say that even if we did translate this with a machine, even that could convey the wrong message. So therefore, there is no foolproof way of translation! There is no method of guaranteeing that a translation will meet the needs of the target audience. This leaves us in a bit of a predicament.

Or perhaps it does not. Perhaps it is true that even given this ambiguity, this principal characteristic of what translation ought to do or be, that translation still can be done. Of course it can still be done. It is just in our hands as translators what we’d like it to look like, I suppose.