Sistema Opioide

Equivalence or fidelity has been commonly referred to as one of the key primary issues when people discuss translation. Normally in the activity of

translation, people tend to regard the original as the unquestionable authority. Yet both literary criticism and translation studies have challenged this taken- for-granted notion. As Benjamin informs us, the relationship between the original and its translation is not one of a superior to its subordinate, but one that shares a more intimate, natural and vital connection (Benjamin,1999). Translation is not a counterfeit constructed from another language, aimed at imitating something as closely as possible. Benjamin claims in his essay The Translator’s Task that “no translation, however good it may be, can have any significance as regards the original” (Benjamin, 1999, p.71). Then what is the task of a translator? Benjamin raises a notion of “the life, and continuing life, of works of art”. He argues that translation proceeds from the original, but not so much from its life as from its “afterlife”. In other words, a translator should work for the purpose of continuing the life of the original. Translations “do not so much serve the work’s fame as they owe their existence to it. In them the original’s life is constantly renewed and achieves its latest and most

comprehensive development”(ibid).

Unapproachable Absolute Fidelity

Echoing Benjamin’s point, Jacque Derrida states that translation is “a moment in the growth of the original, which will complete itself in enlarging itself” (cited in Venuti, 1992, p.7). For Derrida, the absolute, faithful

translation does not exist, for translation is far beyond “word for word” translation, but a “sense for sense” translation on a cultural level. Derrida claims that ‘no translation strategy can be linked deterministically to a textual effect, theme, cultural discourse, ideology, or institution.”(Venuti, 2001, p.172)

The best translation possible is what Derrida calls “the relevant translation” where the act of translation participates in an “economy of in-betweenness”, positioned somewhere between “absolute relevance, the most appropriate, adequate, univocal transparency, and the most aberrant and opaque irrelevance” (ibid, p. 179).

The Illusion of Transparency

Relevance is not a new concept but a popular theory in translation studies in the twentieth century. According to Venuti (1995), it derives from a criterion dominant in English-language translation studies – fluency. Being aware that absolute fidelity is unapproachable, most translators aim at a fidelity of the spirit and the tone, to render the text so that it does not seem to be translated at all, but is as smooth as if written by the author in the target language. Venuti describes such an effect as ‘the illusion of transparency’ –“an effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s efforts to ensure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning” (1995, p.1).

Hence, under the influence of the principle of fluency, Eugene Nida set up the concept of “dynamic equivalence”, which “aims at complete naturalness of expression and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant within the context of his own culture” (1964, p.159). Ernst-August Gutt’s “relevance theory” is also useful here. He argued that the translator of foreign texts should take the receptor’s ’“cognitive environment” into consideration and minimize their “processing effort”, therefore offering a translation that is

“clear and natural in expression in the sense that it should not be unnecessarily difficult to understand”(1991, p.102).

One important feature of the theories above is that the effect of ‘transparency’ is based upon minimizing the foreignness in the original text by assimilating it into the linguistic structures and cultural context of the target language. Such attempts can be rather controversial. Walter Benjamin points to how some translators commit a “fundamental error” here, quoting Pannwitaz: “the translator…holds fast to the state in which his own language happens to be rather than allowing it to be put powerfully in movement by the foreign language” (cited in Benjamin, 1999, p.73). Instead of offering a fluent translation to minimize a reader’s “processing effort”, it might be more challenging but more useful, therefore, to broaden and deepen students’ literary understanding, challenge their institutional knowledge of literature, through the importation of the foreign.

Like Benjamin, Derrida was acutely aware of the fluent, easily readable, and “transparent” text that ‘relevant’ translations put so much effort into producing. Although Derrida admits that the “relevant” translation is an inevitable aim, he thinks that adhering to “the illusion of transparency” may be risky as it “leads the reader to believe that the signified has been transferred without any substantial difference” (Venuti, 2003, p.248).

The Principles underpinning the Participatory Drama Translation

Informed by the translation theories reviewed above, I established a set of principles for the translation from the two modernist short stories into

fidelity’ to the original text, but to serve the ‘afterlife’ of the original, offering a renewed reading experience in the language of drama in an attempt to make the original story achieve a constant and comprehensive development within another context. In other words, the translation worked to keep the original text alive, and to invite the reader to engage with it.

Second, the translation process was approached as a ‘growing out from’ the original, the drama translation becoming an organic work shaped by the original text, growing from within it.

Third, the two modernist short stories are both complex texts in terms of content and form but it would not have been impossible to diminish the difficulties and turn them into ‘smooth’, ‘transparent’ adaptations to suit

students’ expectation and thus minimize their ‘processing efforts’. However, it would have harmed the style of the originals and would have stopped the reader from investigating the innovations integral to modernist literature. As a result, the purpose for conducting this research would have been lost.

In the next section, I will refer to further relevant theories in order to discuss how I translated the two short stories into participatory drama in terms of narrative and point of view. (Since modernist texts are innovative in many different ways, I have not attempted to draw up a general formula here. Details specific to the translation of each story are presented in Chapters 7 and 8, following a detailed textual analysis of each.) In addition, below I will rely on reception theory and writings on theatre audiences to discuss how I used participatory drama as pedagogy to engage students with the two texts.