A note on literary translation
John Hobbins picks up on an old post by Richard Rhodes by way of this comment on my post. I must confess that I’m more with John on this point, but I do just want to ask what exactly we mean by a literary translation, and whether it is quite so opposed to a dynamic equivalence translation as both John and Richard seem to assume. (john notes a similarity in passing, but his stress is on the difference.)
There is a form of dynamic equivalence theory to which it is opposed, and that is one that thinks words and sentences simply encode meaning, and that the meaning somehow exists irrespective of the form, syntax and lexical choices made by the writer / speaker. Then this meaning simply needs to be decoded from one language and encoded in another. This, to my mind, is an inappropriate reification of meaning. I’m not sure that any translator worth their salt would subscribe to this blunt and naive model.
But words do not simply encode meaning, they instantiate relationships, perform acts, and elicit feelings and responses, and this process is conveyed not just by semantics, but by structure. Dynamic equivalent translations that are truly equivalent will seek not only appropriate language and appropriate forms to convey the affect as well as the meaning. These may be appropriately literary in that they draw on the range of literary devices and forms that produce similar and equivalent affects in the target language. Dynamic equivalence does not necessarily have to be limited to the language of a certain (usually lower end) reading age. Indeed, one could argue that if it doesn’t take account of literary style and affect, it is not truly equivalent.
There is still an argument to be had. Literary translations can attempt to find an acceptable way of conveying the strangeness of the form in the source language, or they can seek an appropriate form in the target language that will produce an emotional response other than “this is strange”.. John seems, in his quotation of José Ortega y Gasset to be arguing for the former, and has been trying to illustrate it from some of his posts on the psalms. I would like to see people experiment much more with the latter.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Well, Eugene Nida more or less did - but arguably has backed away from it in his later work. Surely Nida is worth a lot of salt?
I think one might well argue that NEB and REB are both “literary” and “dynamic equivalence” translations. As such, REB at least (having drawn back from some of the textual liberties of NEB) is a good translation for a target audience which appreciates literature and high level literary English.
I agree with you in rejecting the concept of a “literary translation” which is designed not to facilitate understanding of the text but to produce the response “this is strange”.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Hmm - yes I was actually thinking that Nida had moved away from this position, which I can understand in the light of first arguing for it against a strong formal equivalence establishment.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:09 am
John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry and I have been carrying on an email conversation that is relevant here. My main point is the following.
It’s a false dichotomy to say that dynamic equivalent translation (done properly) is opposed to literary translation. True dynamic equivalent translation will sometimes read like literature and sometimes read like the most mundane prose, according to how the original text read. I’d argue that it’s a mistake to say a priori that a translation should sound literary.
I’ll grant that current off-the-shelf dynamic equivalence translations are too stylistically one note. (Also a big problem with the very popular paraphrase, The Message, which is like unsophisticated dynamic equivalence on steroids). But that problem is equally true of literary translations in reverse. They are too one note but in the opposite direction, inappropriately so for most of the NT, not to mention that they are, in general, inaccurate to boot, as measured by the standards of contemporary translation outside of the Biblical context.
Score: dynamic equivalence -1, a priori literary translation -2. Dynamic equivalence wins.
October 13th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Now most of that (I don’t really understand your final score) I agree with. My fundamental point is that to be properly literary, or properly dynamic, translations must be polytonic.