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TRANSLATION
AND CULTURE—THE GESTALT PRINCIPLE IN TRANSLATION— |
| The
present-day socio-political and cultural circumstances offer the
individual of the 21st century a new perspective on the concepts
which used to be given straightforward definitions in the past.
Communication has reached a level man could not even dream of two
or three decades ago. The frantic and continuous development of
technology has caused nations, cultures and languages to gather
together in a sort of a melting pot. Scientists often refer to the
product of this process as “multiculturalism”, “globalisation,
etc., concepts which probably belong to a new international paradigm.
However, they have failed to identify its by-products, which might
prove even more significant for the human society of the centuries
to come. The concepts of translation and culture seem to acquire
new dimensions due to the fact that they are key elements of this
emerging paradigm. One of the most meaningful definitions of the first concept this approach is dealing with is that given by G. Toury in 1978: “Translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions."1 Thus, translators always face the most interesting and perhaps the most challenging aspect of their activity, namely the problem of finding the best expression of the source-language text into the target language. The severity of this problem depends on the cultural gap between the two languages and on the translator’s skills of finding the best way to transfer the cultural meanings of the source-language text into the target-language text. The problems which every translator has to face, particularly in the case of literary translation are lexical, syntactical, and last but not least, ideological. Therefore, the translator finds himself/herself in the position of a “go-between” bridging the differences and still preserving the original meaning and atmosphere into the target-language text. Translation is usually viewed as the transfer of meaning from one language, termed as source language, to another, termed as target language. Translation takes place in writing, and interpreting is its oral counterpart. The two terms are often confused. At its best, a successful translation should read as if it were originally written in the new language. Recent academic research has shown that translating from one language to another is one of the most complex higher order activities of the human brain. The translation method is dictated by the purpose of the translation. While the best translations will always be performed primarily by a human being, in some (limited) situations, machine translation can be a useful technique, and this is likely to increase in importance over time as this technology evolves. The word translation has three different meanings. It refers to translation as: - an abstract concept which includes translation as both a process and a product, namely it refers to both the activity of translating and to translation as a distinct entity; - a product of the process of translating, namely the translated text; - a process, namely the activity of the translator. Several definitions of translation have been given so far, but they are omitted in many linguistic dictionaries. Roger T. Bell, in his book Translation and Translating: Theory and Practice, selected some of these definitions, which he labels “typical”: “Traduire c’est énoncer dans un autre language (ou langue cible) ce qui a été enoncé dans un autre langue source, en conservant les équivalences sémantiques et stilistiques.” (Dubois, J., et. al., Dictionnaire de linguistique, Larousse, Paris, 1973)2, or “Translation is the expression in another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.” Stating, “equivalence is directional and subjectless”, the Spanish scholar Anthony Pym suggests a number of fairly representative equivalence-based definitions of translation3: "Interlingual translation can be defined as the replacement of elements of one language, the domain of translation, by equivalent elements of another language, the range [of translation]." 4 John Cunnison Catford, maintained in 1965 that "Translation may be defined as follows: the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent material in another language (TL)."5 "Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message."6 And finally, Wilss refers to the target text should become: "[Translation] leads from a source-language text to a target-language text which is as close an equivalent as possible and presupposes an understanding of the content and style of the original."7 As regards the possible translation theories derived from the meaning of the word itself, Andrei Bantas, taking into account Bell’s theories (translation as a process, translation as a product and translation as a concept), formulates a fourth theory: the interpretative theory of translation, which, besides focusing on translation as a product and a process, analyses the process of interpretation, comprising wide fields of linguistics, psycho-linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, cultural context, communicative competence, within the framework of “translation-oriented text analysis”. This is in fact a multilateral approach on the phenomenon of translation-oriented interpretation. Bantas mentions that the translation difficulties can be overcome by interpretation and analysis.8 Culture is a far more complex concept and thus should be given a definition that captures its core elements which are not subject to change. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 defines culture as the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour (behaviour peculiar to Homo sapiens, together with material objects used as an integral part of this behaviour). Thus it consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines culture from a social (“the ideas, beliefs and customs that are shared and accepted by people in a society; the attitudes and beliefs about something that are shared by a particular group of people or in a particular organisation”), artistic (“activities that are related to art, music, literature, etc.”) and scientific point of view (“the process of growing bacteria for scientific use, or the bacteria produced by this”). The Webster’s Universal Dictionary defines culture as: artistic and intellectual pursuits and products; a quality of enlightenment or refinement arising from an acquaintance with and concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, etc.; development or improvement of the mind by education and training; the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another; a particular form or stage of civilisation as that of a nation or period; the behaviours and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group; the cultivation of micro-organisms, as bacteria, or of tissues, for scientific study, medicinal use, etc.; the product or growth resulting from such cultivation; the act or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage; the raising of plants, animals, especially with a view to their improvement. There is nothing new or special in these definitions. The most interesting aspect is the fact that all the aforementioned dictionaries (chosen almost fortuitously) define culture as referring to a particular group, to what the members of a certain group have in common. This statement does not exclude the possibility that two or more groups share several identical elements belonging to their culture. Therefore culture could be defined as the set of elements that belong to a certain group of any kind and defines that group. That is why one can speak of Greek, German etc. culture. What they fail to present is the holistic aspect of individual cultures, i.e. the fact that all cultures have something in common, their origin, certain aspects, etc., and they should be considered as a whole. Newmark defines culture as "the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression"9, underlying the fact that every group has its own characteristics. Furthermore, Newmark does not consider “language as a component or feature of culture”10, while Vermeer states, "language is part of a culture"11. According to Newmark, Vermeer's position is similar to admitting untranslatability as ultimate thesis. But Vermeer explains his attitude towards the relation between language and culture with a view to translation, by stating that the translator’s role is to find an appropriate form of the source-language text in the target language. A holistic approach to both culture and translation would solve the problem of “incompatibility”. Newmark speaks of several categories (material culture, gestures and habits, cultural references, lexical feature) of "foreign cultural words"12. Componential analysis in translation is "a flexible but orderly method of bridging the numerous lexical gaps, both linguistic and cultural, between one language and another"13. The two orientations in translation analysed by Nida (formal or dynamic equivalence) should also be taken into account when speaking of cultural implications for translation of the elements in these categories. Translation and culture are two deeply interconnected notions. E. Nida asserts that both linguistic and cultural differences between the two (target and source) languages are equally important as the "differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure"14. Nida’s opinion is that parallels in culture often provide a common understanding despite significant formal shifts in translation. Therefore, cultural implications are just as important for the translator as lexical aspects and his/her approach should be equally focused on both areas. Language, "the heart within the body of culture," (S. Bassnett), roughly defined as the distinctive form of speech of a particular community, most or all of which is unintelligible to outsiders, is one of the most important cultural elements. Be it isolating (each element is an independent word without inflections: Chinese and Vietnamese), agglutinating (elements combine without changing their form to express compound ideas: Japanese, German), inflectional (the boundaries between morphemes are fuzzy, and morphemes can express more than one grammatical meaning at a time: Latin, Russian) or polysynthetic: several morphemes are put together to form complex words which can function as a whole sentence: Chukchi), language is a channel that makes communication between cultures and within the same culture, possible. The same language can make communication possible within the particular group it belongs to, but when communication implies crossing borders another agent is necessary: translation. Translation must mediate the communication process between the two groups, decoding the messages and ensuring accuracy. Therefore, what translation and culture have in common is their most important element (if we were to contradict Newman), i.e. language. This element does not hinder translation, but makes it possible. What might obstruct translation (and thus communication) is the translator’s attempt to impose upon the target culture certain elements belonging exclusively to the source culture, above all in the case of literary translation, specifically poetry translation, where cultural individuality is most prominent. Translation thus becomes a transcultural activity, bridging the gap between two or more cultures. This gap between cultures, and thus between languages, can be bridged and the concept of untranslatability proved erroneous by applying the principles of the Gestalt theory to translation. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been gestellt; i.e., “placed,” or “put together.” An exact equivalent in English is rather difficult to find. The word is usually translated as “form”, “shape” or “pattern”, “configuration”, in psychology. The originator of the Gestalt theory is the Czech-born psychologist, Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), who published in 1912 the paper considered to mark the founding of the Gestalt school. In it he reported the result of an experimental study done at Frankfurt with two colleagues, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. Later on, in his Über Gestalttheorie (an address before the Kant Society, Berlin, on December 7, 1924), Max Wertheimer presented the principles of the Gestalt theory in detail and its relevance to all sectors of human culture. However, he did not specifically refer to translation. Translation implies the transposition of thoughts expressed in one language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group and requires a process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. Cultures establish more and more links between one another and so we should start thinking of multicultural elements and stop considering cultures as individual parts limited to a certain environment. What the 21st century-translator has to face is not merely a text taken from a particular literary work and, as translation theorists might argue, which is perfectly translatable or untranslatable. In the so-called “process of translation,” translators are primarily dealing with the entire culture the text belongs to. The target reader expects the translator to offer a product which contains all those elements that make it identifiable among the translations from other cultures along with those elements which establish a connection with his/her own culture. Therefore, the translator’s job is to perform a cross-cultural translation whose success ultimately depends on his/her understanding of the culture he/she is working with, and his/her ability of preserving those cultural elements living in the original text and embed them in the final product. This final product should not appear unfamiliar to the target reader but a vivid and perfect link between the two cultures. Such enterprise implies several sine qua non requirements: the translator must be both bi-lingual and bi-cultural aiming at becoming multi-lingual and multi-cultural. Wertheimer would say that this ideal, and it appears as such in the eyes of most translators, is perfectly attainable by observing the principles of the Gestalt theory, which clearly state, if applied to translation and translators, that bi- is not enough and certainly not a finality, but it urgently calls for multi-. To go further, the translators’ main task is to initiate a ‘Gestalt (cultural) group-therapy’ addressing all cultures, process which will be completed when the primary cultural unity is reached. The fundamental formula of Gestalt theory may be perfectly applied to the processes translation involves, as these processes are first and foremost intellectual. Language should be actually, not only in theory, considered part of a whole (a particular culture), and that whole should be viewed as part of greater whole (the entire human culture). Similarly, a literary work is part of a national literature and that national literature is part of the whole world literature. The ideal translator should be fully aware of these facts and try to produce a cross-cultural translation. The behaviour of these wholes is not determined by that of individual parts they consist of; these part-processes are determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. A translation, as part of a literature, and consequently of a culture, must be viewed and analysed according to its dynamic functional relationship to the whole from which it was lifted or one can never understand and value it properly. However, the nature of these wholes falls within the range of contemporary Gestalt theorists and philosophers. One of the examples that Max Wertheimer uses to demonstrate the credibility of his theory may as well be applied to translation. The target-language text is just like a melody whose form is deliberately altered. The listener/reader is able to recognize the melody/text despite the new elements it contains. The changed melody/text must contain a factor or an element which enables the listener/reader to recognize in it the original. This is the form-quality, or the Gestaltqualität, as Wertheimer would put it, of the original piece. This element (be it the rhythm, the rhyme, the general atmosphere etc.) of the original text is essential and must be preserved in the target-language text; it is part of the original form and must survive all changes that occur in the process of translation, according to the holistic theory Wertheimer proposes. There must be also a special type of metaphysical element that transcends the basic processes of translation, a “higher process” that “produces” the unity between the source and the target-language text, between the source and the target culture and between those and the human culture as a whole. Sceptics might argue that it is quite impossible for a person to possess the sum of the elements human culture consists of, and thus the ideal translator is a myth. This is a truism. But what if every source-language text is a part which is determined by the character of the entire whole, and the translator must preserve this link between part and whole? What if the ideal translator, the ideal multi-cultural and multi-lingual person is precisely that person who manages to grasp the “musicality” of an entire “symphony” from a short “melody”, and thus multi- is just a question of generating that “higher process” of the mind and not one of time and volume of knowledge? The ideal translator is that person who perceives what takes place in each single part of the source culture and understands that this depends upon what the whole is and manages to render that single part, in a different form/language belonging to a different, but not totally alien, culture. However, the new text the translator produces should not seem totally alien to the target culture. Another example the Gestalt theorists frequently employ is that of the two colours and the way they are perceived. It also applies perfectly to the relation between the translator and the source-language text he/she approaches and the target-language text he/she produces. Wertheimer asks those who raised against such an analogy two questions and provides an answer as well: Is it really true that a specific stimulus always gives rise to the same sensation? Perhaps the prevailing. whole-conditions will themselves determine the effect of stimulation? This kind of formulation leads to experimentation, and experiments show, for example, that when I see two colours the sensations I have are determined by the whole-conditions of the entire stimulus situation. Thus, also, the same local physical stimulus pattern can give rise to either a unitary and homogeneous figure, or to an articulated figure with different parts, all depending upon the whole-conditions which may favour either unity or articulation. Obviously the task, then, is to investigate these "whole-conditions" and discover what influences they exert upon experience.15 Therefore,
the sensations that the two source and target-language texts produce
must be in conformity with the whole-conditions of the two cultures,
respectively. The translator’s role is then to explore these
“whole-conditions” and discover their influences upon
the reader of the source and that of the target-language text. The
readers do not react to sensations but to something that is “coloured”
and “exciting”, “gay”, “strong”,
“affecting”, i.e. they do not react to the text itself
but to the feelings, emotions it conveys. This emotional component
of the original text is another element that the translator should
preserve in an ideal translation. Notes:
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