The Art of Translation and the Treacherous Sea of Language

My mind has drifted onto the art of translation, something that has long interested me. Obviously, to translate a noun, a word such as "dog", into another language, is simple. But translating thoughts, expressions (current and ancient) all subject to cultural influence, is an art, not a science.

A dog is a dog (or is it?)

This was brought home to me recently when I dipped into a new version of "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", a travelogue from the 17th century by the Japanese haiku poet Basho. In the Introduction was a short excerpt of about six different translations of the opening lines of the main text. Quite illuminating just how different each was, even the words "deep north" becoming in some the "interior". For Basho himself, one life, one journey - but what for those who read of it? Where does that journey take us?

Heading north - or the interior?

Here is Stephen Batchelor, a Buddhist writer, on the art of translation:- "It requires that one convey a peculiar configuration of sense, feeling, perception, anguish, desire, and understanding from one world and resurrect it in another......the translator is but a conduit through which a minor miracle occurs. The translation is inscribed in one's flesh; in the pulsing blood, sweat on the brow, spasms of dread or rapture that course through the nerves". This may seem a bit over the top, but maybe we would have to try it for ourselves?

There was a Christian theologian, John Dunne, who wrote a book called "The Way of All the Earth", which spoke of passing over into the world of another Faith, of seeking to walk in another's shoes, of seeing the world through other eyes. Having done so, then to return to ourselves - and to see what has changed, if anything. It does seem that a good translator would have to be able to do this. The whole thing requires empathy.

We all seem to have our very own way of seeing and this can lead to closing our hearts to others, who often see with different eyes.

W. H. Auden wrote in "The Shield of Achilles":-

That girls are raped,that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

Auden

To be locked into a world of our very own axioms can be stifling, even if not unethical.

All this involves what has been called "The Treacherous Sea of Language", a sea where the word becomes the thing itself and the "thing itself" different for everybody.

Caught in a treacherous sea

But I think I'm beginning to waffle..............

So goodbye.

Related Quotes:-

HUI YUNG (4TH–5TH CENTURY) 

Translating Holy Books

We go unwinding the woof from the web of meaning.

Words of the sutras day by day come forth. 

Head on, we chase the mystery of the dharma.