Posted: December 9th, 2014

Translation Moving Toward the Digital Age

Translation Moving Toward the Digital Age

The primary function of translation is to establish communication within the same cultural setting and also across language borders. However, we have to keep in mind that communication is always preceded by the act of interpretation. We interpret texts, whether they be verbal, visual, or musical texts or cultural situations. The immediate connection with the thought of translation has traditionally been with verbal texts. How can written messages be transferred from one language into another, from one culture into another? For the interpretation and the translation of verbal texts, no electronic or digital devices have been necessary, which meant that throughout previous centuries discussions about the craft and theory of translation have focused mainly on the transplantation of words and their possible semantic meanings from one language into another.
The introduction of electronic and digital technology prompted a widening of translation thinking. How relevant was the paradigm of translation beyond the level of verbal translation? It soon became apparent that the concept of translation had to enter the realm of visual, musical, multimedia, and digital translations. The introduction of digital technology and digital thinking reconfirmed one of the basic driving forces of translation, namely, the inherent power to constantly create connections between people and the work they come into contact with. In other words, translation creates a never-ending dialogue, which reaffirms the basic function of translation, namely,  to create associations.
The introduction of the digital liberates an object from being fixed and static in space and time. Attention is taken away from the object itself to the possible interactions with the object. In that sense, the interpretive act is no longer static, but rather a continuous dialogue with the object. Digital technology allows us to move from the descriptive level to the interactive level. The person who interacts with a verbal, visual, or musical work is equipped to engage in a never-ending dialogue with the work, which intensifies the experience of the work. Ultimately, a person might even advance to the level of responding to and modifying the text, the object, or the situation. Digital encourages participation!
Thus, it becomes apparent that the movement from the verbal to the visual, the musical, and ultimately to the digital flows in a natural sequence, supported by technology.
Translation is concerned not only with verbal, visual, and musical translations but also with the translation of movement and human gestures, topics that certainly have not been treated with any kind of seriousness in the past.  In short, the digital technology creates a totally new involvement.
The translations of verbal, visual, and musical texts have gained clearly defined boundaries in past decades as to their critical and practical dimensions. Many scholarly monographs and articles have been dedicated to these topics. At times, some of the scholarly studies have perhaps reached a high level of abstraction that doesn’t necessarily provide particularly helpful guidelines for the translator. It is desirable that all comments about the art and craft of translation should actually be generated from the translator’s point of view.   The most helpful comments about musical thinking and literary writing in general are frequently created by the composers and writers themselves.
Now that digital technology has made its presence known, the question has to be asked, in what form does the digital expand translation thinking and the dialogue with texts?  The inherent activity of translation can be seen in two ways: translation always establishes associations between two things, and at the same time translation is always movement. Until the emergence of electronic and digital technology, that movement could only be recorded and fixed in one single form. Verbal, visual, and musical translations by their very nature are static. They exclude the interaction of the reader, spectator, or listener. The audience becomes a passive participant and cannot in any way modify the work. Similarly, an audience maintains a passive attitude toward films, even though the art form of the film brings words, sound, images, and movements together
However, the multimedia age and digital technology in particular have changed and will change the existence of future audiences as readers, spectators, listeners, and interactive participants.  Translation is movement, and digital technology creates a total involvement.  Since the original image of translation is connected with constantly establishing relationships, movements from one place to the next, the translation paradigm is one of the most convincing tools to create an energetic and creative interaction with works. Digital technology can be responsible for bringing human creative expressions closer together through the incorporation of the action of the user.  Referring once again to film and also to other forms of artistic expression, the content is fixed and always strictly organized by the medium itself. In the digital environment, the content is subject to change. In that sense, the digital is closer to life because of its capacity to evolve, to change according to the environment.
For a moment, it might be helpful to think about Julio Cortázar’s novel Hopscotch, in which he informs the reader that the novel can be read in the sequence it was printed, but also by following a different sequence of chapters that he outlines. The digital allows us to approach texts in non-chronological and non-sequential ways, which ultimately will evolve in a more comprehensive way of understanding and experiencing works. If we consider the short story “The Bound Man” by Ilse Aichinger, the two most important key words are “rope” and “play.”  Both words are repeated numerous times throughout the story.  Using digital tools, the reader will be able to juxtapose in seconds all the places where either one of the words appears in the story. This allows the reader to walk through the text in a horizontal way. That same technique can be enacted with other images, expressions, or even metaphors.  Thus, the reader experiences a different way of recreating a text from within.  The strength of the digital world is its “plasticity.” Not only does the content assume plasticity but also the content can emerge through different sensory outputs.  The digital word in a text has no fixed place; one is free from the text, which no longer depends on its chronological or sequential presence.  The digital dimension is not organized by succession, but rather by means of semantic relationships.  In that sense, digital gets us to access works in the present, which also means that the digital can never be saved in a static or fixed form.
The advantage and therefore the disadvantage of digital thinking and practice is the recognition that digital creations cannot be recorded in static form, only in a digital format. The digital universe allows us to present the interpretation of texts in the most comprehensive way. We can create objects that contain verbal, visual, musical, and sound components that will allow a person to approach the object from various perspectives to create a multiple sensory experience. Thus, digital technology allows us to create a more total understanding of a work and, at the same time, a possibility to establish a continuous interaction with the work.

TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION

By Rainer Schulte

What is the function of interpretation?  To provide the reader, listener, and viewer with entrances into a text, whether that text be a literary, visual, or musical work. Each artistic work presents a particular view of the world, a way of seeing objects and situations as if it were for the first time. Critics and scholars must help us to find ways of entering into these new perspectives of seeing the world. However, it seems that criticism in the past few years has failed to respond to this need. Often, critical approaches that are meant to bring the reader closer to a text have the exact opposite effect. They distance the reader from the text and close rather than open doors to a better understanding of the particular nature of a given form of artistic insight and expression.
To counteract this trend in contemporary criticism, we should look at translation as a possible new way of revitalizing the act of interpretation. At first sight it is difficult to see the immediate relation between interpretation and translation. Seen in the larger context of interpretation as communication with a text,  however, the connection becomes transparent: all acts of interpretation are acts of translation.  The reading of a text is an intense act of translation.
Hans Georg Gadamer, in his work on “Wieweit schreibt Sprache das Denken vor?” (“To What Extent Does Language Prescribe Thinking?”), succinctly expresses the relationship between reading and translating in the following manner: “Lesen ist schon Übersetzen und Übersetzen ist dann noch einmal Übersetzen…Der Vorgang des Übersetzens schliesst im Grunde das ganze Geheimnis menschlicher Weltverständigung und gesellschaftlicher Kommunikation ein.” (“Reading is already translation, and translation is translation for the second time…The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.”) “Reading is already translation.”
Thus, the methodologies of the art and craft of translation can be seen as one way of revitalizing the complicated act of interpretation not only of the literary work but also of all artistic works. What does this mean? Simply, that we begin to look at a text from the translator’s point of view. The translator learns and applies methods of transplanting words, or rather situations, from one language into another. Interpreting a text within the same language can also be considered as an act of translation. Whether a work was written in the present or in the past, we must translate it into our own sensibility. When confronted with a literary work in English, the reader should consider each word as something “foreign” that needs to be deciphered. That outlook immediately takes away the notion that each word has clearly defined boundaries and communicates the same meaning to each reader. The translator’s thinking can be illustrated with the following example. To think in the foreign constitutes the first step toward a possible interpretation that can then lead to the actual translation. Let us assume that the English translator reads the simple words “maison” or “jardin” in French and initiates his approach to this text by thinking about these two words in terms of “house” and “garden’; then a real entrance into the foreign text is seriously endangered. The English word “garden” creates a totally different atmosphere than the French “jardin.” They are the same as far as the dictionary is concerned, but in terms of their cultural and aesthetic ambiance they are miles apart. The translator who decides to think through the French text in terms of the universe that surrounds the English word “garden” closes the door to any true communication with the foreign in the other language. The translator carries something to the foreign text that its semantic boundaries cannot hold. A mold is imposed on the foreign word that freezes the word’s internal energy and destroys its recreative power for the dynamic interchange with other words. The interpretive process ends before it has begun.
The interpretation as translation within the same language requires the same attitude. The reader must approach each word as if it were a word in a foreign language. A writer manipulates words, often modifies and enhances their established connotations, creates new fields of meaning through the interaction with other words, and builds a universe of feelings and emotions that enlarges the reader’s/interpreter’s way of seeing and understanding the world. Only through the experience of the other can we expand our insights into the human condition.
Practically speaking, the interpreter as translator continuously engages in the question: what kind of research must I undertake in order to do justice to the text I am reading, whether I choose to translate it from a foreign language into my own or whether I translate it into my own frame of mind within the same language? The translator’s interpretive act is always rooted in the concreteness of the textual situation and not in some theoretical construct. The translator does not consider the word as an object that can be described or even frozen into a specific meaning but rather continuously interacts with the internal possibilities of a word’s magnetic field. When the interpreter assumes the translator’s role, he lives inside the word and thereby establishes a dynamic environment rather than a static one. Even when a translation appears in the fixed form of the printed page, it cannot claim to be final. There is no such thing as the definitive translation of any text, as there is no definitive interpretation of any text. Whenever a translator returns to the same text, a different reading will take place and therefore also a different interpretation. That process is in no way different when we read and interpret within the same language. We must constantly transplant ourselves into the foreign so that we build the bridge from there back to our own way of seeing.
The translator who has to anchor the interpretive act in the realities of each word has to develop a certain strategy to do justice to a word as an isolated phenomenon and as the link in the ever widening circle of connotations that a word gains through its context expansion. Words, as we know, have primary and secondary meanings. No two people will ever take the exact same impression and visualization from a word. Language in itself is quite restricted: in many instances we have one or two words to describe an object. When we use the word “chair” each person immediately creates an image in his mind that hardly ever coincides in all its details with the visualization of that object in the mind of another person. The chair comes in multiple shapes: a high or low chair, an easy chair, a reclining chair, a swivel chair, a secretarial chair etc. It is unlikely that our first association upon hearing the word “chair” would create in our mind the image of an “electric chair,” although that might be the connotation of the word when it first appears in a literary text. In that sense, the reader as interpreter and translator must unlearn language before the act of interpretation can be initiated. What we think a word connotes upon a first reading of a text rarely coincides with the connotations that the writer injected into that word.
Unlearning could also be characterized as an attitude of openness toward the multiplicity of meanings working within any given word. The tremendous variety inherent in the presence of chairness underlines the dilemma that faces all writers: to create through language something that transcends language. Not only does the chair come in many different shapes, but the specific appearance creates varying emotional reactions in the viewer. A French chair built under Louis XIV generates an atmosphere quite different from a contemporary Swedish or Danish chair, not to speak of a chair that was chiseled out of a stone. A writer’s foremost concern is not to offer statements of meanings to the reader, but to build atmospheres that make it possible for the reader to experience a situation. In order to succeed in this endeavor, writers constantly discover new relationships between words that have to be reconstructed in the interpretive process by the reader/ translator. Yet, we must remember that a word does not only exist through its semantic reality. Each word comes to life with a certain specific physicality that includes its meaning possibilities of meaning, its sound and rhythm, its link to cultural and historical traditions, its modified uses conditioned by geographical realities, and also its visual appearance on the page, especially in poetic forms of expression. All of these ingredients begin to work on the writer as well as on the reader.
Exploration of the word’s internal levels of meanings initiates the reading and translation process. The translator places himself inside the word to think out its magnetic field, to uncover the streams that will flow into the semantic fields of other words. That act–which is the most fundamental one of any interpretation–should be called “visualization.” The American poet W.S. Merwin opens his poem “In Autumn” with the following words: “The extinct animals are still looking for home….” None of these words pose any serious difficulties for the English-speaking reader. Yet before any entrance into the line becomes feasible, the reader must undertake an act of visualization. The expression “the animals are still looking” causes in itself no major problems. What initially confuses the reader is the combination of “extinct” with “animals.” How can animals who are extinct–which suggests that they do longer exist–be engaged in an act of looking. Do we change the meaning if we replace extinct with dead? Very much so! Dead and extinct generate different processes of visualization. The use of dead in that line would derail the poetic as well as the experiential logic: a dead animal has lost the ability to look. That kind of reasoning brings us, the reader/translator, closer to the visualization of “extinct.” Even though the animal as a species might be extinct, it can possibly still live as a stuffed animal in a museum. The context of the following lines in the poem seem to suggest that kind of visualization. For the combination of “extinct animals” to come to life, the reader will be forced to assess every possible existing meaning–as specified through entries in philological and etymological dictionaries–and then decipher the evolving meanings in relation to the context of the poem.
From the visualization of the individual word, the translator moves to the contextual visualization: the word in relation to the words before and after, to the rest of the sentence, to the paragraph, to the entire text, and finally to the oeuvre. At every step of the translator’s work, questions will be asked that come out of the necessity of the word and its placement within the text. Where does the word come from, what semantic and emotional baggage has it acquired through the centuries, what original image lies behind the surface appearance, what role does it play in a given text, how often does it appear in the oeuvre of a given writer, how have other writers of the same period used the word, has the writer revived a meaning-aspect that was prominent in a previous century but not necessarily common today, and how has it been treated, if at all, by other translators and critics? All of these considerations constantly bombard the translator’s consciousness, and they should also be the major concerns of any person who approaches the interpretation of a text.
Texts from the past that have already undergone the scrutiny of time are in that sense easier to handle. Dictionaries will be able to tell us what certain words meant at a particular time of literary history. The Oxford English Dictionary is an indispensable tool for reading English texts of the past. Not only are words explained by themselves, but they are also documented with specific examples from various works written around the same time. The contemporary text, that is to say a text that has just been written by an author, poses more complicated problems. Whatever linguistic and semantic innovations the poet or writer has brought to the use of his language has not yet been reflected in the fixed form of a dictionary. It might show up in a few years, which is of little help for the current reader and interpreter. In that case the new meaning attributed to a word or an expression can only be illuminated through the process of a rigorous contextual visualization. The English writer Francis Bacon wrote an essay titled “Of Studies” in 1597. The first sentence of that essay reads: “Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments and for abilities.” For that sentence to regain meaning for the modern reader, a series of scholarly pursuits have to be undertaken. Literary history tells us that this essay, when first published, had a certain impact. Since the words “pastimes, ornaments, abilities” have changed through the centuries, we no longer have immediate access to the power of expression they had in their own time. Thus, a process of translation of these words into the present linguistic and semantic environment has to be initiated. The interpreter explores the foreignness in these words and tries to find equivalents in present-day language. Once again the question has to be asked: “What kind of research do I have to undertake in order to do justice to this line or text? Actually, the investigation of a single word such as “pastimes” or “ornaments” could serve as an agent to reconstruct an entire Zeitgeist of that period. Starting with the exploration of all the immediate connotations associated with those two words, the reader/translator will then pursue the cultural, aesthetic, artistic, social or political nuances that might be working in these words. What becomes clear in this approach is the important recognition that all translation research –in whatever direction it might lead the translator–will always lead the reader back to the text itself. Here lies a major difference between critical and translational practices. In the former , critics often distance themselves from the text without feeling any obligation to return to it at the end of their interpretations.
Using the dictionary definitions for the word “abilities” might not necessarily provide us with a totally intelligible meaning of how the word is used in the line. Yet, the various choices given generate in the reader ways of thinking about the text that otherwise would not have happened. Here are some definitions given for “ability” in the OED: suitableness, fitness, aptitude, faculty, capacity, bodily power, strength, wealth, talent, cleverness, mental power or capacity. The gamut of associations could probably be extended. Somewhere in between all of these definitions lies the meaning of “ability” that the translator must decipher in his or her act of interpretation. The example brings us back to the above-mentioned comments about chair and chairness. The plurality of existing chair designs reaffirms that there is such a thing as chair. On a higher level, one could say the multiplicity of existing bible translations throughout the centuries reassures us that there is such a thing as the bible. With respect to the excursion into the word “ability,” the translator must move among all of these dictionary possibilities, since each one of them will force him to return to the text and rethink the line in terms of each given meaning. In that sense, the act of interpretation seen through the translator’s eyes develops the reader’s ability to visualize a text. From the practice of translation, we learn above all the art of “situational thinking.”

What, then, does the reader learn from the methodologies derived from the art and craft of translation? As readers transplant themselves into the atmosphere of a new situation in the foreign text, they realize that the text builds not just one clearly defined reality, but rather possibilities of various realities. The readers are left with various options that they can interpret within the context of that atmosphere. The reader/translator reestablishes at every step of his or her work the inherent uncertainty of each word, both as isolated phenomenon and as semiotic possibility of a sentence, a paragraph, or the context of the entire work. The rediscovery of that uncertainty in each word constitutes the initial attitude of the translator. Reading and thus interpreting become the making of meaning and not the description of already-fixed meanings. The foreign text does not offer the reader a new comfortable reality, but rather places him between several realities among which he has to choose; the words that constitute the text emanate a feeling of uncertainty. That feeling, however, becomes instrumental in the reader/translator’s engagement in a continuous process of decision-making. Certain choices have to be made among all these possibilities of uncertain meanings. Whatever the translation decision might be, there is still another level of uncertainty for the reader/translator, which continues the process of reading not only within the text but even beyond the text. This proliferation of uncertainties must be viewed as one of the most stimulating and rewarding results that the reader/translator perspective finds in the study and interpretation of a text. Reading as the generator of uncertainties, reading as the driving force toward a decision-making process, reading as discovery of new interrelations that can be experienced but not described in terms of a content-oriented language. Whatever questions translators ask with respect to their involvement in a text, these questions have no prefigured answers that would be prompted by outside information brought to the text or content-oriented statements about the text. In the translation process there are no definitive answers, only attempts at solutions in response to states of uncertainty generated by the interaction of the words’ semantic fields and sounds. Reading institutes the making of meanings through questions in which the possibility of an answer results in another question: What if?
In that respect, translation-reading has much in common with the performer’s attitude toward the work. Without “Erlebnis” (experience), the performance of a piece falls flat. At all times, performers internalize that which they perform. They are inside the work, and every note or word becomes a new possibility in the moment of its performance. Similarly, the translator/reader makes the reading activity a process in which each word begins to assume possible semantic associations. The translator establishes a dialogue with the work and the approach never becomes static.

Applying the translator’s eye to the reading of a text changes our attitude toward the reading process by dissolving the fixity of print on a page into a potential multiplicity of semantic connections. The words on the page represent only a weak reflection of the situations that the author intended to express. The translator/reader considers the word a means to an end, the final destination of which can never be put into the limitations of static descriptions. The translator does not ask: “What does a text mean?” but rather “How does a text come to mean?”
The methodologies of translation can therefore be used to reactivate the act of reading as a dynamic process that engages the reader in the “Erlebnis” of the literary work.
[Corrected June 25, 2013 at 6pm. Saved, Creative Writing. Book of TR Essays by RS]

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