Agents of Translation (Benjamins Translation Library (Btl); Est)

Agents of Translation

Benjamins Translation Library (BTL) The BTL aims to stimulate research and training in translation and interpreting studies. The Library provides a forum for a variety of approaches (which may sometimes be conflicting) in a socio-cultural, historical, theoretical, applied and pedagogical context. The Library includes scholarly works, reference books, postgraduate text books and readers in the English language.

EST Subseries The European Society for Translation Studies (EST) Subseries is a publication channel within the Library to optimize EST’s function as a forum for the translation and interpreting research community. It promotes new trends in research, gives more visibility to young scholars’ work, publicizes new research methods, makes available documents from EST, and reissues classical works in translation studies which do not exist in English or which are now out of print.

General Editor

Associate Editor

Honorary Editor

Yves Gambier

Miriam Shlesinger

Gideon Toury

Rosemary Arrojo

Zuzana Jettmarová

Rosa Rabadán

Michael Cronin

Werner Koller

Sherry Simon

Daniel Gile

Alet Kruger

Mary Snell-Hornby

José Lambert

Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit

John Milton

Maria Tymoczko

University of Turku

Bar-Ilan University Israel

Tel Aviv University

Advisory Board Binghamton University Dublin City University Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle

Ulrich Heid

University of Stuttgart

Amparo Hurtado Albir

Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona

W. John Hutchins

University of East Anglia

Charles University of Prague Bergen University UNISA, South Africa Catholic University of Leuven University of São Paulo

Franz Pöchhacker

University of Vienna

Anthony Pym

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Volume 81 Agents of Translation Edited by John Milton and Paul Bandia

University of León Concordia University University of Vienna University of Joensuu

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Lawrence Venuti

Temple University

Agents of Translation

Edited by

John Milton University of São Paulo

Paul Bandia Concordia University, Montréal

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Agents of translation / edited by John Milton, Paul Bandia. p. cm. (Benjamins Translation Library, issn 0929-7316 ; v. 81) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.  Translating and interpreting.  I. Milton, John, 1956- II. Bandia, Paul F. (Paul Fadio), 1961PN241.A36

2009

418'.02--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 1690 8 (hb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 9107 3 (eb)

2008039151

© 2009 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Introduction: Agents of Translation and Translation Studies John Milton and Paul Bandia Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner Georges L. Bastin

1 19

Translating cultural paradigms: The role of the Revue Britannique for the first Brazilian fiction writers Maria Eulália Ramicelli

43

Translation as representation: Fukuzawa Yukichi’s representation of the “Others” Akiko Uchiyama

63

Vizetelly & Company as (ex)change agent: Towards the modernization of the British publishing industry Denise Merkle

85

Translation within the margin: The “Libraries” of Henry Bohn Carol O’Sullivan Translating Europe: The case of Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman agent of translation Cemal Demircioğlu A cultural agent against the forces of culture: Hasan-Âli Yücel Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar Limits of freedom: Agency, choice and constraints in the work of the translator Outi Paloposki Cheikh Anta Diop: Translation at the service of history Paul Bandia

107

131 161

189 209

vi

Agents of Translation

The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations: Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires, and Diario de Poesía as aesthetic arenas for twentieth-century Argentine letters Lisa Rose Bradford The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos in bringing translation to the fore of literary activity in Brazil Thelma Médici Nóbrega and John Milton The theatre translator as a cultural agent: A case study Christine Zurbach

229

257 279

Embassy networks: Translating post-war Bosnian poetry into English Francis R. Jones

301

Notes on contributors

327

Index

331

Introduction Agents of Translation and Translation Studies* John Milton and Paul Bandia 1.

Introduction

This book will examine the concept of agency in translation studies, considering certain cases in which agents are responsible for major historical, literary and cultural transitions/changes/innovations through translation. In the Dictionary of Translation Studies Mark Shuttleworth quotes Juan Sager’s definition of the agent in translation: a person who is “in an intermediary position between a translator and an end user of a translation” (Sager 1994: 321 in Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 7). These agents may be text producers, mediators who modify the text such as those who produce abstracts, editors, revisors and translators, commissioners and publishers. For Sager, the agent “is at the beginning and the end of the speech act of translation; the previous speech act of writing the document, and the subsequent speech act of a reader receiving the document are both temporally, spatially and casually quite independent” (Sager 1994: 140 in Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 7). We would like to build on Sager’s definition, though we do include translators amongst our agents, who may also be patrons of literature, Maecenas, salon organizers, politicians or companies which help to change cultural and linguistic policies. They may also be magazines, journals or institutions. And, as Sager points out, they may often combine two or more of these roles (in Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 7). Often they are individuals who devote great amounts of energy and even their own lives to the cause of a foreign literature, author or literary school, translating, writing articles, teaching and dissemination of knowledge and culture. Sager describes the functional role of agents. We would like to emphasize their role in terms of cultural innovation and change, which can be seen in a number of papers in this volume: they may go against the grain, challenge commonplaces and contemporary assumptions, endanger their professional and personal lives, risk fines, imprisonment, and even death.



John Milton and Paul Bandia

Agents of Translation, therefore, highlights the centrality of the position of the agent of translation in introducing new literary and philosophical concepts through translation. This agent may often play an important role, both politically and culturally, in the given society, and it is here that the importance of this collection of papers lies. We can look at two specific types of agents: those who have effected changes in styles of translation, have broadened the range of translations available, or who have helped or attempted to innovate by selecting new works to be translated and introducing new styles of translation for works entering their own society. The contributions of Outi Paloposki, Cemal Demircioğlu, Denise Merkle, Carol O’Sullivan, Lisa Bradford, and Thelma Nóbrega and John Milton emphasize the role of the agent as someone who influences literary trends. Other essays highlight the cultural and political role of the agent of translation. This can clearly be seen in the papers of Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar, Georges Bastin, Maria Eulália Ramicelli, Akiko Uchiyama, Christine Zurbach, Francis Jones and Paul Bandia. But in certain cases the stylistic innovations are linked to the political. Thelma Nóbrega and John Milton contrast the Campos brothers’ attempts to introduce foreign authors into Brazil through translation with a much more Brazilian oriented Marxist criticism dominant in the humanities in the 1960s and 1970s. Lisa Bradford links the challenges to the military dictatorships with trends in translation of poetry in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina. Likewise, Yukichi Fukuzawa’s nationalist ideas in Japan in the Meiji period during the second half of the 19th century, as described by Akiko Uchiyama, can be linked to his policy of selectively translating elements that would fit in with his ideas. And the translators Outi Paloposki describes helped to make Finnish a literary language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thereby strengthening Finnish nationalism. Agents of Translation adopts a global outlook and includes essays from scholars working in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Portugal, Turkey and the UK about important agents of translation, who are, to a great extent, little known, from South America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Let us now examine certain of the elements which underlie the concept of the agent of translation in translation studies.

2.

Patronage

As Translation Studies have taken a Cultural Turn in recent years, we find more and more scholars interested in translators themselves and the factors that



Introduction

i­ nfluence translators. One of the key terms is Patronage, coined by André Lefevere, who emphasizes the role of the patrons to produce cultural artifacts: the Medici, Maecenas, Louis XIV, and “a religious body, a political party, a social class, a royal court, publishers, and, last but not least, the media, both newspapers and magazines and larger television corporations” (Lefevere 1992: 15). Patrons will have central roles in regulating the literary system, prizes, censorship, and the educational system. Obvious examples are the Earl of Southampton, patron to Shakespeare, “official” writers in Socialist states, and universities and foundations which provide scholarships. In Agents of Translation patronage is a key factor in a number of essays, especially those of Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar, Denise Merkle, Carol O’Sullivan and Georges Bastin. According to Lefevere, undifferentiated patronage will exist when there is a totalitarian system where a favoured writer is attached to the court, the ruler or the political leaders in the single-party state. Differentiated patronage will exist when there are free market conditions (Lefevere 1992: 15). Patronage can certainly be important in deciding which works get published but says little about individual agents, whether they be translators, critics, journalists or politicians, figures with influence in the literary world, who were not satisfied with the status quo and attempted to instigate changes. Patronage may also refer to those agents who engage in acts of national consciousness raising as in the case of leaders, artists or institutions in multilingual settings, minority and non-literate cultures by promoting the creation of national languages and literatures for the purposes of achieving national unity, asserting cultural identity, as well as gaining recognition within the global literary space. Many minority cultures have survived the onslaught of dominant global languages through a deliberate translation of themselves into such global languages, which they subvert through innovative linguistic practices to assert their identity on the world stage. Writers from minority language cultures such as Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and Patrick Chamoiseau are “translated men” who may be seen as agents working towards the visibility and preservation of their respective national cultures. The hegemony of the English language is checked through the creative and aesthetic practices of these writers from dominated cultures, and, in the case of the Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau, the creolization of French through translation is a means to counter French assimilation policy and to give voice to the small Caribbean Island of Martinique. In this small territory of the French West Indies, which is politically part of France but geographically by removed from the Hexagone (metropolitan France), the crisis of identity is being addressed through the agency of creolization as self-translation. Writers from minority or dominated cultures are agents of translation insofar as their





John Milton and Paul Bandia

global language works are ­representations of their marginalized cultures in the international literary marketplace as well as deliberate disruptions or stalwarts to the hegemony of global languages and cultures. An excellent example of the way a publishing company has been an agent of changing literary tastes is that of Heinemann Education Books, which has been one of the active agents for promoting and disseminating African literature, both original and in translation, across the world. As early as the 1890s, Heinemann had sought to give a voice to world writers by publishing British writers as well as some non-English European literature in translation by writers such as Bjornson, Ibsen, and Guy de Maupassant. Heinemann’s initial interest in Africa was purely pedagogical or didactic as they engaged in a colonial mission made possible by the British Empire’s efforts to secure an open market for British publishers through the imposition of the British system of education in the colonies. However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s the newly independent African states whose educational systems were modelled on European ones sought to replace European literature – some of which painted unflattering images of Africans – with literature about Africans written by Africans. Heinemann saw an opportunity and created the now famous African Writers Series (AWS), which is largely credited with putting African literature on the world stage. By presenting stories written by Africans about Africans and their histories, Heinemann became the vanguard of the movement for representing African identity in the modern world (Clarke 2003: 167). The African Writers Series gives agency to the African because the novels, short stories, poetry, plays, autobiographies and translations are written by Africans telling their own stories in their own voices for both Africans and non-Africans (Clarke 2003: 168). What began as a forum for the struggle against ­colonial domination had developed into a medium for countering postcolonial oppression, and has become one of today’s main outlets for denouncing neocolonialism and oppressive regimes within the postcolony itself. In keeping with its innovative objectives and its belief in giving a voice to artists, Heinemann has established co-publishing ventures with African publishing houses in order to assist local publishers with limited means to gain access to the global marketplace. This has resulted in the spread of African literature through translation in many languages across the globe and in lower costs for books and their translations in the local market. Heinemann has also given voice to an increasing number of women writers who had been marginalized by a mainly patriarchal system. The publisher has also provided an international platform for many writers who have been forced into exile or have been imprisoned by autocratic regimes. Mindful of keeping abreast with contemporary needs in postcolonial studies, Heinemann has expanded the African Writers Series to include translations from francophone and lusophone Africa, in a bid to encourage intercultural exchange across the continent. In its desire to continue to gain



Introduction

visibility for African literature, it has also entered into an agreement with Penguin Books, which has published some African works in its Penguin Modern Classics Series. The agency and patronage of Heinemann in disseminating and canonizing African literature in original writing as well as in translation is without parallel on the continent, which given its depressed economy often relies on European or American agents for its publications.

3.

Power

Patronage is one aspect of power. And the translator may end up on the wrong side. Fines, prison, violence may await the agent of translation. The Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, Ettore Capriolo, was assaulted; its Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot; its Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death; and Aziz Nesin, who was going to commission a translation into Turkish, narrowly escaped an arson attack which killed 37 people and injured many more. Henry Vizetelly, the subject of Denise Merkle’s essay in this present volume, was imprisoned and died in poverty, and Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar shows how her subject, Turkish Minister of Education, Hasan-Âli Yücel, lost his considerable power as politician and promoter of translations. John Milton’s study on the Brazilian writer, translator and publisher, José Bento Monteiro Lobato (1882–1948) (Milton forthcoming; Milton and Euzebio 2004), describes Lobato’s adaptation of Peter Pan, which, through the multiple voices he uses in the retelling of Barrie’s story, turns the original story into a highly political work. When the narrator, Dona Benta, compares Brazilian children to English children, she says that, unlike Brazilian children, all English children have a special room of their own, a nursery, which will be full of toys, and have special furniture and wallpaper. By contrast, the room of the Brazilian child will be “um quarto qualquer e por isso não tem nome especial” [“any old room, which doesn’t have a special name”] (Monteiro Lobato 1971: 59), thus demonstrating the inferiority of the living conditions of Brazilian children. Likewise, he compares heating systems. In forward-looking cold countries all houses have central heating, and not an open hearth. Although central heating is not needed in Brazil, Brazil is clearly linked to the “países atrasados” [“old-fashioned countries”] (Monteiro Lobato 1971: 59–60). These critiques, together with negative remarks about Brazil in a BBC radio interview, were responsible for his being imprisoned for three months in 1941. Such are the dangers of an agent of translation going against the system, of attempting to introduce works which are not accepted by the totalitarian, ­undifferentiated system. Lefevere glosses over the power which patronage may





John Milton and Paul Bandia

exert over agents of translation, and the personal relationships within the system. Here we might introduce some of the basic precepts of New Historicism, as described by Stephen Greenblatt. New Historicism […] eschews the use of the term “man”; interest lies not in the abstract universal but in particular, contingent cases, the selves fashioned and acting according to the generative rules and conflicts of a given culture. And these selves, conditioned by the expectations of their class, gender, religion, race and national identity, are constantly effecting changes in the course of history. Indeed, if there is any inevitability in the new historicism’s vision of history, it is this insistence on agency, for even inaction or extreme marginality is understood to possess meaning and therefore to imply intention. Every form of behavior, in this view, is a strategy: taking up arms or taking flight is a significant social strategy, but so is staying put, minding one’s business, turning one’s face to the wall. (Greenblatt 1990: 164) Agency is virtually inescapable.

The individual agent is implicated in a web of collective social energies, and individual gestures often have the opposite results to what they intended: a gesture of dissent may help to legitimize the larger process, and an attempt to stabilize may end up by being an unconscious act of subversion. Political agreements and alliances may also change rapidly from one moment to the next, a progressive act at one moment may seem reactionary shortly afterwards (Greenblatt 1990: 165). Greenblatt’s essay “Power, Sexuality and Inwardness in Wyatt’s Poetry” (Greenblatt 1980) shows some of these elements in the particular context of translation. A traditional view of English Literature places Surrey (1517–1547) and Wyatt (1503–1542) as the introducers of the sonnet into the English language, adapting Petrarch’s sonnets into English, and the forerunners of the great sonnet sequence of Shakespeare. However, Greenblatt emphasizes that this mask of courtesy and civility conceals the “hostility and aggression” of court life, on one hand, and “weakness and anxiety, on the other” (Greenblatt 1980: 145). Wyatt’s career at the court of Henry VIII was one of ups and downs. He was knighted in 1535, but in 1536 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for quarrelling with the Duke of Suffolk, and possibly also because he was suspected of being one of Anne Boleyn’s lovers. During this imprisonment Wyatt witnessed the execution of Anne Boleyn on 19 May 1536 from the Bell Tower. He was again confined to the Tower in 1541, before receiving a full royal pardon. Petrarch’s mystical vision, his “experience of illumination and loss” is transformed by Wyatt in “Whoso list to hunt?”, which we reprint in full below, into his attempt at renunciation. Petrarch’s sonnet ends with the poet falling into the water and losing the hind; Wyatt discovers the description on the diamond collar of the



Introduction

doe: “Caesar’s I am”. The sacred element of Petrarch’s poem now echoes with profane elements as Greenblatt speculates on the possible portrayal of Anne Boleyn, who may have been Wyatt’s mistress before she married Henry VIII, and thus the possession of Caesar, as the hind. But this can be no more than implied: “it would have been suicidal folly to write directly about the loss of Anne Boleyn to Henry” (Greenblatt 1980: 148). Greenblatt praises the restraint and rich suggestiveness of Wyatt’s adaptation, which wavers between the danger of the court life of Henry VIII, open sexuality, and the pleasure of the hunt. Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind! But as for me, alas! I may no more, The vain travail hath wearied me so sore; I am of them that furthest come behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore, Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt As well as I, may spend his time in vain! And graven with diamonds in letters plain, There is written her fair neck round about; ‘Noli me tangere; for Cæsar’s I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’ Petrarch’s   Una candida cerva sopra l’erba Una candida cerva sopra l’erba verde m’apparve, con duo corna d’oro, fra due riviere, all’ombra d’un alloro, levando ’l sole a la stagione acerba. Era sua vista sí dolce superba ch’i’ lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro: come l’avaro che ’n cercar tesoro con diletto l’affanno disacerba. ’Nessun mi tocchi – al bel collo d’intorno scritto avea di diamanti et di topazi-: libera farmi al mio Cesare parveª. Et era ’l sol già vòlto al mezzo giorno, gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi, quand’io caddi ne l’acqua, et ella sparve.





John Milton and Paul Bandia

Despite the danger Wyatt and the translators of Salman Rushdie faced, few of us working in the area of Translation Studies are likely to face the prospect of being sent to the Tower of London! However, academic and literary power relations will certainly have a great deal to do with who gets published, who gets promoted, who gets tenure, who gets the fat scholarship, who gets the next job, and who is exiled to a distant Ivory Tower. The way in which ideas in Translation Studies gain currency, even the way in which Translation Studies itself has gained influence, and conflicts between agencies, is a theme we shall be returning to in the following sections.

4.

Habitus

In order to be accepted by society, to maintain a job as a professional translator, to be published, to obtain scholarships, to win friends and influence people, in certain societies to stay out of prison, the translator will have to follow certain conventions. Our search for a theory which puts more emphasis on the role of the agent of translation will bring us to Pierre Bourdieu, whose work has been of increasing importance in Translation Studies since the important essay of Daniel Simeoni, “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus”, published in Target 10.1 (Simeoni 1998). As in all other professions, in their training future translators will learn certain norms from teachers and practitioners they will have to follow if they are to become professional translators and/or interpreters. Simeoni distinguishes habitus from norms by stressing the role of the translators themselves: “It seems to me that Toury places the focus of the relevance on the preeminence of what controls the agents’ behaviour – “translational norms”. A habitus-governed account, by contrast, emphasizes the extent to which translators themselves play a role in the maintenance and perhaps the creation of norms” (Simeoni 1998: 26) and, added to Descriptive Translation Studies, “will force finer-grained analyses of the sociocognitive emergence of translating skills and their outcome, in particular at the micro-level of stylistic variation” (Simeoni 1998: 33). Simeoni suggests research programmes to investigate the extent to which translators’ lexical, matricial and rhetorical decisions are decided by their personal “translational habitus” or whether they depend on differences between the translators themselves, and also “sociographies of single translators’ professional trajectories” through interviews (Simeoni 1998: 31). He suggests a certain translational habitus for John Dryden and his contemporaries at the end of the 17th century in England, one which, at a politically sensitive time – many of Dryden’s contemporaries such as Denham and ­Rochester



Introduction

had been in exile during the Commonwealth – reflected a middle-of-the-road policy, avoiding the considerable freedom advocated by Perrot d’Ablancourt in France (Simeoni 1998: 10–11). Indeed, the essays by Denise Merkle and Carol O’Sullivan on contrasting figures in the Victorian publishing world show how Henry Bohn, in O’Sullivan’s essay, followed and even helped to shape the Victorian ethos, while Henry Vizetelly, in his attempt to publish the unexpurgated works of Zola, failed to follow Victorian mores and habitus and ended up as a marginal figure in society. For Simeoni, present-day translators, following the Enlightenment trope, have accepted their “servility” and subservience to the author. But Simeoni sees the somewhat passive present-day translational habitus as one that is undergoing change as the professional translator has to cope with more and more tasks. The translator will have to adjust to different kinds of norms, according to the specific client, texts which will have to be rewritten, others which need to be closely translated word-for-word. And the competent professional translator will need to dominate quite sophisticated computer skills. A greater openness to new ideas also suggests they will be more open to theoretical ideas coming from Translation Studies. Hélène Buzelin, in “Unexpected Allies: How Latour’s Network Theory Could Complement Bourdieusian Analyses in Translation Studies” (Buzelin 2005: 193– 218), an article which will be examined in greater detail in the next section, mentions that the growing popularity of the theories such as those of Henri ­Meschonnic and Antoine Berman in France may be changing the habitus of the literary translator in France. Such translators are taking on a much more pro-active role in their translations. She describes an interview with the head of a small publishing house specializing in foreign literature, who said that such tendencies could have “devastating effects” contributing to “an inflation of a superego of the translator in complete contradiction with the exercise of literature”. Such translators “were usually rigid, nervous and anxious in their approach to the text and had lost sight of the ‘pleasure’ of the text. Far from being subservient, these translators stood their ground firmly and were usually closed to any form of dialogue – which led to overt conflict, and sometimes even to legal confrontations” (Buzelin 2005: 204). Volume 11, Number 2, 2005, of The Translator was devoted to the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on Translation Studies. Bourdieu’s early studies were based on intracultural relations, and he only began to examine inter-cultural relations at a relatively late stage of his career. Reine Meylaerts comments on Bourdieu’s 1990 essay, “Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées”, which examines some of these relations. Firstly, intellectual life is not something spontaneously international and sublime, above national boundaries but closely inscribed within national boundaries (Meylaerts 2005: 278). When a text



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John Milton and Paul Bandia

circulates within a new culture, it will no longer circulate within its original context and may be given new meanings by the new field of reception (Meylaerts 2005: 278). Thus the novels of Clarice Lispector, which have achieved considerable popularity in Brazil amongst both sexes and various age groups, have been given a definite feminist agenda by Hélène Cixous in the US, and the study of them is to a great extent confined to courses on feminist literature. Bourdieu would like to see a rational internationalist dialogue which would create the conditions for a better understanding and allow ideas to travel undistorted across national boundaries. Though writing in French, Bourdieu uses the term “gate-keepers”, to describe those responsible for introducing new elements into the foreign culture. Such agents will always be pursuing their own interests, which may be conscious or unconscious. Bourdieu gives the example of the importation of Heidegger’s ideas into France by French intellectuals in the 1950s to combat the dominance of ­Sartre’s ideas. Many other examples come to mind. Saliha Paker has written on the importation of French literature during the Tanzimat, “Re-organization” period in the Ottoman Empire, when Western poetry, philosophical dialogue and novels were translated into Ottoman, mainly from French (Paker 1991 & 1998). Haroldo and Augusto de Campos translated and wrote on Mallarmé, Joyce, Cummings and Pound in order to further their own programme of concrete poetry and to give themselves international support and precursors. Lobato twists his adaptation of Peter Pan, as seen above, in order to strengthen his anti-Getúlio Vargas political opposition. And of course, proposing to translate a foreign bestseller may simply be a means of survival for many translators. But agents of translation are much more than gate-keepers. What a number of the agents of translation in this volume have in common is an attempt, in one way or another, to change certain elements of the translator’s habitus. Lobato introduced a more colloquial Portuguese in his translations; he translated from English and not French; he started a specifically Brazilian children’s literature; his adaptations gave greater freedom to the translator/adaptor. Hasan Âli-Yücel’s Bureau of Translation in Turkey, described in Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar’s essay, helped to shape the widespread changes in Turkey after the change to the Roman script and was central in the promotion of Western literature and ideas. Francisco Miranda, in Georges Bastin’s contribution, made use of translation to further revolutionary ideals in Latin America. Akiko Uchiyama proposes that Yukichi Fukuzawa was to a great extent responsible for modelling the belligerent superiority complex of the Japanese mentality towards the end of the 19th century, which would have colossal consequences in the 20th century.



5.

Introduction

Actor Network Theory

But very often the consequences of what the gate-keeper agent allows in or introduces are not what he or she planned. In the article already mentioned, Hélène Buzelin contrasts the work of Bourdieu and Bruno Latour (Buzelin 2005). Actor Network Theory (ANT), as originated by Bruno Latour, rather than concentrating on the strategic positioning of the agents in the field or system, examines the network of relationships between the different actors. For instance, in Laboratory Life (1979) Latour, together with Steven Woolgar, describes the genesis of scientific facts and artifacts resulting from the networks of relationships developing between the scientists’ daily routines: their attempts to find grants, failures, controversies, hesitations and creativity. In her article Buzelin sketches some of the questions that the use of Latour’s theory would require when adapted to the field of literary translation. The scholar would have to examine some of the “strategies, negotiations, struggles, conflicts – but also alliances – and consequently the modalities and reasons underlying the importation of foreign literature in a given context” (Buzelin 2005: 208–209). Such studies may not have a fixed focus, may produce somewhat confused information when examining such questions as: “how and by whom (through which channels) is the text to be translated selected? What are the arguments (and by whom) in this selection process? Who participates in the negotiations over translation rights? How are these participants recruited? How do they interact and negotiate room for manoeuvre?” (Buzelin 2005: 209). She then foresees a study analyzing the role of international literary agents in the translation market, one which takes account of negotiations, bids, selection policy (or lack of policy), alliances and collaborations. Indeed, the agents in this volume have been at the centre of such bids, conflicts and struggles, attempting to disseminate one form of literature over another, importing and exporting literatures.

6.

How ideas gain currency

Let us now look at the roles of certain actors in the way specific concepts have gained currency in recent years in the field of Translation Studies, which has become very diffuse, taught in various kinds of departments in a large number of languages in different parts of the world in undergraduate, MA, PhD and extension courses. The channels through which ideas gain currency have often been vague and circuitous and rarely reflect any definite planned programme.

11

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Possibly the main concept coming from Brazil in Translation Studies in recent years has been that of the “Cannibalism” of “Cannibalistic” translators, ­particularly Haroldo de Campos and Augusto de Campos. However, this particular term, which has gained a certain currency in Translation Studies circles, is very different from what can be found in their work published in Brazil. The concept of anthropophagy, or cannibalism, a practice which was common amongst Brazilian Indians, who would eat their defeated opponents in battle to be nourished by what was good in them, was coined by modernist poet and critic Oswald de Andrade (Andrade 1972), to propose that Brazilian literature has been nourished by European literature but should follow its own path. Haroldo de Campos certainly makes reference to Oswald de Andrade, but never uses the term “Cannibal” or “cannibalistic” translation, developing, instead, a large number of terms such as transcriação [transcreation], recriação [recreation], etc. So where does this term “Cannibalism” come from? Though Haroldo’s vast production of essays, translations and critical work is slowly becoming known in the wider world, it was Else Vieira’s 1994 essay “A Postmodern Translational Aesthetics in Brazil” (Vieira 1994), stemming from her presentation at the 1992 Vienna conference where the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) was launched, which first introduced this concept to many scholars in the translation world. “Cannibalism” was a new exotic concept and reflected a growing interest in what was happening in the translation field outside the established centres. At this time, Else Vieira was also travelling widely and making presentations at a number of conferences. The term had already been taken up by Susan Bassnett, who had had considerable contact with Vieira at Warwick University. In Contemporary Translation Theories Edwin Gentzler then mentions Susan Bassnett’s lectures as 1991 CETRA Professor at the University of Leuven, when she used this term, proposing a form of translation that would avoid the traditional faithful/free clichés (Gentzler 1993: 192–193). Thus, through this chain of presentations at conferences and personal contacts Cannibalism has come to represent, for many outside Brazil, an image of translation in Brazil. Students of translation and scholars may have read Gentzler and Maria Tymoczko’s article, “Translation and Political Engagement: Activism, Social Change and the Role of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts” (Tymoczko 2000). Another important factor is that, as very little of ­ Haroldo’s theoretical work is yet available in English and very few European or North American scholars read Portuguese, there was an enormous dependence on the words of the intermediary, Else Vieira. Both Susan Bassnett and Edwin Gentzler, along with Else Vieira, were interested in promoting and establishing the place of translation ideas from Brazil in the international market, but this was done through a chain of personal contacts rather than any fixed programme, emphasizing the casual and personal way in which ideas gain currency.



Introduction

We can mention another example of the power of the principle actor in the publication of a specific translation. Companhia das Letras is now one of the top Brazilian publishing houses for “quality” fiction and non-fiction. In 1990 Luis Schwarz, Managing Director and owner of Companhia das Letras, gave a talk at the Brazilian Translation Forum, held in São Paulo. He said that his publishing house had not published Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, though they had acquired the publication rights, not because of the fatwa which had been pronounced against Rushdie in 1989, but rather because the Companhia das Letras’ reader’s report had been unfavourable! It had apparently only been submitted to one reader. There is a complete separation between the Brazilian and Portuguese book markets, with works being translated separately for each of the markets, and the version in Luso Portuguese was the only translation available until the editors at Companhia das Letras changed their minds and published Satanic Verses in 1998. Another chain of events, which can be considered untidy, difficult to subject to rigid empirical theorization, can be seen in the popularity of the theories of Antoine Berman in Canada, especially Québec. In “Traduire les Sociolectes” TTR, Vol. VII, no. 2, Berman is heavily quoted in the three articles by Québec scholars, and the McGill University project on translating Faulkner used Berman as a main theoretical component (Chapedelaine 1994: 3–33). A special issue of TTR was published on Berman in 2001, “Antoine Berman Aujourd’hui”, Vol. XIV, no. 2. (Nouss 2001). A number of the contributors: Alexis Nouss, Sherry Simon, Jean-Marc Gouanvic, Barbara Godard, Gillian Lane-Mercier, Marc Charron, Paul Bandia, Georges L. Bastin and Clara Foz, have been amongst the “gate-keepers” responsible for Berman’s popularity in Québec. In one of the most recent volumes, TTR, Vol. XVII, no. 1, “Traductions et Représentations: Parcours dans l’Espace Hispanique I”, three out of five articles quote Berman. When writing his O Poder da Tradução [The Power of Translation], originally a PhD thesis, John Milton spent nearly a year at the University of Essex, and no one was speaking about Berman. Basic works on translation such as Bassnett’s Translation Studies (1980) contain no reference to Berman. He then went to Canada in 1992 and met Sherry Simon and Judith Woodsworth, who recommended reading Berman. Now of course the situation has changed, but, though there is an English translation of L’Épreuve de l’Étranger (1992) and a section from “Sur les tours de Babel” in Venuti’s Translation Reader (2001), Berman has hardly become a mainstream reference, at least in the English-speaking world world. In his essay in the present volume, Francis Jones emphasizes the possibilities of using Actor Network Theory, Activity Theory and Game Theory to examine how individuals interact to set and achieve goals, in this case the translation of post-war Bosnian poetry, integrating the network of agencies and players (source poet, translator, publisher etc.), the various “ambassadors”, into a multi-person

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“embassy network”. This chapter, more theoretical than the others, follows more of a formal social studies than a cultural studies line and makes for an interesting contrast. Indeed, the functional model Jones proposes contrasts with the very emotional subject that he examines: the atrocities carried out in Bosnia.

7.

Agents: Politics

This book will attempt to take Translation Studies outside the traditional paradigms, certainly outside the linguistic confines of the text and the translation process, though these elements are never forgotten. Although all the chapters focus on the agent of translation, the characteristics of this agent may vary considerably. In the case of Outi Palaposki’s essay, the subjects are the translators themselves: Samuli Suomalainen (1850–1907) and Juhani Konkka (1904–1970), two of the most important promoters of Finnish as a literary language. In other cases, the agent is not an actual translator or is someone who has exercised translation as a minor activity. Hasan-Âli Yücel, whose career is described in Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar’s essay, did not actually make any of translations published by the Translation Bureau himself, but was instrumental in setting up this very important government body, which played a major role in the attempt to westernize Turkish literature. Maria Eulália Ramicelli’s essay concentrates on a publication rather than a particular person; indeed, though some of the translators of the Revue Britannique were known, the texts were unsigned. This journal introduced liberal British ideas on politics, economics and society into France. But at a further remove, the magazines that were based on and translated articles from the Revue Britannique in Brazil introduced these very same ideas into Brazil. Moreover, the style of the French translations, which introduced a didactic voice and often changed the structure of the translation, was usually copied in Brazil. Politics is a central theme of Agents of Translation. In his contribution Georges Bastin describes the importance of the Venezuelan Francisco Miranda as a translation agent. Although Miranda did actually translate Viscardo’s Lettre aux Espagnols américains, a pamphlet championing the cause of independence for Spanish America, Bastin emphasizes his importance as an intermediary who encouraged the work of others and who saw translation as a vital part of the distribution of revolutionary ideas. Paul Bandia describes the life and work of the Senegalese intellectual, Cheikh Anta Diop, whose work centred around his attempts to show that the Ancient Egyptians had African rather than Indo-European roots, and that African languages were no less sophisticated than European languages. As a way of proving



Introduction

this, he undertook the writing and translating of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics into modern script, and also translated Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into Wolof. Though a scientist and historian rather than a translation scholar, Diop’s recourse to translation as a research strategy in the heated debates that characterized the field of Egyptology in the 1960s and 1970s highlights the agency of translation in the (de-)construction of history. But Agents of Translation does not necessarily see agency as whiggish, leading to a better world, with translation automatically promoting improved contact between nations. Denise Merkle describes Henry Vizetelly’s attempts to broaden the English mind by introducing popular translations of Zola into England, which exacerbated tensions between Britain and France and ended in his bankruptcy, prison, illness, and an early death. By contrast, Carol O’Sullivan writes on an agent much more attuned to the Victorian mind, and, indeed, one who helped to forge many of the characteristics we associate with the Victorian period: Henry Bohn’s series of expurgated classics in the Classical Library were a great success, and Bohn managed to always stay on the right side of the Victorian moralists. Akiko Uchiyama contrasts two very different views of Yukichi Fukuzawa: on the one hand, the liberal humanist; and on the other, as a popular journalist and translator of an important geography textbook, a propagator of the idea of Japanese superiority and the desire to invade China and Korea. The agent will make choices, which may have great importance for the future of the nation. Lobato’s favouring of Anglo-American works helped to take Brazil away from European influence and move into the American fold, enabling close contact in the 1960s between the Brazilian military and the CIA, thereby helping the 1964 coup. Agents of Translation also challenges the domestication vs. foreignization model. As already mentioned, Lobato inserted deliberately provocative elements into his adaptation of Peter Pan. Barrie’s voice was lost, and the various new narrative voices reflected Lobato’s critiques of the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship. Here we can again refer to Maria Tymoczko’s essay mentioned above (Tymoczko 2000), in which she makes a forceful argument against foreignization as a form of political engagement, arguing that one of the important points in the use of texts for political means is that “texts must be chosen for translation with political goals in view, and, if need be, there must be a willingness to manipulate the texts in translation, so as to adapt and subordinate the texts to political aims and agendas” (Tymoczko 2000: 41–42). Cemal Demircioğlu’s article looks at the many different forms in which translation was seen by Ahmed Midhat (1844–1913), thereby questioning the binary model. Describing Midhat’s translation techniques in the late Ottoman period, ­Demircioğlu makes a typology of Midhat’s work: he sometimes borrowed and

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adapted; he emulated original European works; his paratexts directed the ­readers; he published translations together with commentaries and critiques; he collaborated; he made both interlingual and intralingual summaries. And like the anonymous French and Brazilian didactic translators of Maria Eulália Ramicelli’s article, Midhat often takes on the role of teaching the Turkish reader about European culture.

8.

Agents: Literary forms and literary politics

A number of the agents of translation examined in this collection have challenged the dominant literary system and have played a major role in putting forward an alternative system. The essay of Thelma Nóbrega and John Milton stresses the role Haroldo de Campos has had in bringing translation to the forefront of intellectual life in Brazil. Haroldo also challenged the theories of Marxist critic Antonio ­Candido, which to a great extent dominated the Brazilian academy, and which saw Brazil as a dependent colonial culture. Haroldo stressed the importance baroque culture played in Brazil, and his writing brings to the fore forgotten authors and translators. The authors underline the singular importance of Haroldo de Campos and his brother Augusto on the Brazilian scene. However, Lisa Bradford emphasizes the multiplicity of agents in the translation of poetry in neighbouring Argentina. She traces the swings in the politics of the Argentine translators of poetry, from the apolitical stance of Borges, Bioy Casares and the Ocampo sisters, writing and translating in the pages of Sur, to the activist stance of Daniel Samoilovich’s, Diario de Poesía, which began publication in 1986. And, last but not least, Christine Zurbach describes the collective agency of the Portuguese theatre group, Centro Cultural de Évora, who were responsible for introducing the work of Brecht and other engagé dramatists into Portugal from French after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, thereby dramatically changing the Portuguese cultural scene. We very much hope our own agency in producing this volume will be productive and enjoyable.

Note * Every collection of papers comes about in a different way. In this case an initial Call for Papers was supplemented by personal invitations made to a number of participants at the IATIS (International Association for Translation and Interpreting Studies) congress in July 2006 in Cape Town, where a session on “Agents of Translation” was held.



Introduction

References Andrade, Osvald de. 1972. Do Pau-Brasil à Antropofagia e às Utopias: Manifestos, Teses de Concursos e Ensaios. Introdução: Benedito Nunes. Obras Completas 6. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Bassnett McGuire, Susan. 1980. Translation Studies. London: Methuen. Berman, Antoine. 1984. L’Épreuve de l’étranger. Paris: Gallimard. English translation: 1992. The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, S. Heyvaert (Trans.). Binghamton, NY: SUNY. Berman, Antoine. 1985. “L’Auberge du lointain”. In Sur les tours de Babel, Antoine Berman (ed.). Mauvezin: Trans-Europ. Berman, Antoine. 2000. “‘Translation and trials of the foreign’, from ‘L’auberge du lointain’”, Lawrence Venuti (Trans.). In The Translation Reader, Lawrence Venuti (ed.), 284–297. London: Routledge. Buzelin, Hélène. 2005. “Unexpected allies: How Latour’s Network Theory could complement Bourdieusian analyses in Translation Studies”. The Translator 11 (2): 193–218. Carneiro, Maria Luiza Tucci. 1997. Livros Proibidos, Idéias Malditas: O Deops e as Minorias Silenciadas. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade. Chapdelaine, Annick and Lane-Mercier, Gillian (eds). 1994. “Traduire les Sociolectes”. TTR VII (2). Clarke, Becky. 2003. “The African writers series – celebrating forty years of publishing distinction”. Research in African Literatures 34 (2): 163–174. Foz, Clara and Lafarga, Francisco (eds). 2005. “Traductions et Représentations: Parcours dans l’Espace Hispanique I”. TTR XVII (1). Gentzler, Edwin. 1993. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1980. “Power, sexuality and inwardness in Wyatt’s poetry”. In Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: Univ. Chicago. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1990. “Resonance and wonder”. In Learning to Curse: Essays in early Modern Culture. New York, London: Routledge. Latour, Bruno. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Alan Sheridan and John Law (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 1989. La Science en Action. Paris: Éditions la Découverte. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge. Meylaerts, Reine. 2005. “Sociology and interculturality: Creating the conditions for the international dialogue across intellectual fields”. The Translator 11 (2): 277–283. Milton, John. 1993. O Poder da Tradução. São Paulo: Ars Poética (reprinted as Tradução: Teoria e Prática. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1998). Milton, John. (forthcoming). “The resistant political translations of Monteiro Lobato”. In Resistance, Translation, Activism, Maria Tymoczko (ed.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Milton, John and Euzebio, Eliane. 2004. “The political translations of Monteiro Lobato and Carlos Lacerda”. In L’Histoire de la Traduction et la Traduction de L’Histoire, META 49 (3), Georges L. Bastin (ed.), 481–497.

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Monteiro Lobato, José Bento. 1971. Peter Pan (16th ed.). São Paulo: Brasiliense. Nouss, Alexei (ed.). 2001. “Antoine Berman Aujourd’hui”. TTR XIV (2). Paker, Saliha. 1991. “Turkey”. In Modern Literature in the Near and Middle East 1850–1970, Robin Ostle (ed.), 17–32. London: Routledge. Paker, Saliha. 1998. “Turkish tradition”. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona Baker (ed.), 571–580. London: Routledge. Rushdie, Salman. 1998. Versos Satânicos. Misael Dursan (trans.). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Shuttleworth, Mary and Cowie, Moira. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome. Simeoni, Daniel. 1998. “The pivotal status of the translator’s habitus”. Target 10 (1): 1–39. Tymoczko, Maria. 2000. “Translation and political engagement: Activism, social change and the role of translation in geopolitical shifts”. The Translator 6 (1): 23–47. Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. Rethinking Translation. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence. 1998. The Scandals of Translation. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence (ed.). 2001. The Translation Reader. London: Routledge Vieira, Else Ribeiro Pires. 1994. “A postmodern translational aesthetics in Brazil”. In Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline, Mary Snell-Hornby, Franz Pöchhacker, and Klaus Kaindl (eds), 65–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. HISTAL: Histoire de la traduction en Amérique latine: http://www.histal.umontreal.ca/frances/versionfr.htm

Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner Georges L. Bastin

Université de Montreal

Latin America as a whole is a translation continent, a continent with a transcultural history in which translation has a place of honour. It is not surprising therefore that there have been so many important figures who have translated, encouraged translations and publications of translated books, or reflected on the ways of translating and its impact on the construction of a genuine culture and identity. This paper highlights the trajectory of the major player and agent of translation during the so-called emancipation period, that is, from the end of the 18th century to the first decades of the 19th century, namely Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816). The hypothesis of this study is that the real role played by translation in the Hispano-American subcontinent, described and interpreted by a detailed examination of translation content and the acts of translation performed by the ‘agent’ studied here, is that of having contributed to the emancipation movement, to the creation of a national and continental identity, and to the construction of a new culture in the region. The study goes through Miranda’s biographical data and intellectual life and examines Miranda’s translation of Viscardo’s Lettre aux Espagnols-américains. It then looks into Miranda’s influence on Latin American intellectuals and revolutionary leaders from his home in London and especially into his role as an agent of propaganda through sponsoring newspapers and books. Key words: Francisco de Miranda; Viscardo; Lettre aux Espagnols-américains; translation in revolutionary movements

1.

Introduction

Hispanic America is no different from the rest of the world when it comes to translation agents, persons or institutions that stimulate interculturality, the exercise

20 Georges L. Bastin

of translation, and the development of its study as a scientific object. The main reason for this is that Latin America as a whole is a translation continent, a continent which is fundamentally transcultural, as Ortiz (1940) understands it; in other words, a continent with a transcultural history in which translation has a place of honour. According to Ortiz, the word transculturation: better expresses the phases of the transition process from one culture to another, because it is not only about acquiring a different culture, which is what AngloAmericans really refer to as acculturation. The process is also necessarily about losing or eradicating a previous culture, which one might refer to as a partial (2002: 260) deculturation. 

It is not surprising that there have been so many important figures in this field who have translated, encouraged translations and publications of translated books, or reflected on the ways of translating and its impact on the construction of a genuine culture and identity. Examples of these agents are the many religious orders which, at the beginning of the period of colonization, performed or sponsored a number of translations and linguistic works (Bastin 2007); the body of laws (Leyes de Indias) that regulates interpreters’ work; certain colonial institutions which entrusted the translations necessary for the administration to their employees; the first diplomatic and commercial republican services; publishing houses such as La Constelación del Sur (Willson 2004), and a number of intellectuals such as José Martí (Arencibia 2000; Bastin et al. 2006), Andrés Bello (Pagni 2000; Bastin et al. 2006), and Jorge Luis Borges (Waisman 2005; Kristal 2002). The hypothesis of my study is that the real role played by translation in this part of the Hispano-American subcontinent, described and interpreted by a detailed examination of translation content and the acts of translation performed by the ‘agent’ studied here, is that of having contributed to the emancipation movement, to the creation of a national and continental identity, and to the construction of a new culture in the region. Taking stock of the existing body of knowledge,1 this paper therefore highlights the trajectory of a major player and agent of the translation experienced by all Hispanic America during the so-called emancipation period, that is, from the end of the 17th century to the first decades of the 19th century, namely Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816). The best introduction was made by William Spence Robertson, his first and maybe best biographer: Spectacular and romantic was the career of Francisco de Miranda, Precursor, Knight-Errant, and Promoter of Spanish-American liberty. He was the first cultured South American to make a tour of either the United States or Europe. His life has a unique interest because he was the only personage of his time to



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

­ articipate in the struggle for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, the p French Revolution, and the war for the liberation of Spanish America. It may without exaggeration be said of him that he became acquainted with, and frequently captivated, more distinguished figures of his age in both the Old World and the New than any other contemporary. General Washington, the dashing Marquis Lafayette, Haydn the Composer, the enigmatical autocrat Catherine II, William Pitt, Alexander Hamilton, the domineering General Dumouriez, Napoleon, Bernardo Riquelme, later famous as Dictator O’Higgins, the Iron Duke, Simón Bolívar, who was destined to become the Liberator of Colombia – these and a host of others were more or less intrigued by Miranda’s dynamic personality and fascinating schemes. Historically, his life is important not only because it is concerned with the attitude of world powers toward Latin America during a critical period, but also because it epitomizes the early history of a South Ameri(Robertson 1929: 1, Preface) can nation during the heroic age. 

Miranda gave to his life a unique meaning: the independence and freedom of the Colombian continent, as he called it. Because he devoted his life to achieving this goal, Miranda represented a unique centre of convergence. Not only did he make direct and personal contact with the notable people mentioned above, but also with honourable representatives of the higher hierarchy of Latin America, such as San Martín, from the Southern Cone, Nariño, from New Granade, Montúfar and Rocafuerte, from Ecuador, Servando Teresa de Mier, from Mexico, and José Bonifacio, from Brazil (Diccionario de historia de Venezuela, tomo 3, 1997). Miranda devoted his life to the independence of Hispanic America; he consequently expended a great amount of energy on preparing, publishing and circulating documents of all kinds: letters, proclamations, plans, projects, articles, essays, etc. A large number of such documents implied ideological, political and cultural transference through translation. After describing in the first two sections of this paper the most important details of Miranda’s biography and making a brief description of his intellectual life, I shall mention his translation of Lettre aux Espagnols-américains par un de leurs compatriotes, by Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, his influence as its editor and disseminator, and the meaning that this translation had for Latin America during the years when independence was eagerly sought after. I shall the show how Francisco de Miranda was able to bring together the major players of Hispanic American independence in his house in London, and advise them to translate and disseminate texts of incalculable importance for the creation of the new American Republics. After this, I shall examine a number of publishing houses that were founded as a result of Miranda’s London propaganda, whose aim was the elevation of the culture and political conscience of the peoples of Hispanic America.

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2.

Biographical data

Though Miranda’s life is well-known, I shall mention some of the events that help to explain his personality and the role he played as translation agent. Francisco de Miranda, known as the ‘first universal criollo’,2 was born in Caracas on 28 March 1750, son of Sebastián de Miranda Ravelo, from the Canary Islands, and Francisca Antonia Rodríguez Espinoza from Caracas. He died in Cádiz (Spain) on 14 July 1816. His adolescence was marked by the elite mantuanos3 criticisms of his father because he was a merchant, a profession which, according to them, made him unable to hold the position of captain of the battalion of militia Blancos de Caracas. In 1762 Miranda started his studies in ‘Latin for minors’ and later arts (Bachelor of Arts) at the University of Caracas. Just before turning 21 he went to Spain, on 25 January 1771. In Madrid, he studied Mathematics, French, English, and Geography and began bringing together his personal library with works of philosophers and encyclopaedists, many of them prohibited by the Inquisition. In 1772, he started a military career which led him to take part in the defence of Melilla in Morocco (1774–1775) and in the Spanish expedition against Algiers (1775). Back on the Spanish peninsula, he met the English merchant John Turnbull, who became his friend for life. In Madrid, he joined the expedition to La Habana, and in 1781 he accompanied the Spanish troops in Pensacola, Western Florida. There, Miranda’s personality developed as he envisaged a great free nation which he would soon name Colombia or Colombeia. He was sent to the British colony of Jamaica, in 1781, and in April 1782 he took part in the Spanish naval expedition to conquer the British Islands of the Bahamas. As aide-de-camp to General Cajigal, he negotiated the capitulation of these islands in Haiti, where he had to fight against intrigues and accusations. He later went to the United States, in 1783, where he spent 18 months studying the North American revolutionary process, visiting prominent citizens such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, Samuel Adams, and Gilbert M. de la Lafayette, and outlining his first project for the independence of all the Hispanic American continent. In December 1784 he travelled to England, aiming to seek help to make Hispanic America independent. The timing was not appropriate, so Miranda devoted himself to improving his culture, which later proved important. He developed his personality in a methodical and disciplined way, in different fields of knowledge. In 1785 he started a four year journey through Europe, during which he wrote a detailed journal of his impressions and how he used his time. He wrote about everything he saw, heard, and learned. He went through Europe as a traveller and investigator. London newspapers referred to him as “…an enlightened man, a lover of the freedom of South America”. He visited part of Holland, Prussia, almost



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

all of Italy and Greece, Asia Minor, including Constantinople. At the end of 1786 he went to Russia, where he became one of Catherine’s favourites; she even allowed him to wear the uniform of the Russian army. He visited Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Vienna, Paris, The Hague, Berlin, and Naples. He travelled through Finland and arrived in Stockholm, where he was received by Gustave III, King of Sweden in August of the same year. He then went to Oslo and Copenhagen. In the meantime, the Spanish authorities started watching him, and his extradition was proposed. He continued his trip through Hamburg, Bremen, and Holland, using different pseudonyms, and then went to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the north of what we now know as Italy. Back in London, he resumed his conversations with Prime Minister William Pitt and Lord Grenville about the project for the emancipation of Hispanic America, presenting his plans and studies of military operations feasible in America. In 1792, all of Miranda’s proposals to the London cabinet could be summarized in these few words he wrote to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger: “My goal has always been and still is to promote the happiness and freedom of my own Nation (South America), which has been highly oppressed, and by doing so, to also offer commercial advantages to Great Britain”. Pitt’s indifference forced him to look for new horizons for the achievement of his ideal of American freedom. He went to France, still in its revolutionary period. He arrived in Paris in March 1792, where he established close friendship with many influential people. The War Minister named him Field Marshal of the Revolutionary Army. Soon after he became Second-in-Command of the Northern Army, whose head was General Dumouriez. He fought against the Prussians in Valmy and Dumouriez entrusted him with the control of the Northern Army in what is now Belgium. After accusations and trials from which he managed to escape, he resumed his social life and met the young General Napoleon Bonaparte, who said: “This Quixote, who is not crazy, has the sacred fire in his soul…”. Again persecuted by the Convention and the Directory, he lived in secrecy before going to England. His stay in France was commemorated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and his is the only Latin American name on the famous monument. Miranda returned to London on 15 January 1798 and once again began to put pressure on Prime Minister Pitt, the British cabinet, and the North American authorities, in order to obtain essential help to activate his military plan for his Hispanic American enterprise. At the end of this year and at the beginning of 1799, he took advantage of the return of a number of Latin Americans (including Bernardo O’Higgins, future president of Chile) to the New World to spread the ideal of emancipation. He printed, in French, the Lettre aux Espagnols-américains by Peruvian Jesuit Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, which he would later translate and publish in Spanish.

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At the beginning of 1800 he lived in London with his housekeeper, Sarah Andrews, who gave him two sons, Leandro and Francisco. He continued his lobbying for the independence of Hispanic America, this time with the minister Nicolás Vansittart, who became one of his most constant supporters. He prepared a provisional governmental programme, military regulations, and an appeal To the peoples of the Colombian continent, otherwise called Hispanic America. In 1803 he moved to the house which became his permanent residence, 27 Grafton Street. In 1803, in spite of promises of help from the British cabinet, he was not able to make the expedition he wanted to undertake to Trinidad, the base of his operations in America. In the first months of 1805, he prepared to leave. He wrote his will, naming as executors his friends John Turnbull and Nicolás Vansittart. He arranged that his Colombeia files were to be sent to Caracas (when it became independent), bequeathed his Greek and Latin classics to the University of Caracas, and the rest of his property to his brothers and nephews, so that they could be used for the education of his son, Leandro, and to Sarah Andrews. In 1805 he went to New York, where he visited President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison. They received him well, but did not give support to the expedition he was preparing. With the help of some friends, Miranda was able to arm the brig Leander, named after his son, and set off from New York towards Jacmel (Haiti) on 2 February 1806. At the port in Haiti, the schooners Bee and Bacchus joined the Leander. On 12 March, Miranda designed the tricolour flag (yellow, blue, and red) which flew from the Leander’s mast. The expedition went to the port of Ocumare (Venezuela) via Aruba. After a naval combat in Ocumare on 28 April 1806 against Spanish ships whose firepower was much greater, the Leander was forced to retreat, while the schooners Bee and Bacchus were taken by the Spaniards. Miranda reorganized his forces in Barbados and Trinidad. He disembarked in La Vela de Coro on 3 August 1806, took the fort and hoisted the flag. He went into the city of Coro, and there also hoisted the standard of the new nation. However, many inhabitants, afraid to show their support, preferred to escape from the city, which was attacked by royal troops. Defeated, Miranda set sail again on 13 August. He spent over a year in Aruba, Granada, Barbados, and Trinidad, waiting for help that would never come. On 31 December 1807 he went back to England and resumed his lobbying with the British cabinet, which this time was successful. A military expedition, led by General Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) was preparing to go to South America in order to support the revolutionary movement. However, in May of the same year, Spain was invaded by Napoleon’s troops, so the English expedition which was going to escort Miranda to America went instead to the peninsula, to fight together with the Spanish against the French. During the time he was in London, Miranda had been writing to the cabildos, the municipal ­authorities, and



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

well-known people who had been born in South America in Caracas, Buenos Aires and other towns, urging them to form independent executive councils. He devoted himself to the publication of propaganda documents for the independence and the newspaper El Colombiano, written in Spanish and published in London from March to May 1810. In a circular letter addressed to well-known personalities and institutions in Europe and the New World, he stated that his house in London: “…is and will always be the fixed point for the Independence and Freedom of the Colombian Continent…”. On 14 July 1810, the commissioners of the Supreme Executive Council of Caracas, Simón Bolívar, Luis López Méndez, and Andrés Bello, arrived in London. The process of separation of Spain from the provinces of Venezuela had started on 19 April. In London, Miranda became counsellor, master of ceremonies, and companion of the commissioners. He received them in his house and joined them in their visits to important people and institutions. He proposed returning to Venezuela. Bolívar left London in the middle of September and Miranda on 10 October. On 10 December 1810 he arrived in La Guaira, where he was warmly received by the population and by Bolívar, sent by the Executive Council. Named lieutenant general of the Venezuelan army, he contributed to the foundation of the Patriotic Society and joined the Constituent Congress as a representative. He maintained that it was necessary to declare definitive independence, which took place on 15 July 1811. A few days later, the flag Miranda had brought in 1806 became the national flag. The Precursor, as he was later called by historians, gave Venezuela its flag, signed his name in the records of Independence, and inspired the most beautiful line in the National Anthem: “…United with ribbons made by the sky, America exists as a Nation…”. In July 1811 the royalists from Valencia took up arms against independence, and the Executive named Miranda Chief of the army. He reorganised his army and introduced a strict discipline which was criticised in the government. As a result of the earthquake which destroyed Caracas on 26 March 1812, and with the threat of a number of insurgencies, the Federal Executive Power named Miranda General-in-Chief of Land and Sea of the Venezuela Confederation in Valencia and conferred on him extraordinary powers. Miranda named Bolívar military commander of Puerto Cabello. However, the frigate captain Domingo de Monteverde had invaded Valencia from Coro, and occupied the city. Dictatorial powers had been given to Miranda so he could save the Republic, but the loss of Puerto Cabello, which had been in the hands of Bolívar, resulted in all hope for victory being lost. On 12 July Miranda decided to propose to Monteverde an armistice and subsequent capitulation. On the 26th he went to Caracas. After giving orders to his aide-de-camp and secretary, Pedro Antonio Leleux, to send his records and books to Curazao, he left Caracas on the 30th for La Guaira, where a group of soldiers and civilians, including Bolívar and Miguel Peña,

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arrested him, reproaching him for the capitulation before Monteverde. Soon after, he was handed over to the royalists who seized and put him in chains in the vaults. From there he was transferred to San Felipe Castle in Puerto Cabello. On 4 June he was moved to the El Morro fortress in Puerto Rico, and at the end of 1813 a Spanish brig took him to Spain. At the beginning of January 1814 he was placed in a dungeon in the Cuatro Torres fortress in the La Carraca arsenal, near Cádiz, where he died after great suffering during the night of 14 July 1816. The creation of the concept of America as a unit, as the focal point of a strategy and struggle which involved the whole planet, must be credited to Miranda. The search for a clear idea for America during the period of colonial domination before Miranda was fruitless, and he was the first to achieve a complete vision of what America could mean as he proposed an absolute name – Colombia, or the Colombian continent – which would extend from the Mississippi River to Cape Horn. The raison d’être of his life was the independence of the Colombian continent, and Miranda is still seen as the original and unique convergence centre of this idea.

3.

Intellectual life

As we can see from his biography, Miranda had a very clear idea of his destiny. He explained that with a principle of his ‘life plan’: With this very purpose I have carefully studied beforehand the main European languages, which were the profession that fate and birth designed for me from my early years. All these principles (which are not yet anything else), all these seeds, with more than a little enthusiasm and expense, were sown in my understanding up until the time I was about 30 years old , and these qualities might not bear fruit or be used because of lack of culture and time. But the experience and knowledge that men acquire by personally visiting and examining with keen intelligence the great book of the world and the most wise and virtuous societies that make up the world, its laws, government, agriculture, police, commerce, military arts, navigation, sciences, arts, etc. is that which may ripen the fruit and in some way complete the magnificent work of forming a solid man. (Colombeia)

He travelled through the four continents, especially America and Northern Europe with a will to investigate. His curiosity was insatiable. He wrote: “I only travelled to learn” (t. IV, p. 527 in Lovera 2000: 137). In addition to Latin and Greek, Miranda knew at least six modern languages (Spanish, French, English, Italian, German, and Portuguese). In addition, “he knew Arabic quite well (Polanco Alcántara 2000: 59). His writings were ­characterized by



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

“being greatly permeated by foreign words” (Belda 1985: 13), particularly French. He also wrote in a number of languages, which contributed to his universality. His was not only interested in political, philosophical and military subjects. “He was the first of us to write about art, with such appropriateness and precision that he was even considered our first art critic” (Lovera 200: 131). His fondness for music and its study was noteworthy. He recorded in his Journal his opinions about painting, sculpture, historical monuments, theatre, music, ballet, and opera (Mondolfi 2000: 201–222). On 26 October 1792, only a few months after the publication of the Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), by Olympe de Gouges, who was sent to the guillotine (Lovera De-Sola 2000: 129–200), Miranda was also the first Hispanic American to defend women’s political rights. Books, reading and writing were a major part of his life. His great passion for books can be illustrated by the simple fact that Miranda owned a personal library with more than 5,600 books (about 2,500 titles) (Uslar Pietri 2000: 7–25 and Efraín Subero 2000: 103–128). These figures come from the detailed book lists that Miranda himself kept constantly updated, and there is also a detailed list of his books that were sold. He also preserved his books with great care, protecting them during the shipments that his travels required. He wrote to Turnbull in 1807: “Nothing can be more unpleasant to me than realizing that a single one of my books was taken from my house. Thinking about this possibility really hurts my feelings” (quoted by Subero 2000: 112). Likewise, a number of scholars have reported the Precursor’s favourite and most frequent readings. From the Greek and Latin classics such as Virgil, ­Cicero, Pliny, Plato, Ovid (Terzo Tarifi 2000: 250–268) to the Bible, via philosophical works (Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Boileau, Machiavelli, Hume, Locke, and Paine), military and scientific works (he was especially fond of maps), as well as chronicles of explorers, and last but not least, universal literature. Miranda had another passion, or obsession: writing. His own journal includes a number of references to his writing activities (Lovera 2000). The fact is that he started writing his journal on the same day he travelled to Spain (1771), when he was 21 years old, and he never stopped writing his impressions, opinions, and thoughts. His ‘masterpiece’, Colombeia, includes his Diario de viajes, together with a great number of publications, correspondence and texts. Although it is not a literary monument in the conventional sense of the product of a man of letters, Miranda wrote for his own enjoyment with the careless style of a man of action and with many foreign expressions. His Colombeia is a unique testimony of the period. During the four years he spent travelling throughout Europe, Miranda took along a Journal in which he left perhaps the most complete information about the

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Enlightenment, and he may be considered “the greatest writer of memoirs of his time” (Rodríguez de Alonso 1974). Colombeia, nowadays kept in the Academia Nacional de la Historia de Venezuela [National Academy of Venezuelan History] is his monumental work: 63 volumes, which he himself bound, contain his full history and the collection of texts on revolutionary unity and work throughout 40 years. The 63 volumes are divided into three sections: Travels (26 volumes), the French Revolution (18 volumes), and Negotiations (19 volumes). It was organized by Miranda himself in England, purchased in 1926 by Venezuelan government and moved to the Academia Nacional de la Historia in Caracas on November 15th 1953, where it is kept in a special case. This set of documents is of considerable historical value because it includes a number of key events which were crucial to the history of mankind and in which Francisco de Miranda, the ‘Venezuelan Precursor of the independence of Hispanic America’ took active part. His sensitivity to social issues, his great ability of observation, and his natural sense of belonging enabled him to capture European society and the American ideals in his writings. He thus provided posterity with an account of the highest political issues, of culture in its broader sense, and of the behaviour of the different social classes with which he mingled. The correspondence he kept with a number of the most prominent people of the time is of particular interest. A player in and spectator of the main events which shook the years 1771– 1810, Miranda gave all these documents a meaning that transcends the time when they were written. For almost 40 years, he kept and selected a number of both private and public documents which are crucial to understanding events such as the independence of the United States, the French revolution, and the independence of Hispanic America. From a translation studies perspective we will now see how Miranda himself translated and, especially, the great importance he gave to the translation and reviews in Spanish and English of key documents related to the importance of the emancipation issue in Hispanic America, thereby motivating and encouraging, through his agency, revolutionary intellectuals to commit themselves and take concrete action.

4.

Miranda’s translation of Viscardo’s Lettre aux Espagnols-américains

Though we have analysed this translation in detail elsewhere, it is worth presenting here its main features (for a more detailed analysis of this translation, see Bastin & Castrillón 2004 and Bastin, Echeverri & Campo forthcoming).



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, in Florence between 1778 and 1791, wrote a letter of some 30 pages in French with the aim of having it ready for publication on 12 October 1792, the date commemorating three hundred years of Spanish presence in America. Historians such as Mariano Picón-Salas consider Viscardo’s Lettre aux Espagnols-américains (literally, ‘Letter to the American Spaniards’) to be “the first and most widely distributed pamphlet championing the cause of revolution for independence” in Hispanic America and historically “the first declaration of independence” (1994: 226). The letter is divided into three parts: the first is an accusation against Spanish rule in Hispanic America; the second part is a literal transcription of a text by Montesquieu to serve as philosophical justification for independence; and the third part is an exhortation to Hispanic Americans to fight for their independence. The author, Peruvian Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán (1748–1798), was forced to leave the Spanish territories in America in 1767 together with the five thousand Jesuits expelled by the Pragmatic Sanction, a royal edict of Charles III of Spain. Informed of relevant events in America, Viscardo travelled through Europe and attempted to secure England’s support for Indian and slave uprisings. These efforts failed because England was negotiating peace with Spain. Viscardo died in London in 1798, leaving his papers to Rufus King, a US Minister to the English court (Vargas Ugarte 1964: 70). The Spanish translation of Viscardo’s letter is the work of Francisco de Miranda. Miranda inherited Viscardo’s writings from his friend Rufus King, and in 1799 he published the original French text of Viscardo’s letter in London, giving a fictitious place of publication, namely Philadelphia. As editor he added a preface and a number of footnotes to Viscardo’s text, materials that were also included in Miranda’s Spanish translation of the letter published by Miranda himself in London in 1801. This text became the Bible of revolutionaries in Hispanic America as a result of Miranda’s efforts to make it known throughout Europe and the Americas, first in French and Spanish, and later also in English. The significance of this translation is recognized mainly because of the striking intertextuality between Miranda’s text and Contestación de un americano meridional a un caballero de esta isla [better known as Carta de Jamaica], written by Simón Bolívar in 1815, which is one of his most important political texts. Luis Navarrete goes so far as to suggest that Viscardo’s letter may have served as a model for the one written by Bolívar (1994: 125). An analysis of Miranda’s translation shows that he succeeded in making it as accessible as possible for the Spanish-speaking readers. To achieve this goal, it was essential to bring Viscardo’s letter to them in their own language. Certain manipulations of the text are worth considering because they make the translator’s agenda explicit. As mentioned above, Miranda added an editor’s note and

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a number of footnotes to both the original French publication and the Spanish translation. The editor’s note is a short presentation of the author and the manuscript but it is, however, far from innocent and impartial. Miranda’s subjectivity and political intentions are quite manifest. Ce legs précieux d’un Américain-Espagnol à ses compatriotes, sur le sujet, le plus grand et le plus important qui puisse s’offrir à leur considération, est imprimé conforme au manuscrit de la main de l’Auteur même; et on pourra s’apercevoir au style, que c’est un étranger qui, s’exprime dans la langue Françoise sans aucune sorte de prétention. C’est D. Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzman, natif d’Arequipa dans le Pérou, ex-Jésuite, mort à Londres, au mois de Février 1798, qui en est l’Auteur. On fera connaître dans la suite le reste de cet intéressant manuscrit sur (Viscardo 1799, editor’s note) l’Amérique Méridionale.  Este precioso legado d’un Americano Español a sus compatriotas, sobre el objeto más grande y más importante que se puede ofrecer a su consideración, esta impreso conforme al manuscrito de la mano del autor mismo; y se podra conocer por el estilo del original que es un extranjero que se explica en la lengua francesa sin ninguna especie de pretensión. El autor es Don Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzman, nativo de Arequipa en el Perú, ex-Jesuita muerto en Londres en el mes de Febrero de 1798. En lo sucesivo se hara conocer el resto de sus interesantes (Viscardo 1801, editor’s note) manuscritos sobre la América Meridional.  This precious legacy of a Spanish American to his countrymen, on the greatest and the most important subject that could be put to their consideration, is printed according to the manuscript written by the author himself; and it is possible to see from the style that he is a foreigner who has expressed himself in the French language without any pretension. The author is Don Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, native of Arequipa, Peru, a former Jesuit who died in London in February 1798. In the following pages, we will introduce the rest of this interesting (my translation) manuscript about South America. 

The choice of words in the first sentence shows Miranda’s value judgment conveyed by the use of the adjective precioso (precious) to describe the letter, and the use of the word legado (legacy), which makes the text the property of all Spanish-speaking Americans. Of greater interest from an ideological and sociolinguistic point of view is the use of the adjective of nationality in Viscardo’s title of the original French text, Lettre aux Espagnols-americains (later translated by William Burke into English as Letter to the Spanish Americans, in Burke 1808/1976). Although Miranda entitled the Spanish translation Carta derijida a los españoles americanos por uno de sus compatriotas, [literally, ‘Letter Addressed to the American Spaniards by one of their countrymen’], in his editor’s note he refers to ­Viscardo as



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

‘un Americano Español’ [‘a Spanish American’], defining a distinct and separate identity for his compatriots and shifting their affiliation. Miranda used the translation of Viscardo’s letter not only to introduce readers to the original author and his text but also and perhaps primarily to nurture his own project of independence, a goal he thought he had attained, considering the reception of his translation in the Spanish colonies. A number of historians have corroborated the dissemination and influence of the text in Europe and in the colonies in the first decade of the nineteenth century (cf. Batllori 1953: 153–157; Navarrete 1994: 127). Picón-Salas argues that in fact Viscardo’s text was successfully disseminated as a significant weapon of propaganda (1994: 226). Indeed, preparing for the invasion of Venezuela in 1806, Miranda wrote a proclamation in which he appropriated Viscardo’s arguments to justify his military actions. In this document he also included the complete text of Viscardo’s letter and instructed the religious and the civil authorities of Venezuela to make the public aware of it by posting it on doors and by reading it once or twice daily at mass and other public gatherings (Batllori 1953: 150–151). Back in Europe, after the failure of his expedition, Miranda promoted an English version of the letter. In 1808 one of his supporters, the journalist William Burke, published a book entitled Additional Reasons, for Our Immediately Emancipating Spanish America: Deduced from the New and Extraordinary Circumstances, of the Present Crisis: And Containing Valuable Information Respecting the Late Important Events, both at Buenos Aires, and in the Caracas, as well as with Respect to the Present Disposition and Views of the Spanish Americans: Being Intended as a Supplement to ‘South American Independence’, to which Burke appended his own English translation of Viscardo’s letter. Aware of the interest of the Edinburgh Review in American matters, Miranda seized this opportunity to make Viscardo’s thoughts more available to English-language readers. With the help of James Mill (John Stuart Mill’s father), in 1809 Miranda published a 34page essay in the Edinburgh Review based on Viscardo’s letter, justifying once again the independence of Hispanic America. The first two pages of this article are devoted to Viscardo’s letter and the remaining 32 pages to the emancipation of Hispanic America (Batllori 1953: 154). Viscardo’s letter struck a deep chord with Spanish-speaking Americans during the critical years of the struggle for independence. Early evidence can be found in the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence (1811), whose content was greatly influenced by Viscardo’s ideas. In the same year, the newspaper Gazeta de Caracas reproduced the full text of the declaration. By then William Burke had taken up residence in Caracas and was using this paper to make constant references to the legacy of the Jesuits (Batllori 1953: 157). The letter was

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also reprinted frequently in English, Spanish, and French in the first years of the twentieth century, as historians interested in the ideological foundations of the independence movement recognized Viscardo’s letter as one of the most influential documents of the time. As of yet, I have not heard of another noteworthy translation made by Miranda. Nevertheless, he probably had to make use of translation a number of times because of the intense correspondence he kept with Europeans and Americans in Spanish, English and French, and because there frequently were documents and copies of other letters in Spanish, English and French attached to the correspondence. Grases (1981a: 54) states: “The Precursor Francisco de Miranda, […] on many occasions had to translate the most various documents, so that they could inform the governors, politicians, and intellectuals with whom he discussed his chimera”.

5.

Miranda’s influence in London

After he was thrown out of France in 1797, Francisco de Miranda became an “agent” of Spanish America in London. The work of María Teresa Berruezo León (1989), on the Hispanic American fight for independence in 1800–1830 England, from which I have extracted most of the data presented here, gives to this leader a place of honour. In 1810 the house in Grafton Street became a meeting place for the Hispanic American patriots, and Miranda was the pillar of support of diplomats, politicians, and intellectuals who arrived in London in search of British support for their cause. Previously, on 22 December 1797, Miranda had met in Paris with Pedro José Caro and Antonio Nariño (translator of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 1789) from New Granada, Peruvian José del Pozo y Sucre, and Chilean Manuel José de Salas, all of them commissioners of the representative committee of South American provinces. Together they signed the Act of Paris, which was aimed at achieving the independence of Hispanic America, looking for support from England and the United States. In 1798 Miranda met Bernardo O’Higgins, to whom he dedicated a Decalogue entitled Consejos de un viejo sur-americano a un joven patriota [Advice from an Old South American to a Young Patriot]. O’Higgins, in his correspondence, expresses affection and admiration for Miranda on a number of occasions. Also in 1798 Miranda met William Thompson, a journalist from the Annual Register, who planned to write his biography. Although the project was never carried out, Miranda collaborated with Thompson very closely as military ­assessor



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

for the publication of Military Memories relating to Campaigns, Battles and Stratagems of War Ancient and Modern in 1804. After the first Venezuelan mission arrived in 1810, Miranda’s propaganda mission started in London with his American counterparts. He acted, so to say, as political advisor and tourist and social guide in this first Venezuelan mission formed by Luis López Méndez and important people who were going to mark universal politics and literature, namely Simón Bolívar, Emancipator to be, and Andrés Bello, poet and lawyer. They found in Miranda unrestricted and very useful support for their plans and future actions. Miranda taught Bolívar how to organize propaganda campaigns and persuaded him to publish an article in the Morning Chronicle (5 September 1810). As a result of this campaign, the British press (The Morning Chronicle, The Examiner, The Morning Herald) mentioned the presence of the Venezuelans in London and referred to the new government in Caracas, and reproduced articles from the Gazeta de Caracas. Berruezo León (1989: 90) states: “Venezuela was the cradle of Latin-American diplomacy, and great encouragement and efficiency were found in the actions of Miranda and Bolívar.” Two works stand out in this cooperation between Miranda and the Venezuelans. The first is Interesting Official Documents relating to the United Provinces of Venezuela by Bello y López in 1811, and the second is Outline of the Revolution in Spanish America or an Account of the Origins, Progress and Actual State of the War between Spain and Spanish America; Containing the Principal Facts which Have Marked the Struggle, by Manuel Palacio Fajardo. Both works were published in London by Longman, Hurst, Rees Orme and Brown. Fajardo’s work did not have direct support from Miranda because he had already died when it was published in 1817, but it did have Andrés Bello’s cooperation and made use of Miranda’s teachings and contacts. Thanks to Miranda’s contacts the work was reissued in English in New York in the same year and reviewed in 1820 by Irisarri, envoy of the Chilean government, in his newspaper El Censor Americano, published in London. Irisari released other versions of the work, namely the three French versions (1817, 1819, and 1824). There was also a German version in 1818, so it was translated to three languages in four different countries during those years. The Spanish translation only came out in 1953 in Caracas: Palacio Fajardo, Manuel, Bosquejo de la Revolución en la América Española [Outline of the Revolution in Spanish America], Prologue by Enrique Bernardo Núñez, Caracas. Other illustrious Hispanic Americans gathered around Miranda in London, especially Rocafuerte, Mier and Vergara. Vicente Rocafuerte, from Guayaquil, who was educated in Paris and spoke at least six languages, wrote a prologue to Discurso sobre las mitas de América [Discourse on forced labour in America], entitled A los Indios Americanos [To the American Indians], read by his compatriot José Joaquín de Olmedo before ­Spanish

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royalty in 1812. The ideals of reform, a characteristic of the Enlightenment were glorified. Mexican Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, subsidised by Mexico Viceroy Iturrigaray, went to London to write two volumes of Historia de la Revolución de Nueva España, antiguamente Anáhuac, o verdadero origen y causas de ella con la relación de sus progresos hasta el presente año de 1813 [History of New Spain Revolution, Former Anahuac, its Real Origin and Causes with a Report of the Developments to the Present Year of 1813]. The work, originally intended to defend the viceroy, eventually became an apology for independence: “… all this confusion, disorder, and anarchy that always result in Europeans going unpunished and Americans being handicapped” (quoted by Berruezo León 1989: 137). De Mier, on the other hand, “refuses names such as ‘motherland’ in favour of others such as ‘step-motherland’, for Spain had failed to recognise the equality of its children” (Berruezo León 1989: 139). After the publication, de Mier intervened on behalf of the American cause by joining an expedition to Mexico in 1816. His work, criticised in England, had great impact in Spain, France, and Mexico. José María Vergara, from New Granada, arrived in London with the Colombian diplomatic mission together with Fernando Peñalver and Francisco Zea, Vice-President of Colombia, in the summer of 1819. Vergara, who had fought against the French in the Spanish ranks, was entrusted to study “criminal jurisprudence in England, in order to adopt the most suitable type in the American country.” (Berruezo León 1989: 247). In the same vein of propaganda started by Miranda, Vergara translated Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, by Thomas Paine, published in 1786. The Spanish version Disertación sobre los primeros principios del gobierno came out in London in 1819. Paine, the English republican philosopher who wrote in a fluent style, made Rousseau’s ideas known, and his books had great influence on Hispanic America. Two Venezuelan translators of Paine, who preceded Vergara, should be mentioned: Juan Germán Roscio, who translated Los Derechos del Hombre [The Rights of Man] in 1810–1811, and Manuel García de Sena, who translated La independencia de la Costa Firme justificada por Thomas Paine treinta años ha in 1811 in Philadelphia. Just like Miranda in his translation of Lettre aux Espagnols-américains and García de Sena in his translation of the works of Paine and McCulloch (see Bastin & Echeverri 2004), Vergara wrote a warning to the reader, a 17-page prologue, and added some notes. In the prologue, the translator explains the reasons why he decided to translate Paine, namely “to cooperate with the process of political learning and maturity of the Hispanic Americans” (Berruezo León 1989: 257) and “to show the feasibility of the republican system in Hispanic America without being extremist” (op. cit. p. 259). Vergara also translated a second work in order to complete his assignment of studying the British legal system, namely De L’Administration de la Justice



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

Criminelle en Angleterre et de l’Esprit du Gouvernement Anglais [On the Administration of Criminal Justice in England and on the Spirit of the English Government], by Cottu, judge in the Court of Paris, published in Paris in 1820. Because of a ‘brain disease’, Vergara did not finish his translation which was published in 1826 in London by another translator, Spaniard José María Blanco White, editor of the London newspaper, El Español. The above mentioned works and translations show the great support that Miranda gave to his Hispanic American compatriots at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

6.

Miranda, agent of propaganda

There were several different forms to the way in which Miranda spread propaganda for his support of the independence of “Colombia”. I shall now examine the way in which he collaborated with publicists and writers and how his influence led to the creation of newspapers, journals, magazines and even a dictionary.

6.1 Cooperation with William Burke and José María de Antepara William Burke, Irish publicist, was one of Miranda’s greatest collaborators as confirmed by historians: Burke and other writers from that time published those works according to and inspired by Miranda, with whom he had a connection not only because of their community of ideas, but also because of the bonds of a close friendship.  (Becerra 1917: 209)

The first contribution resulted in the publication of South American Independence: or, the Emancipation of South America, the Glory and Interest of England, in London, 1807. Miranda’s intervention is very clear in this document, whose last part pleads for monetary support from the government, with precise figures which corresponded to his projects. In 1808, Miranda and Burke published another pamphlet entitled Additional Reasons for our Immediately Emancipating Spanish America…, with two issues in London. In this pamphlet, Burke included his English translation of Viscardo y Guzmán’s Lettre aux Espagnols-américains, as well as five documents entitled Cartas y Proclamas del General Miranda [Letters and Appeals of General Miranda]. They continued working together, writing articles in the Annual Register and The Edinburgh Review. After the arrival of the Venezuelan mission in London, Burke became a collaborator for the Gazeta de Caracas, organ of the independent government.

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In 1809, the Spaniard, Manuel Cortés Campomanes, who took part in the Conspiracy of Gual and España in 1797 in La Guaira together with Juan Bautista Picornell, and translated the revolutionary French song Carmagnole (Bastin & Diaz 2004), introduced Miranda to Ecuadorian José María de Antepara. Together with Antepara, and encouraged by John Murray, owner of the Quarterly Review, rival of the Edinburgh Review, Miranda wrote an autobiography. It was published in 1810 under the title South America Emancipation. Documents historical and explanatory, showing the designs which have been in progress and the exertions made by General Miranda, for the attainment of that object, during the last twenty-five years. Originally written in Spanish and based on a vast documentation selected and provided by Miranda himself, it was translated and published in English. The book starts with a review of Viscardo y Guzmán’s Lettre, published by Miranda and Burke in the Edinburgh Review, and includes eleven appendixes with a number of documents related to Miranda’s activity. “Actually, Antepara wrote only the four first pages of the preface and some comments in the appendixes, in order to interconnect the documents” (Berruezo León 1989: 66).

6.2 El Colombiano (1810) and other newspapers I have already mentioned that Miranda published a broad review of Viscardo’s letter in The Edinburgh Review at the beginning of the nineteenth century. After this experience, he never stopped trying to penetrate the English press for purposes of propaganda. He did it through “a certain Doctor Constancio” (Berruezo León 1989: 68 and Robertson 1982: 203), who either wrote or translated Miranda’s opinions on Hispanic America into English in The Statesman and other newspapers. This ‘Doctor Constancio’ could of course have been Miranda himself. Miranda published a letter in The Morning Chronicle in London (16 April 1810), signed “A. Peruvian”, in response to another one published in The Times, and wrote another three articles under the pseudonym ‘Conciliador’ (Peacemaker) entitled On Spanish America (Berruezo León 1989: 71). He was referred to by the editor of The Morning Chronicle on a number of occasions. The first issue of El Colombiano, a newspaper created and edited by ­Miranda, was brought out on 15 March 1810 (a month before the creation of the Caracas Council, which would later result in the independence of Venezuela). It was the first Hispanic American publication in the British press. Five issues were published fortnightly until 15 May (Berruezo León 1989: 73). José María de ­Antepara was in charge of the direction of the newspaper, but its actual editor was ­Miranda, who sent it to his friends in America. The Gazeta de Caracas and La Gazeta de Buenos Aires reproduced some of its articles (Berruezo León 1989: 72). Consist-



Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

ing of two columns in Spanish, El Colombiano included a number of translations. Issue no. 2 included “translation of documents to illustrate politics in France" (Robertson 1982: 299), issue no. 4 “translated an English newspaper” (Robertson 1982: 301). In addition, Miranda “sent an English translation of issue no. 2 to a Downing Street employee” (Robertson 1982: 300). El Colombiano was eventually considered by the government of Great Britain as an “incendiary and subversive newspaper, contrary to the order, tranquillity and union which should prevail in America” (Robertson 1982: 300). In such a difficult situation, the newspaper did not survive. It should be mentioned that England and Spain were allies at that time, and Miranda spared no effort to bring the Junta Central (Central Council) of Spain into discredit. The only thing that El Colombiano had in common with the English government was their mutual hatred of Napoleon. At that same time, Miranda made contact with Hypolyto José da Costa a Portuguese patriot who founded and edited the Correo Braziliense in London. The Correo translated articles and letters by Miranda into Portuguese.

6.3 Diccionario geografico-historico de las Indias Occidentales o América (Geographical and Historical Dictionary of the West Indies, or America) A few months before he left for Venezuela, where he was to become the leader of the first Venezuelan Republic in 1811, Miranda decided to take part in a “project that aimed to […] encourage the translation of the Diccionario geografico-historico de las Indias Occidentales o América (Geographical and Historical Dictionary of the West Indies, or America), by Antonio de Alcedo” (Berruezo León 1989: 78). He encouraged the translation and enlargement of the dictionary, and entrusted it to George A. Thompson, son of his friend William Thompson. The translation of all the volumes came out between 1812 and 1815. The work (Thompson, George A., The Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America and the West Indies, containing an entire translation of the Spanish work of Colonel D. Antonio de Alcedo 5 vols. London, 1812–1815) aroused so much interest that it sold out right away. However, it was not reissued (Berruezo León 1989: 79).

6.4 La Biblioteca Americana [American Library, 1823] The trail blazed by Miranda was followed by the other Hispanic American patriots involved in projects with similar purposes of propaganda.

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One of these projects was Biblioteca Americana [American Library] whose prospectus was written in 1823. The magazine, published in London in two volumes, came out as an organ of a Hispanic American Society, among whose members were Andrés Bello, Juan García del Rio, Luis López Méndez, Augustín Gutiérrez Moreno, and Pedro Creutzer, the first two being the main editors. The magazine was, according to Bezuerro (1989: 377) “the ripe fruit of the collaboration of the patriots in London.” It had three main purposes: to spread in America what was useful for its progress, help America find its roots and its peculiar characteristics, and try to universalize the New World. Ideological, literary, and scientific articles were either inspired by foreign sources in other languages or translations.

6.5 El Repertorio Americano [American Repertoire, 1826–1827] Miranda was, undoubtedly, a unique character who played the lead in Hispanic American propaganda task in Europe for one decade. The patriots who followed (Berruezo León 1989: 80) him walked the trail blazed by him.

Andrés Bello can be seen once more, together with Juan García de Río, directing a propaganda newspaper, Repertorio Americano. This time, he avoided political debate and had scientific and literary purposes. It was a cult newspaper aiming at increasing the level of education of the American peoples, and therefore was of a clear educational nature. The collaboration between the editors resulted in giving a more Hispanic American character to the newspaper. Four issues came out quarterly, from October 1826 to August 1827. In its last issue, Repertorio paid homage to Francisco de Miranda. Like the previous magazine, it included translations and reviews of foreign works, mainly French. Other periodical and editorial enterprises, both original texts and translations, were undertaken in London by Hispanic American patriots and intellectuals. Examples are the Catecismos, by Ackerman (1823–1818) with the ­collaboration of Blanco White, the translations of Ivanhoe and The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott, the magazine Correo literario y político de Londres [London Literary and Political Post], the translations of Teología Natural [Natural Theology] by ­ William Paley, and Ensayo sobre el hombre [Essay on Mankind] and Epístolas [Episotles] by Alexander Pope. In short, an intellectual and cultural inheritance formed in London by Hispanic Americans who knew Miranda’s influence and followed his example.



7.

Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner

Conclusion

In the bicentenary of the arrival of Miranda’s expedition on the coast of Venezuela (1806–2006) and the coming bicentenary of the first official move towards independence in Hispanic America (19 April 1810), I wanted to recover and highlight a unique historical work. I have thus studied step by step the work in propaganda, the press, and translations of Francisco de Miranda, the Generalísimo. I can even go one step further, for Miranda continued his multilingual intellectual work after his death, through his son Leandro, who in 1823 edited in Bogotá the bilingual (Spanish-English) newspaper El Constitucional. In addition, Leandro acted as interpreter-negotiator on different occasions to General Rafael Urdaneta (Mondolfi 2005: 194), as emissary to European governments, to the English government to negotiate the external debt of the recently disintegrated Gran Colombia, as interpreter of Soublette y Montillo, and finally as intermediary to the bankers in City of London (Mondolfi 2005: 195–196). Miranda can be seen as an energy that flowed and seized all Hispanic American patriots and intellectuals who visited his home in London during a key decade and a great inspiration to translators of important documents. María Teresa Berruezo León, whom I have extensively mentioned in this paper, emphasizes this in the conclusion of her work: The translation of foreign works is perhaps the least known task and one which has aroused minor interest and needs to be studied more deeply. Accounts have frequently been given of translations without considering the reasons which motivated the translators to perform them. The lack of originality in the authorship of the works, taken from foreign writings, minimized their importance a priori. Nevertheless, we have seen books by Paine, Pope, Paley, Scott, and Cottu translated into Spanish with very clear purposes, which, according to their contents, attempted to improve the moral, religious and political education of the American peoples. Their transcendence has thus been very significant, because, through them, intellectuals, politicians, and readers with middle or higher education had access to studies which would otherwise have taken too long or whose reading (1989: 615) would have been limited because of the language. 

From a translation studies perspective Miranda embodies the very model of a politically committed translator and agent of translation who sees translation as a weapon of emancipation and therefore does not hesitate to manipulate the original by adding to or substracting from the original what he considers relevant or irrelevant to his readership. Like other figures of his time (Antonio Nariño, ­Manuel García de Sena and Juan Bautista Picornell) he nevertheless recognizes

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the authority of the author, often praising him, but emphasizing the importance of the translated text while he himself, the translator, remains unnamed. The translated text in its historical role appears to be the main concern. In order to describe this great Hispanic American agent, López Méndez, one of the first Venezuelan diplomats, in a letter to the Secretary of State, London, 3 October 1810 (Bello quoted by Berruezo León, 1989: 91–92) stated: “Not even his [Miranda’s] enemies have dared to deny his extraordinary superiority of enlightenment, experience and talent”. In 1826, Simón Bolívar, already ‘Libertador, gave his opinion of Miranda, referring to him as “… the most illustrious Colombian…” I therefore refer to him with no doubt as the “Intellectual Precursor of translation” in Hispanic America.

Notes 1. A forthcoming study will be based on Miranda’s personal diary, called Colombeia, written throughout his long life through and consisting of 63 volumes. The original manuscripts are at the Venezuelan National Academy of History in Caracas. Only a part of it has been digitalized and is available to researchers. 2. Not to be understood as ‘creole’ but rather as born in America of Spanish parents. 3. In Venezuela, the white aristocrats descended from the Spanish conquistadores.



Translated from the Spanish by Sheime Denadai

References Arencibia, Lourdes. 2000. El traductor Martí. Ensayo. Pinar del Río, Cuba: Ediciones Hermanos Loynaz. Colección El fausto. Armas Ayala, Alfonso. 1970. Influencia del pensamiento Venezolano en la revolución de independencia de Hispanoamerica. Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Bastin, Georges L. (2007). “La traduction des catéchismes et la conquête spirituelle dans la Province du Venezuela”, TTR vol. XX, nº 1, pp. 215–243. Bastin, Georges L., Echeverri, Àlvaro and Campo, Àngela. forthcoming. “Translation as the ideological back-bone of the emancipation ideology of Hispanic America”. In Translation, Resistance, Activism, M. Tymozcko (ed.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bastin, Georges L., Campo, Ángela and Echeverri, Álvaro. 2006. “La traducción en América Latina: Una forma de traducir propia y apropiada”. In Estudios: Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales, nº 24 [Espacios de traducción en América Latina, special issue], Andrea Pagni (ed.), 69–94. Bastin, Georges L. and Castrillón, Elvia Rosa. 2004. “La carta dirigida a los Españoles Americanos: Una carta que recorrió muchos caminos.” Hermeneus 6: 273–290.



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Bastin, Georges L. and Díaz, Adriana. 2004. “Las tribulaciones de la Carmañola (y la Marsellesa) en América Latina”. Trans 8: 29–39. Bastin, Georges L. and Echeverri, Álvaro. 2004. “Traduction et révolution à l’époque de l’indépendance du Venezuela”. Meta 49 (3): 562–575. Batllori, Miguel. 1953. El Abate Viscardo: Historia y mito de la intervención de los Jesuitas en la independencia de Hispanoamérica. Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Becerra, Francisco. 1917. Vida de D. Francisco de Miranda, II. Madrid. Belda, Francisco. 1985. La lengua de Francisco de Miranda en su Diario. Caracas: Academia Nacional de historia, Serie El libro menor nº 69. Berruezo León, María Teresa. 1989. La lucha de Hispanoamérica por su indepencencia en Inglaterra 1800–1830. Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica. Burke, William. 1808/1976. Additional Reasons for our Emancipating Spanish America: Deduced, from the New and Extraordinary Circumstances, of the Present Crisis: And Containing Valuable Information, Respecting the Late Important Events, both at Buenos Ayres, and in the Caracas, as well as with Respect to the Present Disposition and Views of the Spanish Americans: Being Intended as a Supplement to the “South American Independence”. New York: AMS Press. Diccionario de historia de Venezuela. 1997. Caracas: Fundación Polar. Grases, Pedro. 1981a. Preindependencia y emancipación: Protagonistas y testimonios. Caracas: Editorial Seix Barral. Grases, Pedro. 1981b. Instituciones y nombres del siglo XIX. Caracas: Editorial Seix Barral. Grases, Pedro. 1997. La conspiración de Gual y España y el ideario de la independencia (3rd ed.). Caracas: Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia. Kristal, Efraín. 2002. Invisible Work. Borges and Translation. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Lovera De-Sola, R. J. 2000. “Las inquietudes intelectuales del Precursor. Estudio crítico del “Diario” de Francisco de Miranda”. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 129–200. Mondolfi, Edgardo. 1992. Testigos norteamericanos de la expedición de Miranda. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores/Centro Venezolano Americano. Mondolfi, Edgardo. 2000. “Miranda y la música”. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 201–222. Mondolfi, Edgardo. 2005. Miranda en ocho contiendas. Caracas: Fundación Bigott. Navarrete Orta, Luis. 1994. “Viscardo y Bolívar: Dos momentos del proyecto emancipador latinoamericano”. In Esplendores y miserias del siglo XIX: Cultura y sociedad en América latina, Beatriz Gonzáles Stephan, Javier Lasarte, Graciela Montaldo, and Maria Julia Daroqui (eds), 125–137. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores. Ortiz, Fernando. 2002/1940. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y del azúcar. Madrid: Cátedra. Pagni, Andrea. 2003. “Traducción del espacio y espacios de la traducción: Les jardins de Jacques Delille en la versión de Andrés Bello”. In Ficciones y silencios fundacionales. Literaturas y culturas poscoloniales en América Latina (Siglo XIX), Friedhelm Schmidt-Welle (ed.), 337–356. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert. Parra-Pérez, Caracciolo. 1992. Historia de la primera república de Venezuela. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho. Picón-Salas, Mariano. 1994. De la conquista a la independencia: Tres siglos de historia cultural hispanoamericana. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

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Polanco Alcántara, Tomás. 2000. “La personalidad de Francisco de Miranda”. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 54–65. Robertson, William Spence. 1929. The Life of Miranda, 2 vol. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Robertson, William Spence. 1982. La vida de Miranda. Traducción del original de Julio E. Payró. 2da ed. Revisada y compulsada por Pedro Grases. Caracas: Banco Industrial de Venezuela. Rodríguez, Jaime. 1998. La independencia de la América española. Miguel Abelardo Camacho (Trans.). Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Rodríguez de Alonso, Josefina. 1974. Le siècle des Lumières conté par Francisco de Miranda. Paris: France Empire. Subero, Efraín. 2000. “El humanismo de Francisco de Miranda”. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 103–128. Tarifi, Terzo. 2000. “Los Clásicos griegos de Francisco de Miranda.” Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 250–268. Uslar-Pietri, Arturo. 2000. “Los libros de Miranda”. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia LXXXIII (329): 7–18. Viscardo y Guzmán, Juan Pablo. 1799. Lettre aux Espagnols-américains par un de leurs compatriotes. Philadelphia. Viscardo y Guzmán, Juan Pablo. 1801. Carta derijida a los españoles americanos por uno de sus compatriotas. Trans. Francisco de Miranda. London: Boyle. Viscardo y Guzmán, Juan Pablo. 2002. Letter to the Spanish Americans: A Facsimile of the Second English Edition (London, 1810). Providence, RI: John Carter Brown Library. Vargas Ugarte, Rubén. 1964. La carta a los españoles americanos de don Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán (2nd ed.). Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, S.A. Waisman, Sergio. 2003. “The thousand and one nights in Argentina: Translation, narrative, and politics in Borges, Puig, and Piglia”. Comparative Literature Studies 40 (4): 351–371. Waisman, Sergio. 2005. Borges y la traducción. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora. Willson, Patricia. 2004. La constelación del sur. Traductores y traducciones en la literatura argentina del siglo XX. Buenos Aires: Siglo veintiuno editores.

Translating cultural paradigms The role of the Revue Britannique for the first Brazilian fiction writers1 Maria Eulália Ramicelli

Federal University of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

From the 1830s on, Brazilian men of letters largely borrowed fictional and nonfictional texts from French and British magazines to publish in periodicals which they founded, directed, and/or contributed to in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The translation and publication of these texts were seen as a means of paving the way for Brazilian society towards civilization and cultural progress as Brazil was just coming out of a long period of colonization marked by severe restrictions on intellectual production. In this circulation of texts, the French magazine Revue Britannique played an important role as agent of translation of British ideas and cultural forms for Brazilians. As the French version of British narratives has strong correspondences with the first Brazilian fictional texts, this article discusses the Brazilian grounds for the selection of the Revue Britannique as a mediator of British fiction. This discussion takes into account the specific British, French, and Brazilian contexts of periodical production at the time. Key words: Revue Britannique, nineteenth century; British fiction in periodicals, first Brazilian fictional narratives, cultural translation

1.

Introduction: Periodicals in the nineteenth century

The French Revue Britannique was an important mediator, or agent of translation, of British ideas and cultural forms for Brazilian men of letters and their readers in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which was the capital and cultural centre of the Brazilian empire in the nineteenth century. This fact can be seen by the numerous fictional and non-fictional texts that were translated from the Revue Britannique for Brazilian newspapers and magazines from the first half of the nineteenth century, texts that had been originally published in British magazines or books and, therefore, reached Brazil via French translation. French mediation

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was not exclusive to Brazil as France had also been publicizing in Europe, since the eighteenth century, its particular view of British intellectual production and general achievements through translations which were free manipulations of the source-text in English. Due to particular conditions of periodical production and circulation of texts, besides the particular historical context of Great Britain, France, and Brazil at the time, translation constituted a means of cultural contact of special complexity. This article thus discusses the Brazilian grounds for the selection of the Revue Britannique as an agent of translation of British fiction. Such a discussion implies considering the position of Brazil in relation to the larger context of European cultural production, led by the two most powerful nations at the time, namely Great Britain and France. Therefore, one must first consider the most important aspects of British and French periodical production before focusing on the role of the Revue Britannique in Brazilian literature. In nineteenth-century Europe, periodicals were the most effective means by which cultural, critical, political, economic, and scientific production could be made available to a diversified and ever-growing readership. Britain, in particular, produced a variety of magazines that addressed the different social classes. In fact, if most British magazines such as the Scottish Edinburgh Review and Blackwood’s Magazine, or the London New Monthly Magazine were produced by and addressed to the middle-classes, there were a number of magazines which were devoted to the instruction and amusement of the lower classes, such as The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction or the Servant’s Magazine for maids, also published in London. The fact that more and more British readers looked for education and entertainment in the pages of periodicals was due to the specific British context of the time. From the Industrial Revolution onwards, British society experienced increasing industrial development, the multiplication of scientific discoveries and technical innovations, besides urban growth. Therefore, for a society in continuous change, moving towards industrialization and urbanization, information meant power. It is then not just a coincidence that access to formal education considerably increased in the first half of the nineteenth century and, consequently, led to the growth in a readership that wanted to be informed about bits and pieces of different areas of human production rather than devote itself to a more lengthy study of a particular subject, such as one finds in books. At the same time, the continuous development of printing techniques resulted in a much more efficient process of production and reproduction of printed material which kept up with the demands of the readership. In this context, there was a two-way relationship between magazines and readers: magazines had the task of spreading knowledge in a pleasant way exactly because readers wanted this kind of content.



Translating cultural paradigms

Moreover, as Henry Colburn (the polemical owner of the New Monthly Magazine) claimed, magazines constituted a literature that satisfied the readers’ wishes for sheer entertainment in addition to social inclusion and affirmation through access to information. This situation had been developing since the late seventeenth century, when a number of more popular periodicals aimed at meeting the readers’ demand for knowledge, by providing them with palatable information (Graham 1930). One can thus see that the didactic purpose of the periodical press developed together with the gradual consolidation of the bourgeoisie in England, from the period of the English social revolution in the seventeenth century to the establishment of a bourgeois society in the nineteenth century. In their aspiration towards gentility, the middle classes regarded reading as a means of both cultural refinement and social consolidation in the new social structure. This situation was particularly noticeable in Great Britain, which became the most powerful nation in the Western world due to its leadership in industrial capitalism and worldwide trade. Its representative political system was often held up as a model for other countries to follow. In this sense, the nineteenth-century British periodical press managed to reflect the way of life of this ever-growing urban industrialized society by incorporating the fragmentation of knowledge and the standardization of cultural production as a consequence of the development of mass production and mass consumption of the written word. The significance of magazines as a cultural form in nineteenth-century Britain is clearly stated by Mark Parker (2000: 27) at the beginning of his analysis of British literary magazines of the 1820s and 1830s: (...) In a moment marked by expensive books, a collapsing market for books, and, despite the abundance of gift books and annuals, a perceived dearth of poetry, literary magazines largely become literature for the middle-class reading audience. Such magazines deliver literature, providing original essays and poems directly and relatively cheaply to their audience, and, through extensive quotation in reviews they disseminate it indirectly. They produce the official discourse on literature, through reviews and running commentary throughout their pages. And ultimately, literary magazines themselves aspire to be literature. (...)2

Parker also discusses the implications of the analysis of a text originally published in a periodical. As his argument goes, the periodical constitutes a specific type of publication aimed at immediate consumption; therefore, its meaning is intrinsically related to the moment of its production. The case studies presented by Parker help one realize how texts previously published in literary magazines had their meaning changed when they were republished in book form, being read and interpreted in a context other than the magazine itself. In other words, the meaning of a text published in a periodical also comes from this discursive unit

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(namely, the periodical itself and all the texts it contains in a certain issue) as the format of the periodical is determined by the context of its production. By context of production one should understand editorial and/or authorial interests besides specific contemporary circumstances. The importance of the British periodical press in the nineteenth century can be seen in the numerous appropriations of British magazines in France. As a matter of fact, a number of French magazines took their British counterparts as models to follow and/or devoted themselves to Great Britain and its cultural production; among these magazines one can find Revue Britannique, Revue Française, Revue Encyclopédique, Revue des Deux Mondes, Journal des Débats, and The Athenaeum (Devonshire 1929: 13–27).

2.

The Revue Britannique

The Revue Britannique was founded in 1825 by liberals Louis-Sébastien Saulnier, Jean-Michel Berton and Prosper Dondey-Dupré. It consisted mostly of translations of various kinds of texts which were lifted from British magazines. These translations usually did not follow the original text in full but were adapted versions that expressed the French translator’s critical view of the British subject in question. In fact, Léon Galibert (the second editor of the Revue Britannique) stated the parameters that underlined the task of translating at a time when there was very little if any concern about the original author’s own ideas and words: Il s’agissait non seulement de choisir, mais d’éliminer [des textes]; non seulement de communiquer au public les meilleurs articles, mais de les résumer et de les élucider quelquefois; non seulement de les transporter dans notre langue, mais de les approprier à notre civilisation; non seulement de prêter l’oreille aux cris de l’une des factions qui divisent l’Angleterre, de l’un des intérêts qui s’agitent dans son sein, mais de comparer les diverses opinions sans les confondre, et de faire jaillir la vérité de leur choc. Cette tâche délicate, et qui exige une connaissance exacte des deux nationalités, a été remplie, avec un talent que l’estime publique a couronné, par les hommes auxquels M.Saulnier l’avait distribuée.3

Therefore, translation should be understood both as a cultural process and a cultural product; in other words, as a means of interpretation of a certain culture by the foreign context that receives it through written texts. This is exactly the idea that is conveyed by the concept of cultural translation, a concept that was devised by social anthropology to express the notion of culture as a text which is creatively and actively interpreted by the anthropologist who, just like the translator, aims at rendering the text (that is, culture) intelligible to another culture (Pallares-Burke



Translating cultural paradigms

1996: 12–13). Apart from the contribution of social anthropology, one also finds in Translation Studies a helpful theoretical basis exactly because it broadens the scope of analysis as it considers translation to be a significant type of rewriting. As a consequence, Translation Studies gives prominence to the context in which translation takes place and establishes a dialectical relationship between the literary system in which the text was produced (source-system) and the literary system which receives the translated text (target-system). According to André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett (1995: 11), “(…) translation, like all (re)writings is never innocent. There is always a context in which the translation takes place, always a history from which the text emerges and into which a text is transposed.” Returning to the founding of the Revue Britannique, it is important to consider that, given the French context of the time, this magazine reflected its founders’ beliefs and ideas about Great Britain. On the one hand, the restoration of the Bourbons to the French throne, marked by Charles X’s ultramonarchist reign from 1824 on, put the liberals on their guard and made them concerned about the maintenance of constitutional monarchy in France. In this context, the considerable political and economic stability of England, even after a long period of war, attracted the attention of the French defenders of the representative and constitutional regime, which had only recently been achieved but not definitely established by the French bourgeoisie. In fact, the editors of the Revue Britannique always acknowledged that Great Britain was a cultural and economic power with strong political institutions and a widely developed trade that reached all parts of the world. Nevertheless, such great interest in British achievements could not hide the strong feelings nurtured in France after the French defeat by England in 1815 and the resulting disintegration of the Napoleonic Empire, amidst the historical rivalry between these two nations for hegemony in the international arena. As Kathleen Jones (1939: 17) states, for Saulnier (the first editor of the Revue Britannique), “(...) la défaite de Napoléon avait été une rude leçon qui lui révéla la supériórité de la civilisation anglaise de l’époque.” This resentment on the French side against English superiority found its way into the Revue Britannique by means of a sharp analytical treatment of British issues in fictional and non-fictional texts selected for translation. All in all, the close and critical attention paid by the editorship of the Revue Britannique to all aspects of British life was part of a broader social-cultural French process that had been in vogue since the eighteenth century, called anglomania. Since the previous century and for reasons that varied according to the period, the French had been showing a strong interest in all issues related to England and its progressive economic and political system due to the unfavourable social, political and economic conditions in France. As a consequence, a number of British novels were translated and sold in bookshops in Paris, and the French

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intelligentsia knew about contemporary British publications in all fields of human knowledge (Jones 1939: 1–11, 79–90; Pallares-Burke 1995: 27–48). As Great Britain was considered to be a parameter in all areas of human knowledge and production, its achievements should be seen by other European countries as a starting point for their own development. This was the principle that guided the editorial policy of the Revue Britannique, which can be noticed in the frequent justifications of such recurrent attention to British periodicals from which all kinds of texts were taken: texts that conveyed criticism and reflection in social, political, economic and cultural areas; reports of scientific and industrial discoveries and development; fictional narratives; pieces of news about faraway regions sent by British travellers who had been attracted by the spirit of adventure and commercial enterprise. As Léon Galibert summed up, British magazines constituted “(...) un réservoir commun; foyer général des documents et des idées qui ont changé le monde ou qui le changeront. Que l’on ne s’étonne donc pas de leur influence, et de celle dont la REVUE BRITANNIQUE s’est entourée: Savoir, c’est pouvoir.”4 The articles to be translated and published in the Revue Britannique were chosen on a comparative basis: apart from making general comments in prefaces, translators and/or editors usually attached footnotes to point out how the text as a whole or a certain passage in it would relate to the French context and be of interest to the French reader. Therefore, the real focus of the editors and translators of the Revue Britannique was on the French people themselves. Moreover, if one considers that the Revue Britannique also aimed at reaching European readers in general, it is possible to conclude that the editors of this magazine were, in fact, indirectly selling an image of their own country through their criticism of British affairs. Such an attitude can be seen in the selection of British fiction for the Revue Britannique, which was basically presented as a form of entertainment but was selected critically. On the one hand, British literature (especially fictional narratives) would amuse the reader and, therefore, counterbalance the general weighty content of the magazine. On the other hand, it would also bring some novelty to French literature as the French liked to read: “(...) [les] tableaux de moeurs où nos voisins excellent; car, comme l’a dit Mme de Staël, ils semblent avoir une fenêtre intérieure avec laquelle ils s’examinent eux-mêmes.”5 In fact, the British fiction selected for the Revue Britannique could serve the utilitarian purpose of making British customs known to French readers. Hence, one can find footnotes attached to the narratives in order to present the translator’s justification for the selection of the story, as happens in the following passage attached to “Mes campagnes parlementaires”:



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(1) NOTE DU TR. Cet article est un tableau fort piquant de la corruption sans pudeur qui s’était glissée dans la gestion des affaires publiques de la GrandeBretagne, avant la réforme du Parlement. Les roués du régent et les courtisans de Louis XV montraient moins d’impudence que les prétendus élus du peuple qui siégeaient à la seconde Chambre. Félicitons nos voisins de ce qui le souvenir de tant de corruption et d’infamies n’ait pas entraîné le Parlement réformé dans des réactions violentes. Il a pu jeter l’ancre sur des pentes et s’y maintenir sans glisser.6

This note contains the translator’s critical comment on the subject matter of this narrative in which the narrator reveals how he managed to get a seat in the British Parliament by taking advantage of the common but illegal procedures that ruled the negotiation of political positions. This narrative is also an example of how obscure the procedures of periodical production could be in the nineteenth century since the periodical indicated as its original source – New London Journal – did not exist in Britain at the time. As one can find other similar cases in the Revue Britannique, one can conclude that there must have been a mistake in the indication of New London Journal as the title of the periodical in question or even that this story may have been originally written in French rather than translated from the English, in which case a British title would have been cunningly provided to delude the readers about the true origin of the narrative. Therefore, “Mes Campagnes Parlementaires” would be a case of pseudotranslation. Still in regard to the French taste for narratives which were informative about and critical of the British way of life, one can read in the Revue Britannique a narrative such as “Un logement à portée du tout”, which tells the story of a typical rich London merchant (Mr. Rufus Wadd), who buys a country house at such a “convenient distance” from his working place that he could frequently go to London to run his business. This narrative was originally entitled “The Inconveniences of a Convenient Distance” and was written by John Poole (an obscure author nowadays) for publication in the New Monthly Magazine, in 1830.7 Although the French translator usually made significant changes in the British fictional texts during the translating process, he seems to have approved of the original sarcastic tone of this story since he kept it in his translation. Therefore, the narrator of “Un logement à portée du tout” is highly important in this narrative since he is strongly ironical in his description of Mr.Wadd’s petit-bourgeois taste, which is expressed in the decoration of Mr.Wadd’s country-house and his literary preferences. The Revue Britannique frequently advertised the self-imposed mission of conveying information and reflection on a number of subjects to French and European readers alike. As a consequence of such a comprehensive and lofty purpose, the editors hoped that the magazine would be read as a book or encyclopedia rather than a periodical with a transitory value:

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Notre ambition était qu’un jour la collection de la REVUE BRITANNIQUE fût comme des espèces d’annales, comme une vaste histoire, non des faits dont la presse quotidienne alimente ses feuilles, mais de l’esprit humain, de ses travaux, de ses découvertes dans les diverses branches de l’arbre encyclopédique.8

The Revue Britannique was well received in France, where there were at least three editions of the 1825 issues in order to meet subscribers’ demand. In addition, Kathleen Jones states that other French periodicals published texts borrowed from the Revue Britannique, and that this magazine was an important means of publicizing British authors, both those who were already known and those who were new to the French readership. But the Revue Britannique also achieved a large circulation abroad. It was illegally reproduced in Belgium, and the Belgian copies were widely sold around Europe.9 Also, when praising the translations published in the Revue Britannique, the editors claimed that the translators had been able to improve the texts in such a way that the route of the borrowings could be reversed: (...) plumes habiles qui plus d’une fois les [les textes] ont même améliorés, en les traduisant, comme semble l’indiquer la faveur que la REVUE BRITANNIQUE a obtenue en Angleterre et aux États-Unis, où cependant nous ne faisions le plus souvent que renvoyer, sous les formes d’une autre langue, les richesses que nous en avions tirées.10

3.

The Revue Britannique in Brazil

As previously stated, the main aim here is to consider the presence of the Revue Britannique in nineteenth-century Brazil by highlighting the appropriation of fiction published in this French magazine by Brazilian men of letters, in a particular historical period. To start with, one has to consider the fact that after the censorship of printed material ceased in 1821, the periodical press continuously expanded in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It is then in periodicals from the Brazilian court, especially those published in the 1830s and 1840s, that one finds several fictional and non-fictional texts borrowed from the Revue Britannique. It is interesting to note, though, that only one periodical (namely, O Cronista) gives some hints about the immediate source of these texts. On the whole, one is led to think that the British articles and fictional narratives were directly taken from the British periodicals or books which are indicated as their original place of publication. In other words, the mediation played by the Revue Britannique was not revealed by the Brazilian men of letters, who were not only the translators of these texts but also the founders, editors, and most frequent contributors to the periodicals in which these foreign texts were published.



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The Revue Britannique was also taken as a model for the Revista Nacional e Estrangeira whose opening article in the founding issue in May 1839, signed by the founders and editors (João Manuel Pereira da Silva,11 Pedro d’Alcântara ­Bellegarde,12 and Josino do Nascimento Silva13), states the following: Because we do not trust our restrictive lights and acknowledge our own insufficiency, we will turn to others’ writing rather than to ours, by modelling this publication on the Revue Britannique. Most Brazilian men of letters know this collection of articles on science and art, and this knowledge sets us free from the task of praising it. As we subscribe to a large number of periodicals, both English and French alike, which are published under the title of Magazine, we are able to satisfy our readers’ wish by translating and publishing the best of what we could find in them.14

The self-consciousness of the editors of the Revista Nacional e Estrangeira allows one to realize how precarious the cultural conditions and the means of production of printed material in nineteenth-century Brazil were, especially up to the 1850s. As a matter of fact, from 1821 onwards, a growing number of newspapers and magazines were published in Rio de Janeiro despite numerous difficulties to produce and keep a periodical running at the time: there was lack of appropriate printing machinery, a shortage of skilled workers at all levels of the printing process, and financial problems in running a periodical as the number of subscribers must have been very limited in a society which was basically illiterate. Thus, most Brazilian magazines had a very short life in the first half of the nineteenth century, usually of less than a year. Nonetheless, the fact that they existed implies that there was a demand, or rather, there were readers. A comparative analysis of the first Brazilian fictional narratives and the British fiction that reached Brazilian periodicals via the French translation of the Revue Britannique shows that this French magazine was appropriated by Brazilian men of letters with a view to their project of founding Brazilian literature. Literature should convey a certain image of the country to its own people in order to help keep Brazil an independent and unified nation. In fact, the time was one of the most trying for the Brazilian ruling courtly classes as they experienced strong internal conflicts and had political and intellectual interests that went against those of the local elite and popular leaders of certain provinces. In September 1822, Dom Pedro I proclaimed the independence of Brazil from Portugal and became the ruler of the new empire. However, as early as 1824, he managed to centralize political power in his own hands and consequently open the way to the dominance in government decisions of a small circle of bureaucrats and merchants, the majority of whom were Portuguese. Increasing dissatisfaction from Brazilian politicians, army generals, and the people in general led Dom

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Pedro I to abdicate from the throne in April 1831. As his son was too young to rule (Dom Pedro II was then only five), subsequent groups of three regents, and later a sole regent, were in charge of the central government. This period is known as the Regency and lasted until 1840 when 15-year-old Dom Pedro II was declared to be of age to become emperor. The Regency was a very turbulent period. The frequent changes of regents went hand in hand with struggles among the ruling classes in the court and with bloody popular revolts that took place in a number of provinces to call for provincial independence and/or republicanism. As a matter of fact, the Brazilian provinces were not integrated either politically or economically as, after independence, the country’s economy remained directed towards exportation, which meant that all attention was diverted from the development of an internal market. Besides, there were neither material conditions (due to the precariousness of the means of transport and communication) nor political or economic interest to promote thorough national integration. As a consequence, the Regency was also marked by frequent attempts from Portugal to recolonize Brazil by fomenting dissatisfactions in the provinces with the central government in Rio de Janeiro. On the other hand, the central government related political independence to the maintenance of the integrity of the Brazilian territory; the concept of nation in Brazil was, therefore, very limited as it was restricted to territorial integration. Despite the political crises, the Regency was the first period when the Brazilian ruling classes had political power in their own hands, and, for them, it was not only important to ensure the conquest of political independence by means of territorial unity but also to organize the country as a new-born nation. As historian Jean Marcel Carvalho França (1999: 82) points out, this project, only apparently bureaucratic-administrative, had deep ideological implications: [this purpose] meant two things at least: on the one hand, to provide the country with its own cultural structure, that is, to provide it with a history, with a literature, with a geography; in short, with a community of values that would be able to create in the Brazilian the feeling for the nation. On the other hand, and complementarily, it meant educating the people, making them enlightened, orderly and hardworking enough so as to be able to cooperate more decisively in the progress of the country.15

This is the context one must bear in mind when one reads the opening articles of Brazilian magazines published in Rio de Janeiro in the 1830s and 1840s, which claimed that Brazilian periodicals should both symbolize and lead the country to civilization by publishing Brazilian production and translations of a wealth of various articles borrowed from European periodicals, notably from French and British ones. In this context, translating meant the promotion of the development



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of the Brazilian civilization since the texts translated brought modern ideas and new cultural forms into a country which was just coming out of a long period of colonization marked by severe restrictions on intellectual production. The Brazilian periodical press also had another important task: to encourage the mostly illiterate Brazilian people to read and be instructed in order to cooperate with the desired move towards civilization. Therefore, the pleasure of reading, that is, of acquiring knowledge and entertainment, was widely advertised as the main aim of a number of magazines, such as Gabinete de Leitura and Museo Universal, or as the reason for the insertion of a new section in the newspaper O Cronista, on 5 October 1836, namely, the feuilleton, a French invention from the early nineteenth century, consisting of a detachable section at the bottom of the first pages of newspapers, and which brought entertainment in the form of fiction. So, after a didactic presentation of where to find and how to read this entertaining section in newspapers, the editors of O Cronista stated that, by bringing this French novelty to Brazil, they were encouraging Brazilians to read. As can be seen, borrowings from French and British written culture attended to certain cultural and ideological interests on the part of the Brazilian men of letters who employed and/or adapted the foreign production according to their own needs, which basically consisted of the project of creating a cultural structure for the recently independent nation by distinguishing Brazilian identity from that of Portugal. In this sense, these men of letters were interested in and contributed to a number of fields: theatre, history, literary history and criticism, politics, economics, and literature. As my focus is on the role of the Revue Britannique as a cultural agent of translation of British fiction for Brazilians, it is worth remembering that, at the time, literature held the central position in the formation of national culture and identity. Besides, the period when there was more intense translation of foreign fiction in nineteenth-century Brazil corresponds to the initial stage of Brazilian fiction itself. Consequently, as fiction was an important means of nationalizing literature in Brazil, it is important to examine the reasons for the strong correspondence between the narrative pattern used by Brazilian men of letters in their own fiction and that emphasized and/or created by the French translator during the translating process of British narratives for the Revue Britannique.

4.

The translations of the Revue Britannique

A comparison of the French translation and the original version of these British narratives shows a recurrent set of translation procedures that led to the formation of a particular formal structure of the narratives in their French version. Among these British narratives, there is one which is paradigmatic of such a translating

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process since the deep reformulation of its formal structure not only provided the text with a more didactic tone but also impregnated it with the French translator’s view of the British context portrayed there. The narrative in question was taken from Pickwick Papers and is the free translation of Chapter 13. In French, this extract is called “Les élections anglaises” (Revue Britannique, June 1837) and, consequently, in Portuguese, “Eleições inglesas” (Museo Universal, April 1840). In the Revue Britannique, the story is introduced by two long paragraphs that present Charles Dickens and his fiction to the French readers. This introduction was left out of the Brazilian translation; however, the rest of the French version was closely followed by the Brazilian translator. Much of the fun and interest roused by Pickwick Papers comes from the way the narrative is structured: the narrator lets the reader notice the nuances between the narrator’s and the central characters’ point-of-view. As the narrator introduces himself as the editor of the notes taken by the members of the Pickwick Club, he follows the central characters’ point-of-view, but, at the same time, reveals his own interpretative hypotheses of the facts, which do not agree with those of the characters. As a consequence, the clash in the disagreement between the narrator’s and the characters’ views creates an irony that permeates the whole novel and allows the reader to apprehend the narrator’s sharper and more comprehensive understanding of the different situations. This type of point-of-view would serve Dickens’ aim of impregnating his fiction with criticisms of various aspects of contemporary English society. Therefore, there is in Pickwick Papers an intentional interpretative gap between the various meanings conveyed in the text by the central characters and by the narrator, who has on his side a rather wise character, Samuel Weller, who is Mr. Pickwick’s valet. The reader is then supposed to fill in this interpretative gap with his own interpretation of the ironical treatment given to the members of the Pickwick club by this editor. However, the translation published in the Revue Britannique, and later in the Brazilian Museo Universal, presents a narrator who, by leaving aside this ironical subtlety in favour of a categorical interpretation of facts and characters, imposes his own opinion and personal judgment on the reader. The story itself starts differently: the first paragraph is completely new and comprises a summary of the idea of the book and a brief presentation of the central characters. The second paragraph corresponds to the opening of Chapter 13 in Pickwick Papers, but the beginning of the French translation follows a different tone: the narrator himself introduces the members of the Pickwick club as ridiculous, whereas, in Dickens, these characters are free to act by themselves and, therefore, to get involved in various awkward situations which make them subject of derision to other characters and even to the reader. It is exactly this change in the narrative tone, which leads up to an important corresponding change in the role of the narrator, which



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is the most striking characteristic of the French translation (and, consequently, of the Brazilian one). The subtle irony is turned into overt irony; the editor of the papers, who sometimes shows uncertainty about some of Mr. Pickwick’s interpretations, is turned into a narrator who forcefully presents his own view and whose discourse guides the reader’s own understanding of the story. In other words, the French translator turned the narrator into an overt interpreter of the narrative. Therefore, the reader receives a text in which the narration develops in conjunction with its interpretation within a narrative format that can be easily digested. The French version reads as follows: in “Les élections anglaises” the Pickwickians stop at a town called Eatanswill in order to observe the election procedures to select a member of the House of Commons. Amid the confusing rivalry between the two opponents, the two main newspapers of Eatanswill fight each other, each supporting one of the two candidates. As Mr. Pickwick, in a moment of confusion, sides with the bleues, he is introduced to Mr. Polt, who is the editor of the Gazette, the organ of this party. Hence, when Mr. Polt speaks up about the universal importance of the press, the French translator created the following passage to allow the narrator to judge this character: Après avoir terminé ce discours empreint du lieu commun de la diffusion et de la niaiserie qui constituent le mérite du genre, M. Polt s’essuya le front avec un foulard, et notre héros [Mr. Pickwick] lui tendit la main en lui exprimant l’admiration profonde dont le pénétraient une éloquence aussi généreuse et des sentiments aussi magnanimes. (...)16

In the sequence, when Samuel Weller firstly appears in “Les élections anglaises”, the narrator praises him with these words: (...) M. Pickwick était charmé; il venait d’achever sa toilette, l’oreille au guet, et regardant de temps en temps par la fenêtre, lorsque son fidèle domestique, Samuel Weller, entr’ouvrit doucement la porte, et fit apparaître le profil malin et jovial d’une excellente figure de valet madré.17

In the quotation above, the phrases in italics were created by the French translator and clearly illustrate how he made the text be more didactic as the narrator sums up in his own speech the perception that the reader himself would have of Sam Weller during the extensive reading of Pickwick Papers. In fact, these translating procedures recur in the translation of the other British narratives. They are: (1) emphasis on the central action at the expense of details, secondary characters, and secondary narrative actions; (2) greater prominence of the narrator who facilitates the reader’s comprehension of the text by repeating and explaining in detail information regarding both the narrative itself and the foreign context portrayed in the story; the narrator also guides the reader’s own interpretation as

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he already interprets what he narrates. Therefore, the French reader (and, consequently, the Brazilian one too) reads a story whose meaning has already been deciphered by another previous reader – the translator – who voices through the narrator’s speech his own critical view of the foreign cultural aspects in the narrative. By translating these British narratives from the Revue Britannique, Brazilian men of letters were acquainted with a certain narrative structure that would prove to be useful for their own production of fiction, as one can see below. I have already stressed how clear it was for the leading political, economic and cultural groups in Rio de Janeiro that the nation and its literature were being founded during the Regency and, consequently, that it was crucial to ensure the sovereignty of Brazilian culture and territory. This process, nonetheless, implied a necessary exchange with Europe; no longer with Portugal, but rather with Great Britain and France. Here one can establish a plausible relationship between the first Brazilian fictional writings and the French mediation in the translation process of this British fiction, as this mediation altered the formal structure of the narratives by intensifying the role of the narrator as an interpreter. So it is more than a coincidence that the role of the narrator in the first pieces of Brazilian fiction corresponds closely to that found in the French translation of this British fiction, but with a different purpose: in the Brazilian fiction the narrator aims at explaining and guiding the reader’s interpretation of the Brazilian context itself rather than of a foreign context. “As Duas Órfãs” [“The Two Orphan Girls”], by Joaquim Norberto de Sousa e Silva, is paradigmatic of the kind of fiction that was written in the first half of the nineteenth century in Brazil.18 It takes place in the colonial period, at the time of the battles against the Dutch invasion of the Northeast of Brazil, and is the story of two young women (cousins and orphans), called Mariana and Isabel, who fall in love with the same man, Dinis Gonçalves. This love triangle gets more complicated as Dinis loves and is engaged to Mariana but does not reject Isabel. The plot is divided into five short sections that can be organized into two blocks: the first block contains Sections I and II, which center on the historical content and introduce considerable information about the Dutch and the real Brazilian characters (including women) who fought to defend Brazilian territory; the second block is formed by Sections III to V, in which the content of historical chronicle is abandoned in favour of the conflicts resulting from the love triangle. The narrator dominates the development of the plot by giving information and making frequent comments about the unfolding of the facts and what the characters think, feel, and do. At two moments of the narrative the narrator freezes the action in order to insert long descriptions of local flora and fauna: a landscape that resembles a postcard for its static perfection. In another passage, the narration of the battle between Brazilians and the Dutch provides the narrator with a timely opportunity



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to praise the heroism of those who defended the integrity of the Brazilian territory. Among them, one finds black slaves and Indians who are said to have fought ‘voluntarily’ for the rescue of this region from the hands of the Dutch. Finally, the story has a gothic-like end: the three characters involved in the love triangle meet violent deaths, and Dinis turns into a ghost that haunts the banks of the River San Francisco where he drowned. As Sousa e Silva emphasized the patriotic feeling by focusing on the urgent defence of the territorial integrity of Brazil, “As Duas Órfãs” would help delineate what should be understood as the identity of Brazil. Hence the insertion of long descriptions of a typically Brazilian natural setting as a means of nationalizing literature. However, the analysis of the narrative structure shows that these natural descriptions are rarely integrated into the development of the plot as their insertion invariably causes interruption of the action. As for the plot, it comes mainly from the European sentimental, domestic and occasionally gothic type of fiction. In other words, the story opens with a political issue, which allows the author to work on patriotism and national union, but is then diverted to a love story that leaves the historical-patriotic theme behind. In this narrative mélange, the narrator, by overtly controlling the development of the action, tries to hold together the narrative components which nonetheless keep a permanent friction: (1) the historical chronicle to reinforce the patriotic feeling; (2) the sentimental plot with a melodramatic dénouement as one could easily find in the bulk of European novels that reached Brazil; (3) the description of natural Brazilian settings to nationalize the narrative. As in “As Duas Órfãs”, the first pieces of Brazilian fiction have a centralizing narrator that made it possible for the Brazilian men of letters to write narratives of a rather simple structure without the need to coherently develop the other narrative elements (characters, setting, time) or to establish a proper connection between the different phases of narrative action as the narrator was given the task to keep a tight rein on the fictional discourse, at all its levels. This kind of narrative structure is very similar to that of British fiction, especially after the French translator’s interference, which was published alongside Brazilian narratives in periodicals from Rio de Janeiro. At this point, one should consider the fact that these Brazilian and British fictional narratives were mostly written for periodicals. This type of fiction invariably has its structure centered on the narrator and serves a pedagogical function as the stories are usually developed in order to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the narrative itself. One can also find the frequent overt expression in the narrator’s speech of the author’s own ideas and beliefs, which make it difficult to specify fictional discourse. In addition, it is important to recall that both in Europe and in Brazil translation and free appropriation of texts were still quite unrestrained by formal regulation in

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the first half of the nineteenth century. As a consequence, the French translation of this British fiction turned the narrator into a prominent character who worked as a spokesperson of the translator’s own critical view of the British context portrayed in the narratives. In the Revue Britannique, this procedure served the editorial aim of critical scrutiny of the British achievements and cultural habits. In the Brazilian context, though, such a prominent narrator guided the reader’s understanding of the text itself (which is perfectly understandable in a country where most people – rich and poor alike – were illiterate), but also took on the task of presenting a certain view and certain aspects of the Brazilian culture and habits for the reader of his own country. In this sense, the first Brazilian writers of fiction employed the narrator as a tool to convey to the reader information about cultural aspects that should characterize an authentic Brazilian identity, which was always proudly given a nationalistic and patriotic feeling. To conclude, it is important to mention that these Brazilian men of letters also had access to other types of European fiction, including novels that reached Brazil in book form, fiction that they themselves translated into Portuguese to be published in various newspapers and magazines in Rio de Janeiro. In addition, literary critic Flora Süssekind (2000) also establishes a plausible connection between the early stage of Brazilian fiction and the writings of European travellers on Brazil in order to explain this position of the narrator. One should therefore consider this British fiction in its particular French version as another interlocutor of the first Brazilian fiction writers, who found in the Revue Britannique a fictional structure that was particularly suitable for their ideological and literary project in the Brazilian context of the time.

Notes 1. This text is based on my doctoral thesis: Ramicelli, Maria Eulália. Narrativas Itinerantes. Aspectos franco-britânicos da ficção brasileira, em periódicos do século XIX. PhD thesis, University of São Paulo, 2004. 2. Gift books and annuals were popular small ornate books usually sold from October onwards to be given as Christmas presents. They were famous for their gorgeous engravings which provided themes for the writers who were engaged to produce fictional narratives or poems to go with the pictures. 3. Extract from an insert in the September 1835 issue, p. xii. 4. Extract from an insert in the September 1835 issue, p.viii. Italics in the text. 5. Extract from the preface in the January 1834 issue, p. 10. 6. Revue Britannique, October 1833, p. 254.



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7. John Poole (1786 ? – 5 February 1872) was a successful dramatist whose farces and comedies were produced in London between 1813 and 1829. Popular actors such as Charles Kemble, John Liston, and William Farren appeared in his plays, the most famous of which was Paul Pry (1825). Although in his heyday Poole moved in fashionable society, his last twenty years were spent in obscurity. Through Charles Dickens’s influence, Poole received a yearly pension of £100. 8. Extract from the preface in the January 1830 issue, p. 6. 9. For instance, the copy of the Revue Britannique that belongs to the collection of the British Library mentions on the front page that it was published in Brussels. 10. Extract from the preface in the January 1834 issue, p. 11. 11. Pereira da Silva was born on 30 August 1817 in Iguaçu (in a rural area in the province of Rio de Janeiro) and died on 16 June 1898 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. From 1834 to 1838, he lived in Paris, where he graduated in Law. In this period, he joined other Brazilian men of letters (namely, Domingos J. Gonçalves de Magalhães, Francisco de S. Torres Homem, and Manuel José de A. Porto Alegre) to found the magazine Niterói (1836) which has been called the official launcher of Romanticism in Brazil. Back to Rio de Janeiro, Pereira da Silva was a very active man of letters who worked as a lawyer and held several political and bureaucratic offices, always as a conservative. He was the editor of certain periodicals from Rio de Janeiro, such as the important newspaper Jornal do Comércio, and founded, directed and/or contributed to a number of other magazines and newspapers. Pereira da Silva was a member of several important cultural institutions in Rio de Janeiro and was one of the founders of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He wrote many historical works about Brazil and was the most prolific writer in the initial stage of Brazilian fiction. Being sympathetic to the regulation of the profession of literary writer, Pereira da Silva joined the group that founded the Men of Letters Association of Brazil in 1883. 12. Bellegarde was born on 3 December 1807 in Brazilian waters as his parents fled with the Portuguese royal family to Brazil to escape from Napoleon’s army. He graduated in Mathematics and became a member of the Brazilian army under the protection of Dom Pedro I, who was the eldest son of King Dom João VI and the first emperor of Brazil. Bellegarde was also elected as a deputy to the General Assembly in 1863, but did not take office. He contributed to another magazine, the Minerva Brasiliense. Bellegarde died on 12 February 1864. 13. Nascimento Silva was born on 31 July 1811 in Campos, a rural area of the province of Rio de Janeiro, and died on 6 June 1886. He studied Law in the College of Law of São Paulo and occupied several offices in this field. Nascimento Silva was the president of the provinces of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, a provincial and general deputy, and also a member of the emperor’s counseling group. Just like Pereira da Silva, Josino do Nascimento Silva was a member of several important cultural institutions in Rio de Janeiro. He was the owner of the typography where the periodicals O Cronista and Gabinete de Leitura were printed and was the editor of two important newspapers: Diário do Rio de Janeiro and Jornal do Comércio. 14. “Por não confiarmos em nossas acanhadas luzes, reconhecedores da própria insuficiência, recorreremos antes aos escritos alheios do que aos nossos, modelando esta publicação pela Revista Britânica. A maior parte dos literatos brasileiros conhecem esta coleção de artigos sobre ciências e artes, e esse conhecimento forra-nos ao trabalho de elogiá-la. Assinantes de grande número de periódicos, tanto ingleses como franceses, publicados com o título de Revista, estamos ao alcance de satisfazer os desejos de nossos leitores, traduzindo e publicando o melhor que deles pudermos colher.(...)” Extract from the opening article of the Revista Nacional e Estrangeira, May 1839, p. vi. Italics in the text. My translation.

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15. “[esse propósito] significava ao menos duas coisas: de um lado, dotar o país de uma estrutura cultural própria, isto é, dotá-lo de uma história, de uma literatura, de uma geografia, enfim, de uma comunidade de valores apta a gerar no brasileiro o sentimento de pátria; de outro lado, e complementarmente, significava formar o povo, torná-lo esclarecido, ordeiro e trabalhador o suficiente para que pudesse colaborar mais decisivamente para o progresso do país.” Italics in the text. My translation. 16. Revue Britannique, June 1837, p. 552. 17. Ibid., p. 553. My italics. 18. This narrative seems to have been originally published in a book entitled Mosaico Poético and in a brochure in 1841. Sousa e Silva was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro on 6 June 1820 and died in Niteroi (also in the province of Rio de Janeiro) on 14 May 1891. As a student, Sousa e Silva was a constant visitor to the National Library, where he met priest Januário da Cunha Barbosa, who became his protector and employed him as his assistant in the library. From then on, Sousa e Silva remained in close contact with the imperial government and held several bureaucratic posts. He was a member of important cultural institutions in the court. Sousa e Silva deserves special attention for having had an extensive literary production (poetry, fiction, and drama) and for having been a precursor of literary history in Brazil.

References Bassnett, Susan and Lefevere, André (eds). 1995. Translation, History & Culture. London: Cassell. Bassnett, Susan. 1996. Translation Studies (Reprinted Revised Edition). London and New York: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan and Lefevere, André. 1998. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Blake, Augusto V. A. Sacramento. [S.d.]. Dicionário bibliográfico brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. O Cronista. 1836–1839. Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Commercial de Silva & Irmão. Devonshire, M. G. 1929. “Intermediaries or Channels of Introduction” In The English Novel in France, 1830–1870, 13–27. London: University of London Press. França, Jean M. Carvalho. 1999. Literatura e sociedade no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista. [S. l]. Imprensa Nacional e Casa da Moeda. Graham, Walter. 1930. English Literary Periodicals. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Jones, Kathleen. 1939. La Revue Britannique, son Histoire et son Action Littéraire (1825–1840). Paris: Librairie E. Droz. Kunitz, Stanley J. and Haycraft, Howard. 1936. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company. Lee, Sidney. 1899. Dictionary of National Biography. [LIX]. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Macedo, Joaquim Manoel de. 1876. Ano biográfico brasileiro. [II]. Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia do Imperial Instituto Artístico. Museo Universal; jornal das famílias brasileiras. 1837–1844. Rio de Janeiro: Typ. J. Villeneuve e Comp. The New Monthly Magazine. 1814–1871. London: Published by Henry Colburn.



Translating cultural paradigms

Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia Garcia. 1995. "The Spectator", o teatro das luzes. Diálogo e imprensa no século XVIII. São Paulo: Hucitec. Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia Garcia. 1996. Nísia Floresta, O Carapuceiro e Outros Ensaios de Tradução Cultural. São Paulo: Hucitec. Parker, Mark. 2000. Literary Magazines and British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Revista Nacional e Estrangeira. 1839–1840. Rio de Janeiro: Typ. de J. E. S. Cabral. Revue Britannique, ou choix d’articles traduits des meilleurs écrits périodiques, de la GrandeBretagne, sur la littérature, les beaux-arts, les arts industriels, l’agriculture, la géographie, le commerce, l’économie politique, les finances, la législation, etc., etc. 1825–1901. Paris: Dondey-Dupré. Sousa, J. Galante de. 1960. O teatro no Brasil. Subsídios para uma bibliografia do teatro no Brasil. [II]. Rio de Janeiro: INL e MEC. Süssekind, Flora. 2000. O Brasil não é longe daqui: o narrador, a viagem. 1a reimpressão. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

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Translation as representation Fukuzawa Yukichi’s representation of the “Others” Akiko Uchiyama

University of Queensland, Australia

The focus of this essay is Fukuzawa Yukichi’s representation, or translation, of non-Western cultures, which had a significant bearing on the Japanese reader’s perception of these cultures. He was a renowned nineteenth-century educator and intellectual whose translation work is recognized to have contributed to modernization of the country. However, Fukuzawa’s representation of these cultures, specifically his writings on China and Korea, has been under scrutiny as evidence for him being a nationalistic expansionist who contributed to instigating Japan’s aggression towards Asia. This essay examines how his act of translation is linked to the image of Fukuzawa as a proponent of Japan’s aggression and how Fukuzawa is responsible for ideologically framing Japan’s relationship with other non-Western cultures. Although Fukuzawa lived in the nineteenth century, his representation is still important for contemporary Japan. Key words: Fukuzawa Yukichi; translation in Japan; Meiji period; translation of textbooks

1.

Introduction

This essay examines Fukuzawa Yukichi1 (1835–1901), who played a key role in introducing Western civilization to Japan and exerted significant influence on Japanese society. He was a renowned educator and intellectual in the nineteenth century, and his work is often linked to opening up Japan to the world and to modernization. His work is widely recognized in contemporary Japan, and he is a familiar figure as his portrait is featured on ten-thousand yen notes. He is also known as the founder of Keiō University, one of the most prestigious private universities in Japan. It is less well known that he started his career as a translator. His works include many translations, albeit in a broad sense. Some of the works are conventional translations, and some involve abridged translation and adaptation. Others are discussed as his own work under weighty influence of Western thought.

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These translations form a major part of the work that contributed to Japan’s social transition from feudal domains under the Shogunate to a modern nation. Therefore Fukuzawa played a significant role as an agent of translation, primarily as a translator. He was also a publisher, thereby exercising another type of translation agency. In 1869 he embarked on what he described in his autobiography as the “one big speculative venture of my life” (trans. Kiyooka 1981: 288), which was his publishing business under the name of Fukuzawaya Yukichi. He later published a newspaper called Jiji shinpō. The focus of this essay is on Fukuzawa’s representation, or translation, of other non-Western cultures, which contained negative remarks about these cultures, and the influence of this representation on the Japanese reader. This representation is closely associated with his image as a nationalistic expansionist. Partly because of his often seemingly contradictory writing, there are many different images of Fukuzawa. Indeed, Yasukawa states that there are not many thinkers who receive such varying and conflicting critiques as Fukuzawa (2000: 21). Two images are broadly typical. One is Fukuzawa as a proponent of civil liberties, who promoted independent thought and egalitarian humanism. This is regarded as the popular or mainstream image. One of his major works, Gakumon no susume [An Encouragement of Learning]2 begins with this famous statement: “It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man” (trans. Dilworth & Hirano 1969: 1). He is often associated with this statement, which is one of the main elements of the popular image of Fukuzawa. The other image is Fukuzawa as a proponent of Japan’s aggression towards neighboring Asian countries, disdaining people from these countries. This essay focuses on the latter image and investigates how Fukuzawa’s act of translation is important in creating this image and how Fukuzawa’s writing influenced the Japanese reader’s perception of other non-Western cultures. The main texts to be examined are Sekai kunizukushi (1869) [Nations around the World], which raises the issue of the level of civilization, and newspaper editorials written by Fukuzawa, which contain negative references to China and Korea. Although Sekai kunizukushi is a translation and the editorials are Fukuzawa’s own writing, the examinations of the book and the editorials are connected by the act and notion of translating. The texts used for this examination are taken from the current edition of Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū [Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi].3 These twenty-one volumes were published between 1958 and 1964 when Japan’s economy began to grow rapidly after World War II. This publication commemorates the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Keiō University, which started as a small private school in 1858. There had been previous editions of the complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi. The Meiji edition, five volumes, was published in 1898 when Fukuzawa was still alive. The Taishō edition, ten volumes



Translation as representation

(1925–1926), and its sequel the Shōwa edition, seven volumes (1933–1934), were edited by Ishikawa Mikiaki (1859–1943), who was Fukuzawa’s younger contemporary. The previous editions were used as references for compiling and editing the current edition, which includes quite a lot of new material found since Ishikawa’s collections. Ishikawa’s work is still important as it shows how Fukuzawa’s works were collected for circulation, especially with regard to the selection from normally unsigned Jiji shinpō editorials which were written by Fukuzawa as well as other staff journalists. We will come back to this point when we examine the newspaper editorials.

2.

Fukuzawa’s epoch

Fukuzawa lived in a time of radical transition, with Japan suddenly opening up to the world in the nineteenth century. Japan had been isolated for over 200 years and had only limited contact with Dutch traders on the island of Dejima in Kyūshū. Commodore Perry arrived in Japan in 1853 to persuade Japan to open up its ports. The subsequent Kanagawa treaty concluded in 1854 between Japan and the United States marked the end of Japan’s isolation. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the Tokugawa shogunate’s reign and restored the power of the emperor. This opening up to the world also brought about some changes in the relationship between Japan and China, the neighbor which had been the dominant influence on Japan’s social and cultural institutions for 1,300 years. This contact with the West prompted Japan to turn to the West – Tanaka explains that the “West brought a different perspective, the probable future; knowledge was infinite” (1993: 32–33). Japan’s subsequent victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in a shift in regional dominance in Asia. After opening up to the world, “pre-modern” Japan endeavored to catch up with the “modern” West. In this sense, modernization in Japan was virtually Westernization. Japan was aware that Western knowledge and technologies were needed to facilitate its modernization. One way to import this knowledge was through translation, and many Western works were translated for this purpose. Kondō and Wakabayashi explain that “the aim of many translations in the first decade of the Meiji period was educational rather than aesthetic” (2001: 488). The so-called Three Books of Meiji are: Seiyō jijō (1866–1870) [Things Western] by Fukuzawa Yukichi, Yochi shiryaku (1870–1877) [A Brief Description of World Geography] by Uchida Masao, and Saigoku risshihen (1870–1871) [Success Stories in the West] by Nakamura Masanao (Keiu). They are all translations, although the first two books are not translations in the conventional sense since they draw upon a number of Western sources. Seiyō jijō introduces social and political ­affairs in

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Western countries, and Yochi shiryaku is a geography textbook. The third book, Saigoku risshihen, is a translation of Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles. Another translation by Nakamura, Jiyū no kotowari (1872) translated from J. S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859), was also influential.

3.

Fukuzawa Yukichi

A very brief biographical account is useful here, with its focus upon Fukuzawa’s involvement with the West. Fukuzawa was born in 1835 to a lower samurai family in the strictly hierarchical feudal society. His early academic training was in Chinese studies, as was usual for samurai children. He later started rangaku (Dutch studies), which was the only established kind of Western studies at the time. The need for knowledge of Western technology, especially gunnery, became more pressing with Commodore Perry’s arrival in 1853. After visiting Yokohama, with its port newly opened for foreign trade, Fukuzawa saw English as an increasingly important language for Japan’s future, as the country was gradually being dragged into the international (or rather Western) arena. He then made a great effort to acquire the new language. The shift of focus from the Dutch to the English language is significant – it was Fukuzawa’s knowledge of Western social affairs that he had gained through the English language, rather than science and technology, which played an important role in transforming Japanese society. Fukuzawa was one of the few people who actually visited foreign countries during the time of social transition. He went on a Tokugawa government mission to the United States in 1860. On his return, he was employed by the then Foreign Ministry of the Tokugawa government to translate official documents. He visited Europe in 1862 and the United States again in 1867 to broaden his knowledge of the West. The Meiji Restoration took place in 1868 at the mid-point of his life. Fukuzawa declined the offer to work for the new Meiji government and remained an independent scholar. With his experience in Western countries and knowledge gained from Western literature, Fukuzawa endeavored to introduce Western civilization to Japanese society. He was one of the most prominent scholars of Western learning, who wrote on Western affairs and translated Western books which he thought would contribute to Japan’s social development. Fukuzawa’s writing is fluent and easy to read and is strikingly different from what was regarded as the authoritative and mainstream writing style of the time that was strongly influenced by the Chinese language. Fukuzawa’s style greatly contributed to the popularity and accessibility of his works, which made him extremely influential among the general public.



4.

Translation as representation

Sekai kunizukushi

Fukuzawa published many books, including translations. Gakumon no susume (1872 to 1876) [An Encouragement of Learning] and Bunmeiron no gairyaku (1875) [An Outline of a Theory of Civilization] are two of Fukuzawa’s major works which have been read by successive generations. These two works are normally associated with his image as a civil libertarian. Although it is not of great interest to contemporary readers, Seiyō jijō (1866 to 1870) [Things Western], mentioned above, is also one of his important works. This is the work by which Fukuzawa made a name for himself. Of these three works, Seiyō jijō is known as a work of translation. The other two books are generally described as Fukuzawa’s own work with the influence of Western thinking, although they involve translation from Western sources. Sekai kunizukushi (1869) [Nations around the World] was also hugely popular during Fukuzawa’s lifetime. I will closely examine this book because it is related to Fukuzawa’s view on civilization, which was formed through his translation of Western sources. The book involves representation of the civilized West and uncivilised others, presenting Western civilization as Japan’s goal, on the one hand, whilst containing references such as “despotic China” and “savage Africa”, on the other. Sekai kunizukushi is a geography book for children and the general public which was published in 1869 by his newly established business, Fukuzawaya Yukichi. It is an abridged translation based on several geography and history books published in the United States and Britain, as Fukuzawa explains in his notes. He even emphasizes that his opinions are not included at all (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 585). It consists of six sections and concisely introduces the geography and people of the world. The information provided includes geographical features, population, products and social affairs. The book also refers to the stages of civilization, with nations around the world introduced in relation to their level of civilization. The crucial connection between geography and civilization has been pointed out in the book edited by Katō and Maeda: Meiji scholars aiming to enlighten Japanese people regarded geography as an important subject to be taught. As Fukuzawa designates Asia as “Half-Civilized”, Africa as “Savage” and Europe as “Enlightened” in Sekai kunizukushi, understanding world geography was directly linked to understanding the progress of civilization. The scholars tried to show the goal which Japan should strive for.  (Katō and Maeda 1989: 353)

Learning geography is closely associated with understanding the world in its relation to the stages of civilization. Advancing toward civilization is a key issue in

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Sekai kunizukushi, and Fukuzawa clearly addresses the reader in his hope that Japan will strive towards Western civilization.4 Although Sekai kunizukushi is no longer of great interest to contemporary readers, it enjoyed a wide readership at the time of publication. The attractive text formatting and the writing style contributed to the popularity and considerable sales of the book. The page is divided into top and bottom sections: the body text is set in the bottom section, and the top section provides additional information to the body text together with many illustrations. The body text is written in the traditional seven-five syllable meter, which creates a rhythmic tone in the text and makes it easier to read the text aloud. Ishikawa describes the book as being so popular that children all over the country used to recite the text, just like singing songs (in Nakagawa 2002: 409). Minamoto refers to an estimate that one million copies were in circulation in the early Meiji period (1997: 2). It was one of the commercial books temporarily listed as school textbooks by the Meiji government when the new school system was introduced in 1872. Considering the popularity of the book and the limited knowledge Japanese people had about the world in those days, the impact of the book on the reader would have been great. Sekai kunizukushi must have affected the way the Japanese reader saw the world. Minamoto argues that the illustrations in the book influenced the creation of the stereotyped image of foreign places which Japanese people have had in their mind from the Meiji period onward (1997: 5). Fujita also argues that the popular image of Africa held by Japanese people was fixed in their minds by the contents of Sekai kunizukushi (2005: 117–118). It is worth noting that both Minamoto and Fujita suggest that this image had a lasting influence on the way Japanese people see other cultures. Let us see how Sekai kunizukushi and its main source book, A System of Modern Geography (Mitchell’s New School Geography) by an American, S. ­Augustus Mitchell, respectively represent the world. Fukuzawa explains the stages of civilization in the Appendix, which is largely based on “The States of Society” in Modern Geography. Fukuzawa presents the four stages of civilization as “chaos”, “barbarous”, “uncivilised or half-civilized”, and “civilized and enlightened”, which correspond to the Savage, Barbarous, Half-Civilized, and Civilized and Enlightened in Modern Geography.5 The savage state is explained by Mitchell as follows: 146. What is meant by Savage life? Savage life is the lowest stage of existence among wandering tribes. It is but little removed from the life of brutes. Such is the condition of some of the natives of Central Africa, of New Guinea, and Australia.



Translation as representation

147. How do savages live? Savages roam over a great extent of country, and live by hunting and fishing, and sometimes upon insects, roots, and wild fruits. They make war upon each other, and are very cruel and superstitious. Some savages are cannibals and eat human flesh. 148. Do savages dwell in houses? Savages sometimes live in huts of the rudest kind; and a collection of these constitutes a village, where they live for a short time, until their nomadic or wandering instinct prompts them to leave it. They pay little or no attention to agriculture, and are usually naked, or have very scanty clothing. 149. What is said of their knowledge? Savages are almost entirely ignorant: they have no knowledge of letters, no system of laws or morals, and no division of land. 150. How are savages governed? Savages are governed by chiefs, who are usually absolute and cruel despots.  (Mitchell 1875: 35–36)

Fukuzawa translates the above in Sekai kunizukushi as follows (English back translation is provided for the purpose of comparing the information in the original and the translation only): The first [stage] is called chaos. The people are in the lowest state among savages and not far from the state of birds and beasts. This is the state of the natives of inland Africa, New Guinea and Australia. They wander around the vast land and live by hunting and fishing, or live on insects and roots of wild plants. They do not have a merciful heart and fight each other; they are superstitious and have no moral principles. Some even eat human flesh. They do not dwell in houses. Although they may make shabby huts and form a village-like setting, they move whenever they want, without leaving vestiges of the dwelling. They are not engaged in agriculture and do not eat grain. Their clothes are shabby, and they are usually naked. Their knowledge is highly limited; they have no knowledge of letters, no system of laws, no moral principles, and no division of land. Such ignorant people still have their chiefs who govern them cruelly and tyrannically.6  (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 663–664)

We can note in passing that although Mitchell’s text is written in a question and answer form, Fukuzawa only translates the answer parts. Apart from this format change, Fukuzawa’s text qualifies as a conventional translation. Notwithstanding some minor changes in the way of expressing things, Fukuzawa does not seem to deliberately disparage the “savages” depicted in the original English nor does he elevate their status. It is fair to say that his note to the effect that his opinions are not included at all is substantiated here as far as the main message is concerned.

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Other stages of civilization are translated in similar manner. The Tartars, Arabs, and some Africans belong to the barbarous stage, and the people are governed by patriarchal chiefs with inhumane laws. The half-civilized state is a considerable improvement on the barbarous state. China, Turkey, and Persia are included in this stage. Although Mitchell included Japan in this class, Fukuzawa omitted this mention of Japan.7 Europe and the United States are depicted as civilized and advanced in technology. On the whole, the Western notion of civilized and uncivilised presented by Mitchell is represented by Fukuzawa without any major distortion. The implied criteria for the civilized or uncivilised, such as “clothed” or “naked”, seem to be accepted or represented in Sekai kunizukushi. The important point to note here is that the notion of the stages of civilization involves, in Fukuzawa’s representation, seeing the stages in relative terms, whereas Mitchell appears to speak in absolutes – for Fukuzawa, the half-civilized state is regarded as civilized in comparison with the barbarous state. This relative perspective of civilization is clearly expressed in his later work Bunmeiron no gairyaku (1875). Although the classification of civilization itself involves relativity, Mitchell’s description of “The States of Society” seems to be racially connected and confined. Mitchell explains that the Caucasian race “are the most improved and intelligent of the human family, and seem capable of attaining the highest degree of progress and civilization”, while the Mongolian race are “limited in genius and slow in progress” (Mitchell 1875: 33). The Black race are “indolent in habit, and have not attained to any high degree of civilization” (Mitchell 1875: 34). Fukuzawa refers to the five races elsewhere in Sekai kunizukushi, but does not mention racial characteristics8 which, in Mitchell’s text, are relevant for the progress of civilization. Fukuzawa made an even more interesting change in his translation. Mitchell inserted four illustrations to depict each state of civilization. Fukuzawa moved these illustrations to the section on Europe in Sekai kunizukushi, and introduces an explanation of the illustrations as follows: Although Europe is now without doubt the most civilized and enlightened continent in the world, it was in a chaotic and ignorant state in the old days. Even as it gradually progressed toward civilization, military might was considered highly important in the feudal age, and merchants and peasants were often oppressed by the power of knights. As scholarship has progressed over the past two to three hundred years and people’s livelihoods have prospered, people have come to value intelligence and not to be afraid of force. State affairs have reflected this trend, and the present political regime has gradually been formed. I present the illustrations below which depict the gradual stages from the chaotic/ignorant to the civilized/enlightened society; the illustrations are copied from a Western geography book. You can have a general idea about society by looking at these illustrations.9  (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 610–612)



Translation as representation

It appears that Fukuzawa transferred the illustrations not only to show the stages of civilization but also to emphasize that Europe has been through these stages to achieve its level of civilization. Even the now-civilized Europe was once in a chaotic state. Because Europe is presented as civilized and enlightened and consequently as the goal for Japan to reach, the notion of a Europe once at the chaotic stage is encouraging for the country which Fukuzawa thinks will advance toward civilization. This departure from a tightly accurate translation stresses the progressive nature of civilization, which is another important point in discussing Fukuzawa. This view on civilization implies dynamics in the progress of civilization, as opposed to the static and racially confined view expressed by Mitchell – every culture has the potential to become civilized with due diligence. And this is connected to the notion of egalitarianism with which the popular image of Fukuzawa is associated. Other parts of Sekai kunizukushi which introduce accounts of specific areas and countries also involve translation based on Mitchell’s book. I take the example of the section on Africa, which Fujita regards as responsible for the popular image of Africa among Japanese people. Africa is generally depicted as a lowly place in Sekai kunizukushi. For example, a description goes as follows: its small population is ignorant, illiterate and does not have any arts; it is a world of ignorance and chaos (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 602). Looking at the depiction in Modern Geography, such as “a deplorable state of ignorance” and “no knowledge of letters”, it is reasonable to think that Fukuzawa did not create the description of African people but extracted given information from Modern Geography and perhaps some other Western sources. There are sections which are more akin to translation. The reference to cannibalism, for example, has a corresponding sentence in Modern Geography. The sentence in Sekai kunizukushi – it is said that the blacks in the place called “Niyamuku”10 kill people and eat their flesh (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 607) – bears enough resemblance to the following sentence in Modern Geography to be called translation: “The Niam-Niams, lately visited by Mr. Petherick, are cannibals” (Mitchell 1875: 425). It is important to note that Fukuzawa uses the hearsay form “it is said”, which indicates that he is reporting a written source. This is both a departure from strict translation and an assertion of the fact that he is, indeed, translating rather than giving his own views. He often uses hearsay expressions in Sekai kunizukushi, and the use of various hearsay expressions is notable in the book. There are twelve illustrations in the section on Africa, and ten of them are copied from Modern Geography. One of the ten illustrations depicts a lion standing over a man lying on the ground. The text explains the illustration as follows: there are many lions around here, and they sometimes harm people; it is horrifying (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 605). And the caption says: a lion eats a man. This illustration must have made a strong impression on the reader, branding the

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image of Africa as a place of wilderness with fierce animals. Other illustrations are mostly scenery, including the one of a pyramid and a sphinx. Three illustrations feature modern buildings which were thought to be a sign of civilization, while others feature natural scenery including the desert. The people in the two illustrations are holding spears. The African illustrations starkly contrast with the illustrations in the section on Europe, which depict grand cities and monarchs in sumptuous attire. The contrast also highlights the dichotomy of the civilized and the uncivilised. On the whole, Africa is introduced in Sekai kunizukushi as “savage Africa” with a harsh nature and fierce animals, inhabited by backward people including cannibals. Even though the information mostly originated from Modern Geography, it reached the Japanese reader through Fukuzawa’s translation. Lefevere’s view on translation is useful here to explain the transcultural nature of translation: translation is the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting, and. . . it is potentially the most influential because it is able to project the image of an author and/or a (series of) work(s) in another culture, lifting that author and/or those (Lefevere 1992: 9) works beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin…. 

Fukuzawa’s translation projects the image of the world represented by Mitchell in Japanese culture. And as a type of rewriting, certain intervention (or manipulation as explained by Lefevere) is involved in the translation. It is important to mention here the representation of China in Sekai kunizukushi, as the next section of this essay examines the representation of China and Korea in Jiji shinpō editorials. China is basically depicted as a country with a great tradition, which is now bullied by Western nations. Although the section on China is less akin to translation, we can see the traces of Western sources in Fukuzawa’s description. Uemura’s (2006) analysis of “Asia” is useful here. He explains how such notions as “Asian despotism” and “Asian stagnation” are examples of stereotypical phrases which were developed in Europe to describe the “Asian” state. He traces these notions back to Montesquieu and Hegel, and examines how they were accepted and internalized by Japanese thinkers such as Fukuzawa. In Sekai kunizukushi, Fukuzawa states that the political regime in China is what is called “despotic” in a Western language (1869/1959: 594). This is compared to the description of the Chinese government as “an absolute despotism” in Modern Geography. Fukuzawa’s “rendition” that civilization in China has gone backward and their customs and manners are failing (1869/1959: 594) is closely linked to the notion of “stagnant” Asia. The manner of expression is Fukuzawa’s own, but the frame of thinking seems to be influenced by Western sources. The question to be asked here is how we look at Fukuzawa’s representation of the world in Sekai kunizukushi – whether Fukuzawa is responsible for fixing the



Translation as representation

image of other cultures among Japanese readers, and whether Fukuzawa actively promoted a negative image of non-Western cultures. The question is important for his image as an imperialistic expansionist, as his view of the stages of civilization (with Western civilization as Japan’s goal) and its corollary of the dichotomy of the civilized and uncivilised are presumably linked to the image of Fukuzawa as an imperialist. As far as the propagation of a certain image is concerned, the simple answer would be “yes”. Sekai kunizukushi in effect influenced the way the reader saw the world. As mentioned before, the book’s popularity and the limited information about the world among the general public at that time suggest that the book had a great impact on the reader’s view of the world. Whether Fukuzawa actively promoted a negative image of non-Western cultures is a tricky matter to decide. As Fukuzawa explains in his notes, Sekai kunizukushi is a translation. And Fukuzawa specifically explains that his opinions are not included at all. Of course, we cannot take his words literally; we have already seen that Fukuzawa manipulated certain information when translating, and the fact that he says that his opinions are not included seems an intentional ploy. This statement could assert the authenticity or authority of the content drawn from Western sources. Or, conversely, it could evade the authenticity of the content – Fukuzawa may insinuate that he is not responsible for the content. He often uses expressions of hearsay,11 which indicates that he is reporting what is written in the source. In any case, the inclusion of such a statement is at the very least a deliberate call to the reader’s attention of the existence of Western sources. Fukuzawa generally represents the world in terms of the nineteenth-century Western notion of the civilized West and uncivilised others. His focus is still on the progress of civilization, as Fukuzawa in the book inspires Japanese people to strive towards Western civilization. Europe and the United States are introduced as civilized and enlightened, representing a state for Japan to aspire to. Other cultures are introduced at their different stages of civilization. Because his focus is on progress, the implication is that the savages are not inherently savages or fixed at the savage state, but they are at the pre-civilized stage in the process toward civilization. In this sense, Fukuzawa did not seem to have promoted a fixed image of one culture in relation to its civilization level. However, Western civilization as a goal for Japan suggests that other cultures which have not reached the civilized and enlightened stage are negative examples for Japan. And even if Fukuzawa stresses the progressive nature of civilization, non-Western cultures are presented “here and now” in the time of Fukuzawa in the negative sense of uncivilised. Here I can borrow Sakamoto’s remarks when she examines Fukuzawa’s construction of “Asia” as “the negative Other” of Japan: “Uncivilised countries may be destined to civilize, but, taken synchronically, one can always distinguish one from the other” (Sakamoto 1996: 125). The reader of

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Sekai kunizukushi receives the synchronic image of uncivilised non-Western cultures. Here civilization in relative terms works to distance and exclude. Based on the perspective of civilization in relative terms, distancing Japan from other “half-civilized” Asian countries, for example, can (in theory) cause Japan to be closer to the “civilized” nations. Whether consciously or not, Fukuzawa’s translation choices distanced Japan from other “uncivilised” cultures and accordingly highlighted “uncivilised” aspects of other cultures. In this sense, Fukuzawa is in effect responsible for promoting a negative image of non-Western cultures. Another factor is involved in the creation of this negative image. Fukuzawa had limited contact and experience with foreign people and places, although he visited the United States twice and Europe once and briefly stopped in a few other places during his 1862 trip. Most information in Sekai kunizukushi is gained from the Western sources by reading and translating the sources. Even his contact with neighboring China was limited.12 Ishida points out that the image of China that Fukuzawa had was, in the main, either as a notional Confucian country or China depicted in Western geography books (1975: 599). It is fair to say that the image of China that Fukuzawa had was partly created by his translating Western sources. The Chinese people Fukuzawa actually encountered on the mission to Europe were the people who were subjugated by the British. If expressed metaphorically, these Chinese people were already “translated” into British colonial subjects. “Seikōki” [Travel Journal of the West], which is based on his notes taken during the trip to Europe, describes the Chinese in Hong Kong as follows: the natives in Hong Kong are vulgar in their manners and customs; they are simply forced to toil for the British (Fukuzawa 1962: 9). Matsuzawa also mentions that visiting Western countries gave Fukuzawa an opportunity to learn about China and Chinese people and possibly let him see China from the viewpoint of the West (1993: 188). This viewpoint is completely different from that developed in traditional Sinology in Japan that Fukuzawa himself had previously been involved in; the China to which Japan had looked up to was reduced to a “half-civilized” country exploited by the West. The indirect encounter with foreign people and places may have given him pseudo-Western eyes. Part of Fukuzawa reads and writes things from the viewpoint of a Western author, and the resulting translation, Sekai kunizukushi, reflects the Western viewpoint. After all, his aim was that Japan would achieve the state of Western civilization and possibly advance further. Adopting Western eyes can form a part of the process. The point has to be made that, regardless of the fact that Sekai kunizukushi is a translation of Western sources and Fukuzawa’s focus is on the progress of civilization, Fukuzawa, as the translator and publisher of the book, played a significant role in propagating a negative image of non-Western cultures. Fukuzawa’s aim of leading Japan to reach the level of Western civilization resulted



Translation as representation

in his presenting Western civilization as a positive example for Japan to emulate and other non-Western cultures as a negative example of the not-yet civilized. Western civilization as a goal for Japan suggests a desire to identify with the West, which consequently suggests a notion of ideologically distancing Japan from other non-Western cultures. This notion of distancing is clearly shown in a newspaper editorial written by Fukuzawa, which is examined below.

5.

Newspaper editorials

The image of Fukuzawa as a nationalistic expansionist mainly revolves around his editorials in the Jiji shinpō, the newspaper he owned and published. There is an interesting story behind the establishment of the newspaper, as Fukuzawa explains in his autobiography. Fukuzawa was asked in late 1880 by the three ministers of the government “to take charge of a newspaper, or official bulletin, which they were then planning to start” (trans. Kiyooka 1981: 316). He turned down their request, but changed his mind when he learned that “the government was going to open a national diet and, by way of preparation, wanted a newspaper” (trans. Kiyooka 1981: 316). However, the newspaper plan suffered a setback due to the political upheaval in 1881. In the following year, Fukuzawa established the newspaper on his own. Apparently he was reluctant to launch the business but was persuaded to do so by his nephew, who lost his government position in the political turmoil; the business experienced financial difficulties at the beginning, and Fukuzawa complained about the hard work (Tokura 2006). In any case, the Jiji shinpō eventually became a major newspaper in Japan. Despite the initial approach from the government, the newspaper heralded the spirit of independence, being “free from political and business interests” (trans. Kiyooka 1981: 322). A large number of editorials are included in the complete works of ­Fukuzawa Yukichi (1958–1964): nine volumes out of the total twenty-one volumes are allocated to Jiji shinpō editorials, which were written from 1882 to 1901. The topic of the editorials varies, but those represented here are the ones about Asia, more specifically China and Korea. These editorials contain negative references to the neighboring Asian countries, which are regarded by some as evidence for ­Fukuzawa supporting Japan’s aggression toward Asia. The descriptions given of China and Korea often include terms such as “backward”, “obstinate”, “ignorant”, “despotic”, “corrupt”, and “obsequious”. These characteristics are clearly seen in the section on China in Sekai kunizukushi, which is a translation in both the physical and metaphorical senses. The editorials cover a period of about two decades; their aggressiveness and contempt varies, and they occasionally contradict each other. “Tōyō no seiryaku

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hatashite ikansen” [How Japan Should Exercise Its Political Strategies in the East] (1882) fears for hypothetical violent crimes committed by the Chinese army if Japan by any chance lost a war against China – looting, killing people, raping women, and setting fire to houses. Fukuzawa continues that he heard about a Chinese man who killed a French woman and cut off her ears and fingers to steal her gold rings and earrings in haste (Fukuzawa 1960: 439). “Ichidai eidan o yōsu” [The Needs for a Decisive Step] (1892) observes that Japan is in the best position to lead Korea to civilization and that the Japanese government should take a decisive step to exercise Japan’s strategic involvement in Korea (Fukuzawa 1960: 417– 418). On the other hand, “Shinajin shitashimu beshi” [We Should Make Friends with the Chinese] (1898) criticizes the use of derogatory terms for Chinese people (Fukuzawa 1961: 286). In “Shina no kaikaku ni tsuite” [On Reforms in China] (1898), Fukuzawa expresses his surprise at the changes in China after the SinoJapanese war and states that China is really Japan’s former teacher to whom Japan is indebted (Fukuzawa 1961: 479). Conflicting remarks by Fukuzawa logically enough attract conflicting views on Fukuzawa. For example, Yasukawa, who has made the most severe attacks on Fukuzawa (as a nationalistic expansionist) in recent years, denounced as a “lie” Fukuzawa’s condemnation of the derogatory terms about Chinese people in “Shinajin shitashimu beshi” (Yasukawa 2000: 246). Conversely, Hirayama regards “Shinajin shitashimu beshi” as Fukuzawa’s true voice (2004: 164). Hirayama’s view is that Fukuzawa criticized the political regime of China and Korea but was not disdainful of Chinese and Korean people in general. Apparently not all Jiji shinpō editorials that are included in the complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi are wholly Fukuzawa’s own writing; some may have been drafted by staff journalists and (possibly) edited by Fukuzawa. Hirayama argues that the inclusion of editorials was manipulated by Ishikawa Mikiaki, who, as mentioned before, was the editor of the Taishō edition (1925–1926) and its sequel, the Shōwa edition (1933–1934) of the complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Ishikawa actually worked for ­Fukuzawa at the Jiji shinpō; he joined the newspaper in 1885 and was editor-in-chief from 1899 to 1922. The current edition (1958–1964) basically follows Ishikawa’s selections, as the co-editor Tomita Masafumi explains. Tomita notes that only a person like Ishikawa who closely worked with Fukuzawa at the newspaper can differentiate Fukuzawa’s writing (1960: 671). Hirayama claims that “Tōyō no seiryaku hatashite ikansen” and “Ichidai eidan o yōsu”, which are often quoted in the discussion of Fukuzawa, were not thought to be written by Fukuzawa before Ishikawa included them in the complete works (Hirayama 2004: 92–93). He believes that it was Ishikawa who was a nationalistic expansionist with a disdainful view of Chinese and Korean people, and certain editorials with an aggressive and derogatory tone were writ-



Translation as representation

ten or drafted by ­Ishikawa. It is important to note that the time Ishikawa edited the complete works saw Japan’s growing military activities in China after Japan had secured certain interests in its neighbor by winning the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). The Manchurian Incident, which started in 1931, brought about the establishment of the puppet state, Manchukuo, in 1932. This led to the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937, which developed into the Pacific War in 1941. Although Hirayama gives some evidence for his argument, it would be difficult to assess with absolute accuracy which editorial is or is not Fukuzawa’s writing and to what degree ­Fukuzawa edited his staff ’s writing. And the fact remains that the editorials concerning Asia, including the ones which Hirayama regards as written by Fukuzawa, involve negative references to Asia. The most famous (or infamous) of all his editorials is “Datsua-ron” [On Leaving Asia], which deserves more detailed examination. “Datsua-ron” was published in the Jiji shinpō on 16th March 1885. Imanaga’s remarks on the editorial show its link to Japanese imperialism: “Datsua-ron” is widely known to have set the subsequent direction of Japanese modernization (Imanaga 1979: 172) – the direction of leaving Asia, which resulted in Japan’s aggression in Asia. He argues that “Datsuaron” needs to be severely criticized as it ideologically framed Japan’s ruling of China and aggressive policy in South East Asia and worked as a useful tool for Japanese imperial rule (Imanaga 1979: 253). Although Imanaga’s observation on aggression in Fukuzawa’s writing is not solely based on his examination of “Datsua-ron”, his statement makes the editorial markedly significant. Let us briefly look at what is written in “Datsua-ron”. It begins by saying that “[t]ransportation has become so convenient these days that once the wind of Western civilization blows to the East, every blade of grass and every tree in the East follow what the Western wind brings” (in Lu 1997: 351). The propagation of civilization is like “the spread of measles” and difficult to prevent. The “old-fashioned and bloated government” was replaced by the new one, and Japan embraced Western civilization with the notion of datsua (leaving Asia). While the spirit of the Japanese people has “already moved away from the old conventions of Asia” to Western civilization, its unfortunate neighbors China and Korea cling to their old customs and Confucianism. In the author’s view, “these two countries cannot survive as independent nations with the onslaught of Western civilization to the East”. Because of Japan’s geographical proximity to these two countries, Westerners may identify Japan with those whose governments “still retain their autocratic manners” and whose people “are deep in their hocus pocus of nonscientific behavior” – with the Chinese who “are mean-spirited and shameless” and with the Koreans who “punish their convicts in an atrocious manner”. These associations “can affect” Japan’s “normal conduct of diplomatic affairs”. Then comes the oft-quoted concluding section:

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What must we do today? We do not have time to wait for the enlightenment of our neighbors so that we can work together toward the development of Asia. It is better for us to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with [the] civilized nations of the West. As for the way of dealing with China and Korea, no special treatment is necessary just because they happen to be our neighbors. We simply follow the manner of the Westerners in knowing how to treat them. Any person who cherishes a bad friend cannot escape his bad (sic) notoriety. We (in Lu 1997: 353) simply erase from our minds our bad friends in Asia.13 

China and Korea are represented as the countries which are bigoted and resistant to Western civilization – Japan’s bad friends in Asia. In examining Fukuzawa’s negative representation of Asia in “Datsua-ron” and other editorials, the analysis of Sekai kunizukushi we have seen above is useful, as the representations in the book and those in the editorials involve common elements. First of all, there is some “translation” element in the editorials. Although of course the editorials are not translations from Western sources, they certainly contain traces of Western colonial discourse. As Sakamoto describes, Fukuzawa’s negative representation of Asia is related to the Western representation of the “uncivilised”: “China’s image was constructed in the framework of the dichotomy of civilisation and barbarism which originated in the West, and in this capacity was linked to ‘uncivilised’ Asia in general” (Sakamoto 2001: 150). The image of violence, cruelty, and immorality, as seen in “Tōyō no seiryaku hatashite ikansen”, is usually attributed to the “uncivilised”, and this attribution is often based on an hypothetical and imaginative fear. The argument in “Ichidai eidan o yōsu” that Japan needs to lead Korea to civilization, hence justifying its meddling in Korea, is also seen in Western colonial discourse. In this sense, Fukuzawa’s representation of Asia is partly a repeat of Western discourse. The dichotomy of the “civilized” and the “uncivilised” in the discourse of the West has been transported (translated) to the dichotomy in Asia with Japan on (or closer to) the “civilized” side in comparison with China and Korea on the “uncivilised” side. The framework of “civilized” and “uncivilised” is again related to distance. In “Datsua-ron”, Fukuzawa distances “uncivilised” Asia from Japan – the spirit of the Japanese people has “already moved away from the old conventions of Asia” toward Western civilization. And it is better for Japan “to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with [the] civilized nations of the West.” Japan has left “half-civilized” (in terms of the definition in Sekai kunizukushi) Asia to be closer to the “civilized” West. The identification of Japan with the “civilized” West was still one-sided – Japan trying to identify with the West without the West acknowledging the identification – which is expressed as fear of Westerners identifying Japan with China and Korea. Adopting Western eyes is also evident in “Datsua-ron”. The assertion that “no special treatment is necessary” when dealing



Translation as representation

with China and Korea and that the Japanese “simply follow the manner of the Westerners in knowing how to treat them” shows a shift of viewpoint. This is more a case of taking on Western behavior than adopting Western eyes; the Japanese can follow the way the Westerners treat (other) Asian people. This logic suggests Japan’s mimicking/practicing Western colonization in Asia, as Sakamoto points out: “To treat China and Korea ‘just like Westerners treat them’, in the historical context of the time, meant to invade and colonise them” (Sakamoto 2001: 151). Hence the notorious “Datsua-ron”. We have briefly seen how Asia is represented in the Jiji shinpō editorials by Fukuzawa and how this representation is connected to his translation work of Sekai kunizukushi. The question to be asked is how influential was (and in some sense is) Fukuzawa’s representation of Asia, particularly the references in the famous “Datsua-ron”. As far as “Datsua-ron” is concerned, it is one newspaper editorial which was published on one day in 1885. The extent of its influence would have been different from the influence of such a work as Sekai kunizukushi, which sold as many as one million copies and was read and recited by many people. It is unlikely that a single editorial in one newspaper significantly influenced the mentality of the people who read the newspaper. When discussing the current notoriety of “Datsua-ron”, it is interesting to note how the editorial became so “famous”. Tomita recalls that, after World War II, he was asked by somebody (he does not remember who) on the telephone in which volume of the complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi his editorial called “Datsua-ron” was included. He continues that “Datsua-ron” suddenly became famous afterwards (Tomita 1992: 599). Hirayama (2004) explains how “Datsua-ron” was made famous after the War by a number of researchers who discovered the editorial and discussed it in their research on Fukuzawa. As far as the context in which “Datsua-ron” became famous, Hirayama’s explanation is plausible. In this sense, Actor Network Theory (ANT) (referred to by Milton and Bandia’s Introduction, and Jones’s article in this volume) can be used to examine the current status of an editorial which appeared in 1885. The actors (prominent scholars) involved in the “Datsua-ron” network are partially introduced here in a summary of Hirayama’s account. The editorial was not specifically mentioned until the 1950s when Tōyama Shigeki and Hattori Shisō made references to it. They discuss “Datsua-ron” in relation to Japan’s aggression in Asia, which is linked to their intention of countering Maruyama Masao’s reading of Fukuzawa as a civil libertarian. In 1961, “Datsua-ron” acquired the attribute of “famous” in Takeuchi Yoshimi’s article: it is well known that Fukuzawa argued for “Datsua-ron”. Takeuchi may have felt that the editorial was famous among the researchers of Japanese political theory based on his discussions with other contributors to the book in which his article is included.

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Since then the editorial has been attributed with the adjective “famous”, and it eventually became “famous” around 1967 (Hirayama 2004: 209–226). And the English translation of “Datsua-ron” which appears in Lu’s Japan: A Documentary History (1997) further expanded the network. The way “Datsua-ron” became “famous” still does not discount what it says, in terms of projecting images and creating an ideological framework of the images. And there were other editorials with negative references to China and Korea. It is difficult to imagine how the editorials on Asian affairs collectively could not have had an effect on readers, although they were more sporadic than continuous. The Jiji shinpō was a major newspaper published by the influential Fukuzawa. The ideological framework of “civilized” Japan and “uncivilised” China and Korea is looming in “Datsua-ron” and other editorials, which is reflected in Japan’s subsequent aggression in Asia. The editorials in the Jiji shinpō played a significant part in shaping the ideological framework based on the image of “uncivilised” and therefore “inferior” Asia from which Japan had already moved away.

6.

Conclusion

Fukuzawa, as a well-known scholar of Western learning, as a best-selling translator, and as a publisher, influenced the way in which Japanese people saw the world. The world Fukuzawa represents is largely based on the discourse of the dichotomy of “civilized” and “uncivilised” in his Western sources. Western civilization is presented as the goal for Japan to emulate, and Fukuzawa’s desire for Japan to identify with the West in terms of the attainment of civilization relegates other non-Western cultures. This framework easily led to the contempt of other non-Western cultures, which was “translated” to the image of Fukuzawa as a nationalistic expansionist. The important thing to note is that the representation of non-Western cultures by Fukuzawa is often mediated by the West. Some representation is literally a translation of Western sources and some is a metaphorical translation of the discourse of the West. Pseudo-Western eyes and attitudes are involved in the representation, and the distance between Japan and other non-Western cultures is manipulated with the West as an axis. On the whole, Fukuzawa’s representation of non-Western cultures is linked to the Western representation – it is a re-representation (re-translation) which is further distanced from the referent. This renders the image of non-Western cultures projected by Fukuzawa more precarious. And this precarious image affected how the Japanese related to other non-Western cultures. Fukuzawa ideologically framed Japan’s somewhat indirect relationship with these cultures, as measured against the West.



Translation as representation

Fukuzawa’s representation has had a lingering effect in forming part of the stereotypical image of other cultures. The ideological framework of “civilized” Japan and “uncivilised” Asia has also had a continued effect on the contemporary examination of Japan’s colonial aggression in Asia. And “Datsua-ron” is a topic in current discussions of Fukuzawa. The representation/translation by Fukuzawa is still relevant when we examine how Japan evaluates its relationship to the neighboring Asian countries and the world.

Acknowledgement I gratefully acknowledge the support of Dr. John Milton for his invaluable comments and help in editing this paper.

Notes 1. Japanese names are cited in Japanese order, i.e. the surname first, followed by the personal name without a comma in between. 2. The title of existing published translations is italicized. 3. There are more recent publications of selected Fukuzawa works. The latest collection is Fukuzawa Yukichi Chosakushū (2002–2003), twelve volumes published by the Keiō University Press. 4. It is important to note that Fukuzawa did not blindly worship the West. 5. Although Mitchell divides the social condition into five stages, “the Savage, Barbarous, Half-Civilized, Civilized, and Enlightened” (1875: 35), he more or less categorizes “civilized and enlightened nations” as one group. He adds that “[a]ll enlightened nations are not equally civilized” (1875: 38) to make a certain distinction. 6. 第一を混沌といふ。蛮野の内にても最も下等の民にて、鳥獣の仲間を外るゝこ と甚はだ遠からず。阿非利加の内地、「新ぎんな」「あふすたらりや」などの土 人、これなり。はてしもなく広き野原に徘徊して猟漁を業とし、或は虫を喰ひ或は 野山に生じたる木の実草の根を食物とす。其人の性質、慈悲の心なくして互に相争 ひ、物事に迷い易くして人の道を知らず、甚はだしきは人の肉を喰ふものあり。其 住居は常に家なし。或は粗末なる小屋掛を作り一村の趣を成すこともあれども、便 利次第にて忽ち散じその痕跡も見ず。農業を勤めざれば五穀を喰はず。衣服も甚は だ見苦しくして大抵裸体の者多し。其知識は固より狭く、文字を知らず、法律を知 らず、礼儀の道なく、地面の区別なし。斯る愚民の内にも矢張頭分のものありて大 勢を支配し、その取扱ひ甚はだ暴虐無道なり。(Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 663–664) 7. Fukuzawa most likely read the sourcebook which was published in 1866, while the book used for the analysis in this essay was published in 1875. I consulted the 1865 edition and found that Japan was mentioned. It is reasonable to believe that Fukuzawa’s sourcebook also mentioned Japan and that he deliberately omitted it. In a later work, Bunmeiron no gairyaku (1875), Fukuzawa clearly states that Japan is half-civilized.

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8. Fukuzawa translated Mitchell’s description of the five races, including racial characteristics, in Shōchū bankoku ichiran (1869). 9. 当事欧羅巴は文明開化世界第一とて相違もなきことなれども、往古は矢張渾沌 無知、追々開けの進むに及でも、中古は封建の世とて専ら武を重んじ、武士の威光 烈しくして町人百姓の難渋せしことも多かりしが、二、三百年以前より学問の道漸 く行はれ、人の生計も繁盛するに従ひ、世の人皆智を貴で力を恐れず、国の政事も 自然にその辺に基きて、次第に今日の有様に至りしなり。今こゝに渾沌無知の風俗 より文明開化に至るまで、次第にその趣を顕したる絵図を、西洋の地理書より写し て示すこと左の如し。此絵を見て世の中の大概を知るべし。 (Fukuzawa 1869/1959: 610–612) 10. It is possible that Fukuzawa translated “Niam-Niams” as “Niyamu Niyamu” and that the transliteration “Niyamu Niyamu” was subsequently misprinted as “Niyamuku” due to the similarity between the ditto mark and the letter for “ku”. 11. These expressions may have been employed to create an atmosphere of traditional storytelling. 12. Fukuzawa had a different experience with Korean people. He had a number of Koreans, including Kim Ok-kyun, under his care. He sympathized with the Koreans who aimed at political reforms in their country, and many Korean students studied at Keiō University. 13. 左れば今日の謀を為すに、我国は隣国の開明を待て共に亜細亜を興すの猶予あ る可らず、寧ろ其伍を脱して西洋の文明国と進退を共にし、其支那朝鮮に接するの 法も隣国なるが故にとて特別の会釈に及ばず、正に西洋人が之に接するの風に従て 処分す可きのみ。悪友を親しむ者は共に悪名を免かる可らず。我れは心に於て亜細 亜東方の悪友を謝絶するものなり。(Fukuzawa 1885/1960, Vol. 10: 240)

References Fujita, Midori. 2005. Afurika ‘hakken’: Nihon ni okeru Afurika-zō no hensen. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1959. Sekai kunizukushi. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū [Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi], Volume 2, 579–668. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1960. “Tōyō no seiryaku hatashite ikansen”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 8, 427–443. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1960. “Datsua-ron”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 10, 238–240. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1960. “Ichidai eidan o yōsu”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 13, 412–418. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1961. “Shinajin shitashimu beshi”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 16, 284–286. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1961. “Shina no kaikaku ni tsuite”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 16, 478–483. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1962. “Seikōki”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 19, 6–65. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.



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Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1969. An Encouragement of Learning [Gakumon no susume]. David A. Dilworth and Umeyo Hirano (Trans.). Tokyo: Sophia University. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1973. An Outline of a Theory of Civilization [Bunmeiron no gairyaku]. David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst (Trans.). Tokyo: Sophia University. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1981. The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi [Fukuō jiden]. Eiichi Kiyooka (Trans.). Tokyo: Hokuseidō Press. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 1997. “Datsua-ron” [On Saying Good-bye to Asia]. In Japan: A Documentary History, David J. Lu (ed.). Armonk, New York, and London: M. E. Sharpe. Hirayama, Yō. 2004. Fukuzawa Yukichi no shinjitsu. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū. Imanaga, Seiji. 1979. Fukuzawa Yukichi no shisō keisei. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. Ishida, Takeshi. 1975. “Kaisetsu”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi shū [Kindai Nihon shisō taikei 2], Takeshi Ishida (ed.), 579–607. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Katō, Shūichi and Maeda, Ai (eds). 1989. Buntai [Nihon kindai shisō taikei 16]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kondō, Masaomi and Wakabayashi, Judy. 2001. “Japanese tradition”. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona Baker (ed.), 485–494. London and New York: Routledge. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge. Matsuzawa, Hiroaki. 1993. Kindai Nihon no keisei to seiyō keiken. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Minamoto, Shōkyū. 1997. “Fukuzawa Yukichi cho Sekai kunizukushi ni kansuru ichi-kenkyū: shoshigaku-teki chōsa”. Kūkan, shakai, chiri shisō [Space, Society and Geographical Thought] 2: 2–18. Mitchell, S. Augustus. 1875. A System of Modern Geography. Philadelphia: Caxton Press of Sherman & Co. Nakagawa, Shinya. 2002. “Kaisetsu”. In Fukuzawa Yukichi chosaku shū, Volume 2, 405–418. Tokyo: Keiō Daigaku Shuppankai. Sakamoto, Rumi. 1996. “Japan, hybridity and the creation of colonialist discourse”. Theory, Culture & Society 13 (3): 113–128. Sakamoto, Rumi. 2001. “Dream of a modern subject: Maruyama Masao, Fukuzawa Yukichi, and ‘Asia’ as the limit of ideology critique”. Journal of Japanese Studies 21 (2): 137–153. Tanaka, Stefan. 1993. Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkley, Los Angels, and London: University of California Press. Tokura, Takeyuki. Visited September 2006. “Jiji shinpō shi” No. 2: Sōkan zenshi, Meiji 14-nen no seihen. http://www.keio-up.co.jp/kup/webonly/ko/jijisinpou/2.html Tomita, Masafumi. 1960. “Kōki” [Postscript]. In Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, Volume 8, 671– 678. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tomita, Masafumi. 1992. Kōshō Fukuzawa Yukichi, Volume 2. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Uemura, Kunihiko. 2006. Ajia wa ‹Ajiateki› ka. Kyoto: Nakanishiya Shuppan. Yasukawa, Junosuke. 2000. Fukuzawa Yukichi no Azia ninshiki. Tokyo: Kōbunken.

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Vizetelly & Company as (ex)change agent Towards the modernization of the British publishing industry Denise Merkle

Université de Moncton, Canada

This chapter sets out to examine the role of the publishing house Vizetelly & Company, its founder Henry Vizetelly and his son Ernest, as agents of change who contributed to the modernization of the publishing industry in late-Victorian Britain. This case study will show that these agents were loosely affiliated with progressive social movements that were resisting the confines of rigid Victorian class structure and public morality. Vizetelly & Company’s innovations consisted in publishing foreign works in translation, especially realist and naturalist fiction, as well as Anglo-Irish fiction (e.g., George Moore’s novels), in cheap editions destined for a new reading market, the product of the 1870 Elementary Education Act (The Forster Act). By contrast to many periods when it is easier to publish translated works than indigenous ones, it was the opposite in Victorian Britain and being associated with progressive, socially disruptive thought and movements made the task that much more risky. Censorial mechanisms came into play in reaction to Vizetelly & Company’s translation and publishing projects, to which Henry Vizetelly devoted the better part of the 1880s. His career ended on a bitter note: his firm went bankrupt, and he spent three months in prison in 1889 for having published what was labeled by the courts to be “obscene” literature in translation. Yet, he is credited with having contributed to successfully undermining the monopoly of the circulating libraries and introducing to the British publishing marketplace inexpensive editions in a single volume through his translation and publishing activities. The paper concludes that these innovative agents were agents of metamorphosis. Living abroad had changed the worldview of Henry and Ernest Vizetelly. As a result, they operated from within a changed universe that was no longer late Victorian. This case study could prove useful to understanding the dynamics at play in intercultural relations and the role of the translator as intercultural agent. Key words: Henry Vizetelly; Ernest Vizetelly; Zola in translation; censorship in translation

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[I]f you charged enough for it you could publish a translation of any work ever published and no one would send you to prison, as they sent poor Mr. Vizetelly to prison for charging only six shillings each for the translations of the novels of Zola, and not because they were bad translations, which would have been reasonable enough. […] “These works were not intended for the English lower classes.”  (Edgar Jepson, quoted in Colburn 1968: 29)

1.

Introduction

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of intense literary translation activity in Victorian England. The 1880s was, at least at the outset, a decade of optimism; writers and thinkers believed that the time was ripe for a paradigm shift of sorts, for greater scientific curiosity and literary openness after more than eighty years of Puritanical domination in the public sphere. Elements of change were secularism, socialism, sexual libertarianism, nascent feminism and Darwinism; these were just a few of the social and intellectual movements that were upsetting patriarchal complacency. Texts such as Henrik Ibsen’s revolutionary play A Doll’s House, Balzac’s, Flaubert’s and Zola’s realist and naturalist novels, as well as Eastern sex manuals1 that communicated alternative worldviews were imported in an attempt to renew British culture and literature, for in keeping with British tradition, “translation appears […] as a reaction to a perceived intellectual/cultural lack, which the translator hopes the translation will make good” (Ellis & Oakley-Brown 2001: 5). However, by contesting the patriarchal worldview of the British Empire at a time of heightened domestic and colonial tensions, many of these writings were feared to be threats to the preservation of the Victorian status quo, and the socially-sanctioned presses continued to refuse to publish writings that did not reproduce Victorian literary or cultural norms. Non-conformist British writers, such as George Moore, were forced to deal creatively with censorial mechanisms, or else face the wrath of conservative and traditionalist moral authorities, a fate that befell Oscar Wilde. A succinct definition of moral authority in the context of this study is the set of fundamental assumptions that guided British perceptions of the world, or a system of moral rules; competing moral authorities drive cultural conflict. The moral authorities during this period were incarnated by the Church, in particular the Church of England (in conflict with secularism), the circulating libraries, in particular Charles E. Mudie’s select library (in conflict with the private presses and secret societies and mass market publications), Parliament and the legislators (in conflict with socialists), the legal system, the police that enforced laws and the morality leagues, in particular the National Vigilance Association2 (in conflict



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with sexual libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, etc.). These conservative moral authorities were united in their concern over the newly literate working classes that were the product of the 1870 Elementary Education Act (The Forster Act) that had introduced compulsory universal education for children from five to thirteen. The newly literate sought inexpensive, often sensationalist, reading material for their entertainment. Their socio-economic standing excluded them from access to books lent by the circulating libraries or to books sold by subscription. It would be reasonable to expect, in this climate, that all foreign texts would have been the target of various forms of censorship. Nevertheless, such was not the case. While foreign texts in the original language circulated freely in Britain (Speirs 2003: 85), the same cannot be said for their translations. The British Museum, for example, admitted the originals of some foreign works into the catalogue, “though the English translations were barred” (Fryer 1966: 52–53). Morality prize winning writers, such as André Theuriet and Octave Feuillet (Portebois 2003: 66), were approved by British moral authorities; however, those novels that did not serve as innocent entertainment or that were socially disruptive and sexually explicit, such as Émile Zola’s novels, were condemned. Publishers who wished to publish the latter did so at their own risk. One publisher of socially disruptive literature in translation was Vizetelly & Company. The family-run publishing house (1880–1890) pioneered the translation and publishing of foreign novels for a mass market during the early 1880s, around the same time that Richard Burton was publishing for upper-class predominantly male readers Eastern sex manuals and The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. Burton was very aware of the dualistic moral rules that governed society, and by adhering strictly to them, i.e., printing objectionable works privately and for elite subscribers only, managed to avoid prosecution (see Shamma 2005: 55 and Merkle forthcoming). However, Henry Vizetelly seemed to have either mastered to a lesser degree society’s rules or chosen to contest them. Although manipulating them sufficiently to make considerable profits during the first years of his company’s operation, within eight years he fell prey to the “cultural hysteria” generated by the “proliferation of foreign translations” (Fleming 2001: 48). Towards the end of the century, Victorian England was starting its revolt against censorship in literature, a revolt that had already resulted in a greater degree of freedom of expression in France than elsewhere on the Continent. England buried books deemed subversive to the throne, subversive to religion, or of an improper or obscene character (Fryer 1966: 52) in secret societies, gentlemen’s clubs and the private case.3 Only highly-expurgated versions of objectionable books stood a chance of being read by the public without being prosecuted. Bawdy Shakespeare had been expurgated by Alexander Pope in 1725, then again by the man who gave bowdlerism its name (Thomas Bowdler) in the early 1800s.

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Even the Bible had been bowdlerized for household reading. Burton found protection for his erotic translations behind the creation of a secret literary society – the ­Kamashastra Society – and identified the place of publication as the sacred ­Benares. Since his books were privately printed and not made available to the public, he could not be prosecuted. On the contrary, the founder of Vizetelly & Company and paterfamilias, Henry Vizetelly, was found guilty of obscene libel: his crime, to have made available to the general public, in particular the lower classes, “unexpurgated” translations of “objectionable” foreign, primarily French, literature. Yet his publishing efforts would contribute to undermining circulating library domination and to eliminating the triple-decker publication,4 thereby playing a role in the modernization of the British publishing industry. In his introduction to The Private Case, G. Legman explains that the structure of Western censorship began to crack first in France in the non-political arena during the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to Baudelaire’s amoral poetry, ­Victor Hugo’s realism and Émile Zola’s naturalism (1981: 14). Henry Vizetelly, best known for his translations of Émile Zola’s novels and for the two trials that resulted, was an agent of change who played an active role in the British revolt.

2.

The Vizetelly family

This family of Italian descent (originally spelled Vizzetelli) was active in journalism and publishing from the late eighteenth century in England. Henry Vizetelly (1820–1894) had been active in London’s thriving printing (decorative and text) and publishing industry, before leaving for the Continent, specifically Paris. With his brother James, he had founded the printing company Vizetelly Brothers & Company (1842–1849). James Vizetelly claimed to have translated Hugo’s Napoleon le Petit and two of the four volumes of Lamartine’s Restoration of Monarchy, among other works (Korey 2003: 37n14). In 1843 Henry was the co-owner of The Pictorial Times, but sold his share the next year to keep up with printing; the paper ran successfully until 1848. He fought against the newspaper stamp duty in the 1840s and 1850s (it was finally repealed in 1855) and in the late 1850s was much involved with the campaign to repeal the newsprint tax (Vizetelly 1904: 247). Henry Vizetelly, Printer and Engraver, operated from 1850 to 1861 and from 1864 to 1865. In 1855, with David Bogue, Henry founded The Illustrated Times. Two years after Bogue’s death, in 1859, he sold his share to Herbert Ingram and continued his printing and publishing activities into the mid-1860s. “[U]nhampered by conventionality or precedent,” in Edmund Yates’s words (quoted in Korey 2003: 32), in 1865 he left with his family for Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for a number of London journals and where he had an annual contract of



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£800 with the Illustrated London News. While in France, he translated Marius Topin’s The Man with the Iron Mask, issued by Smith, Elder & Co in 1870, and also published numerous works of non-fiction in English about French wines, Paris during the siege, etc. In Paris during the last years of the Empire and the Paris Commune, the correspondent had a close view of the literary sensation created by Émile Zola’s naturalist novel about the ravages of absinthe among the working classes, L’Assommoir (which means, in French, a tavern where one can drink to the point of losing consciousness). After the death of his second wife and eldest son, he left Paris in 1876 or 1877. Henry Vizetelly was 56 or 57 years of age when he returned to London to found the small family firm Vizetelly & Company; his combined expertise as printer, engraver, publisher, editor and translator would all be brought to bear in the enterprise. Between May 1880 and December 1890, Vizetelly & Company published approximately 250 titles by about 110 authors. Of the 250 titles, about 140, or 56%, were French titles in English translation, or just over one-half of the catalogue. French authors represented forty-eight of the 110 writers (43%), and four authors accounted for 55% of the total number of titles, or almost onethird of the entire catalogue with seventy-six titles: the mystery writer Fortuné du Boisgobey (thirty-nine titles), the “father of naturalism” Émile Zola (eighteen titles), the mystery writer Émile Gaboriau (twelve titles) and Georges ­Ohnet (seven titles). According to an advertisement inserted into Daudet’s Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder (1880), the “Popular French Novels” series (15 titles) featured works of “unobjectionable character” that could be published in English translation in unabridged form (Portebois 2003: 62) and was destined for women readers. The titles of some of the series that published translations were “Du Boisgobey’s Sensational Novels” (39 titles), “Celebrated Russian Novels” (10 titles), “French Sensational Novels” also called “Celebrated Sensational Novels” (7 titles), “Gaboriau’s Sensational Novels” (12 titles), “Zola’s Realistic Novels” (18 titles) (Portebois 2003: 56–58). Other series published George Moore’s scandalous novels, controversial Restoration plays and Christopher Marlowe’s plays, some of which were attacked because of “certain religious opinions attributed to [their author]” (Portebois 2003: 61). Several of the books by Henry Gréville (pseudonym of Alice Durand), André Theuriet and Octave Feuillet that defended family values were published by Vizetelly & Company in English translation (Portebois 2003: 66). These books were not targeted by the morality leagues. From the list of authors of inexpensive books published in one volume by Vizetelly & Company, du Boisgobey turned out to be the best seller. The market for popular literature was growing. Pierre Coustillas explains that, while the middle classes could easily afford a circulating library subscription that gave ready access to approved books, the newly literate working classes found the

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price too steep (1976: 11). This latter group was looking for entertaining and inexpensive reading material. With his Parisian experience still relatively fresh in his memory, Henry Vizetelly decided to publish English translations of French bestsellers, for he thought that sensationalism was going to keep his business afloat. In fact, he was among the first publishers in Britain to publish for a mass-market in the 1880s. What Vizetelly underestimated was the establishment’s fear of the potentially subversive power of a translated novel read by those who did not master foreign languages, or the poorly educated – in the traditional British sense of the word.5 The uneasy French reception of realism and naturalism had crossed the Channel along with the novels, much amplified by the time the novels had finished their crossing; Brendan Fleming describes the phenomenon in terms of a “profound cultural crisis precipitated by the introduction of French literary naturalism into England” (2001: 48). Naturalist writers, especially Zola, were often considered uncouth and morally outrageous in Paris, the centre of literary innovation during this period. Though their authors were sometimes censured, the works were not censored. It is thus not surprising, given Victorian England’s obsession with delicacy and aversion to bawdiness, especially in the public arena, that British authorities found their literary products to be highly objectionable reading material and used French controversy to bolster their arguments. The moral authorities feared that these novels would corrupt numerous groups considered potentially volatile: workers who might wish to rise above their station; women who had to be protected from the “unnatural” i.e. sexual thoughts and romantic excesses; young women who might neglect their maternal and wifely duties; children who were devoid of judgment; and adolescents who were vulnerable to temptation. So the publisher of fiction for the new mass market was expected to shoulder considerable social responsibility, to assume the role of “moral guardian.”

3.

Censorship and the late-Victorian publishing industry

Victorian internalized self-censorship ensured that literary products conformed to Victorian discursive norms (bowdlerism), and the circulating libraries working closely with publishers refused to distribute bawdy, pessimistic or grotesquely realistic books. A publishable novel had to be optimistic, to provide spiritual and ethical models (usually from the upper classes) worthy of being imitated, to be light with a happy ending or to entertain in an innocent fashion. And it had to be long enough to be published in three-volumes (triple-decker) (­Griest 1970: 127–131). The circulating libraries still dominated the book industry in the 1880s, though resentment was growing among Victorian writers whose published books did not



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make the official list of books stocked by them. Books that the circulating libraries had refused to distribute or had discouraged by selling them “under the counter” included George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), “the vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind” (Haight 1955: 46), George Gissing’s New Grub Street, the vivid imaginary description of a writer who cannot find a market for his books because of a tyrannical library system, George Moore’s A Modern Lover (1883), Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), H. G. Wells’s Ann Veronica and Compton MacKenzie’s Sinister Street (Haight 1955: 47–61). The twenty-first century reader recognizes some of these titles as among the finest examples of late-Victorian literature. It will come as no surprise that the authors of these novels were starting to rebel against constraints imposed by the publishing system dominated by the circulating libraries. Interested readers had to ask for the above books specifically in order to have access to them. Mudie’s Circulating Library went so far as to refuse to deliver Moore’s Esther Waters to the W. H. Smith bookstalls located in train stations. Moore was furious that circulating libraries bought only fifty copies of A Modern Lover and kept it under the counter (Speirs 2003: 84), considering its realism and violence too raw. Anger and frustration pushed the writer to lead one of the more vocal and ardent assaults against the Victorian publishing system of the 1880s. Anglo-Irish Moore’s most direct attack against the circulating libraries denouncing specifically Mudie’s censorship was his essay, Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals, that first appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette on 10 December 1884. Encouraged by Émile Zola to attack the library system, George Moore asked ­Henry Vizetelly to publish a reedited version of the essay, allying himself with Vizetelly & Company who published in 1885 his novel, A Mummer’s Wife, in a single volume for six shillings (Griest 1970: 149). In the early 1880s highly expurgated pirated American translations of Zola’s novels were entering the country and being sold from under the counters in Soho’s Holywell Street.6 Henry ­Vizetelly was familiar with the fact that the circulating libraries had refused to stock the first British translation of a Zola novel, The Ladies’ Paradise [Au Bonheur des dames], the first of Zola’s novels to be translated in Britain. Edmund Downey describes the fate of this novel translated by Frank Belmont in 1883: [Mr. Tinsely] was willing to publish the novel as a book, if I was confident it would not give offence. So Tinsely Brothers arranged with M. Zola to issue The Ladies’ Paradise in three-volume form. ... I argued that anyone who would find fault on moral ground with the passages he indicated would find fault with Adam Bede or David Copperfield. ... when The Ladies’ Paradise in its highly-clarified form was subscribed, most of the Circulating Libraries held up their hands.  (quoted in Colburn 1968: 24)

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And as we have seen, circulating libraries had found fault with George Eliot’s Adam Bede. In the end, the translation of Au Bonheur des dames was published by Vizetelly & Company in 1886 (King 1978: 393). Yannick Portebois explains that after praising the Vizetelly translation of Daudet’s Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder and Theuriet’s Maugars Junior, The Athenaeum of 7 August 1880 gave notice that it would no longer review translations of French novels, justifying its position as follows: “If English publishers find it profitable to translate well-known French novels by the dozen, by all means let them do so; but they must not expect to have their versions criticized” (2003: 62). According to the literary establishment, anything worth reading should be read in the original language; monolingual readers were therefore not serious readers. The literary establishment’s position on literature in translation, in particular popular literature in translation, was thus made clear in 1880. However, Henry Vizetelly did not see this as a warning sign of trouble ahead. He nevertheless correctly identified the market potential of this new niche in the book market and decided to cater for it.

4.

Domesticated translation for the masses and preventive censorship

M. J. D. Roberts affirms that from 1860 in England social conformism was ensured indirectly by means of self-censorship7 (1992: 141). As we have seen in the introduction to this paper, since the eighteenth century, classic works had been rewritten, i.e., bowdlerised, to conform to Victorian discursive norms. In the nineteenth century, writers and translators who wished to have their works published, also had to reproduce these norms. Those who created works deemed worthy of being imitated by readers were attributed the role of “authorized spokespersons” (Bourdieu 1980: 277) of late-Victorian society. Vizetelly & Company’s translators were anonymous. Being invisible, they were not “authorized spokespersons,” yet they reproduced in many cases society’s norms. We have no proof that the Company’s translations were revised by a member of the Vizetelly family, except for La Terre, the translation of which was revised by Ernest Vizetelly. Vizetelly & Company’s anonymous translations have been examined by William Colburn, who identifies three strategies of selfcensorship common to the Zola translations published by the firm prior to 1888: (i) cutting out or softening of references to bodily functions, such as urination and flatulence (e.g., “chamber pot” becomes “jerry” in Nana), (ii) “softening of language” (expurgation of blasphemy, e.g., “Jésus-Christ,” Hyacinthe’s nickname, disappears in The Soil, or replacing swear words with euphemisms), (iii) modification or elimination of specific references to sexual or female bodily functions



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(references to pregnancy, labour, menstruation and sex acts are attenuated or simply cut) (1968: 30–31). These strategies, or trends in translation behaviour, reproduced the translation norm for the period: Edward Lane and Isabel Burton also expurgated their respective translations of the Arabian Nights using these techniques (see Merkle 2006; Merkle forthcoming). We shall now consider briefly examples of expurgation in the three Vizetelly & Company translations that the courts would consider the most pernicious: Nana, Piping-Hot! [Pot-Bouille], The Soil [La Terre] all by Émile Zola. The Vizetelly translation of Nana: A Realistic Novel (1884) was advertised as “without abridgement.” Nevertheless, it was self-censored, though less so than some of Zola’s other novels in English translation (King 1978: 392). The original did not present the difficulty of a sociolect, the major translation challenge in L’Assommoir. Some short passages were cut, for example, “comme des femmes, chaque mois, font tourner le lait” [like women every month curdle milk8] (1991: 227). However, softening was much more frequent. For example, most references to bodily functions and sexual relations were softened: pot de chambre (1991: 172) [chamber pot] familiar utensil (1884: 134) On m’a juré que tu avais couché avec… (1991: 27) [Someone assured me that you had slept with…] I have been assured that you once knew her only too intimately (1884: 10)9 Nana était nue (1991: 47) [Nana was naked] Nana was next to naked (1884: 27)

However, what profoundly shocked British morality was the novel’s theme. Nana was a “mangeuse d’hommes” [lit. man-eater] (48), the devouring and dominating female, the most feared of all female archetypes in the misogynistic paternalist system of Victorian England. This novel was perceived to be a direct assault against the Victorian ideal of the “angel in the house” who puts maternal and wifely duty above all else. In England as in France, the upper classes were supposed to set the moral example. However, in this novel, Comte Muffat becomes Nana’s plaything. The Vizetelly translation Piping Hot! (1885) the first to be included in the series of “Zola’s Powerful Realistic Novels” (Speirs 2003: 89) was subjected to more rigorous expurgation of objectionable passages: one-third of the novel was cut.10 One example (among many) is a reference to a venereal disease transmitted by the son of the lady of the house to one of the maids, Julie, Zola’s denunciation of the plague of syphilis that had invaded Paris, and to a lesser extent, London. Below is

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reproduced the Vizetelly translation followed by Zola’s original. The suppressed passage is in bold in the French version. The truth was that, warned by Doctor Juillerat, and anxious for the health of her son whose little goings-on she tolerated at home, so as to keep them under control, she had had an explanation with Julie, who had been unwell for some time past: and the latter, like a genteel cook, whose style was not to quarrel with her (Zola 1885: 377) employers, had accepted her week’s notice.  La vérité était que, prévenue par le docteur Juillerat, inquiète pour la santé de son fils dont [Mme Duveyrier] tolérait les farces chez elle, afin de les mieux surveiller, elle avait eu une explication avec Julie, malade depuis quelque temps; et celle-ci, en cuisinière distinguée, dont le genre n’était pas de se quereller chez les maîtres, avait accepté ses huit jours, dédaignant même de répondre que, si elle se conduisait mal, elle ne souffrirait tout de même pas ce qu’elle souffrait, sans la malpropreté de monsieur Gustave, le fils de madame. [deigning to add that she may have behaved badly, but she would not be suffering from what was ailing her were it not for the poor hygiene of Master Gustave, the son of Madame.]  (Zola 1990: 460)

Pot-Bouille also contains numerous rape scenes, for a tendency to sexual violence is the character flaw of Octave, the novel’s protagonist. However, in Piping Hot! the brutality of rape scenes is softened, when not excised, along with the anguish felt by the victim. The final novel that we shall consider is La Terre. Ernest Vizetelly explains that during a visit to Paris, George Moore met with Zola to negotiate the British translation rights for the novel. Henry’s fourth son from his first marriage, ­Ernest Alfred, was born in 1853 and educated at the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte. He returned to London with his French wife in 1886 to join his father’s business as editor and reader. He arrived after the publication of Nana and Piping Hot!, just in time to help out with The Soil (1904: 251–253). Vizetelly & Company did not know a lot about the novel, other than that it dealt with French peasants and land parceling. The anonymous first translator refused to finish the translation, then a second anonymous translator was given the task. Ernest read the proofs of La Terre and, surprised by the audaciousness of the plot, knew that it would not be possible to publish an unexpurgated edition. So he undertook to expurgate, suppressing Hyacinthe’s blasphemous nickname, “Jésus-Christ”, as well as references to his infirmity (he farted continuously) that “might be true to life,” but that “would also give offence to people who no longer read Sterne, and also know little or nothing of Rabelais” (Vizetelly 1904: 254–256). The translation was published less than a year after the “Manifeste des Cinq” was published in France. The negative French reception had a definite negative impact on Henry Vizetelly’s court case.



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Below, the French original follows the English passage that was found to be one of the most offensive of the nine passages (Woollen 2002: 18) read to the jurors. Additions to the English translation are underlined; excised words and passages, or words that have been softened in the translation, are in bold in the French original. She shook her head in doubt; and, as Cæsar still fumbled about, and seemed to be getting exhausted, she came to a resolution. “No, he must he helped,” she said. “If he goes wrong, it’ll be waste [sic] of time.” Calmly and carefully, as if bent on a serious piece of work, she had drawn near. Her intentness made the pupils of her eyes retreat, left her red lips half open, and kept her features motionless. Raising her arm with a sweep she aided the animal in his efforts, and he, gathering up his strength, speedily accomplished his purpose. It was done.  (Zola 1888: 12) Elle hocha la tête ; et, César tâtonnant encore, s’épuisant, elle se décida. « Non, faut l’aider... S’il entre [entered] mal, ce sera perdu, elle ne retiendra pas. » D’un air calme et attentif, comme pour une besogne sérieuse, elle s’était avancée. Le soin qu’elle y mettait fonçait le noir de ses yeux, entr’ouvrait ses lèvres rouges, dans sa face immobile. Elle dut lever le bras d’un grand geste, elle saisit à pleine main le membre du taureau [she held the bull’s member in both hands], qu’elle redressa. Et lui, quand il se sentit au bord [he felt almost ready], ramassé dans sa force, il pénétra [he penetrated] d’un seul tour de reins [with a violent lower back action11], à fond [deeply]. Puis, il ressortit [withdrew].  (Zola 1994: 28)

Geraldine Jewsbury, a reader-reviewer at Bentley, among other publishers, had refused a British novel that dealt with English peasants because, in her opinion, the bourgeois reader was not interested in peasant life (Greist 1970: 128). The first Vizetelly trial confirms that the city-dwellers who sat on the jury knew little about and were not interested in learning about farm life and about the farm girls who often had to be present, even help out, when a cow was being serviced by a bull.

5.

Téléscopage and critical reception

From 1885 to 1890 Vizetelly & Company published between fifty and almost ninety titles a year, almost half of which were French titles. A total of nine titles were published in 1880, six titles in 1882 and eighty-five titles in 1887, of which

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ten titles were by Zola and twelve by du Boisgobey, making up one-quarter of the production in that year. Whereas Flaubert’s realism and Zola’s naturalism had been introduced gradually to French readers and authorities over three decades (1850s, 60s, 70s), the arrival of these novels in England came as an onslaught of literary alterity, a phenomenon that Yves Chevrel refers to as téléscopage in “Naturalismes allemand et français”, read during Le Naturalisme: Colloque de Cerisy. The term refers to the compressed time period over which novels of a specific literary movement or written by a specific author may enter a foreign literary system (1978: 47). This “avalanche,” to use Philippe Hamon’s term (discussion in Chevrel 1978: 73), risks being negatively received, even censored, since the target culture has not had the luxury of time to become gradually accustomed to and to learn to appreciate the new school or the new author. We shall limit the discussion here to the reception of the expurgated novels discussed in the previous section, since it is the prosecution of these novels that made headlines and that resulted in Henry Vizetelly’s imprisonment. The time span between the publication of Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867) and La Terre (1888) in France was 21 years. During this period, the novels and the novelist were discussed, debated and reviewed, and the author had the opportunity to react to his critics. These novels entered the British system between 1884 and 1888, when the morality campaigners were particularly vigilant. Eight Zola translations had been published between 1884 and 1886; between April 1886 and January 1887, five new Zola translations were published. Henry Vizetelly decided to offer to British readers the Rougon-Macquart series as well as other realist and naturalist novels. The three most harshly criticized novels were published in rapid succession shortly after their publication in France: 1879 – Nana (tr. 1884), 1882 – Pot-Bouille (tr. 1885), 1887 – La Terre (tr. 1888). We have seen that Vizetelly’s anonymous translators rewrote them, in keeping with what they believed to be the British horizon of expectation. Yet, for marketing purposes, the translations were labelled “unexpurgated.” To sell his books, Henry Vizetelly had printed on the title page of each translated Zola novel that it was “a realistic novel,” knowing that at this time in the British mind realistic was associated with pornographic. These translations were very popular. Like the Vizetelly translation of Madame Bovary (1886) made by Eleanor Marx-Aveling (see Merkle 2004), these were all first British translations. Certain elements of British society felt invaded, even overwhelmed, by them. Nevertheless, even though the reviews were generally negative, readers of popular literature bought up the books. Naturalist novels in translation did sell well; Vizetelly & Company often sold more than 1000 volumes a week, mostly translations of Zola’s novels (Vizetelly 1904: 257).12 Nevertheless, the reviews become progressively more negative after the publication of Nana (see Decker 1934; Clark 1994).



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Nana (1884) was the first to be targeted aggressively by the moralists. ­Andrew Lang wrote that the novel “appeals to the basest curiosities. It cannot be called an alluring description of vice, but it does gloat on, and sows broadcast, the knowledge of secret and nameless iniquities. Literature and science alike refuse to acknowledge this last unclean fruit of the tree of Rougon-Macquart” (quoted in Decker 1934: 1142–1143). Clarence Decker quotes George Eliot (“The New Naturalism” Fortnightly Review, August 1885, XLIV: 246) who wrote: “[In Nana] there is not a vestige of the ‘beau ideal.’ Blank and crude materialism, the trivial, the foul, the base of animal life, is the staple of the book from beginning to end” (1934: 1144). Mr. Coote (the N.V.A. secretary) considered “the whole tone of the book immoral” (quoted in Colburn 1952: 63). Piping Hot! (1885) did not meet with a warmer reception than Nana. For its part, The Soil (1888) provoked the loudest outcry of all of Zola’s novels. Brendan Fleming explains that the controversy in France was taken by Ernest Vizetelly as a warning. In two letters (10 January and 13 January 1888) to Zola, Vizetelly & Company wrote that a literal translation of La Terre could not be published serially because of the “extreme hostility of the British press” (2001: 51). It appears that Vizetelly & Company was particularly interested in this novel because “the representation of the land question in the novel [Zola’s implied criticism of land parceling] was seen as being very pertinent to the land agitation in Ireland” (2001: 51). Gladstone’s Irish Land Act had been adopted in 1881, and the Irish land commission had been established. The result was the movement away from often absentee British landlords in Ireland and towards increased Irish ownership. However, one contentious point was the subdivision of land into uneconomic units. In addition, Vizetelly & Company had published other books representing contemporary Irish issues: George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin (1886) and F. Mabel Robinson’s Mr Butler’s Ward (1885), Disenchantment: An Every-day Story (1886), The Plan of Campaign (1888) (­Fleming 2001: 52). In Fleming’s opinion, the translation of La Terre ruined Vizetelly & Company (2001: 47). The popular success of Zola’s novels in English was a double-edged sword for Vizetelly & Company: the more popular the novels, the more closely the guardians of public morals followed sales and read the reviews.

6.

Setting an example: Henry Vizetelly on trial

Backed by Lord John Campbell’s Obscene Publications Act (1857) and Sir ­Alexander Cockburn’s test of obscenity (to deprave and corrupt) in the Queen vs. ­Hicklin, W. T. Stead led the attack against Émile Zola and Henry Vizetelly. A reformer, he became editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and, in 1885, published The Maiden Tribute of

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Modern Babylon, a series of articles in which he denounced child prostitution in London. His obscene photographs outraged the public, and Stead was incarcerated, but the N.V.A., led by John Kensit, took over. Samuel Smith presented the problem of pernicious literature, especially Zola’s novels and their link with France’s moral decay (Landon 2003: 112), in the House of Commons on 8 May 1888 and accused Henry Vizetelly of being the disseminator of pernicious literature in translation. Parliament passed a motion in favour of strong enforcement of obscenity laws, but “unofficial action” was also encouraged (i.e., the work of the N.V.A.). On 10 August 1888, Henry Vizetelly was charged with obscene libel, and copies of Nana, Piping Hot! and The Soil were retained as evidence. The translation of The Soil was considered the most pernicious and was selected for the court case (Landon 2003: 112–115). During the 31 October 1888 trial, “[…] The Soil formed the sole basis of the indictment. This novel was seen as exemplifying the depravity of Zola’s fiction, and indicative of the danger of Vizetelly & Co.’s cheap translations” (Fleming 2001: 47). By contrast to the muted response of the publishing press, the N.V.A. published a triumphant pamphlet: […] they had twenty-one passages, taken from different parts of the work in question, some of them long passages, extending over several of its pages. There was no question before them of a book written with a wholesome purpose of teaching, or with an innocent purpose of amusing, but this book was filthy from beginning to end. [...] There was not a passage in it which contained any literary genius or the expression of any elevated thought. There was not a single scene described which could be pointed to as being free from vicious suggestions and (NVA 1889: 17) obscene expressions. 

The passage reproduced in Section 4 of this article was one of the nine read to the jury that were considered sufficient evidence to convict Henry Vizetelly. This was the first successful application of the Queen vs. Hicklin to a literary work. Despite his Extracts principally from English Classics: Showing that the Legal Suppression of M. Zola’s Novels Would Logically Involve the Bowdlerizing of Some of the Greatest Works in English Literature (Henry does not appear to have been aware that most of the works to which he refers had been expurgated early in the century), a text compiled and published by Henry Vizetelly in 1888, the publisher pleaded guilty to having published Nana, Piping Hot! and The Soil, three weeks after Émile Zola had been made a Knight of the Légion d’honneur for La Terre. Henry Vizetelly was condemned to a fine of £100 sterling and to one year’s probation. From the court case we learn that translator self-censorship and Vizetelly & Company’s expurgation efforts had clearly been insufficient. The National Vigilance Association quotes The Liverpool Mercury: “It is true that the English



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e­ ditions are expurgated, but even when the most repulsive features were gone there still remained enough of ­objectionable matter – in the characters, the incidents, the plot, and the moral – to justify repressive action” (1889: 22). According to Graham King: The Times cheerfully agreed with the outcome of the trial, and was pleased that Vizetelly would incur a considerable commercial loss by the enforced withdrawal of the convicted books. The paper also made the curious point that because the translations were cheap editions, implying that they were available to the working (1978: 244) classes, the offence was that much greater.

Apparently believing that only the indicted version of Nana, Piping Hot! and The Soil had been banned, after the trial Henry’s son Ernest proceeded to expurgate fifteen books. He spent two months cutting or changing 325 pages (Colburn 1952: 48). The first trial had put Henry Vizetelly on the path to financial ruin. As for books already in print, the offensive pages were removed and a blank page added. On the title page of the new editions, Ernest Vizetelly removed “without abridgement” from Translated without abridgement from the ___th French Edition. ­William ­Colburn found in the Bookseller of 9 January 1889 that Vizetelly & Company had announced the “re-issue” of fifteen realist novels by Émile Zola in January 1889, including in the list Nana, Piping Hot! and The Soil that were however not yet ready and still “undergoing revisions” (1952: 49). These new editions were intended to sell quickly at the low price of three shillings and sixpence or less (versus the original six shillings). The moralists jumped on this publicity and the N.V.A. brought twelve counts against Vizetelly & Company, as well as five against “William Mathieson Thompson [sic], trading as Temple Publishing Company” for having published obscene libels, including A Ladies’ Man by Maupassant, Nana and Pot-Bouille by Zola (Colburn 1952: 50–51, 62–65). Thomson pleaded guilty on 28 May 1889, two days before Henry Vizetelly’s second trial. Because Thomson agreed to sell the books no longer and to pay the trial fees, he was not punished further. The N.V.A. laid one charge against W. George for selling Pot-Bouille, one charge against W. Smith for selling Nana and one charge against E. Roberts for having sold a “similar book” (Colburn 1952: 50–51, 51n94). The moralists took Henry Vizetelly to court once again, and he was found guilty on seven counts of translating insufficiently expurgated novels in translation. On 30 May 1889, he was condemned to three months in prison. The publishing house went bankrupt. Henry Vizetelly died on 1 January 1894.

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7.

Conclusion

What can Henry Vizetelly’s experiences tell us about translation agents and agency? First, a translator considered to be one of a culture’s “authorized ­spokespersons” (Bourdieu 1980: 227, my translation), is an agent who has acquired and internalized, through education and socialization, discursive norms that reproduce the socio-cultural constraints of his or her culture. Henry Vizetelly was not considered authorized to speak on behalf of the “traditional” values that guided public decorum in late-Victorian England. In fact, many of his publications did not conform to the dictates of conservative authorities in matters concerning public morality, for he had not used their “norms as guidelines for [his] translational behaviour” (Toury 1995: 277) and editorial decisions. Rather he was an embodied agent of (ex)change, who was punished for his intercultural publishing activity. In addition, thanks to his entrepreneurship, he was also to some degree an “agent of metamorphosis” to use Michael Cronin’s term, for he not only effected change but became “metamorphosized in the process” (2006: 105). His social activism was apparent in his early career when he fought to eliminate the newspaper stamp duty and newsprint tax. While an expatriate in Paris, he had learned the language and culture of Britain’s imperial rival. Rather than an engaged agent13 of British imperial culture, he became embedded in both French and English cultures, or perhaps in between. Furthermore, as Fleming has shown, his firm seemed to be sympathetic to the “Irish question” through its association with Anglo-Irish writers, the most well-known being George Moore, whose novels were much criticized in the British press and censored by the circulating libraries. The result was a “changed universe” (Cronin 2006: 105) considered far too radical and “other” to conservative Victorians. From this “changed universe,” Vizetelly altered the Victorian publishing world. Mona Baker explains that, in Gideon Toury’s view, norms are the options that translators as members of a community living in a given socio-historical context select on a regular basis; the translator is a member of a community with shared values, norms and practices (2001: 164). As we have seen, expurgation was the norm in the 1880s, at least when publications were destined for the general public. Toury explains that “censorship can also be activated during the act of translation itself though, inasmuch as the translator has internalized the norms pertinent to the culture, and uses them as a constant monitoring device” (1995: 278) (italics in original). Vizetelly & Company’s anonymous translators resisted foreign interference; in the case of Zola’s novels, they resisted the literary alterity of French naturalism. Their reaction was to purify the target text. When the translation was not considered pure enough, Ernest Vizetelly post-edited/revised them (for example, The Soil when it was first published; later, the twelve translations he expurgated after the first trial). We have an interesting example here of anonymous ­translators



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of Zola’s novels respecting the Victorian discursive, and translation, norm of expurgation (bowdlerism). However, as we have seen, the literary establishment was ­categorically against the translation of Zola’s “popular” novels, especially the potentially “seditious” ones discussed in this paper. No amount of bowdlerism could change the literary establishment’s position on the issue. Jeremy Munday (2001: 117) has underlined the importance of nuancing Toury’s approach to norms and laws of translation by insisting on the necessity to consider ideological and political factors, such as the status of the source text in its own culture. As we have seen, Zola’s novels were highly controversial in France, yet the author actively promoted the translation of his works and their exportation to foreign markets. The result in Victorian England was the banning of three of the translated novels. In each banned novel, traditional patriarchal authority takes an indirect hit. In Nana, the young courtesan from the lower classes to which the novel owes its title manages to associate with men from the upper classes, to manipulate them, then to degrade them. In Piping Hot!, Zola caricaturizes the hypocrisy of the Paris bourgeoisie, the mainstay of patriarchal society. Perhaps worse, he demystifies the female body. Finally, in The Soil, Zola describes an unpunished parricide, as well as incest, rape, etc. Few of nature’s (i.e., the human body’s) secrets were left unexposed. Worse perhaps, Zola’s impersonal narrative style enabled him to observe without making moral judgements. According to the moralists, this new aesthetic form could have negative moral consequences (Gengembre and Saint-Cloud 1988: 411). The authorities believed that the readers of penny dreadfuls, as sensationalist inexpensive novels were called, who sought out scandalous novels, just as they read scandal sheets and tabloids, were able to read Zola’s novels solely as sensational novels; these readers were thought to be unable to appreciate Zola’s social criticism. For these reasons, even some of Henry Vizetelly’s friends believed that he deserved his punishment. For example, his friend, James Greenwood, the younger brother of the first editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, supported his conviction. In a letter to his daughter, Greenwood wrote: “The truth is […] he does deserve his punishment; and if he were a younger man I should not pity him in the least. On the other hand, offences of that sort are worse in an old man than a young one” (quoted in Portebois 2003: 61). An ironic twist to Vizetelly & Company’s attempts at avoiding moral censure through expurgation was the negative critical reception of the quality of its translations. Translations were to be signed, well-written, and certainly not “indifferent.” The N.V.A. quoted a review published in The Star: Even were [La Terre] elevated by the undoubted power and realistic skill of some of [Zola’s] earliest efforts, it is impossible to excuse its reproduction into English. Mr. Matthew Arnold once said of a translation of Homer that there was no

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j­ustification for its existence. Still less could a hastily and a slovenly written translation of a filthy French novel justify its existence. Some translations, notably those of Schiller’s ‘Allenstein’ and Carlyle’s ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ have been literature in the best sense. But indifferent translations are not literature, and that is the end (1889: 22) of the matter from the standpoint of art... 

The Westminster Review deplored Vizetelly & Company’s “anonymous translations” (October 1886) and wrote that the translations were “Hardly up to the mark. It would perhaps be unreasonable to look for great literary excellence in an anonymous translation....” (quoted in Colburn 1968: 25). According to Roger Clark (1994: 10), the two trials awoke anti-French, in particular anti-Zola, sentiment.14 After the trials, nobody dared touch Zola until October 1892, when Chatto & Windus (where Ernest Vizetelly worked after the collapse of his father’s firm) decided to publish The Debacle. Very favourable testimonials from war correspondents and military officers ensured the success of the novel. The novel was so successful in fact that the publisher dared publish Zola’s new novels in translation. However, these novels were even more expurgated than the earlier Vizetelly & Company translations. Ernest Vizetelly wrote in the preface to his Chatto & Windus edition of The Fat and the Thin in the early 1890s that he had expurgated the dialogue of the characters to conform to British norms of delicacy (Colburn 1968: 27). Colburn reports that the reviews of Ernest Vizetelly’s translation of Zola’s Fécondité were generally positive: “excellent, both as translation and for its discretion than of those of the anonymous Vizetelly and Co. translators” (1968: 28–29). Continuing the work that his father had started, Ernest Vizetelly was Zola’s agent and translator from 1891–1902 (see Speirs & Portebois 2002) and Chatto & Windus published the translations in one volume. To conclude, Vizetelly & Company was “one of the most innovative publishers of the 1880s,” in the words of Brendan Fleming (2001: 48), an avant-garde intercultural agent – primarily between France and Britain – working against dominant norms. Its translations did much to introduce the British to foreign literature, especially French and Russian realism and naturalism. Furthermore, Vizetelly & Company’s trademark innovation of the one-volume novel during the 1880s was a major attempt to circumvent the control of the circulating libraries over the literary market-place and is believed by many book historians to have “hastened the demise of the three-decker novel and, ultimately, of the circulating libraries” (Speirs 2003: 85). In fact, by the mid-1890s “the three-decker was a thing of the past” (Landon 2003: 110). It is thus clear that Vizetelly & Company, or more precisely its founder Henry Vizetelly, was an embodied agent of change that contributed to the modernization of the British publishing industry through his translation activities and cultural exchanges. The punishment meted out by



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Britain’s “authorized spokespersons” was bankruptcy of the firm and the premature death of Henry Vizetelly. Translation can indeed be a risky business.

Notes 1. The highly secretive Kamashastra Society was formed by Richard Burton and F. F. Arbuthnot in order to print limited editions of various Eastern works, chiefly of an erotic nature, e.g., the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883), the Ananga-ranga or The Hindu Art of Love (1885) and The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui (1886). The translators’ names were suppressed, though in some cases inverted initials were used. The translations are generally attributed to Burton, Arbuthnot or to both men. 2. Subsequent references are abbreviated to N.V.A. 3. The British Museum’s depository for morally objectionable publications in the nineteenth century, the private case, was “inaugurated in the tradition of keeping wanton books as a preserve of a small circle of privileged men of letters, rich amateurs, and dilettanti” (Fryer 1966: 50). 4. A single-volume inexpensive novel sold for six shillings in contrast to the approximately 32s charged by the circulating libraries for a triple-decker, or a novel published in three volumes, in order to make books too expensive to purchase outright. Indeed, these triple-deckers were expensive, and the intended market could only afford to borrow them. The role of the circulating libraries was to lend these novels to their primarily middle-class subscribers. 5. This situation provides an interesting contrast to countries and periods in which it is easier to publish translated works that come under less intense censorial scrutiny. 6. Soho was and still is the centre of London’s pornography trade (Colligan 2002: 15). The Holywell Street boom that had started in the 1830s (Fryer 1966: 41) was ongoing, and Soho was where rare book shops distributed books of an erotic and exotic nature. 7. In this paper, self-censorship in translation refers to the translator’s decision to cut or soften; a clear distinction is made between self-censorship and preventive censorship imposed on the translation by the reviser or the editor. Expurgation encompasses self-censorship and editorial preventive censorship, also called prior censorship. See Brownlie (2007) for a somewhat different interpretation of self-censorship. 8. All glosses are the author’s. 9. Vizetelly & Company apparently thought that the Biblical “know” was acceptable. 10. For a detailed presentation of expurgation in Piping Hot! and analysis, see Merkle (1994). 11. A twenty-first century reader may wonder whether the poor bull was suffering from lumbago. 12. Geoff Woollen believes that “Vizetelly’s puffing of his sales figures in the Pall Mall Gazette” fomented the parliamentary debate on ‘Corrupt Literature” on 8 May 1888 (2002: 17). 13. For a discussion of translation and political engagement, see Tymoczko (2000). 14. Ironically, the prosecution of Henry Vizetelly and his translations of Zola’s novels explains to some extent the considerable interest in these topics among Zola scholars.

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References Baker, Mona. 2001. “Norms”. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Mona Baker (ed.), 164. New York and London: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Brownlie, Siobhan. 2007. “Examining self-censorship: Zola’s Nana in English translation’’. In Modes of Censorship in Translation: National Contexts and Diverse Media, Francesca Billiani (ed.), 205–236. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Chevrel, Yves. 1978. “Naturalismes allemand et français: Écarts et rencontres. Suivi d’une discussion”. In Le naturalisme: [colloque du] Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle (1976), Pierre Cogny (ed.), 43–74. Paris: Union générale d’éditions. Clark, Roger. 1994. “A Victorian lady reads Zola, or ‘disgusted’ of Stratford-on-Avon”. Bulletin of the Emile Zola Society 9: 3–14. Colburn, William. 1952. “Zola in England, 1883–1902” [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois. Colburn, William. 1968. “Victorian translations of Zola”. Studies in the Literary Imagination (Georgia State College) I (2): 23–32. Colligan, Colette. 2002. “Obscenity and empire: England’s obscene print culture in the nineteenth century” [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Kingston: Queen’s University. Coustillas, Pierre (ed.). 1976. Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals: A Polemic on Victorian Censorship. Sussex: The Harvester Press Limited. Cronin, Michael. 2006. Translation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Decker, Clarence E. 1934. “Zola’s literary reputation in England”. PMLA XLIX: 1140–1153. Ellis, Roger and Oakley-Brown, Liz (eds). 2001. Translation and Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness. Clevedon/Buffalo/Toronto/Sydney: Multilingual Matters. Fleming, Brendan. 2001. “The first English translation of La Terre (1888): An assessment of the letters from Vizetelly & Co. to Émile Zola”. Publishing History: The Social, Economic and Literary History of Book, Newspaper and Magazine Publishing 50: 47–59. Fryer, Peter. 1966. Private Case – Public Scandal. London: Secker & Warburg. Gengembre, Gérard and E. N. S. Fontenay, Saint-Cloud. 1988. Flaubert – Madame Bovary. Paris: Maynard (“Collection Texte et Contexte”). Griest, Guinevere. 1970. Mudie’s Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Haight, Anne. 1955. Banned Books. New York: R. R. Bowker Co. King, Graham. 1978. Garden of Zola: Emile Zola and his Novels for English Readers. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., Barnes & Noble Import Division. Korey, Marie Elena. 2003. “‘Plodding along as printers and engravers’ the early years of ­Vizetelly & Company”. In Vizetelly & Compan(ies): A Complex Tale of Victorian Printing and Publishing, Marie Elena Korey et al. (eds), 9–38. Toronto: Governing Council, University of Toronto. Landon, Richard. 2003. “A man under fire: Henry Vizetelly and the question of obscenity in Victorian England”. In Vizetelly & Compan(ies): A Complex Tale of Victorian Printing and Publishing, Marie Elena Korey et al. (eds), 108–113. Toronto: Governing Council, University of Toronto.



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Legman, G. 1981. “Introduction”. In The Private Case: an Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British (Museum) Library ... with an Introduction by G. ­Legman, Patrick J. Kearney (ed.), 11–59. London: Jay Landesman Ltd. Merkle, Denise. 1994. “Émile Zola devant la censure victorienne”. TTR VII (1): 77–91. Merkle, Denise. 2004. “Intertextuality in Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s A Doll’s House and Madame Bovary”. Babel 50 (2): 97–113. Merkle, Denise. 2006. “Towards a sociology of censorship: Translation in the Late-Victorian Publishing field”. In Übersetzen-Translating – Traduire: Towards a ‘Social Turn’?, Michaela Wolf (ed.), 35–44. Münster-Hamburg-Berlin-Wien-London: LIT Verlag. Merkle, Denise. Forthcoming. “Secret literary societies in late-Victorian England”. In Translation, Resistance, Activism, Maria Tymoczko (ed.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Munday, Jeremy. 2001. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London and New York: Routledge. National Vigilance Association (NVA). 1889. Pernicious Literature. Debate in the House of Commons. Trial and Conviction for Sale of Zola’s Novels. With Opinions of the Press. London (Strand): The National Vigilance Association. Portebois, Yannick. 2003. “A publisher and his books: The catalogue of Vizetelly & Co., 1880– 1890”. In Vizetelly & Compan(ies): A Complex Tale of Victorian Printing and Publishing, Marie Elena Korey et al. (eds), 39–78. Toronto: Governing Council, University of Toronto. Roberts, M. J. D. 1992. “Blasphemy, obscenity and the courts: Contours of tolerance in nineteenth-century England”. In Writing and Censorship in Britain, Paul Hyland and Neil ­Sammells (eds), 141–153. London: Routledge. Shamma, Tarek. 2005. “The exotic dimension of foreignizing strategies”. The Translator 11 (1): 100–110. Speirs, Dorothy E. 2003. “Émile Zola’s novels”. In Vizetelly & Compan(ies): A Complex Tale of Victorian Printing and Publishing, Marie Elena Korey et al. (eds), 79–105. Toronto: Governing Council, University of Toronto. Speirs, Dorothy E. and Portebois, Yannick. 2002. Mon cher maître: Lettres d’Ernest Vizetelly à Émile Zola 1891–1902. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tymoczko, Maria. 2000. “Translation and political engagement: Activism, social change and the role of translation in geopolitical shifts”. The Translator 6 (1): 23–47. Vizetelly, Henry. 1888. Extracts Principally from English Classics. London: Vizetelly & Company. Vizetelly, Ernest. 1904. Émile Zola: Novelist and Reformer. London: John Lane, The Bodley ­Alfred Head. Woollen, Geoff. 2002. “Troughs of Zolaism”. The Bulletin of the Emile Zola Society (26 October): 14–25. Zola, Émile. 1884. Nana: A Realistic Novel. Anonymous trans. London: Vizetelly & Company. Zola, Émile. 1885. Piping Hot! Anonymous trans. London: Vizetelly & Company. Zola, Émile. 1888. The Soil. Anonymous trans. London: Vizetelly & Company. Zola, Émile. 1990. Pot-Bouille. Paris: Presses Pocket. Zola, Émile. 1991. Nana. Paris: Presses Pocket. Zola, Émile. 1994. La Terre. Paris: Presses Pocket.

Translation within the margin The “Libraries” of Henry Bohn Carol O’Sullivan

University of Portsmouth

This chapter considers the Victorian publisher Henry G. Bohn as a pioneer in the publishing of translated classics for a general market. Through his ‘Standard Library’, established in 1846, and the equally successful ‘Classical Library’ (1848), Bohn made literature in translation available to a mass readership at the then low prices of three shillings and sixpence or five shillings. Targeted at the Victorian reader eager for self-improvement, most of the volumes in Bohn’s Libraries were highly improving in nature, with an emphasis on history, biography and philosophy, much of it by Continental authors. Bohn’s catalogue also included, however, some of the more notorious classics of European literature, including the Decameron (published 1855), Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1855), the Satyricon of Petronius (1854), the poems of Catullus (1854), Apuleius’s Golden Ass (1853) and the epigrams of Martial (1860). While ‘unexpurgated’ translations of some of these works would be published for private circulation in the Victorian period, the norms of the period required that they be censored to fit them for a general market. Key words: Henry Bohn; Standard Library; Classical Library; censorship in translation; paratext

Introduction As the new Oxford History of Literary Translation into English shows, translations featured prominently in the democratisation of reading in the Victorian period. A combination of advances in printing technology and a fast-growing readership made possible larger print runs, lower prices and an explosion in publishing activity of all kinds. Pre-eminent among the publishers who took advantage of these developments to target a mass market was one Henry George Bohn. Bohn set out to provide high-quality literature to as wide a readership as possible by keeping prices low. He realised the importance of recognisability, and Bohn’s ‘Libraries’,

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the first volumes of which appeared in 1846, would remain “for perhaps a century, the most widely known series of volumes ever to be assembled and distributed in common format” (Cordasco 1951: ix). Targeted at the Victorian reader eager for self-improvement (see Altick 1963: 26), most of the volumes in Bohn’s Libraries were highly improving in nature, with an emphasis on history, biography and philosophy, much of it by Continental authors. Among the many worthy tomes, however, can be found a number of texts whose status as improving literature was rather less stable. It is these volumes, and the careful editorial handling they required, which are the subject of the present article. Drawing on André Lefevere’s concept of ‘margin’, the article outlines the ingenious ways in which Bohn negotiated canons of respectability in a climate of growing moral severity. By paying lip service to the prevailing norms, he was able to contribute to the circulation of some of the more notorious works of European literature among a wide readership and in editions which compare favourably for completeness with Bohn’s contemporaries and successors.

Henry George Bohn, Publisher Bohn (1796–1884), the son of a German bookbinder and second-hand bookseller, was a notable figure on the Victorian publishing scene.1 He began his career working as a book-buyer for his father, and set up as a bookseller on his own account at York Street, Covent Garden in the spring of 1831. Bohn made his name with the mammoth ‘Guinea Catalogue’ of 1841, which cost more than £2000 to produce and included, in its list of more than twenty thousand items, many remainders. These remainders, which included a large number of translations, would form the basis for Bohn’s first series, the ‘Standard Library’, established in 1846. Translations featured prominently across the other Libraries too, including the Scientific and Antiquarian Libraries (1847), the Ecclesiastical Library (1851) and the Philological and Philosophical Library (1852), and naturally made up the entirety of the Classical Library, begun in 1848. Overall, translations featured so prominently in Bohn’s output that Kenneth Haynes considers that “it was Henry Bohn, more than any other publisher, whose series actively influenced the formation of a canon of world literature in translation” (2006: 8). Bohn retired in 1864 and sold his entire stock of the Libraries, together with the copyrights and stereotype plates, to the publishing house of Bell & Daldy, later George Bell and Sons. At the time of their sale the Libraries numbered some 600 volumes, to which Bell would add substantially over the course of the next half-century, thus contributing to the series’ long shelf life.



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Contemporary accounts of Bohn show us a man of prodigious energy and a strong, sometimes difficult, personality. The genesis of the Standard Library provides a vivid illustration of his commercial ruthlessness. The year before the publication of the first volumes in the Standard Library, the publisher David Bogue of Fleet Street began publication of a uniform series entitled the ‘European Library’, the first title of which included illustrations to which Bohn held the copyright. Bohn obtained an injunction against Bogue and promptly proceeded to undersell his rival with the new Standard Library, which was in a strikingly similar format. On Bogue’s death a few years later, Bohn acquired his remaining stock (Lister 1988: 56). Among more personal reminiscences of Bohn, one anecdote tells how he would hang out the window of his office at York Street, shouting at passing carters if they lingered in the street later than the statutory limit of nine o’clock (“Bohn and His Library” 1904: 464). On retirement, Bohn appears to have had some difficulty in relinquishing his publishing responsibilities. The sale of the Libraries to Bell & Daldy included the York Street offices, but as Edward Bell relates, [t]he transition was not completed without some difficulty, for Mr. Bohn, with a tenacity which was characteristic, continued to occupy part of the principal house. My father, impatient at the delay in getting full possession, effected it at last by making, one morning, a forcible entry through the door which shut off (Bell 1924: 78) Bohn’s office and established himself at the desk.

Having accepted the situation “with a fairly good grace”, Bohn moved to an office in Henrietta Street. He had kept back some book stock, which was warehoused in town and sold off piecemeal. He now occupied himself with objets d’art, gardening and cataloguing his valuable collections. His summer garden parties at Twickenham were social highlights, and he was still dancing the quadrille on his lawn at the age of eighty-five (Pearce 1992: 789). Obituarists paid tribute to his extraordinary energy, his commercial flair and a certain talent for self-promotion. Above and beyond his publishing responsibilities, Bohn himself edited or compiled a number of the volumes in his Libraries (Cordasco 1951: 103–104) and translated several texts, notably by Schiller. Bohn felt strongly about Schiller, whom he called “the greatest genius of Germany”. The Standard Library included Schiller’s Works in four volumes (later added to by Bell), published between 1858 and 1860. In the preface to the Historical Dramas we are told that neither labour nor expense has been spared in the production of the present volume, and scarcely any sale of it, in this popular form, can reimburse the publisher, but, if he should succeed in diffusing among his countrymen a more enlarged appreciation of the beauties of Schiller, he will feel abundantly requited.

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The translations of several texts seem to have been a labour of love as well as a commercial endeavour. Bohn tells us in the preface to Early Dramas and Romances that: The task of translating and editing this volume to the extent stated, has been performed during snatches from hours of business or rest, by the publisher; and, amid the pressure of his engrossing and more legitimate avocations, has been most trying. But he has been borne through it by an enthusiastic admiration of the author, and if his readers reward his perseverance with their approbation, he may hope to forget the sacrifice it has cost him in the pleasures of the recom(Bohn 1849: xii) pense.

Never backward in coming forward, Bohn highly commended his own translations to his readers. Of Schiller’s early play The Robbers he tells us that There is no drama in the German language, indeed hardly any piece of writing in the same compass, more difficult to render satisfactorily into English; arising in some measure from the familiar colloquy and thieves’ jargon which pervade it, and the author’s frequent use of metaphor, antithesis, and provincialisms.

Readers need not fear, however, because Familiar with the German original from his boyhood, the publisher does not fear having committed any errors in interpreting the author’s meaning, nor has he departed from his very words more than was necessary to preserve fluency and, (Bohn 1849: viii) as far as possible, the author’s energy of diction.

Bohn’s translation of Schiller’s unfinished novel The Ghost-Seer in the same volume has been reprinted as recently as 1992. The editor of this edition largely bears out Bohn’s assessment of his own translation practice, remarking that “although its Victorian stateliness somewhat stiffens and formalizes Schiller’s unpretentious middle style, [the translation] is very faithful. The occasional slips from fidelity are too rare and insignificant to be mentioned” (Sammons 1992: xii).

Bohn’s “Libraries” Bohn’s publishing agenda and his aspirations for the Libraries are clearly laid out in the introductory Prospectuses which appeared glued into the front endpapers of the early volumes. The Standard Library, the first series to be launched, was described as a “series of the best English and foreign authors, printed in a new and elegant form, Equally adapted to the Library and the Fireside’, at the extremely low



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price of 3s 6d. per volume”. The emphasis in the Standard Library was on accessibility and textual integrity: This Series has been undertaken with the view of presenting to the educated public, works of a deservedly established character, accurately printed in an elegant form, without abridgement, and at the lowest possible price that can remunerate the Publisher. In the present advanced stage of widely-diffused intelligence, and after the many able arguments adduced by some of the most powerful minds of the age in favour of extended literature, it would be superfluous, in a notice of this kind, to extol the advantages of circulating the higher productions of genius and learning, on terms that may render them accessible to all. (Prospectus)

Fidelity was the key criterion for translations. In John Oxenford’s translation of Goethe’s autobiography, published in the Standard Library in 1848, we are told that “it was the intention of the Publisher to reprint [the existing American translations] without alteration, but, on comparing them with the original, it was perceived that the American version was not sufficiently faithful” (“Advertisement” 1848). Fidelity was even more of a watchword for the Classical Library, probably the best remembered of the Bohn series today. The Classical Library aimed to offer straightforward literal prose translations for students of the classics and the many whose knowledge of Latin and Greek was not sufficient to allow them to read easily in the original. An advance advertisement for the new series declared that [t]his Series…will comprise faithful English translations of the principal Greek and Latin Classics. The versions will be strictly literal, that is, as true a reflection of expression, style, and thought, as the idioms of the languages will permit. Each work will be given without abridgment, but in the smallest practicable compass. The volumes will not be distended by diffuse notes and illustrations, collected from the common sources of hacknied [sic] information; but brief suggestive notes, adapted to the real wants of the student, will be introduced wherever they are deemed essential. […] Of existing translations, such as are satisfactory will be adopted; but the far greater number require correction, and will be carefully and competently revised.2

Many of the volumes in the Classical Library bore the words ‘literally translated’ stamped on their spine. This literalism reflected the prevailing attitude to classical source texts, whose “status […] as sources of European culture meant that translators had to engage directly with issues of ownership and fidelity” (Bassnett & France 2006: 48). Existing translations such as Smart’s Horace (1850) were revised for accuracy. The many new translations emphasised their improvements

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in relation to previous editions. The preface to Henry Thomas Riley’s translation of Terence and Phaedrus (1853) declares characteristically that the translator has “endeavoured to convey faithfully the meaning of the author, and although not rigorously literal […] has, he trusts, avoided such wide departures from the text, as are found in the versions of Echard, Cooke, Patrick, and Gordon.” Translations in Bohn’s series had a high visibility; translations were always attributed and translators’ prefaces and notes were standard. Not all the translations were good, and the quality of scholarship and editing at time left something to be desired, but the overall quality of the series was acknowledged by such critics as Carlyle, who called them “the usefullest thing I know”, and by Emerson, who declared that the Bohn translations “done for literature what railroads have done for internal intercourse” (quoted in “Bohn and His Library” 1904: 463). Bohn’s readership was varied and voracious. The uniformity of the volumes proved a decided selling-point, even overriding their sometimes uneven quality; an editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine reminisced about “the pride of ownership I felt as a youth in the augmenting row of goodly-looking books which, with the appearance of a new volume of “Bohn”, extended along my shelves” (‘Sylvanus Urban’ 1884: 413). For several decades the Bohn Libraries sold in great numbers: Edward Bell claims sustained annual sales of over 100,000 volumes (1924: 75). They were read by a wide cross-section of society, from schools to the Mechanics’ Institutes, where they were already in high demand by 1849 (“Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries” 2005: 259). The British Library was obliged to take steps to manage demand as [a]fter many years of long-suffering on the part of the Trustees, the volumes in Bohn’s libraries became so mutilated by students who were not content with reading them during the hours at which that institution is open that a decree was promulgated that all the works included in his various sets of publications should be removed from the reading-room  (“Obituary: Henry George Bohn” 1884: 137)

That it was for the translations that Bohn was and would be remembered comes across clearly from Bohn’s epitaph in Punch (6 September 1884, p.110): Eh? Dead at Eighty-nine? A ripe old age. Dear renderer of many a learned page Into the – rather dryasdust – vernacular; True source of many an utterance oracular From many a pseudo-pundit, who scarce owns To wandering in that valley of dry Bohns. Thousands should thank thee who will hardly do so –



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In public! From Catullus down to Crusoe, From Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle deep, To Goethe, Schlegel, Schiller we drink pottle-deep – Of Learning’s fount from thy translated tap! And what though o’er it one may nod and nap? ‘Tis wholesome, if not sparkling, with sound body, If not the glint of true Pierian toddy. Gone from thy roses underneath the daisies, We echo Emersonian thanks and praises, And say (Pundits make puns, and sometimes own ‘em), “Vale! De mortuis nil nisi Bo(h)num!”

This affectionate piece of doggerel reflects the publisher’s mixed reputation at the time of his death, balanced between respect for the scale of his achievement and gentle scorn for its lack of literary pretensions. Despite the sometimes pedestrian quality of the translations, they had been and remained a valuable resource for Victorian as well as later readers.

Notoriety and expurgation At no point in the many obituaries or accounts of Bohn’s life and works is there as much as a hint of scandal. This might seem surprising, given the notoriety of several works included in the Libraries: Boccaccio’s Decameron (published 1855) Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1855), the Satyricon of Petronius (1854), the poems of Catullus (1954), Apuleius’s Golden Ass (1853) and the epigrams of Martial (1860). The Decameron, for instance, would be the subject of a lawsuit brought by the National Vigilance Association against the publishers Matthieson & Co in 1888.3 Even Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1854) was considered shocking enough at the time for its translator to prefer to remain anonymous (DeLaura 1975). The prosecution and ruin of Henry Vizetelly in the late 1880s for publishing (expurgated) translations of the works of Zola vividly illustrates the dangers attached to publishing suggestive literature. Worse still, these unedifying works were on general sale in unabridged, ostensibly literal translations at the then low price of three and sixpence (on price and its relationship to censorship, see Perrin 1969: 21). The explanation for Bohn’s success in publishing these texts, without in any way compromising his reputation or incurring criticism from any but the most puritanical, may be sought in Lefevere’s useful concept of margin.4 In an article on translations of Catullus, Lefevere remarks with regard to freedom of speech that “You can, in theory, say anything you want, any way you want.

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In practice, though, if you want to be listened to at all, you will have to say it within a certain margin”. To attempt to express oneself outside the margin is possible, but lays one open to a range of possible negative outcomes involving “risk and peril, from the lack of social prestige involved in samizdat type publication, or publication in little magazines or with small presses, to the loss of jobs, or the blacklist, to other, more drastic measures” (Lefevere 1984: 128). It is important to recognise that the margin is more than a line drawn between the acceptable and the unacceptable. The ‘margin’ designates above all a liminal zone of operation within which more or less subversive or unwelcome material may be made available to readers, given sufficient discretion on the part of its originators. Depending on the nature of a given society this margin may be more or less broad or narrow, and is likely to change over time, as was certainly the case in Victorian Britain, which grew steadily less permissive as the century advanced. The most obvious evidence of Bohn’s ‘discretion’ is to be found in the expurgation which features in many of the above volumes. This was a feature of the age. The publication of Sir Thomas Bowdler’s Family Shakespeare in 1807 had heralded what Bassnett and France have called “the great age of expurgation” (2006: 53), a phenomenon to which Bohn’s Libraries are particularly vulnerable. The aspiration to offer literal translations ‘without abridgment’ was intrinsic to the existence of the Libraries. It would, however, inevitably result in the series becoming a site for the negotiation of issues relating to cultural and literary acceptability. The most usual form taken by expurgation in Bohn’s Libraries is the inclusion of passages in a language other than English. Thus, sections from the ‘Golden Ass’ recounting the narrator’s dalliance with Milo and Pamphile’s maid Fotis and, after his transformation, with the wealthy Roman matron known as the ‘new Pasiphae’ are printed in the original Latin, either in the body of the text or in a footnote (Works of Apuleius 1853: 35–36, 209–210). Passages in Ovid and Petronius are similarly treated. In such instances the original text is sometimes supplied in the footnotes. Sometimes more than one foreign language is used. In Kelly’s new translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron two problematic stories are partially told in the original Italian, together with a French translation. A number of the Epigrams of Martial are left in Latin and accompanied by Graglia’s eighteenth-century Italian translation, “in those instances where an English translation given faithfully would not be tolerable” (Bohn 1860: 4). Foreign translations were carefully chosen; in his preface to the Epigrams the publisher goes on to explain regretfully that [t]here have been seven complete French versions of Martial, some very recent, and it would have been equally, if not more, convenient, to select from these, but



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that none of them have used the least refinement, and indeed, have sometimes rather exceeded their author in his worst properties.

Omissions, while regrettable, were not apologised for. Bohn’s assertion that a faithful English translation of certain of Martial’s epigrams ‘would not be tolerable’ assumes the same shared values and standards among publisher, translator and readers as does his regular translator Walter K. Kelly’s remark that a literal translation of Catullus 33 and six other poems would be “insufferable in English” (Poems of Catullus 1854: 31). Other forms of expurgation used by Bohn and his translators included, in rare instances, the lacunar ‘…’ (as in Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars), euphemism, and less often outright bowdlerisation. Thus William James Hickie, whose translation of the plays of Aristophanes for the Classical Library was published in 1853, renders the line from Lysistrata “En mē dido tēn cheira, tēs sathēs age” [if he doesn’t give you his hand, take him by the penis] as “If any do not give his hand, lead him by the nose” (Lefevere 1992: 41–42). Such bowdlerisations would become an object of mockery by later scholars and readers, but it is important to remember that the larger the audience, the greater the decorum expected; and Bohn’s audience was very large. The publication of such writers as Martial, Catullus and Boccaccio in unexpurgated forms did take place in the Victorian era, but such editions were on the whole expensive and printed for private circulation only, as in the case of John Payne’s Decameron (1886) or the Index Expurgatorius of Martial (1868; see Kearney 1982: 12). A striking illustration of margin in action is provided by Bohn’s so-called ‘Extra Volumes’. Between 1846 and 1855, Bohn published some half-dozen translations in the same format as the Standard Library but distinguished by the colour of their binding. The first to be published was Anthony Hamilton’s Grammont’s memoirs of the court of Charles the Second in 1846. Later volumes, published between 1849 and 1855, included French Fairy Tales and Romances, also by Hamilton; Urquhart and Motteux’s famous translation of the Works of Rabelais; the Decameron of Boccaccio, the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre and Cervantes’ Exemplary Novels (Cordasco 1951: 50–51).5 The first volume included an advertisement signed by Bohn explaining the decision to publish outside the main series. The initial advertisement is worth quoting in full, as it sheds light not only on the motivation behind the creation of the ‘extra volumes’ but also on Bohn’s attitude to Victorian prudery in general. The publisher, doubting the propriety of including Count Grammont’s Memoirs in his “Standard Library”, thinks it expedient to print them (and at intervals

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­ erhaps other works), in a separate series, under the above title. The binding is of p a different colour to mark the distinction. The Memoirs of Grammont, although universally admitted to be among the most witty and entertaining that have ever been written; described by Gibbon as “a classic work, the delight of every man and woman of taste;” praised and edited by Sir Walter Scott; printed in almost every language and every form; and found in every good historical library; are, it must be confessed, too much embued [sic] with the leaven of Charles The Second’s days to suit the severer code of the present age. The book, however, is full of curious historical information, and must always be a standard-library work, under whatever denomination it may be presented; and the prudish reasons which should keep it inaccessible to the great mass of readers, would be equally applicable to nearly all the writers of the Charles-theSecond period, including Pepys; as well as to Ariosto, Fontaine, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Byron, and even Shakespeare and Pope. But the publisher feels that the subscribers to his “Standard Library”, after having been led on by such samples of his intentions as the works of Robert Hall, Roscoe, Schlegel, and Sismondi, with the prospect of others of the same sterling character, have a right to count on his not altering the tone of that series by including any thing which may not unhesitatingly be put into the hands of the most fastidious; and they have some evidence of his wish to deserve such confidence as the course now pursued.

The risqué tone of Hamilton’s book, by comparison with the thoroughly improving tone of the Standard Library, is not allowed to constitute an obstacle to its publication. Instead, Bohn cleverly positions the text in relation to the canon, candidly admitting its problematic status, but immediately on the one hand bringing the authority of Gibbon and Scott to bear as to its literary merit, and on the other hand aligning the text with an eclectic selection of unassailable literary figures from home and abroad, culminating grandiloquently with Shakespeare and Pope. To understand the effectiveness of the designation ‘extra volumes’ we must look back to the rationale for the establishment of the Standard Library, which aimed to be ‘equally adapted to the Library and the Fireside’. This compartmentalisation of Victorian reading spaces would find its most famous expression in Stanley Lane Poole’s evaluation of translations of The Thousand and One Nights in 1886: “Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers” (quoted in Bassnett & France 2006: 53). Print run, price and translation strategy would dictate which particular segments of the reading public a given translation was aimed at. The Extra Volumes, on the other hand, float serenely in the margin, both within the Libraries and exterior to them. Through occasional expurgation and the payment of lip service to the norms of



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the time, Bohn successfully published at three-and-sixpence a new Heptameron and a ­substantially revised Decameron – both versions by Walter Kelly, who seems to have been the least coy of Bohn’s translators. The translation of the Heptameron would be republished several times before the end of the century, and republished in an expurgated form in 1927 (Chilton 1984: 24). These strategies clearly come under the heading of self-censorship, an activity which stems from the fact that publisher and/or translators ‘have internalised the norms pertinent to the culture, and [use] them as a constant monitoring device’ (Toury, quoted in Merkle 2002: 16). At the same time, to think of Bohn as capitulating entirely to censorship would be to misrepresent him. In the advertisement for the new quasi-series quoted above the publisher clearly aligns himself in opposition to the ‘prudish reasons’ which would argue for the omission of Grammont’s Memoirs from his list, and his choice of texts to publish bears this out. Further evidence of this attitude is to be found in his appearance as a witness for the defence in the trial of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant for obscene libel in 1877 (The Times, Thursday 21 June 1877). Interestingly, during Bohn’s testimony he admitted that Bell & Daldy had “had to withdraw from circulation several well-known works, as the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont and the works of Rabelais” – both of these titles among the Extra Volumes.6 An overview of Bohn’s publishing strategy reveals a consistent unwillingness to be too constrained by canons of literary morality in the period. The translations he published of ‘difficult’ classical authors, including some, such as Petronius, who were only rarely published in translation, made available a surprising quantity of explicit material (see e.g. Currie 1996: 52). If we compare the 1853 Bohn translation of the Golden Ass with the almost contemporaneous 1851 translation by Sir George Head, it is clear that the Bohn translation exhibits a much lower degree of discomfort with such features of the text as digestion and sexuality, and is inclusive enough, despite its occasional euphemisms and passages in Latin, to justify its editor’s claim that “[t]he Golden Ass has been several times presented to the English public, but, it is believed, never yet so completely or faithfully” (Works of Apuleius 1853: ix). In the case of Martial Bohn himself wrote a preface to the volume defending Martial and setting forth his stance on publication: It is a singular fact that Martial is the only Latin poet of mark who has not hitherto been completely translated into the English language. […] Elphinston, in his preface, ventures to assert that Martial laboured in the detection of error, the vindication of innocence, the diffusion of knowledge, and the display of truth; and that he communicates more life, and more literature, more wisdom, and more wit, than any other of the ancient poets, or perhaps than all of them put together.

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This is stronger language in his favour than other writers have used, and perhaps more than is borne out by facts, but the English reader may now judge for himself.  (Bohn 1860: iii–iv)

It would of course be more accurate to say that the English reader with knowledge of Latin or Italian might now judge for himself; nevertheless, in the opinion of the editors of Martial in English, Bohn’s publication of Martial in translation was an act of “some courage” (Sullivan and Boyle 1996: xxxiv). In regard to more recent literature, R. D. Boylan’s 1854 version of The Sorrows of Werther for Bohn replaced a previous expurgated edition (which had in turn been translated from an already expurgated French version) with a much more satisfactory text. In his preface to the volume which contained both Sorrows of Werther and Froude’s anonymous translation of Elective Affinities, Bohn defends his publication of these texts on the grounds that In many points, it were to be wished that Goethe had not so written; but to alter anything is not in the translator’s commission. The literary and moral persuasions of a man like Goethe are objects of a rational curiosity, and the duty of a (quoted in Constantine 2006: 217–218) translator is simple and distinct.

As we have seen, this is a highly selective view of the translator’s brief and not consistent with prefatory statements in other volumes of Bohn’s Libraries; but the important factor here is that again Bohn was prepared to use any arguments at his disposal in order to facilitate the publication of literature he considered to be of value.

An experiment with “erotica” The conflict between the will to provide complete translations and the moral standards of the day at times led Bohn into strange contortions, including a brief experiment with classical erotica in translation. Erotica was something that Bohn had naturally come into contact with before during his career as a bookseller, and a quantity of erotica features in the ‘Guinea Pig’. He now apparently sought to appeal to the market for pornographic literature with two volumes published in 1854. The first featured Catullus, Tibullus and the poem known as the ‘Vigil of Venus’, and the other included Propertius, Petronius’s Satyricon, the neo-Latin ‘Basia’ of Johannes Secundus, and the ‘Love Epistles’ of Aristaenetus. Walter Kelly was responsible for the editing and most of the translations, though previously published verse versions were also supplied. These volumes are distinguished from the rest of the Classical Library by the inclusion of the heading ‘erotica’ on the title



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page. This paratextual tactic would have a profound impact on the ­presentation of these translations, requiring startling editorial sleight-of-hand in the attempt to meet a range of sometimes conflicting expectations. The use of prose or verse is key to the dynamics of censorship in these two volumes. Faced with a text which has been called “only too insipid to be disgusting” (Smith 1876 vol. 1: 288), Halhed and Sheridan choose to translate Aristaenetus’s prose into verse as a way of avoiding the necessity for accuracy. The effort required to scan and rhyme inevitably distorts the meaning, allowing the two translators to declare with relief that “it were absurd to pretend that this translation is perfectly literal; the very genius of prose and verse forbid it”. They go on to argue in self-justification that “the learned reader who shall consult the original, will find many reasons for the impropriety […] of following the author’s expressions too closely” (Elegies of Propertius 1854: 434). A similar licence is exploited in the Catullus volume, which freely omits prose translations of those poems which would be ‘insufferable in English’ (33, 56, 74, 80, 97, 100, 106, 112), offering a variety of verse or ‘metrical’ translations in their stead and further glossing them with the 1803 French prose translation by Noël. At the end of the biographical introduction we are told that The present prose translation of Catullus, the first, we believe, that has appeared in English, has been framed upon the principle of adhering as closely to the letter of the original as is consistent with the genius of the respective languages. For a faithful rendering of the letter, prose is the best medium; but there its power end[s]; for all beyond we must have recourse to verse.  (Poems of Catullus 1854: 4)

The prose translations allow the volume to be marketed as a ‘literal’ translation, and further, in the present case, to be presented as erotica. The verse translations serve a double purpose. On the one hand, they ostensibly offer the reader a more adequate text, of a higher literary status, and thus more worthy of the famous original; on the other, again, ‘les exigences de la rime volent au secours de la vertu’ (Cogny & Cogny 1979: 296). One such unacceptable text is Catullus 56. No prose translation is given by Kelly. Instead, a footnote takes the reader immediately to Noël’s translation: L’aventure est trop plaisante! Tu vas rire mon cher Caton; toi qui aimes les bons contes, tu vas en rire pour l’amour de moi. Je viens de surprendre un joli enfant, que ma nymphe initiait complaisamment aux plus doux mystères. J’ai percé le petit drôle d’un trait vengeur, et Venus a souri de ma vengeance.   (Poems of Catullus 1854: 43)

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A further note also commends the reader to a metrical version by Nott: ‘Tis ridiculous, Cato, ‘tis really droll; When you hear it, I’m sure you will laugh from your soul: Cato, laugh! if to thee thy Catullus is dear; For ‘tis droll and ridiculous past all compare: The fact is, this moment I caught my young blade Just attempting to rifle an innocent maid: Then, sweet Venus, if thou wilt not take it amiss, I will find out the shaft that will punish for this!   (Poems of Catullus 1854: 217, 218)

Noël’s ‘free version in French prose’ is quite free, reversing the emphasis of the sexual encounter between the ‘joli enfant’ and the ‘nymphe’. It offers an effective play on words with ‘trait vengeur’, meaning both an avenging spear and a sarcastic quip, reflecting the ambiguity of ‘cecidi’, which here can mean to bugger or to flog, verbally or otherwise. Nott plays on the words ‘blade’ and ‘rifle’, picking up the ‘shaft’ or spear, though the shift in the last line from the past to the future tense effectively obscures the punchline of the anecdote, which is that Catullus joins in, making a third in the encounter.7 A more lateral approach is taken in the case of Catullus 97, also given without a prose version and footnoted with “a similar epigram by Nicarchus [Book 11, No. 241], which has been thus translated by Grotius”: Non culo, Theodore, minus tibi foetida bucca est Noscere discrimen sit sapientis opus. Scribere debueras hic podex est meus, hic os: Nunc tu cum pedas atque loquare simul, Discere non valeo, quid venerit inde vel inde; Vipera namque infra sibilat atque supra. 

(Poems of Catullus 1854: 95)

Nott’s metrical version of 97 stretches the original’s twelve lines into twenty-two bouncy lines of iambic tetrameter: By all that’s sacred I declare I’m doubtful which I should prefer; Whether, Aemilius, I would choose Thy odious mouth, to feast my nose, Or that more odious part, which shame Forbids me in my verse to name! Neither is over-clean at best; But if I must, I’d take the last; It’s toothless sure; whereas, you know



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Your mouth has tusks a yard or so; Has gums so full of holes and stink, ‘Twas a worm-eaten chest you’d think; And then its width! which to my mind Brings some toil’d mule that’s oft inclined To stale, when, chafed by summer heats, The brine’s lax aperture dilates. Yet to the nymphs this homely swain Makes love, and of his form is vain: Oh, worthier sure a lash to feel, And work with asses at the mill! Who’d kiss that wretch might kiss, I swear A pale-faced hangman you know where. 

(Poems of Catullus 1854: 285)

Here Nott plays with non-translation, inviting his readers to read between the lines with such phrases as ‘that more odious part, which shame/ forbids me in my verse to name’ and ‘you know where’. Interestingly, the conventions of bowdlerism here seem to dictate that passages included in a foreign language still retain an element of accessibility; otherwise why include Grotius’s Latin translation of Nicarchus, instead of the original Greek, which many fewer readers would have understood?8 Censorship is not limited to the eight poems left without an English prose translation. Euphemism and elision are also freely employed. The furious ‘Paedicabo et irrumabo’ of Catullus 16 becomes, quite neatly and vaguely, ‘I will trim you and trounce you’. Two of the poems to the boy Juventius are euphemised by the simple expedient of omitting any reference to Juventius; Catullus 48 is titled ‘To his love’, and Catullus 99 simply ‘To ------’. The use of Latin terms and calques can mask a multitude of sins, as with ­mentula (Catullus 114, 115), phallus (Catullus 20) or pathic (Catullus 57). At times the price of admission seems to be an expression of overt disapproval of the source material. Catullus 57 is footnoted with the comment that “there is scarcely a phrase in this most atrocious lampoon which we dare reproduce in its loathsome nudity” (Poems of Catullus 1854: 44). The next poem, which refers to Lesbia’s promiscuous life in Rome, is one which editors are reluctant to exclude from the collection, because of its link to the Catullus-and-Lesbia romantic narrative, but the mixed feelings the poem engenders come across clearly from Kelly’s footnote: “nothing can exceed the sad sweetness of the first three of these five verses; but that villanous [sic] glubit in the last line is enough to poison all the waters of Aganippe”. The contextual meaning of glubit, which is given in Little and Short’s Latin dictionary as ‘to peel’ or ‘to strip the bark’, is uncertain, but it is here translated euphemistically as ‘makes herself a common trull to’. So far, so straightforwardly expurgated. The body of the text is not, however, the whole story. The texts are also provided with abundant footnotes offering the

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usual mix of “details, uncertainties, nuances, complexities; additional arguments; attempts to forestall objections, digressions…” identified by Genette as the basic fodder of footnotes (1997: 326). Such a volume of notes would be expected in an edition of a classical work with its many associated textual and cultural issues. A closer examination of these footnotes reveals other agendas at work, however, exploiting the marginal space of the footnote to recuperate some of the textual material lost to the body of the text through expurgation. Lefevere’s ‘margin’ here takes on a physical manifestation. Thus in Catullus 16 the translation ‘I will trim you and trounce you’ is footnoted as follows: Paedicabo et irrumabo. These detestable words are used here only as coarse forms of threatening, with no very definite meaning. It is certain that they were very commonly employed in this way, with no more distinct reference to their original import than the corresponding phrases of the modern Italians, T’ho in culo and becco fottuto, or certain brutal exclamations common in the mouths of the English vulgar.

Beginning with the reasonable observation that the terms are used in generic terms here for the purposes of insult, the footnote then goes on to remind the reader several times over of their ‘original import’. We are reminded that the words are ‘detestable’ and ‘coarse’, and readers with a knowledge of Italian are offered two strongly-worded equivalents. The monoglot reader must be content to speculate on the identity of the ‘brutal’ English exclamations referred to. The explanatory and interpretive functions of the footnote are here put at the service of keeping the suggestive qualities of the text constantly before the reader. Thus several footnotes take pains to identify doubles entendres in the text which might have escaped the reader’s attention, as in these two examples from the Satyricon (Elegies of Propertius 1854: 215) 1

Do you not know, &c.] Quid tu non intellexeras cinoedum embasicoetam vocari? The joke consists in the double meaning of the word embasicoetas, which is properly a cup on getting into bed, (εμβασις κοιτης,) what we call familiarly “a nightcap,” but may also signify one who mounts upon a bed, one who perambulavit omnium cubilia, as Catullus says. 3 Put the beggar over the gentleman.] Post asellum diaria non sumo: literally, I will

not partake of ordinary fare after choice fish. Here again there is a play of words. Asellus (jackass) was the name of a fish greatly esteemed by Roman epicures; it was also a common term for designating a homo bene vasatus, asini instar.

Disagreements with the interpretations of previous critics, which are the meat and drink of classical footnotes, tend to centre on morally, rather than merely



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textually, problematic points, as in the long footnote on possible interpretations of the sparrow in Catullus 2. Petronius’s expression ‘qui utrosque parietes linunt’, translated ‘those who keep fair with both sides’, is footnoted: “This is the Greek proverb δύο τοίχους άλέιφουσι, nearly equivalent to, They run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. All the English and French translators have erroneously ascribed to it an obscene meaning” (Elegies of Propertius 1854: 234). The reader is left to infer this erroneous meaning for themselves. The text’s suggestiveness is further strengthened through a network of intertextual reference to other notorious authors, including Ovid, Martial, Juvenal and Catullus, and cultures (predominantly Italian culture, in the case of the Satyricon). While some footnotes account for difficulties already recognised in the body of the text, either through a textual gap or the inclusion of a passage in the original language, others serve the purpose of drawing the reader’s attention to an apparently innocuous phrase. A reference to ‘long-haired boys’ in Petronius is accompanied by the explanatory note: “To wear the hair long was, in the male sex, a token of the vilest depravity. St. Ambrose quotes a proverb to this effect: Nullus comatus qui non idem cinaedus” (Elegies of Propertius 1854: 220). We can now look back on some of the expurgatory strategies mentioned above, paying particular attention to their conspicuousness. These are texts which insist throughout on their own censored status. In hindsight, the code-switching from Latin to English found at several points in Petronius takes on a much more mischievous aspect, as does the use of calques and borrowings. As Cogny and Cogny put it, “l’utilisation d’un terme inconnu incite le lecteur à remonter aux sources et souligne par prétérition la grossièreté des propos” (1979: 299). A number of critics have pointed out the effectiveness of this as not only a titillating, but also an educational strategy. As J. P. Sullivan remarks, untranslated epigrams in the Bohn Martial “have been a great stimulus to the learning of Latin among English schoolboys” (1991: 185). The range of devices and strategies employed to re-eroticise the censored text is well illustrated in the treatment of Catullus 32, a poem already the subject of extensive discussion by André Lefevere (1984): XXXII To Hypsithilla. My sweet Hypsithilla, my delight, my merry soul; bid me, like a dear girl, come to you to pass the noon.* And if you bid me, add this, that no one bar the gate, that no fancy take you to go abroad, but that you remain at home, and prepare for us no end of amorous delights.† But if you agree, summon me immediately, for I am lying on my back after dinner, full, and pampered, and am bursting my tunic and my very cloak.‡

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The three footnotes to this poem are reproduced below: * To pass the noon.] That is, to take my siesta with you. See Ovid, Amor. i. Eleg. v. † Prepare for us, &c.] We have substituted a vague phrase for a singularly plain and precise one. Noël, the French translator, approaches the original more nearly, but still in a covert manner: ‘Prépare neuf couronnes au front de ton vainqueur.’ The Abbé Marolle [sic], he says, ‘traduit ce passage scabreux d’une manière assez plaisante: “Et de neuf façons qu’il y a de caresser quand on est de bonne humeur, n’en oublie pas une.” Il est gai, le cher abbé!’ ‡ Am bursting, &c.] Pezay, a French translator, strangely mistakes the meaning of the passage, as if it amounts to this, ‘I have gorged until I am ready to burst;’ and he quotes the remark of ‘une femme charmante’ who said that her only reply to such a billet-doux would have been to send the writer an emetic. But the lady might have prescribed a different remedy if she had been acquainted with Martial’s line O quoties rigidâ pulsabis pallia venâ! or with this quatrain of an Old French poet:

Ainsi depuis une semaine La longue roideur de ma veine Pour néant rouge et bien en point Bat ma chemise et mon pourpoint.

The footnotes invoke a range of intertexts. Some are classical, from Ovid’s account of a summer afternoon in bed to the line from Martial, xi. 16. Gaps and omissions are filled by three French translations, the 1803 translation by Noël, the eighteenth-century version by the Marquis de Pezay and the 1653 Marolles translation, as well as an anonymous quatrain of apparently Middle French poetry. These intertexts repeatedly relocate the Catullan text in the category of ‘erotica’ as Ovid and Martial share in Catullus’s notoriety. The expression ‘noon’ signifies no more than meridiatum, but the reminder of the Continental tradition of the siesta, and the link with Ovid’s Amores, here lend the English text more resonance than it might otherwise have supported. The following footnote, on the other hand, plays with frankness in calling the reader’s attention to the attenuation which has taken place in translation. ‘No end of amorous delights’ is a wholly inadequate rendering of novem continuas fututiones, with its obscene neologism (Lefevere 1984: 129), but the reference to the ‘singularly plain and precise’ original spurs the reader to attempt a slightly more explicit French prose translation by Noël, which will lead him inexorably on to another, and again slightly more explicit one by Marolles. The text’s translated status is intrinsic to this strategy of progressive but illusory unveiling.



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The prose translation of the final line of the poem, ‘pertundo tunicamque palliumque’, is very little more explicit than Lamb’s ‘my frame with passion glowing’ or the anonymous ‘bursting with love’, included among the metrical translations (Poems of Catullus 1854: 200). For this reason, a footnote is required to make clear to the reader just what they are missing, first by outlining how the original’s suggestiveness might be misunderstood, and subsequently by offering alternative texts on similar topics in not one, but two languages, thus doubling the reader’s chances for enjoyment. The Bohn/Kelly Catullus makes a virtue of the necessity for censorship through a process of eroticisation of the act of expurgation. At the same time, eccentric as it is, the volume compares very well to translations for many decades both before and after, for several reasons. At a time when selective reading of Catullus was the norm, the Bohn Catullus, by contrast, accounts for all the poems without exception, a coverage which compares well with, for instance, Macnaghten and Ramsay’s late Victorian schools’ edition of the Carmina, which omits forty-five poems, and even Fordyce’s lacunar edition of 1961, which omits 32. Kelly gives prose translations for all but eight poems, compared to the more than twenty poems omitted by George Lamb (Gaisser 2001: 116). Bohn’s Catullus would be reprinted by Bell & Sons in 1884 and again as late as 1909, thus keeping a complete, if problematic, edition of all the poems in circulation in a climate in which, as Lefevere observes, until as late as 1980 “it was perfectly possible for generations of freshmen to read Catullus in anthologies without suspecting that he had ever written anything vaguely resembling the obscene” (1984: 139).

Conclusion We will end this brief survey of Bohn’s output and publishing strategies by suggesting briefly the reasons for his success in keeping difficult works in circulation. Undoubtedly, timing had something to do with it, his Libraries being established as they were in the decade preceding Lord Campbell’s Obscene Publications Act. The timing, however, cannot be the only reason. Importantly, Bohn’s choice of more risqué material is taken from non-contemporary sources, classical texts for the most part. The older the work, the more able to ride out temporary unfashionability: as Lefevere has observed in relation to canon formation, “works of literature canonized more than five centuries ago tend to remain secure in their position, no matter how often the dominant poetics itself is subject to change” (Lefevere 1992: 19).

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Furthermore, although the low cost of the volumes in the Bohn Libraries made them available to a wide readership, their lack of literary pretensions, their unassuming ‘literalism’, seems also to have made them to a degree culturally invisible, as is suggested by the gently satirical obituary in Punch. Prose translations of poetry, in particular, were of little consequence in the literary environment of the time. A substantial 1872 survey of Catullus translations in the British Quarterly Review lists John Nott (1795), Lamb (1821), Martin (1861), Cranstoun (1867), and Robinson Ellis (1871), but entirely ignores the 1854 Bohn volume. Bohn’s success in avoiding censure may also have had something to do with his avoidance of the most incendiary material, notably French fiction, which is conspicuous by its absence from his Libraries (Haynes 2006: 8). The most important reason, however, for Bohn’s commercial success and comfortably scandalfree career must be the degree to which his policy of widespread, but restrained, expurgation kept him ostensibly within the margins of Victorian decorum.  

Carol O’Sullivan University of Portsmouth

Notes 1. More comprehensive accounts of Bohn’s career can be found in, for example, Mock 1991, Pearce 1992, Lister 1988. I am indebted to Derek Jones for several valuable references supplied at http://www.derekjones.org/Bohn.htm and in private correspondence. 2. This Advertisement also appeared glued into the front endpapers of early volumes. I am indebted to Derek Jones for a copy of the text. 3. See The Times 8 September 1888, p. 4. The lawsuit was thrown out. 4. One correspondent for the American periodical Putnam’s Monthly Magazine considered that the volumes should never have been allowed into the United States: ‘While these libraries merit the praise we have given them, they also contain some of the filthiest and most indecent books ever printed in the language. These, of course, we do not here indicate by name; but it would, certainly, be well for the American agents to exercise a more rigid censorship on their importations than they seem to have practiced hitherto (6:32, August 1855, p. 215). Given the date of this article, it is plausible that the correspondent referred to the two volumes of Bohn ‘erotica’ (see below). 5. Cordasco’s dating of these volumes is unfortunately not reliable. Both the British Library catalogue and Derek Jones (“The Bohn Bibliography”) confirm that Cervantes’ Exemplary Novels were first published by Bohn in 1855, not 1846 and Hamilton’s Grammont’s memoirs of the court of Charles the Second in 1846, not 1853.



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6. Weedon 1992: 25. Weedon’s annual sales figures for the various Bohn Libraries show that the Extra Volumes sold between c.1000 and c.4500 volumes a year between 1865 and 1876. The last Extra Volumes were printed in 1875 and the last year for which sales figures are given is 1876. Sales had, however, improved noticeably in the early 1870s, which further supports the hypothesis that the series was discontinued for moral, as opposed to commercial, reasons. 7. Or a second, depending on how one interprets ‘trusantem’; cf. Thomson 1997: 339–340; also Adams 1990: 146, n.1. 8. On the delicate balance between understanding and not understanding, see Ó Cuilleanáin 1999: 32.

References Adams, J. N. 1990. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins UP. “Advertisement”. 1848. In The Autobiography of Goethe. Translated from the German by John Oxenford, Esq. London: Henry G. Bohn. n.p. Altick, Richard D. 1963. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Bassnett, Susan and Peter France. 2006. “Translation, politics and the law”. In The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English. Volume 4: 1790–1900, Peter France and Kenneth Haynes (eds), 48–58. Oxford: OUP. Bell, Edward. 1924. George Bell, Publisher: A Brief Memoir. London: Chiswick Press (privately printed). Bohn, Henry G. 1847. “Preface”. In The Works of Frederick Schiller: Historical Dramas. Translated from the German. London: Henry G. Bohn. Bohn, Henry G. 1849. “Preface”. In The Works of Frederick Schiller: Early Dramas and Romances. Translated from the German. London: Henry G. Bohn. Bohn, Henry G. 1860. “Preface”. In The Epigrams of Martial, translated into English prose, each accompanied by one or more verse translations from the works of English poets, and various other sources ii–v. London: Henry G. Bohn. “Bohn and His Library: The History of Both, with A Noteworthy New Foot-note”. 1904. The Book Monthly 1: 462–467. Chilton, Paul. 1984. “Introduction”. In Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron, trans. Paul Chilton 7–33. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cogny M. and Mme Cogny. 1979. “Euphémisme et contre-euphémisme: d’après quelques traductions de Pétrone”. In Colloque sur la Rhétorique, R. Chevallier (ed.), 293–302. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Constantine, David. 2006. “German”. In The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English. Volume 4: 1790–1900, Peter France and Kenneth Haynes (eds), 211–229. Oxford: OUP. Cordasco, Francesco. 1951. The Bohn Libraries: A History and a Checklist. New York: Burt Franklin. Currie, H. MacL. 1996. “English translations of the classics in the 19th century”. In Aspects of Nineteenth-Century British Classical Scholarship, H. D. Jocelyn, (ed.), 50–58. Liverpool: Liverpool Classical Monthly.

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DeLaura, David J. 1975. “Froude’s anonymous translation of Goethe”. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 69: 187–196. The Elegies of Propertius, The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the Kisses of Johannes Secundus. Literally translated, and accompanied by poetical translations from various sources. To which are added, the Love Epistles of Aristaenetus. Translated by R. Brinsley Sheridan and Mr. Halhed. 1854. London: Henry G. Bohn. Findlen, Paula. 1993. “Humanism, politics and pornography in Renaissance Italy”. In The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, Lynn Hunt (ed.) 49–108. New York: Zone Books. Gaisser, Julia Haig (ed.). 2001. Catullus in English. London: Penguin. Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation [Seuils], trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: CUP. Haynes, Kenneth. 2006. “Translation and British Literary Culture”. In The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English. Volume 4: 1790–1900, Peter France and Kenneth Haynes (eds), 3–19. Oxford: OUP. Jones, Derek. n.d. “The Bohn bibliography” At www.derekjones.org/Bohn.htm [accessed 28 January 2007] Kearney, Patrick J. 1982. A History of Erotic Literature. Hong Kong: Parragon. Kendrick, Walter. 1996. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lefevere, André. 1984. “Translations and other ways in which one literature refracts another”. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 38:2: 127–142. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting, & the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge. Lister, Anthony. 1988. “Henry George Bohn (1796–1884): Bookseller, publisher and controversialist”. Antiquarian Book Monthly Review 15: 54–61 Merkle, Denise. 2002. “Presentation”. TTR 15 (2): 9–18 Mock, David B. 1991. “H. G. Bohn (London: 1831–1864)”. In British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820–1880 [Dictionary of Literary Biography 106], Patricia J. Anderson and Jonathan Rose (eds), 59–62. Detroit, MI/London: Gale Research Inc. “Obituary: Henry George Bohn”. 1884. In The Academy 26: 136–137. Ó Cuilleanáin, Cormac. 1999. “Not in front of the servants: Forms of bowdlerism and censorship in translation”. In The Practices of Literary Translation: Constraints and Creativity, Jean Boase-Beier and Michael Holman (eds), 31–44. Manchester: St. Jerome. Pearce, Brian Louis. 1992. “Henry George Bohn (1796–1884): ‘The Bookseller’”. RSA Journal 140: 788–790. Perrin, Noel. 1969. Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books. New York: Atheneum. The Poems of Catullus and Tibullus, and, The Vigil of Venus. A literal prose translation with notes, by Walter K. Kelly. To which are added the metrical versions of Lamb and Grainger, and a selection of versions by other writers. 1854. London: Henry G. Bohn. “Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix” (London: House of Commons, 1849, pp. vii–ix, 77–83, 124–125”. 2005. In Victorian Print Media: A Reader, Andrew King and John Plunkett (eds), 254–267. Oxford: OUP.



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Reynolds, Matthew. 2006. ‘Principles and Norms of Translation’. In The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English. Volume 4: 1790–1900, Peter France & Kenneth Haynes (eds), 62–82. Oxford: OUP. Sammons, Jeffrey L. 1992. “Introduction”. In The Ghost-Seer, Friedrich Schiller, i–xiii. Translated by Henry G. Bohn. Columbia, SC: Camden House. Smith, William (ed.). 1876. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: John Murray. Sullivan, J. P. 1991. Martial, the unexpected classic: A literary and historical study. Cambridge: CUP. Sullivan, J. P. and Boyle, A. J. 1996. “General Introduction”. In Martial in English, J. P. Sullivan and A. J. Boyle (eds), xv–xxxvii. London: Penguin. ‘Sylvanus Urban’ [pseudonym of the editors of Gentlemen’s Magazine]. 1884. ‘Table talk: Bohn’s libraries and the purchase of books.’ Gentleman’s Magazine 257: 413–414. Thomas, Donald. 1969. A Long Time Burning: The History of Literary Censorship in England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Thomson, D. F. S. (ed.). 1997. Catullus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Weedon, Alexis. 1992. Summary Statistics for George Bell & Sons and the Bohn Libraries 1865– 1920. Oxford/Bristol: HOBOD [History of the Book on Demand Series 1]. The Works of Apuleius, comprising the Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, the God of Socrates, the Florida, and his Defence, or A discourse on magic. To which are added, a metrical version of Cupid and Psyche, and Mrs. Tighe’s Psyche, a poem in six cantos. 1853. London: Henry G. Bohn.

Translating Europe The case of Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman agent of translation Cemal Demircioğlu

Okan University, Istanbul, Turkey

This paper examines the concept of agency by focusing retrospectively on the diverse translation practice of Ahmed Midhat (1844–1913), who was an important Ottoman novelist, translator, publisher, journalist and the owner of the newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat [Interpreter of Truth]. Ahmed Midhat’s writings provide an exemplary framework for rethinking agency in terms of multiple translation-related practices in a period of Ottoman contact with European culture in the late 19th century. Through the examination of his translation activity and discourse on translation, this paper will emphasize that Ahmed Midhat was a good example of provocative agency, (i) which generated significant dynamism in Ottoman writing, publishing and journalism, (ii) and which functioned as a “mediator” in conveying Western culture to Ottoman society by performing different forms of translation practices. He was also the major provocative figure in the so-called “classics debate” of 1897 which was on translating neo-European classical works into Ottoman Turkish. Thus, in his dialogue with Europe, Ahmed Midhat appears as an agent of translation in the private sphere who made a great contribution to the shaping and modernization of ­Ottoman culture and literature in the late 19th century. Key words: Ottoman translation; Ahmed Midhat; Tercüman-ı Hakikat (Interpreter of Truth); Classics debate; Tanzimat

1.

Introduction

The present paper attempts, on the one hand, to sketch a picture of Ahmed ­Midhat’s translation practices with a special focus on the title pages and prefaces of certain of his translated works. On the other hand, considering Ahmed Midhat an exemplary case of private agent of translation, this paper intends to highlight

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different forms of Ottoman transfer from European culture and literature in a period of transition from the East to the West continuing in the late nineteenth century. My main argument is that the cultural and literary items from a model culture may be transferred by means of free agents of translation to the receiving culture in a variety of culture-specific ways, especially to a culture which is in the process of shifting civilization. Seen as a significant “cultural entrepreneur” in the late Ottoman literary tradition,1 Ahmed Midhat deserves particularly close attention among the writers and translators of the Tanzimat [re-organization] period. In the discourse of a number of modern literary historians, critics and translation scholars, he has been described in various ways. For Mustafa Nihat Özön, eminent literary historian, lexicographer and secondary school teacher in the early republican period, Ahmed Midhat was “a famous person who wrote European-like novels” in Turkish literature in the late 19th century (Özön 1942: 82), and for Şevket Rado, literary historian, he was a “writing machine of 40 horse power who met the cultural needs of the Turkish generations of his time and wrote 150 works including novels, short stories and plays as well as works in history, philosophy, psychology and education”; he was a “novelist, short story writer, philosopher, scholar, historian, educator, researcher, bibliophile, printer and businessman” (Rado 1955: 9, 1986: 3). According to Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, famous novelist, critic, literary historian and professor of modern Turkish literature, he was “a huge apparatus for consumption”, “a giant who ate with no concern for digestion” but also a writer who “opened the gates to the short story and the novel through invention or adaptation” (Tanpınar 1988: 462–463). Fevziye Abdullah Tansel, scholar of modern Turkish literature, describes him as the one who “wrote the first indigenous examples of the story and novel” and “drew much attention to this genre with his translations and borrowings from French literature” (Tansel 1955: 109). In the words of Işın Bengi, who carried out the first doctoral research on Ahmed Midhat’s translations, he was “a gigantic figure” and “the eloquent mediator” who struggled in a revolutionary fashion “to introduce and establish what was missing in the home literary polysystem” (Bengi 1988: 288). According to Saliha Paker, who ascribed for the first time a particular status to Ahmed Midhat’s literary translations in her systemic analysis of translated literature in the Tanzimat period, he was “the leading advocate for an extreme form of ‘acceptability’”, and “in a sense, institutionalized it” (Paker 1991: 23). Not only these views but also my research carried out as part of my doctoral study on a selected corpus of the translational works of Ahmed Midhat (Demircioğlu 2005) indicate that his text production displays considerable diversity and provides us with a scope for studying the various “options” of Ottoman



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agents of translation in translating from European literatures and in enlarging the literary repertoires of his time by means of these options (for “option” see EvenZohar 2002a: 167). His translated works, as well as his discourse on translation, help show the culture-specific aspects of translation in the late Ottoman literary tradition. Adopting a provocative attitude in his translations, he produced a range of texts in his dialogue with Europe via cultural transfer by way of producing not only original works but also others in the form of conveying, borrowing, emulation, imitation, conversion, summary and conversation. It is interesting that some of his works which he based on a foreign source and which were perceived as unusual translations also provoked critical debate among his contemporaries.

2.

Considering agents of translation to be “Option makers”

In examining the concept of agency in translation, taking into account certain cases in which agents are responsible for the cultural transference through translation, John Milton points out that agents of translation may often combine various functions and appear as “translators, teachers, literary critics, publishers, journalists, politicians, patrons, literary salon organizers, even organizations such as NGOs”. According to Milton, agents are “individuals who devote great amount of energy, and even their own lives, to the cause of foreign literature, author or literary school, translating, writing articles, teaching and diffusing” (Milton 2006, and see Milton and Bandia’s Introduction to this volume, p. 1). In this framework, Milton’s definition allows us to infer at least two fundamental characteristics of agents of translation: first, agents may take on various identities or professions in the social life of a given culture, and, second, they may carry out intermediary roles in translationrelated practices, emerging as individuals with multi-functions. Agents appear as “option makers” from the perspective of Itamar Even­Zohar’s theory of “culture repertoire”, which is a productive theory suggesting a set of hypotheses for handling the procedures and products of transfer without excluding the notion of agency. In this framework, agents indicate known or unknown members of a given society who contribute to the organization of social life in varying degrees. They are “human elements” or “societies” who are obviously engaged in “the making of culture repertoire”, “material or semiotic import” and “transfer”. From the perspective of this theory, it is obvious that any reference to agents of translation also means referring to their proposals of different choices, alternatives or “options” which serve for the organization of social life (Even­Zohar 2002a: 166). Hence, one can think of “options” as ways that help a given society transform its somehow chaotic or disordered position into an ­organized

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one, as was observed during the process of shifting civilization in Ottoman culture which started during the eighteenth century and continued up to the decline of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. As a significant concept of Even-Zohar’s theory of “culture repertoire”, it seems clear that “option” points to agents who are involved in active decisionmaking. At this juncture, it appears as a notion closely related to the notion of planning or intervention of agents who are engaged in the making of “culture repertoire” via translation. Even-Zohar defines “culture planning” as a “deliberate act of intervention, either by power holders or by ‘free agents’ into an extant or a crystallizing repertoire”. Thus, his conception of “culture planning” helps us explain certain attempts not only by institutions, but also by people whom he identifies as “free agents” (Even-Zohar 2002b: 45, 1994: 8), all of whom were engaged in planning by means of translation. In other words, it draws our attention to change that may appear in the target culture through planning initiatives (see also Toury 2002: 151). Such initiatives can be seen in the creation of options for a variety of writing practices on the part of various Tanzimat writers and translators who were engaged in translating from European languages and literatures in order to meet the needs of the Ottoman target culture. In the context of Ottoman modernizing literature, it can be said that Ahmed Midhat’s options derived from his translational practices are good examples of a contribution to the making of Ottoman literary repertoires. In relation to “deliberate culture planning and the creation of new socio-political entities”, Even-Zohar also speaks of certain individuals, “mostly intellectuals or cultural entrepreneurs, or even makers of life images through poetry and fiction” as “idea-makers”. He refers to these individuals or a group of individuals in terms of “produc[ing] ideas – or at least images – that can be converted to alternative or new options for the repertoire of culture by which the life of societies is shaped and organized” (Even-Zohar 2004: 248–249). This is the point where Even-Zohar describes “idea-makers” as “option-devisers”, drawing our attention to the fact that they have been not only engaged in creating ideas as new options but also, most importantly, active in converting these ideas to socio-cultural reality by implanting them into the repertoire of culture. He states that option-devisers who become active in implementation also take on the role of entrepreneurs and thus, for him, it is adequate to call “idea-makers” “cultural entrepreneurs” (Even-Zohar 2004: 248–249). It seems obvious that this framework helps us reconsider agents – whether they are free or bound to an institution – not only to be actors who are involved in active decision-making and planning but also to be entrepreneurs who are active in creating ideas convertible to options for the organization of social life. Thus, the framework enables us to make special ­connections between agency and cultural entrepreneurship, as in the case of Ahmed Midhat.



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Ahmed Midhat appears as an “idea-maker” in certain cases since he played no small part in developing new tastes and interests among Ottoman public readers, still completely unacquainted with Western cultural and literary forms and aspirations. He aimed not only to entertain but also to instruct a reader of unsophisticated and unliterary tastes. Hence he functioned as a mediating channel in introducing Western material and intellectual developments to Ottomans with his novels and short stories which were regarded in modern scholarly discourse as popular and simple in both style and sentiment. Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar states that Ahmed Midhat’s writings on European science and philosophy, positivism, religion, the notion of social class, and private enterprise, all of which were published in Dağarcık [Memory] i.e. one of the magazines edited by Ahmed Midhat in 1870, reflect a comprehensive programme he proposed for Ottoman readers (Tanpınar 1998: 449). Thus, the concept of considering him an “idea-maker” is related to his activity of authoring enlightening pieces on many diverse topics which appealed to him. These works are outstanding in terms of his plain and intelligible language as well as of his aims to establish a direct dialogue with the reader and, most importantly, to introduce European material developments to Ottomans as options. This is why he was honoured by his readers with the title “hâce-i evvel” which means “the first teacher”. His decision to print his own books on a foot-operated printing press that he had established on the ground floor of his house in 1871 also shows him as a “cultural entrepreneur” in the private sphere. In the 1870s he had to shoulder the responsibility of earning a living for his family (Lewis 1960: 289), and this was one way he might increase the family income. Using his printing press to produce various literary periodicals, he would become quite an experienced printer in a few years. From 1878 onwards, he started publishing and editing Tercüman-i Hakikat, in which he serialized not only his own novels and short stories but also his translations. Contributing to the intellectual history of this period, this periodical was eventually to become the longest lasting newspaper in the history of the Turkish press. He opened his pages, especially those in the literary supplements of Tercüman-i Hakikat, to important discussions on cultural, literary and translational issues. By conducting a debate on the transfer of European neo-classics to Ottoman culture, Ahmed Midhat opened up discussion on the ways in which Europe could be the cultural and literary model for the Ottoman society. Furthermore, as Paker underlines, Ahmed Midhat was the first Turk who imported an incubator for chickens (kuluçka makinesi) – and also a modern beehive (fenni arıkovanı) – into Ottoman social life, using both on his farm in Beykoz, near Istanbul (Paker 2004: 4). What he was doing in Even-Zohar’s sense of entrepreneurship is actually to achieve a sort of “material or semiotic import” (Even-Zohar 2002a) by implanting an invention, i.e. the incubator or beehive, into modernizing social life of the

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Ottomans by capturing Western material developments. All these reflections of his textual production and business life show a planned programme he, as a deliberate agent of translation, was engaged in by producing new options and ideas to extend the cultural repertoire via transfer. Similar to Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Toury also takes agents as institutions or individuals that are active in planning. Toury considers planning to be associated with “making decisions for others to follow, whether the impetus for intervening originates within the group itself or outside of it” (Toury 2002: 151). He also points out that agents may occasionally prefer “to generate texts by translation – and then present them as non-translated entities (or sometimes the other way around)” (Toury 2002:159). Toury’s statement draws our attention to certain manipulations which one can find both in the production and presentation of texts produced by agents via translation. In the case of Ahmed Midhat, it is evident that some scholars are faced with certain problems in identifying whether certain of his texts are indigenous or translations although they were apparently generated based on a foreign source in another culture but presented by Ahmed Midhat as “non-translated entities”. Additionally, the options he offered for translating European classics into Ottoman Turkish in the so-called “classics debate” of 1897 can also be regarded as an unofficial site of literature planning. The conceptual frameworks outlined above help us to broadly understand the dynamics of change that may appear in Ottoman target culture through agents and agency of translation. I think that the notion of agency in connection with the notion of “multi-function”, “culture repertoire”, “option”, “planning”, “import”, “transfer” and “idea-makers” opens up a wider vision to understand textual productions of various Tanzimat writers and translators who were engaged as cultural “mediators” in translating from European languages and literatures (cf. “eloquent mediator” in Bengi 1988: 388). From these perspectives, Ottoman agents may appear on the one hand to have adopted innovative, as seen in the case of Ahmed Midhat, or conservative attitudes towards translating from a ‘foreign’ culture and literature. On the other hand, the notion of planning allows us to consider ­Ottoman writer-translators to be agents generating a new literature with certain policies into which translation would introduce new options for renewing Ottoman repertoires. Especially from the perspective of planning, discourses on cultural and literary imports from Europe, for instance Ahmed Midhat’s views in the “classics debate”, reflect overt and/or covert planning acts. In the Ottoman cultural and literary context of the late 19th century, Ahmed Midhat’s textual productions, say his “options”, thus appear as good examples of a contribution to the making of Ottoman literary repertoires.



3.

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Cultural and literary implications of translation in the Tanzimat period

Ahmed Midhat produced most of his works for the education of readers from the Ottoman public and managed to gain an enormous number of readers when we compare him to his contemporaries such as Namık Kemal, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem, Şemseddin Sami, Nabizade Nazım etc. In fact, he has been called the writer of the Tanzimat period (Okay 2002: 130). In Turkish history, the period which extended from the proclamation of the Noble Rescript of Gülhane in 1839 to the establishment of a parliamentary regime in 1876 is known as the Tanzimat, i.e. re-organization period. Since Ottoman society was subjected to a number of important administrative, legal and educational reforms, the Tanzimat is regarded as representing the intensive beginnings of the Europeanization movement, together with counter-forces opposing the reforms in the context of their resistance to a shift in civilization (Lewis 1968: 74–128; Tanpınar 1988: 52–73). According to Saliha Paker, the Tanzimat marks indeed a historical turning point in terms of a change in the Ottoman system of culture and literature. Paker states that “not only in the literary polysystem but also in the broader socio-cultural polysystem ‘established models’ were considered outdated and rejected by the young writers who looked to the West, especially to France, for innovations of all kinds” (Paker 1986: 78). From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and particularly during and after the Tanzimat period, the spread of Western ideas and a familiarization with Western social and political materials were strongly motivated by the rise of a new literature which started to differ both in form and content from Ottoman traditional literature (Evin 1983: 9–21; Tanpınar 1988: 249–300; Paker 1991: 18–25; Bengi 1990: 70–84; Berk 1999: 11–18). In this period, French literature gradually began to replace “the classics of Iran as the source of inspiration and the model for imitation” in the formation of a new literature (Lewis 1968: 136). There was a lack of non-canonized written literature for the urban population, hence a need for new literary models in a new language. It was the translations which appeared in newspapers and magazines that served to fill such deficiency and need, and translations played pivotal roles not only by providing Ottomans with reading materials but also by making Western culture known to Ottoman readers. Surveying the late nineteenth century translation activity from the perspective of Westernization, Özlem Berk states that “[literary] translations from the Western languages played an important role and function in the Turkish modernisation process, as manifested in the form of Westernisation starting in the mid-nineteenth century” (Berk 2006: 1).

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Not only the emergence of new literary models and genres adopted in time by Ottoman writers and translators but also interest in various fields such as Western thinking discovered by Ottoman readers was the result of the first translations from the West, mainly from French literature.2 The emergence of translations was naturally a part of major cultural, literary, and institutional transformations and reforms in Ottoman society, and the year 1859 was an important moment since the first three translations from French were published and circulated in that year: Terceme-i Manzume [Translations of Verse] by İbrahim Şinasi, Muhave­ rat-ı Hikemiyye [Philosophical Dialogues] by Münif Paşa, and Terceme-i Telemak3 [The Translation of Telemak] by Yusuf Kamil Paşa. These translations introduced Western poetry, philosophy as well as the novel to Ottoman readers, each of which actually represented a new literary genre (Tanpınar 1988: 150; Paker 1991: 19; Evin 1983: 41–46). This is why they are regarded in modern scholarly discourse on ­Ottoman translation history as indicating the beginning of the literary Tanzimat in Ottoman culture. From the beginning of the literary Tanzimat on, there was another medium which fulfilled an essential role in shaping public opinion in relation to political, cultural and literary progress: the press (Özön 1934: 141–143; Sevük 1944: 562–566; Lewis 1968: 146–150; Tanpınar 1988: 249–252; Evin 1983: 46–48). Newspapers, literary journals and magazines functioned as important means of communication and also started to give considerable space to translations, particularly from French literature. They often serialized translations of novels and short stories, some of which also circulated on the market after being printed in book form. Especially after the first parliamentary regime was established in 1876, with Sultan Abdülhamid II on the throne, there was a considerable increase in the number of newspapers, journals and literary magazines (Öksüz 1995; Kolcu 1999). But the reign of Abdülhamit II (1876–1908) was also the period of increasing repression and censorship (see Kudret 1997: 631–676; İskit 2000: 68–90). Ahmet Ö. Evin, who examines the origins and development of the Turkish novel, indicates that with the advent of the reign of Abdülhamit II, the intellectual milieu as well as the political and cultural context of Turkish literature started to change, and hence the era of the Tanzimat was over. According to Evin, Turkish literature began to be concerned with the social rather than the political aspects of Turkish life (Evin 1983: 79). In the changed political climate of the post-Tanzimat period, Evin portrays Ahmed Midhat as “the person responsible for setting a strong trend of didacticism”, emphasizing that he never developed “a novelistic art or even a sense of style” and adopted the style of the storyteller (meddah) who lengthens his narrative (Evin 1983: 82). Such statements reflect, of course, critical evaluations of his approach to literary writing. Ahmed Midhat was also subjected to critical evaluations in terms of his translation strategies. In the following section, I will



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review his appearance as a translator in the discourse of two literary historians in the republican period.

4.

Ahmed Midhat’s image as translator in the discourse of literary historians

In his Avrupa Edebiyatı ve Biz: Garpten Tercümeler II [European Literature and Us: Translations from the West], Ismail Habib Sevük, a well-known literary historian and secondary school teacher, regards Ahmed Midhat as an advocate of “sense-for-sense translation” (mealen) as opposed to Şemseddin Sami, famous Tanzimat novelist, translator and lexicographer who supported translation as the same (aynen) (Sevük 1941: 608). Sevük was critical of Ahmed Midhat because of his “domesticating” strategy (Venuti 1995: 242) that he performed on ‘foreign’ texts. Sevük had in mind a polarized dichotomy between free (mealen) and faithful (sadık) translation in evaluating Ottoman translators and their practices. This is why he seems to have excluded “unfaithful translations” (e.g. mealen) from his notion of “good translating”, and tended to identify these not as translations. On the other hand, he supported translating a foreign text faithfully at the expense of breaking target language conventions or of resulting in some kind of foreignness in Turkish. Sevük’s criticism of Ahmed Midhat’s Sid’in Hulâsası, a famous summary translation of Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, (see section 6.6.1) which was subjected to a discussion in the “classics debate” of 1897, clearly demonstrates his conception of fidelity to content and form. According to Sevük, the summary translation was one of the outdated Ottoman practices of terceme. Actually, Sevük was much more critical of Ahmed Midhat within the context of “our [Turkish] understanding of translating” from the West in the late nineteenth century. He criticized Ahmed Midhat for not producing a ‘proper translation’, in other words, for not following a policy of accuracy in translation. Claiming that Ahmed Midhat did not produce even a summary (hulâsa), he identified Sid’in Hulâsası as an explicatory version (tavzih) of its original. According to Sevük, Ahmed Midhat expanded the material belonging to the mise en scène in the original. He also declared that the summary was much more detailed and lengthy than the original and contrasted to what the title of the text was indicating (Sevük 1941: 36–38). For Sevük, Ahmed Midhat performed literal renderings of certain short passages, generating a strange (nakl) ‘conveying’ of the original. In a similar vein, in 19uncu Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi [A History of Nineteenth Century Turkish Literature], Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar criticized Ahmed Midhat’s approach to translation. According to Tanpınar, Ahmed Midhat did not

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restrict himself to making changes in his translations of European novelists which were necessary for the mental progress of his readers (Tanpınar 1988: 456 and see also footnote 17 in this work; Bengi 1988, 1999). This assessment appears as a significant point of departure in Tanpınar’s review of Ahmed Midhat’s literary translations. Tanpınar pointed to an apparent correlation between Ahmed Midhat’s tutorship and his purpose in doing translation, and looked critically at Ahmed Midhat as a writer who attempted to immediately translate the materials which he encountered in Western novels or articles in newspapers in a free and expanded way. According to Tanpınar, Ahmed Midhat reads absolutely anything he finds or, to use an analogy, he eats with no concern for digestion, like a giant. That is why Tanpınar rates Ahmed Midhat’s literary translations as “superficial exchange” (Tanpınar 1988: 462). Similarly, Tanpınar speaks of Ahmed Midhat’s conception of exchange when reviewing his adventure novels (Tanpınar 1988: 471). Tanpınar also criticized Ahmed Midhat for his random selection of translations, which he perceived as unconscious and lacking reason (Bengi 1988, 1999). Tanpınar mentioned that, for Ahmed Midhat, Cervantes would be the same as Octave Feuillet, and similarly Victor Hugo the same as Xavier de Montepin and Eugène Sue, and even Émile Zola could easily be sacrificed for Paul de Kock (Tanpınar 1988: 471). Even though Tanpınar was critical of Ahmed Midhat’s competence in writing fiction, as well as of his selections and policy in translation, he acknowledged that Ahmed Midhat opened several basic doors in improving the novel and story by way of “invention” as well as “adaptation” (Tanpınar 1988: 463). Furthermore, his assessments of Ahmed Midhat’s approach to translation draw attention to his diverse practice of text production and his ways of translation, whereby some works are identified by Tanpınar as “adaptations” or written in the manner of Western works.

5.

The “Classics debate” of 1897: A call for Ottoman literary progress

During the late nineteenth century, translation was indeed a distinct subject in the Ottoman system of culture and literature. One of the most noticeable ideas on translation was the need to translate from the West, and translation played a formative role in Ottoman cultural and literary life (Demircioğlu 2005: 153, 171). In this context, Ottoman literary as well as non-literary agents who expressed their views on translation focused essentially on the significance of translating European literary works into Turkish. They held both explicitly and implicitly that translation was an instrument for Ottoman cultural and literary development (terakki) from the Tanzimat period onwards.



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The “classics debate”4 was sparked off by an article entitled “Müsabaka-i ­Kalemiyye İkram-ı Aklâm” [Writing Competition, Writers’ Gifts], by Ahmed ­Midhat in 1897, and continued for approximately six months on the pages of various newspapers and magazines.5 The debate discussed whether Ottomans needed to translate or imitate European works of literature, especially European neo-classics, in order to achieve their own cultural and literary progress. Ahmed Midhat drew attention to the translation of classical works from the West as a means of acquiring European literary development. He called on his contemporaries to translate European classics, referring to Racine, Corneille, Shakespeare and Goethe, and a number of Ottoman writers participated in the debate, thus responding to his invitation: Ahmed Cevdet, writer and chief editor of the newspaper Ikdam, Cenab Şahabeddin, poet of the New Literature movement and translator, Necib Asım, writer, translator, philologist, teacher and parliamentarian, İsmail Avni, writer, Hüseyin Daniş, poet, writer and translator of Omar Hayyam’s Rubaiyyat, Ahmed Rasim, writer, novelist and translator, Hüseyin Sabri, writer and translator, and Kemal Paşazade Said, eminent translator, teacher and member of the Supreme Council (Kaplan 1998: 8–12). As the title of Ahmed Mithat’s initial article indicates, he called on the ‘talented pens’ of his time to make European classical works known to Ottoman readers. At this juncture his discourse emerges as a good example to illuminate how translation was related to the notion of progress in literature. Actually, his attempt to arouse interest in translating European classics goes back to the idea he had launched in his preface to his famous summary translation of Corneille’s Le Cid. With this work, Ahmed Midhat placed a strong emphasis on the need to translate European classical works for Ottoman readers, offering his summary (hulâsa) as a product comparable with translation (terceme) approximately seven years before the “classics debate” of 1897. In the preface, he says “People who are not aware of these classical works cannot reach the great progress of Europe” (Ahmed Midhat 1890–1891: 6). His focus was on transferring European classics and accepting them as models (meşk) to produce Ottoman texts comparable to those of Europe. This notion is of course significant in terms of his understanding of the translational contact with Western literatures. He tended to reiterate the view that European texts could also be appropriated. His notion of model (meşk) indicates that he had a particular approach to translating from European literatures by means of a number of strategies (See Appendix II). But what is important is his perception of Europe as a source for importing new literary products into the “Ottoman interculture” (Paker 2002: 120), which includes an overlap of Turkish, Persian, Arabic and French cultures in the late 19th century. He even suggested that the great works of Europe needed to be accepted and loved as literary models for ­Ottoman progress in literature (Ahmed Midhat 1890–1891: 4–5).

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A few years later, in the course of the “classics debate”, he again called attention to the same issue and claimed that translations of such classical works – by European neo-classical, but not Greek classical writers – would serve the progress (terakki) of Ottoman readers. But what is interesting in his discourse is that, though he accepted translating from neo-classical and romantic writers (i.e. ­ Corneille, Goethe, Racine and Shakespeare), he rejected translating the works of realist French writers such as Zola, Richepin and Bourget. The reason behind this was his perception of realist writers as harmful to Ottoman moral values at that time. Another important point seems to be his conception of imitation (taklid) which he discussed in relation to translating European classical works. Ahmed Midhat approved of the imitation of French literary works if they would serve as literary models (Kaplan 1998: 47; Paker 2006: 334–336; Demircioğlu 2005: 153–158). But at the same time, he emphasized the significance of translation which, according to him, would very much serve Ottoman literary progress. Statements in the debate on the connections between translation and imitation reveal that participants generally agreed that European classics could or should be translated but not imitated. This idea, of course, points to a principal difference which seems to have started in identifying translation by considering it separate from the practice of imitation in the late nineteenth century (see also Paker 2006: 344). However, it is apparent that imitation was overtly discussed in relation to conveying (nakl) and translating European classical works. Thus, imitation comes up in connection with translation in the discourse of the “classics debate” as well as the debate on “Decadents”. In other words, it appears as part of Ottoman practice of text production via translation. As an individual agent of translation, Ahmed Midhat seems to have adopted, as Saliha Paker proposes, a “permissive” attitude towards translating from a ‘foreign’ culture and literature. At this juncture, Paker interprets Ahmed Midhat’s permissiveness as “reflecting an ‘imperialist’ attitude in which otherness is denied and transformed”, using the term “imperialist” to describe “assimilating strategies” performed not only by Midhat but also by other Ottoman literary figures (Paker 2006: 331). I think that Ahmed Midhat’s assimilating strategy can be clearly observed in the works, especially those he produced based on a foreign text via translation by referring to himself as the writer. In this manner, his translational terms and concepts provided in ‘Appendix I’ may also be taken as the actual indications of his “imperialist” attitude in translating texts from the West to the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century.



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Examining Ahmed Midhat’s translation discourse through paratexts

In this section, I will focus on the paratextual data of certain translational works by Ahmed Midhat, offering a descriptive analysis to explore various aspects of his translation practice as well as his discourse on translation. In order to re-evaluate the concept of translation equivalence in the literary translations of Ahmed Midhat and to reconstruct his translational norms, Işın Bengi makes use of, for the first time, paratextual data such as title pages, prefaces and epilogues in her doctoral thesis (Bengi 1990). Bengi thinks of paratextual data as reflecting the cultural and literary constraints which are necessary for the understanding of the target literary system at the time. Similarly, in examining the uses of paratexts in translation research, Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar also emphasizes that “a critical description of paratextual elements surrounding translations can be instrumental in bringing to light the divergent concepts and definitions of translation in a specific period within a culture”. Borrowing from Gérard Genette the concept of “paratext”, Tahir-Gürçağlar critically examines two cases from the Turkish system of translated literature in the 1940s, and refers to paratexts as “presentational materials accompanying translated texts and the text-specific metadiscourses formed directly around them” (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2002: 44). She draws attention to paratexts as “a third type of material, largely liminal in nature, which goes unmentioned” (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2002: 44). Thus, in my examination of the paratextual data, I will deal with how texts are identified, described or named by Ahmed Midhat and concentrate not only on the title pages and prefaces, but also on the terms and concepts related to translation. This will help us to recognize at the macro level the variety of ways in which translation was practiced.

6.1 Translation as Iktibas: Borrowing from Emile Augier’s L’Aventurière Nedamet mi? Heyhat! [Remorse? Alas!] was a novel acquired by Ahmed Midhat from the French dramatist Emile Augier’s L’Aventurière, which was first serialized in Tercüman-ı Hakikat and then published in book form in Istanbul in 1888–1889. On the title page, Ahmed Midhat refers to himself as the writer of the text, although the name of the original writer was apparently mentioned. In his long preface, “A Friendly Talk in an Introduction”, he starts first by giving background information about the history of the novel in France. Reviewing the novel as a new developing genre in Ottoman literature, Ahmed Midhat’s assessments illuminate how Ottoman writers had developed intertextual relations mostly with French sources.

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In his preface, Ahmed Midhat compares Emile Augier’s literary writing with that of Racine and Corneille, raising him to the level of a respected writer and also describing L’Aventurière as a valuable verse play in terms of its moral principles. Ahmed Midhat’s explanations on the structure and literary aspects of the source text demonstrate that he performed certain modifications on the French original at various levels. Not only did he convert (tahvil) a verse play into an ­Ottoman Turkish prose narrative, referring to particular difficulties in translating such a great work into verse, but he also changed the title of the original from L’Aventurière to Nedamet mi? Heyhat! since he found the name of the original undeserving to convey such an elegant, philosophical and fine work to Turkish for the sake of Ottoman readership. The adjustments he performed at the structural and linguistic levels may be the essential reason for his reference to himself not as the translator but as the writer (see also Bengi 1990: 130–132). Ahmed Midhat also acquaints his readers with his translation strategy, indicating that he is not in favour of word-for-word translation (terceme-i ayniyye). He says We are not in favour of translation as the same. We read a sentence, a statement, or even a page written in French and rewrite it independently in Ottoman. That is why our translations appear as if they were originally written in Ottoman. Let us translate Emile Augier’s Serseri [L’Aventurière] in that way. But this work was not written with such an ordinary prose… We actually considered a great deal how we could translate such a work written so meticulously. Then suddenly we remembered the novel Amiral Bing, which we had written previously by way of (Ahmed Midhat 1888–1889: 9) translation. 

Generally speaking, the preface gives us significant clues to understand culturespecific ways of Ottoman textual production via translation. It highlights the fact that there were a group of people who either ‘translated’ from or ‘imitated’ European novels in Ottoman culture in the late nineteenth century. Not only this work but also his other borrowings which he published in his series of Letaif-i Rivayat [Finest Stories] a collection of his short stories published as 25 series between 1870 and 1895, indicate that Ahmed Midhat appropriates many novels by translation (terceme) as well as in other ways related to translation. In his borrowing i.e. İki Hüdakar [Two Cheats] published in a series of Letaif-i Rivayat, whose story was based on an anecdote in a French newspaper, he clearly explains his assimilating attitude: For many years, my readers have been familiar with my approach, by which I perform many adjustments on the novels I appropriate from Europe by translation, and then recommend for the sake of Ottoman morals… I make the idea



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of changing more advanced, especially with respect to the issue of borrowing. I have never been like a prisoner within the borders of the works I have borrowed. ­Taking only the idea [of the original], I rewrite a new work based on that idea.  (Ahmed Midhat 1893–1894: 2–3).

Among his borrowings, Nedamet mi? Heyhat! appears as a significant work in which he transformed an original play into a novel by means of translation. Thus Ahmed Midhat’s conception of borrowing shows us that he always tends to perform certain adjustments on his borrowings, especially at the structural level, – even on the texts he identifies as translation (terceme). With regard to his idea of making adjustments in such borrowings, his translation strategy appears to take the idea from the source text and “rewrite” (yeniden kaleme almak) it on the basis of that idea, and hence spreading it in Turkish. This may be the reason why he refers to himself as the writer of such works and thus describes some of his borrowings as texts “stolen” (müsterak) from foreign sources, especially from French, for instance his Diplomalı Kız [Girl with a Diploma], a short story also published in his series of Letaif-i Rivayat in 1889–1890.

6.2 Translation as Nazire: Emulation of Alexandre Dumas Père’s Le Comte du Monte Cristo Hasan Mellâh yahut Sır İçinde Esrar [Sailor Hasan or Secrets in the Secret] was published by Kırk Ambar in 1874–75 as a novel which attempted to emulate Alexandre Dumas Père’s Le Comte du Monte Cristo. In the preface, “Introduction” (Mukaddime), Ahmed Midhat refers to himself as the writer, expressing his intention to contribute to the progress of Ottoman literary writing with this work. Informing his readers to acknowledge this work not as a translation or imitation, he presents his text as an indigenous work coming out by emulation of a foreign novel (Ahmed Midhat 1874–1875: 1). In the light of Gideon Toury’s translation postulates, i.e. “source-text”, “transfer” and “relationship” (Toury 1995: 33), one can safely consider that the transfer relationship between a target text and its “assumed” source may involve a cross-textual relationship. In other words, on the basis of the transfer postulate, it may be inferred that one can make use of structural and/or narrative elements of the original in the translational relationship with its source. Ahmed Midhat’s comments on the plot of both Hasan ­Mellah… and his other novel Haydut Montari [Bandit Montari] (1887–1888), both of which were identified by Midhat as emulation, reveal that he tended to forge cross-textual relationships with his French originals. Especially in his preface to Haydut Montari, he makes clear the issue of emulating French novels, which he evidently

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performed as a functional strategy of assimilation in the production of his prose narratives in Turkish. He says: The plot of Hasan Mellah was not as extensive as the plot of Le Comte de Monte Cristo. Neither is the plot of this novel, Haydut Montari, as extensive as the plot of the novel Simon et Marie which we have emulated… We have followed many great European writers, for instance, Alexandre Dumas and his son, Octave Feuillet, Gaboriaux and even Paul de Kock. We have not only translated but also emulated their works, and won the appreciation of our respected readers with our industriousness in the art of the novel.  (Ahmed Midhat 1887–1888: 3–4)

These statements indicate that nazire signifies cross-textual transfer in which the emulator could make use of the story, theme or plot of the original and modify it to fit in the target cultural and literary environment. From the perspective of Paker’s interpretation of Ahmed Midhat’s translation discourse as reflecting an “imperialist” attitude (Paker 2006: 331), I consider that nazire may indicate one of the ways to assimilate foreign texts into the Ottoman system of culture and literature that was in formation.

6.3 Translation as Terceme: Translating Paul de Kock’s La Fille aux trois jupons Üç Yüzlü Bir Karı [A Woman with Three Faces] was a novel translated by both Ahmed Midhat and Ebüzziya Tevfik from the French novelist Paul de Kock’s La Fille aux trois jupons in 1877. In the preface, “To Readers” [“Kâriîne”], the translators who refer to themselves as “mütercimler” [translators], designate their text as a story that deserves to be read by the Ottomans. Drawing attention not only to the style but also to the original writer since both are unknown to the target readership, they introduce Paul de Kock as an important French prose-writer, well-known in France as well as in other European countries, who writes tragic works (facia) in particular. Discussing their translation strategy, Midhat and Tevfik mention that they did not perform a word-for-word translation (harfiyyen terceme) because they considered that it was nearly impossible to perform a literal translation. They emphasize that it would have been difficult to convey (nakl) each property in the SL to the TL through literal rendering. But they state too that they did not perform a free translation since they believed that those who have not lived in Paris could not understand the beauty (letafet), the signs (rumuz) and the wit (nikat) inherent in Paul de Kock’s novel. At this point, the translators explain their choice of translation strategy as follows:



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Therefore, we rewrote the sense of the original story in Turkish… Our success is due to never distorting the style and story-line of the original, and to demonstrating both the structure of the story and the various manifestations of humankind in the same way Paul de Kock did.   (Ahmed Midhat and Ebüzziya Tevfik 1877: 2)

The statements of the translators draw our attention to the close relationship between “translation” and “rewriting” (Lefevere 1992: 1–9, 47) in their dialogue with European literature. At the discourse level, it is evident that Ahmed Midhat and Ebüzziya Tevfik followed a strategy they defined as “rewriting the sense of the original” in the target language. Perhaps more important than that, they would follow, announcing to their readers, the same strategy in translating other stories written in this new style, as well as those by Paul de Kock. Their statements about the structural modification of the original are interesting as they declare that they never distorted the structure and the action line or plot of the source text in the process of rewriting even though they describe their rewriting strategy as “translation and writing” (terceme ve tahrir) as well as “examining and purchasing” (mütalaa ve iştira). Thus in this context, one can safely consider that rewriting appears as translation, which indicates a culture-specific practice of terceme in Ottoman culture at that time.

6.4 Translation as Muhavere: Conversation with John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science This work was published in the form of a book in 1895–1896 with the permission of The Sublime Ministry of Education after being serialized in Tercüman-ı Hakikat. Interestingly on its title page, two titles and two writers are given. One is Nizâ-ı İlm ü Din [Conflict between Religion and Science], and the title J. W. ­Draper who was introduced as a professor at the New York School of Science is designated the writer (muharrir) of this work. The other title given below is İslâm ve Ulûm [Islam and Science] and Ahmed Midhat refers to himself as the writer (muharrir) of this second work. The paratextual information on the title page implies that there are two works packaged together in one volume, and this explains why there are also several prefaces entitled “Warning” (İhtar), “Our Introduction” (Bizim Mukaddimemiz) and “Draper’s Introduction and Our Examinations” (Draper’in Mukaddimesi ve Mütaalatımız). In the preface titled “Warning”, Ahmed Midhat is conscious of such a presentation. Offering two titles and therefore presenting two works in one volume, he mentions that the first title is the literal translation of Draper’s book Les Conflits

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de la science et la religion. A reference to a French title and source shows that it was translated from French i.e. the mediating language. Midhat states that the second title represents his own work, which consists of his response to Draper’s text, including his commentary and critique. What is interesting about this work is its overall arrangement. Ahmed Midhat draws attention to the fact that it is an intermixed (mütedahil) work, and this is why he arranged it in a fragmentary fashion. First presenting certain parts from Draper’s work in translation printed in small fonts, he then offers his responses printed in relatively large fonts. He suggests that if one wishes to obtain the translation of Draper’s work, or his own full response, one should bring together the parts printed with either small or large fonts. In the second preface, titled “Our Introduction”, Ahmed Midhat gives information about the source writer and the content of this work. He explains the reasons why he is responding to Draper’s main claim, which is based on the notion that there is a conflict between religion and science. He introduces Draper to Ottoman readers as an important writer who won fame particularly with his book on the history of European philosophical progress that had also been translated into French, German, Italian, Russian and Serbian (Ahmed Midhat 1895–1896: 5–6). The essential reason for his choosing to translate Les Conflits de la science et la religion is related to the content. Ahmed Midhat believes that Draper’s work was written deliberately against the institution of religion. Hence taking a defensive attitude in responding to this work, he tries to prove that there is no such conflict but rather harmony between religion and science in the case of Islam which is lacking in the case of Christianity. In harmony with his purpose of translating Les Conflits de la science et la religion, Ahmed Midhat arranges the Turkish text in the form of a conversation (muhavere). In this sense, he states that he does not offer a full translation of Draper’s work, mentioning that he translates necessary words or sentences or parts uttered by Draper. Importantly, in the cases when Draper repeats himself, Ahmed ­Midhat omits such repetitive and useless parts, and follows the strategy of abridgement (tarik-i ihtisar). But he underscores that he still does not move away from Draper’s main idea. What is of utmost significance here is that he calls attention to the essential task of an interpreter which he defines as faithfully interpreting the original utterance of a person. This reminds us that Ahmed ­Midhat tends to regard himself as an interpreter (terceman) in his conversation with Draper. Identified as an intermixed work in the form of conversation, his text includes not only some translated parts from a foreign work but also his response (cevab) to that work which constitutes indigenous writing. Without performing a full translation, he carries out, in some cases, certain abridgements to the source text



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material. ­Although he does not carry out a full translation, he identifies his act of translation and hence his product as translation (terceme).

6.5 Translation as Nakl: Conveying Adolf Mützelburg’s Der Held von Garika Konak yâhut Şeyh Şâmil’in Kafkasya Muhârebâtında Bir Hikâye-i Garîbe [Mansion or a Strange Story about Şeyh Şamil’s War in the Caucasus] was published in Istanbul in 1878–1879 as a historical novel coming out in translation as part of the New Library publications [Yeni Kütüphane] which were promoted by Tercüman-ı Hakikat. A note on the title page indicates that this work was transferred (nakl) from German into Ottoman Turkish by Ahmed Midhat and a German translator Vizental [in Turkish transcription], both of them refer to themselves as the nâkil [one who transfers] on the title page. In the preface, “Introduction” (Mukaddime), the nâkils express the fact that they serialize by translating a historical novel by Adolf Mützelburg, who is introduced to Ottoman readers as a famous German writer, and who is reported as having written a story about Şeyh Şamil’s war in the Caucasus under the title Konak [Mansion]. The translation was presented as a beautiful novel which provides the reader with striking and judicious information on Caucasian history and geography. They admire the original writer because of his success in depicting Şeyh Şamil, his commanders and their glories, while remaining faithful to real historical events. Aiming to collaborate in translating this work, they draw attention to the benefits and significance of collaboration in translating foreign works into ­Ottoman Turkish. They call for Ottoman writers to follow collaboration in translation, especially for those who wish to fulfill the need for indigenous works in the target language.

6.6 Translation as Hulâsa 6.6.1 From the West: The Summary of Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid Ahmed Midhat was an important literary figure who used ‘summary’ as a translation strategy in the late nineteenth century. He published Sid’in Hulâsası [Summary of Le Cid] in 1890–1891 with a preface and an annotated critique he added to the end. Though the original text was about 75 pages, his summary translation added up to a total of 222 pages, including the summary itself (about 131 pages),

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and two important paratextual sections, entitled “Statement” (İfade) (about 14 pages) and “Critique of Le Cid” (Sid ’in İntikadı) (about 76 pages). Interestingly, Midhat identifies his version paradoxically as a summary comparable with a translation (terceme). In his preface, Ahmed Midhat opens a dialogue with an imaginary reader. What is interesting in this dialogue is that the respected reader questions the reasons for Ahmed Midhat’s selection of Le Cid and his translation strategy. The imaginary person in the dialogue functions as an implied reader who expresses a demand for the translation of European classics. Addressing the Ottoman writers of his time, Ahmed Midhat tries to give his reasons for pursuing the summary strategy. According to Ahmed Midhat, it was important to make such European works known to Ottoman readers. Thus he practiced summary translation as a strategy which, he thought, would best serve his informative and pragmatic purposes. A few years after he wrote his preface to Sid’in Hulâsası, Ahmed Midhat reiterated the importance of the summary strategy in the “classics debate”. In his article titled “Yine İkram-ı Aklâm”, he explained this strategy and suggested that it needed to be taken as a solution for the difficulties of literal translation. He even referred to commentary (şerh) and annotation (tahşiye) as other methods of translation practiced in French literature in translating Ancient Greek works. His explanations reveal that he was aware of certain methods and/or strategies practiced in French literature, which he seems to have adopted as models. In Ahmed Midhat’s approach to translation, strategies such as literal (harfiyyen), free (serbest, mealen) or summary (hulâsa) appear to be closely connected to the notion of intelligibility. In this context, it makes sense that Ahmed Midhat referred to the importance of the summary strategy for producing comprehensible versions. As a writer and publisher of Tercüman-ı Hakikat, his rationale for the summary strategy may have been connected to his identity and activity as a journalist who valued communicative language and immediate intelligibility. Sid’in Hulâsası was published in a series of “Summaries of the Great Works”, which was initiated by Ahmed Midhat. Thus this paratextual information is an important clue to the then current need for publishing summaries of works of great literary merit, in other words, it shows a deliberate initiative for planning literature, offering ‘summaries’ as new options in introducing Western cultural materials to the Ottomans. In the preface, he first focuses on the question of translating European classics by following various lines of argument about (i) the need for translation to make great European classical works known to Ottoman readers, (ii) the method of translation, and (iii) the function and purpose of generating summaries. It is obvious that Ahmed Midhat thought of European civilization as



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having reached its highest stage of progress through “extensive ­experimentation with everything for several centuries”. The core of his argument centers on accepting European great works as models (meşk) which genuinely deserve to be appreciated by Ottomans. He argues that if the aim is to know the great European works, Sid’in Hulâsası could be used as an adequate version of Le Cid. If not, it would be a great loss for the Ottomans to be unaware of the European classics (Ahmed Midhat 1890–1891: 14). Ahmed Midhat claims that in summarizing Le Cid he has not produced a version which could be identified as the literal rendering of Le Cid because the original was a tragedy in verse. He expected to find two essential features in classical works i.e. rhetorical eloquence (belâgat) and imaginative content (hayal), emphasizing that it is almost impossible to convey the rhetorical eloquence of verse by literal translation. According to Ahmed Midhat, there remains the imaginative content to be transferred, which he considered possible to translate. He also claims that he prefers not to render Le Cid as a free translation (serbest terceme) and underlines that free translation would result in a version of inordinate length and would not provide the serious benefits expected from rendering such European classical works into Turkish. He offers his summary as an adequate version of Le Cid which would avoid the problems of rendering verse as verse. He pleads: Please, be gracious! Could you expect any serious advantage from translating those works in great length as by way of free translation since there exists only their subject matter [to be conveyed]? If the purpose is for us to know the great European works as much as is necessary, then shouldn’t my summary of Le Cid (Ahmed Midhat 1890–1891: 9) be considered adequate? 

Since he was a novelist not a poet, it seems reasonable that it would be a difficult task for him to render Le Cid literally as verse. This seems to be the essential reason why he followed various strategies in translating verse into Turkish. His translation discourse in this preface reveals that he foregrounded three points related to the strategy he followed in conveying Le Cid into Turkish: he neither translated nor gave either a free or literal rendering of the verse but rather summarized it. He also pointed out the function and purpose of his summary. In terms of his transference strategy, he mentioned that his prose version would serve to make Corneille’s Le Cid clear and intelligible to the target readers who had not seen the play. Thus the imaginary reader would gain an understanding of the textual composition as well as the cultural background of the original. Presuming that Le Cid is culturally unfamiliar to the target reader, Ahmed Midhat offers not only to summarize the original but also to explain it. He states:

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On the one hand, it should be summarized as necessary without changing the original, on the other hand, it should be written as a commentary and explanation to make it intelligible. Such benefits for the people can never be denied.   (Ahmed Midhat 1890–1891: 13–14) (my italics)

The above quotation shows that Ahmed Midhat intended to remain close to the original play in his summary. At the same time, he declares another strategy: writing in the form of commentary and explanation (şerh and tavzih). His rationale in explaining his purpose and the functions of his text seems to have been based on the assumption that French culture was distant from Ottoman culture. That is why he starts off by pointing out the lack of a literary genre, such as tragedy in verse, which was foreign to the receiving system.

6.6.2 From the East: The intralingual summary of Ali Çelebi’s Version of Kalilah wa Dimnah This work, Hulâsa-i Humayunname [Summary of Humayunname], was published in Istanbul in 1886–1887 by Matbaa-i Amire with the supreme permission of His Majesty, the Caliph Abdülhamid II. On the title page Ahmed Midhat refers to himself as the person who summarizes (mülahhis) but not the writer (muharrir) in comparison with his appearance in the summary of Le Cid. In a long preface of 11 pages titled “Special Statement” (İfade-i Mahsusa), Ahmed Midhat states that he offers an intralingual summary translation of Ali Çelebi’s Humayunname, which was a sixteenth century Turkish version of the famous book of fable Kalilah wa Dimnah (See Toska 2004: 293–294). According to Ahmed Midhat, Ali Çelebi’s translation was an old version in Ottoman Turkish, and the Sanskrit original had managed to survive for many years through translations into several languages. Based on explanations in the preface Ali Çelebi wrote for his own Humayunname, Ahmed Midhat gives important information on the history of translations of Kalilah wa Dimnah into Persian (also into Pahlavi, i.e. old Persian), Arabic and Turkish. The original text was written by Bidpay (in Turkish transcription), a Brahman who presented his text to the king Debşelim (in Turkish transcription). Then it was translated by Buzurcumühr from Sanskrit into Pahlavi and presented to the ruler, Nuşirrevan. It was also translated from Pahlavi into Arabic by Abdullah bin Mukaffa who was commissioned to propose a comprehensible version in Arabic by Ebu Cafer ­Mansur, the second Abbasid caliphate. Ahmed Midhat mentions that, after the invasion of Iran by Muslim Sasanians, the Pahlavi version of Kalilah wa Dimnah was translated into Persian at the request of Ebu’l-Hüsn Emir bin Nasîr bin Ahmed, a Sasanian ruler, since it was no longer comprehensible due to the linguistic gap between Pahlavi



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and Persian. For this reason, it was conveyed from prose to verse by a Persian poet Rudegî. Because Rudegî’s translation was considered to be distant from its source as the prose source had been conveyed into verse, Ebu’l-Muzaffer Behramşah, a Gaznevî ruler, commissioned Nasrullah bin Mehmed bin Abdülhamid to produce another translation based on Abdullah bin Mukaffa’s version in Arabic. But Ahmed Midhat points out that this translation was also regarded as unclear and incomprehensible. He also mentions that Emir Süheylî, a commander surveying under Sultan Hüseyin Baykara then commissioned Mevlana Hüseyin bin Ali ElVaiz to write another comprehensible version in Persian. Ahmed Midhat goes on to inform the reader that Mevlana Hüseyin bin Ali El-Vaiz (also known as Kâşifî) titled his fifteenth century version of Kalilah wa Dimnah in Persian Envâr-ı Süheylî [Lights from Süheylî]. Midhat mentions that it was Envâr-ı Süheylî which was taken as the source text for translation by Ali Çelebi, who named his translation Humayunname, stating that Humayunname was presented to Süleyman the Magnificent. Of special importance is the fact that Midhat thinks of Humayunname as being incomprehensible for late nineteenth century readers because of its long ornate sentences. That is why he emphasizes that its ornate style and unclear language led to it being neglected by Ottoman reading circles over a period of approximately 300 years (Ahmed Midhat 1886– 1887: 8). This explains why he was commissioned by Sultan Abdülhamid II to produce a simplified and explicatory summary (telhis), which would help renew Kalilah wa Dimnah and make its benefits available in Ottoman culture in the late nineteenth century. It is also important that Ahmed Midhat was equipped with a norm to write (yazmak) in clear and understandable Turkish. Furthermore, he was also given license, where necessary, to comment (şerh) and explain (izah) certain points in the source story. This implies that “to comment” and “to explain” were regarded as acceptable acts during the process of summarizing a source text in Ottoman culture at that time.

7.

Concluding remarks

My analysis of the paratextual data of certain works which were produced by Ahmed Midhat based on a foreign text in another culture shows us that he performed various translation strategies in his dialogue with the West. Extending from literal to free in different forms, he identifies certain of his texts as “translation” (terceme), “conveying” (nakl), “borrowing” (iktibas), “stolen text” (müsterak), “dialogue and the translator’s response as part of dialogue” (muhavere), “summary” (hulâsa), “conversion” (tahvil) and “emulation/imitation” (tanzir/taklid).

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This ­displays a wide range of textual options he generated via translation, contributing to the making of Ottoman literary repertoire in the late 19th century. Related to this point, Ahmed Midhat’s reference to himself also shows diversity in self-designation of authorship. He refers to himself as the translator (mütercim), the conveyor (nâkil), the one who summarizes (mülahhis) and in some others as the writer (muharrir) – even in such works he refers generally to a foreign author or work. In one way or another, his reference words indicate a certain translational relationship with his source texts. Remembering Theo ­ Hermans’s emphasis on “the otherness of other cultures” (Hermans 1995: 221–222) in terms of culture’s conception/s and practice/s of translation, all of these identifications point to the culture-and-time-bound manifestations of an Ottoman agent of translation. The diversity that we see in Ahmed Midhat’s reference to himself also seems to violate our modern and clear-cut definitions between the writer and the translator. In the case of Ahmed Midhat, it is also evident that we need to speak of the existence of blurred borderlines in the production of texts via translation in Ottoman culture in a moment of encounter or confrontation with Europe. In the light of the frameworks outlined by John Milton, Itamar Even-Zohar and and Gideon Toury, we may conclude that Ahmed Midhat was an important Ottoman agent of translation who devoted a great amount of energy and his own life to the progress of Ottoman society as well as its culture and literature, producing indigenous works and articles, translating texts from foreign literature and provoking important debates related to translation. As a novelist, translator, teacher, literary critic, publisher, journalist and entrepreneur, it is evident that he took on various identities and hence combined various functions in the Ottoman system of culture and literature in the late 19th century. He served as an option maker in the production of a cultural repertoire based on Western models since he proposed different choices and alternatives to introduce Western culture and literature to the Ottomans via translation. As a free agent of translation active in the private sphere, he may also be regarded as a planner since he called on his contemporaries to follow his strategies in the generation of texts either by translation or by other ways related to translation, and since he produced many works in the process of Westernization for the development of his readers who were mostly illiterate. Ahmed Midhat’s practice of translation indicates that European cultural and literary items were imported to Ottoman society by free agents of translation in various ways which may include culture-specific aspects of transfer.



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Appendix I: A detailed chart indicating non-linear, beyond-binary translational relationships between terms and concepts in Ahmed Midhat’s discourse on translation.

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Appendix II: A map of Ahmed Midhat’s strategies of translation Translation (Terceme)

literal (harfiyyen)

emulation (tanzir) free (serbest , imitation mealen) summary (hulasa) (taklid) commentary (şerh)

expansion (tevsien) explanation (izah)

description (tasvir)

annotation (haşiye )

conversion (tahvil)

Notes 1. Referring to both Itamar Even-Zohar’s concepts of “idea makers”, “culture entrepreneurs”, “makers of life images” and “the prospects of success” and Gideon Toury’s conception of translation as a means of planning, Saliha Paker discusses whether we may consider Ahmet Midhat to be an active planner of culture in her striking paper presented at a special conference on Ahmed Midhat in 2004. Looking at Ahmed Midhat’s life through these concepts, Paker examines his practice of textual production with special reference to his business life and claims that Ahmed Midhat appears not only as a dynamic writer and translator but also as a dynamic entrepreneur and businessman. Based on Ahmed Midhat’s biography (see Okay 2002), Paker draws attention to Ahmed Midhat’s entrepreneurship which, she argues, could be well observed not only in his authorship as a writer, translator and journalist but also in his business life as a printer. According to Paker, Ahmed Midhat was deliberately engaged in the creation of new options and produced evidently new ideas for Ottoman’s cultural repertoires in the late 19th century. This is why Paker suggests calling him the planner of culture as well as cultural entrepreneur (Paker 2004: 6). I would like to thank Saliha Paker for letting me read her unpublished paper. 2. At this point, one needs to remember that there was also a rich tradition of translations from Arabic and Persian into Turkish, which went back to the pre-Ottoman period in Asia Minor in the thirteenth century and continued in the Ottoman period up to the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. For translations in the pre-Ottoman period, see Levend 1988; Ülken 1997; Kut 1998; Paker and Toska 1997. 3. Yusuf Kamil Paşa’s Terceme-i Telemak is conventionally regarded as the first novel translated into Turkish. But Kavruk (1998) indicates that Fénelon’s novel Les Aventures de Télémaque (1699) was first translated in 1792 by Seyyid Ali Efendi, a diplomat who was sent to France and translated it in order to improve his French (Kavruk 1998: 9).



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4. For a critical discussion of the “classics debate” see Paker 2006. Paker uses the debate as a focus for examining change in Ottoman conceptions of translation and its practice. Establishing the literary and cultural context of the late 19th century, she deals with the concepts of imitation and translation as they come up in the debate, and discusses certain implications with reference to our understanding of Ottoman translation practices. Paker’s article is important since her analysis rethinks Turkish concepts as well as conceptions of translation, addressing certain links between the tradition and the modern. 5. The year 1897 was important since it witnessed two literary debates, first “the Decadents” and then “the Classics Debate”. Known as “the Decadents” in the Turkish literary history, the debate was on the current position of Ottoman classical literature with its European counterparts. A group of Ottoman poets and novelists belonging to the New Literature front (edebiyat-ı cedide), for instance Tevfik Fikret, Cenab Şahabeddin, Halid Ziya, Mehmed Rauf, were accused of imitating French literature via translation and leading to the production of a literature full of foreign content and forms. Also participating in the debate with his provocative article “Decadents” (Dekadanlar), Ahmed Midhat denounced the work of the New Literature group as a failure and criticized them in terms of using an unusual style which derived from breaking the conventional rules of the current language in its connection with Arabic and Persian (Emil 1959; Paker 2006: 332; Demircioğlu 2005: 178).

References Ahmed Midhat. 1874–1875. Hasan Mellâh yahud Sır içinde Esrar. Istanbul: Kırkanbar Matbaası. Ahmed Midhat.1886–1887. Hulâsa-i Humayunname. Istanbul: Matbaa-i Âmire. Ahmed Midhat. 1887–1888. Haydut Montari. Dersaadet: Kırkanbar Matbaası. Ahmed Midhat. 1888–1889. Nedamet Mi? Heyhat! Borrowed from Emile Augier. Istanbul. Ahmed Midhat. 1889–1890. Diplomalı Kız. Istanbul: Kırkanbar Matbaası. Ahmed Midhat. 1890–1891. Sid’in Hulâsası. Istanbul. Ahmed Midhat. 1893–1894. İki Hüd’akâr. Istanbul: Matbaa-i Âmire. Ahmed Midhat (trans.). 1895–1896. Niza-ı İlm ü Din – İslâm ve Ulûm. Dersaadet. Ahmed Midhat and Ebüzziya Tevfik. 1877. Üç Yüzlü Bir Karı. Istanbul: Mihran Matbaası. Ahmed Midhat and Vizental. 1878–1879. Konak yahut Şeyh Şamil’in Kafkasya Muharebatında Bir Hikâye-i Garîbe. Istanbul: Kırkanbar Matbaası. Bengi, Işın. 1988. “The eloquent mediator: Ahmed Midhat Efendi”. In Proceedings of XIIth Congress of the International Comparative Association, R. Bauer, D. Fokkema (eds), Vol.5: 388–393. Bengi, Işın. 1990. “A Re-evaluation of the concept of equivalence in the literary Translation of Ahmed Midhat Efendi: A linguistic perspective” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Hacettepe University, Ankara. Berk, Özlem. 1999. “Translation and Westernisation in Turkey (From the 1840s to the 1980s)”. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Center for British and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick, U.K.

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Berk, Özlem. 2006. “Translating the “West”: The position of translated Western literature within the Turkish literary polysystem”. In Ri.L.Un.E., No. 4, 1–18, Electronically available from: http://www.rilune.org/ENGLISH/mono4/Berk_Rilune4_2006.pdf Demircioğlu, Cemal. 2005. “From Discourse to Practice: Rethinking “Translation” (Terceme) and Related Practices of Text Production in the Late Ottoman Literary Tradition.” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Electronically available from: http:// www.transint.boun.edu.tr/tezler/CemalDemircioglu.pdf Emil, Birol. 1959. “Servet-i Fünuncular ve Dekadanlık Meselesi” Istanbul University Unpublished B.A. Thesis. Türkiyat Institute, No. T524. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1994. “Culture planning and the market: Making and maintaining sociosemiotic entities” Electronically available from http://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/papers/ plan_clt.html. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 2002a. “The making of culture repertoire and the role of transfer”. In Translations: (re)shaping of literature and culture, Saliha Paker (ed.), 166–174. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 2002b. “Culture planning and cultural resistance in the making and maintaining of entities”. In Sun Yat-Sen Journal of Humanities 14, (April): 45–52. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 2004. “Idea-makers, culture entrepreneurs, makers of life images and the prospects of success”. In Papers in Culture Research 2004, Electronically available from http://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/papers Evin, Ö. Ahmet. 1983. Origins and Development of the Turkish Novel. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica. Hermans, Theo. 1995. “Revisiting the classics: Toury’s empiricism version one”. In The Translator, Volume 1, Number 2, 215–223. İskit, Server R. 2000. Türkiye’de Neşriyat Hareketleri Tarihine Bir Bakış. Ankara: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları. Kaplan, Ramazan. 1998. Klâsikler Tartışması Başlangıç Dönemi. Ankara: Atatürk Yüksek Kurumu Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Başkanlığı. Kavruk, Hasan. 1998. Eski Türk Edebiyatında Mensûr Hikâyeler. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları. Kolcu, Ali İhsan. 1999. Türkçe’de Batı Şiiri. Ankara: Gündoğan Yayınları. Kudret, Cevdet. 1997. “Abdülhamit Devrinde Sansür” in Edebiyat Kapısı: İncelemeler, 631–676. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. Kut, Günay. 1998. “Anadolu’da Türk Edebiyatı”. In Osmanlı Devleti ve Medeniyeti Tarihi. ­Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), 21–68. Istanbul: IRCICA. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge. Levend, Agâh Sırrı. 1988. Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi (Giriş), Vol. I, 3rd ed. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları. Lewis, Bernard. 1960. “Ahmad Midhat”. In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume I: A-B, 289–290. Leiden: E.J. Brill, London: Luzac & Co. Lewis, Bernard. 1968. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press. Milton, John. 2006. “Agents and agency of translation”. Paper presented in 2nd Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, 12th–14th July, 2006. (Abstract, electronically available from: http://www.iatis.org/content/iatis2006/programme/panels.pdf)



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Okay, Orhan. 2002. “Teşebbüse Sarfedilmiş Bir Hayatın Hikâyesi”. In Kitap-lık, Number 54, 130–136. Öksüz, Yusuf Ziya. 1995. Türkçenin Sadeleşme Tarihi Genç Kalemler ve Yeni Lisan Hareketi. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu Yayınları. Özön, Mustafa Nihat (ed.). 1942. “Hikâyeleri-Romanları”. In Ahmed Midhat’s novel: Yeniçe­ riler, 86–94. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. Özön, Mustafa. 1934. Metinlerle Muasır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi. Istanbul Devlet Matbaası. Paker, Saliha. 1986. “Translated European literature in the late Ottoman literary polysystem”. In New Comparison, Number 1, 67–79. Paker, Saliha. 1991. “Turkey”. In Modern Literature in the Near and Middle East 1850–1970, Robin Ostle (ed.), 17–32. London: Routledge. Paker, Saliha. 2004 [forthcoming]. “Bir Kültür Planlamacısı Olarak Ahmed Midhat”. Unpublished paper presented in Symposium on Ahmed Midhat Efendi, May 5–6–7, 2004, Istanbul, Boğaziçi University Turkish Language and Literature Department. Paker, Saliha. 2006. “Ottoman conceptions of translation and its practice: The 1897 ‘Classics debate’ as a focus for examining change”. In Translating Others, Vol. 2, Theo Hermans (ed.), 325–348. Manchester: St. Jerome. Paker, Saliha and Zehra Toska. 1997. “A call for descriptive translation studies on the Turkish tradition of rewrites”. In Translation as Intercultural Communication, Mary Snell-Hornby, Zuzana Jettmarová and Klaus Kaindl (eds), 79–88. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Rado, Şevket. 1955. “Ahmed Midhat Efendiyi Anmaya Hazırlanırken”. In Bir Jübilenin İntibaları: Ahmed Midhat’ı Anıyoruz, Hakkı Tarık Us (ed.), 8–9. Istanbul: Vakit Matbaası. Rado, Şevket. 1986. Ahmet Mithat Efendi. Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları. Sevük, İsmail Habib. 1941. Avrupa Edebiyatı ve Biz Garpten Tercümeler II. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. Sevük, İsmail Habib. 1944. Tanzimattan Beri. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. 2002. “What texts don’t tell, the uses of paratexts in translation studies”. In Crosscultural Transgressions, Research Models in Translation Studies II Historical and Ideological Issues, Theo Hermans (ed.), 44–60. St. Jerome: Manchester. Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi. 1988. 19uncu Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi. 7th ed. Istanbul: Çağlayan Kitabevi. Tansel, Fevziye Abdullah. 1955. “Ahmet Mithat Efendi’nin Garp Dillerinden Tercüme Roman ve Küçük Hikâyeleri”. Tercüme, Number 60, Volume XI, 109–121. Toska, Zehra. 2007. “Ahmet Midhat Efendi’nin ‘Bir Diğer Eseri’: Hulâsa-i Hümayunnâme”. Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 31/II, Şinasi Tekin Hatıra Sayısı II, Editors Yücel Dağlı, Yorgos Dedes and Selim S. Kuru, 291–318. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Toury, Gideon. 2002. “Translation as a means of planning and the planning of translation: A theoretical framework and an exemplary case”. In Translations: (re)shaping of literature and culture, Saliha Paker (ed.), 148–165. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press. Ülken, Hilmi Ziya. 1997. Uyanış Devirlerinde Tercümenin Rolü. 3rd ed. Istanbul: Ülken Yayınları. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

A cultural agent against the forces of culture Hasan-Âli Yücel Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Hasan-Âli Yücel (1897–1961) was one of the most prominent politicians of the Republican era in Turkey. He served as a member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly for fifteen years (1935–1950), eight of which he spent as the Minister of Education. Yücel’s term of office as Minister of Education (1938–1946) was one of the most revolutionary periods in the early republican era otherwise marked by a series of radical reforms covering the alphabet, dress, unification of education, and women’s voting rights in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Yücel embarked on a number of projects across various fields of culture, including the setting up of the Translation Bureau which would produce 1,247 translations from mainly Western and Eastern classics until 1966 and the launching of the influential translation journal Tercüme. He set up the revolutionary and controversial Village Institutes, which were primary and secondary schools set up in the rural areas with a unique curriculum. He oversaw the establishment of various institutions of higher education. He organized various artistic and cultural exhibitions. He took the initiative to publish several encyclopedias and dictionaries. Hasan-Âli Yücel was also a writer of both literary and scholarly works, so he was not only interested in providing patronage and guidance to cultural affairs but was also active in literary and cultural production. Key words: Hasan-Âli Yücel; Republican Turkey; Translation Bureau; agents of change

1.

Introduction

Hasan-Âli Yücel (1897–1961) was one of the most prominent politicians of the Republican era in Turkey.1 He served as a member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly for fifteen years (1935–1950), eight of which he spent as the Minister of Education (1938–1946). Yücel’s term of office as minister was one of the most revolutionary periods in terms of cultural policies in the early Republican era.

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He became best known as the founder of the state-sponsored Translation Bureau set up in 1939, a major institution which is still associated with the attempts to modernize and westernize Turkey. The present article will explore the career of Hasan-Âli Yücel and link it to his private personality. His influence on Republican cultural institutions such as the Translation Bureau and the Village Institutes will be studied, and his role within the entirety of the Republican cultural practices will be tackled. The purpose is to explore the various components of his capacity as a progressive cultural agent and carry out an inquiry into the background which led him into setting up and shaping the Translation Bureau. The article will focus on the interactions among politics, culture, translation and the personal history behind the turbulent career of a cultural agent. Another aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the study of the activities of cultural agents can be a valuable tool for the study of the historiography of culture and translation. On the other hand, I would like to argue that the study of cultural agents should not be carried out in the form of traditional biography, something which I shall avoid in the present paper. After all, (…) should not the collective lead in turn to the individual, and is not the individual, for the historian, inevitably a member of a group, and is not the study of the individual – biography – an indispensable complement of the analysis of social (Le Goff 1995: 12) (my emphasis) structures and collective behaviour?” 

2.

The need to study cultural agents for a more comprehensive cultural history

Translation as a form of intellectual production, and translated texts as cultural products can be (and have been) studied from a variety of perspectives. As long as they are not severed from the general cultural context in which translations and translators operate, all of these perspectives provide interesting insights into translational phenomena. A close-up study of translated texts juxtaposed with their source texts provides valuable information about strategies and norms translators observe in different cultures and time periods. Experimental studies on the cognitive processes of translators attempt to shed light on the otherwise obscure stages our minds go through during the act of translation. General systemic studies engage in questioning the ways in which groups of translations affect (and are affected by) cultural processes and neighboring fields such as literature or politics. It seems that the key to achieving a holistic view of translation history lies in avoiding a fragmentary approach that isolates any one of these perspectives from



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larger cultural forces. A sole emphasis on disperse target or source texts without due notice of the individual or collective factors that shape them is doomed to produce singular conclusions that tell us little else other than the features of the specific texts one studies. The study of cognitive processes in translation is likewise only helpful if it is embedded in a larger behavioral and social framework. It seems that the field of Translation Studies is ever in need of broader perspectives which will help researchers to incorporate (un)translated texts, larger socio-cultural forces and individual or collectivities of translators into its analytical framework. Among these three elements, the translator is perhaps the least studied and explored factor. A mere cognitive outlook falls short of explaining the act of translation as a social process while the study of society without due attention to the individuals constituting it, or a description/analysis of translations without proper consideration of their producers also remain highly deficient. Against the need for a stronger focus on the individuals shaping the field of translation, one rising trend has recently been the study of translators as active “agents” in the field of translation and culture. Authors have elaborated on the concept of agency in translation in various ways. Anthony Pym, who has set out to tackle the place of agents in translation history, mainly regards the issue from the viewpoint of translators and discusses how translators can be considered to have a “causal role” in shaping the course of translations (1998: 157) with their own identity and agenda as a professional group (1998: 160). He suggests that they have largely been eclipsed by translation (2000: 2). However, Pym has also questioned the degree to which a history of individual translators can be instrumental in identifying general trends and patterns in translation history (1998: 160). Daniel Simeoni has been a key figure in revising the view on translators in Translation Studies. He opened up several new areas of research on translators instead of translations through his now-seminal article “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus” incorporating Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and the concept of translation norms (Simeoni 1998). The study of agency in translation has so far mainly focused on the translator as the agent as illustrated above. However, translational agents can sometimes be located further away from the site of textual production. Some individuals may appear to have no direct connection with translation, yet a closer look reveals that they impact the selection, production and reception of translations through their cultural practices. These individuals are usually those who have wider influence on the society in which they operate, and translation turns out to be one of the fields where the implications of their cultural practices are felt. Major groups of cultural agents with this kind of a strong cultural influence would be politicians,

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businessmen or other types of community leaders. Politicians as democratically elected presidents and ministers, or dictators or military commanders may set a clear course for the future of a society’s culture. Their explicit or implicit attempts at “culture planning” (Even-Zohar 1994: 1997) would have an inevitable effect on translation policies and strategies which are intricately linked with cultural processes. Gideon Toury terms these individuals “agents of change”, since they often introduce new options for a given culture and hence act as producers of the cultural repertoire (Toury 2002: 151). “Agents of change” act in various ways which may have implications especially for the field of literary translation that appears to be more closely linked with cultural policies than, say, technical translation. Corporations2 or politicians may act as patrons of translation by setting up special institutions or funds. Such patronage may bring about formal or self-imposed selection criteria that allow or restrict the publication of certain genres or specific works. The resources they allocate to cultural activities, which may also include translation, may enable the publication of otherwise unpublishable translations with low sales figures excluded from the mainstream of literature and culture. André Lefevere has delved into these kinds of patronage and concluded that patronage which comes in a variety of forms not only creates an ideological framework for translation (and other types of literary production processes such as anthologizing or writing literary histories, which Lefevere refers to as rewriting) but also constructs its poetics as “an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical characters and situations, and symbols” combined with “a concept of what the role of literature is, or should be, in the social system as a whole” (Lefevere 1992: 26). It therefore becomes evident that one has to look further than the immediate producers of individual translations such as translators, editors or publishers in order to understand the context wherein translations are embedded. The “agents of change”, or cultural agents as I will term them, are individuals who are equipped with special assets and abilities – to use Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, special types of “capital”. They may at times have cultural or economic capital, sometimes both, yet there is little doubt that they hold a vast amount of “symbolic capital”, i.e. “accumulated prestige, celebrity, consecration or honour” (Bourdieu 1993: 7). It is this high symbolic status of these individuals that positions them higher on the social ladder. This article has chosen one such individual as its theme and will discuss the ways in which the study of the personal trajectory of a cultural agent may be instrumental in discovering the broader sociocultural background which nurtured him. In particular, it will tackle the ways in which historical translation studies may draw on biographical data and such data may complement textual material geared towards unearthing and explaining translation policies, strategies and selection criteria in a given culture and time.



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The ­individual in question is Hasan-Âli Yücel, Turkish politician, author and poet who left a deep impression on the 20th century Turkish socio-cultural scene. In a joint introduction to a volume on biographical research they edited for Current Sociology, Daniel Simeoni and Marco Diani questioned how biographical research can influence the way social scientists and humanists do science in an age of deconstruction, and likened life histories to the “Babelian curse” – the “imperfect substitutes” for life itself (Simeoni and Diani 1995: 1). Therefore, when dealing with biographical sources one should be aware that one is not dealing with facts but with their representations. This requires care with the way one’s sources present life histories and the way one weaves a life history out of the sources one has used. This caviat is also valid for sources covering Yücel, which have a tendency to paint a unidimensional picture, foregrounding certain incidents and turning points in his life and elements in his background at the expense of others. In what follows, I will set out to offer a life history of Hasan-Âli Yücel without attempting to gloss over the complex nature of his life and activities. The complexity in his life partly derives from the social and political context in which he grew up and worked. Yücel belonged to a generation that underwent a drastic cultural transformation. Born in the Ottoman Empire, this generation had to fight in wars and then had to establish a nation state out of the ruins and the heritage of an empire. The members of this generation nearly created a new culture from scratch with a new legal system, a new alphabet and a new economy. The complexity is also due to the personal circumstances of Yücel (which may not be all that unique). He belonged to a religious family and was also a strong believer in Islam – yet he served as minister in one of the most secular periods in Turkish history. He was well acquainted with Eastern music and literature but became known as the Minister who launched a massive westernization movement in culture. The various sources written on Yücel tend to downplay this complexity and end up bringing his individual qualities to the fore, rather than creating a holistic picture. The challenge for me is to draw on the existing sources that often create a seemingly uniform picture on Yücel and reflect the diverse and complex sides of Yücel’s life and times in this article.

3.

Hasan-Âli Yücel’s early years in life

In the early pages of his childhood memoirs Hasan-Âli Yücel describes his childhood home in a wealthy mansion in Ottoman Istanbul. He relates the story of how his mother became pregnant with him after years of waiting and prayer, his Ethiopian nanny, his love for his parents and grandparents and his first memories

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of the Mevlevi brotherhood which would prove so influential in shaping his future personality and worldview (Yücel 1998a). He appears to have experienced a happy childhood in a closely-knit extended family, something that he also tried to maintain during his adulthood and parenthood. Yücel was born on December 17, 1897 in Istanbul as the son of Ali Rıza Bey, who worked for the telegraph company. His grandparents and great grandparents on both sides belonged to educated and intellectual families. His father’s side came from a line of civil servants and musicians, and his mother’s side came from a military background (Çıkar 1997: 13–14). It can thus be suggested that he began life with a head start, inheriting a considerable degree of cultural capital from his family. He was an only child and the focus of his parents’ attention, spending much of his early years in the confines of his home, entertaining himself with an occasional visit to a relative or a picnic (Yücel 1998a: 141). Although his childhood and adolescence corresponded to a troubled period in Turkish history, Yücel received what can be considered a good education even by current standards. He started school at a local primary school which he despised due to the harsh discipline and the excessive emphasis on religious instruction (Yücel 1998a: 76–80). He switched to a well-known and more modern private school, Mekteb-i Osmanî [The Ottoman School], in 1906 and graduated with high honors (Yücel 1998a: 121). His father wanted him to attend the military boarding school in the city, but when his mother refused to let him leave home so early he enrolled in a good local high school, Vefa İdâdîsi. In April 1915, in his senior year at the high school, he was called up and joined the army (Çıkar 1997: 30). He quickly advanced in the military ranks and survived the First World War without having to fight actively on the front. When he was discharged from the army in 1918 he was a lieutenant. Upon his return he matriculated in Istanbul University to study first law and then philosophy. His philosophy education provided him with a foundation in life and guided him throughout his career. This education also complemented his previous religious/mystic background and enabled him to create a unique outlook on culture, which also underlies his practices as a cultural agent, as I will argue in the following pages.

4.

The Mevlevi influence

Ali Rıza Bey’s side of the family belonged to the Mevlevi brotherhood3 where Hasan-Âli was also initiated at a very early age. His father was a devout Muslim and Mevlevi and composed and performed Mevlevi music. Hasan-Âli’s grandmother from her mother’s side was a Kadirî dervish, and as an adult he often remembered her company. She seems to have been a major influence on



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his ­religious ­background. Yücel remembered the way she had him read religious books and prayed. He also remembers the story of how she hid her worry-beads after the tekkes were banned and closed down in 1925 with the fear that she would be arrested if she were caught with dervish items at her home (Yücel 1998a: 32). The affinity to the Mevlevi sect was so deep at his childhood home that when he was looking for a place to re-locate his house, Ali Rıza Bey chose to settle next to the summer dwelling of the Mevlevi sheikh, Celâl Efendi (Yücel 1998a: 69). There is little doubt that Yücel continued to be religious throughout his whole life, and it is also possible to trace the Mevlevi influence over his long career in politics and writing. However, this influence has not been recognized or acknowledged by the majority of authors on Yücel’s life and career (cf. Sönmez 2000; Şengör 2003). Zeki Arıkan, a historian of the Republican period, mentions Yücel’s Mevlevi background, but only links it to his musical talent and his ability to communicate well with others and does not trace its influence to his cultural views (1997: 166). Yücel’s son, the late poet Can Yücel, suggests that his early encounters with the Mevlevi brotherhood were reflected in Hasan-Âli Yücel’s “manners, tolerance and music” in the later stages of his life, but does not mention anything about his political or philosophical view on life (1997: XVI). In the meantime, a look at Yücel’s own writings shows that the Mevlevi influence endured throughout the 63 years of his life. Perhaps the most telling proof of this is the long poem Allah Bir (“There is Only One God”) written in the Mesnevi form, which he completed in 1954 but was only published posthumously in 1961 (Yücel 1961). Yücel’s daughter Canan Yücel Eronat remembers that the poem was recited in his 40th day remembrance ceremony – a Muslim tradition in which the dead are commemorated by their families and friends with prayers 40 days following their death. A well-known Mevlevi instrument, the ney, accompanied the poetry recital in Yücel’s ceremony (Interview with Canan Yücel Eronat in Aksoy 2005). A number of writers have commented on Yücel’s religious background. However, these are often those who have been most critical of his practices as a cultural agent and appear to find faith and modernist cultural activism paradoxical (cf. Ayvazoğlu 1999). I would like to argue that the reluctance to mention the Mevlevi side of Yücel mainly originates from a widespread view of Turkish modernization as a strictly secular and largely positivist project. Acknowledging the religious aspects of one of the most ardent Ministers of Education in the early Republican period would jeopardize such a view. It would also complicate the (partially correct) representation of the Republican reforms as an attempt at detaching people from their traditional Islamic roots (Kayaoğlu 1998: 295–296; Güvenç 1997: 225, 245; Yamaner 1998: 197, 201).4

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The Mevlevi order displayed some interesting features in terms of its sociopolitical connections. It was never perceived as a conservative or fundamentalist brotherhood and was represented as an “intellectual and aristocratic urban brotherhood” (Hasan Âli5 1932: 57) belonging to the high social strata (Gölpınarlı 1983: 254). Although it has largely been depicted as an apolitical brotherhood (Gölpınarlı 1983: 270), a number of Ottoman sultans, including Selim III and Mahmut II, adopted Mevlevi principles as a means to contain Janissaries who were members of the rival Bektashi order (Gölpınarlı 1983: 271). During the gradual demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Yenikapı Grand Lodge (­Mevlevihane), where Hasan-Âli and his family belonged, started to play a larger political role and allegedly became instrumental in the dethronement of Murat V in 1876, to be replaced by Abdülhamid II, who would have a long and much debated reign (Gölpınarlı 1983: 272). Until 1908, the Yenikapı Mevlevihanesi remained an institution which was feared and suppressed in the despotic reign of the Sultan (Gölpınarlı 1983: 272). Abdülhamid was right in fearing the Yenikapı ­Mevlevihanesi since it had a great deal of political power. Its sheikh Celaleddin Efendi was known to have close connections with the Young Turk movement in Paris (Gölpınarlı 1983: 273). After the Second Constitution was declared in 1908, and Sultan Reşad replaced Abdülhamid in 1909 one of his first acts was to visit the Mevlevihane. This occasion was much celebrated by the Mevlevi order, and Sultan Reşad gave funds to the brotherhood and helped to restore some if its buildings (Gölpınarlı 1983: 273). Young Hasan-Âli was present during Reşad’s visit to the Yenikapı Mevlevihanesi, and he gives his impressions in his childhood memoirs (Yücel 1998a: 158). Several leading figures in the Mevlevi order became members of parliament before and after the proclamation of the Republic, and although the order lost its pre-republican influence and power, it continues to attract thousands to its mystical charm (Gölpınarlı 1983: 273). Hasan-Âli Yücel owes his gradual politicization in life to the Mevlevi order (Sayar 2002: 52). His quiet childhood spent in the safe haven of his home and the Mevlevihane had instilled a spiritual side in young Hasan-Âli. Yet the difficult period under which he spent his adolescence and early adulthood opened his eyes to the more worldly and harsh facts of everyday life. Already aware of the political stance of the Mevlevi brotherhood which he acquired during the many meetings and rites he attended, Yücel was quick to develop a political attitude of his own. As a teenager he wrote an essay on the 1912 Balkan War where he dealt with the social repercussions of the war from an emotional and nationalist perspective. The essay entitled “İntikam Olsun” [“In Revenge”] won a competition and was published in a student magazine (Çıkar 1997: 28–29). In April 1915, as a senior year student in high school he was drafted into the army and was only able to continue his education in 1918. He first enrolled at the Law School and then



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switched to the Philosophy Department. He had to change his major mainly due to an argument he had with one of his professors. This incident has later been seen as an indication of his just and outspoken nature (Çıkar 1997: 34). His education in philosophy set the course for his future career and most of his activities as a cultural agent. This education complemented his mystic disposition and enabled him to establish an “inner balance” (Sayar 2002: 50–52). Philosophy forced him to re-orientate his worldview and to “open up, to leave the spiritual world for the streets, to leave the Mevlevi tekke to look for bread and water in the apocalyptic days of occupied Istanbul, to smuggle arms into Anatolia in the War of Liberation and to seek a new form of political and social structure for Turkey” (Sayar 2002: 52). Interestingly, as a philosophy student, he disliked abstract discussions and focused on logic and ethics – a move which has been interpreted as a precursor for his political career as a “man of action” (Tanpınar 1961). His devotion to science and positivism, which became more pronounced during his time as the Minister of Education has also been associated with his training in philosophy (Şengör 2003: 102). Furthermore, his political and literary career has also been strongly linked to this education. In his book on the mystic aspects of Hasan-Âli Yücel, Ahmet Güner Sayar writes that were it not for his training in philosophy, Hasan-Âli Yücel would have become a good composer and a Mevlevi dervish and would probably have remained a spectator in the making of the new Turkey (2002: 51). It seems that Yücel was indeed trying to strike a balance between mind and spirit, as much of his later writings indicate. He wrote in 1954, long after his term as minister, that science alone would make the human spirit blind. He suggested that religion would inform the spirit of the higher good of humanity (Sayar 2002: 58). He wrote elsewhere that consideration for only spiritual aspects of life at the cost of material facts “would kill us and everyone else” (Sayar 2002: 52). His devotion to Sufism, and in particular, to the Mevlevi order, may strike one as being paradoxical. Yücel was one of the major cultural agents of early Republican Turkey at a time when the nation-in-the-making was trying to replace religion as the uniting sentiment by a common language and culture. The alphabet reform in 1928, which replaced Ottoman script by Roman letters, and the ensuing attempts to modernize the Turkish language, purging it of Arabic and Persian vocabulary, were part and parcel of the country’s new secular policies. How can one reconcile Yücel’s role as the minister of a strictly secular government with a worldview that derives its inspiration partly from religion? This is a question that can only be answered in the context of the socio-political environment of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. It is also a question that closely concerns the illusion of a total transformation or cultural rupture that took place in Turkey with the proclamation of the Republic in 1923. This ­question

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needs to be examined in terms of whether this kind of a spiritual outlook on life was common and legitimate in the early decades of the Republic. I would like to argue that Yücel’s incorporation of faith and science into his approach to culture should be explored through the East/West binarism – something which has been haunting Turkey since the 19th century. Although there are few sources on the topic, I would also like to argue that the dilemma between spiritualism and modernization was felt and expressed by many Turkish intellectuals in the early Republican period. The prime example of this would be Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, the famous novelist, poet and essayist, in whose works one can trace the influence of an Oriental way of life, often juxtaposed with the pangs of cultural modernization. He must also have felt these pangs personally as he was once seen gazing through the windows of the Blue Mosque on a Ramazan night with tears in his eyes, not daring to go in (Kaplan 1963: 5). Other intellectuals, such as famous physician and artist Süheyl Ünver, another close friend of Yücel, also experienced the confusion caused by the cultural transition in Turkey (Sayar 2002: 62). What ailed some Turkish intellectuals became an asset for Yücel. Many authors contend that Yücel’s success as a politician and writer is a result of the way he combined Eastern and Western cultural influences. Tanpınar wrote that Yücel deliberately borrowed from both Eastern and Western sources, an attitude which culminated in the way he published his translation of Mevlana’s Rubais and a novel on Goethe’s biography around the same time (Tanpınar 1961). In a letter addressed to Yücel, Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın, journalist, writer and poet, complimented his efforts to have Eastern literature as well as Western literature translated into Turkish as an attempt at discovering the cultural past of the country (Ünaydın in Sağlam 2001: 17–18). However, Yücel’s emphasis on westernization and his cultural activism have also been widely criticized and condemned, especially in the context of the Translation Bureau (Ayvazoğlu 1999). It seems that there are divided opinions about Yücel, and these opinions mainly originate from people’s stance vis-à-vis the Republican reforms and Turkey’s modernization process. Yücel has so far been praised and adopted by Turkish intellectuals with liberal and leftist inclinations and criticized and rejected by conservatives. It appears as though the full picture about his public and private personality is often missed in general assessments about his life and career and his holistic view on culture combining aspects of both the East/spiritualism and the West/positivism is often neglected. Some writers appreciate Yücel’s familiarity with Ottoman culture but also find this paradoxical, given his practices as the Minister of Education. An example of this perspective comes from Yılmaz Öztuna, a conservative intellectual who included Yücel in his Encyclopedia of Turkish Music. He comments, “He [Yücel] was perhaps the only Minister of Education in republican times who had true knowledge of Turkish culture, yet his practices have been detrimental to national



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culture” (1976: 395). The practices that Öztuna refers to are the very ones which have been widely celebrated by many intellectuals and ordinary citizens, such as the establishment of the Translation Bureau and the Village Institutes.

5.

Yücel’s rise as a cultural agent – The making of his symbolic capital

Yücel’s professional career started in 1921 when he took up a teaching post in a private school in Istanbul. He had expected to get a position in a state school, but was turned down mainly due to his political stance against the Ottoman government, which was now on its deathbed (Çıkar 1997: 45). He was finally appointed to an official teaching post in İzmir in 1922, shortly after which he started distinguishing himself as a leader of opinions among his colleagues. He set up a teachers’ union in İzmir with his fellow-teachers soon after his arrival (Çıkar 1997: 46). He also played an important role in the publication of the newspaper, Türk Sesi [The Turkish Voice] (Arıkan 1997: 197). It was in İzmir that he met Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and the first President of the Republic of Turkey. In February 1923 in a public meeting, he asked Atatürk whether he had any plans to close down the religious educational institutions, the Medreses, which had become “fossilized” according to Yücel (Çıkar 1997: 46). Yücel’s comments make his cultural and political inclinations evident and present a picture of a young intellectual keen to see the educational system of the country purge itself of religious influences and change. After a short stay in İzmir, Yücel returned to Istanbul and started teaching philosophy and Turkish literature in a number of high schools. His cultural influence seems to have spread during this time: he invited his students to his home, where they had a chance to meet young poets and professors and disseminated “information, ideas and goals about the future” (Tahsin Banguoğlu in Çıkar 1997: 49). Yücel stopped teaching in 1927, when he was promoted to the post of school inspector, which marked the beginning of his rise in the bureaucracy. He was assigned to Paris, France, for one year in 1930, and upon his return to Turkey he accompanied Atatürk on a tour of the nation as his advisor on educational matters. He was only 33 at the time, and his appointment to this demanding task by the Ministry of Education indicated his exceptional astuteness (Çıkar 1997: 55). He served in various posts in the Ministry of Education until his election as a member of parliament in 1935 (Çıkar 1997: 66). His entry into politics was probably facilitated through the close contacts he maintained with Atatürk and the governing Republican People’s Party during the early 1930s. Atatürk became aware of his ideas on language and culture following their travels in the country, and Yücel gave him a very positive impression (Sayar 2002: 71). It was therefore natural for

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Yücel to be invited to take part in the first Language Congress convened in 1932. The Congress provided a forum for a discussion on the current state of the Turkish language and set out to prepare a programme to improve and expand Turkish grammar, vocabulary and scientific terminology (for the Proceedings of the Congress published in Turkish see Birinci Türk Dil Kurultayı 1933). This Congress, which he attended along with the best-known and distinguished linguists, writers and academics, was a significant moment in Yücel’s career and a milestone in his emergence as a cultural agent. The 1920s and the first half of the 1930s were productive years in the writing career of Hasan-Âli Yücel. His increasing cultural influence and prestige, i.e. the making of his symbolic capital, was not only fostered by his activities first as a teacher, and then a bureaucrat as since his university years he had been publishing essays, poetry and textbooks on various subjects. His first poems and essays started to appear in political and literary magazines as of 1921. He published his first textbook Ruhiyat Elifbası6 [The Psychology Alphabet] in 1924 followed by a literary textbook and a collection of essays on art in 1926. He wrote a textbook on logic and method (1928), published transliterations of Tevfik Fikret’s poetry (1928), published a translation of Mevlana’s Rubais, a novel on Goethe’s life, and a literary textbook (1932). His first poetry volume appeared in 1933, and he published an informative book on the French educational system in 1934. It is therefore safe to argue that Yücel had already built up a name as a prolific writer and intellectual before he was elected as a member of parliament. Yücel’s textbook on logic and method was already used nationally as educational material in high schools in 1930, as demonstrated by an anecdote he later wrote in a newspaper: Atatürk and Yücel visited a high school in Kayseri during their tour of the nation. The classroom they entered was taking a philosophy lesson, and the book the students used was Yücel’s book. Atatürk complimented Yücel on the way he explained the methodology of positive sciences in the book and challenged him to find pure Turkish terms to replace Arabic ones (Çıkar 1997: 55–56). It was during this three-month tour that Atatürk became aware of Yücel’s Mevlevism. During their visit to Konya they also visited the Mevlana Museum, where Atatürk intentionally made Yücel wear some Mevlevi garments and asked him to translate one of Mevlana’s poems originally written in Persian into Turkish (he knew that Yücel was fluent in Persian). He was pleased to hear the poem in Turkish, which mainly dealt with the idea of the Oneness of God and announced that he was happy for not having closed down the lodge after the law ordering the closing down of tekkes and for having converted it into a museum (Sayar 2002: 71). This latter anecdote, which is not among the most widespread ones about Yücel, has been interpreted as an indication of Atatürk’s approval of



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Yücel’s spiritual side. Yücel’s Mevlevi background was later criticized and used as a way of downgrading his personality in front of Atatürk. When Atatürk praised Yücel as an “intelligent young man” at a dinner table, someone in his company declared, “Sir, Hasan Âli is Mevlevi and so is his father”. Yet the strategy backfired when Atatürk said, “He never told me. In fact, I rather appreciate Mevlana!” (Borak in Sayar 2002: 72). Sayar argues that Yücel felt encouraged by Atatürk and published his collection of Mevlana’s Rubais which he translated from Persian following his tour with Atatürk. The poems had already been translated and published in a magazine in 1928, and what was published in 1932 was only an edited collection in book form (Sayar 2002: 72–73). Following his election to the parliament until the year he became Minister of Education in 1938, Yücel wrote essays on a wide number of subjects. He took up issues pertaining to culture and education, and the arguments he brought forth in these essays indicate that he was preparing to become Minister of Education (Sayar 2002: 67). The best source for tracing his views on cultural matters during this time is Pazartesi Konuşmaları [Monday Conversations], where he collected the essays he wrote for the daily Akşam starting from 1936. In these essays he wrote about the importance of eliminating the duality in written and spoken Turkish (1998b: 43–44). He took up the need to establish a special educational system for training teachers to work in villages (1998b: 21–24). He stated that the great works of “advanced countries” should be translated into Turkish to achieve literary progress (1998b: 82). He suggested that the state help publishers in terms of improving the quality and quantity of their publications (1998b: 105–109). He tackled the importance of creating a Turkish philosophy (1998b: 131–133). He also emphasized the importance of creating an atmosphere amenable for artists to flourish and work (1998b: 305–308). Pazartesi Konuşmaları indicates that he had already made plans for his future practices as a minister. There is close correspondence between the issues taken up in these essays and the issues he prioritized as Minister of Education as I will demonstrate in the following section.

6.

Yücel as the Minister of Education

The two biographies written on Hasan-Âli Yücel focus extensively on his political career (Çıkar 1997; Sönmez 2002). Many other sources on Yücel’s life and career represent him foremost as a politician and the former Minister of Education rather than a writer or poet. Some go as far as presenting him as “the most memorable” Minister of Education in Republican times (Aksoy 2005), while others suggest that his success as a minister has largely overshadowed his activities in other fields of culture (Şengör 2003: 101). This is probably due to the fact that

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Yücel’s educational policies as a minister had a great impact on Turkish society as a whole. There may also be other reasons for the emphasis on his political life at the cost of his previous or later cultural activities, such as the availability or lack of first-hand sources about the various stages of his life. It is no coincidence that many biographies deal with politicians. As Jacques Le Goff (1995: 11–12) writes, (…) historical biography must make itself, at least to a certain extent, into a story; being the narration of a life, it is structured around certain individual or collective events – a biography without events has no sense – and, as it must be devoted to a personage about whom we have enough information, enough documents, it has a good chance of focusing on a politician.

Indeed, although there is plenty of documentation about most of the stages of Yücel’s life, the best and the most reliable sources cover his term as minister. Apart from the many secondary sources, there are two direct sources which relay most of Yücel’s speeches and written statements as Minister of Education. These are Milli Eğitimle İlgili Söylev ve Demeçler [Speeches and Statements on National Education] (1993), a collection of his speeches and statements on national educational matters on various occasions, and 2 volumes of Hasan-Âli Yücel’in TBMM Konuşmaları ve İlgili Görüşmeler [Hasan-Âli Yücel’s Speeches and Pertaining Discussions in the Turkish Grand National Assembly] (1999), his interventions and speeches in parliament between 1939–1946. These sources summarize his ideas and views on cultural and educational matters. According to one of these sources, in one of his first statements as minister, Yücel announced that he had a holistic view on education and culture and that these two could only be viewed in a synthesis (Yücel 1993: 297). This explains the emphasis he placed on publishing activities and his incorporation of translation into the scope of the Ministry of Education. Education and translated literature became parts of an integral cultural campaign aimed at creating a new cultural repertoire in Turkey in the first half of the 1940s. Formal education was a strong pillar of this cultural campaign. In one of his early statements as a minister, Yücel stressed that unless Turkey improved its educational system as a whole, starting from primary schools and going right up to the level of higher education, it would not be able to advance (Yücel 1993: 297). Soon after he took office, Yücel started to implement his ideas and carried out a series of “humanist” educational and cultural reforms (Çıkar 1997: 72). For eight years as Minister of Education, Yücel acted as an influential “agent of change”, re-organized the educational and cultural infrastructure of the country and introduced a number of innovations regarding rural and popular education, art and



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technical education, universities, publication of classics and opera and theatre (Sönmez 2000: 38–39). Along with the setting up of the Translation Bureau, one of the major steps undertaken by Yücel was the establishment of the Village Institutes. These were special primary and secondary schools which would train the teachers required to educate people in rural areas. The law on the establishment of these institutes caused a great deal of discussion in the National Assembly. Some MPs criticised the educational model based on voluntary attendance and participation and especially criticised the co-educational principle which was radical for the rural Turkey of the 1940s (Çıkar 1997: 90). These discussions foresaw the much larger resistance that would build up against these institutions in the later phases of Yücel’s ministry. The institutes were set up in 1940, with 20 schools scattered around the countryside. In 1947, with the transition to the multi-party system, they were re-structured and lost their initial function of offering practical training to the rural population. In 1951 they were converted to “Teachers’ Schools”. These institutes had a transforming role on the rural population during their short period of activity. They were set up with the idea of educating the rural population, who would, in turn, educate their fellow-villagers and help combat illiteracy and general backwardness. There is little doubt that the institutes not only taught children about rural matters such as agricultural methods or animal husbandry, but they also intended to convey the general principles and ideology of the new Republic. First and foremost, they aimed to implant a sense of equality (Apaydın 1967: 54) and introduced practices that ran against religious conservatism, which dominated the majority of the countryside. Furthermore, their incorporation of girls into the educational system and their adoption of co-education as well as their emphasis on positivism were some of the elements that reinforced the principle of secularism. Another major law which was endorsed by the National Assembly in 1940 was the law on the establishment of the State Conservatory, which had started its preliminary operations in Ankara in 1936 (Katoğlu 1997: 432). The law stipulated the establishment of a conservatory which would have an exclusive focus on Western-style education and would base itself on Western music and drama (Katoğlu 1997: 435). This aspect of the law raised some debate in the National Assembly, and one MP from Konya inquired about the emphasis on Western music when Turkey already had such a deep-rooted musical tradition (Yücel Eronat 1999: 147). Yücel replied to this by saying that the future musicians in Turkey would have to know the history of their music but that they would compose and perform music in the mode of the “civilized world” with Western instruments. However, what they would express in this Western style of music would be the “Turkish spirit” (Yücel Eronat 1999: 158).

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Yücel had been closely involved in traditional Ottoman music since his childhood. He even composed a song which became immediately popular in the 1920s (Sayar 2002: 45; Aksoy 2005). Both his father and uncle were famous musicians (Öztuna 1976: 395). He held musical gatherings in his home, which were attended by the most famous classical Turkish musicians of the day, and performed and sang in some of them.7 His daughter Canan Yücel Eronat tells us that Yücel became familiar with Western classical music during his stay in Paris, and that it became a passion for him throughout his whole life. Both Turkish and Western music were heard and enjoyed in their home (Aksoy 2005). This small example shows that there were some differences between Yücel’s private and public personalities. While he embraced elements from both Western and Ottoman cultures in his private life, Yücel appeared as a more dedicated Westernist in his public profile as a politician. However, it can be safely argued that his orientation towards Western culture was not an attempt at imitating the West and copying Western cultural products in Turkey. For Yücel, Westernization was closely linked to the idea of “Turkish Humanism”, something which he expressed as a “free approach and sensitivity which values all human works regardless of their time or place” (1993: 379). In the speech he made on the occasion of the first graduation ceremony of the State Conservatory held in 1941 he remarked, “The author may not be one of us, the composer may belong to another nationality. Yet we are the ones who understand and enact those words and sounds. Therefore, the plays and operas performed by the State Conservatory are ours; they are Turkish and national” (Yücel 1993: 379). For Yücel, and many intellectuals of the time who propagated the concept of humanism, Westernization was a means to become more authentic and national. According to the proponents of the humanist movement, humanism was to be instrumental in unearthing Turkish national history and literature, and it was presented as “a quest to discover oneself ” and a way to explore Turkish history and literature in its entirety (Burian in Arıkan 1999: 86). What appears as a paradox (discovery of the “national” through a study of Western cultural sources) became a perfectly legitimate method for Turkish humanists as Bernard Lewis confirms: “Among the Turks, the two terms most frequently used to denote their revolution are nationalism and Westernization – and the two are not, as in other parts of the world, in contradiction with one another” (Lewis 1961: 478). The humanist idea dominated cultural projects undertaken in the 1930s and early 1940s. Among them, the establishment of the Translation Bureau was an occasion where humanism was most discussed and promoted, as I will explain in the next section. Yücel’s practices as Minister of Education covered a wide range of fields, extending from the publication of encyclopedias to the setting up of higher institutions of education such as Istanbul Technical University (1944) and Ankara



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­ niversity Medical School (1945). He also prepared the University Law approved U by the National Assembly in 1946. The encyclopedias which began to be published during his term of office are still considered unique initiatives in Turkey. The first of these was İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the Encyclopedia of Islam, a translation of the four-volume Encyclopédie d’Islam, which started to be published in 1940 and was only completed in 1988 (Çıkar 1997: 85–86). The second one was İnönü Ansiklopedisi, a general encyclopedia named after İsmet İnönü, the President of the day. İnönü Ansiklopedisi was based on a number of foreign sources, and the name was changed to Türkiye Ansiklopedisi in 1951 following İnönü’s replacement by Celal Bayar. A third encyclopedia, whose publication was begun during Yücel’s term was the 5-volume Sanat Ansiklopedisi, Encyclopedia of Art, prepared by Celal Esat Arseven. Publication of the encyclopedia began in 1943 and was completed in 1945 (Çıkar 1997: 89). It is indeed interesting to see that Yücel gave priority to an encyclopedia which offered information about Islamic culture and its products among the publication activities of the Ministry. However, it should also be borne in mind that the encyclopedia was initially prepared and published in Leiden and represented Islam from a Western perspective. Yücel himself admitted that there were a series of errors in the encyclopedia which were corrected in the Turkish edition (Çıkar 1997: 85). In any case, the selection and publication of İslam Ansiklopedisi was an indication of the importance Yücel attached to Eastern and Islamic culture in addition to Western culture. One can also trace the Mevlevi influence throughout Yücel’s political career, yet one has to read between the lines. During his time as Minister of Education Yücel avoided making his Mevlevi side explicit (Sayar 2002: 75). Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to make an occasional statement which expressed his sympathy for the Mevlevi order. In a special message published in the Mevlana special issue of a state-sponsored journal [The Journal of the Konya People’s House] he wrote “He [Mevlana] became an element of life for me” (in Sayar 2002: 28). Furthermore, it was during Yücel’s ministry that restoration on the Galata Mevlevihanesi was begun (Sayar 2002: 75). There is also a widespread anecdote about a dream that Yücel had during his ministry. He allegedly dreamt of Mevlana, who told him to protect his dervish. He phoned the Mevlana Museum in Konya the day after and found out that the elder, dede, in Mevlana’s Tomb in Konya, had been forced to retire due to old age. He ordered his retirement to be cancelled and instructed the museum director to keep him there until his death (Sayar 1997: 68–69). This anecdote was later confirmed by Yücel’s daughter in an oral interview (Şengör 2003: 97). In the meantime, Yücel’s biggest service to the Mevlevi order is considered to be his commissioning of the Mesnevî for translation by the Translation Bureau.

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7.

Yücel as a patron of translation

The setting up of “Tercüme Bürosu”, the Translation Bureau, is considered one of the most important steps in Yücel’s career as a politician and a cultural agent. Although it has been suggested that his involvement in the Village Institutes has to a great extent dominated the impression he left on society (Kayalı 1997: 209), the various articles written in commemoration of the centenary of his birth in 1997 (which was also declared the Hasan-Âli Yücel Year by UNESCO in Turkey) show that the Translation Bureau is the major project he is associated with (for an example see Anamur 1997 and Cumhuriyet Kitap June 25, 1998). I have demonstrated elsewhere that the Village Institutes and the Translation Bureau are pillars of the same modernization project and that the students and teachers of the Village Institutes were among the most ardent consumers of the products of the Bureau (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2008: 77–81). Therefore, unlike Kurtuluş Kayalı, who sees the two institutions as being irrelevant and disconnected (1997: 209), I suggest that most of the activities of the Ministry of Education can be positioned within a larger and holistic project. The early activities of the Translation Bureau provide a ground where this project can be deconstructed into its various elements. The establishment of the Translation Bureau was preceded by a century-old debate on the need to translate Western classics into Turkish. Since the 19th century intellectuals had commented on the importance of creating a planned and systematic translation movement (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2008: 98–99). There had been earlier attempts by both the Ottoman and the Republican governments to launch planned translation movements, yet these fell short of creating the desired impact and impetus (Kayaoğlu 1998). Yücel had been thinking about the issue before his time as the Minister of Education. To begin with, he had translated at least two works: Cuvillier’s ABC de Psychologie and Mevlana’s collection of poetry, Rubais. Furthermore, he had personally suffered from the shortage of translations of philosophical works into Turkish as a student (Çıkar 1997: 42–43). Yücel felt that translation would be a means of literary progress. In his weekly column in the daily Akşam he wrote, “Familiarizing our youth with the literature of advanced countries in schools, translating and publishing great works on a wide scale will help create a selective and critical readership, and our writers will have to work more carefully to satisfy this readership” (Yücel 1998b: 82). It is evident that Yücel already included translation as a major element in his cultural agenda. One of his first practices as Minister of Education was the organization of the First Turkish Publishing Congress in May 1939, which proved to be a milestone leading towards the establishment of a government-sponsored translation



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agency. The Congress allocated special space to translation and set up an individual Translation Committee. This committee prepared a report and submitted a list of modern and ancient classics recommended for translation. The committee stated that works related to humanistic culture should be prioritized. Moreover, it stressed the need for state involvement in translation and suggested that an institution be established under the Ministry of Education to start up a planned translation movement (Birinci Türk Neşriyat Kongresi 1939: 125). The Translation Bureau was set up in 1940 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education. The Bureau also published a journal under the title Tercüme [Translation]. The classics translated by the Translation Bureau were published by the Ministry of Education under the general title “Translations from World Literature” and were gradually covered by up to 47 different series. The Translation Bureau was initially set up as one of the pillars of the cultural modernization project and was a significant step towards creating a new literature for Turkey. It bridged the political and the literary fields by serving as a channel through which the concept of humanism, as the ideological basis for Turkish modernization, would be transferred. The Translation Bureau also took on a pivotal role in the canon formation process in early Republican Turkey. By defining canonicity in terms of the lists it prepared and its translations, the Bureau distinguished high literature from low, or popular literature. Works originating from a “humanist” background were clearly prioritized, regardless of the genre they belonged to, especially during the initial six years of the Bureau’s operation. The Bureau started its operations in 1940 and translated 10 plays for the State Conservatory in its first year. 13 works were translated in 1941. Thereafter, the number of books translated and commissioned by the Bureau rose steadily. 27 books came out in 1942, 68 in 1943, 97 in 1944, 110 in 1945 and 143 in 1946 (Klâsikler Bibliyografyası 1967: VI). Both during its initial phase and throughout its operations, the Bureau focused on Western classics. Some of the most popular source authors for the Bureau were Plato, Molière, Balzac, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Greek and Latin works were largely prioritized, while Eastern works appeared to be neglected to a significant degree. Only 23 out of the 467 titles translated between 1940 and 1946 were Eastern classics (5 per cent), and these mainly consisted of Arabic and Persian works (based on Tuncor 1989: 26–65). The ads published in the journal Tercüme inform us that the books published by the Ministry of Education were sold at state bookstores and private bookstores at reasonable prices. However, these books reached their target readership mainly through two major channels: schools and the libraries at the People’s Houses, which were local community centres. Statements of graduates of Village Institutes and former attendants of the People’s Houses demonstrate that these institutions

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encouraged reading through various means such as organizing competitions for best book summary or special reading hours where translated classics were given a special place (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2008: 73–77). The activities of the Translation Bureau created energy and dynamism in the publishing market. The number of private publishers started to increase in the early 1940s, and these usually concentrated on translated literature of both a canonical and a popular nature. They were eager to capitalize on the growing public interest in translated works (TahirGürçağlar 2008: 168–172). The emphasis placed on Western literature by the Translation Bureau may appear paradoxical, given Hasan-Âli Yücel’s influence on the Bureau and his worldview rooted in the Eastern tradition and nurtured with the belief that Turkey could only develop through Western methods (Nusret Hızır in Sayar 2002: 67). The weight on Greek and Latin classics was mainly due to the Bureau’s humanistic mission. In his preface to the translations carried out by the Bureau, which was published in all translations until his resignation in 1946, Yücel made the connection between translation and humanism explicit and wrote: The first understanding and feeling of the spirit of humanism starts with the adoption of works of art, which are the most concrete expression of human existence. Among art forms, literature is the richest in terms of the intellectual elements of this expression. Therefore, when a nation repeats the literatures of other nations in its own tongue, or rather in its own conception, it increases, revives and re-creates its intellect and power of understanding. This is why we consider translation activity so important and influential for our mission.(Yücel 1961: 12)

Humanism was almost invariably associated with the translation of Greek and Latin classics. In his preface to the special Greek issue of Tercüme, Hasan Âli Yücel expressed this in strong terms. He maintained that humanism required familiarity with Greek works and that the “civilized world” was rooted in Ancient Greece. He then went on to argue that Islamic civilization had established its “intellectual front” (fikir cephesi) by making use of Ancient Greek sources. He also suggested that the Islamic civilization had been selective in its use of Greek writers and philosophers, which brought about its failure (Yücel 1945: II). Once again, it becomes clear that Yücel perceived of culture and civilization as a whole and was aware of the close connection between the Muslim and Greek sources. Various authors suggest different origins for Yücel’s humanistic inclinations. Sayar (2002: 44) suggests that his humanism is rooted in his Mevlevi background, while Çıkar (1997: 121) draws links between Yücel’s humanism and German neohumanism. He argues that Goethe provided the background for Yücel’s humanism and that he adopted Goethe’s humanism as a basis for “Turkish humanism” (Çıkar 1997: 121). Once again, one can sense a fragmentary approach and a failure



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to present Yücel’s worldview as a complex, yet integral whole borrowing elements from both East and West, spiritualism and positivism. Sayar intends to reflect this complexity by arguing that Yücel’s intellectual proximity to Goethe was due to the way Goethe combined elements from both the East and the West (2002: 152). In the meantime, the few Eastern classics published by the Translation Bureau under Yücel were appreciated by those who felt the need for more emphasis on Muslim culture in Turkey. A major work, Mevlana’s Mesnevî was translated into Turkish for the first time in 1942 and was seen as a major step in terms of introducing Mevlana to the Turkish readership (Sayar 2002: 74). There were a total of 14 Arabic and Persian works translated into Turkish during Yücel’s ministry under the series “Oriental-Islamic Classics” and one re-edition of a translation previously made from Persian into Ottoman Turkish (Klâsikler Bibliyografyası 1967: 281– 299). Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that, statistically, the Translation Bureau provided much more room for Western works. Ahmed Güner Sayar justifies this policy by underlining the fact that Turkey was trying to catch up with Europe, which was considered to be the center of ‘material’ civilization (2002: 152). However, there were also dissident voices who criticized the Bureau’s operations, especially towards the end of Yücel’s period of office. Among these, the most outspoken criticism came from Refi Cevad Ulunay, a journalist much opposed to the cultural policies of the Republican People’s Party. Ulunay wrote very negatively about the Bureau on the grounds that it neglected Eastern classics (1946: 191). This indicates that Yücel and the Translation Bureau under his ministry were not met with unanimous approval by the population and intellectuals. After 1946, a decline was observed in the number of books published, as well as a revision of the general policy of the Translation Bureau. When the Bureau was closed down in 1966, it had produced a total of 1247 works, including reprints. 973 of these were first translations. Tercüme, too, continued to be published until 1966, but (especially) in the 1950s it became rather irregular, failing to appear for long periods.

8.

The unmaking of Yücel’s symbolic capital

Hasan-Âli Yücel was one of the best-liked and popular ministers in early Republican history. He was praised and complimented by other politicians and writers both during his time as minister, later during his life and after his death. Yet he also turned out to be the one politician who suffered the heaviest blow and the biggest fall from grace. İsmet İnönü’s presidency, when Yücel served as a minister, took place during the Second World War and was spent in an effort to keep Turkey out of the war.

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Turkey did not take part in the war, yet spent the first half of the 1940s in a relatively oppressive atmosphere. While the government supported Western policies and undertook radical cultural reforms, it was not all that permissive to differing political tendencies. After all, the country had a one-party system, and İnönü was called “the National Chief ”. There was martial law and strict control of the press, to counter foreign espionage and infiltration (Lewis 1961: 298). Both the nationalist and the leftist press, which criticized the social and economic management of the country, were closely monitored and closed down in 1944 (Koçak 1997: 132–134). Nationalists and pan-Turkists, who felt the Nazi support behind them, had become active in the early years of the war, but as the war drew to an end and Turkey joined the allied powers they became increasingly frustrated and hostile to the government (Koçak 1997a: 132). Nationalists disliked Yücel’s policies and even attempted to assassinate him in 1942 by shooting a bullet through the window of his living room (Çıkar 1997: 117). They considered Yücel’s humanist policies as “leftist” (Çıkar 1997: 116) and entered into disagreements with him, which culminated in two famous court cases in 1944 and 1947. In the first court case a number of young nationalists were arrested and tried in the court for racist activities (Koçak 1997a: 133). Yücel was alleged to have ordered the police forces to arrest and torture them in addition to having them detained for over a year (Yücel 1947: 5–6). It was this allegation that painted a very negative picture of Yücel in the eyes of those who held nationalist tendencies. This is an impression which continues even today (Ayvazoğlu 1999: 32). His tense relations with the nationalists and the rising allegations about his sympathy for communists spelt the beginning of the unmaking of Yücel’s high status in politics and thus of his symbolic capital. Yücel was forced to resign from his post in August 1946, which brought the end of an era in Turkish culture. As the war ended, it became clear that Turkey had to ally itself with the West and join the UN. Closer adherence to Western politics meant that the country had to have a functioning democracy with a multi-party system (Karpat 1959: 143). With the transition to the multi-party regime in 1945, the Republican People’s Party loosened its grip on cultural policies and became somewhat more populist, reversing some of the reforms it had earlier undertaken. For instance, it made some reversals in the field of the linguistic reform (Heyd 1954: 49; Lewis 1961: 429) and secularism (Karpat 1959: 279), major pillars of Turkey’s modernization project. Following the transition to the multi-party system, Hasan-Âli Yücel’s cultural practices started to be criticized harshly both inside and outside parliament. Even İnönü admitted that the opposition disliked Yücel even more than they disliked him (Çıkar 1997: 120). Yücel noticed the rise of conservative and nationalist tendencies in the country, lost the support of his party and was distanced by İsmet



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İnönü (Koçak 1997b: 222), which all led to his resignation from his post in 1946 (Çıkar 1997: 120). He continued to serve as an MP until the next elections in 1950. He lost his seat in the elections, which brought the end of his political career. In 1947, he opened up a libel case against Kenan Öner, the defense lawyer in the 1944 case, who accused him with a number of charges including his alleged communist activities (Çıkar 1997: 126). This court case further eroded Yücel’s public image. He won the case, yet the press published a number of mostly false stories about him, and the public were led to believe that he was a communist torturer who intended to lead Turkey to destruction (Çıkar 1997: 131). Yücel published his defense in a well-known book, Dâvam [My Case] (1947), but failed to correct the false impressions that had formed. Yücel spent his remaining years in disappointment but continued to be active in the field of culture. After all, he was still associated with humanism and cultural modernization, and he was still largely respected by the intellectuals of the country. He wrote for the dailies, Ulus, Cumhuriyet and Dünya. He continued to publish books and brought out collections of essays and poetry as well as scholarly books (for a full list of Yücel’s publications see Sönmez 2000: 19–20). He was elected to the National UNESCO Committee in 1958. His major cultural involvement after his ministry took place in the second half of the 1950s when he started working as the editor-in-chief of İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, a major publishing house sponsored by one of the biggest banks in Turkey. The publishing house was founded in 1956, and Yücel served as editor until 1960. During these four years nearly half of the 42 books published by İş Bankası were translations from English, French and German. The translations were made by former members of the Translation Bureau or academics. Yücel may be said to have continued the translation movement he launched at the Ministry of Education in İş Bankası (Çıkar 1997: 138). İş Bankası Publications launched a new series in 2005 under the title “Hasan-Âli Yücel Classics Series”. The series includes over 150 titles as of 2008 and features re-prints of various translations by the Translation Bureau as well as new translations of mainly Western classics. For a full list, see http://www.iskulturyayinlari.com.tr The products of the Translation Bureau under Yücel’s ministry were among the first targets attacked by different sections of the society following his resignation. In July 1947, Lermontov’s Demon, which had been translated into Turkish in 1945 under the title Vadim, was harshly criticized in the National Assembly for containing passages unfavorable to Turks. Fahri Kurtuluş, Republican People’s Party’s Rize MP, even introduced a proposal to delete these passages from the book (Karpat 1959: 377). While the budget of the Ministry of Education was discussed in the National Assembly, another MP condemned the translation of Encomium Moriae by Erasmus, published under the title Deliliğe Methiye [In Praise

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of Madness] and said “we cannot hand our culture over to madmen” (in Günyol 1997: 4). Vedat Günyol, writer, publisher and translator, who also worked for the Bureau, has suggested that during the time of Yücel’s successor, Reşat Şemsettin Sirer, a committee was established to check both translated and original books and that this committee had some books withdrawn from the market and destroyed (Karantay and Salman 1988: 13). There is no documentary evidence to show that this committee really existed, and as Özlem Berk writes, “the details of such manipulations in cultural policies are difficult to trace” (2004: 135). Nevertheless, the sheer existence of such a claim points to a general reaction against books translated by the Bureau during Yücel’s ministry. Although the products of the Translation Bureau are greatly appreciated in some sections of Turkish society to the point of making the Bureau a symbol of an incomplete modernization project today (Cumhuriyet Kitap June 25 1998: 5–7; Tahir-Gürçağlar 2003: 129), there are also critical statements made by various authors (see for example Kayaoğlu 1998: 307–308; Güngör 1996: 130). A strong form of criticism came from Beşir Ayvazoğlu, a well-known conservative writer (1999: 33). In an interesting essay on Yücel, praising his religious side and downplaying his cultural practices as the Minister of Education, Ayvazoğlu writes that Hasan-Âli Yücel is associated with the Village Institutes set up “to train communists” and that he is largely remembered as a torturer of nationalists and protector of communists. He continues by stating that many regard Yücel as “only a Minister of Education who had Greek, Latin and Western classics translated in order to destroy the Turkish-Islamic culture and to replace it with the Greek-Latin humanist culture” (Ayvazoğlu 1999: 33).

9.

Re-presenting Hasan-Âli Yücel

An attempt to offer an (alternative) account of the practices of cultural agents runs the risk of oversimplifying their cultural endeavors. It is so much easier to pick out the practices that comply with a certain image of the cultural agent. The image that is evoked by Yücel’s name in most members of the Turkish academic community today would be that of a cultural hero. He is remembered and celebrated as the founder of the Translation Bureau and the Village Institutes. This image has been confirmed and reinforced by a number of publications and essays which appeared in 1997 and after, mostly triggered by the centenary of his birth and UNESCO’s designation of 1997 as the Hasan-Âli Yücel year in Turkey (among others see Danabaş and Budak 1997; Coşturoğlu and Emiralioğlu 1997; Anamur 1997). The image formed by these publications and many others is an unproblematic one where Yücel is represented as an ardent defender of a radical



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cultural transformation in Turkey. However, few researchers point towards the complex nature of his cultural agency, and even fewer question the dilemmas in his life and career. There are numerous questions that can be posed: How smooth was Yücel’s transition to a Western-oriented positivist paradigm from the mystic background he grew up in? How strong was the mystic influence over his political career? How did he combine his fondness for Eastern culture and music with his post in a government which so zealously defended Western art against traditional Turkish art? Was he unique in combining elements from both the East and the West, from both spiritualism and positivism in his time? Such questions, which I have partially tried to answer in the present paper, also lead one to challenge a common view of the onset of the Republican period as a sudden rupture from the Ottoman Empire. Although Republican reforms drastically changed the educational system, the alphabet, dress codes and even people’s life styles in Turkey, it would be naive to believe that this happened overnight. The personal trajectory followed by Yücel shows that for quite a long time (and perhaps still today) elements from Ottoman culture became intertwined with modern Turkish culture, which remained in the making for many years after the proclamation of the Republic in 1923. In the field of literature and translation the Ottoman influence made itself felt for many years after 1923, especially in popular literature (TahirGürçağlar 2008: 258–260). In this sense, one could perhaps refer to a temporal ‘interculture’ (Pym 1998: 177) where elements from two related, yet different, cultures co-existed. It is evident that Yücel carried elements of both cultures with him throughout his whole life. What does this study on an individual agent contribute to the study of translation and culture? First of all, in the Turkish context it enables the researcher to better understand the motives behind the Translation Bureau. Yücel’s strong emphasis on creating a unique type of Turkish humanism was probably fostered by both his training in philosophy and his affection for the human being instilled in him by the Mevlevi order. It is unclear whether the Translation Bureau would have been so active in translating Greek and Latin classics into Turkish without his support. Furthermore, there is little doubt that the translation of Mesnevî at that specific point in time was a result of Yücel’s Mevlevi side. In fact, it is debatable whether such massive translation activity would have been launched without the Publishing Congress held under his auspices, and the Translation Bureau which followed. His vast political influence, the timing of his ministry and his belief in Turkish modernism enabled a century-old wish to materialize – to have a systematic translation movement covering major Western classics. Researchers have every right to question and challenge the selection criteria and the translation strategies implemented by the Bureau. They also have a right to ask whether such top-down, state-sponsored efforts ever find their intended audience and

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create the desired impact on the reading public. Yet there is no doubt that the Translation Bureau sparked off by Yücel’s enthusiasm is the largest and longest translation initiative ever made in Turkey.

Notes 1. The term “Republican era” refers to the period starting in 1923 with the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, which has continued until today. 2. Some Turkish businessmen are closely involved in cultural and educational activities including translations. Several major banks and holding companies own publishing houses with the aim of contributing towards the development of Turkish culture. Among these, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, owned by a large bank, undertook a major translation initiative starting in the early 1990s and published various translations which would normally be considered commercially unfeasible. An example is Ulysses, published in Turkish translation for the first time in 1996. 3. The Mevlevi brotherhood is a Sufi order founded in Konya, Anatolia by the Persian poet Jalal Al-Din Al-Rumi known by the name Mevlana in the 14th century (Doniger 1999: 701). It seeks to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God (Doniger 1999: 1035). 4. Although Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his fellow politicians ousted the Islamic institutions such as the Caliphate and religious orders, Atatürk was known to have a neutral view of religion. Foreign commentators have observed that the first Republican government is neither “favorable nor hostile to Islam”. “The truth of the matter seems to be that it is distinctly opportunistic in its attitude: that it is favorable to whatever in Islam is consistent with the republican ideals, relentlessly opposed to anything which might endanger Kemalist success” (Donald E. Webster quoted in Kongar 1986: 36). 5. Note that this book was published before the promulgation of the law requiring everyone to take on surnames in 1934. Therefore it appeared under the name Hasan Âli. 6. The book was a re-writing of Armand Cuvillier’s ABC de Pyschologie in which Yücel translated the text directly from French and introduced certain additions (Kaynardağ 1997: 230). 7. Dr. Bülent Aksoy broadcast a recording of one of these meetings on his radio show Musiki Meclisleri on 13 February 2005, probably the first time they had been broadcast.

References Aksoy, Bülent. 2005. Musiki Meclisleri. Radio programme, broadcast on Açık Radyo, Istanbul, on 20.2.2005. Apaydın, Talip.1967. Karanlığın Kuvveti. Istanbul: Ararat Yayınevi. Arıkan, Zeki. 1997. “Hasan-Âli Yücel ve Tarih Bilinci”. Tarih ve Toplum 28 (166): 196–204. Arıkan, Zeki. 1999. “Cumhuriyet Döneminde Hümanizma Akımı”. Bilanço 1. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları. Ayvazoğlu, Beşir. 1999. Sîretler ve Sûretler. Istanbul: Ötüken.



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Berk, Özlem. 2004. Translation and Westernisation in Turkey, From the 1840s to 1980s. Istanbul: Ege Yayınları. Birinci Maarif Şûrası. 17–19 Temmuz 1939, Çalışma Programı, Konuşmalar, Lâhikalar. T.C. Maarif Vekilliği: Istanbul. Birinci Türk Dil Kurultayı. Tezler, Müzakere Zabıtları. 1933. T.C. Maarif Vekâleti: Istanbul. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production. Randal Johnson (ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Coşturoğlu, Mustafa and Emiralioğlu, Mehmet (eds). 1997. Hasan-Âli Yücel’e Armağan. Ankara: Birleşmiş Milletler Türk Derneği Yayınları. Cumhuriyet Kitap June 25, 1998, 1–7. Çıkar, Mustafa. 1997. Hasan-Âli Yücel ve Türk Kültür Reformu. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları. Danabaş, Ali Ekber and Budak, Abdülkadir (eds). 1997. Hasan-Âli Yücel Günleri. Ankara: Edebiyatçılar Derneği. Doniger, Wendy (ed.). 1999. Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1994. “Culture planning and the market: Making and maintaining sociosemiotic entities”. Paper delivered at the Darmouth Colloquium “The Making of Culture”, Dartmouth College, 22–27 July, 1994. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1997. “Culture planning and cultural resistance in the making and maintaining of entities”. Paper delivered at the International Workshop “Relocation of Languages and Cultures,” Duke University, May 6–11, 1997. Gölpınarlı, Abdülbaki. 1983. Mevlâna’dan Sonra Mevlevilik. Istanbul: İnkılap ve Aka. Güngör, Erol. 1998. In Aydınlar ve Sosyal Meseleler, R. Güler and E. Kılınç (eds). Istanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat. Günyol, Vedat. 1997. “Hasan Âli Yücel”. In Hasan Âli Yücel Anma Kitabı, Çeviri: Ekinler ve Zamanlar Kavşağı, Hasan Anamur (ed.). Istanbul: Yıldız Üniversitesi. Güvenç, Bozkurt. 1997. Türk Kimliği. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. Hasan-Âli. 1933. Türk Edebiyatına Toplu Bir Bakış. Istanbul: Remzi Kitaphanesi. Heyd, Uriel. 1954. Language Reform in Modern Turkey. Jerusalem: The Israel Oriental Society. Kaplan, Mehmed. 1963. Tanpınar’ın Şiir Dünyası. Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları. Karantay, Suat and Salman, Yurdanur. 1988. “Vedat Günyol’la Söyleşi”. Metis Çeviri 2: 11–19. Karpat, Kemal H. 1959. Turkey’s Politics, The Transition to a Multi-Party System. Princeton and New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Katoğlu, Murat. 1997. “Cumhuriyet Türkiye’sinde Eğitim, Kültür, Sanat”. In Türkiye Tarihi 4. Çağdaş Türkiye 1908–1980, Sina Akşin (ed.). Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi. Kayalı, Kurtuluş. 1997. “Bir Türk Aydınının Trajik Portresi”. Tarih ve Toplum 28 (166): 205– 210. Kayaoğlu, Taceddin. 1998. Türkiye’de Tercüme Müesseseleri. Istanbul: Kitabevi. Kaynardağ, Arslan. 1997. “1918–1923 Arasında İstanbul’un Kültür Ortamı ve Felsefeci Yücel’in Üniversite Yılları”. Tarih ve Toplum 28 (166): 227–232. Klâsikler Bibliyografyası 1940–1966. 1967. Ankara: Milli Kütüphane Yayınları. Koçak, Cemil. 1997a. “Siyasal Tarih (1923–1950)”. In Türkiye Tarihi 4. Çağdaş Türkiye 1908– 1980, Sina Akşin (ed.). Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi. Koçak, Cemil. 1997b. “Öner-Yücel Dâvâsı”. Tarih ve Toplum 28 (166): 214–222.

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Kongar, Emre. 1986. “Turkey’s cultural transformation”. In The Transformation of Turkish Culture, The Atatürk Legacy, Günsel Renda and C. Max Kortepeter (eds). Princeton: The Kingston Press. Koraltürk, Murat. 1997. “Hasan Âli Yücel (1897–1961)”. Tarih ve Toplum 58 (166): 211–213. Le Goff, Jacques. 1995. “Writing historical biography today”. Current Sociology 43 (2/3): 11–17. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge. Lewis, Bernard. 1961. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Öztuna, Yılmaz. 1976. Türk Musikisi Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 2. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi. Pym, Anthony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome. Pym, Anthony. 2000. Negotiating the Frontier. Manchester: St. Jerome. Sağlam, Nuri (ed.). 2001. Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın’dan Hasan Âli Yücel’e “Diyorlar ki” İçin Bir Mektup. Istanbul: Kitabevi. Sayar, Ahmed Güner. 1997. “Hasan-Âli Yazılarına Önemli Bir Zeyl’e Zeyl”. Tarih ve Toplum 27 (158): 68–70. Sayar, Ahmed Güner. 2002. Hasan Âli Yücel’in Tasavvufî Dünyası ve Mevlevîliği. Istanbul: Ötüken. Simeoni, Daniel. 1998. “The Pivotal status of the translator’s habitus”. Target 10 (1): 1–39. Şengör, A. M. C. 2003. Hasan-Âli Yücel ve Türk Aydınlanması. Ankara: TÜBİTAK Yayınları. Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. 2008. The Politics and Poetics of Translation in Turkey, 1923–1960. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. 2003. “The Translation Bureau re-visited”. In Apropos of Ideology, Translation Studies on Ideology – Ideologies in Translation Studies, Maria Calzada Pérez (ed.). Manchester: St. Jerome. Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi. 1961. “Hasan Âli Yücel”. Yeni Ufuklar, 109. Toury, Gideon. 2002. “Translation as a means of planning and the planning of translation: A theoretical framework and an exemplary case”. In Translations: (re)shaping of literature and culture, 148–165. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press. Tuncor, Ferit Ragıp. 1989. Milli Eğitim Yayınları Bibliyografyası. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi. Ulunay, Refi Cevad. 1946. “Klâsiklerimiz ve Maarifin Klâsikleri”. Tercüme 7 (38): 190–192. Yamaner, Şerafettin. 1998. Atatürk Öncesinde ve Sonrasında Kültürel Gelişim. Istanbul: Toplumsal Dönüşüm Yayınları. Yücel Eronat, Canan (ed.). 1999. Hasan-Âli Yücel’in TBMM Konuşmaları ve İlgili Görüşmeler, 1939–1943. Ankara: TBMM Kültür, Sanat ve Yayın Kurulu Yayınları. Yücel Eronat, Canan (ed.). 1999. Hasan-Âli Yücel’in TBMM Konuşmaları ve İlgili Görüşmeler, 1943–1946. Ankara: TBMM Kültür, Sanat ve Yayın Kurulu Yayınları. Yücel, Can. 1997. “Hasan-Âli Yücel”. In Hasan-Âli Yücel Anma Kitabı, Hasan Anamur (ed.). Istanbul: Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi. Yücel, Hasan Âli. 1945. “Yunan Özel Sayısına Önsöz”. Tercüme 5 (29–30): I–IV. Yücel, Hasan Âli. 1961. “Klâsiklere Birinci Önsöz”. Tercüme 15 (75–76): 12. Yücel, Hasan-Âli. 1947. Dâvam. Ankara: Ulus Basımevi. Yücel, Hasan-Âli. 1961. Allah Bir. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. Yücel, Hasan-Âli. 1993. Milli Eğitimle İlgili Söylev ve Demeçler. Ankara: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları. Yücel, Hasan-Âli. 1998a. Geçtiğim Günlerden. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları. Yücel, Hasan-Âli. 1998b. Pazartesi Konuşmaları. Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları.

Limits of freedom Agency, choice and constraints in the work of the translator Outi Paloposki

University of Helsinki1

Translators’ agency has been under increasing attention lately, from several different viewpoints and using different kinds of data. The present paper is an attempt at outlining concrete day-to-day routines and decision-making of two translators in Finland, one in the late 19th century and the other in the mid20th century, on the basis of their correspondence and other documents. The study of their lives can shed light on issues such as the selection (or rejection) of books to be translated, translation strategies, the use of source texts and versions, typographical and layout design, and fees. I will outline the interaction between the translators and their publishers and readers and explore the issues which determine the balance between individual agency and collective norms. Key words: agency; choice; negotiation; norms

1.

Introduction

The extent to which translators are free to decide on the contents of their work varies, depending on the position of the translator in question, on the literature to be translated, and the expectations of the readers, among other factors. In the research on the translators’ role there is variation as well: a number of scholars are interested in the individuality of the translator and consequently tend to focus more on data where individuality or subjectivity can be studied, while others may be more interested in the role of norms and other constraints in the work of the translator. In an interesting discussion on the comparability of theoretical frameworks, Siobhan Brownlie (2003) draws attention to one of the differences between two major theoreticians in the field of Translation Studies, Antoine Berman and Gideon Toury: the role of the individual and the role of the social. Brownlie (2003: 102) concludes that “[w]hile not denying the role of the other pole, Berman thus gives emphasis

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to the individual, and Toury to the social”. I would like to suggest that such differences are not contradictions; and that different theoretical frameworks do not necessarily compete with each other. Rather, difference may be seen as a question of supplementarity. Toury’s work was a necessary move away from a prescriptive, source-text oriented framework in Translation Studies, but in no way does it erase or make redundant earlier work on translations. Similarly, Toury’s focus on the social factors does not need to be replaced by a framework which is more oriented towards studying individual translators and their actions. Translation in this sense is not separate from any other human action: the role of the social and the role of the individual vary and they are negotiated each time anew in new circumstances. The study of such negotiations is and has been one of the main concerns of modern sociology: tracing the origins of this discourse to Karl Marx, Anthony Giddens (1984: xxi; 162–179) formulates an account of human agency and “structure”; i. e. the constraints imposed by economic and political systems, for example. His account is informed by and develops the theoretical views expressed by major Western sociologists during the latter half of the 20th century. The sociological branch of Translation Studies, including the work on translators, seems to fall in line with Giddens’ framework – the work of Anthony Pym (including vocabulary such as bodies and locales) already seems an obvious materialization of Giddens’ formulations.

2.

Agency in translation

Reconciling these two frameworks, André Lefevere (1992: 9) noted more than ten years ago: “Translators operate under the constraints listed above. They most definitely do not do so in a mechanistic universe in which they have no choice. Rather, they have the freedom to stay within the perimeters marked by the constraints, or to challenge these constraints by trying to move beyond them”. Translation can thus be studied both from the point of view of the individual translators’ choice and decision processes and the effects of these in the target culture, and from the point of view of the norms and constraints surrounding translators (these may even have been set up by them or their predecessors). Translation norms are facts which only gradually get formed in an emergent literary culture. During the early phases of translation activity it has been noted that translation practices vary enormously. Such was the case with early Arab translation in the 8th to 9th centuries in Baghdad, for example (see Montgomery 2000: 109 et passim). Norms evolve only gradually, and often as a result of the work of the translators themselves. Such phases allow us to study the interaction between individual choices and practices of the translators, and the response or demand



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from the part of patrons, publishers, readers and critics. A similar situation existed in Finland in the 19th century, giving birth to a new configuration of translators’ practices. In this article, I will concentrate on individual agency, while the surrounding constraints or demands imposed on the translator figure as a backdrop and point of comparison. While the concept of norms stresses the collective forces in translating, the individual combination of experience, talent, creativity and initiative provides the other half of the environment translators work in. In Translation Studies, the emphasis on translators’ textual power and influence and on their role as active and powerful agents is discernible in a number of studies, but in different ways. Feminist theories underline the translators’ textual presence and the possibility of “hijacking” the text (see Godard 1990: 91, Simon 1996: 14–16). Going beyond textuality, the interest in translators as human, living creatures is evident for example in the FIT history project (see Delisle and Woodsworth 1995; Delisle 1999, Delisle 2002), where the translators’ instrumental role is highlighted. Furthermore, Anthony Pym (e.g. 1998: 160–161) has repeatedly called for attention to translators’ active agency, encompassing in his study more than just an interest in translator biographies. Yet another kind of emphasis on the individual can be found in Douglas Robinson’s work (2001), where the subjectivity of translators is explored with a more psychological dint. In Finland, the role of translators in institutional settings is an important research topic (see, e.g., Koskinen 2008). The Finnish translation history (a two-volume, 1000-page work published in 2007), spelled out as one of its explicit aims to make individual translators visible. The study of translational agency may make use of different sets of data. The studies listed above use, variously, translations, different kinds of paratexts, and biographical sources. Kaisa Koskinen (2000: 99), in her treatment of translation ethics, introduces a useful distinction between textual, paratextual and extratextual visibility. This categorization can also be applied to agency, and consequently to the data used in the study of agency. Textual agency would refer to the translators’ voice in the text, to her/his footprints, so to speak, be they deliberate manipulation, stylistic preferences or habits (Baker 2000; Gullin 2002; Pekkanen 2007) or functionalist-oriented adaptation or anything in between. Paratextual agency consists of the translators’ role in inserting and adding notes and prefaces, and extratextual agency of the selection of books to be translated, the use of different editions and intermediary translations, and to the role of translators in “speaking out”, publicizing their translations, explaining their methods and strategies, and the like. The translator’s role may also extend to the whole of the book market (selection and availability of books) and in this way be formative of audience tastes. John Milton (2003) sees agency as a far-reaching influence which can affect the whole of the national book market (as happened in Brazil due to the activities of

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Monteiro Lobato). André Lefevere (1992: 35) combined the study of textual and extratextual agency in showing that translators often decide which texts and how to translate: “It happens not unfrequently that translators decide … that foreign authors are ‘not always models of taste’”. There is still relatively little work done on the actual working circumstances of translators. The daily routines and day-to-day procedures of translators remain largely hidden, partly due to their “invisible” nature: their work is often carried out alone, and not infrequently with the explicit understanding that translators are to remain in the shadows (cf. Venuti 1995: 1–9). Historically, documents shedding light on translators’ practices and routines may have been lost. Some documents, considered self-evident today, did not even exist before, such as translation contracts. No wonder Keith Harvey (2003: 68–69) warns against interpreting all textual features as resulting from the translator’s deliberate agency. According to Harvey, textual or paratextual features (or “bindings”, as he calls them) can never be assumed to be the unique responsibility of the translator (or the editor, for that matter). However, rather than drawing our attention away from the translators’ agency, this situation allows us to study precisely the middle ground between translators and other agents – that is, if we have data on these negotiations. Historical research does have its drawbacks: when there is no data, we cannot simply produce new sources (as we sometimes can with actual topics – think of interviews, participant observation and the like). But sometimes historians are lucky, too: there have been translators who have meticulously kept notes or taken copies of their correspondence, specifying the kinds of tasks they are involved in, their suggestions to the publishers, and their reactions to publishers’ requests, to literary developments, and the like. The study of such routines constitutes an invaluable aid for understanding the role of translators. To try and draw a sketch of translators’ possibilities of choice/ agency and their limits, I will here summarize the research I have done into the correspondence and other personal papers of two translators in Finland, Samuli Suomalainen (1850–1907) and Juhani Konkka (1904–1970). I will supplement my findings with the work of other scholars studying Finnish translators (­Saarikivi 2005; Vuokko forthcoming). Of the two translators whose documents constitute my data, Suomalainen was active during an era when the bulk of literature published in Finnish was translated. Translation was in some ways the most important mode of text production, and print runs doubled every ten years or so (Kovala 1992: 192). The role of translation had changed from that of pioneering literary development and enhancing the written language to that of providing the ever-growing Finnish readership with world literature. Today, every year half to two thirds of the literary production in the Finnish language consist of translations (with



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non-fiction texts, the share of translations is even greater). In actual practice this means around 1000 new titles of translations each year: in the year 2000, for example, this figure was 1104 books, which accounted for 57.9% of total book production (Sevänen 2007). In the late 19th and early 20th century, Samuli Suomalainen had a key role as he was one of the most widely praised translators of his generation, and his translation activity extended over a period of several decades, spanning works from six languages, different genres (including non-fiction), and consisting of different translation strategies. Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia, but emergent nationalism, among other factors, fed into linguistic and literary enthusiasm. Juhani Konkka’s work was situated in a different context: that of an independent Finland, with a growing national literature (at times even with a bias against all “imported” literature). My study on Juhani Konkka imposes on the understanding of previous translators’ role a new historical layer, a viewpoint of how the situation of the translators had altered due to changing circumstances – or if it had changed at all. The study of the life and work of translators in Finland during the 20th century is still largely a blank page, so there is not much basis for comparison, but the value of an individual “window study” as Barbara Czarniawska (1997: 65) calls it, is in allowing us to see one potential outcome. The study of only one translator from a period does not lend itself to formulating generalizations, but what it does do is to supplement the picture of the historical evolution of the work of the translator and show what kinds of developments were possible. Both men also had literary production of their own, although both are better known as translators, and their own work has more or less disappeared from public. The study of these two translators should shed some light on the question of the role of the translator, of translators’ rights and freedoms, in a historical context.

3.

Karl Gustaf Samuli Suomalainen (1850–1907)

The name of K. G. S. Suomalainen (or Samuli S., as he became known), became a stamp of quality at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries to such an extent that it was used by publishers in book advertising as a sign of a good translation. He was prolific, fast, and by all accounts reliable, but what makes him interesting is not only the large scale of different types of work he did and the great number of languages he mastered, but also his very fluent and expressive written Finnish at a time when most translators and literati were still linguistically affected by the lifelong exposure to mostly Swedish texts at school; a background which left many of them somewhat insensitive to interference from Swedish. Suomalainen seems to

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have been exempt from this. In a related study, where I am looking at translated language in 19th century Finland, preliminary findings point out that, contrary to what is commonly put forward for first translations, many of the first attempts at conveying a work into Finnish during the latter half of the 19th century were very close to their originals (as opposed to being domesticated versions). Obviously, this was not a result of a deliberate policy of foreignization or any such thing but simply interference. Finnish is an agglutinating language, unlike most source languages of the time, and interference shows in the under-representation of some typological features that distinguish Finnish from other languages. Interestingly, a lot of this interference went unnoticed at first, and many of the translations were praised for their good language. At the same time, however, a growing purism took hold, and there were increasing demands for a “pure” Finnish language. Suomalainen was also working at a time when translation was not a profession the way it is today. The first translators of fiction in Finland had carried out their translation work on top of (more regular) duties such as those of teacher or priest, and alongside other irregular and “altruistic” tasks such as newspaper editing and writing, for which there was no remuneration (they often needed to pay out of their own pocket to get their newspapers or translations published). The first generation, working from the 1820s to the 1840s, had left a legacy of commitment and toil to create and develop written language and literature, which were considered signs of a mature nation. They had started their work at a time when literature in the Finnish language included less than two hundred books, and when there were no newspapers in Finnish. Their task of establishing a literary tradition through translating, editing and writing was a formidable one. The following decades saw a steadier flow of translations from more varied sources (authors and languages), alongside a new infrastructure of printing presses and publishing outlets and increasing literacy through schools and libraries. Translators now spent more of their working time translating and produced more translations than their predecessors. Translation was no longer the pioneering work of a few tireless enthusiasts, to develop literature and the written language. Instead, it was becoming transmission. The task now was to transfer world literature to the language of the young nation which was eager to “become civilized”, to build its cultural capital.2 On the other hand, translation also attracted people who needed money but did not necessarily possess the linguistic abilities demanded for the job. There were, consequently, signs of a growing dissatisfaction with the kinds and quality of translated books on offer. Suomalainen and certain other colleagues of his stood out. He was one of the first really prolific translators, with a natural talent for the language, and who spent a considerable amount of his working life translating, thus preparing the ground for the full-time translating professional of today.



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The son of a Finnish jewelsmith who had settled in St. Petersburg, K. G. S. Suomalainen spent his childhood and went to primary school there. Meanwhile, in Finland, there was an increase in the volume of books published in Finnish, the setting up of schools, libraries, publishing houses and bookshops. News of these developments travelled to St. Petersburg and stirred enthusiasm in the young generation. His talent spotted by a teacher, Suomalainen was sent to the newly-established Jyväskylä Lyceum, the first Finnish-language lyceum in Finland, and from there he went to the University of Helsinki. Suomalainen was the only one of his generation of Finnish translators and writers to have benefited from a schooling in Finnish, as Swedish was still the dominant language of education in the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the university, Suomalainen studied sciences and languages – a combination that was to be of great use to him in later life, as he earned his living teaching mathematics, wrote mathematics exercise books, worked as the editor of the local newspaper, held office on the public library board, and translated over sixty books. Among Suomalainen’s translations there were works from Russian literature, for which he was eminently qualified because of his childhood exposure to Russian language and literature. He is considered to have introduced this geographically close but until then almost completely unknown and/or ignored literature to Finns. He started with Pushkin (The Captain’s Daughter in 1876); his translation in 1882 of Mertvye Dushi (Dead Souls) by Gogol was to become a classic. Kuolleet sielut won the first prize in a competition for translated literature, and Suomalainen’s translation is still read today (latest reprint 2008), despite the emergence of later translations.3 In addition to Pushkin and Gogol, Suomalainen translated Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gorky. He was also among the first to translate directly from French, starting in the 1870s and translating authors such as Jules Verne and Anatole France. English was then a little-studied language in Finland, and most translations from English had been made through second languages. Suomalainen’s first translations from English were made with the help of translations into other languages. From English he translated classics by Oliver Goldsmith, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and contemporary literature such as H. G. Wells. He also translated from Danish, Swedish and German. In addition to novels, Suomalainen translated non-fiction, especially during the first decades of his translating career. After a pause of almost ten years in his translating activity, he started to translate again during the last years of the old century, and from then on he translated relentlessly, in addition to his job as a teacher , sometimes as many as five books per year. There are no documents explaining this period, but as his economic situation was poor, the need for money might have prompted him to seek extra work. He had several projects under way at the same time. During all this time, he suffered from various illnesses, and he

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was also badly in debt; at one stage, his house was in danger of being confiscated. His wife Hilma also translated and undertook some of the work commissioned to him. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing to what extent they collaborated when translating. Suomalainen lived the latter part of his life (from 1880 onwards) in Sortavala in Eastern Finland (today on the Russian side of the border). From his remote homestead he corresponded with foreign authors, friends, and publishers. His own copies of this correspondence are kept at the University Library of Helsinki; an impressive collection of 1500 copy pages of letters by Suomalainen plus dozens of letters received. Unfortunately, all the letters from publishers are missing, and as publishing activity was young and largely unregulated at the time, there are no copies in the archives of Suomalainen’s main publisher, Otava, either. The existing copies are not all in pristine condition, but for the most part they are legible. It is this correspondence which provides most of the available information on Samuli Suomalainen’s agency: they allow us a glimpse into his individual decision-making processes but also to the limits of his power.

4.

Translator’s agency in Samuli Suomalainen’s correspondence

Suomalainen’s correspondence from his first translation period (1870s and 1880s) is lost, and we therefore know nothing of his relations to his first publishers, but a new copybook was started around the time he initiated cooperation with Otava towards the end of the 1890s. Otava, still today one of the biggest publishing houses in Finland, was set up in 1890 with the aim of improving the quality of Finnish-language books on the market, especially translations. Another leading principle for Otava was the idea of fair compensation for the translator for his or her work. The first common endeavour between Suomalainen and Otava was not a success: Suomalainen had agreed on a contract with Otava to translate a book and had embarked on it when it transpired that there already was a translation on the market by another publishing house. A jinx seemed to be on Suomalainen’s work: in 1898, he was again translating the same work as another translator. He was very generous in offering to give up his work if the other translator could find a publisher, since this translator was poorer than he (!). In the end, however, the other translator gave up, and Suomalainen’s translation of Vladimir ­ Galaktionovich Korolenko’s Slepoj muzykant (Sokea soittaja, “The blind musician”) appeared in 1900. In a strange twist of fate, a third translation of the same novel had appeared while Suomalainen’s translation was being printed. This coincidence is an illustration of the state of authors’ copyright at the time: no permission was required for translation.4



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As the first letters to Otava are missing from the copybook, it is not known whether books were first suggested by Suomalainen to the publisher or the other way round. It would seem reasonable to assume that Suomalainen started by offering to translate, since this was not an uncommon practice, and by the time he started to translate for Otava he had been living a long way from Helsinki for nearly two decades, and he had not done any translation for a long time. In any case, he continued offering Otava (and other publishers) books to translate throughout the rest of his life. Out of the 26 novels he translated from 1899 to 1907, it is possible to identify – on the basis of the correspondence – the initiator of translation in 12 cases. In six cases, it was Suomalainen, and in the other six cases it was his publisher. He also rejected several books, and Otava in turn rejected some of those suggested by Suomalainen. In addition, Suomalainen was asked to read books sent to him by the publisher and to comment on their suitability for translation. One of the books Suomalainen objected to was Gustav Frenssen’s Jörn Uhl. Surprisingly, he set out to translate without first reading it – obviously trusting the writer who was a priest. After completing 99 pages (about a quarter of the book) Suomalainen decided he could not go on. He wrote to Otava, explaining that he considered the description of “sexual love” in the novel wrong and morally untenable. His literary tastes seem to have been fairly conservative: he once wrote he preferred “old masters”, and the contemporaneous literature he translated was in no way scandalous or even novel. Suomalainen asked Otava to find another translator for Jörn Uhl, and in a gesture of goodwill attached a vocabulary list of recurrent words and expressions in his letter, to help the new translator in his task. Otava complied and promptly found another translator, the writer Volter Kilpi, who finished the work. The resulting book would also constitute an interesting piece of data for a textual analysis of translators’ styles and language use as it encompasses the texts of two very different translators. One of the preliminary findings of such an analysis is that Suomalainen’s language is the more fluent and creative, while Kilpi’s language is cumbersome and sometimes difficult to understand, for example in failing to distinguish between he and she (which in Finnish are expressed with one pronoun, hän, only). Without going into discussions on the relative advantages or disadvantages of fluent language versus foreignization, suffice it to say here that the question of Kilpi’s language use was hardly one of deliberate, reflected-upon decision but of haste – probably even a gut feeling that translating was not a challenging enough task for a writer.5 The main point, however, in this discussion is the freedom of the translator to forsake a translation he has promised to undertake without being reprimanded by his – in André Lefevere’s terms – patrons (publisher, in this case). At this stage in history, certain literary currents – such as French realism – were much disputed,

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and their harmful influence on Finnish literary developments and on readers was criticized. Suomalainen was not alone in his moralistic views; publishers were often reprimanded for their choices of books. In such a situation it was perhaps not surprising that Otava let Suomalainen off the hook so easily. When recommending books to the publisher, Suomalainen used a number of arguments. Among the merits of a potential translation he listed acclaim, popularity and quality. A book by Herman Bahr had aroused great interest in Berlin; Anatole France and Jules Verne’s works had been awarded prizes by the French Academy. In addition to or instead of acclaim, popularity of or demand for a book abroad were also considered to be the guarantee of its success on the Finnish market. Suomalainen cited the figures of over 80 editions in the case of France, 69 editions for Arthur Chambers in their source cultures to prove his point. Suomalainen also gave his own quality evaluations: “one of the best and most timeless works of world literature” (Fritz Reuter); “Literature that does not age” (Dickens). Sometimes he described the content or the style: “a very pleasant psychological novel” (Harraden), “full of the funniest scenes” (Zschokke) (All these letters are in Finnish; the translations here are mine). If timelessness constituted a merit, so did actuality. Turgenev held special symbolism for Suomalainen: “Turgenev’s novels are, I think, even more significant for us Finns right now, with the tremendous strain we are under. He, as ‘an admirer of the West’ and with his Western European mind shows us what sort of people we are dealing with”. Russian literature was not universally favoured in Finland at the turn of the century; obviously this is why Turgenev was portrayed as a Westerner. All in all, Suomalainen’s arguments were basically the same as those used by translators and publishers in general during the last decades of the 19th century when they were defending their suggestions or decisions to translate certain books. Classics in general were promoted by emphasizing their timelessness, their popular reception, and general considerations of quality. In this sense, Suomalainen was not inventing anything new, and his agency was not based on very individualistic decisions. As he had been one of the leading figures in the 1870s boom of cultural life and literary imports in Finland, it is not surprising that he also used similar arguments in recommending works to be translated later in his life. Sometimes the arguments worked, sometimes they did not. It was thus not always the force of the argument itself but of other contingent factors. The missing half of the correspondence with the publishers might help us to understand these factors, but as it is, we are left with intuitive guesses: sales prospects, for example, must have played a role, but on which facts did Finnish publishers base their beliefs that a work that sold well abroad would not sell well in Finland?



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Suomalainen never got to translate Dickens even though Dickens was popular and several of his books were still untranslated into Finnish at the turn of the century (Aho 1977: 20–21). Bahr’s book (suggested to Suomalainen by the author himself) did not go down well either. Instead, the Russian classics he recommended were taken up, and a case of veritable campaigning was that of a book by the British vicar, Arthur Chambers, Our Life After Death, which greatly appealed to Suomalainen’s growing religiousness in his later life and which he finally managed to coax through after approaching two different publishers and appealing several times to conquer their initial reluctance. He assured the publishers that the book would provide not only spiritual comfort to the readers but also financial success to the publisher. However, the book was never reprinted, and the reception within the Church of Finland was critical. No wonder, as the book was based on the unorthodox idea of there being no hell. There was, however, a certain enthusiastic response among the lay members of the church, as can be gleaned from the letters Suomalainen received after his translation was published. Interestingly, the book is a forgotten antecedent of another book a hundred years later to produce havoc and chaos in the Church of Finland around the same issue, this time written by a Finnish priest, Antti Kylliäinen. In both cases, the comforting message was drowned in a fury of criticism towards such controversial ideas. Other instances of agency in Suomalainen’s work included the use of different source texts, comparison and compilation, especially in adapting, reworking and editing classics, such as Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe and Münchhausen, and several of Jules Verne’s books. He suggested different source text versions to the publisher, got hold of translations in other languages and discussed the difficulties in abridging or adapting works. He believed that adapting was not a simple task to be carried out by less qualified people or in shorter time; there were principles to be followed in adaptation and a responsibility to be accepted. To this effect, he once heavily criticised a German adaptation for the “blind domestication” apparent in it. He did not specify what he meant by “blind domestication”, but as he took liberties with texts when adapting them, this might have been a question of where to draw the line: how much domestication was acceptable. Suomalainen, for example, did not localize the place names in his translations. To some extent, Suomalainen also advised the publisher on the typography, layout and covers of the books to be printed and on the use of illustrations, which he picked out of different original or translated versions and generally defended with arguments dealing with the nature of the work in question and the quality of the pictures. At a time when the codification of orthography and standardization of written Finnish were not yet completed processes (to the extent they ever can be), Suomalainen was making his own decisions as to the orthography of loan words

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or foreign place names and defending his choices by referring to systematicity. His language use was held in high esteem: book reviews praised him unanimously, and his translations were met with growing enthusiasm, carving for him a special niche as the introducer of a model for the Finnish language. How this model actually affected the readers’ use of language is a more complex issue. Measuring influence is notoriously difficult, because the processes are slow, and attribution is difficult to pin down with any degree of certainty. However, there are certain indicators of his influence on the way the Finnish language developed. For example, much of his descriptive vocabulary was kept in place even in retranslations of his works, and many of his grammatical guidelines were followed in later works. In other words, other translators followed his style even in retranslating works that he had translated previously, and the grammatical principles he set forth in his short treatises on grammar were closely followed and accepted by the majority of grammarians and translators. Suomalainen was able to negotiate his fees to some extent by resorting to the difficulty of the work in question. He was a keen defender of his rights and could be quite acrimonious in his letters if he felt he was being maltreated. This happened for example when it transpired that somebody else was translating a work for which he had been granted sole licence by the author, or when he felt that he was being pressurized into working too fast or with too low fees. The layout of his translations also caused him great consternation at times: “I must express my disdain for the tedious look of the book”; “I am very depressed for the font you have chosen: painfully small, bad for the eyes. Why this bourgeois [name of the font]? It does not even seem to have accents.” Then again, when he was badly in need of money, his letters became generally much more apologetic and humble: “I am sorry to impose upon you again; you have so often showed kindness to me. I have debts to pay off on the 13th of this month, and I would be grateful, if you could send me 700 marks as advance payment” – showing how dependent he was, after all, on the publisher. Suomalainen epitomizes a period of nascent translatorship: he took up, discussed and negotiated issues for which there was no fixed procedure, routine or codification, such as working languages, strategies, quality, and payment.

5.

Other fin-de-siècle translators in Finland

To be able to compare Suomalainen’s activities to other translators and to get a more general view of agency, a few other turn-of-the-century translators are briefly discussed here: Aatto Suppanen, Antti Jalava and Waldemar Churberg stand out among the pioneers of literary translation.



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Aatto Suppanen (1855–1898) was, alongside Samuli Suomalainen, one of the most prolific translators of the era. In addition, he is often considered as the first professional translator of fiction into Finnish, and, like Suomalainen, he enjoyed general critical acclaim. Suppanen’s correspondence with WSOY, his main publisher and employer, shows that he, too, was active in suggesting works to be translated (Saarikivi 2005: 85–86). He followed literature closely and was often very critical in his remarks about contemporary novels, making his views known to Werner Söderström, the founder and director of the publishing house. ­Suppanen often suffered economic hardships, and this made him more prone to accepting what he was offered. He had strong principles, however, and, again like Suomalainen, would not translate anything that was against his moral code. In contrast to Suppanen and Suomalainen, Antti Jalava (Saarikivi 2005: 59) and Waldemar Churberg (Vuokko, forthcoming) were better off financially and thus freer to choose their own work. Jalava could concentrate on Hungarian literature, which he devoted his energy to promoting in Finland, and Churberg published two series of translations from world literature, including translations by Jalava and Suomalainen. Suomalainen and Suppanen were financially dependent on the publishers, which constricted their agency at times – Jalava and Churberg had more liberty, making their agency more visible.

6.

Juhani Konkka

Born in Ingria, in the south-western corner of Russia, Konkka shares with Suomalainen the experience of spending his childhood in Russia and his later life in Finland. Konkka’s migration, however, was a much more unhappy one, as his parents fled after the Revolution and many of his relatives were lost in the turmoil of the war. His literary career did not take off very successfully in the beginning, and he lived in poverty for some time. He, too, was under the threat of losing his home, because of rent arrears. At this stage, he was begging his publisher for work: “If you would want something translated from Russian, I would do it extremely well for you”. (Juhani Konkka to Alvar Renqvist/Otava on Sept. 4th, 1931). In 1939, Konkka was employed at the marketing department of WSOY. He later remembered that there were three persons working there at the time, and 360 books coming out each year (letter to Ilmari Melander on Jan 18th, 1967). Konkka’s first published translations appeared in 1939 – the beginning of a long and productive translating career to last until his death in 1970. Konkka translated almost solely from Russian, and he was one of the most prolific translators into Finnish of Russian literature. In a letter to WSOY in 1969 he claimed to have translated more Russian literature than anybody else in the

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whole world (this information came, according to Konkka, from the Russian authorities themselves), and the Soviet Writers’ Union awarded him a prize for his translation. In addition to translating and retranslating classics such as Gogol, Gorky and Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Gontsharov, he introduced several Soviet writers to the Finnish audiences (Vera Panova, Konstantin Fedin, Yuri Bondarev). Konkka had an originality of style which made some critics dryly comment that his translations were into Konkka, not into Finnish (Jänis 2007). His involvement with Gogol’s Mertvye Dushi (Dead Souls) reveals an interesting history of translation and retranslation of this classic into Finnish. First translated in 1882 by Samuli Suomalainen, Dead Souls was retranslated in 1939 by a renowned Slavist and a colleague of Konkka’s at WSOY, Jalo Kalima. Strangely enough, the name of the translator only appears in initials (J.K.), which also happen to be Juhani Konkka’s initials. Despite being a new translation, it kept a lot of Samuli Suomalainen’s idiosyncratic expressions, vocabulary, and in several places, it repeats the earlier translation verbatim. This translation was reprinted several times during the following decades (first reprint 1945), but the reprints now carry two translators’ names, Jalo Kalima and Juhani Konkka, without any mention of revision. This has led some readers to think that the 1939 translation by J. K. was already made in collaboration between the two translators. The key to this puzzle is found in Konkka’s letter to Martta Eskelinen from the publisher Otava in 1967. Konkka replied to a request to retranslate the work: “It is a pleasure for me to retranslate Dead Souls. I corrected Kalima’s translation over 30 years ago and retranslated parts of it. It is high time to return to it and make for once a translation that will never need replacing”. Textually the most interesting observation, however, is that several of Suomalainen’s figures of speech and idiomatic expressions travel through Kalima/Konkka translation and survive even in Konkka’s new translation in 1970, nearly 90 years after Suomalainen’s translation. This despite the fact that Konkka repeatedly stressed that his 1970 text was a new translation, and would never need replacing.

7.

Konkka as an agent of translation

Juhani Konkka’s documents are kept in the archives of the Finnish Literature Society. They consist of copies of letters written by him, incoming correspondence (mainly from publishers), drafts and suggestions for potential translations, and publishing agreements. Leading a very desperate existence in the 1930s, Konkka seems to have gained more influence as a translation agent only gradually. In the 1950s he had already



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produced an increasing and impressive number of translations and gained a ­reputation as a translator. There are plans and drafts for a number of translation projects from the 1950s and 1960s in his archives. From the more modern Russian literature, he suggested and got to translate works of Vera Panova, Konstantin Fedin and Vladimir Tendryakov. For translation of classics, he suggested both retranslation of a number of works (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov) and a new packaging (series) for a number of masterpieces (Gorky, Chekhov). When it came to modern literature, he was also knowledgeable and introduced several Soviet writers to publishers. His expertise extended also to more remote corners of the Soviet Union: he recommended and carried out a translation by the Armenian writer Alexander Shirvanzade. His arguments for the retranslation of classics relied on older translations being either erroneous (War and Peace, translated by J. A. Hollo, one of the “grand old men” of Finnish translation history and generally held to be insurmountable – for Konkka, he was “ridiculously” erroneous) or old-fashioned (Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, by Hilja Riipinen). His suggestions for new translations were well informed and thorough: he usually made a synopsis of the storyline for the publisher, occasionally including fragments of translated text. In addition, he often made detours to the personal circumstances or style of the writers and spelled out their special features. Nearly all the recommended books were also taken up by publishers, and Konkka got to translate them. As an example of the planning and selecting of series, he carried out the work for Gorky’s selected works in Finnish for the publisher Tammi. His plan for the series was very detailed and included arguments in favour of each work to be included. The series was planned to include “the best” of Gorky’s production and to represent him as a versatile and highly esteemed author. Konkka did not often specify what he meant by quality; the argument was simply “the best short stories” by Gorky, or “the peak of his prose”.6 For the inclusion of the play The Lower Depths, Konkka resorts to authority: he refers to scholars’ and critics’ unanimous opinion of this play being the best of all of Gorky’s plays. One of Konkka’s arguments for choosing a work for translation was the taste of the audience: novels are what “the Finnish readers prefer”. Konkka’s selection is based on “artistic quality and integrity”. For the benefit of Finnish readers, Konkka wants to include Gorky’s autobiographical notes, diary entries and letters since Gorky was “a great friend of Finland”, and there is a lot to interest a Finnish audience in Gorky’s writings. Konkka was, for some time, the personification of Russian literature in Finnish. He himself liked this role and pontificated on issues relating to what was suitable or not for translation, commented on earlier translations made by other translators, and on one occasion, spelled out his disgust with a younger translator

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very clearly in his letters to several colleagues and representatives of the publishers. His confidence is clear in an interview after his renowned Solohov-translation in the 1950s, where he compares the old translation with his new one, criticizing translation errors in the first one, and describes the background work and reference works he has consulted in carrying out the translation. Konkka was thus a very visible translator, extratextually as well as textually. If his translation style was “Konkka-esque”, his double role as an author (even if his own writing nearly stopped towards the end of the 1940s) made him a well-known figure in Finland. Paratextually his role was evident, too: he wrote prefaces to several collections of Russian classics and also to newer works – although he did complain that this activity took too much of his time. Konkka gained a great deal of prestige, which also shows in the fact that he was explicitly asked in the early 1960s by the publisher Otava “to act as their eyes” in following what went on in the modern Soviet literature and recommending books for translation. The language situation in Konkka’s time was very different from that of Suomalainen. There was no need to develop a literary language or try and overcome problems related to orthography, morphology and the like. Editing had become a normal practice of publishing houses. Older translations were sometimes edited, too, and Konkka was asked to edit other translators’ work – which he found timeconsuming and tedious; he would rather have retranslated the work itself. If Konkka was able to persuade publishers of his literary competence, his suggestions for better fees did not seem to be met favourably. In the 1930s, still a young writer, he suggested the setting up of some kind of support agency for writers, but the suggestion was turned down in a curt letter from the publisher. In the 1950s in connection with changing copyright laws Konkka wanted to improve the translator’s copyright situation to grant them a share in reprints, too, but was cold-shouldered again. Konkka, much like Suomalainen, was an efficient and productive translator, but in later life he, too, suffered from a number of illnesses and, for example, was no longer able to type; thus he needed to pay a typist, and seemed to find money hard to come by. Thus, through the correspondence with his publishers, Konkka was able to give suggestions on retranslation of classics, series packaging (producing new series of Russian masterpieces), and the Soviet literature which he considered worth translating. Chronologically, the correspondence shows a personal career spanning from a destitute life in Finland during the 1930s depression to a self-conscious role of a leading translator from Russian, knowledgeable and competent in introducing old and new works of Russian and Soviet literature to Finnish publishers and audiences alike.



8.

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Credibility of the translator

To be able to negotiate, a translator needs certain credibility and trust. For both Suomalainen and Konkka, one of the factors contributing to this credibility must have been their long careers as translators and their critical acclaim. Suomalainen was already well-known when he started to translate for Otava; he had a reputation of being fast and efficient, and his work was deemed to be of excellent quality. This was proved by not only the favourable newspaper reviews but also the first prize he won in the translation competition organized by the Finnish Literature Society in 1882 (with his translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls). His experience in journalism gave him credibility in the technical issues related to layout and printing, and as he was used to editing other people’s texts, his eye for detail and style must have been unusually sharp. The one time he was attacked in an anonymous newspaper article (for an abridged version of Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers, an original Finnish work which was at the time already becoming a classic), Otava defended him and his adaptation publicly in a long letter to the newspaper. Konkka also had a record of translating from Russian and had a reputation of being a specialist in the area. And again like Suomalainen, he also had experience in journalism, adding to his fame and credibility as a language specialist. During Suomalainen’s time, Finnish publishing houses were at their infancy. Together with all the other infrastructure connected with literacy, publishing was establishing itself during the last decades of the 19th century. There was enthusiasm and goodwill, but not much expertise, and translators thus played a key role as advisers. This is surely one of the factors behind Suomalainen’s agency. Yet book publishing has always needed to negotiate the precarious balance between cultural goodwill and economic sustainability: translation has often been the branch in which costs were cut. At the time when Konkka was active, these same publishing houses had acquired prestige and grown in size, but they were still in need of expert advice, especially with lesser known languages. Cultural capital was thus Konkka’s key to establishing good working relations as well, but this cultural capital did not automatically generate economic wealth. Suomalainen and Konkka were exceptionally well endowed to become active agents in choosing and planning their own work. Despite all the hard work, however, the one thing neither of them ever managed to change was the insufficient pay granted for translation work; their meagre income did not suffice to save them from economic hardship. Similar destinies seem to have befallen all those who needed the work to earn their living. Even today, translators’ fees are lower than many other academically educated or otherwise linguistically gifted people’s fees and salaries. At the time when Suomalainen was active as well as in Konkka’s

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youth, the situation was sometimes desperate for people with no inherited wealth: intellectuals, peasants, and workers alike. During Konkka’s lifetime the way of life in Finland gradually changed with the welfare state and a general (if slight) increase in remuneration for translation work.

9.

Agency contextualized

As can be seen in Suomalainen’s and Konkka’s story, agency is individual – it is at least to some extent dependent on the credibility of the person in question. Furthermore, not all the arguments worked. Translators thought of arguments and offered them to the publishers, who chose and decided, in the end. Unfortunately, we have much less information on this side of the issue – on the publishers’ decision-making processes, at least from Suomalainen’s time. Furthermore, publishers do not need to give arguments or persuade – they can simply offer the job to the translator and be fairly sure that if one translator won’t do it, someone else will. There is also evidence of translators finding work harder to come by as they grow older (Leskelä-Kärki 2006, quotes two of the most prolific translators of their generation, Aune and Helmi Krohn, on this issue). It is not known whether this happened because there were better qualified or educated translators available or because younger translators worked for even lower fees. On the other hand, the translators were free to reject work, although this option required heavy personal investment and trust in one’s own ethics. In the end, we are thus confronted with the limitations of the translators’ agency: those constraints and norms that regulate, to some extent, their freedom. In his division of translational norms into preliminary and operational, Gideon Toury gives us a way of conceptualizing the relation between agency and norms. What we called extratextual agency stands in relation to Toury’s preliminary norms, and paratextual agency is confronted with his operational norms: the translators’ “scope” or decisions, first, concerning translation policy and directness of translation, and second, concerning the textual make-up and verbal formulation (for a discussion on preliminary and operational norms, see Toury 1995: 58–61). The balance between the individual translator’s creativity, subjectivity and agency and the norms and constraints of the surrounding society is an issue of negotiation and change, where each individual translator is differently positioned. In all of these areas it is a question of a different kind of agency.



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Notes 1. This research has been carried out with financial support from the Academy of Finland. During my research period I was based at the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland. I thank both institutions and my colleagues there for all their help and support. – This paper is a continuation of the discussion I started at the EST Congress in Lisbon in 2004. 2. For an overview of the situation in the 19th century, see Paloposki (2005). 3. In many ways, Suomalainen’s translations challenge the retranslation hypothesis, claiming that later translations are closer to the originals than first translations. Suomalainen produced both first translations which were never superseded by later translations, and second translations which were more domesticated than what first translations (by other authors) had been. For retranslation hypothesis and its empirical testing, see Koskinen and Paloposki (2003) and Paloposki and Koskinen (2004). 4. Several translators, however, wrote to authors requesting the right to translate their books, and the granted right was then printed in the books to claim authority (“translated with the permission of the author”). 5. Interestingly, Kilpi got severe criticism from linguists, both for his translations and for his own authorial work. 6. Again, the translations from original Finnish letters into English are mine.

References Aho, Riitta. 1977. Charles Dickensin teosten vastaanotto Suomessa kirjallisten aikakauslehtien ja sanomalehtien kritiikin perusteella vuosina 1840–1939. Unpublished seminar paper, University of Tampere, Department of Literature. Baker, Mona. 2000. “Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator”. Target 12 (2): 241–266. Brownlie, Siobhan. 2003. “Berman and Toury: The translating and translatability of research frameworks”. TTR 16 (1): 93–120. Czarniawska, Barbara. 1997. Narrating the Organization. Dramas of Institutional Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Delisle, Jean (dir.). 1999. Portraits de traducteurs. Sous la direction de Jean Delisle. Ottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Delisle, Jean (dir.). 2002. Portraits de traductrices. Sous la direction de Jean Delisle. Iottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Delisle, Jean and Woodsworth, Judith. 1995. Translators through History. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Godard, Barbara. 1990. “Theorizing feminist discourse/translation”. In Translation, History and Culture. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (eds), 87–96. New York: Pinter Publishers. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. London: Polity Press. Gullin, Christina. 2002. Översättarens röst. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Harvey, Keith. 2003. “‘Events’ and ‘horizons’. Reading ideology in the ‘bindings’ of translations”. In Apropos of Ideology, María Calzada Pérez (ed.), 43–69. Manchester: St. Jerome.

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Jänis, Marja. 2007. “Juhani Konkka”. In Suomennoskirjallisuuden historia II, Hannu Riikonen, Urpo Kovala, Pekka Kujamäki and Outi Paloposki (eds), 473–476. Helsinki: SKS. Koskinen, Kaisa. 2008. Translating Institutions. An Ethnographic Study of EU Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome. Koskinen, Kaisa. 2000. Beyond Ambivalence. Postmodernity and the Ethics of Translation. Tampere: University of Tampere. Koskinen, Kaisa and Paloposki, Outi. 2003. “Retranslations in the age of digital reproduction”. Cadernos de Tradução XI (1): 19–38. Kovala, Urpo. 1992. Väliin lankeaa varjo. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation/History/Culture. A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge. Leskelä-Kärki, Maarit. 2006. Kirjoittaen maailmassa. Krohnin sisaret ja kirjallinen elämä, 1880– 1950. Helsinki: SKS. Merrill, Christi Ann. 2002. “Playing the double agent: An Indian story in English”. The Translator 8 (2): 367–384. Milton, John. 2003. “The political adaptations of Monteiro Lobato”. Cadernos de Tradução XI (1): 211–227. Montgomery, Scott L. 2000. Science in Translation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. O’Sullivan, Emer. 2003. “Narratology meets translation studies, or, the voice of the translator in children’s literature”. Meta 48 (1–2): 197–207. (http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2003/ v48/n1/006967ar.html) Paloposki, Outi. 2005. “Translators and literary criticism in 19th century Finland”. In New Tendencies in Translation Studies, Karin Aijmer and Cecilia Alvstad (eds), 55–67. Göteborg University, Department of English. Paloposki, Outi and Koskinen, Kaisa. 2004. “A thousand and one translations: Revisiting retranslation.” In Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies, G. Hansen, K. Malmkjær and D. Gile (eds), 27–38. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pekkanen, Hilkka. 2007. “The duet of the author and the translator: Looking at style through shifts in literary translation”. New Voices in Translation Studies 3: 1–18. Pym, Anthony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome. Robinson, Douglas. 2001. Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason. Albany: State University of New York Press. Saarikivi, Susanna. 2005. Suomentajana 1800-luvulla. Antti Jalavan ja Aatto Suppasen näkemyksiä ja kokemuksia. MA thesis, University of Turku, Finland. Sevänen, Erkki. 2007. “Suomennoskirjallisuuden määrällisestä kehityksestä”. In Suomennoskirjallisuuden historia II, Hannu Riikonen, Urpo Kovala, Pekka Kujamäki and Outi Paloposki (eds), 12–22. Helsinki: SKS. Simon, Sherry. 1996. Gender in Translation. Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London and New York: Routledge. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Vuokko, Katja. Forthcoming. Waldemar Churberg. MA thesis, University of Turku, Finland.

Cheikh Anta Diop Translation at the service of history Paul Bandia

Concordia University, Montréal

This is a case study of how the knowledge and practice of translation can be put to the service of history. The study addresses in particular the efforts of a renowned African scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop, in tracing the African antecedents of the Ancient Egyptian civilization. The focus is on Cheikh Anta Diop’s mastery and translation (or deciphering) of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Meroitic script into a modern written language script. Diop’s ultimate goal was to establish a historical and cultural connection between ancient Egypt and Black Africa, through a systematic translation of certain keywords and a comparative linguistic study of Ancient Egyptian and African languages. Diop was also interested in refuting arguments or hypotheses regarding the untranslatability of cultures, particularly between so-called primitive languages and modern, highly scientific languages. Although the debate about the link between Black Africa and Ancient Egypt had lost steam by the end of the 20th century, Diop’s work still carries weight in some scholarly circles, especially given the contemporary ideological importance of issues related to ethnicity and “identities” in disciplines such as postcolonialism and cultural studies. Whatever position one chooses to take on the debate on the subject of a ‘Black Egypt’, one cannot deny the considerable impact of Diop’s scholarship and, from a translation studies perspective, his role as an agent of translation in the writing of history. Key words: Cheikh Anta Diop; translation in Africa; Meroitic script; ­Egyptology

1.

Introduction

Modern-day translation scholars with some interest in Africa have often limited their study on colonial or post-colonial Africa, as if translation activity only began in Africa with the arrival of Europeans. The often-mentioned rationale for this attitude is the lack of written documents from pre-colonial Africa, as the narrative

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t­ radition was oral and not written. Although it is generally true that orality is a major component of various African narrative traditions, several scholars have pointed out the fact that there were some indigenous forms of writing in Africa in pre-colonial times. Cheikh Anta Diop (1974) alludes to the existence of hieroglyphic writing in Africa, although somewhat limited by the absence of papyrus in the heart of the continent (1974: 159). He mentions the existence of an authentic hieroglyphic writing called Njoya in Cameroon, quite similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. He also discusses a syllabic form of writing called Vai in Sierra Leone, and cites the following comments by a Dr. Jeffreys: “…the writing of the Bassa is cursive. That of the Nsibidi is alphabetical” (quoted in Diop 1974: 160). It is safe to assume that, given the plethora of languages and the great many ethnic groups on the African continent there must have been a great deal of translation and intercultural activity among these different peoples. Also, the presence of some form of writing akin to the Egyptian hieroglyphics must have ensured some measure of continuity in the recording and furtherance of African civilization. The oral tradition – or rather, the apparent lack of a written tradition – argument has often served as an excuse to those scholars who would rather minimize the import or contribution of Africa to the evolution of the history of humanity. The idea of a “black tabula rasa,” that is, an Africa devoid of history and consequently devoid of humanity was dear to colonial historiography and served as justification for colonial incursions into Africa. Some prominent African historians have made it their lifetime work to deconstruct what they consider to be flaws in the fundamental postulates of European Africanist discourse. The well-known Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop, is widely acknowledged as an eminent historian who devoted most of his career to unearthing Africa’s prestigious historical past by tracing its relation to the ancient Egyptian civilization. Diop’s ultimate goal was to establish a historical and cultural connection between ancient Egypt and black Africa, thereby squarely placing the African continent, and particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, within the movement of universal history. Cheikh Anta Diop’s contribution to the history of translation in Africa lies mainly in one of the research methodologies he adopted to pursue his search for the African antecedents of ancient Egypt, namely the decipherment and translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics into modern written language script. Cheikh Anta Diop was not a translator, in the classic sense of the term. Rather, translation was incidental to his work, a means to an end, a powerful and convenient tool that would enable him to establish parallels between vestiges of negroAfrican linguistic and cultural practices with those of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Although it may come as a surprise to view Diop as an agent of translation



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since his work did not directly seek to foster the enterprise of translation, in the spirit of this volume Diop’s translation agency can be ascertained in terms of the overall impact his reliance on translation practices has had in shaping the discipline of African history. Therefore, the focus in this discussion is not to revisit the contentious and unresolved debate over the relation between Africa and Ancient Egypt, but rather to illustrate the importance or agency of translation in the (re-) writing of history. In other words, adopting an Afrocentric or Eurocentric view on the history of Ancient Egypt is not as important for our discussion as highlighting the role of translation in shaping the course of history. Diop’s scholarship in this respect was guided by the belief that there had been a deliberate attempt to “whitewash” the civilization of Ancient Egypt, distancing it from its African origins and appropriating it for the benefit of European ideology of racial superiority. Although Diop’s views have come under considerable attack and have largely been contested by recent scholarship, there is no doubt that the field of Egyptology has benefited from his research on Ancient Egyptian language and culture, as some researchers continue to grapple with the issue of the historical links between Africa and Ancient Egypt. Diop’s work might have been dismissed by some as the ideas of a scholar-activist, yet the basic tenets of his work are still being pursued by scholars worldwide who may or may not agree with his postulates. For instance, as recently as in 2005 Robert G. Morkot revisited the issue in his book The Egyptians: An Introduction, when he states: For European scholarship Egypt’s cultural place in ‘Africa’, and Africa’s cultural impact on Egypt, have been constantly changing. Much early Egyptology viewed Egypt as distinctly African, but the borders were redefined in the nineteenth century, drawing a line across Sudan, south of which became the world of ethnology and anthropology, contrasted with archaeology (large stone-built monuments) and written records to the north. Some Egyptologists and anthropologists have argued that there was an African basis to Egyptian culture and institutions, notably the kingship; others have preferred to treat Egypt as totally separate from Africa. There can be no doubt that the origins of Egyptian civilization lie in Africa.  (Morkot 2005: 1–2)

Morkot further states; “Locating Egypt raises issues about how Europeans, who are largely those who have written Egyptology, have viewed Egypt both as part of, and as distinct from, ‘Africa’” (2005: 3). And why this ambiguity about the place of Ancient Egypt? According to Morkot: Speculation about the ‘race’ of the Egyptians began in the eighteenth century and increased during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the growing European influence over the Near East, Africa and Asia. Ideas about race were

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used as a justification for imperial expansion, and some of the developing academic disciplines were called upon to lend support to the racial theories. Notable among these were language studies, with languages soon being used to define peoples. The new theory of ‘Evolution’ too, was a major factor. Early anthropology proposed a ‘unilinear’ evolutionary development for humans, and claimed to produce scientific evidence for this by complex cranial measurements. The living ‘races of mankind’ were then ordered along a presumed scale of development. As a result, the Egyptians could be blackened or whitened according to the personal (2005: 7–8) agenda of the writer.

Morkot’s book is one among many fairly recent publications that revisit the controversy surrounding the origins of Ancient Egypt. It seems timely indeed for the purposes of this volume on the agency of translators and translation to study the role of translation in the work of Cheikh Anta Diop, an influential figure among historians of Ancient Egypt in Africa. Besides recourse to translation as an instrument to reconstruct history, Diop also engaged in contemporary interlingual translation practices, albeit in an attempt to debunk pseudoscientific hypotheses and instil cultural as well as national pride. For instance, Diop’s acclaimed translation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into Wolof, a Senegalese language, was done to disprove those Western scholars who had claimed that African languages were not sophisticated enough to express abstract scientific concepts. Diop’s translation experience was not only useful for a linguistic community that could boast only a small minority of European-language speakers. As a linguist, he was also interested in refuting tendentious arguments for untranslatability put forward by linguists and cultural anthropologists regarding the translation of so-called primitive (or native) discourse. Thus, although he did not elaborate theories based on his translation activity, Cheikh Anta Diop had a deep appreciation of the role of translation in the writing of ancient history, in matters of intercultural relations, as well as the importance of a translation approach (i.e. cross-cultural analysis or contrastive linguistics) for literary or scientific investigation. Through a comparative linguistic approach he successfully traced the genetic similarities between his native Wolof and ancient Egyptian in order to establish their common ancestry, and also translated excerpts from some Western canons such as a text by Horace and the French “La Marseillaise” into Wolof in order to prove the viability of certain African languages in expressing literary and scientific discourses. Diop used translation to cast light upon the past with the aim of integrating the African component, in proportion to the actual role it has played, into the history of humanity.



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2. The French connection To fully appreciate the historical specificity of Cheikh Anta Diop’s intellectual contributions and his research methodologies, including hieroglyphic translations, it is necessary to contextualize the historical as well as the intellectual climate prevalent at the beginning of his scholarly career. Cheikh Anta Diop was born in Senegal in December 1923 and died in February 1986. He devoted his entire life to scholarship and to retrieving ancient Egyptian history as an intrinsic part of Black African history. After obtaining his Baccalaureate in Philosophy and Mathematics in Dakar, he moved to Paris in 1946 to pursue further studies. While at the Sorbonne, Diop studied Mathematics, and also took courses in Sociology, Anthropology, Ancient History, Prehistory and Linguistics under renowned French scholars André Aymard, Gaston Bachelard, André LeroiGourdan, Marcel Griaule and Lille Homburger. Diop also studied Hieroglyphics, Egyptology and Nuclear Physics and eventually earned his Doctorat d’État in 1960, after much controversy over a thesis that threatened the very foundation of the science of Egyptology. The driving force behind Diop’s academic pursuits was the determination to undo what he considered to be “the most monstrous falsification in the history of humanity” (1974: 43), carried out by modern historians and Egyptologists. According to Diop, the plight of the African continent began when Egyptologists, dazzled by the grandeur and perfection of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and being victims of the prevailing racist philosophy in Europe, sought to sever the ties between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa. He states, “The birth of Egyptology was thus marked by the need to destroy the memory of a Negro Egypt at any cost and in all minds” (Diop 1974: 45). Working on the premise that the common denominator of all theses by Egyptologists is the denial of a Negro Egypt, Diop sets out to debunk their theories by resorting to various scientific methods including the translation and deciphering of ancient texts. According to Diop, the denial of a Negro Egypt began with Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt in 1799, when orientalist Egyptologists were brought in to study the ancient Egyptian civilization. Impressed with the level of sophistication of this civilization, egyptologists became obsessed with establishing its link with the Greco-Roman civilization thus claiming it for Europe while minimizing its African origins. Egyptologists quickly set to work to refute the accounts of ancient historians and travellers “from Herodotus to Diodorus, from Greece to Rome” (Diop 1974: 57) who were European and had unanimously recognized the “Negro’s role as an initiator of civilization” (Diop 1974: 57). Diop cites as an example the work of Champollion the Younger, Father of Egyptology, and subsequently that of his brother Champollion-Figeac. Champollion the Younger is credited with deciphering the hieroglyphics found on

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the Rosetta stone in 1822. Champollion left as his legacy an Egyptian grammar and a series of letters to his brother which he had written during his visit to Egypt from 1828 to 1829. His work unveiled the hieroglyphics, thereby revealing the wealth of Egyptian civilization. Based on a study of paintings in tombs and bas-reliefs Champollion stated the following: Men led by Horus, the shepherd of the peoples, belong to four distinct families: The first, the one closest to the god, has a dark red color, a well-proportioned body, kind face, nose slightly aquiline, long braided hair, and is dressed in white. The legends designate this species as Rôt-en-ne-Rôme, the race of men par excellence, i.e., the Egyptians. There can be no uncertainty about the racial identity of the man who comes next: he belongs to the Black race, designated under the general term Nahasi. The third presents a very different aspect; his skin color borders on yellow or tan; he has a strongly aquiline nose, thick, black pointed beard, and wears a short garment of varied colors; these are called Namou. Finally, the last one is what we call flesh-colored, a white skin of the most delicate shade, a nose straight or slightly arched, blue eyes, blond or reddish beard, tall stature and very slender, clad in a hairy ox-skin, a veritable savage tattooed on various parts of his body; he is called Tamhou. (…) The variations I observed fully convinced me that they had tried to represent here the inhabitants of the four corners of the earth, according to the Egyptian system, namely: 1. the inhabitants of Egypt, which, by itself, formed one part of the world…; 2. the inhabitants of Africa proper: Blacks; 3. Asians; 4. finally (and I am ashamed to say so, since our race is the last and the most savage in the series), Europeans who, in those remote epochs, frankly did not cut too fine a figure in the world. (…) This manner of viewing the tableau is all the more accurate because, on the other tombs, the same generic names reappear, always in the same order. We find there Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise; but the Namou (the Asians) and the Tamhou (Europeans) present significant and curi(quoted in Diop 1974: 46–47) ous variants. 

Diop quotes this passage mainly to point out some contradictions in Champollion’s attempt to deny the Black heritage of ancient Egypt. He begins by insisting that the notion of a “dark-red” race used to describe the Egyptians was the figment of the imagination of Egyptologists who failed to acknowledge that the colour was just another hue in the varied complexions of Black people. Diop strengthens his argument further by highlighting the following statement in the quotation: “We find there Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise,” which contradicts Champollion’s earlier claims and confirms that Egyptians and Black Africans are basically the same people. Diop continues his attack on Egyptologists by citing none other than Champollion’s brother,



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­ hampollion-Figeac, who blames the Ancients for having spread the false imC pression of a Negro Egypt. Champollion-Figeac states: The opinion that the ancient population of Egypt belonged to the Negro African race, is an error long accepted as the truth. Since the Renaissance, travelers in the East, barely capable of fully appreciating the ideas provided by Egyptian monuments on this important question, have helped to spread that false notion and geographers have not failed to reproduce it, even in our day. A serious authority declared himself in favour of this view and popularized the error. Such was the effect of what the celebrated Volney published on the various races of men that he had observed in Egypt. (…) He concludes that the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same species as all indigenous Africans. To support his opinion, Volney invokes that of Herodotus who, apropos the Colchians, recalls that the Egyptians had black skin and woolly hair. Yet these two physical qualities do not suffice to characterize the Negro race and Volney’s conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization is evidently forced and inadmissible.  (quoted in Diop 1974: 50–51)

Diop takes issue with Champollion-Figeac’s claim that black skin and woolly hair “do not suffice to characterize the Negro race.” In his view, “It is at the price of such alterations in basic definitions that it has been possible to whiten the Egyptian race. Lo and behold! It’s no longer enough to be black from head to foot and to have woolly hair to be Negro!” (Diop 1974: 51). Diop states regrettably that “These, however, were the definitions and alterations of the initial data that were to become cornerstones on which ‘Egyptological science’ would be built” (Diop 1974: 51). Diop’s faith in the words of the Ancients is unshakable. Theirs were eyewitness accounts that formally affirmed that the Egyptians were Black. When Herodotus, the Father of Historians, visited Egypt in the 5th Century B.C., he insisted upon the Negro character of the Egyptians stating, “The Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are black-skinned and have woolly hair…” (Herodotus 1928: 88). To highlight the contradictions circulating among Egyptologists of the modern era, Diop also quotes the accounts of Count Constantin de Volney, who had travelled in Egypt between 1783 and 1785, at a time when racist ideology was rife in Europe, and the slave trade flourished. Volney’s reports specifically countered those claims which sought to distance the Copts, the race of the Pharaohs, from their black African origins. Speaking about the Copts he says: … all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where

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Herodotus says: “As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair…” same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of peoples.  (Volney 1787: 74–77)

Volney then relates his observations to the prevailing ideology and historical circumstances of his times.

What a subject for meditation, to see the present barbarism and ignorance of the Copts, descendants of the alliance between the profound genius of the Egyptians and the brilliant mind of the Greeks! Just think that this race of black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of peoples who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery and questioned whether black men (Volney 1787: 74–77) have the same kind of intelligence as Whites! 

Hence, for Diop, the eyewitness accounts of ancient travellers and historians leave no doubt about the Negro origins of Egyptian civilization. Through a philological study of ancient texts and a careful translation or decoding, or in some cases re-translation, of these texts, Diop sought to echo the voices of the Ancients, establishing conclusively that ancient Egyptians were of Nubian descent, “The Nubians (being) the accepted ancestors of most African Blacks, to the point that the words Nubian and Negro are synonymous. Ethiopians and Copts are two Negro groups subsequently mixed with different white elements in various regions” (Diop 1974: 49). His re-translation and etymological analysis of the adjective melanochroes used by Herodotus to describe the Egyptians, were meant to discredit those European scholars who had earlier translated the term as “having brown skin.” Diop believes melanochroes is the strongest term in Greek to denote blackness. Cheikh Anta Diop’s competence in a range of disciplines helped him forge a solid multidisciplinary approach to his research in the field of Egyptology. Diop spent the last eighteen years of his professional career as Director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory (IFAN) at the University of Dakar in Senegal. This, indeed, was due to his early interest in and advanced knowledge of nuclear physics. The radiocarbon laboratory would enable Diop and his research team to date pre-historic artefacts and to carry out experiments on archaeological findings. As a student in Paris, Diop had worked in the research laboratory of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who was the leading nuclear physicist in France. The Joliot-Curie family was famous



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for discovering Radium, and also for receiving a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Joliot-Curie was a student of Paul Langevin’s, a prominent teacher of physics who publicized Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in France. The close relationship between the Curies, Joliots, Langevins and Einstein created an intellectually stimulating environment for young Diop. This could explain why he later on decided to translate Einstein’s Theory into Wolof. As both a historian and a physicist, Diop used his physics laboratory at IFAN to bring pre-historic facts to life to support the writing of an indigenous, authentic, history of Africa. Cheikh Anta Diop arrived in Paris at a time when the colonial situation in Africa and elsewhere dominated intellectual discourse. A major rift was developing among intellectuals from the colonies, pitting those demanding the end of colonialism and outright independence against those holding on to the comfortable ideal of maintaining the colonies within the realms of a France d’Outremer. It was a time when the French Constituent Assembly had three Blacks among its members: Léopold Cédar Senghor of Senegal, Aimé Césaire of Martinique, and Madame Eugénie Éboué of Guadeloupe, widow of the famed politician, Félix Éboué. They were later joined by Léon Gontran Damas of French Guyana. Césaire, Senghor and Damas were the founders of modern négritude, a literary movement of the 1930s which sought to assert negro-African identity and reaffirm the authenticity of negro-African civilization. However, it was generally believed that in spite of all the clamouring about its Africanness, the négritude movement merely strove for recognition as an authentic African component within an assimilative French political structure. Other intellectuals seeking to free Africa from France’s colonial rule distanced themselves from the négritude movement. For them, the négritude leaders eager to be seen as Black Frenchmen (or citizens) had become pawns in the hands of French colonialists. Cheikh Anta Diop was among those intellectuals highly critical of the négritude movement, whose leaders he referred to disparagingly as “les littéraires” (literary scholars) with lofty ideas about their cultural identity and their place in the French political scene, without any rigorous scientific training that could help them rescue the history of African civilization from the grip of colonialist historians. Diop was particularly incensed by what he perceived to be the African intellectual’s ignorance of his ancestral past and the great civilizations that had existed along the Nile. In his view, such ignorance had led the intellectuals of the négritude movement to accept without questioning some of the theories elaborated by their European professors. They were eager to assimilate the theories of ethnologists such as Frobenius, Delafosse and Lévy-Bruhl. These ethnologists had a great deal of influence over their young African students who were basically taught to accept the presumed inferiority of their race vis-à-vis the West. It was taught that Africa had no art or civilization of its own, and that “tout art [africain]

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résulte du mariage de la sensibilité végétative du nègre, qualité inférieure, et d’une rationalité appollonienne blanche, qualité supérieure… [Et en Afrique noire,] le génie artistique […] n’a surgi qu’à la suite de l’hymen des Blancs avec les Noirs” (Diop 1981: 17). Africa was thus presented in philosophical terms as a land of emotions devoid of any form of rationality. Africans, particularly their intellectuals who had the chance to become aware of world opinion about their people, developed a sense of alienation and loss of pride. And so the négritude intellectuals who at the time had no scientific means to refute such claims took them at face value. This might have led Aimé Césaire, the Martinican poet, to describe his African ancestors as “ceux qui n’ont exploré ni les mers ni le ciel” as expressed in the following lines: Those who invented neither gunpowder nor compass Those who tamed neither steam nor electricity Those who explored neither the sea nor the sky…

(Césaire 1968: 99 & 101)

And Senghor to declare that “L’émotion est nègre, comme la raison hellène” (Emotion is Negro and reason Greek) (Senghor 1939: 295). Disappointed by these African poets and writers who would reiterate, without examining the false theories they had been taught, Cheikh Anta Diop became obsessed with providing this generation of “littéraires” with “une approche scientifique rigoureuse” (Diop 1981: 20). He began by reading the works of historians, scholars and philosophers of Antiquity such as Herodotus, Aristotle and Strabo, who wrote positively about Africa, as can be seen in Greek iconography, and Africa’s contribution to bringing civilization to the Mediterranean world and consequently the West. One of Diop’s first tributes to African civilization was to edit a special deluxe issue of Le Musée vivant magazine in November 1948. He co-edited the volume with Madeleine Rousseau, a French art collector and critic, who was known to have had one of the finest private collections of African art objects. Richard Wright, author of Native Son and Black Boy, who had become a celebrated author in France, wrote the introduction to the volume. Its launch coincided with an exhibition of Madeleine Rousseau’s African art collection, and one of the members of the honorary committee supportive of the project was none other than the artist Pablo Picasso, who was strongly influenced by African sculpture.

3.

Deconstructing history

Cheikh Anta Diop’s intellectual contributions to history can be best understood in terms of the scholarly terrain on which he undertook to rewrite the history of Africa. Western versions of African history had done much to obliterate the past



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of African people, systematically overlooking the greatness of civilizations that had existed for centuries. According to Diop and other Africanist scholars, Western scholarship was motivated by a desire to justify the exploitation of African people through slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries, and subsequently through the colonization of the continent, which began in earnest with the partition of Africa at the Berlin conference in 1885. This period spanning two centuries saw the rise of a form of European scholarship that systematically denigrated African culture and civilization in order to legitimize a particularly vicious form of colonization. Falsification of history was made all the more possible as early African history, which is based on oral tradition, was largely unrecorded in writing. Diop’s main goal then was to deconstruct history and to recover the past by systematically overturning Western cultural assumptions about Africa, an objective which could only be undertaken in the years following decolonization. Diop’s works, therefore, are part of the tradition of pan-Africanism and the struggle against an intellectual colonialism that was guilty of a deliberate falsification of human history (Diop 1991: 1). Cheikh Anta Diop engaged in thorough scientific research over a long period of time, and his main ideas have been crystallized in a number of publications including a number of books that have been considered essential to a complete understanding of African history. In 1955 he published Nations nègres et culture, in which he presented innovative interpretations of African history as well as strategies for African political independence. In 1967 Antériorité des civilisations nègres (The African Origins of Civilization) was published. The book was meant as a challenge to decades of European historiography and to point out the need to connect the history of Black Africa with that of Ancient Egypt. Diop’s last major work was Civilisation ou barbarie: Anthropologie sans complaisance, published in 1980 and followed by an English translation, Civilization or Barbarism, in 1991. According to Diop, this book is a “further contribution to the work that has allowed us to elevate the idea of a Black Egypt to the level of an operational scientific concept” (Diop 1991: 1–2). The book corrects the “distorted perspective caused by the blinders of colonialism [that] had so profoundly warped intellectuals’ views of the African past …” (Diop 1991: 2). Civilization or Barbarism is considered Diop’s most important work, the result of a lifetime of research. Diop painstakingly counters efforts by European scholars to dislocate Egyptian civilization from sub-Saharan Africa. He engages in a full-scale empirical study, using the disciplines of linguistics, cultural and physical anthropology, history, chemistry, and physics that his research required to uncover the ancient origins of African civilization. The following are some key points in the book: Africa is not only the birthplace of homo erectus but also of homo sapiens; Ancient Egyptians were of negroid origin, and the Nubian kingdom gave birth to Egypt; Greece and

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Western civilization have their historical antecedents in Egypt. This last point was demonstrated by “identifying the Greek vocabulary of Black African Egyptian origin” (Diop 1991: 6).

4.

Translation as linguistic evidence

Of particular interest to scholars of translation history is Diop’s mastery and translation, or decipherment, of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Meroitic script. After producing a wide range of evidence regarding the Negro origins of ancient Egypt, through iconography and physical anthropology (craniometry, oseology, blood group tests, melanin dosage tests, etc.), Professor Diop turned to linguistics to provide evidence that until today has not been seriously challenged. Professor Diop approached his quest for the linguistic evidence of the Negro origins of Ancient Egypt on three main fronts: through a philological study of ancient texts written by Greek and Latin authors; by a systematic analysis, deciphering and translation of the hieroglyphics and the Meroitic script; and by establishing the relationship between ancient Egyptian and Negro-African languages. After a major conference on the racial identity of Ancient Egypt, sponsored by UNESCO, which brought together renowned Egyptologists in Cairo in 1974, Diop published his “linguistic evidence” in 1977 in a volume titled L’étude sur la parenté génétique de l’égyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines. Through the study of ancient texts, Professor Diop pointed out that Greek and Latin writers contemporary with ancient Egyptians consistently described the Egyptians as Negroes. He referred to the testimony of Herodotus, ­Aristotle, Lucian, Apollodorus, Aeschylus, Achilles Tatius, Strabo, Diodonus Siculus, ­Diogenes Laertinius and Ammianus Marcellinus. This philological exercise involved a great deal of translation activity. Furthermore, Diop cited the biblical tradition, which also considered Egypt as belonging to the descendants of Ham. According to Diop, these facts have consistently been overlooked by the science of Egyptology, a product of imperialism. Professor Diop also studied the way the Egyptians saw and described themselves, by carrying out a linguistic analysis of the language and literature left behind by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic epoch. In order to accomplish his aim, he studied the hieroglyphics as well as the Meroitic script, the ancient writing of Nubia. Diop then undertook to decipher and translate the Pharaonic script into the modern alphabet. It was shown that ancient Egyptians used only one word to designate themselves KMT, translated literally by Diop as “the Negroes.” The word is said to be the strongest term in Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness. Accordingly, its hieroglyphic representation is a length of wood charred at the end.



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Diop goes on to analyze and translate the following adjectives KM = Black, and KMTJW = the Negroes, (or ‘the Blackmen’, translated literally) = the Egyptians (as opposed to “foreigners”). He concludes that these are the only adjectives of nationality used by the Egyptians themselves, and both mean “Negro” or “Black” in the Pharaonic language. Diop was puzzled that Egyptologists hardly ever referred to these adjectives, and when they did they would translate them by euphemisms such as the “Egyptians”, without any reference to their etymological meaning. However, Diop did point out that the term ‘foreigners’ also came from the same root KM, but insisted that the Egyptians used it to describe themselves as a people as distinguished from all foreign peoples. Diop’s claim has been disputed by other Egyptologists who believe that the “non-Black” Egyptians used the term to refer to their neighbours in the South. According to Diop, these Egyptologists seem to prefer the expression RMT KMT, which could be translated as “the men of the country of the black men” or “the men of the black country.” Incidentally, he claims, the Egyptologists have conveniently chosen to emphasize the second translation and insist that the translation should read “the black earth”, based on the colour of the loam (soil), or “the black country,” and not “the country of the black men.” Morkot backs the view generally held by Egyptologists in the following comment: Kemet means ‘black’ and is generally taken to mean the land which is covered by the silt during the inundation of the Nile. Many Afrocentrist writers have argued that Kemet defines Egypt as the ‘land of the black people’, but this is a grammatically incorrect reading. That Kemet means the land rather than people is further confirmed by its use in contrast to DeSHReT, the ‘red’, a term for the areas beyond (Morkot 2005: 5) the cultivation, continuing into the deserts. 

Through hieroglyphic translations Diop also proved that “black” or “negro” was the divine epithet invariably used for the chief beneficent gods of Egypt (e.g., Osiris, Hathor, Apis, Min, Thoth), whereas all the malevolent spirits were qualified as desrêt = red; many African languages also refer to white nations as ‘red’. The following are his translations of the surnames of the gods: KMWR = the ‘Great Negro’ for Osiris KM = the black + the name of the god KMT = the black + the name of the goddess

Diop’s elaborate translations are meant to expose some of the early mistranslations proposed by Egyptologists, which had contributed significantly to shaping the course of history. In a subsequent attempt to strengthen his linguistic arguments, Cheikh Anta Diop engaged in a full-scale translation project with the aim of establishing the

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linguistic affinity between Ancient Egyptian and the languages of Africa. Diop carried out a comparative linguistic analysis between ancient Egyptian and Wolof, a Senegalese lingua franca, which is said to be as close to ancient Egyptian as Coptic. Through an elaborate exercise in terminology and lexicography, he established lexical, verbal, phonetic and semantic parallels and correspondences between the grammars of ancient Egyptian and Wolof, demonstrating that the kinship between the two languages is indeed genealogical in nature. For instance, in discussing the foundations of African philosophy, Diop outlines a list of ancient Egyptian philosophical concepts that have survived in his native Wolof expressed in more or less the same vocabulary (see Diop 1991: 358–360). The following are a few examples: Ta in Egyptian means ‘earth’, and Ta in Wolof means ‘inundated earth, the very image of Egypt, of the Nile Valley’; Tem in Egyptian signifies ‘to stop doing something; non-being, complete stop’ and in Wolof ‘to stop doing something; absolute immobility; complete stop’; Sa refers to ‘the god who nourishes the intelligence of truth; god of knowledge’ in Egyptian, and in Wolof ‘to teach, to instruct’; Set means ‘Isis’ or ‘woman’ in Egyptian, and ‘spouse’ or ‘wife’ in Wolof. It could be argued that the genetic relationship between Ancient Egyptian and Wolof afforded Diop, a native speaker of Wolof, an insight into the deciphering or translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics at a level not available to his European counterparts. Hence, Diop’s unwavering conviction in his thesis of a Negro origin for ancient Egyptian civilization. Morkot also emphasizes the importance of linguistic evidence when he says: Ancient Egyptian belongs to a language group known as ‘Afro-Asiatic’ (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt’s cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples who had wide-ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia.  (Morkot 2005: 10)

It is this kind of comparative linguistics which allowed Diop to engage in a fullscale translation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into Wolof. Indeed, for Diop, the translation of Einstein’s theory is no more unusual than the comparative philological study of Wolof and Egyptian grammar and vocabulary. In advocating the linguistic decolonization of Africa, Diop argues for the use of African rather than colonial languages in schools. To strengthen his arguments he points out that, just like Europe, Africa, in spite of its many languages, can forge major national languages capable of international and scientific communication. He believes that the language issue is an important factor in the struggle for Africa’s cultural unity and progress. Diop therefore engages in the translation of Einstein’s theory of relativity into Wolof in order to appease those sceptics who think African ­languages



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cannot equal European languages in the expression of complex scientific concepts. The version he translates is a synopsis by Paul Langevin (mentioned above), which Diop supplements by providing brief translations of Horace and the Marseillaise as further proof of the versatility of African languages. In answer to critics of his linguistic methodology, he argued that the existence of the Indo-European linguistic family had been established using similar linguistic methods. Diop’s linguistic approach had a serious impact on the study of African languages which is still being felt today in the field of African linguistics. He also had some musings on the phenomenon of acculturation as it relates to translation and intercultural relations. In a chapter entitled “Toward a Method for an Approach to Intercultral Relations” (Diop 1991: 221–227), Diop discusses issues of interculturality mainly by opposing Europe to Africa, pointing out that “A literary piece written in any European language can be translated into another European language with a minimal impoverishment; the identity of the fauna, the flora, of history, guarantee the existence of expressions rigorously equivalent in all the languages of the geographic-cultural area under consideration” (Diop 1991: 222). However, “The situation is different when a translator tries to translate the literary message of a written work, of a poem, from a European language into an African language or vice-versa” (Diop 1991: 222). He then discusses three likely scenarios in the event of translating between such distant cultures. 1. The concept and images that carry the message are … of a specific type, and a

literal translation is therefore impossible in a language that does not participate in the same culture. For example: “white as snow,” “bear one’s cross.” 2. Images and expressions are of a universal type in the sense that they are sufficiently detached from all sociogeographic and climatic coordinates, so that the terms that designate them in one language can be translated without distortion into any other language no matter what its climatic zone. For instance: “great hardships,” “to burn one’s boats,” to be doubled up with laughter,’ “to smell disaster.” 3. There is a third category, made up of specific images that are susceptible to an adapted translation in the languages of different climatic zones. Thus, the French expression “attendre sous l’orme” (to wait until the cows come home) can be compared to its equivalent in Wolof, a Senegalese language, with the following adapted translation: “Neg ci ron dahaar gi,” which literally means “to wait until the tamarind tree grows,” but which retains practically all the flavour of the original French expression. (Diop 1991: 222)

According to Diop the systematic translation of the expressions in (2) and (3) is a sure way to enrich the translating language without altering its genius. By so doing, new expressions and concepts can be introduced into African languages or their European counterparts. Such an intercultural exchange would eventually lead to a rich pool of common images and expressions, which, rather than duplicating the

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stock of already existing expressions, would provide the basis for the possibility of the “translations of entire and diverse works on a global level” (Diop 1991: 222). This universalist understanding of intercultural translation can yield results that are more acceptable to the linguistic consciousness, as these perfectly intelligible and delectable expressions when encountered in translations can evoke precise images in the mind of the reader, unlike neologisms which are mere sounds that absorb the meaning of the sentence (Diop 1991: 222). Therefore, in a way, Diop views translation as a means of enriching language and enabling intercultural communication, surely more effective than the creation of culture-specific neologisms which are likely to minimize intercultural relations at a global level. In Diop’s view, an African poet who tries to express an image conceived in his native tongue in a European language will find the poetic image broken by a “barbarous” neologism as the proper terms are desperately nonexistent in the target language: “the baobab is not the equivalent of the oak tree” (Diop 1991: 223). He provides the following quotation by Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Diop considers “one of the better-intentioned men among the Western intellectuals with regard to Africa” (Diop 1991: 224), to emphasize the point of not translating the African image by a European one: The specific traits of a Society correspond exactly to the untranslatable locutions of its language. Now, that which dangerously threatens to curb the effort of the Blacks to reject our tutelage is that the harbingers of the new negritude are constrained to compose their gospel in French. And since French lacks the terms and concepts to define negritude, since negritude is silence, to evoke it they employ “allusive words, never direct ones, (quoted in Diop 1991: 224) reducing themselves to an equal silence”.

Diop’s main argument here is that unless the process of acculturation and alienation (i.e. of the European language culture) is complete, an adequate intercultural translation between African languages and their European counterparts, which maintains the cachet of African culture, is impossible. This attempt at theorizing intercultural translation underlines Diop’s primary concern of instilling pride and confidence in Africans with respect to their diverse linguistic and cultural heritage and their rich historical past.

5.

Critical assessment

Diop’s views gained some measure of credibility with the publishing of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (vol. I, 1987; vol. II, 1991) which, in arguing for what he refers to as the Revised Ancient Model, as opposed to the Aryan Model, of ­Classical



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civilization highlighted the Afroasiatic and Semitic components of Greek civilization. According to Bernal, in order to sustain a mainly racist ideology, the Aryan Model had distanced Greek civilization from any possible influences from Ancient Egypt by highlighting instead its Indo-European origins. Although Bernal’s aim was simply to re-establish the link between Greek civilization and its Afroasiatic and Semitic filiations, he has been criticized for playing into the hands of Black nationalists who believe that Ancient Egyptian was a Black civilization. Bernal does not seem to take a stand on this issue, but points out that there are three categories of scholars concerned with the subject: (1) those who without any special training simply try to seek out the truth about the black past to counter the big lie of black historical and cultural inferiority; (2) those who argue only that Blacks had a share in building the Egyptian civilization along with other races, hence demanding a share in Greek Antiquity; and (3) those who have developed the multidisciplinary skills to take command of the African past, a necessary condition for the foundation of an African historiography. Cheikh Anta Diop is placed in this third category, which is generally associated with the movement of Afrocentrism. Without necessarily criticizing Diop and his followers, Bernal, who is not black, admits that he finds it easier to place himself and his Revised Ancient Model within the spectrum of black scholarship rather than within the academic orthodoxy. Bernal sees himself in the second category, in the company of eminent scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois and Ali Mazrui and others who, “while they do not picture all Ancient Egyptians as resembling today’s West Africans, do see Egypt as essentially African” (Bernal 1987: 437). In volume II of Black Athena Bernal provides a wide range of linguistic and archaeological evidence to highlight, among other things, the high quality of Egyptian civilization and its central role in the formation of Greek civilization. However, it is interesting to note that in Ian Shaw’s recent book (2004) one of the subtitles reads “Black Egyptians: Bernal, Diop, and the reinvention of Kemet,” thus lumping both scholars together in what Shaw obviously thinks is an Afrocentric revisionist view of history. Shaw makes the interesting observation that Ancient Egyptians would have found contemporary debates about their ethnic origin based on physical characteristics to be out of step with their beliefs and the way they viewed or portrayed themselves. He states: Such depictions …would have been recognized by the Egyptians themselves as simplified stereotypes, given that the thousands of portrayals of individual Egyptians show that the population as a whole ranged across a wide spectrum of complexions, from light to dark brown and black…. There is, therefore, also a sense in which the ‘Egyptians’ regarded themselves as a distinct population in purely (Shaw 2004: 105) cultural non-racial terms. 

226 Paul Bandia

Shaw seems to view the debate over the identity of Ancient Egyptians as a mainly ‘black issue’, particularly in North America, where Afrocentrists are trying to better their lot by claiming a much more significant stake in the emergence of early civilizations. He points out that many Afrocentrists regard the science of Egyptology as so tainted that they will only refer to the country of Egypt as ‘Kemet’, the ancient Egyptian toponym which translates literally as ‘the black land’. However, Shaw, like most Western critics, believes the term refers to the black fertile soil rather than the colour of the people. According to Shaw, Afrocentrist arguments for a black Egypt range from Bernal’s highly intellectual thesis in Black Athena which presents a convincing case for an Egyptian link to Western civilization, through Cheikh Anta Diop’s more tenuous and polemical assertions, to the downright emotive or obscure such as Molefi Kete Asante’s suggestions. Although Shaw acknowledges that some Egyptologists have put forward racist interpretations of the Egyptians, for a variety of reasons, some having to do with paving the way to slavery and colonialism, he does not believe that these unfortunate circumstances would justify the Afrocentrist claims regarding Ancient Egypt.

6.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the divergent views about the identity of Ancient Egypt, Cheikh Anta Diop’s contribution to Egyptology, the history of Africa, and consequently the history of humanity, cannot be overemphasized. His legacy proves that dissemination of knowledge has never been an innocent activity and is often determined by the relations of power. The lifetime work of this erudite, polyvalent scholar can offer certain lessons to translation historians: translation, as an intellectual activity, can be put to the service of history by allowing us to search deep into the past to rectify facts and hopefully avoid scholarly distortions. Diop’s varied scientific background enabled him to establish a sound basis for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, a versatile quality which most professional translators would acknowledge as an asset rather than a liability. In 1966, at the world festival of Black arts in Senegal, Cheikh Anta Diop, along with W. E. B. Du Bois, was voted the most influential scholar of the 20th century in the Black world. As stated by Kevin C. MacDonald, “A great deal of ink has been spilt debating the subject of a ‘Black Egypt’…. Whatever position one chooses to take on the question of a ‘white’, ‘black’ or ‘multiracial’ Egypt, one cannot deny the considerable impact of Diop on the literature of the African diaspora” (MacDonald 2003: 93). In recognition of his groundbreaking work, the main university in Senegal was renamed after him and is now known as the Institut Fondamental de l’Afrique Noire – Cheikh Anta Diop. Macdonald points out that,



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“Globally, his ideas and writings have spawned many successors and were seminal to the academic paradigm of Afrocentrism…” (2003:93). Diop bequeathed to Africa the awareness of a heritage born of a great ancient past. He was indeed a Pharaoh of knowledge.

References Bernal, Martin. 1987. Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. I. The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985. London: Vintage. Bernal, Martin. 1991. Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. II. The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bernal, Martin. 2001. Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal responds to his Critics, David C. Moore (ed,). Durham (N.C.); London: Duke University Press. Césaire, Aimé. 1968. Return to My Native Land. Emile Snyders (Trans.). Paris: Présence Africaine. Curtis, Alexander E. 1984. Cheikh Anta Diop, An African Scientist. An Axiomatic Overview of his Teachings and Thoughts. New York, Chesapeake: ECA Associates. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1967. Antériorité des civilisations nègres: mythe ou vérité historique? Paris: Présence Africaine. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1974. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? M. Cook (Trans.). Westport, CN: Lawrence Hill & Company. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1979. Nations Nègres et Culture. Paris: Présence Africaine. (First published in 1954). Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1981. Civilisation ou barbarie? Anthropologie sans complaisance. Paris: Présence Africaine. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1991. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi (Trans.), Harold J. Salemson and Marjolijn de Jager (eds). Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books. Herodotus. 1928. History. Book II. George Rawlinson (Trans.). New York: Tudor. Macdonald, Kevin C. 2003. “Cheikh Anta Diop and Ancient Egypt in Africa”. In Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O’Connor and Andrew Reid (eds), 93–105. Encounters with Ancient Egypt Series. London, UK: UCL Press, Institute of Archaeology. Morkot, Robert G. 2005. The Egyptians: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Senghor, Léopold S. 1939. “Ce que l’Homme noir apporte”. In L’Homme de couleur, 295. Paris: Plon. Shaw, Ian. 2004. Ancient Egypt. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Volney, Count Constantin de. 1787. Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. Paris.

The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires, and Diario de Poesía as aesthetic arenas for twentieth-century Argentine letters Lisa Rose Bradford

Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina

In an attempt to locate the role of poetry translation in the development of Argentine twentieth-century literature, this essay focuses on the work done by specific groups of poet/translators associated with three major literary magazines. An overview of the relationship between national production and translation in Argentina is first presented, and then, through a brief summary of the century’s political events, certain parallelisms with literary movements are established. This is followed by an analysis of the imported expressions, which are often found to be incongruent or de/recontextualized within the local repertoire. Notions of cultural agency (Bourdieu) and cultural poetics (Greenblatt) serve to reveal both how these groups maintain a tradition of discernable discourse practices in their translations and how the imported schools of poetry generally served to legitimize the poet/translators’ own poetic practices in forming a readership for their works by enforcing modes of reception through the inclusion of selected foreign poets. Key words: Sur; Poesía Buenos Aires; Diario de poesía; Victoria Ocampo; Daniel Samoilovich

1.

Introduction

From the foundation of the Argentine Republic in 1810, foreign paradigms have been imported and adapted, particularly of the French Romantic mode, which has led to many a paradoxical situation. One finds, for example, a rejection of the corrupt civilization of the city, when Argentine urban life was incipient; and

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an ennobling of the innocent heart of the savage, who, in the Pampas, had to be exterminated in order to carry out the expansionary strategies of the Desert Campaign.1 Argentina has constituted a complex site where more than a translation of mere texts appears: one finds a transplantation of ideas that occurs in situ as wealthy Argentineans often lived multicultural lives, sailing between Latin America and Europe accompanied by English nannies and dairy cows in order to intermingle in the French milieu for lengthy periods of time.2 Though the culture axis begins to shift from France to the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century in order to assay the pioneering political and literary paths being carved out in the New World,3 it is significant to note that even in the late 1940s and 1950s, Argentina’s “cultural agents” continue to gaze on France as an ideal to emulate, even though this pattern does not always suit the Argentine arena. From the early nineteenth century through the 1960s, the use of French writers to validate local production continues to bear fruit even though the models are often ill-fitting or manipulated for local utility.4 The absolute shift from the French ideal occurs only after the 1970s when certain agents, acting after the devastation of the “Process” (Proceso de reorganización nacional) of Videla’s infamous military dictatorship, begin to search through the social and cultural rubble for a positive, constructive “sincerity” to accompany their production. In the past 65 years, much of this process can be attributed to three major groups of poet/translators who, aided by imported texts, have been instrumental in aggressively challenging or encouraging pre-existing conventions in Argentine poetry. The groups forming the literary magazines Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires, and Diario de poesía have promoted international contemporary poetry and produced Spanish versions of poems that have not only swayed generations of Argentine poets, but have, in some cases, become classic translations that continue to be republished in poetry anthologies today. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts to categorize certain elements in our study of this agency, the area of research on this translation process corresponds to a particularly “restricted field of action” in the sense that poetry is normally neither written nor translated for mass consumption.5 Within this field of action, specific poet/translators employ strategies that vary according to period, creativity and “positionality,”6 but even so, we can discern a dominant “habitus” within their use of a language dependent upon normative practices inherited from or imposed, directly or indirectly, by Spain. This language produces a strangeness deemed decorous for the translation of poetry and is thus recognizable as a separate “translational discursive genre.”7 Furthermore, it is essential to consider the selection of poets translated for publication since, using Stephen Greenblatt’s ideas on cultural poetics, these



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 231

­ ractices serve both to enforce certain modes of reading as well as constraining p others according to patterns of inclusion and exclusion. In order to understand the interplay of translation practices and literary production in Argentina in the twentieth century, it is essential to review first, the relationship Argentine writers from these groups establish between a national artistic identity and their vision of world literature and its progress; and second, their inherited normative translation practices. Concluding from an examination of the works translated by these groups, it becomes clear that many transplants suffer a transmutation stemming from, on the one hand, the de/recontextualization of forms arising from entirely different sociopolitical situations, which hinders the integration of the imported texts; and, on the other, translation problems grounded in an established translational discursive genre that fails to reflect the revolutionary impetus of the original verse. This situation consequently nurtures or suffocates aesthetic shifts according to the local reality, the poetics in play, and the agents’ strategies. However, all of these poet/translators have been active in promoting aesthetic postures and molding the tastes of their readers by introducing foreign voices within the context of strong publishing forums, achieved by combating and dominating other emerging ideas and forms to thus gain a solid space in the field of publication and construct concrete sources to be tapped by the following generations of writers.

2.

The twentieth century political spectrum

The translation agents who introduce intercultural phenomena – “gate-keepers” (Bourdieu 1999: 162) who guard the customhouse of literature and philosophy – select and disseminate foreign cultural capital, but the integration of these imports depends not only on their personal “gaming” powers, but also on the arena of reception, i.e., the readers and writers and their appreciation and identification with the works in their translated versions. A knowledge of the political events that attend the collectivities of “generations” of Argentine writers, therefore, helps us to comprehend the potential for action and the struggle with incongruities within the “strategic possibilities of conceptual games” (Bourdieu 2003) these cultural agents exploit in their importation of foreign texts. From the 1880s on, in socioeconomic terms, Argentina experienced great prosperity with an opulent upper class and a huge comfortably-off middle class up until the 1970s. This growth was, however, constantly accompanied and undermined by negligence and frequent and sharp policy swings. Much of the mismanagement of Argentine resources has been attributed firstly to absentee landowners (many

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of whom lived more in Europe than Argentina); to a lack of understanding of the interrelationships of global economies (leading those in power to ignore the impact the Great Depression would have on Argentina); and to industrialists who failed to reinvest or modernize. However, it has also been put forward that the growth of this economy with its grounding in agriculture and industry was thwarted largely by U.S. interests that perceived this growth as too competitive and not complementary to its own progress.8 Hence, the U.S. interference from the 1920s through the 1970s in the upheavals of the governments of Yrigoyen, Perón, and Frondizi as well as within the military dictatorships that culminated in the notorious and bloody “Process” (1976–1983).9 To summarize the century in brief, the first and second presidencies of Hipólito Yrigoyen, co-founder of the Radical Civic Union, profited from a neutrality during WWI that produced a period in which Argentina was known as the Barn of the World. When he sought to restrict oil exploitation by the U.S. and the U.K., his government was brought down by a military coup led by José F. Uriburu. In the turmoil of the still productive and growing industrialization of the following governments, the years between 1930–1945 became a period of trade-union development and with it the consolidation of the “Peronismo” of Juan Domingo Perón’s first government, which also fell in 1955 due to its unpopularity among both the upper-middle-class and the oligarchy, as well as with the U.S. After years of fraudulent voting and authoritarian rule, Arturo Frondizi, representing the left wing of the Radical Civic Party, was elected in 1959, but internal disagreement regarding his support of Cuba during the missile crisis, his meeting with Che Guevara, and his lifting of the ban on the Peronist party also left him vulnerable to being ousted by sectors backed by the U.S. government. After different turns of authoritarian governments from 1966 to 1972, the Peronists returned in 1973 with an explosive amalgamation of interests and ideologies, finally to be toppled by the military dictatorship of the “Dirty War.” After the country had engaged in the South Atlantic War10 and plunged deeply into foreign debt (much stemming from military spending before and during the war), this dictatorship was finally replaced in 1983 by democratic rule, which from 1988 to 1999 continued to thrive within the precarious stability deriving from Carlos Menem’s ravaging privatization programs. Since the 1980s, questions of corruption and foreign debt and the subsequent instability of skyrocketing inflation have eaten away at Argentina’s economic potential, and the trade deficit has undermined all probability of resurgence within the neoliberal scenario of globalization.



3.

The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 233

The literary scene and translation practices

This rapid succession of democratic governments and dictatorial military regimes is in many ways, though not necessarily in a parallel fashion, reflected in the literary production, particularly in its pendular swings – usually in a romantic mode – between high aestheticism and regionalism and/or social engagement, oftentimes prompted by imported literature and philosophy. A comparative analysis of both arenas unearths interesting links between political and poetical change. In Argentina’s history of imported forms, one can cite three basic concepts regarding the identity of Argentine literature and its relationship with the foreign. Some view Argentina’s literary culture as comprised of the entirety of Western literature, without exception, and anything produced, whether it be by translation or original writing, is galvanized in a great movement and freedom that blurs what is proper (suitable and legal) and appropriated, a vision conceived by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges. Others argue that translation has filled a great literary vacuum on the Pampas from the nineteenth century on, sour grapes perhaps of the “parricidal” notions of writer Héctor Murena upon viewing Borges’ overwhelming and, in his opinion, “foreignizing” role in Argentine letters.11 Further, some agree with Josefina Ludmer who has theorized that the national literature is rooted in a rejection of Spanish literature and that its specific tones are to be traced back to the payadores (the impromptu verse production akin to the “freestylers” of today) that inspired the gauchesca. Upon viewing twentieth-century Argentine literary production, it appears evident that Thorstein Veblen’s ideas quoted by Borges regarding the disassociated association of the Jew in European literature – an association more by choice or chance than a legal and dutiful alliance – also serve to describe the sentiment concerning Argentina’s literature, particularly before the 1950s. In his famous essay “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” Borges proposes the analogy between the Jews’ relevance in Western culture and the Argentine writer’s relationship with this tradition: since the Jewish artist acts within a culture without feeling bound to it, s/he is more prone to innovate, just as the Argentine writer feels no allegiance to European culture and can therefore use it without paying homage to propriety/ property or hierarchies. In general, it could be said that the Argentine writer has digested massive quantities of foreign material, and s/he has assimilated it both in authorial and translational production, without the prejudice or shame of feeling the outsider or of participating in plagiarism, similar to the so-called process of cultural anthropophagy in a few cases. Famous poet/translators from the first half of the twentieth century such as Borges, J. R. Wilcock and Silvina Ocampo, Alberto Girri, Raúl Gustavo Aguirre,

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and Miguel Brascó established a tradition of poet/translators who supported this notion of free access regarding foreign texts, and, in fact, in many cases, utilized translation as an integral part of their complete works.12 This is not to say, however, that these writers all stood among the theorists of “cultural cannibalism”;13 indeed, they were not particularly brash in their reworking of poetic texts save Borges’ subversive domestication of Molly Bloom’s final interior monologue published in Proa in 1925. His controversial displacement of Molly through the omission of foreign referents and landscapes establishes a homey atmosphere for the emphasis he places on the intimate and erotic elements of her thoughts: Stanhope and Mulvey become fulano y zultano; seedcakes, cakes with almonds; rhododendron, flowers; tweed coat, a gray suit; bogs, Sierra flowers and cornfields are the Argentine “equivalents” for lakes, mountain flowers and fields of oats. In fact, Borges puts the taboo “vos” in Molly’s mouth, an Argentinean form of the second person singular informal that was not to be used even in original writing until the late 1950s. Though his version has been highly criticized throughout the century,14 he was well aware of both the utility and the relative fidelity of translation practices. Borges’ ideas on translation have proven extremely influential and provocative: already in the ‘30s, in his essay “Los traductores de las 1001 noches,” (“The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights,”) (1974b) he explored topics related to the relativity and instability of translations, developing concepts intrinsically bound to both his notions regarding the reader as author and the blending of the different genres – essay, poem, review, short story, translation – that underlie his entire oeuvre and testify to his playful vision of the hazy confines of originality. In fact, avoiding the term “original” Borges speaks of “direct writing” and, according to his way of reasoning, a translation undergoes the same manipulation of forms and topics that a text by one single author does, since they are equally tousled by the aesthetic, social and editorial realities of each period and thus comprise many versions, “written” by both the writer and the reader.15 Furthermore, regarding the utility of the imported text, he was able to introduce the imaginary autobiography into Argentine letters with his translation of Orlando, a form that would suit him well in his early prose pieces. In the world of literature, it is no novelty that writers experiment with texts they admire, interweaving the valuable threads of a translation into their own tapestries; it is simply yet another way of responding to a text. In this fashion, many Argentine authors have used translation as an exercise in writing and glossing, as dissemination of the poets they esleem, and also as personal production. There are many publications of authors’ works with appendices of translations, thus creating such a common practice that a writer such as Juan Gelman, to give just one example, was able to integrate this practice into his poetry in order to erase the



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 235

“property line” between his originals and his translations by generating pseudotranslations within his collections.16 Summing up, Argentina possesses a tradition of translational production that has enjoyed great freedom in the game of what is “proper” and what is appropriated, and, as payment for translation has not been the main motivational factor in the field of “high” literature, presses have had little control over the mode of translation, and thus, the poet/translator has also been somewhat liberated from that restriction.17 Furthermore, some of the most important publishing houses for Hispanic literature were founded in Buenos Aires during the twentieth century: Sur, Sudamericana, Losada and Emecé.18 Though some poet/translators have profited from this space for creative freedom to a certain degree, others such as the central figures of Enrique Pezzoni and Pepe Bianco in the period of Sur maintained a rather conservative position, and their translational mode avoided sentences and structures or vocabulary that might not be understood in Spain, thus forging a “panhispanic” expression, in Pezzoni’s words (Willson 1997). Therefore, one can detect a rather lukewarm and undistinguished entry of Argentine translations into the arena of world literature, not due to a lack of activity by any means, but rather because the translators for the most part have neither come to accept nor make manifest their own culture through the use of an Argentine idiom in the reproduction of the foreign text, thus creating a marked translation positionality that has made use of an “idiomatic persona,” an invention of a linguistic façade produced to universalize the Spanish version, which continues to dominate the arena today.

4.

Victoria Ocampo and the directions of Sur

The impact of the publications carried out by Sur is of enormous importance in the development of Argentine and Hispanic literature as a whole. With Victoria Ocampo, as editor, Maecenas,19 writer, and translator, working with Pepe Bianco, Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Girri, Pezzoni and her sister, Silvina, Sur provides us with the first solid platform to understand the pattern of transplants in Argentina. From the crumbling of the Spanish economy and society after the Spanish Civil War and the relatively “weak”20 literary tradition in Argentine letters prior to 1920 there emerges an inviting landscape for Argentine translations of foreign works and the publication of Hispanic authors in general.21 The most recognized repercussion of the foreign literature disseminated by the presses of Sur, during a period that spans from 1931 to 1960 (the magazine will continue publication well into the 1970s), resides in the editions of Modernist authors such as Henry James, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Albert Camus, Paul Valéry, Dylan Thomas, Virginia

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Woolf and William Faulkner; as well as postmodern narrators and playwrights such as Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett.22 These translations formed the cornerstones for the writers of the so-called Boom in Latin American literature, influencing the writings of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, etc.23 Moreover, produced in a period of extreme experimentation in drama and the lyric as well as a renovation of modes of representation in the novel, these translations influenced novelists, poets, and playwrights alike. The magazine itself not only promoted these works, but more importantly, it constituted a contemporary response to current events, creating a forum for discussions on art, philosophy, history and current events (the Spanish Civil War,24 World War II, the independence of India, etc.), with great quantities of poetry interspersed throughout its pages. Many issues, in fact, provide overviews of distinct poetic expressions such as French, Italian, Brazilian, British, Peruvian and even Japanese contemporary poetry.25 Quite up to date and varied in its selections, from 1931 to 1960, Sur (whose staff of 15 included seven Europeans) publishes versions of poems by the leading writers from Europe and the U.S.: Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot and Karl Shapiro from the U.S.; T. E. Lawrence, Vita Sackville-West, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Herbert Read and Dylan Thomas from Britain; Salvatore Quasimodo, Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti from Italy; Paul Valéry, André Gide, Paul Éluard, André ­Malraux, Francis Ponge, Jean-Paul Sartre from France; and Mário de Andrade, Cecília Meireles, Murilo Mendes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Vinicius de Moraes from Brazil, just to name some of those who have reached the sphere of canonical poetry in the twentieth century. One finds diverse modes of translation in the versions found in Sur: in general, Ricardo Baeza renders his poems in prose versions ignoring questions of typeset and rhyme (see Auden or Spender); Wilcock often makes strange or unhappy word choices and in no way attempts to capture the musicality of the original (see Moore or Sitwell); Silvina Ocampo produces sensitive and informed texts (see Raine or Muir); Felix della Paolera is quite free and, at the same time, expansive regarding lexical usage (Dylan Thomas), and Borges proves wonderfully poetic, creating seemingly “original” writings (Stevens, Cummings). A brief example of the last two modes will illustrate the range of approaches these translators were to engage. In response to the publication of Thomas’s Collected Poems 1934–1952, Sur publishes an introductory note and a translation of “Fern Hill” by della Paolera in a fashion that reproduces much of the musicality of Dylan Thomas’ poetry and attempts to emulate the use of gerunds in the form



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 237

of near literalisms, which, in turn, create unusual usages in the case of certain words. Regarding the first feature cited, the lines “respondía a mi cuerno, claro y frío ladraban los zorros por las lomas / y el domingo repicaba lentamente / en los guijarros de los arroyos sacros” stands quite musically akin to the English resonances of “[they] / Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, / And the Sabbath rang slowly / In the pebbles of the holy streams.” Albeit, the use of gerunds and derivatives of gerunds in the following lines is quite odd and thus halting: “y redondeado el sol ese día mismo, / Debió ser después que la simple luz naciera / en el hilante sitio, prístino, los deslumbrados potros saliendo calurosos / del relinchante establo verde / hacia los prados de la loa.” (“And the sun grew round that very day, / So it must have been after the birth of the simple light / In the first spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm / Out of the whinnying green stable / On to the fields of praise.”) The words roll, spin and resonate in Spanish as they do in English; however, the terms “hilante” (spinning as in yarn, but not as in rotation) and “relinchante” (whinnying) are extremely strange words in Spanish, musical, yet odd as adjectives and faltering in their derivation and reedification of common forms (1958: 35–37). Borges and Bioy Casares, on the other hand, do not replicate the forms of words, but rather their lyrical circumstances. In the poem “Subject of Sea Change” by John Peale Bishop, the inventiveness of the imagery is admirable. For example, the word “rima” (rhymes) in the following lines in lieu of the word “answers” of the English version serves to deepen the aesthetic response of the house: “Descolorida en sus tejas hasta un gris plateado, / Que aun ahora, cuando es inminente la primavera, / Rima con malezas de dormido laurel.” (“Bleached in its shingles to a silvery gray / Which even now, when spring is overhead, / Answers from thickets of unwakened bay”). Another example: “Y no se apaciguaron hasta que Tiresias llegó / De su horrible merienda del carnero degollado” in which the word “merienda” (tea snack) is used to render “repast” (“And were not cased before Tiresias came / To his dread repast from the slain ram”), intensifies the irony of the meal of this slaughter (1944: 113–14). Moreover, this duo does not employ a Spanish Peninsular vocabulary and thus creates a slight illusion of Argentine expression. Of course the diversity of translation depends less upon the habitus of the translation duo or an editorial policy than upon the strategic play emanating from these writers’ talents, which enable them to avoid the simple persona or the awkwardness of other translations found within the pages of Sur. In synthesis, the magazine itself promotes a selection of poetry (topics of existentialism and war abound) and poets (Modernists elites for the most part, in line with Borgesian poetics)26 more than a translational positionality. In fact, there

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is, for example, no mention of translators in the Brazilian selection, and, as mentioned earlier, the practices range from the domesticating prose versions of Baeza to the foreignizing practices of della Paolera and on to the recreative poise of the Borges/Bioy Casares team.

5.

Positioning poetry: Aguirre’s Poesía Buenos Aires

Ideas and manifestoes of contending literary generations are often recorded within poetry journals with the immediacy characteristic of such publications, and it is with another group of agents, those captained by Raúl Gustavo Aguirre in Poesía Buenos Aires, that a different wave of innovation is translated into Argentine letters. Edgar Bayley, theoretician of the group, who, with his essay “Invencionismo” (1946) initiates a move away from the neo-romantic poets of the 1940s with their recycled nationalism and regionalism, writers who had been producing a nostalgic, romantic or even elegiac expression of Argentineity. This new group sought to disengage itself from this neo-romanticism and to bind its expression to a notion of “vitalism” in a desire to found a “poetry of life,” and, reaching back to surrealism in order to enter into the cerebral and hyperartistic posture, they began to profess “invencionismo.” The poetics that conjoin to form this inventionismo – often compared to the “creacionismo” of Chilean poet, Vicente Huidobro – produce a definite shift from previous modes of regionalism. Here, the aestheticism of the verse holds reign over the topic, and the metaphor is substituted by the image to differentiate between the “logical order of words used for communication and the possibilities of poetic language,” in an “inventive consciousness” (Aguirre 1979a: 75).27 The original group of poets,28 Aguirre, Jorge Mobili, Edgar Bayley and Juan Jacobo Bajarlía, undertake a great deal of translation work, and their own writing combines with this translation fervor. According to Aguirre, they did not promote any aesthetic orthodoxy, but upon viewing the list of poets translated, an agglutination of surrealism and creacionismo can be observed. In fact, poet/translator Horacio Armani has commented that behind every poem “lurk the heads of ­Apollinaire, Reverdy, Huidobras, Éluard, René Char or Drummond de Andrade” (in Fondebrider, Diario de Poesía, 18, 1989: 14). Self-financed – by donation parties thrown by different members, as reported by Aguirre – the magazine begins publication in 1950, inaugurated with essays and manifestoes attesting to the search for novel expression: Our initial publication will have the characteristic of a poetry anthology that, living in the present, with no fear of the novelty implied, will both propagate and



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 239

spur itself on. The readers will thus have the books with their impact yet to be disinterred by time and with a better presence than in the individual publications, as they will be accompanied by the distinct tonal phases of the different poetics in (Aguirre 1979a: 25) all their power and paradox.

Many of the early essays attest to their vision of a national scene suffocated by a poetic sterility stemming from foundational poets such as Lugones and Borges and on through to the neo-romantics of the 1930s and 1940s (Aguirre 1979a: 39). For this reason and following the tradition of French imports, this journal published a vast array of French poets: Menard, Char, Reverdy, Artaud, Breton, Tzara, Michaux, etc.; however, other innovators such as Stevens, Pavese, Drummond, Pessoa, Pasternak, Elytis and Ungaretti also authored poems translated in the tenyear duration of this magazine. The figure of the writer – as the dark poet based on the legend of Rimbaud (also translated and quoted in the manifestoes), who is, at the same time, regarded as emblematic savior of a lost sensibility – provides a constant topic of discussion. For example, from the very first issue, Aguirre and Mobili rethink the manner, place and future of the contemporary poet and how s/he should write, finally concluding that this new poetry must be for an elite due to the established aestheticism of the verse form. Even in the prose poems, one finds words that grow out of words, using things and places as pretexts for putting sounds together in a pleasurable form. Moreover, the group translates an essay by Carlos Drummond de Andrade in which he promotes a poetry of the word, rejecting poetry of the event, the city, or the body. In Aguirre’s essay, “Poetas de hoy. 1953,” he further highlights this poetic stance by enumerating modes to be avoided: “neither classical decorum, nor existentialism, nor social topics, nor the ‘phraseology’ of the surrealists” (MPBA 114). Apart from the aesthetic tendencies that emerge from the poets selected for translation, it is revealing to analyze the type of translation practiced by this group. Aguirre is the group’s main translator, having produced versions of Éluard, Tzara, Char and Rimbaud, Dickinson, Cummings and many more. His translation mode changes somewhat from author to author, though in general one can say that his register in Spanish is elevated and formal, following a long-established decorum of Iberian lexicon and grammar. The poet who most appears in the pages of this journal is René Char, all of whose poetry is translated by Aguirre, and a brief analysis of his translation serves to illustrate characteristics of Aguirre’s translation techniques. Char’s “Q’il Vive!” is a poem of colloquial speech, an apparent simplicity of figures, and an image portraying a lukewarm and defeated country “contre-sepulcre.” From the title on, there are both periphrastic interpretations and binding literalisms in Aguirre’s

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version. The original title does not correspond to an elision as one would think of in “¡Viva!” (“Vive la France”), nor do the words “bujía,” “empañado,” and “ensimismado” properly render “bougie,” “négligé and “attentif ” since these Spanish words – archaic (the first) and interpretative (the second and third) – evoke a gothic and neo-romantic air not present in the French version; some lines are added or missing (perhaps a question of different editions). Furthermore, the use of the passive voice and other literal translations of syntax as well as the cognate “bougie” point to a taut, nearly interlineal connection with the original text (MPBA 383). This close bond to lexical forms in the French text can also be observed in his version of the poem, “Centon’’ (MPBA 385). Moreover, little attention is given to the crucial semantic fields of pain and war: the use of “termino” (“I end”) when the French “rends” speaks of surrender, conforming to the military motif of the poem; “Echaríais a perder” (“you will miss”) has little semblance to “Vous en éventriez la sensation” which brings to mind literally a gut reaction that, with a bit of experimentation, might have been more encompassingly rendered through the verb “desentrañar” (disembowel) thus maintaining a metaphorical and physically wrenching sense in the image. However, another aspect to be noted in this translation is the adherence to the Spanish informal second person plural, “vosotros” (“[vosostros] [e]charíais a perder”) neither present in the French, nor used in Argentine speech or writing. This practice denotes translation diction incongruous with the contemporary style of the French version as well as with contemporary Argentine poetry. The use of “vosotros” (the second person plural used only in Spain) continues in other poems such as Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” which, at the same time employs the word “mirlo” for blackbird – not only incorrect, but in avoidance of the common term in Argentina, “tordo” (not the same species, but similar in ubiquity and color) – thus reinforcing an inherited poetic diction (MPBA 304). Furthermore, in the translation of an essay by Menard, Aguirre utilizes the words “brizna” (grass) and “guijarro” (pebble) (MPBA 128), again Peninsular words not to be heard in Argentina, but constants in Spanish and, ultimately, in many Argentine translations. The archaic and at times literal translations found in these poems are not present, however, in his versions of poems published by E. E. Cummings. Here Aguirre attempted to create the compounds and neologisms common to Cummings’ poetry; however, the poet’s exploitation of dashes is not reproduced in the translations (nor are they in Aguirre’s versions of Emily Dickinson), possibly due to the fact that the use of dashes is not prevalent in the repertoire Spanish poetry. Aguirre’s own words regarding translation strategies found in his prologue to his selections of Rimbaud, however, contradict our findings:



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 241

We have not wished to imitate that illustrious colleague who, where Shakespeare writes that life is like the speech of an idiot, “all full of sound and fury,” perhaps fearful of such an uncanny expression for his time, still unaccustomed to modern poetry, turns the speech into “with great ostentation.”29

The uncanniness revealed in the translations cited is tied to Aguirre’s use of the Spanish Peninsular diction and literalism more than to the novelty of the French and English expressions, which may be linked to questionable personal translational skills and/or the Argentine tradition of this panhispanic translational discursive genre. Turning to the accompanying sociopolitical realm of the 1950s, one finds that the politics of this decade of publication, beginning with the democratic elections that place Perón at the head of the government in 1945, represent a period of great social change because of the newly established power of the unions, the dogmatic and authoritarian nationalism that can be found even in elementary school readers, and the beginning of the Argentine feminist movement, fuelled by the figure of Eva Perón. However, Perón’s government is violently overthrown in 1955, triggering a period of fraudulent elections and the growth of military political power and social strife. The social and political violence of this period may have driven these poets into their apolitical stance; moreover, this sequence of events in no way reproduces the sociopolitical context of France. Tzara, Char, Éluard, Breton, all members of the French Resistance, war survivors, and members of the Communist Party, generated a poetry of recuperation after experiencing the burning of Europe. The “vitalism” of these French poets parallels their returning from the death of two World Wars. In contrast, Argentina’s economic and social woes stem mainly from the arrogance of ignoring the reality of the Depression: its population had increased immensely, principally because of the European emigration set in motion by the World Wars and the Spanish Civil War, and a large number of these emigrants joined the union struggles of the already exploding numbers of farm workers who had arrived in Buenos Aires when the agricultural sector began to collapse during the Depression. Continuing with questions of poetic postures – in Poesía Buenos Aires, admittedly for an elite and rejecting an aesthetic of propaganda for the masses (“nor social topics”) (Aguirre 39) – one wonders how Éluard and Char, with their social concerns, their participation in the French Resistance and consequential anguish expressed in the war poets enter into these anthologies. Many of the Brazilian poets translated (Drummond, Murilo Mendes) also write verse that often addresses topics of social injustice viewed from a leftist stance. In fact, this “­vitalism” seems

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almost to stand in conflict with the apolitical inventionismo proposed by this group. Though the realities of Argentina and France are not at all parallel – neither did the poetry produced reach the radical change theorized by Bayley, nor were the translations reflections of the aesthetics sought – the seeds of vitalism do take root in the following generation of writers, particularly in the remarkable poet, Juan Gelman.

6.

Reverberations in the 1960s and 1970s

Poesía Buenos Aires did not produce immediate effects in the 1950s; in fact, it can be said that this group of agents will not be remembered in the annals of Argentine literature for their own personal works, most of which is best read in the company of their translations in order to truly appreciate the movement; however, the admixture of social commentary and imagism provided a Petri dish for the poets of the 1960s who maintained the concept of dealing with “the real thing” as image and analogy for the creation of an engaged literature. Rejecting the aestheticism of Poesía Buenos Aires and the conservative politics of Sur (a reaction that serves to illuminate the agency of the two previous groups), these new poets would instead intone a discourse emerging from the streets of Buenos Aires to portray scenes of injustice in Argentina. The mark of this change comes with Juan Gelman’s Violín y otras cuestiones (1956). A conversational style dominates in this poetry (though not yet to the point of using the “vos” form). It contains a new attitude regarding national identity, which is reflected in the images produced in the verse: for example, the use of names of presidents and numbers of laws as lexical signifiers (“alcorta,” “anchorena,” “ley 4144” in “Un viejo asunto”) and the inclusion of objects or locations in Buenos Aires, responding precisely to the contemporary Argentine social reality. It is also significant that this slim volume would have been prefaced by Raúl González Tuñón, the first of the social urban poets of Argentina and something of a father to every Argentine writer dramatizing or lyricizing social concerns, who has been anthologized as part of the 1930/1940s generation, but is quite distant in tone and topic. Gelman was not alone is his style of writing; many works of this sort of verse are published in the 1960s. From 1974 on, however, a number of these poets were forced into exile or were later killed during the military dictatorship. Gelman has himself lived in exile since 1974, leading many to say that his absence, along with the overwhelming presence of the censorship of the “Process,” created an



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 243

i­ nterruption of the poetics of the 1960s, leaving again a space for the neo-romantic surge to engulf the poets of the 1970s (Fondebrider 1984: 16). It must be added that magazines such as Zona (1963), El lagrimal trifuca (1968) Macedonio (1970) and Xul (1980) all inherited the poetics of the movement of Poesía Buenos Aires, and many of the authors writing during the military dictatorship were associated with these magazines. The poets who published in Argentina during the “Process” – sometimes called “nomads” (Kovadloff 1982) or “castaways” (Bradford 1990). Searching for inspiration in Spanish poetry, to the point of returning to the ­ Golden Age poets and neo-romantics like Rilke, they generated a decorous and formal mode of poetics that reaches back into the Argentine literary scene of the 1950s, for the most part ignoring or denying the possibility of reflecting political or social concerns in their works.30

7.

“Sincerity” of the object: Samoilovich and Diario de Poesía

With the debacle of the South Atlantic War and the economic policies that led Argentina into a new height of foreign debt, elections are called in 1982, but the chosen government of Raúl Alfonsín is helpless to stop the rampant inflation, reinstate the ravaged industrial sector (imports had ruined most of the large and small industries during the deceptive fixed exchange rate during military rule), or entice new investors, all of which will nudge Argentina outside the limits of a competitive ring of countries beginning to participate the new global markets, save in its role as an exporter of commodities such as beef, grain and fish. It is during this period that another group of energetic cultural agents comes to the fore. Diario de poesía (“Poetry daily/diary”) is born three years after the new democracy in the year 1986, started up by the poet/translator and Maecenas, Daniel Samoilovich. His idea to produce a tabloid format for immediate consumption parallels his desire to cover “what is in the street in balance with the eternal nature of poetry” (2003). Consistent with this philosophy, Diario has always been sold in newspaper kiosks in an attempt to place this poetry within the arteries of the city in lieu of bookshops and libraries. The first issue integrates an enormously broad spectrum of authors including Juan L. Ortiz (1940’s anomaly of a poet from the provinces) and Juan ­Gelman in an attempt to “rescue” both of these poets from oblivion, a tactic repeated by the staff throughout the years; texts of “young” poets such as Irene Gruss, Néstor ­Perlongher, Víctor Redondo; Allen Ginsberg so as to pay homage to an ­international precursor; and texts from Kiki de Montparnasse’s memoirs, accompanied by rather suggestive photographs. This issue initiates a mode of publishing, which included

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attractive graphic layouts, interviews, Argentine and foreign poetry sections, a dossier (eight-page centerpiece devoted to a specific poet or movement), a cultural calendar, and an assortment of essays, reviews, and opinions. Examining the dossiers, we find that U.S. poetry dominates over all other national literatures. The statistics as of 2002 (Bradford 2005) show approximately 37% U.S. literature, 25% Argentine, 22% European, and 14% Latin American. However, in the selections of current poetry (no more than three pages), Argentine literature predominates. A partial list of U.S. poets (born or by adoption) translated in Diario serves to define the journal’s tendencies: John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Olga Broumas, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Lucille ­Clifton, ­Robert ­Creeley, E. E. Cummings, H. D., Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence ­Ferlinghetti, David Ferry, Judy Grahn, Susan Howe, Jack Kerouac, Denise ­Levertov, ­Marianne Moore, ­Lorine Niedecker, Frank O’Hara, Grace Paley, Ezra Pound, Carl ­Rakosi, Kenneth Rexroth, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Charles Simic, Wallace ­Stevens, Walt ­ Whitman, Richard Wilbur, Tennessee Williams and William Carlos ­Williams, just to name the best-known. Most of these poets are translated by ­Daniel Samoilovich, Mirta Rosenberg, Jorge Fondebrider, Diana Bellessi and María Negroni (all poets themselves), though, in the case of the dossiers, sometimes previously published translations are also included. For the most part, the selections focus on now canonical poets, who can be characterized, at least in their initial publication, as countercultural, anti-formal, and ideologically marginal. If we consider the proportion of women poets, it is also clear that there is an intentional forging of a new tradition of feminine modes of expression in the context of the journal. Various articles have been written about the tendencies of contemporary Argentine poetry promoted by this group,31 characterized by a detour from neobaroque and neo-romantic mannerism to thus recover a colloquial and even political accent constituting a style that has been called “neo-objectivism”32 by some critics. Samoilovich has not denied this label, and the Diario group adheres to a formation inspired by imagisme and literature of engagement or Zukofsky’s concept of “artistic sincerity.” For example, though most of the main group of objectivist poets – Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky, and George Oppen – have not been translated in the pages of the magazine, there is a seeming preference to go back to Pound as a grandfather figure of this neo-objectivism, and the translations of Levertov, Niedecker, Creely and Pound all maintain a political and/or objectivist bias. In the middle of the 1995 spring issue dedicated to the relationship between poetry and politics, we find the translation of Levertov’s essay, “At the Edge of Darkness. What is political poetry?” thus highlighting the bond with objectivist and, further, feminist poets.



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Samoilovich, moreover, has reinforced his focus as a neo-objectivist by saying that poetry should be “not the presumption of translating objects into words […] but rather the attempt to create with words artifacts that have the evidence and disposition of the objects” (14, Spring 1993: 18). This type of value judgment guides the reader within the framework of a regulatory poetic space. In fact, another member of the staff who has written many essays on poetry, Daniel García Helder, classifies other modes of expression that continue with the “heroism of language” as “outdated” and as mere extensions of Rubén Darío’s modernismo, pointing a finger at the neo-baroque or neo-romantic poetry of other contemporary Argentine writers (4, Fall, 1987: 24). Regarding the mode of translation found in this publication, it cannot be said that the dominant language used in the poetics of original works coincides completely with the positionality of the translator in the sixty plus issues of Diario. In a few poems there are infrequent integrations of words of solely Argentine usage or the “vos” common to original production and daily speech (see Sexton’s “Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” translated by Samoilovich and Rosenberg, for example [55, Spring, 2000: 18]), and there is a certain irreverence regarding forms imposed by Spain (neither the “vosotros” nor vocabulary specific to Spain is used), but the translator’s voice is clearly influenced by the translational discursive genre that has prevailed in Argentina for the last century of “panhispanic” discourse. In other words, the idiomatic persona does not coincide with the lyrical voice of the poet/translator in his or her original work since translation is evidently judged as exacting a greater universality. These writers are not at all oblivious to the problems of translation. ­Samoilovich, Rosenberg and Fondebrider all have been active in translation forums, and the tenth issue of Diario (1988) printed a dossier entirely dedicated to translation, including commentaries by famous translators, Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” and personal critiques and comparisons of versions. Therefore, one could imagine that they might attempt a more revolutionary or nationalistic positionality in accordance with many modern theories of translation, but, in the end, the tradition of an idiomatic persona continues to reign. More important in our consideration of the modes of translation in this magazine is the location of the influence of the personal styles of each poet in his/her translation process. There is no invasion of the translator’s voice, but rather the exploitation of virtues of personal poetics that are oftentimes made advantageous to the new rendering. Bellessi’s poetry, for example, is characterized by a challenging voice and sensual exploration of lesbian desire and first love – mother and daughter – which become evident in her selections and Spanish versions of U.S. women poets. In the case of Rosenberg, her invention of rhythms and musicality

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help to create outstanding versions of Anne Sexton’s verse. The neo-objectivism of Samoilovich with “techniques apt for tiny cultural or ‘natural’ scenes […] enemy of the metaphor, something of a friend of allusion” (Samoilovich 14, Summer, 1990: 18) gives him ample freedom of expression and faith in the allusive metaphor, perfect for the translations of Carver and Ashbery.33 In general, Diario de poesía has pursued and encouraged the previously described “disassociated association” traditional to the Argentine writer in its attempt to “fill the voids” (Fondebrider 2004). The selections are shaped with a comparatist vision so as to develop a world poetry anthology. The manipulation found in this anthologization becomes evident in the selection of the poets and the text to be translated, the introductions and critical essays, and traces of personal styles in the versions published. This magazine’s choice of poets reveals an interest in intermingling the Beats, New York Poets, women’s and gay poetry – all from marginal, revolutionary or objectivist postures – with an abundance of Argentine poetry to accompany and fortify the experimental field of verse that has constituted this publication for the past 20 years.34 In this fashion and returning to ideas posed by Greenblatt, the very inclusion of poetry translated by these poets both enforces the aforesaid poetics as it becomes a form of exclusion, or “constraint” of certain other movements rejected – the neo-baroques in particular – by these cultural agents.

8.

Translation Persona and Argentine translational habitus

Our analysis of the lexical choices found in these translations serves to reveal a solid tradition of a conservative discursive genre which is considered decorous for publication, even when the original material is colloquial, countercultural or indecorous – arguably the basis of literary development and certainly the mark of poetic diction from Modernism onward. Moreover, this linguistic persona used in Argentine translation does not admit the use of “vos,” Argentine dialect, or zero translation, except in the case of proper names, though within the original works of these poet/translators, foreign words and Argentine colloquialisms are indeed utilized. Nonetheless, it is significant to note, recalling ideas once conceived by Goethe, that literature is not a natural language but rather an artificial tongue; accordingly, all literary production is artificial and translation is merely an exacerbation of this phenomenon. Moreover, as Argentine novelist and critic Ricardo Piglia has written as a generalization, but more specifically pointed to Argentine translations, “[…] the translator resides on the borders of language and always seems to be



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about to write a third language, an invented, artificial language” (Piglia 1999: 5)35 or, the translational persona. We must not disregard, therefore, the fact that the poetic process generates a realm of strangeness due to its own mode of constructing linguistic figures of a specific diction that is inherited from generation to generation and used intertextually or responsively. For instance, the exotic words “guijarro” (pebble) and “mirlo” (blackbird) mentioned regarding Aguirre’s translation are again employed in the late twentieth century and can, furthermore, be found in Mirta Rosenthal’s original poetry in a cross-fertilization of sorts, even though her style is generally colloquial and unadorned.36 Argentines have always been “poachers,”37 using their imported texts imperviously and improperly, but their game is already transgenic because of the tenor of the translations they consume. Regarding the “normative approach” to translation practices, we could characterize the particular translation discursive genre in present Argentine production as one of anti-identity: in its refusal to reflect the linguistic reality of any specific Spanish-speaking country, the language that is utilized in the publication of bestsellers and in subtitling generally responds to a neutrality imposed by distributors that attend to Spain, Latin American, and the Latino community in the U.S. in their marketing procedures. Though many of the translations from Spain do reproduce the ideology of “invisibility” (Venuti) with regard to the Iberian public, to the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, these same texts prove more visible, heteroglossic, and at times even “deterritorialized,” because of the linguistic and stylistic differences from locally produced texts. Ironically, the ubiquity of Iberian translations in the Argentine market gives them a normative authority that renders translations utilizing the characteristic Argentine “vos” strange to most of the Argentine population.38 The reason for this is that the conventions of the translation discursive genre demand a neutrality or, again, an anti-identity in its expression.39 This requirement cultivates a translational convention that promotes an acculturation of new idioms, which expands the language but also interrupts canons proper to the Argentine tradition without necessarily connecting them affectively to any reality other than a virtual or a textual one.40

9.

The interplay of the Agents

In our final analysis, it is evident that all three of these groups publish their magazines to both introduce new works and to legitimize their own production, and it should be noted that the anthologization of selected foreign texts and their own works makes these magazines more momentous than the poets’ own writing, with

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the exception of Borges. Moreover, it is the function of literary magazines is to promote reading habits, which often serve as experimental fields or battlefields, and the compendia generated by these three magazines with their multicultural network are born and flourish in this fashion. With the translations, prefaces, commentaries, essays, manifestoes and apologies, these gate-keepers guide their readers to learn to differentiate between what is proper to add to the Argentine literary identity and what is not, while also molding their tastes in translation discourse. Through “self-projection and assimilation but alienation through reification and expropriation” (Greenblatt 2005: 28), these agents enforce certain poetics while constraining others. Since this interplay also depends on the potential repertory – with the Argentine discursive genre of translation standing so distant from local discourse – and since political events accompanying the production of foreign and local literature do not coincide, there is a definite misalignment in the times when foreign poetics can become truly enmeshed within the local production, and this displacement distorts, disallows, and culls the foreign input in unpredictable fashions. When we reflect on the alterations provoked by translations carried out under the auspices of Sur, we might wonder how Faulkner’s rendition of social decomposition after the U.S. Civil War, Woolf ’s interest in feminine roles, Forster’s dramatization of colonialism, and Camus’ existentialism were received by a 1940s Argentine reading public living in a society in some ways to be classified as pre-modern. Furthermore, the majority of the poets translated can be labeled as Modernist, chosen more for their novelty and superlative poetics than their engagement with a tendency or topic. Though many essays allude to the crises of war, they impart general philosophical glosses more than revolutionary or leftist fervor. These publications provide exercises in avant-garde poetics that revolve around the preoccupation with the representation and the ontology of perception, elements that in the 1960s will be re-rooted within the context of their ideological debates in the writers of the “Boom.” By the same token, Argentina, particularly before the Depression, logically viewed itself as a flourishing, modern nation, competing in every realm with the rest of the world, so there seemed to be no incongruence between Argentine production and worldwide economic and intellectual movements. Nevertheless, considering the intermingling of texts imported by Poesía Buenos Aires, we should go on to ask whether this optimistic surreal mixture of conscious and unconscious – used in Europe to thwart what was seen as the rigidity of a rationalism that had led to the horror of the World Wars – could be honed with inventionismo to make it fit into an Argentine reality of the 1950s, unscathed by the destruction wrought by such rationalism. These writers of Poesía Buenos Aires were of a comfortable bourgeoisie, neither Communist nor Peronist, who,



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furthermore, devoted their efforts more to the power of the word than the power of politics. They attempted to introduce existentialist and Marxist poets emerging from the French Resistance and the anguish of war in order to share these European poets and perhaps create a new brand of Argentine poetry in the promotion of the contemporary canon of world literature rather than to endorse circumscribed poetics or ideologies; however, the transplantation does not fully come to fruition until the 1960s when, wrested from their extreme aestheticism, it is cross-pollinated with the Beats and the social concerns surrounding the city of Buenos Aires by poets such as Gelman. The objectivist input transposed and fomented by the Diario marks an attempt to represent a reality disentwined from the romantic impulse – whether in its aestheticism or engaged forms – first through the Diario poets’ reading of the initial objectivists (Pound, Williams) and then in their leap toward the Beats and countercultural expressions. Professing a desire to let the objects speak for themselves in lieu of using the traditional means of metaphor and symbol, they explore and promote voices imported principally from U.S. poetry. Of course, the test of time will pronounce the degree of success of the agency of this group. The magazine has passed its twentieth year of publication and contemporary production is a well-spring for future creative efforts.41 At present, there is a tendency toward the publication of more and more Latin American poets and less translation, perhaps owing to the departure of comparatist Fondebrider from the staff and/or to a simple need to reinstate a homogeneity of Latin American poetics in the face of globalization. The field of poetry is, again, a restricted field, and the intellectual dramas discussed in the pages of these journals are also limited to a select group of readers who can transport themselves from their everyday reality to the conflicts taking place on other stages, with the optimistic result of finding the strategies to “translate” these notions and poetics into the local sphere of action. In addition, amid the havoc of the “democratization” of cultural production in the last ten years due to the Internet and satellite TV, one can only guess whether poetry agents will ever be truly interventional, local or geographically nuclear again. The intervention will be virtual and the legitimization ephemeral and skeptical, as is the attitude toward Internet in general. As the intellectual field becomes larger and its outlines hazier, the poaching becomes more erratic, and the predictability of taste will respond more to a charting of the agility to pass from one form to another in the speed of upload and download and the flare for mimicry and pastiche than to the patience to read and digest. The internal logic of the poetics of Internet will most probably set the stage for the practices of the next groups of agents. Nevertheless, journals, virtual or paper, will continue to constitute a space for the fusion of poets, and in this same fashion coteries of admiration and

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­ roduction were established within the space of these three literary journals, thus p forming and promoting poetic biases. Therefore, an analysis of the anthologization practices as found in all of the publications contributes to the understanding of the cultural politics generated by these groups of agents. In each of these cases, moreover, we have observed how translation closely accompanies this propagation of aesthetics even though the mode of translation does not always concur with the type of poetry fomented by the artists and the topics do not always suit the Argentine reality of the period in question. On the whole these poet/translators of Sur, Poesía Buenos Aires and Diario de poesía have not been interventionist in terms of manipulating the texts through a language that would leave an Argentine or ideological imprint on the text, save the unconscious establishment of an anti-identity persona as a normative mode for the translation of poetry. When tracing the impact of this agency on the future of Argentine poetics, it is clearly more significant, first, to trace the selection of foreign poets to publish, and, second, to plot the infusion of imported texts in the context of national artistic identity. We find these agents introducing and interweaving avant-garde aesthetics through relatively conservative translation techniques, reverently displaying a desire to disseminate foreign works in order to impose modes of reading, to ensure the presence of important contemporary world poets in ­Argentina, and, with the exception of the inconsistencies found in Poesía Buenos Aires, to fortify their own aesthetic stance within the pages of their magazines, and, thereby, fashion the course of twentieth-century Argentine poetry.

Notes 1. In the push to safeguard and exploit lands west and south of Buenos Aires, General Julio Roca directed this military plan from 1878–1880. Many question whether this romantic and imperialistic “Desert Conquest” would not be better termed a genocide of South American Indians. In fact, it was the Hudsons, Humboldts and Darwins who transported the beauty and tranquility of the Argentine “desert” to Europe, while the Argentine narrators, for the most part, portrayed the Indians as ugly beasts and longed for order and civilization. 2. Victoria Ocampo began writing French, in fact, not in Spanish; Borges lived extensively in Europe. 3. See Sarmiento’s praise of the northern paradigm in his Viajes. 4. See Andrea Pagni’s article on the Andrés Bello’s manipulation of Victor Hugo. Discrediting the Romantic spirit in the on-going debates in Latin America in the nineteenth century, believing this movement to be detrimental to the growth of the Americas, he culled and altered many of the allusions present in Hugo’s “À Olympio.” 5. It is clear that the struggle involved in the publication of poetry does not produce the exact same patterns found in narrative, particularly in the case of popular literature. Nevertheless, the



The agency of the poets and the impact of their translations 251

interlinking of the fields is evident, and, moreover, the mode of poetry translation in Argentina emulates the dominant non-interventionist practices to be found in the translation of other, more financially dependent genres. 6. By positionality I refer to how we position ourselves and are positioned by others in the field of translation, used often in terms of gender (see Sherry Simon), but here it encompasses translational ideological stance, whether it be conscious or unconscious (see Berman and ­Tymoczko). 7. Translation discourse can also constitute a Bakhtinian discursive genre in the context of Argentine literature. See “Los discursos de la traducción” (Bradford 2000). 8. See, for example, Eduardo Galeano’s Las venas abiertas de América Latina. BA: Siglo XXI, 1971. 9. After the death of Perón, in1974, both left- and right-wing terrorism shakes the country, with the end result being a coup under the leadership of General Jorge Videla. In this period ending after the Falklands War, it is calculated that from 12,000 to 30,000 people “disappeared” (National Commission on the Disappeared, CONADEP) under the strategies of the ‘Proceso de Reorganización Nacional” (also called “The Dirty War”) used in order to cleanse the nation of all subversive forces, which included unionists, students, clerics, journalists, etc., and often, the friends of these people as well. 10. In 1982, the Islas Malvinas or Falkland Islands were retaken by Argentina, some say as a smokescreen to obviate the growing national and international criticism of the “Proceso” and the economic debacle created under the neo-liberal design of the Minister of Economy, José Martínez de Hoz. The war lasted for two months, resulting in the military withdrawal of the Argentina forces and a continued campaign to regain the disputed possession within the U.N. This conflict is widely known is the Falklands War. 11. “The entire future is the result of having no past”: believing in the possibility of an individuality in writing based on personal experience and the “sacredness” of the metaphor and the world, Murena was an outsider to his generation of writers who either imitated forms found in Europe (particularly France) or worked on the basis of an engagement of literature and local politics. See Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel. Literatura propia y apropiada. These ideas can also be indirectly linked to notions of “Dependency Theory” stemming from Raúl Prebisch’s “Singer-Prebisch thesis” on the inequality of central and peripheral economies, which was developed in the 1950s and in vogue in the 60s and 70s. 12. J. V. González’s Obra completa (posthumously published by his son with the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in 1934) and Silvina Ocampo’s Poemas de un amor desesperado (­Sudamericana 1949) both include their translations of many foreign poets. 13. The notions of cultural anthropophagy were first developed in Brazil by Oswald de Andrade to describe a Brazilian mode of cavalier hybridization of Modernist forms and local traditions, later taken up by Haroldo de Campos to provoke irreverence in translation, now questioned as a Romantic vision self imposed via Europe (see “Brazil as Exposition” by João Cezar de Castro Rocha, http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v08/rocha.html, Feb. 1, 2006). 14. See Sitio 2, 1982 with retranslations and discussion of Molly’s monologue by Enrique Pezzoni and a verse version by Ramón Alcalde. 15. Also note his “La busca de Averroes,” “Pierre Menard” and “Las versiones homéricas,” in Las obras completas.

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16. See Porrúa (2001). Other examples can be found in Maria Moreno. El affaire Skeffington. Rosario: Bajo la luna nueva, 1992 (pseudocriticism of a lesbian poet); Juan José Hernández. Desiderátum: Obra Poética. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo, 2001 (Williams, Verlaine Cassou, Cadou); Carlos Feiling: Amor a Roma. Bs.As: Sudamericana (a mixture of his poems with free adaptations of British and Latin poets). 17. The group of Sur has been called the “rich kids” (Cambours Ocampo), who could often disregarding translations fees. 18. However, in the last 30 years, Spain has again gained control of the market, including publication for Hispanics in the U.S. 19. Victoria Ocampo’s investment in Sur and her financial woes stemming from its mismanagement can be seen in her memoirs. Furthermore, in later years, Ocampo was able, through her post in the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, to get grants for translators, as was the case of Pezzoni’s work on Moby Dick. 20. I am, of course, referring to the polysystems theories of I. Evan-Zohar and G. Toury, which serve to analyze hegemonies in the import/export processes of literary translation and the repercussions of translated texts in the new system of reception. 21. Noteworthy is the fact that many of the leading publishing houses were run by Spanish exiles. 22. The authority of this group in the course of Argentine letters and their translation habits has been amply researched, particularly by Patricia Willson in her recently-published La constelación del Sur. 23. Indeed, though it is often the poetry that sparks change in writing processes, much of Editorial Sur’s influence on twentieth-century Spanish American literature springs from their publication of translations of novels and theater. Sur does publish Bianco’s translation of a collection of poems by French symbolist Paul Valéry in 1945 and Victoria Ocampo’s accidental translations of Rabindranath Tagore; Borges’ versions of Walt Whitman, Silvina Ocampo’s translations of Emily Dickinson did not appear until 1985 in the Spanish publisher Tusquets; and Girri’s exercises with Eliot, initiated in the 40s, and come to fruition in 1980 in Sudamericana. 24. Though the Argentine members of the editorial staff shared oligarchic roots, their politics varied: the division created by opinions regarding the Spanish Civil War – Ocampo originally was opposed to the Republican forces, just as she also supported the overthrow of Yrigoyen’s democratic government, while Borges, for example, was against the governments of both Uriburu and Franco. Both Borges and Ocampo will reunite in their dissent regarding the Peronist regime. 25. 1942, Brazilian, 1944, U.S.; 1947, British and French; 1950, Italian, 1957, Japanese, 1959, Indian, 1963, Spanish; 1962 Arab; 1964, Peruvian; 1965, Latin American, 1968, German. French works were translated mainly by Victoria Ocampo, Wilcock, Ricardo Baeza and Borges; Italian authors by Girri and Viola Soto; British by Silvina Ocampo, Wilcock, Baeza, Revol and Felix della Paolera; and U.S. poetry by Wilcock, Baeza, Borges with Bioy Casares and Viola Soto. 26. It is interesting to note that Borges publishes little poetry in Sur, particularly from 1940– 1960, instead writing essays and short fiction for the magazine that later appears in collections such as Historia de la eternidad, Ficciones and El Aleph. 27. First elaborated in 1945 by the main theoretician of the group, Edgar Bayley, but published in the first issue of Poesía Buenos Aires in 1950. All translations from the Spanish are mine.



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28. Edgar Bayley, Miguel Brascó, Juan Jacobo Barjarlía, Jorge Mobili, and Osvaldo Svanscini were all involved in this enterprise. 29. No hemos querido imitar a aquel ilustre colega que, donde Shakespeare escribe que la vida es como el hablar de un demente, “todo sonido y furia”, tal vez asustado por una expresión tan insólita para su tiempo todavía no acostumbrado a la poesía moderna, lo convierte en un hablar “con gran aparato.”Iluminaciones y una temporada en el infierno de Arthur Rimbaud, BA CEDEAL, 1969. 30. This discussion is further elaborated in my doctoral dissertation (1990), “A Generation of Castaways: A Study of the Translation Process in Four Argentine Poets of the 1970s”, which deals with Rafael Oteriño, Guillermo Boido, Ricardo Herrera, and Jorge García Sabal. 31. Daniel García Helder, “El neobarroco en la Argentina”, in Diario de poesía Nº 4, otoño 1987: 24–25; Santiago Kovadloff, “Balance y perspectivas”, en Xul Nº 1, 1980; Daniel Samoilovich, “Barroco y neo-barroco”, in Dossier “El estado de las cosas”, Diario de poesía Nº 14, verano 1990, 18; Ana Porrúa, “Una polémica a media voz; objetivistas y neobarrocos en el Diario de poesía”, in Boletín del Centro de estudios de teoría y crítica literaria, Rosario: Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 11, Dec. 2003: 59–69. An example of this tendency can be found in the writings of Néstor Perlongher and Arturo Carrera. 32. The Objectivist group could be considered as a branch of U.S. poetry growing out of Pound and Williams but crystallizing in poets such as Luis Zukofsky and finally Charles Olsen:” […] an avant-garde, leftist poetry movement initiated in the 1930s that combined elements of Imagism, Marxist thought, and their unique understanding of artistic ‘sincerity’ […]. http:// students.washington.edu/dwhunts/objectivism.htm. 33. For a more detailed analysis of the translation, see my article, “La voz del Poeta/traductor en el Diario de Poesía, Argentina, 1986-presente”, Espacios de la traducción en América Latina, Estudios, Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales. 34. Furthermore, its influence is already becoming evident in a new generation of poets, particularly a nucleus of poets from Bahía Blanca who publish the cyber magazine Vox. 35. Significantly, Piglia’s own fiction assumes a meditation on modes of appropriation in literature. His novels deliberately introduce the polemic between what is proper and what is foreign, and in his parody, plagiarism, and montage of quotations, there emerges a mode of flagrant transtextuality: in Respiración artificial we find the words of Joyce, Benjamin, Arlt, Borges, and even George Steiner. 36. “Madam,” for example, we find “y el aquí que nada insume, pero resta / el tiempo de decirlo, cuando el mirlo / se ha posado, al fin, sobre esta rama.” (Diario 4, 1987: 10). Is this an intertextuality with Stevens or an inadvertent use of translational diction? 37. See de Certeau’s notions of consumers who “misuse” cultural capital. 38. Though “vos” is the informal singular “you” in Argentina (whereas “tú” is used in most other Spanish-speaking countries, during one of my literary translation workshops, I found nearly unanimous rejection of the “vos” form in translation practices among my students. Moreover, the Argentine dubbing of The Incredibles in 2004 became a subject of blogging, and most commentators concurred that they preferred a “neutral” Spanish. 39. The only areas of translation which at times use principals of localization are in drama and cinema subtitling.

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40. For example, I asked several Argentine poets what they understood when reading the word “guijarro” in a poem, and they responded that it may be found on a beach, thought it might be related to pottery, but were not certain. Pebbles, “canto rodado” are, however, quite common in Argentina on beaches and in decorative gardens. 41. Sufficient interest has been stirred to initiate a research project on the interrelationship between the Objectivists and Argentine contemporary poetry, co-directed by the author and Ana Porrúa with the participation of poet Sergio Raimondi.

References Aguirre, Raúl Gustavo. 1979. Antología de la poesía argentina. Buenos Aires: Fausto. Aguirre, Raúl Gustavo. 1979a. El movimiento poesía Buenos Aires Buenos Aires: Fraterna. Andrade, Oswald de. 1990. “Manifesto antropófago”. A utopia antropofágica. São Paulo: Editora O Globo, 47. The “Manifesto” was launched in May 1928, in the first issue of the Revista de Antropofagia. Andrés, Alfredo. 1969. El 60. Buenos Aires: Dos. Arrieta, Rafael Alberto (ed.). 1958. “La traducción poética”. Historia de la literatura argentina, 242–274. Buenos Aires: Peuser. Avellaneda, Andrés. 1983. El habla de la ideología. Editorial Sudamericana: Buenos Aires. Bellesi, Diana. 1997. “Género y traducción”. In Traducción como cultura, Lisa Bradford (comp.), 93–97. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo. Berman, Antoine. 1992. The Experience of the Foreign. New York: State University of New York Press. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1974a. “El escritor argentino y la tradición”. In Obras completas, 267–274. Buenos Aires: Emecé. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1974b. “Los traductores de las 1001 noches”. In Obras completas, 397–413. Buenos Aires: Emecé. English version: 2000. “The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights”. In The Translation Studies Reader, Esther Allen (Trans.), Lawrence Venuti (ed.), 34–48. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. “The peculiar history of scientific reason”. Sociological Forum 6 (1), 3–26. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1999. Intelectuales, política y poder. (cf. “Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées,” first printed in 1990. Romanitische Zeitschrift für Leteraturgeschechte/Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes, 14 année, 1–2: 1–10). Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Bradford, Lisa. 1990. “A generation of castaways: A study of the translation process in four Argentine poets of the 1970s.” Doctoral Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley. Bradford, Lisa (ed.). 2001. La cultura de los géneros. Rosario: Viterbo. Bradford, Lisa Rose. 2005. “La voz del Poeta/traductor en el Diario de Poesía, Argentina, 1986– presente”, Espacios de la traducción en América Latina, Estudios, Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales, 303–332. Universidad Simón Bolívar. Cambours Ocampo, Arturo. 1963. El problema de las generaciones literarias. Buenos Aires: Peña Lillo. Casey, Alfredo. 1969. Dos siglos de poesía norteamericana Buenos Aires: Zamora.



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Char, René. 1950. Les Matinaux. Paris: Gallimard. Cruz, Eva. 1993. Más de dos siglos de poesía norteamericana. México: UNAM. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Steven Rendell (Trans.). Berkeley: UC Press. de Sagastizábal, Leandro. 1995. La edición de libros en la Argentina: Una empresa de cultura. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Dickinson, Emily. 1985. The poems of Emily Dickinson. Silvina Ocampo (Trans.). Barcelona: Tusquets. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1981. “Translation theory today. A call for transfer theory”. Translation Theory and Intercultural Relations – Poetics Today 11: 1–7. Fondebrider, Jorge. 1984. “Juan Gelman y nuestra poesía,” La danza del ratón, VI. 16–18. Fondebrider, Jorge. 1988/1989. “Dossier: Poesía Buenos Aires”. Diario de poesía 11: 13–24. Fondebrider, Jorge. 2004. Interview, May 1, Lisa Bradford. Galeano, Eduard. 1971. Las venas abiertas de América Latina. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Gentzler, E. 1996. “Translation, counter-culture and the fifties in the USA”. Translation, Power, Subversion, Román Alvarez and M. Carmen-Africa Vidal (eds), 116–137. Clevedon, Philadelphia, Adelaide: Multilingual Matters. Girri, Alberto. 1966. Poesía conrteamericana contemporánea. Buenos Aires: Omego. Greenblatt, Stephen. 2005. The Greenblatt Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Hermans, Theo. 1999. Translation in System. Manchester: St. Jerome. Iriarte, Fabián O. 2003. “Anatomía del fascículo: La colección Los Grandes Poetas de CEAL”. Actas de las III Jornadas del Departamento de Letras, 2003, 352–356. Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Iriarte, Fabián, Mallo, Alfonso O. and Aldana, Fabiola. 2001. “Tres hipótesis de la lectura sobre el Diario de Poesía”. In La escritura y los críticos, Ana Porrúa (ed.), 55–63. Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Kovadloff, Santiago. 1982. Una cultura de catacumbas. Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar. Lafleur, Héctor René, Provenzano, Sergio and Alonso, Fernando. 1962. Las revistas literarias argentinas 1893–1967. Buenos Aires: CEAL. Ludmer, Josefina. 1988. El género gauchesco. Un tratado sobre la patria. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Luhman, Nikolás. 1995. Social Systems. John Bednarz (Trans.). Stanford: Stanford UP. Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel. 1967. Literatura propia y apropiada. Buenos Aires: Losada. Masiello, Francine. 1986. Lenguaje e ideología: Las escuelas argentinas de vanguardia. Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette. “Objectivist Timeline” visited January 2004. http://students.washington.edu/dwhunts/ objectivism.htm Panesi, Jorge. 2000. Críticas. Buenos Aires: Norma. Piglia, Ricardo. 1999. “Textos inéditos. Páginas de un diario”. Clarín, Cultura y nación. 5 dic. 5. Pagni, Andrea. 2005. “Olimpia en América del Sur. Usos hispanoamericanos del romanticismo francés.” Espacios de la traducción en América Latina, Estudios, Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales, 17–32. Universidad Simón Bolívar. Porrúa, Ana. 2003. “Estos viejos aires nuevos: poesía argentina de los ’90”. In Actas de las III Jornadas del Departamento de Letras, 209–215. Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Salas, Horacio. 1975. Generación poética del 60. Buenos Aires: Ediciones culturales argentinas. Samoilovich, Daniel. 1988. “Dossier: Traducción”. Diario de poesía 10: 24.

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Samoilovich, Daniel. 1990. “Dossier: El estado de las cosas”. Diario de poesía 14: 18. Samoilovich, Daniel. 2003. Interview, September 3, Lisa Bradford. Samoilovich, Daniel. Visited Feb. 2004. Banda hispânica http://www.secrel.com.br/jpoesia/ bhargentina.htm Sarlo, Beatriz. 1998. La máquina cultura. Buenos Aires: Ariel. Trilling, Lionel. 1953. “The function of the little magazine”. In The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society, 97–106. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books. Tymoczko, Maria. 2003. “Ideology and the position of the translator: In what sense is a translator ‘in between’?”. In Apropos of Ideology, María Calzada Pérez (ed.), 181–201. Manchester: St. Jerome. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London, NY: Routledge. Willson, Patricia. 2003. La constelación del sur. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.

The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos in bringing translation to the fore of literary activity in Brazil Thelma Médici Nóbrega and John Milton

Pontifícia Universidade Católica, São Paulo / Universidade de São Paulo

This article is a review of the implications of the Campos brothers’ practical and theoretical activity as translators on the translation field in Brazil, focusing on Haroldo de Campos’ role as translator, translation theorist and literary critic. Key words: Haroldo de Campos; Augusto de Campos; Concrete poetry; Décio Pignatari; translation in Brazil

1.

Introduction

Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003) is without doubt the foremost figure in the area of translation of poetry in Brazil. Together with his younger brother, Augusto (1931–), he has brought translation to the frontline of literary activity in Brazil. The Campos brothers have made translation “respectable”. They have put translation at the forefront of literary activity and they have given it literary and academic prestige. Early in their career as Concrete poets they moved translation away from the dilettante mode of the Geração de 45 poets. They took translation seriously, and their theorization and professionalism in the area of translation can be contrasted with the dilettantism of poets such as Manuel Bandeira’s book of translated poems (Bandeira 1966). Moreover, much of the poetry they have translated has even been commercially successful, Poesia Russa Moderna, for example, is now in its eighth edition. Haroldo and Augusto de Campos have successfully combined their theoretical work on translation and their actual translations in a way that has been unequalled almost anywhere. This article will concentrate on the essays and articles of ­Haroldo, probably one of the major thinkers on translation in the 20th century and whose work up until now has been little known outside Brazil.1 We also believe that

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the breadth and cohesion of his work, together with that of his brother, ­Augusto, and other members of the group of Concrete poets, especially Décio ­ Pignatari, has been unequalled in any other country. Haroldo de Campos can be called a true Agent of Translation: he has made translation a central activity in the Brazilian literary world; his translations have introduced a large number of previously unknown authors to the Brazilian public; he has had considerable influence on attitudes towards translation; he has put forward a complex theory of translation that emphasizes the aural and visual aspects of the translation of literature; he has also influenced changes in the Brazilian canon; and these changes have provoked vital debates on the position of literature in Brazil and of Brazilian literature in the world context.

2.

Haroldo and Augusto de Campos: Theoretical positions

Haroldo and Augusto de Campos were born in São Paulo, in 1929 and 1931, respectively. These brothers with opposite and complementary personalities and biotypes – Haroldo average height, quite chubby, exuberant and talkative, ­Augusto tall, slim, shy and introspective – shared from an early age a passion for literature. These differences would be reflected in their poetry from the beginning, though not so noticeably during the Concrete Poetry period, in which individual differences tended to be effaced. From the sixties, however, the Concrete brothers developed in different directions. Augusto remained closer to the Concrete principles, developing its potentialities through the use of new media languages and techniques. Throughout the years, his canon has expanded to include a vast and diverse range of authors: the Symbolists Paul Valéry and Arthur Rimbaud; the Romantic John Keats; the Victorian ascetic, Gerald Manley Hopkins; the Expressionist Rainer Maria Rilke; as well as Gertrude Stein, from the early Modernist canon, and the musician John Cage. All these translations are remarkable for their creativity and craftsmanship, and for their attempt to replicate the phonetic and rhythmic patterns of the original. Haroldo, on the other hand, became more interested in the philosophy of language and Semiotics, not only as poet and translator but also as translation theorist and literary critic. As a poet, from the early seventies onwards, he no longer followed the strict Concretist parameters but rather developed a sophisticated poetic work that included Galáxias, fifty long fragments that challenge the limits between prose and poetry, mother tongue and foreign tongue, original and translation. Haroldo’s translations are usually accompanied by dense essays and prefaces to explain his translation work and to put forward a coherent and insightful theory of translation. One of his most influential essays was written as early as



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1962. In “Da Tradução como Criação e como Crítica” [“Translation as Creation and Critique”], his first fully-fledged attempt to theorize his extensive and intensive literary translation practice, Haroldo drew on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce via Max Bense, and the Poundian Make it new. The main ideas of this fundamental study, which he later developed and refined, remained throughout his work. Haroldo, discussing the axiom that poetry is untranslatable according to the conclusions of Max Bense and Albrecht Fabri, because form and content cannot be separated without loss of aesthetic information, suggests that such impossibility may entail, as a corollary, the possibility of recreation of these texts: We shall have, as Bense wishes, in another language, another piece of aesthetic information, which is autonomous, but both will be connected to each other by a relationship of isomorphy: they will be different in terms of language, but, as isomorphic bodies, they will be crystallized within the same system.  (Haroldo de Campos forthcoming)

He later coined the term “transcreation”, a term which he first used in an essay “Píndaro, hoje” [“Pindar, today”], (Haroldo de Campos 1969: 109) to designate this operation that refuses the dichotomy form/content and focuses on the poetic form of the text – its phonosemantic configuration. Thus, transcreation aims at the impossible in translation, the rendering not only of meaning but also of form. Contrary to the common sense belief that poetry is untranslatable because it is difficult, it is this very difficulty, the complex arrangement of formal and semantic elements, which makes a text all the more translatable: Thus, for us, the translation of creative texts will always be recreation, or parallel creation, which is autonomous but reciprocal. The more the text overflows with difficulties, the more recreatable, the more seductive it will be in terms of the possibilities which are available for recreating it. In a translation of this kind, it is not only the signified that is translated, but also the sign itself, its physicality, its materiality (its sound qualities, its visual imagetics, everything which, according to Charles Morris, contributes to the iconicity of the aesthetic sign, with iconic sign understood here as that “which in a certain way is similar to that which it denotes”). The signified, the semantic parameter, will merely and only constitute the boundary of the recreative task. And this (kind of translation) can be seen as the opposite of the so-called literal translation.  (Haroldo de Campos forthcoming)

So, recreation, or transcreation, for Haroldo, does not mean free adaptation of the original, but extreme fidelity. It means a reconfiguration that takes into account all elements of the poem – the phonoprosodic, visual, syntactic. Creativity here means being able to find solutions within the semiotic scope of the poem,

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and not outside it. Haroldo also likes to play with the frontiers between creation and ­recreation, presenting together with translated poems his “transluminuras” [“transluminations”], or pseudo-translations – poems composed in the style of a an author he translated, like “baladetas” [“short ballads”] inspired by Guido ­Cavalcanti or poems following Chinese or Japanese forms. For this reason, from the beginning of his theoretical activity, Haroldo rejected the biased view that translations are inferior products, as the translator now, far from being the author’s servant or mouthpiece, or a reproducer of meanings, becomes a recreator and a critic, choosing the texts that deserve to be translated, and successfully recreating them, according to Pound’s view of translation as creation and also as criticism. Furthermore, translation as criticism entails a critique of translation. As ­Haroldo is careful to point out, only those translations which can perform this radical reconfiguration of sound-meanings are creative, i.e., producers of relevant and new meanings, instead of mere repetitions. In this early essay, we also find the notion, which would be later developed, that there is no clear-cut frontier between the original and translation, creation and recreation. Later, he incorporated into this initial theorization the thinking of authors such as Walter Benjamin, Roman Jakobson, Paul Valéry, and Edgar Allan Poe. Haroldo had not read Benjamin when he wrote the essay, but found in “The Task of the Translator” the same basic principles as those of his own theory of translation. Benjamin affirms the priority of the form over the content: the hallmark of the bad translations is “the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content” (Benjamin 2000: 16). The translator must search for and reveal the “pure language”, hidden in the language of the original, a messianic concept related to the lost language of Babel. Having heralded this language, having been the angel that carries the message of the pure language, the translation becomes so rarefied that it cannot be, in turn, translated. In Haroldo’s reading of Benjamin, which he developed in various articles,2 the “pure language”, that which the true translator must rescue or reveal, may correspond to the Jakobsonian term “intracode”, the semiotic poetic substratum that runs through every language, the elusive poetic form that the translator must recognize and recreate. Indeed, for Haroldo de Campos, Benjamin developed a metaphysics of translation, while Jakobson developed its physics or pragmatics. But, for Haroldo, Benjamin remained tied to the classic dichotomy original/translation by postulating the impossibility of the translation of a translated text. Another author who, for Haroldo, represented a physics of writing – and, by extension, of translating, was Edgar Allen Poe. In his essay, “O Texto-Espelho (Poe, Engenheiro de Avessos)” [“The Mirror-Text (Poe, Engineer of Reversals)”] (Haroldo de Campos 1976: 23–41) he argues that Poe’s essay, “The Philosophy



The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos 261

of Composition”, in which Poe famously described how he wrote the poem “The Raven” backwards, so to speak, starting from the word-refrain “nevermore”, and explained that he solved the poem like a mathematical problem, with no recourse to intuition, undermines the usual Romantic perception of the poet as an enlightened being, possessed by inspiration or by the Muses, and whose work has very little to do with his intellect. Therefore, Haroldo’s image of Poe an engineer of reversals. Haroldo claims that poetry is the result of a dialectics between intelligence and sensibility, rigour and fantasy, intuiton and rationality. He then follows Jakobson’s analysis, in which the linguist makes clear the phonic figures, the fusion of sound and meaning, that iconize the movements of the poem, reveals Poe’s mastery in “writing in reverse”, and then goes on to analyze to what degree these effects are recreated in translations by Fernando Pessoa, Machado de Assis, Oscar Mendes and Milton Amado, and his own.

3.

Haroldo and Augusto as Concrete poets

Haroldo de Campos, along with his brother Augusto de Campos and ­ Decio ­Pignatari, emerged on the Brazilian literary scene in the early fifties, with the group Noigandres, gathered around the homonymic magazine, which later evolved into the group which formulated the precepts of Concrete Poetry. They were trying to set themselves apart from the Geração de 45, a literary trend which went against the former major Brazilian renovating movement, the 1922 Modernist Movement, and tried to reestablish classical and traditional poetic forms. The Brazilian Modernist Movement broke away from the Parnassian and academicist aesthetics of the 1920s, tardily introducing into Brazil elements of the European avant-gardes such as Futurism and Cubism and practiced a more experimental literature, which was more in tune with industrial civilization. It should be pointed out that the ever present tension between nationalism and internationalism was represented by two of the main figures of the movement, Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade, Oswald wishing to embrace foreign influences and mix them with the local culture, and Mario searching for a local form of Brazilian expression. As a reaction to Modernism, most of the Geração de 45 poets, among them Péricles Eugenio da Silva Ramos and Lêdo Ivo, rejected experimentalism and adopted a neoclassic poetics, reviving the ode and the sonnet. Concrete poetry resumed both the experimentalist spirit of the Modernist Movement and its connections with foreign artistic movements. But, unlike Brazilian Modernism, it was the first avant-garde international movement created from the direct and dominant participation of Brazilian poets. They put forward

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a poetic aesthetics which focused on the materiality of language, stripping it of its rhetorical apparatus and reducing it to its essence: its semantic and visual/ acoustic form. Concision, synthesis, objectivity and condensation were among its “mots d’ordre”. They drew many of its aesthetic guidelines from the other arts, attempting to form a bridge, or a translation, between avant-garde music and visual arts and literature. In music, their reference points were Webern, Boulez and Stockhausen; in the visual arts, Mondrian, Max Bill and Albers. The name they chose comes from the Concrete movement in painting and sculpture, and they had very strong affinities with Constructivism. Indeed, they tried to recover the advances made by the European avant-garde, such as aspects of Futurism and Dadaism at the beginning of the 20th century, which were buried by the two world wars, Differently to the European countries, shaken by the wars and busy with the task of rebuilding their societies, São Paulo was the ideal place for the emergence of an avant-garde. Brazil had only been a fringe participant in the conflicts, and the metropolis of São Paulo was the centre of the Brazilian industrial surge of the fifties. To be modern, to modernize, was the country’s agenda. The Concrete poets were very well placed to start their cultural renovation. On the other hand, their internationalist, cosmopolitan view of art and literature, and their emphasis on the aesthetic and structural aspect of the poem, met with great resistance from the dominant nationalistic and socialist realism trend in Brazilian culture – an opposition that would only increase in later decades, especially in respect to a critical school that stemmed from the Clima magazine, founded in the 1940s, which brought together critics like Antonio Candido and ­Lourival Gomes Machado. Candido, one of the major Brazilian critics and the most distinguished member of this school, began as a Sociology professor, like many of his generation, since in the 1940s and early 1950s the academic milieu in São Paulo was heavily influenced by French sociologists like Roger Bastide, who taught at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). The Clima critics were more interested in the national sphere and were concerned with developing an authentic Brazilian literature, as free as possible from foreign influences, but always haunted by the ghost of underdevelopment. Maybe for this reason they failed to pay much attention to translation, either between verbal languages, or between literature and other arts. This agenda contrasted sharply with that of the Noigandres poets. Also, while the Clima group remained more fixed to the local level, the concrete poets, especially Haroldo, developed contacts and friendships with international critics and writers such as Umberto Eco, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, Octavio Paz, Luciana Stegagno-Picchio, and Jacques Derrida. The Concrete poets were also important in the context of the literature of other Latin-American countries, which had been deeply influenced by French



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s­ urrealism, which the Concretes rejected. The avant-garde in Brazil, from the minimalism of Modernist Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954), who wrote his minute-poems using cinema montage techniques, and the concision of the “poetengineer” João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920–1999), chronologically a member of the Geração de 45, but with a bare, geometrical, visual poetry and a demystifying attitude towards the poem, viewed as a product, which was markedly Constructivist. For Haroldo de Campos, Cabral, “the mathematician engagé”, represents in Brazil the beginning of a construction or constructivist poetry, which is rationalistic and objective, as opposed to an expressionist poetry, subjective and irrational (Haroldo de Campos 1992: 80). Concrete Poetry thus emerged as a new international avant-garde poetry, and this internationalism was clear in the way the movement soon spread – exhibitions were organized in many countries: Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Japan, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, giving rise to debates and controversy (in Oxford, in 1965, a group of conservative students vandalized a Concrete exhibit) and influencing other international poetic trends. In Brazil, the first major exhibit of Concrete poems as such was held in São Paulo in December 1956. Translation, until the emergence of the Concrete poets, was seen in its traditional, classical way, as an ancillary, derivative operation, doomed to be inferior to the original. Translators, as a rule, had a more dilettante attitude and seldom theorized about their craft. Modernist poet Manuel Bandeira’s book of translated poems, for example, Poemas Traduzidos [Translated Poems] (1966), mixes translations of recognized poets such as Goethe, Hölderlin, Emily Dickinson, Paul Éluard and Ruben Darío with those of Latin American poets who were friends of his, even admitting his very limited knowledge of English, and saying that he followed his nose rather than any paideuma (From Itinerário da Pasárgada, quoted in Wanderley 1985: 11). Nevertheless, translations abounded during the forties, mainly of French Symbolist poets, such as Rimbaud and Verlaine, or of the English Romantics, such as Keats and Blake, always, as was to be expected from a group with Parnassian inclinations, using traditional verse forms and an inflated diction. Haroldo and Augusto de Campos and Decio Pignatari, all in their early twenties, were also very active translators, regularly publishing in the literary journals of the time, but focusing on Modernist poets writing in English. Haroldo de Campos, for instance, translated Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Sitwell. None of these translations, although they already revealed their talent as translators, showed a new approach. But, in the late forties and the early fifties, the brothers were already beginning to study and translate what would become their canon, or paideuma, and which was to gain canonical status in the Brazilian literary milieu.

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This list included authors such as Pound, Cummings, Joyce and Mallarmé, who were up until then virtually unknown in Brazil. The Concrete poets saw their work as a product of a critical “evolution of forms” (Augusto de Campos et al. 1987: 153). Instead of the traditional syntax, which was logical and discursive, they proposed an analogical, “ideogrammic” syntax, which allowed the direct juxtaposition of concepts. By introducing these authors, they ushered the Modernist tradition into Brazilian literature by making available a vast range of new poetic devices to Brazilian poets and translators and making possible a huge leap – much like the motto of President Juscelino Kubitschek, President of Brazil from 1956 to 1961, who wished to rapidly develop Brazil’s economy “fifty years in five”. In so doing, they eliminated the lag between the Brazilian literary movements and those from Europe. Such a programme allowed the Campos brothers to move freely and critically back and forth between geographical and temporal positions. Thus, even as they translated 20th century Modern or Modernist poets, the Campos brothers, in the anthology Traduzir e Trovar [Translate and Troubadour] (Haroldo de Campos 1968), began to reach back to 14th century Italy, to the dolce stil nuovo poets – Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizzelli, translated by Haroldo de ­Campos – and to 17th century England and the metaphysical poets – John ­Donne, Andrew Marvell and others, translated by Augusto de Campos, who also went back to Middle Age Provence to enrich the Brazilian collection of verse forms with translations of Arnaut Daniel, Guilhem de Peitieu, Marcabru, and Bertran de Born. Never had these authors – mostly from the Poundian paideuma – been presented in an avant-garde context in Brazil before as part of a productive present, and not of a respectable but remote past. Although Augusto de Campos has not developed a theoretical framework as consistent as his brother’s, his many books of translated poetry have in common the search for innovation, insightul essays and commentaries, and the control of rhythm and sound patterns. He chooses authors from different periods and movements, and here shows his critical skill. He writes in the introduction to Verso, Reverso, Controverso [Verse, Reverse, Controverse]: “Poetry is a family of castaways, floundering in time and space. Here I try to assemble some of its rare survivors, those that speak closest to me: those who fought under a radical flag and a radical motto — invention and rigour. The unstranslated and the untranslatable. Those that have broadened verse and made it controversial in order to reach its reverse” (Augusto de Campos 1978: 8). As a critic and scholar, along with Haroldo, he rediscovered the Brazilian Romantic poet Sousândrade and the Brazilian Symbolist Pedro Kilkerry. He is also well-known as an essayist and music critic, and has written extensively on Bossa Nova and Tropicalia.



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Augusto still sees himself as an avant-garde poet, unlike Haroldo, who thought that avant-gardes no longer belonged to a “post-utopian” world, a term that he forged as an alternative to “post-modern”, a world where only a critical and creative re-reading of the past has been possible. While in his translations he travels from Arnaut Daniel to Rimbaud, in his poems Augusto is still experimenting with the bare materiality of the word. Thus we can see one of the main elements of both Haroldo and Augusto de Campos as agents of translation is in the way they have introduced a large number of foreign authors to the Brazilian public. The authors they introduced had one point in common: they all innovated in formal terms. And here we can see one of the main points of the translation focus of the Campos brothers.

4.

Early translations and influences

Their first anthology was Cantares de Ezra Pound (1960), later expanded, with the participation of Decio Pignatari, José Lino Grünewald and Mario Faustino. This was followed by Panaroma do Finnegans Wake (1962), the transposition of eleven fragments, presented bilingually, accompanied by interpretive comments, and the anthology Mallarmé (1975), also with Décio Pignatari. Through translation, they made a survey of those international authors whose work would allow them to stake out the field of a new poetical language. Their trademark was the short poem, with a geometrical presentation, much wordplay and a minimum of syntactic elements, arranged by parataxis, which was a radicalization, and maybe the consequence, of the Modernist poetic language they introduced. A good example is Augusto’s translation of Cummings’ “A leaf falls”, which geometrically follows the original. l(a so le (l af f fa o ll l)l s) (ha one c l ai) iness itude 

(Augusto de Campos 1986: 32–33)

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Augusto de Campos translated and corresponded with Cummings, who is quoted in the manifesto for his word fragmentation and typographical arrangements. These innovative poetic devices went into the formulation of the Concrete aesthetics, which was outlined in their manifesto, “Plano Piloto para a Poesia Concreta”, [“Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry”] originally published in 1958 (Haroldo de Campos et al. 1987). According to this manifesto, from Pound, their greatest mentor, they assimilated the “ideogramic method”, that is, the attempt to reform Western poetics through the visual representations of the Chinese language, according to Fenollosa’s studies on the Chinese written character. The concrete poets, incidentally, kept up a lively correspondence with their controversial master, who supported their movement and praised their translation of his works. Another poet of the Modernist canon who stimulated their poetic experiments was James Joyce, particularly his “verbivocovisual” concept – the intermingling of the visual and acoustic aspects of the word – the neological practice of the ideogramic-word (portmanteau, or montage word) and the interpenetration of space and time. Indeed, the Joycean neologism has been one of the main features of their poetics. The Concrete poets were largely responsible for popularity of Finnegans Wake in Brazil. The Campos brothers were actually great-grandsons of an Irishman from Galway, who emigrated to Salvador, Bahia, and their translation of some of its fragments was, for a long time, the most comprehensive anthology of Joyce’s most challenging work in in Brazil. Here’s an example: “Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper! It’s well I know your sort of slop. Flap! Ireland sober is Ireland stiff. Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me! Your prayers. I sonht zo! Madammangut!” “Tira as teias dos teus olhos, mulher, e vê se enxovalhas certo. Ainda bem que eu conheço o teu jeito de exingar. Flap! Irlanda sóbria é Irlanda salobra. Lave Maria, cheia de graxa, o suor é conosco! Tuas lavainhas. Só eu sei! Madamadona!”  (Haroldo & Augusto de Campos 2001: 87)

Mallarmé is also a fundamental point of departure in the Plano Piloto and the Concrete paideuma. Along with Pound, he provides the most important influence on their work, because of his emphasis on the visual aspect of language, his exploration of typographic resources as substantive elements of composition, and especially because of his ground-breaking solution to the “crise de vers”: as lines are paratatically arranged on the blank space of the page, which is also used as an element of composition. Through Mallarmé, they tried to eliminate as much as possible the contradiction between the analytical-discursive nature of traditional syntax and the non-discursive nature of poetry, a contradiction which, according



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to them, caused what Mallarmé called the “poetry crisis” at the end of the nineteenth century. It should be noted that the Brazilian concrete poets rediscovered Mallarmé before the 1960s French Structuralists, like Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, for whose work Mallarmé was also a touchstone. Another Modernist translated by the Campos brothers in the fifties and sixties was the Russian poet Maiakovski, who interested them both for his formal invention and for his political activism, especially for his link between invention and activism. During the turbulent period of the Brazilian military dictatorship, when certain sectors of the left-wing intelligentsia expected poets to make their poetic creativity conform to a Jadnovistic-social-realist formula of “speaking the voice of the people”, the Campos brothers answered their accusers with a ­Maikovskian motto: “no revolutionary form, no revolutionary art”. Their enthusiasm for Russian literature led them, together with professor of Russian literature, Boris ­Schanaiderman, to expand their translation work into a lengthy anthology, published as Poesia Russa Moderna [Modern Russian Poetry], introducing into Brazil the work of ­Khliébnikov, Pasternak, Iessiênin, Maria Tsvietáieva, among many others. The quality of the translations impressed the great linguist Roman Jakobson.

5.

Haroldo’s later translations

Translation played a major role in Haroldo’s later work. In addition to his theoretical essays, several of which have already been mentioned, he introduced a number of important foreign authors to the Brazilian public. As a translator, Haroldo went beyond the Western modernist tradition and built a transtemporal, synchronic canon that encompasses Chinese and Japanese authors, both classic and contemporary, Biblical texts and Greek and Latin classics, supporting the Goethean concept of Weltliteratur. In every language he studied, he tackled both ancient and modern authors, moving from the present to the past and the other way around. From the sixties, he set himself apart from the work of the other Concrete poets, as well as from the Poundian paideuma, beginning with his interest in German avant-garde poetry. After his first trip to Europe, in 1959, Haroldo de Campos started publishing in newspapers translations of poets like Arno Holz, Christian Morgenstern, August Stramm, the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, Bertold Brecht’s poems, introducing the linguistic experimentation of these poets, as well as devices such as permutation, syntactic-semantic reduction, visual distribution, material research. Around this time, he also met Francis Ponge and translated his poem L’Araignée. In Arno Holz’s “Barocke Marine”, [“Marinha Barroca”], He and Augusto emulated the sound pattern of the original, creating neologisms, as they did with the

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fragments of Finnegans Wake, this time to reflect the German morphology in the Portuguese language: 

“Über die rollenden Wasser hin, lärmend, jauchzjohlen, wonnejubelnd, lustlachend, schwärmend...” “Sobre águas rolantes, eis bramantes, jubilogritantes, alacreberrantes, lubrigargalhantes...” (Haroldo de Campos 1997: 97)

Haroldo was also one of the first promoters of Japanese and Chinese culture in Brazil. He studied Japanese in the late fifties, and he started to translate the haikus of Buson and Bashō by establishing a link between them and the avant-garde poetry founded by Mallarmé. He was not the first to translate haikus in Brazil, but the first to treat it not as an exoticism, but as a poetic form available for the contemporary poet. For instance, in this haiku by Buson:

Canta o rouxinol

garganta miúda – sol lua – raiando (Haroldo de Campos 1977: 61)

Haroldo gave the translated text a Mallarmaic/Maiakoviskian layout, spacing the lines and juxtaposing them by parataxis. But he mainly attempted to reproduce the visuality of the ideogram. “Akeru”, which means “to dawn” or “to rise”, is composed of the nouns sun (sol) + moon (lua). The literal transposition of these elements recovers the visual etymology of the ideogram and performs the process of the rising sun. He also translated Hagoromo, the Noh play by Zeami. At a later date he translated Chinese poets such as Li Po and Wang Wei, in his anthology Escrito sobre Jade, [Writting on Jade] again emphasizing the visual aspect of the ideogram and rendering the pieces as part of modern poetic language. Haroldo de Campos also translated many Spanish-speaking authors, especially Octavio Paz. Haroldo and Paz held similar views about poetry and criticism, which prompted Haroldo to translate the long poem Blanco. The result was Transblanco, a book containing the translation and the correspondence between the two poets. But Haroldo was particularly interested in the Latin American Baroque, or Neobaroque, which led him to promote and often translate pieces by Julio Cortázar, Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy (all of whom were his personal friends), Lezama Lima, as well as authors from the historical Baroque, such as Góngora, Quevedo, Sor Juana de la Cruz. Indeed, the importance of the Baroque in ­Haroldo’s work and translation theory is the subject of Section 7. He fostered



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the view that literatures of Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America had in the Baroque a common poetic background, and strove to shorten the distance between them. He also encouraged and assisted the translation of key Brazilian works into Spanish, English and other languages. Umberto Eco noted that, in his translation of Dante’s Paradise, Haroldo managed to overcome the main difficulties for Dante’s translators, which is whether to reproduce archaic terms or point towards modernity, also overcoming the challenge of the difficulties of Dante’s hendecasyllables and his terzina. Eco argues that Haroldo has surpassed all these limits, sounding medieval and modern at the same time, and considers him the greatest modern translator of Dante” (Eco 2005: 269). Reading the Commedia as a “vast metaphor”, Haroldo sees in the metaphysical saga of Lucifer the drama of the translator. Lucifer desired to steal the Creator’s light, and is punished for trespassing on this divine prohibition. Translating this metaphysics into semiological terms, Haroldo argues that Lucifer’s sin was to transpose the signic limits (il trapassar del segno), in his wish to transform himself into the final interpretant of the Supreme Sign. Surpassing the “semiological guilt” present in the theological scope of the Commedia, Dante’s translator, in his transcreation (or translumination, as he calls this specific translation) must strive to recreate, as far as possible, the semiotic form of the text, exceeding the limits of his own language, until he achieves the semiological transgression which is to transform the original into the translation of its translation, “even if it is only for a brief moment” (Haroldo de Campos 1989: 80–83). After translating the avant-guarde German poets, Haroldo de Campos transcreated the Romantics Goethe and Hölderlin. In the case of Goethe, like that of Dante, he intertwines literary analysis, criticism, translation theory and practice in his book Deus e o Diabo no Fausto do Goethe [God and the Devil in Goethe’s Faust] (Haroldo de Campos 1981), in which he translates fragments of the Second Faust. In “Transluciferação Mefisto-faústico”, he went beyond the Benjaminian displacement of the hierarchy between translation and original, denying its angelical role of heralding the “pure language”. For Haroldo translation becomes “a satanic enterprise, inherently transgressive”, when the translator takes over the original’s authorship, thereby revealing his hubris as a semiotic sin, transgressing the dichotomy between form and content, original and translation. This is what he calls a “Luciferian translation”, for Lucifer, the fallen angel who coveted the Creator’s flame, is the symbol of the radical translator: “...creative translation, possessed by demonism, is neither pious nor memorial: it aims (...) at the original’s erasure: its obliteration” (Haroldo de Campos 1981: 209). In his translation of the Second Faust, he exemplifies his theory, which itself was born out of his practice, developing a translation strategy that invents new

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solutions by expanding the Portuguese language and, at the same time, keeping close to the original. He first proceeds to a “micrologic” reading of the original, treating it like a musical score – not only metre and end rhymes, but also internal rhymes, alliterations, the phono-syntatic structure as a whole. Then he invents a scheme that is analogous to that of the original, recreating its complexity, making up for the losses of effects in Portuguese which were not possible in German. Here’s the translation of the final lines, which evoke the “Eternal Feminine” (Haroldo de Campos 1981: 209):

Alles Vergängliche O perecível Ist nur ein Gleichnis; É apenas símile. Das Unzulängliche, O imperfectível Hier wird’s Ereignis; Perfaz-se enfim. Das Unbeschreibliche, O não-dizível Hier ist’s getan; Culmina aqui Das Ewig-Weibliche O Eterno-Feminino Zieht uns hinan. Acena, céu-acima.

In his translation, Haroldo preserved the rhyme scheme – though not always regular rhymes, introducing “diversity in unity” – and the metrical cadences of the original. He replaces the sound effects by others in Portuguese, causing, for example, the word “perecível” to appear in anagram in the following lines. And, in order to maintain the metrical pattern and avoid clichés, he forms new compound words, like “não-dizível” and “céu-acima”. One might even say that, in attempting to recreate every aspect of the original, he ends up by creating a new text that stands on his own as a literary creation. In the 1990s, he started learning Hebrew in order to launch into another poetic adventure: the translation of Biblical texts, not as doctrinal or sacred writings, but as poetry. He was the first modern Brazilian translator to take up this approach (José Eloi Ottoni translated the Book of Job in the 19th century), and one of the few in the world to do so, besides French translators Henri Meschonnic and André Chouraqui. Haroldo translated the Qohélet (Eclesiastes), fragments of the Bere’shith (Genesis, including the Tower of Babel episode), parts of the Book of Job and the Song of Songs (Haroldo de Campos 1990). In Qohélet, in particular, Haroldo transforms the sceptical Biblical sage, “he who knows that he doesn’t know”, into a post-modern, Nietzschean character whose nihilism and doubt speak very closely to the modern-day reader. In the refrain, the text’s leitmotiv, havel havalim/hakkol hável, was translated as névoa de nadas/tudo névoa-nada, thereby maintaining the alliterative play of the original and the materiality of the noun hével (vapour) and evoking, both on the semantic and phonic levels, the famous word “nonada”, which opens Guimarães Rosas’ Grande Sertão: Veredas, one



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of the great Brazilian Modernist classics. Such intertextual use of the rhetorical repertoire of Brazilian literature is a common procedure in Haroldo’s translations, and besides Rosa, in the translation of Qohélet also he explores the phonic, lexical and morphosyntatic effects drawn from the popular speech by poets João Cabral, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and later by folk musicians. Haroldo also returned to one of the sources of Western literature when he translated the Iliad, imprinting the sound patterns of Homeric Greek onto Portuguese. For example in line 363 of Canto 2, for “hós frétre frétrephin arégue, fíla dè fýlois”

Haroldo recreates the Hebrew repetition in Portuguese: (...) “Que a tribo à tribo ajude, como a família à família”.

And in line 23 of Canto 69: “heúdeis, autár emeîo lelasménos épleu, Akhilleû”.

the dipthong eu is replicated: “Embeveceu-te o sono, ó Aquileu que esqueceu-me!”  (Haroldo de Campos 1990: 34–35)

In the domain of the classics, he also transcreated the Greek poets Sappho, Alceu, Alcman, and Parmenides, and the Latin poets Ovid, Catullus, Persius, and Horace (Haroldo de Campos 1998a: 167–213). He also translated the 20th century Greek poet Kavafis. In this translation, he found inspiration not only in Pound but also in Odorico Mendes, the 19th century Brazilian translator of Homer and Virgil, whom he rediscovered and made his precursor, recreating the phonic form of the original (paraphonia). Take, for instance, these fragments of the Metamorphosis (lines 415–419): 

Se inclina, vai beber, mas outra sede o toma: Enquanto bebe o embebe a forma do que vê. Ama a sombra sem corpo, a imagem, quase-corpo. Se embevece de si, e no êxtase pasmo, é um signo marmóreo, uma estátua de Paros (Haroldo de Campos 2001–2003: 26)

Here, the paronomastic enchainment of B (enquanto BeBe o emBeBe) seems to mirror the incorporation by Narcissus of his own image reflected in the water. Also in “se enBvece de si”, we have the reflection of Se in Si and again the phoneme

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B in the middle. This solipsistic introjection is also phonically performed in the paranomasia “No mirar-se, admira o que nele admiram” (line 424) and “súplice e suplicado, ateia o fogo e arde” (line 426).

6.

Anthropophagy and cannibalism

Concrete poetry, the first Brazilian poetic movement which was not an importation from Europe, which has had a considerable and long-lasting impact on the Brazilian literary scene, was also the first poetic movement to be consciously born out of translation. Translation, in this sense, combined the concept of Anthropophagy, coined by Brazilian Modernist Oswald de Andrade, the assimilation of the European literary legacy, devouring just what is vital and nourishing and discarding that which is not (like a cannibal Indian would with captured European colonists), and the Poundian idea of “Make it new”, reading and translating the authors of the past, remote or not, modernizing them in such a way that they live and breathe again in a new cultural context. Both Anthropophagy and “Make it new” take on a synchronic, critical view of the literary tradition, superimposed on the traditional, linear, diachronic tradition.

7.

Haroldo and the importance of the Baroque

Haroldo de Campos’ translation theory and literary theory are inseparable. For him, both translation and translation criticism aimed at forming a new canon and a new historiography, rescuing authors that were left in the margins of the traditional historiography as they had not conformed to dominant aesthetic and ideological values, like the Romantic, Sousândrade; the Symbolist, Kilkerry; the Modernist, Oswald de Andrade; and the Baroque poet, Gregório de Matos. And it is here that we find the third main area in which Haroldo acts as an agent of translation: in introducing into Brazil a theory and approach to literature in which translation played a central role and which was very different to the dominant trend in the 1960s, which was centered around the sociological criticism of ­Antonio Candido, which was entrenched at Universidade de São Paulo. ­Candido has a diachronic, linear vision of Brazilian literature, which, for him, began only in the 18th century, when Romanticism broke free from European influences and affirmed a national identity. Candido excluded the Baroque from his historiography, considering that during this period the Brazilian “literary system” was not mature or independent enough from its European sources. Indeed, this school stresses the dependent and subordinate relation of Brazilian literature to



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the ­European ­literatures, much as a translation is dependent on and subordinate to the original. Probably because of his strong nationalistic concerns, Candido, as well as his followers, has excluded not only the Baroque, but also translation, from his theoretical framework (see Haroldo de Campos 1989). In O Sequestro do Barroco na Formação da Literatura Brasileira [The Kidnapping of the Baroque in the Formation of Brazilian Literature] (Haroldo de Campos 1989), a deconstructivist reading of Candido’s major historiographic work, Haroldo shows, using Jakobson’s language functions, that Candido excludes the Baroque from his historiography not merely on historical or factual grounds, but does so using a semiological model. Because he favours the referential and emotional functions of language, which are congenial to a critic who tries to link the sociological with the literary, Candido excludes poetical and metalinguistic functions. Therefore the Baroque, with its linguistic exuberance and self-referentiality, will not fit into his model, while the more referential and expressionist Romanticism becomes its major paradigm. For Haroldo, on the other hand, the concept of Baroque, and of the Baroque as translation, is crucial. He believes the Baroque is paradigmatic of our origin as absence of origin: “Since the early colonial times, our literature has been marked by hybridism, where foreign elements have blended with native ones”. It is no wonder that, for Haroldo, translation and the Baroque operate at the same level: “Baroque, in Brazilian literature as well as in several Latin-American literatures, simultaneously means hybridism and creative translation. Translation as transgressive appropriation and hybridism (or cross-breeding) as the dialogical practice of expressing the other and expressing oneself through the other, under the sign of difference” (Haroldo de Campos 1998a: 210). This is the meaning of Anthropophagy for Haroldo, or what he termed “Razão Antropofágica” in a wellknown essay (Haroldo de Campos 1981a) – through translation as a device of critical appropriation, of interplay between the national and the international, of the insertion of difference in the universal, he sought to create an alternative, decentered view of literature, without the nostalgic search for an origin. Parody and carnavalization play a critical role in this new model, exemplified by the Baroque poet Gregório de Matos, and this model trades the problem of origin, which has always haunted Brazilian historiography, for a de-centered, dynamic and transnational view of the origins of Brazilian literature. Thus, the Baroque, for Haroldo, is a strategy that enables him to displace the dichotomies according to which Brazilian and other Latin-American literatures, like translation in relation to the original, are necessarily secondary and inferior in relation to the European sources. With this double inversion of hierarchies, he attempts to bring these marginal categories to the centre.

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8.

Haroldo as teacher and publisher

As an editor of a prestigious publishing house, Perspectiva, Haroldo also played an important part introducing modern trends in Brazil, publishing structuralist/post-structuralist authors such as Jakobson, Barthes, Todorov, Derrida and many others. And as Professor of the Catholic University of São Paulo, in the Department of Communication and Semiotics, of which he was one of the founders, from the early seventies he and Décio Pignatari taught many postgraduate courses on literature, emphasizing translation theory and practice, introducing Peirce’s theory of signs, Russian semiotics and structuralist authors into Brazil. The theories were tested in “translation laboratories”, in which translations were compared and developed. Such laboratories were in line with his view that translation is a theoretical praxis and that literature is essentially transnational, and can only be studied from a comparative perspective: By experiments like this, we are convinced of the impossibility of teaching literature, especially poetry (and that prose which is found to be comparable as a result of formal study ), without introducing exemplification and criticism through translation. Given that literary patrimony is universal, one cannot consider an impervious teaching of literature. No theoretical work on the problems of poetry, no aesthetic of poetry will be valid as an active pedagogy if it does not engage directly with the materials to which it refers, the creative patterns (texts) under study. If translation is a privileged form of critical reading, it will be through translation that other poets, lovers of poetry and students of literature will be led to penetrate the heart of the artistic text, its mechanisms and most intimate cogs.  (Haroldo de Campos forthcoming)

9.

Conclusion

Although Haroldo and Augusto as poet-translators had not left behind the Modernist canon they started from, they moved a long way from the restricted programme and list of authors of their Concrete Poetry days. As a result of their translation project and varied activity not only as translators, but also as commentators, critics and promoters of translation, the Campos brothers helped to give great recognition to this field in Brazil. While there has always been a lot of controversy surrounding their work as poets and critics, they are almost unanimously acclaimed as being among the best (if not the best) Brazilian translators. Their names appear on the cover of their books of translated



The role of Haroldo and Augusto de Campos 275

poetry, which indicates their claims and rights to authorship. Accompanied by long scholarly analysis of the poet in question, the history of his work’s reception and elaborate notes on the translation, these books combine translation theory, literary theory and criticism. Haroldo and Augusto have also acted as agents of translation in the sense that they often appeared in the media, publishing in the main literary newspapers and journals, frequently at the center of heated debates. To a certain extent, they became celebrities and influenced various aspects of Brazilian culture – literature, music, art, etc. They acted as mentors of the Tropicalist avant-guarde, collaborating with the movement and encouraging musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil to blend Brazilian musical tradition with international rhythms, like rock ‘n’ roll, at a time when even the electric guitar was rejected due to its “imperialistic” associations. As translators, they made translation a respectable and desirable field to work in and inspired others to become artist-translators like themselves. In fact, since the 1950s and 1960s, there has been a boom of poetic translations in Brazil, many of them following the paradigm established by the Campos brothers. The sophisticated and innovative graphic design of the covers of their works have also stood out among the more traditional and drab covers, introducing the concept of an interaction or unity between the interior and the exterior of a book of poetry. In Brazil, literary translation is inextricably tied to the names of Haroldo de Campos and Augusto de Campos, who have deeply changed the translation status in the country, stimulating the work of other translators and bringing translation to the forefront of literary studies.

Note 1. Though there are an increasing number of scholars working on Haroldo’s work. We can mention the work of Odile Cisneros from the University of Alberta (Bessa & Cisneros 2007) and Inês Oseki-Dupré at the Université de Provence (Oseki-Dépré 2003; Oseki-Dépré 2005).

References Bandeira, Manuel. 1966. Poemas Traduzidos. Rio de Janeiro: Edições de Ouro. Benjamin, Walter. 2000. “The Task of the Translator”, tr. Harry Zohn. In The Translation Studies Reader, Lawrence Venuti (ed.), 15–25. London: Routledge. Bessa, Antônio Sérgio and Cisneros, Odile. 2007. Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Campos, Augusto de. 1978. Verso, Reverso, Controverso. São Paulo: Perspectiva.

276 Thelma Médici Nóbrega and John Milton

Campos, Augusto de. 1986. E. E. Cummings 40 POEM(A)S. São Paulo: Brasilense. Campos, Augusto, Campos, Haroldo and Pignatari, Décio. 1975. Teoria da Poesia Concreta: textos críticos e manifestos 1950–1960 (2nd ed.). São Paulo: Duas Cidades. 1st ed. 1965. São Paulo: Invenção; 3rd ed. 1987. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Campos, Haroldo. 1968. Traduzir e Trovar. São Paulo: Papyrus. Campos, Haroldo. 1969. “Píndaro, hoje”. In A Arte no Horizonte do Provável e outros Ensaios, 109–119. São Paulo: Perspectiva. 2nd ed. 1972; 3rd ed. 1975; 4th ed. 1977. Campos, Haroldo. 1976. “Poe, engenheiro de avessos”. In A Operação do Texto, 23–41. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. 1977. “Haicai: homenagem à síntese”. In A Arte no Horizonte do Provável e outros Ensaios, 55–62 (4th ed.). São Paulo: Perspectiva. 1st ed. 1969; 2nd ed. 1972; 3rd ed. 1975. Campos, Haroldo. 1981. Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. 1981a. “Da razão antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração”. In Revista Colóquio/Letras. Ensaio, n.º 62, 10–25, July 1981. Campos, Haroldo. 1989. O Seqüestro do Barroco na Formação da Literatura Brasileira: o Caso Gregório de Matos. Salvador: Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado. Campos, Haroldo. 1990. Qohélet – O-Que-Sabe (Eclesiastes). Introductory essay: “Qohélet, OQue-Sabe: Poema Sapiencial”, 17–41. São Paulo: Perspectiva. 2nd ed. 1991. Campos, Haroldo. 1992. “Da Tradução como Criação e como Crítica”. In Metalinguagem e Outras Metas, 31–48. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. Forthcoming. “Translation as Creation and Critique”, tr. by John Milton of “Da Tradução como Criação e como Crítica”. In Critical Concepts in Translation, Mona Baker (ed.). London: Routledge Campos, Haroldo. 1992a. “O Geômetra Engajado”. In Metalingugem e Outras Metas, 77–88. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. 1997. “Arno Holz: da revolução da lírica à elefantíase do projeto”. In O ArcoÍris Branco: Ensaios de Literatura e Cultura, 75–95. Rio de Janeiro: Imago. Campos, Haroldo. 1997a. “Tradition, translation, transculturation: The ex-centric’s viewpoint”. Tradterm 4 (2): 11–18. Campos, Haroldo. 1998. Dante: Seis Cantos do Paraíso. Rio de Janeiro: Fontana/Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1978. Later published in Pedra e Luz na Poesia de Dante. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1998. Campos, Haroldo. 1998a. “A Morte de Narciso”. In Crisantempo: no espaço curvo nasce um, 210–213. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. 1998b. “Greguerias & Latinórios”. In Crisantempo: no espaço curvo nasce um, 169–213. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Campos, Haroldo. 2001–2003. Ilíada de Homero, vol. 1. 2001. São Paulo: Mandarim. 2nd ed. 2002. São Paulo: Arx; 3rd ed. 2002; 4th ed. 2003. Campos, Haroldo and Campos, Augusto. 2001. Panaroma do Finnegans Wake (4th rev. ed.). São Paulo: Perspectiva. 1st ed. 1962. São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura. Campos, Haroldo, Campos, Augusto and Pignatari, Décio. 1975. Mallarmé. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Eco, Umberto. 2005. “La scomparsa di un poeta”. In L’Educazione dei Cinque Sensi, Haroldo Campos (ed.), Daniela Ferioli (trans.), 267–269. Pesaro: Metauro.



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Oseki-Dépré, Inês. 2003. “Retraduire La Bible: Le Qohélet”. In Cadernos de Tradução: Tradução, retradução e adaptação, no. 11 – 2003/1. Pós-Graduação em Estudos de Tradução – PGET, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Oseki-Dépré, Inês (ed. & trans.). 2005. Haroldo de Campos: une Antologie, 95–125. Paris: Al Dante. Wanderley, Jorge. 1985. “A tradução do poema entre poetas do modernismo: Manuel Bandeira, Guilherme de Almeida, Abgar Renault”. Dissertação de mestrado. Rio de Janeiro: PUC.

The theatre translator as a cultural agent A case study Christine Zurbach

Universidade de Évora, Portugal

This case study describes the activities between 1975 and the end of the 1980s by a group of theatre translators associated with the cultural project of a collective agent, the Centro Cultural de Évora (CCE), a professional theatre group, set up in 1975 by the Ministry of Culture. Established in the interior of Portugal, in Évora, the CCE aimed at making theatre at both a regional and national level more dynamic. The company used a repertoire of plays most of which were by classic and contemporary foreign authors. The list of authors shows us that a large number of them are French, demonstrating the traditional presence of French culture in Portugal. Other authors are German, revealing the influence of the theatre of Brecht after 1974 in Portugal. Certain authors, both contemporary and older authors, were translated into Portuguese for the first time. Others, generally classics like Molière and Shakespeare, are retranslated in contemporary versions. The intervention of the CCE corresponds to what EvenZohar calls cultural planning as the aesthetic choices of the programmes of this company correspond to the importation of the theatrical and cultural model which had already been experienced in France from 1950 to 1970, that of the decentralization of the theatre, where the reading of the classics and the promotion of certain contemporary authors are vital. Translation played a central role in the choices of this cultural agent, showing the dramatic and artistic choices in the theatrical innovation following the 25 April 1974 revolution, after the end of censorship, when Portugal was open again to other languages and ideas. The translations have generally been linked to a type of theatre which had considerable influence during the period of the development of new projects after 1975, especially with young or new companies performing the same translated texts and which has benefited from the support of the CCE, which founded this decentralization movement. Key words: theatre translation; Portuguese theatre; socio-cultural project; ­innovation

280 Christine Zurbach

1.

Introduction

The understanding of the role of translation and translators in societies and cultures has been the main aim of Translation Studies (Pym 2000; Even-Zohar 1997), which, confronted by the complexity of the phenomenon, continually reformulates its methodological and theoretical approaches (Delabastita 2003). Nevertheless, the area of theatre translation has remained a poor cousin, despite the important studies on consecrated authors like Shakespeare (Delabastita & D’hulst 1993), particular cases such as that of theatre in Québec (Brisset 1990), or relations between text and mise en scène (Bassnett & Lefevere 1998). More studies are needed in this area, especially on the position of the translator as participant in the artistic practice of the theatre and as theatrical specialist. Though Translation Studies has emphasized “the importance of placing the translator at the centre of thinking about translation” (Delisle 1998: 1) or the historical role of translators (Baker 1998: XIV) and contemporary training of translators (Gile 2005), the role of the theatre translator has remained little known or even invisible (Venuti 1995) despite the fact that the translator often plays a central role in the formation of company repertoires, not only as a translator but also as a cultural agent, as we shall see in this case study. The study has been inspired by the approach developed by Anthony Pym, who has considered the role of the translator from the point of view of the concept of frontier, linked to those of negotiation and interculturality (2000). Pym, by considering in his first works (1998) the translators as agents who work in the space of the relations between languages and cultures, places his proposal in the area of those studies which are concerned with the cultural aspect of translations. In this way, translators will be a kind of intermediaries between cultures as their practice is that of mediation in the same way as are members of other professions. He here joins Even-Zohar, who insists on the specificity of their role in the importation and transfer of cultural repertoires: “(…) we should give much more attention to the translators, not only to their products, recognizing they may often produce much more than texts” (1998: 367). Aware of the complexity of the phenomenon, our point of departure will be that of the researcher, who, wondering about the place of translation in (and through) the process of theatrical communication, does not merely examine the translated texts, but also examines the typology and limits of the tasks of the translators, the actions to which the translated texts are linked, and the institutional relations of the production and use of theatrical repertoires for cultural goals. Our empirical observation of the practice of theatre translation does in fact show us that it can contribute to the constitution or the transformation of what Even-Zohar calls the “cultural repertoire” (1997) of the target culture. Thus in the



The theatre translator as a cultural agent 281

totality of the mode of production of the special repertoire which is the corpus to be studied, from its selection to its reception, it is possible to observe how, in a given socio-historical context, translation may correspond to an importation of institutionalized cultural practices, in the sense that Even-Zohar speaks of transfer (1997), thanks to a form of intervention which will engage the translator in various moments and levels of the process. In this case study, we will see how a concept of “public service theatre”, as was experienced in France from the 1950s, was explicitly made to function, and how this project depended on a particular dramatic corpus that was translated and imported.

2.

A case study: An institutional and cultural project

Our case study will examine the professional production of plays by a cultural agent, the company of the Évora Cultural Centre (CCE) in Portugal, from 1975 to 1988. The CCE, working in provincial Portugal, directed their work to a local and regional public in order to give them access to cultural goods they had not previously had access to, especially theatre. The particular sources which have been used in this study should be mentioned. The theatre historian will not be surprised to learn that, in this case, as in all theatre research, the indispensable archives for all research based on an empirical knowledge of the object in question are non-existent as such. Nevertheless, elements of the history of the institution can be found in the centre of documentation and the department in charge of organizing the diffusion of the repertoire to a specific public: young professional, amateur, university, trade union and professional association theatre groups. Thus, the work carried out by the group between 1975 and 1988, that of reproducing and making known the texts as part of a systematic task of teaching and supporting theatrical work carried out by other agents, is preserved in a large number of documents of an artistic and literary nature, especially translations. On the other hand, thanks to the continuing institutional relationship of those responsible for the company with their political interlocutors, the official administrative documents have also been preserved and may be consulted. In addition, on the twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of the company (1995 and 2000), they were partially reproduced and made public in issue nº 15/16 of the Adágio (1995) revue, published by the Centre in order to describe and clarify its role during this period. In fact, the care given to the preservation of the documentary memory of the work undertaken may be considered a reflection of the cultural value which it has been given. This case seems important as it provides a particular set of circumstances where the theatre translator performs his or her function as a contracted ­member

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of an institution which is carrying out a development strategy directed at a defined target public and whose innovatory work is formulated with the help of texts which make up a theatrical repertoire. Here, translation is a decisive element in the strategy of the importation of a foreign theatrical model. It is decisive in the choice of texts but also in terms of the dramatic and aesthetic treatment which orients communication with the target audience: as it was dominated to a great extent by the Brechtian model of critical thought on reality, it was linked to the rewriting of texts, supported by interpretative choices in translation, but also by aesthetic and pragmatic orientations which influenced production (cf. 4 below). Actually, the final aim was a play based on a translated text, and it was distributed and publicized as an artistic object. In order to better understand the issue of such an institutional relationship, which closely links translation and theatrical practice to cultural aims, we can initially detail the organization and the aesthetic and theatrical choices of the institution to which the translator we describe here is attached, and which make clear his or her role as an agent of translation, then the way the translation is connected to the socio-historical context in which their collective and individual action takes place. We shall finish by making an analysis of the type of values / norms / “performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations” (Toury 1995: 55) which characterize the translations themselves in terms of their reception. Initially we shall make a brief study of the corpus of the plays performed between 1975 and 1988, which are seen in Table 1 below. This shows a high number of plays translated by the CCE, both in quantitative terms, when one compares the number of Portuguese authors to those of non-Portuguese origin, who were imported and translated, and in qualitative terms, when one situates the translated works within a dramatic and discursive profile of the group, that of a universal theatrical heritage whose survival is ensured by systematic retranslation and contemporary productions.

Table 1.  Chronology of the CCE Repertory between 1975 and 1988 Season Origin

Author

Portuguese title

1975 1975 1975 1975 1975 1976

Richard Demarcy LuisValdez Luis Valdez Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht Marivaux

A Noite do 28 de Setembro O Soldado raso As duas Caras do Patrão Luz nas Trevas O Senhor Puntila e o seu Criado Matti O Preconceito vencido

France US. US. Germany Germany France



The theatre translator as a cultural agent 283

Table 1 (continued) Season Origin

Author

Portuguese title

1976 1977

Italy A.Beolco Histórias de Ruzante Portugal Almeida Garrett O Conde de Novion

1977 1977 1978 1978 1978 1979 1979 1980 1980 1981 1981 1981 1981 1982 1982 1982 1982 1983 1983 1983 1984 1984 1984 1985 1985 1985 1985 1985 1986 1986 1987 1987 1987 1987 1988 1988

Britain Portugal Germany Germany Portugal Germany France Germany Portugal Greece Russia Portugal Italy Germany Germany Germany Portugal Portugal France France France Portugal Russia Britain Portugal France Portugal Portugal Spain France France Portugal Portugal Norway Portugal France

Shakespeare José Régio Peter Weiss Bertolt Brecht Gil Vicente Weisenborn Molière Kleist Camões Aristophanes Gogol Almeida Garrett Goldoni Tankred Dorst Karl Valentin O. Horvath Gil Vicente Sá de Miranda Prosper Mérimée Michel Vinaver Anonymous Passos/Barradas Tchekhov Ben Jonson Raul Brandão Corneille Gil Vicente F.J. Viegas Lope de Rueda Molière Marivaux A. Prestes Ernesto Leal Henrik Ibsen Gil Vicente Arthur Adamov

Medida por Medida Mário ou eu próprio - o Outro A Noite dos Visitantes O que diz sim / O que diz não O Velho da Horta Quinze Rolos de Moedas de Prata Jorge Dandin A Bilha quebrada Auto de El-Rei Seleuco A Paz O Inspector Falar a verdade a mentir O Amante militar A grande Imprecação Como é que ele se chama? A Fé, a Esperança e a Caridade Auto da Índia Os Estrangeiros O Céu e o Inferno Dissidente, só Amorosos Sem Alterações - As Alterações de Évora de 1637 O Canto do Cisne / Os Malefícios do tabaco O Alquimista O Doido e a Morte Horácio Farsa de Inês Pereira O segundo Marinheiro Cinco “Pasos” de Lope de Rueda A Escola das Mulheres O Legado Auto da Ciosa Afonso III Solness o Construtor O Juíz da Beira M. o Moderado

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The reasons for such a repertoire by those responsible for the artistic side of the CCE is justified by the specific need to support the cultural and political policy of the CCE, both in terms of “a strategy aiming at the development of the Portuguese theatre, the surpassing of endemic backwardness, and the gestation of consummated facts which introduce the notion of public service(…)” (“Repertórios” 1995: 6), this last expression clearly pointing to a demand of the theatrical agents from the political system of the period. Greatest importance is given to a theatre of the text if one can judge by the statement according to which “the quality of the verb is the strongest instrument which this art has at its disposal” (“Repertórios” 1995: 6). It is not surprising then that the heritage of the “classics”, associated with the literary canon, has a very important place. It is represented by famous authors like Shakespeare and Molière, through whom directors elaborate a discourse founded on their historical value, criticizing the essentialist and universalistic discourses which accompany them through a critical perception of their meaning for a contemporary usage. The choice of Portuguese authors shows the same dramatic coherence and privileges certain authors. Gil Vicente, from the beginning of the 16th century, is the most important point of reference in Portuguese drama, and his reception undergoes revision. Until 1974 his work had been ideologically manipulated by the Salazar regime. The work of Almeida Garrett represents romantic irony and the will to reform society. The discourse of contemporary texts also reflects a critical vision of history and of society that the production, inspired by Brecht’s work, develops. These aesthetic choices affect the translation norms of the group (cf. 4 below). In Portugal in 1975, both as a company and a cultural agent, CCE was a new model whose creation was favoured by the novelty of the context of its creation. It was actually the only artistic project formally set up by a decree of the Secretary of State of Social Communication, to which it reported to and sent its accounts. It was basically made up of some 15 members, actors and directors, technicians and administrative workers. This structure, subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and organized according to the norms of a company or a professional organization, was directed by an artistic director, in this case a theatre director, who had both the functions of administrative and financial manager. However, the artistic director played a decisive role in the organization of the company, and the importance given to the choice of the repertoire determined the members of the team and the distribution of the tasks according to the specificity of requirements. In actual terms, the orientation of the project was that of supporting a policy of choosing a repertoire designed to promote the universal theatrical heritage and the “appropriation of a memory which is historical and which belongs to us” (“Repertórios” 1995: 6). In particular, the repertoire of the “classics”, from Portugal or other cultural and linguistic traditions, presupposes the existence of a skilled artistic team which is aesthetically



The theatre translator as a cultural agent 285

c­ oherent, and which implies a multiplicity of agents, of whom a number, especially directors and actors, are also translators, as we shall see. The project, established in the capital of a province in the centre-south of Portugal, is closely linked to the political transformations which came about as a result of the Revolution of the Carnations, which, in April 1974, put an end to the authoritarian regime which had been inherited from the Salazar period. An exhaustive study of the circumstances in which the work of translation took place, and, as a result, those of the links between the cultural-translation agent with history and the collectivity cannot be detailed here, but it is certain that an analysis limited to a corpus of texts, which ignores the historical origins of the institution that is responsible for their production and the relationships with the site of reception, will be incomplete. These political transformations brought about important structural modifications, such as the abolition of censorship, which had great repercussions in literary and theatrical life, especially in the relationships between the literary and the artistic on one hand, and power on the other. The identification of these interferences in the theatrical field will allow us to account for the fabric of the conditions of production of the repertoire, whether they are political, institutional, economic, cultural or social, as they played a role in literary and artistic communication in this period. In terms of a systemic relationship, the artistic work of this company which was subsidized by the State is that of a situation of economic and political dependence, which is not without its own consequences for its independence. The norms adopted for its translations are, in this initial period, marked by an opening emphasizing innovation and favour foreign influences and therefore the importation of texts and their translations, but they also show very precise ideological choices. Actually, the general effort to change cultural direction after 25 April 1974, supported by the new powers, and the abolition of political censorship, thereby allowing free access to new languages, are decisive for the orientations which were adopted in the choice of authors and texts which were introduced into the repertoire and their artistic treatment (see Section 4 below). It is in these circumstances that the company is seen as a cultural agent as it was responsible for a decentralized theatrical project, and, benefiting from institutional support, had the task of developing an innovative cultural policy, which consisted of pursuing the artistic production and diffusion, outside Lisbon and the cultural centre of Portugal, of plays which are addressed to a new public in the periphery. Finally, we should mention that the project includes a programme of theatrical and cultural training in the drama school which was attached to the company from its establishment in 1975. This theatrical training unit was in charge of the preparation of future decentralized projects of the same type, which repeated the aesthetic choices of the CCE, especially the textual corpus used in the courses

286 Christine Zurbach

and interpretation exercises which included numerous translations, chosen to correspond to the educational and cultural vision which valued the literary and theatrical heritage.

3.

A cultural agent of the theatre and a translator

According to the categories proposed by Toury (1995), it is initially at the level of preliminary norms, the choice of texts, the translation policy of what was to be translated from the universal theatrical heritage, that the CCE translator made an intervention. We shall see that in the majority of cases this function was mixed with that of the artistic director who was responsible for the programme for each season as it had been established by the directors of the CCE. Thus the translator played a central role in the composition of the repertoire for each season and influenced the importation of texts coming from foreign literatures, this being the result of his or her accumulation of functions within the project itself. The texts to Table 2.  Translators of the CCE repertoire Author

Text (Source / Target)

Translator

Function in the play

Demarcy

La Nuit du 28 septembre (A Noite do 28 de Setembro) Acto (O Soldado raso) Acto (As duas Caras do Patrão) Lux in Tenebris (Luz nas trevas)

Teresa Mota / CCE collective M.Barradas L.Varela M.Barradas

Actors

Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (O Senhor Puntila e o seu Criado Matti) Le Préjugé vaincu (O Preconceito vencido) Due dialoghi di Ruzante in lingua rustica, sententiosi, arguti e rediculosissimi; Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnú de campo; Bilora (Histórias de Ruzzante) La Poudre d’Intelligence (O Pó da Inteligência) Measure for Measure (Medida por Medida) Nacht mit Gasten (A Noite dos Visitantes) Measure for Measure (Medida por Medida)

M.Barradas (1)

Director Director --------------------------------Director

M.Barradas / actors J.Peixoto

Director / Actors Director

L.Varela (1)

Director

M.Barradas

Director

M.Barradas M.Barradas

Director Director

L.Valdez L.Valdez B.Brecht B.Brecht Marivaux A.Beolco

K.Yacine Shakespeare Peter Weiss Shakespeare



The theatre translator as a cultural agent 287

Table 2 (continued) Author

Text (Source / Target)

Peter Weiss B.Brecht

Nacht mit Gasten (A Noite dos Visitantes) Der Jasager / der Neinsager) O que diz sim / O que diz não G.Weisenborn Fünfzehn Schnüre Geld (Quinze Rolos de Moedas de prata) Molière George Dandin ou le mari confondu (Jorge Dandin) Kleist Der zerbrochene Krug (A Bilha quebrada) Aristophanes French transl. La Paix (A Paz) Gogol Goldoni T.Dorst

Port. transl. (O Inspector) L’Amante militar (O Amante militar)

Translator

Function in the play

M.Barradas L.Varela (1)

Director Director

Clara Joana

Actor

F.Mora Ramos

Director

L.Varela (1) M.Barradas / L. Varela L.Varela (1) J.Silva Melo (2)

Director Directors Director --------------------------------Director

Grosse Schmahrede an der Stadtmauer M.Barradas (A grande Imprecação) K.Valentin Lachkabinett (Como é que ele se chama?) “Cornucópia” (2) Theatre Company of Lisbon Horvath Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung L.Varela (1) Director (A Fé, a Esperança e a Caridade) Mérimée Le Ciel et l’Enfer (O Céu e o Inferno) F.Mora Ramos Director Vinaver Dissident, il va sans dire (Dissidente, só) L.Varela (1) Director V.Lemos (2) Director Anonymous Le Badin qui se loue. Un amoureux. Le Cuvier. (Amorosos) (invited) Tchekhov Port. Transl. (O Canto do Cisne (3) ----------------Os Malefícios do Tabaco) ----------------Ben Jonson The Alchemist (O Alquimista) L.Varela (1) Director Corneille Horace (Horácio) M.Barradas Director Lope de Rueda Pasos (Cinco “Pasos”) Gil Nave / Director / A.Passos Actor Molière L’École des Femmes L.Varela (1) Director (A Escola das Mulheres) Marivaux Le Legs (O Legado) L.Varela (1) Director Ibsen Bygmester Solness L.Varela Director (Solness o Constructor) Adamov M. le Modéré (M. o Moderado) A.Maia Lobo (2) --------------------------------(1) (2) (3)

Translation accompanied by the dramatic work of the author of this study, which implies the confrontation between the original of the translated text and an intermediary text. Does not belong to the CCE. Translation previously published by a commercial publishing company.

288 Christine Zurbach

be translated, which were part of the artistic choices of the CCE programme, resulted in the selection, production and diffusion of the plays to be presented to the public, and all these tasks were coordinated and guided by the artistic direction team, which was made up by the director and his or her close collaborators, who were also the directors and authors of plays and who carried out the preliminary translation work, as we shall now see. Among the tasks which support the work of artistic production and diffusion of the theatrical repertoire, the basis of the annual programme, the most decisive action in terms of the work of reproduction was that of the programming, the choice of works for the repertoire to be presented to the public. In addition to a number of original texts in Portuguese, the large number of translations reflected one of the essential characteristics of this procedure. Founded on a foreign model of theatre policy, which had been elaborated in France in the post-war period and which aimed at the promotion of decentralization of the theatre, established by political power as a programmed and structured strategy, this orientation was based on a repertoire of “popular” theatre, thus called as it is directed to large numbers of people and no longer to an elite, and should be addressed to a public whose loyalty should be guaranteed by various forms of organization of their relationship to the institution. In addition, these text choices are associated with a reception aesthetics which was based on various procedures inspired by Brecht, in particular a reading of the theatrical fable according to a work of critical distancing based on the relationship between the actor and the mise en scène. This theatre policy, which was especially developed by the TNP of Jean Vilar in the 1960s, was familiar in Portugal in the professional theatrical milieu, which looked for ways of renewing theatrical practice. But it was only with the CCE that it became a cultural practice which was suitable for the Portuguese context, and its establishment coincided with a period of political and historical changes. The translation of the repertoire was thus carried out by the directors and actors as a coherent step in the development of the aesthetic and ideological orientation: that of the task of a dynamic cultural project developed by this group of professional actors, working with experimental theatre at a local level, part of a decentralization of the theatre. Let us finally say that, in the case of translation as it is practiced in the CCE, the terminology turned out to be unsuitable, as when we speak of translators as agents who are exercising the profession of translator in the ordinary sense of the term, this term hardly corresponds to the socio-professional reality which the term here refers to. This form of translation is an action which is carried out by those who produce it as a function of an artistic programme. It is also transversally a part of the sequence of the actions which are necessary for the theatrical



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practice of the company. In reality, this position, which is relatively uncommon, shows the researcher how unstable the term translation may be and relativizes its use in function of the variety of observable practices. It should also be added that the target text, before being rehearsed and performed, is presented to those involved in the play, who are also able to contribute to the final version and introduce modifications. These usually come about as a result of the criteria of the acceptability of the text, its “theatricality” or speakability, and these alterations may also be made during rehearsals. This will have an effect on the text of arrival, now submitted to a norm which privileges usage and the speaking of the text on the stage.

4.

The translated texts and the choice of the translators

In this section, we shall examine the choice of the translators in the process of the production of the texts which were used, whether in the case of the directors or the actors. The following table shows a series of characteristics which are important for this study, attempting to combine elements of a linguistic and generic nature with the programmatic elements which have just been described here so we can see the extent of the importance of socio-cultural norms on the choice of works to be translated. Table 3.  Translations performed by CCE between 1975 and 1988 Author

Translated title

R. Demarcy La Nuit du 28 septembre (A Noite do 28 de Setembro) Luiz Valdez Acto (O Soldado raso)

Luiz Valdez Acto (As duas Caras do Patrão) B. Brecht Lux in Tenebris (Luz nas Trevas) B. Brecht Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (O Senhor Puntila e o seu criado Matti)

Source text(s) French original written for the inauguration of CCE, published in 1976 French tr. in Travail Théâtral, VIII, 1972: “Simple soldat”; no translator’s name; original “Actos by Luiz Valdez y el Teatro Campesino”, Cucaracha Press, 1971, Fresno, California French tr. ibid.: “Les deux visages du patron” French tr. in Théâtre complet, XI, L’Arche, 1968: “Lux in Tenebris”; tr. Gilbert Badia French tr. in Théâtre complet, IV, L’Arche, 1972: “Maitre Puntila et son valet Matti”; tr. Michel Cadot. German original: “Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti”, in Stücke, IX, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1965

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Table 3 (continued) Author Marivaux

Translated title

Le Préjugé vaincu (O Preconceito vencido) A. Beolco Due dialoghi di Ruzante in lingua rustica, sententiosi, arguti e rediculosissimi; Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnú de campo; Bilora (Histórias de Ruzzante) K. Yacine La Poudre d’Intelligence (O Pó da Inteligência) Shakespeare Measure for Measure (Medida por Medida) Peter Weiss Nacht mit Gasten (A Noite dos Visitantes)

Source text(s) French original: “Le Préjugé vaincu”, in Théâtre complet, II, éd. F.Deloffre, Garnier, 1968 French tr.; éd. L’Arche

French original: “La Poudre d’Intelligence”, in Le Cercle des Représailles, Seuil, 1959 French tr.:”Mesure pour Mesure” by François Victor Hugo, Garnier, 1964 French tr. Armand Jacob: “La Nuit des Visiteurs”, éd. Seuil German original: “Nacht mit Gasten”, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963 B. Brecht Der Jasager / der Neinsager German original: “Der Jasager/der Neinsa(O que diz sim / O que diz não) ger”, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972 Weisenborn Fünfzehn Schnüre Geld French tr.: “Quinze Rouleaux d’argent”, stage (Quinze Rolos de Moedas de version by G.Jung, based on a French text by prata) P.Grappin, Théâtre Populaire Romand, coll. Répertoire, nº15, 1969 Molière George Dandin ou le mari French original: “George Dandin ou le mari confondu (Jorge Dandin ou o confondu”, in Oeuvres complètes, III, Garniermarido enganado) Flammarion, 1965 Kleist Der zerbrochene Krug French/ German bilingual edition; “La Cru(A Bilha quebrada) che cassée /Der zerbrochene Krug”, Aubier, 1961, and Portuguese tr.: “A Bilha quebrada”, unpublished by B.Silva for the Experimental Theatre Company of Porto, 1957 Aristophanes French tr. La Paix (A Paz) French tr.: “La Paix”, by Marc-Jean Alfonsi, in Théâtre complet, I, Garnier-Flammarion, 1966 Gogol Port. Tr. (O Inspector) Portuguese tr.: “O Inspector Geral”, by ­Orlando Neves, Livr.Civiliz., 1968. Italian tr.: “L’Ispettore”, by Renato Vecchione, Einaudi, 1978 Goldoni L’Amante militar (O Amante Italian original, revised translation of Jorge militar) Silva Melo (unpublished) German original: “Grosse Schmahrede an der T. Dorst Grosse Schmahrede an Stadtmauer”; der Stadtmauer (A grande Portuguese tr. by M.Barradas, published in ­Imprecação diante das ­Muralhas da Cidade) Teatro em Movimento, nº5, nov/dez.1973



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Table 3 (continued) Author

Translated title

K. Valentin

Lachkabinett (Como é que ele se chama?) Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung (A Fé, a Esperança e a Caridade)

Source text(s)

German original; translations by Teatro da Cornucópia Horvath French tr. by Renée Saurel: “La Foi, l’Espérance et la Charité”, Gallimard, 1967 German original, final version and variations: “Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung”, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980 Mérimée Le Ciel et l’Enfer French original: “Le Ciel et l’Enfer”, in Théâtre (O Céu e o Inferno) de Clara Gazul, Garnier-Flammarion, 1968 Vinaver Dissident, il va sans dire French original: “Dissident, il va sans dire”, in (Dissidente, só) Théâtre de chambre, L ’Arche, 1978 Le badin qui se loue. Un amou- French original: “Le Badin qui se loue”; French “Un Amoureux”; “Le Cuvier”, in La Farce ­anonymous reux. Le Cuvier (Amorosos) en France de 1450 à 1550, texts collected by A.Tissier, CDU-Sedes, 1976 Tchekhov O Canto do Cisne Portuguese tr.: “6 Peças em un acto”, PortuOs Malefícios do tabaco guese version, Porto, Minotauro, 1965 Ben Jonson The Alchemist (O Alquimista) French tr.: “L’Alchimiste”, adapt. by Marcel Moussy, in L’Arche, 1957; Spanish tr.: “El Alquimista”, by Marcelo ­Cohen, Bosch, 1983. English original.: “The Alchemist”, in Three Comedies, Penguin Books, 1983 Corneille Horace (Horácio) French original: “Horace”, in Théâtre complet I, éd. Georges Couton, Garnier Frères, 1971 L. de Rueda Pasos (Cinco “Pasos” de Lope Spanish original de Rueda) Molière L’École des Femmes French original: “L’École des Femmes”, in (A Escola das Mulheres) Oeuvres complètes II, Garnier-Flammarion, 1965 Portuguese tr.: “Escola de Mulheres”, by M.Valentina Trigo de Sousa, Europa-América, 1974 Marivaux Le Legs (O Legado) French original: “Le Legs”, in Théâtre complet II, éd. F.Deloffre, Garnier, 1968 Ibsen Bygmester Solness French tr.: “Solness le Constructeur”, version (Solness o Construtor) by Gilbert Sigaux, Gallimard, coll. théâtre du monde entier, 1973 Adamov M. le Modéré (M. o Moderado) French original: “M. le Modéré”, in Théâtre IV, Gallimard, 1968

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The first apparent characteristic, which can easily be checked by references to the source text, is that the dominant language is French, whether it is the case of French authors or of French translations of authors from other countries. This linguistic presence of the French language has a close link to the intercultural space (Pym 1998) in which these directors/ translators have been educated, and which is conducive to the circulation of ideas, between two or more languages, cultures and theatrical traditions. This is the reason for the predominance of translations from French. As most of the translators had a university level education (especially in Law, Language and Literature, History, and Philosophy), French was for them a means of direct contact with ideas coming from abroad. This is partially explained by the fact that French was an obligatory second language in Portuguese schools, but also due to the dominant position of French culture in the intellectual and artistic world of this generation, which was in opposition to the Portuguese regime in the pre-1974 period. In two cases, these directors/ translators obtained a scholarship in theatre studies at the L’École Supérieure du Théâtre National in Strasbourg in the 1970s. These courses and residence in France enabled them to consolidate the necessary skills needed to import the theatre model of the “public service theatre”, which has already been discussed, and to establish a collection of works made up of the French editions of plays, which could be used for the CCE programme (here the role of L’Arche publishing house is central). This collection, centred around the plays and the authors of the universal drama canon, is a coherent selection, which regroups original texts in French or foreign authors in French translations or often in adaptations, and which were used as intermediary texts. We can mention the case of the reception, through their French translations, of Brecht’s plays, originally written in German, or the main European authors of modernity, such as Chekhov, Ibsen and Strindberg, whose languages were not known to the Portuguese translators. Table 4.  Generic denomination and Translation Genre (Source-texts)

Genre (Target-text)

La Nuit du 28 septembre – fable théâtrale sur la révolution portugaise Simple Soldat – acto ou mito Lux in Tenebris – Einakter / pièce en un acte Herr Puntila [...] – Volksstück (B.B. 27.08.1940) ou pièce populaire; title original du manuscrit de Wuolijoki: A Finnish Bacchus, suivie d’ une version en “Salonkomodie” de “Die Sagemehlprinzessin”, sur le modèle du conte de fée d’Andersen Le Préjugé vaincu -comédie en un acte et en prose

Fábula teatral Acto Not specified peça popular

Comédia



The theatre translator as a cultural agent 293

Table 4 (continued) Genre (Source-texts)

Genre (Target-text)

Due dialoghi di Ruzante in lingua rustica, sententiosi, arguti e rediculosissimi; Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnú de campo; Bilora – dialoghi

“Histórias do Ruzante”: “Falatório do Ruzante de volta da guerra”; “Ruzante, o Bilora”; “Oração de boas vindas do Ruzante ao Cardeal Cornaro” La Poudre de l’Intelligence – farce Farsa Measure for Measure – a play called Measure for Measure, Not specified; mentioned in dark comedy the program as: “uma comédia, uma tragédia, uma “moralidade”?” Nacht mit Gasten – eine Moritat / une complainte Peça popular Der Jasager und der Neinsager- Schulopern Peça didáctica Fünfzehn Schnüre Geld / Quinze rouleaux d’argent – adapta- Not specified tion d’un opera chinois en 8 tableaux, “un drame qui est aussi une comédie” George Dandin – comédie-ballet Not specified Der zerbrochene Krug La Cruche cassée – comédie en treize Comédia scènes La Paix- comédie antique Comédia Le Révizor – trad. Arthur Adamov: comédie en cinq actes As in the Portuguese former translation by Orlando Neves: comédia em 5 actos; sátira L’Amante militar – commedia; comédie Comédia Die grosse Schmahrede “imprecação” as genre (in the title) Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung / La Foi, l’Espérance et la Charité – Ein kleiner Totentanz / Petite danse de mort en cinq tableaux Le Ciel et l’Enfer – comedia du “siècle d’or”, comédie, saynète Dissident [...] – pièce en 12 morceaux farces (françaises du Moyen-âge) Pièces en un acte de Tchekhov

Pequena dança de Morte em cinco quadros Comédia Peça em doze fragmentos Amorosos, farsas medievais Serão Tchekhov – teatro de câmara The Alchemist / L’Alchimiste – comédie en cinq actes et en vers Comédia Horace – tragédie en cinq actes et en vers Tragédia Cinco “Pasos” de Lope de Rueda – paso Pasos L’École des Femmes – comédie en cinq actes et en vers Comédia Le Legs – comédie en un acte et en prose Comédia Solness – trad. de Gilbert Sigaux, o.c.: pièce en trois actes peça em três actos M. le Modéré – clownerie Palhaçada

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This table enables us to see a further dominant characteristic of this repertoire in terms of the question of genres and translation, that of the role of comedy and the comic theatre and its variants. This genre shows the critical aspect of the theatrical art and was central to the work of the CCE, together with the dramaturgy of the epic Brechtian theatre, which has transformed theatrical practice both at the level of textual and dramatic production and at the socio-political level on which cultural projects from the 1980s onwards have been based. But what are the choices of the directors and translations in terms of translational norms? As these texts are not directed towards publication, they are defined from the beginning by a conception of the dramatic text which depends less on their literary value than on their “theatrical potential” (Pavis, in Angenot 1989: 97). This initial choice implies a particular and specific conception of translation, which depends on intermediary texts in French, for reasons we have already shown. In addition, the documents which have been preserved clearly show, through the large number of variants of annotated manuscripts on the texts which were distributed in the rehearsals and introduced during the production of a play, the priority which was given to a textual version which was a result of the rehearsals of the texts. The modifications privilege the initial norm of acceptability (Toury 1995) of the translations, valuing the stage action in detriment of the verbal and literary dimension of the texts. Lexical and syntactic elements were introduced that were determined by interferences of the socio-historical context, which are always translated into contemporary Portuguese. Actually, the operational norms in the CCE translations show us that, even in a strategy based on repertory theatre, thus of texts, the theatre translator is engaged to an even greater extent in an artistic, cultural and political rather than a literary project. According to this description, the translations, their dramaturgy, interpretation, production, and the metatexts which accompany them form a whole whose coherence comes from the translation and which confirms the systematic orientation of the adopted norms towards the adaptation of the texts for the supporting structured project aimed at theatrical innovation. Differently to the theatre they had inherited, the translators produced new translations of Molière and Shakespeare, classics such as Aristophanes, canonized authors such as Ibsen and Strindberg, and translated unpublished plays such as those of Brecht and other German authors who broke with naturalism. It is clear that the texts represent a new poetics or dramaturgy, for which it was necessary to rely on the French model, not only because of its prestige, but also because of the similarity with the post-1945 situation in France. Translating is an essentially pragmatic action, which seems to exclude all theoretical speculation if one judges it by the small number of commentaries on the translations in programmes which accompany the plays. More utilitarian than literary, it shows the main competence of these translators, that



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of their skill to produce texts which can fulfill theatrical goals, both in cultural and political terms. Their work is thus an example of the intersemiotic coherence which takes into consideration the theatrical issues behind their choices. In this imported cultural model that represents innovation and change, there is an attempt to replace tradition by means of questioning a certain elitist theatre of the past and also a concept of theatrical translation. These translations are less close to the conception of translation which has been called adequate than to processes of adaptation which are connected to the circumstances of production and the diffusion of texts through performed plays and a project, which is part of a period of the transformation of the Portuguese theatre, which, from 1975, was influenced by such projects coming from young companies in provincial capitals, who used and performed the same texts translated by the CCE to develop their repertoire and reflect on changing theatrical processes. The final characteristic to be described is the fact that these translated texts are associated with a new production aesthetics, and it is this theatrical and textual model that is the object of transfer (see above), and this is particularly visible in the revision of the reception of the so-called “classic” authors. In this repertoire, the presentation of classic works, whether of foreign or Portuguese dramatists, contains a new “reading”, which comes about in the procedures of rewriting and manipulation (Lefevere 1992) of the text as an innovatory hermeneutic paradigm. This was the case of Molière, Marivaux and Shakespeare, and German dramatists such as Kleist and Büchner, but this procedure can be equally applied to the productions of Portuguese authors such as Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda and Almeida Garrett, who received a dramatic treatment which stressed the historical and ideological aspect of their plays and was very different to their previous sacralization, with its definite “patriotic” connotations.

5.

Coherence of the programme and of the intervention

Thus, the translation is no longer limited to textual or linguistic elements but is rather a model of rewriting bringing about a new stage poetics, which is materialized in the reception model of older texts. When translating the literary complexity of these texts, with their linguistic, textual and cultural specificity, the translators follow certain theatrical norms. In this case, these norms privilege political engagement and intervention that will act on the target public in terms of transformation. In order to better understand these concerns, we can refer to the well-known position of Even-Zohar, who, following Eichenbaum, conceives of literature as a set of systemic activities, where we must not forget the historical context of

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the production of the translations. In our case, the translations we are examining can be seen in a similar way to original plays as part of a highly politicized period of change and rupture with the past and in an emerging theatrical discourse, which is very close to what is called a theatre of intervention. In addition, as has already been seen, though a French influence is maintained, this influence now introduces a new language to both the stage and to artistic practices, and also to the theatrical space theatre and the civic element of the theatre. Helped by an integrated or systemic approach of the translators and the contextual elements of their work, it is easy to detach and succinctly describe that which may help interpret the links between the translator, his or her work, and the wider context of the production and its reception, in other words, with the historical and cultural aspects of its practice. In actual terms, the composition of the corpus of the repertoire presented to the public in this period shows the stability of the hierarchy of the intersystemic relations between Portugal and France, which still seemed to be dominated by the cultural prestige and superiority which have been traditionally attributed to French literature as a source literature (Casanova 1999). This fact can be seen, as we have shown, by the recourse to a large number of French works, though through the procedure of an indirect translation, using the concepts we have already described. In this case study of the CCE, we can see translation as a linguistic practice and a rewriting, according to the terminology of André Lefevere (1992), which no longer has an apparent, or at least, an explicit, literary character. It is used for an action in society, at both regional and national levels, through diffusion in the theatre. In this form of communication, and in this particular case, the choice of the repertoire and the construction of the final theatrical object, translated, interpreted and put on stage, are focused on performance. Theatre translation is a complex textual and cultural practice, marked by an oscillation between two major types of functions: that of the stage and that of reading (page / stage). But the analysis of the practice of theatrical companies shows that priority is given to the essentially theatrical function of texts for the stage and performance, made up of verbal and non-verbal elements. In the case of the CCE, priority was not given to reproducing the published texts but rather to theatrical performance. For the researcher the consequences of this secondary position of the text as a literary object are somewhat negative: the documentation is unsatisfactory, and the play texts and the translations, paratextual elements, statistics, etc., are disorganized or difficult to use, as, not having been published, they are badly preserved and are found in the form of successive versions of the same text, which has been corrected and modified during the course of rehearsals. However, this fact confirms the theatrical and non-literary vocation of the texts, which, as they are printed for immediate use for rehearsals, and are out of date when they are reused by other



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agents. A large amount of information is omitted: clear references to the fact that they are translations, such as the name of the translator, and the fact that the translation has been made by the directors, are rarely included despite the importance of this fact for the totality of the process. It is thus necessary to examine the list of credits published in the programmes and distributed to the audience before the performances. These translations are simple photocopies, showing the lack of importance given to this document and written texts in general, which are important only for the work of the actors and rehearsals. Nevertheless, apparently contradicting this lack of interest in the written text as cultural heritage, it is in the complementary texts that we find confirmation of this aspect of the act of translation as cultural and political intervention. From the beginning of its activities until the end of the 1980s, the CCE published a particular type of publication directed to other users. This was a further selection of plays, privileging shorter texts or those which are more accessible in technical or artistic terms. These texts are addressed to a specific target audience, theatre companies, usually directed by young people, which would potentially continue the theatrical strategy followed by CCE. Actors trained by the CCE theatre school or by members of the company who set up their own groups and adopted the existing model spread from the North to the South of Portugal (Faro, Leiria, Portalegre, Braga, Viana do Castelo…). This process, which is based on the partial repetition of the CCE repertoire or certain of its characteristics, demonstrated the acceptance of this theatrical and cultural strategy, and it was also used by cultural agents attached to amateur theatre groups, who were looking for a new or unpublished repertoire and were sensitive to the prestige of CCE from whom they received support at different levels. The CCE texts also entered the national Portuguese circuit, thanks to their distribution by the network of amateur groups and their use by FAOJ, an official organ which promotes youth leisure activities and which replaced a similar structure from the previous regime.

6.

Final considerations

The methodological choice adopted here, concentrating on the cultural role played by the translation as it was carried out by particular translators, has led us to look for certain answers to the questions which have been raised by such a vision of translation which is beyond the classical approach, based on text comparison. Actually, as we have attempted to show, the answers which have an explicative value and clarify possible factors of casuality, are situated outside the texts themselves and are linked to the circumstances of production and the reception of the translated work. Our case study has attempted to understand the

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t­ ranslation in ­function of the intended aims, the target audience and the circumstances of the work of the translator in terms of a collection of translated texts, which constitute a form of communication in a particular socio-political context aiming at an intervention in the social structure. It has attempted to account for a mode of reworking the literary text in society, in certain historical and political circumstances, and the importance of the role given to the translators, who are the cultural agents responsible for the production of texts but who are also responsible for the implantation of a conception of a living theatre, which EvenZohar describes in the following way: “(…) I suggest that we integrate into the concept of “goods” (and “products”) also the images projected into society by the people engaged in the making of repertoire, who are in the particular case of transfer agents of transfer. The labor of these agents may introduce into the network of cultural dispositions certain inclinations towards repertoires engaged by them. In other words, the new repertoire is not restricted in such cases to the items imported as goods – or not necessarily to them alone – but what plays a role in the culture is the persons, the agents themselves who are engaged in the business” (1997: 361). To conclude, we can mention the fact that, during the 1980s, the founding director of the CCE played an important role at the Ministry of Culture in preparing a new legislation for theatre on a national level, which was inspired by other countries in Europe and would help to overcome the cultural backwardness of Portugal. Though this last action was not followed up, this would justify the use here of the concept of intercultural site, where contact between languages and cultures takes place through translation(s). This will help us to account for the characteristics of the cultural meaning of the project of the CCE as a concrete open space where this contact has been experienced. 

Translated from the French by John Milton

References Baker, Mona. 1998. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan & André Lefevere. 1998. Constructing Cultures. Essays on Literary Translation. Clevedon et al.: Multilingual Matters Brisset, Annie. 1990. Sociocritique de la traduction. Théâtre et altérité au Québec (1968–1988). Québec: Les Éditions du Préambule. Casanova, Pascale. 1999. La République mondiale des Lettres. Paris: Seuil. Delabastita, Dirk. 2003. “Translation studies for the 21st century: Trends and perspective”. Génesis 3: 7–23. Delabastita, Dirk, and Lieven D’hulst. 1993. European Shakespeares. Translating Shakespeare in the Romantic Age. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.



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Delisle, Jean. 1998. Portraits de traducteurs. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Delisle, Jean et Judith Woodsworth (dir). 1995. Les Traducteurs dans l’histoire. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1997. “The making of culture repertoire and the role of transfer”. Target, 9 (2): 355–363. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1998. “Some replies to Lambert and Pym”. Target 10 (2): 363–369. Gile, Daniel. 2005. La traduction. La comprendre, l’apprendre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lefevere, André.1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York: Routledge. Pavis, Patrice. 1989. “Études théâtrales”. In Angenot, Marc (dir.). Théorie littéraire, problèmes et perspectives, 95–107. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Pym, Anthony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St Jerome. Pym, Anthony. 2000. Negociating the Frontier. Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History. Manchester: St Jerome. Mário Barradas (coord.). 1995. “Reportórios”. In Adágio, nº15/16, 6–15. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies – And Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge. Zurbach, Christine. 2002. Tradução e Prática do Teatro em Portugal de 1975 a 1988. Lisboa: Edições Colibri.

Embassy networks Translating post-war Bosnian poetry into English Francis R.Jones

Newcastle University

This article is based on a web survey of on-line and print translations into English of poetry by writers from Bosnia since the 1992–1995 war. Combining insights from Actor Network Theory, Activity Theory and Goffman’s Social Game Theory, it examines the relationships between human and textual agents in the production of poetry translations. It maps these relationships onto agents’ geographic ‘positionality’. Among the findings are: (1) Poetry translation is produced by networks of agents working across a ‘distributed’ space. This implies that it is simplistic to conceptualise literary translation in terms of one agent’s loyalty to one cultural space. (2) Translators often carry less power in a production network than an anthology/journal editor or a living source poet. (3) Networks involving players from source-language regions working in a target-language country are particularly effective in publication terms. Key words: Bosnian poetry; translation in Bosnia; Actor Network Theory; Activity Theory; Social Game Theory

1.

Introduction

This article looks at agencies of poetry translation in the ex-Yugoslav cultural space (see Figure 1). It analyses how poetry by writers from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia for short) has been translated into English since the 1992–1995 war. It focuses not on textuality and theme, but on who interacts where with whom in order to bring translated poetry to readers. Poetry counts in this cultural space. Folk lyrics and epics collected by Vuk Karadžić in the 19th century laid a basis for the Serbian variety of its main language, which I call Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (or BCS for short).1 And his

302 Francis R. Jones

Figure 1.  The Yugoslav successor states in 1996 (sketch map)

namesake Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Serb rebels in the Bosnian war and now under indictment for genocide, prides himself as a poet. Many readers of this article can still picture the latter Karadžić, for the Bosnian conflict was played out in front of the world’s media, with news services running daily reports from a Sarajevo under siege from his rebels. For many intellectuals outside the former Yugoslavia, this international attention also led to an engagement with Bosnian culture. This engagement was informed largely by opposition to the ethno-nationalist aims and brutal methods of the Bosnian Serb (and Bosnian Croat) rebels, and by support for an “anti-nationalist” ethic of intercommunal tolerance (Jones and Arsenijević 2005). As BCS has few non-native readers, translation into globalized languages such as English helped enable this engagement. Since the December 1995 peace treaty, international concern with Bosnia has waned. But though conditions have improved enormously, Bosnia is still a fragile state. Surviving tensions between its three main ethno-religious groups (Bosniak/ Muslim, Croat/Catholic and Serb/Orthodox), legitimated by partition into two largely ethnically-defined ‘entities’ (Figure 1), still present challenges to building a



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viable polity based on civil-society values. Plus high unemployment and the fact that many former refugees still live in diaspora deprive the country of a sound economic base. Post-war Bosnia, therefore, is no less deserving of international attention and engagement, for which translation can act as a crucial conduit. And as poetry, particularly in the ex-Yugoslav space, is highly valued and often given the status of representing a country’s wider literary culture, examining poetry translation production can act as a litmus strip for examining how post-war Bosnia is internationalized via translation. For reasons such as these, this article surveys the post-war translation of Bosnian poetry into English. Its central assumption is that translations are instigated and produced not by a lone translator, but by a network of ‘agents’. These may be texts or people: a canonical source text, a translator, target-draft-readers and a publisher, for example (Buzelin 2004: 739). Two sets of questions are focused on. One concerns ‘agency’, i.e. who/what acts on whom/what, and how: – Who or what are the main agents involved in producing published English translations of work by Bosnian poets? – How do the agents interact? Another concerns ‘positionality’, i.e. where agents’ allegiance lies (Toury 1980, in Tymoczko 2003: 184): – What is each agent’s region of origin, and where are they acting? Answers to these questions are important to chroniclers of post-Yugoslav culture. But for translation scholars, a final question remains: – How far are this study’s findings specific to Bosnian-English translation, and how far might they apply to poetry translation between other non-globalized and globalized languages?

2.

Agency, embassy networks, cultures

2.1 Agency in translation Traditional models of literary translation typically focus on just one aspect of translation production: on how the agency of the source text is mediated by that of the translator in order to form a third agent, the target text (Buzelin 2004: 737– 738). Since the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies during the early 1990s, though the translator and his or her text-transformation work have remained central to models of translation production, they have been analysed in their macro-social

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context – that is, according to the profiles and motivations of the groups represented and affected by translation (see e.g. Gentzler’s 2002 overview). This has in turn allowed a wider range of agents to be included in models of translation production. Thus Tymoczko points out that seeing the translator as a text-interpreter in a cultural framework enables one to view translation as cross-cultural teamwork, rather than restricting oneself to the notion of translator as lone artisan (2003: 196–199). And some recent scholars have mentioned the role of other actors and processes in translation production: Venuti, for example, discusses the macro-social causes and effects of publishers’ preferences concerning what translated works they are willing to commission or publish (1995: 19, 1998: 48).

2.2 Embassy networks Until very recently, however, research into translation agency has been hampered by the lack of a theoretical model linking the agency of individuals with their macro-social context. This missing link, I argue, can be provided by combining three models of social interaction: Actor-Network, Activity and Social Game Theory. Actor Network Theory models how a project is produced by different ‘actors’ linked by a ‘network’ of contacts (Latour 1987; Ryder 2003, 2005; applied to translation production by Buzelin 2004: 737–740; Buzelin 2005b: 197; cf. Abdallah 2005). These networks can be mapped graphically. Among Actor Network Theory’s principles are: – Actors may be people (e.g. source poet, translator, editor, publisher). They may also be artefacts, which explains how a source text by a dead poet, say, may act as a powerful agent in its own right. – Networks develop as existing actors ‘recruit’ new actors into the network, by introducing people or producing artefacts. The more powerful actors are those who recruit more actors.2 – Production is a process of negotiation, tension and/or “complicity” (Buzelin 2004: 738) between actors, each with their own inputs and opinions. In Actor Network Theory, a project’s goals are negotiated within the network (Buzelin 2005b: 197). But not all goals are locally negotiated: a sense of common purpose, for example, may be what causes a network to form. A framework which allows for more complex hierarchies of goal behaviour is Activity Theory (Axel 1997; Engeström and Miettinen 1999). This distinguishes between:



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– the ‘object’3 of the overall ‘activity’ (e.g. for a work of Bosnian poetry to be published in English); – the underlying ‘motive’ for the ‘activity’ (e.g. to support Bosnian culture); – the ‘goals’ of the ‘actions’ that make up the ‘activity’ (e.g. to produce a target manuscript); – the ‘operations’ that enable the ‘actions’ (e.g. translating, consulting draft readers). Actor Network and Activity Theory powerfully model the particular and microsocial: how individuals interact to set and achieve goals. They lack, however, clear links with the general and macro-social: what typical patterns interactions might fall into, and how the interpersonal network might relate to the wider community or society. This is a strength of Goffman’s Social Game Theory, which sees social action as made up of different prototypical ‘games’, each played by different ‘parties’ of ‘players’ performing various prototypical roles, with each party trying to promote its own set of interests (Goffman 1971, 1970: 86–89; applied to translation studies by Wadensjö 1998; Jones 2000). One of Goffman’s player roles is that of ‘ambassador’: someone who transmits messages between different parties, but who is also empowered to negotiate for his or her own party. This has been used to model the poetry translator’s twin tasks: as text converter and as representative of source poet or source text (Jones 2000: 69). But if translation is carried out not by one player but by a network of players (source poet, translator, publisher etc.), this implies that we should see these tasks as performed not by one ‘ambassador’, but by a multi-person ‘embassy’. Combining these three models into a single ‘embassy network’ model of translation production would arguably combine their explanatory power. This would enable the researcher to analyse how people join and act together to produce translations, how they are motivated and generate motivations, and how they are influenced by and influence social groups outside the immediate production network.

2.3 Parties and cultures In literary translation research, translators are often seen as mediating between cultures. With the concept of ‘party’, Social Game Theory allows for the fact that embassy networks may represent and attempt to influence groups outside the network. But does it help the present study to see poetry translation embassies as representing a Bosnian ‘source culture’ and attempting to influence an Englishlanguage ‘receptor culture’?

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Beginning with the former, some within and outside Bosnia claim there is no Bosnian culture to represent, for they see Bosnia as an artificial amalgam of three distinct and mutually hostile ethno-religious groups, each with a cultural identity (Croat, Serb and Muslim) not specific to Bosnian territory. Others within and outside Bosnia see it as having a strong and specific cultural ‘unity in diversity’ (Mahmutćehajić 2000). This group includes most Bosnian→English poetry translation embassies in wartime and immediate post-war Bosnia (Jones and Arsenijević 2005). This implies that these embassies represent two partially overlapping parties. One is the domestic and international interest-group that supports a unity-in-diversity model of Bosnian culture (Jones and Arsenijević 2005). Yet this very ‘activity motive’ means that such embassies also see themselves as representing Bosnian culture as a whole. But even if Bosnian culture were less contested, its geographic bounds would be hard to draw. On the one hand, personal and cultural contacts within the exYugoslav space are frequent, helped by the fact that BCS is the mother tongue of most from the region (and that Slovenian and Macedonian are closely-related languages). On the other hand, there is a large post-war Bosnian diaspora within former Yugoslavia and world-wide. And the latter forms part of a wider ex-Yugoslav diaspora dating from before and during the wars of the 1990s. Thus living in native-English-speaking countries, say, there are Bosnians, Croatians and Serbs who write poetry that is translated into English, or who translate poetry from BCS into English. Nevertheless, it may still be analytically useful to use the label ‘source culture’ to denote a cluster of identities and practices linked to the Bosnian geographic space – particularly as a poetry translation embassy’s ‘motive’ may be to validate this concept. But defining a distinct and bounded receptor culture for this study is even more problematic. English’s status not only as the native language of many geopolitical spaces, but also as the world’s most widespread second and auxiliary language, means that readers of Bosnian poetry in English translation may conceivably owe allegiance to any region in the world. This could even include allegiance to Bosnia: thus Bosnian readers may buy a Bosnian-English bilingual edition of a key Bosnian poetic work because they may see the English text as validating their own poet’s global status (Jones 2000: 84–85). Describing the party which the embassy communicates to as ‘the receptor culture’, therefore, has little explanatory power. Better would be Venuti’s concept of ‘heterogeneous community’ (2000: 477): all those who read, review, are influenced by, or value, the target text in question.



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3.

Methods

3.1

I am what I research

This section examines data gathering and analysis methods. First, however, we need to discuss the researcher’s involvement in the research process. In situations of social conflict and contested values, like those of 1990s and 2000s Bosnia, researchers cannot be neutral towards their research material, and the researcher’s narrative is just one of the many possible narratives of events (Campbell 1998: 34– 40). So how can readers gain a reliable picture of these events? One answer is to present evidence from multiple sources (Abramson 1992: 191–193). Thus this study builds its qualitative analyses, where risk of researcher bias is highest, on the base of more objective survey data. Another is to let readers know the researcher’s stance and involvement so that they can allow for potential bias (Brewer 2003: 261) – which is why I use the first person where I feel that these need highlighting. Thus my own stance is revealed in this article’s Introduction by my use of emotive words such as “brutal” or contested concepts such as “Bosnian culture”. As for my involvement, I translate from BCS into English. During the wars of the Yugoslav succession, I consciously promoted, via the translation of political and poetic works into English, an anti-nationalist ethic of inter-communal tolerance both within Bosnia and in the wider ex-Yugoslav space (cf. Jones 2004). Researchers’ involvement in their material need not always be problematic, however: it may also form a data source in itself. Thus there is a long tradition in poetry translation research of translators examining their own working processes (e.g. Bly 1983; Weissbort 1989, 2004). I follow this tradition by using my own insider knowledge to flesh out outsider data from bibliographic research.

3.2 Data-gathering Data for this study was gathered in two phases: searching for relevant publications, and reconstructing their agency networks.

3.2.1 Publication searches This first phase generated a bibliographic survey of English-language translations of Bosnian poetry published between the war’s end and the time of searching, i.e. 1996 to mid-2006. ‘Bosnian poetry’ was defined as whole poems originally written in BCS by poets born or bought up in Bosnia, whether or not they still lived there. Both print and web publications were included, as long as they presented at least one whole poem. Searches were exclusively web-based, using three sources:

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– A general search engine: Google (http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_ search?hl=en), using the formula poetry AND (Bosnia OR Bosnian); – An academic search engine: FirstSearch (http://firstsearch.uk.oclc.org), using the formula poetry AND Bosnia* AND translat*; – A translation-specific database: UNESCO’s Index Translationum (http:// portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php‑URL_ID=7810&URL_DO=DO_ TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html), using the categories FROM Bosnian and TO English. Searches made in mid-2004 (Jones and Arsenijević 2005: 92–94) were replicated in mid-2006. Most data came from the 2006 searches,4 but scanning the 2004 results added titles that had become less web-visible in the intervening period. Web searches can generate more data than print searches, and more quickly. But, like all bibliography searches, web searches are conditioned by where and how they are made (Ó Dochartaigh 2002: 199–201). Thus Google can identify both web and print publications (the latter via publishers’ websites, for example). But its algorithms, which privilege the most-linked-to sites, will favour web-wise print publishers and authoritative web poetry journals, say, above printed pamphlets or blogs. Similarly, Index Translationum and FirstSearch will bias towards canonical or academically worthy titles. Moreover, though all 24 FirstSearch and 13 Index Translationum hits could be examined for relevant titles, this was not possible with all 3,830,000 Google hits: the 2006 search was halted after 500 hits, when only one hit in 50 was adding a new title to the survey. Hence this survey tends to privilege the authoritative above the ephemeral or idiosyncratic, and cannot claim to be exhaustive. It can, however, claim to cover most book publications within the period. And though it can only give a sample of web-published translations, these appear representative of higher-status sites, which arguably have most international impact. Print journals, however, may be under-reported: they accounted for only one of the 26 titles found, whereas I suspect they might actually have a stronger real-world presence.

3.2.2 Agency data In the second data-gathering phase, the 26 titles were scrutinised for data on agency: who the poet(s), translator(s), editor(s), publisher(s) and other key agents were, where they were working, who or what appeared to initiate the project, and how it appeared to come to fruition. Data on book projects came from publishers’ websites, the poet’s website (Goran Simić only), and the books themselves (where available). Data on web-published projects came from the sites themselves. Added information came from my own insights as participant in three of the projects (Agee 1998; Dizdar 1999, 2002).



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3.3 Data analysis This also took place in two phases. Firstly, numeric and simple statistical analyses of publication-types and key actors were carried out to identify overall tendencies. Secondly, the agency data were mapped and interpreted using the ‘embassy network model’ described above.

4.

Quantitative patterns

4.1

Publications and poets

Beginning with quantitative findings, 15 of the 26 publications are paper-only (all books), 9 web-only, and 2 paper-plus-web (one journal + web extracts, and 1 book + website): see ‘’ at the end of this article. Overall, they feature 31 named poets and several anonymous ones. Of the 26 publications, 14 feature a single poet: four a dead poet, and ten a living poet. The other twelve publications feature multiple poets. Single-poet publications tend to be paper-based, and multi-poet publications to be web-based (Spearman correlation ρ .50, 1-tailed significance p .005). There are clear differences in agency pattern between ‘single-dead-poet’, ‘single-living-poet’, and ‘multi-poet’ publications: hence this three-way division is the basis of Section 5’s Agency patterns findings below. First, however, we look at what quantitative analyses tell us about key agents’ positionality.

4.2 Location In this study, positionality is mapped in terms of external ‘location’. The various categories of location show both where actors originate from, and where they are working during the project. ‘Anglo’ actors are natives of Australia, Canada, UK or USA; all in the survey are working in their native region. ‘Ex-Yugo’ actors (natives of the Yugoslav successor states), however, fall into four categories: Bosnians working in ‘Bosnia’ vs. in the ‘Bosnian Diaspora’ (outside Bosnia); and natives of other ex-Yugo regions working in their own ‘Other Ex-Yugo’ region vs. the ‘Other Ex-Yugo Diaspora’ (outside former Yugoslavia). Finally, ‘Other’ actors come from and work in other regions (e.g. Germany). All poets in the survey are Bosnian natives. Of the 31 named source poets, eight live in the Bosnian Diaspora (three in Anglo countries and five elsewhere), and 23 live or lived in Bosnia. Bosnian-Diaspora poets, however, have a publication profile out of proportion to their numbers. They feature exclusively in 12 of

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8

No of publications

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 o gl An An

glo

+

h Ot

er

o gl An

+

B

D

po ias

ra

ia sn Bo B

D

po ias

ra

ia sn Bo

+

B

r po as i D

a r he Ot

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o

o kn Un

wn

Figure 2.  Translator location

the 26 projects, whereas Bosnia-based poets feature exclusively in only 10 projects (the remaining four projects feature both types of poet). A project may have one or more translators, and translators have a wide range of locations. There is a rough balance between projects involving Anglo translators and projects involving Ex-Yugo translators (see Figure 2); dominant categories are Anglo-only (7), Anglo + Bosnian-Diaspora (7) and Bosnian-Diasporaonly (5). Of the 16 projects which have editors, half have Anglo editors (8) and half Ex-Yugo editors (Bosnia 3, Bosnian Diaspora 3, Other-Ex-Yugo Diaspora 2): see Figure 3. In this study, ‘publisher’ denotes the person(s) responsible for bringing a publication to its readers, such as a book publisher, printer, journal editorial board, webmaster, etc. Publishers are largely but not exclusively Anglo: 17 of the 26 projects have Anglo publishers, and another two have Anglo co-publishers. As for whether certain player roles tend to be in the same location, the only significant correlation here is a very strong tendency for editors to be in the same location as their publishers (Spearman ρ .88, p .000). Though most publishers are Anglo, the location of other key agents in Bosnian poetry translation projects is very varied. And though editors and publishers tend to be in the same region, embassy networks tend otherwise to be geographically highly ‘distributed’ rather than focused in one location.



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9

Number of publications

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Anglo

Bosnia

B Diaspora

Other ExYugo

OEY Diaspora

Other

Figure 3.  Editor location

5.

Agency patterns

We now look more closely at agency patterns within the three types of poetry translation project mentioned earlier: ‘single-dead-poet’, ‘single-living-poet’, and ‘multi-poet’. Each of the three sub-sections below gives an overview of typical actors and their locations for that project type, followed by a case-study examining one such project in depth.

5.1

Single-dead-poet projects

5.1.1 Actors Single-dead-poet networks have three typical features that distinguish them from the other two types. Firstly, they have as prime actor a canonical source text that inspires (recruits, in Actor-Network terms) the network’s human actors: see Figure 4, which shows how networks of this type are typically structured. Though only two of the 31 named poets in the survey were dead at the time of publication, they have a relatively high profile, accounting for four of the 26 projects overall, with three of the four featuring Bosnia’s most celebrated poet Mak Dizdar (1917–1971). Secondly, most human power in the network lies in a partnership between editor and translator. In two of the four single-dead-poet projects, editor and translator are the same person (Bajgorić and Foley 2004; Dizdar 2006); and a third (Dizdar 1999) was co-initiated by an editor, a translator (myself) and a publisher.

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book

Publisher

Editor

Source work

book manuscript

critical apparatus

Translator

Translated poems

Key direction of recruitment human actor non-human actor

Figure 4.  Single-dead-poet projects: Typical actor network5

Thirdly, single-dead-poet projects typically have a critical apparatus of commentary and notes. As this is supplied (recruited, in Actor Network Theory terms) by both editor and translator, it is also an expression of their joint network power.

5.1.2 Location Here, only translator location deviates from the overall survey picture. In the survey overall, there is a rough balance between Anglo and Ex-Yugo translators (Figure 2). But with single-dead-poet projects, Anglo translators dominate: three projects each have an Anglo translator, and the fourth has an Anglo plus a diaspora-Bosnian translator. Recruitment patterns discussed above suggest that this is because Anglo translators are more likely to be inspired by such works to translate them for publication. The underlying reason may be a sense that the wider heterogeneous community prefers native-writer target-text quality with canonical works. 5.1.3 Case study Figure 5 shows an example of such a project: the 1999 bilingual edition of Dizdar’s Kameni spavač / Stone Sleeper, in which I was the translator (see Jones 2000 for a detailed account). This project was jointly initiated by publisher, editor and translator. In a cellar during a wartime bombardment, Sarajevo publisher Edin Mulać and editor Rusmir Mahmutćehajić decided that producing a bilingual bibliophile



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UK

Bosnia book

Publisher Bosnian

Source work artwork Editor

Bosnian

Graphic designer

Translator Anglo

Bosnian

Draft readers Anglo & Bosnian

critical apparatus book manuscript Translated poems

Figure 5.  Dizdar (1999): Actor network

edition of Dizdar’s 1973 masterwork would be a valuable way of promoting Bosnian culture. When the latter heard that I was already translating the work into English, the plan went into full operation. Figure 5 accounts for location in two ways. Where in the world the actors are operating is shown by the shaded background fields: thus the fact that the non-human actor critical apparatus spans the background fields ‘UK’ and ‘Bosnia’ shows that it is produced in both regions. And the actors’ origins, where relevant, are indicated by subscripts: for example, Editor Bosnian. Three other players are worth mentioning. One is graphic designer Dževad Hozo, recruited by editor Mahmutćehajić to provide illustrations of the medieval tombstones which form a key theme of the work (Buturović 2002). Two others are the target-draft readers (recruitment shown by dotted arrows): Anglo Brian Holton (recruited by myself), who advised on the drafts as English poems; and Bosnian Midhat Riđanović (recruited by editor Mahmutćehajić), who advised on how well the target drafts reflected the source text.

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In Activity- and Social Game-Theory terms, this embassy’s ‘activity object’ (to publish Dizdar’s work) had the overt ‘motive’ of supporting an integrationist model of Bosnian culture. This also aligned the embassy with a geopolitical party: those who supported an integral Bosnian state. This is why copies of the final text were purchased by the Bosnian Foreign Ministry, say, to use as diplomatic gifts. Nevertheless, some underlying ‘actions’ had ‘goals’ that betrayed the presence of sub-‘motives’ on the part of individual actors – an example of what Buzelin describes as the multi-voiced nature of translation networks (2004: 737–738). Thus when Holton rewrote one English draft poem into his native Scots, this was partially inspired by his and my wish to valorize regional differences within the target language. This, however, did not conflict with the overall project ‘motive’, as a refusal to see difference as threatening is crucial to anti-nationalist, integrationist models of Bosnian culture (Mahmutćehajić 2000: 14–18).

5.2 Single-living-poet projects 5.2.1 Actors Of the ten single-living-poet projects, only one (Duraković 1998) has a named editor, and translators are rarely given prominence in descriptions of the projects. This implies that the source poet is a powerful actor, and often the main one. A typical network pattern, therefore, is that shown in Figure 6. Here the poet holds most network power in that she or he writes the source poems and helps shape the target manuscript, and at the very least liaises ( in Figure 6) with publisher and translator. Of course, some projects may be initiated or co-initiated by a translator – particularly, perhaps, if the translator is a target-language poet, as with David Harsent’s

Publisher

book

source poems

Source poet

Translator

target manuscript translated poems

Figure 6.  Single-living-poet projects: Typical actor network



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translations of Goran Simić (1996, 1997). Or by a publisher – particularly as singlepoet projects tend to be books. And translators and publishers are both necessary actors in such projects. Hence they hold at least some network power.

5.2.2 Location So where is the source poet, as main actor in this network type, located? We have already seen how translated Bosnian-Diaspora poets are fewer in number than translated Bosnia-based poets, but feature in more publication projects overall (see 3.2 Location above). This disparity is even more marked with the ten singleliving-poet projects, where eight feature Bosnian-Diaspora poets and only two feature Bosnia-based poets. Moreover, no fewer than seven of these eight ‘singlediaspora-poet’ projects feature a poet living in an Anglo country, and only one a poet living elsewhere (Slovenia: Osti, 1999). Hence single-living-poet projects, which give individual poets a higher profile than multi-poet projects, give disproportional prominence to diaspora poets living in Anglo countries. As publishers are also largely Anglo, one reason for the diaspora poets’ publishing success might be because they are geographically closer to their publishers. Quantitative analysis, however, fails to confirm this: correlation between poet and publisher location for single-living-poet projects is weak and non-significant (Spearman ρ .43, p .12). The answer, however, may well lie in the fact that five of the eight single-diaspora-poet projects involve one poet – Goran Simić, resident in Canada. The other three such projects, by contrast, feature three different poets and follow no particular location pattern. The diaspora poets’ success, therefore, may well be largely due to Goran Simić’s ability to form successful translation production networks. 5.2.3 Case study This also makes it worth looking closely at a Simić network. Figure 7 shows his latest translated work, From Sarajevo with Sorrow (2005). The book’s Canadian publisher writes: When Sprinting from the Graveyard was published in 1997, Goran Simic’s poems were severely altered out of the fact that they might offend “Western sensibilities”. These newly translated poems restore all that is offensive, despairing and necessary to our understanding of war by capturing the poems’ original power and (Biblioasis 2006) humanity. 

This implies two separate inputs to translator Amela Simić: the source poems which she must retranslate, and David Harsent’s translations of these poems in the 1997 volume which she must improve. Unpublished source poems written

316 Francis R. Jones

Bosnia

Canada New book

Publisher

From Sarajevo with Sorrow (2005)

Old untranslated source poems

Source poet Bosnian

New source poems

New target manuscript

Translator Bosnian

Old previouslytranslated source poems

(Re-)translated poems

Old translated book Sprinting from the Graveyard (1997)

Figure 7.  Simić (2005): Actor network

during the siege of Sarajevo, and new source poems written about the siege, form a third and a fourth input respectively. This also offers a clue to Goran Simić’s apparently rich output: the 2005 volume is partially based on material from his 1997 book. Similarly, his 2003 web “Selected poems” merely quotes from his 2003 book Immigrant Blues. In Activity and Actor-Network terms, this shows how different ‘activities’ are often linked by sharing actors, such as poet or texts, so that not every ‘operation’ (e.g. writing new source poems) need be repeated in each ‘activity’. The actors do not necessarily play the same role in each network, though. Thus the Sprinting from the Graveyard book is the outcome of Simić’s 1997 network, but an initiating actor in his 2005 network.

5.3 Multi-poet projects 5.3.1 Actors A key feature of these projects is that an editor typically wields most network power: of the 12 multi-poet projects, 11 are instigated or controlled by editors. A typical network pattern for multi-poet projects is shown in Figure 8 (where



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published text

Publisher

Editor

source poems

Translators

anthology / web journal manuscript

Source poets

translated poems

Figure 8.  Multi-poet projects: Typical actor network

dotted lines and dotted ovals/rectangles denote optional recruitment routes and actors). Here an editor plans (i.e. recruits) an anthology, web journal issue, etc. She or he then has two options for recruiting target texts. One is to obtain source poems from source poets and send them (or have the poets send them) to translators; the translators then produce the translated poems. The other is to ask source poets to supply already-translated poems. In the latter case, no translator actually participates in the network (as with dead source poets, only their texts participate). The editor may also recruit or be recruited by a publisher. Alternatively, as multi-poet projects are typically web-based, he or she may web-publish the collection him- or herself. The editor, therefore, is the most powerful actor in multi-poet projects, with other actors, particularly translators, playing a subsidiary role. Translators, for instance, need not participate in the network. And if they do, they carry out intermediate-level ‘actions’ that further ‘goals’ (supplying target poems). But, unlike the editor, they do not have an overview of the whole ‘activity’ (to produce the publication), and are therefore not necessarily motivated by its ‘object’ (e.g. intercultural communication).

5.3.2 Location Key players’ location in multi-poet projects parallels players’ location in the survey as a whole: that is, editors tend to be either Anglo or Ex-Yugo (Figure 3), and to work in the same location as their publishers.

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Serbia

Canada

Bosnia editor

Other Anglo

editor/publisher

Serbian

Anglo

poets Anglo

source poets Serbian

poems

source poets Bosnian

journal

journal

Reč

Descant

web extracts Descant

source poems

target poems

Serbian

source poems Bosnian

translators

Figure 9.  Mulhallen (1996): Actor network

5.3.3 Case study One multi-poet project was published both in paper and web form (though the latter is no longer available), and involved both an Anglo and an Ex-Yugo editor: Belgrade, Former Yugoslavia and the Body Politic, a special issue of Canadian poetry journal Descant (Mulhallen 1996). Published just after the Bosnian war, it is worth examining as an example of the ‘solidarity projects’ typical of the wartime and immediate post-war period. The complexity of this project’s agency network (Figure 9) illustrates the geographical, political and interpersonal ambitiousness of many such projects. Key actors are the two editors, Albahari (working in Serbia and Canada, and involved in Bosnia) and Mulhallen (working in Canada). According to Mulhallen (1996: web contents page):



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A meeting in June 1994 between Serbian writer David Albahari and editor Karen Mulhallen resulted in a literary swap between two journals, and two cultures. In this issue, Descant publishes selections from a leading Belgrade literary review, Reč.

The Descant issue, however, is more than a two-country exchange between Serbia and Canada. Along with poems by Canadian poets and translated Serbian poems from Reč, it also incorporates translated poems by Bosnian poets in Bosnia and Canada. This is noteworthy, for in 1994 the Bosnian government was still at war with Bosnian Serb militias sponsored by the Serb nationalist regime in Belgrade. Though I have not been able to ascertain whether Albahari helped Mulhallen select Bosnian writers for Descant, he certainly could have done so, as he had been involved with Bosnia via his help in evacuating Sarajevo’s Jewish population earlier in the war. Be this as it may, Descant’s placing of Serbian and Bosnian poets sideby-side can be seen as an act of anti-nationalist solidarity promoting both Bosnia and the former Yugoslav region as a complex but coherent cultural whole. Moreover, from 1994 Albahari was himself a member of the ex-Yugo diaspora in Canada, as were some of the Bosnian and Serbian poets featured, and at least two of the translators (and perhaps three, the fourth being UK-based). In other words, the complex identities and locations of the actors involved (Anglo and Yugo, Bosnian and Serbian, domestic and diaspora), and the fact of their working together, supported the ideology inherent in the text that they produced – one which declared a global ex-Yugoslav cultural space as a space for complex intercultural synergies. Here, combining Actor-Network, Activity and Game analyses, the actors’ intermediate-level ‘actions’ within the network reinforced the embassy game’s overall ‘object’. This was to represent a pan-Yugoslav, anti-nationalist, integrationalist party to an English-reading heterogeneous community, and to oppose a nationalist party within and outside Bosnia which sought to present intraYugoslav relations as based on irreconcilable enmity.

6.

Conclusion

6.1

Agency

In many ways, the present study’s findings about recent Bosnian→English poetry translation reflect those of Actor-Network-based research into other translation genres. The present study found that translators are not necessarily important actors in their production team: in the multi-poet and single-living-poet projects which numerically dominate the Bosnian→English poetry translation scene, their power tends to be subservient to that of the editor and the source poet respectively.

320 Francis R. Jones

Though these poetry translators are not as powerless as the commercial agency translators surveyed by Abdallah (2005), both studies call into question the privileging of the translator’s agency by many mainstream translation models. Numbers are not everything, however. The few projects where translator agency is the most powerful, the single-dead-poet group, may also carry extra cultural status because they deal with the canonical rather than just the contemporary. Not every actor in a translation network has equal external visibility, as Venuti famously points out (1995). Nor are the most visible actors necessarily the most powerful: Buzelin, for example, mentions the powerful but externally invisible role of the chief translation reviser in Canadian English-to-French novel production (2005a). Thus, in this study, poets are arguably the most visible actors, as their names are displayed most prominently in all the final products. But editors carry more network power in multi-poet productions, which form the largest single category in numerical terms. A crucial assumption of Actor-Network, Activity and Game models, however, is that agency lies not so much in individual actors as in the network as a whole – in the cooperation between technical communicators and translators in producing multilingual car documentation (Göpferich 2005), say. Hence, who holds more or less power within the network is less important than whether the network forms and performs efficiently and effectively. Thus Goran Simić’s striking publication record appears due firstly to his ability to re-recruit networks on the basis of previous ones (using pre-existing source and even target texts, and re-enlisting previous translators such as David Harsent and Amela Simić). And secondly to those networks’ effectiveness in bringing texts to a reading public.

6.2 Location The location of translation players, i.e. their position in and loyalty to one or more geo-cultural spaces, is an important factor in what gets translated, and by whom it gets read. By mapping interpersonal networks onto their players’ location(s), this study has given useful micro-social insights into key questions of ‘positionality’ posed by macro-social approaches to literary translation – such as whether translators’ loyalty is to the source or target culture, or to a third, in-between space (Tymoczko 2003: 184–186). If we look at the location not of the translator but of the whole translation network, then it appears that literary translation (or at least, all 26 poetry translation projects in the present study) takes place in a ‘distributed space’ that spans several geographic regions. This best supports, perhaps, Tymoczko’s view that literary translation typically happens in a combined



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source+target cultural space, rather than in the target culture or an in-between space (2003: 195). This distributed space encompasses, but is not restricted to, the source writer’s and the translator’s respective birth regions – other regions may be involved, as with Bahtijaragić (2004), where the poet lives in Canada and the publisher in Germany. Moreover, the diaspora location of many source poets, translators and editors implies a double positionality: coming from the ex-Yugo cultural space but living and working in Canada, for example. Indeed, Bosnian poetry translation networks with key players (such as source poets and editors) in diaspora seem particularly effective in producing publications. This is not, it seems, because of the players’ proximity to publishers. But it may well be helped by the diaspora players’ double location, which enables them to interact effectively with three types of player: ex-Yugos ‘back home’, Anglos in Canada, say, and other diaspora players like themselves. One question remains: are the findings of this study peculiar to the Bosnian→ English context? To a certain extent, they are. Firstly, this study’s ‘source-culture’ players are drawn not only from the source region proper (Bosnia), but also from a wider linguistic and cultural area (former Yugoslavia) which was recently the matrix state of the source region proper. Secondly, the existence of a source-culture diaspora as a key factor in poetry translation is to a great extent the product of a war characterised by mass expulsion, and of a post-war economy that has failed to entice all émigrés to return. Nevertheless, few linguistic cultures are restricted to one nation-state; and in an age of global mobility, many if not most cultures have a diaspora of writers and translators. Thus, in my experience of translating poetry from two other non-globalized languages, Dutch→English and Hungarian→English production networks can relate to one or more source regions (Netherlands and Flanders, say); they span, at the very least, the region of source-poem production and translation publication; and they virtually always involve both diaspora and non-diaspora players.

6.3 Networks and textuality Deliberately for the sake of analytical clarity, though perhaps perversely in terms of giving the whole picture, this study has not looked at other factors that may affect published translation production, such as the poetry’s theme, or the poetic skill of source poet and translator. It would be interesting, for instance, to explore how Goran Simić’s publication success might reflect an efficiency not only in setting up translation production networks, but also in re-mining his experience of wartime Sarajevo even 10 years after the war’s end (in From Sarajevo with Sorrow,

322 Francis R. Jones

for example), and thus in meeting Anglo readers’ expectations of Bosnian poetry as war rapportage. Or conversely, how the Bosnian location of Abdulah Sidran (probably Bosnia’s most eminent living poet) and his translator might have combined with the low-key, complex, post-modern content of his verse to restrict his English book-length output to just one volume, published by a Sarajevo non-governmental organisation. This, however, is the topic of another study.

Notes 1. Known in Yugoslav times as one language, Serbo-Croat, with various regional varieties, its name now depends on the speaker’s identity. Thus Croats call it Croatian, those who believe in the integrity of the Bosnian state call it Bosnian, etc. Likewise, my use of BCS perhaps betrays a certain jugonostalgija. 2. Actor-Network theorists distinguish “actors”, who have power in the network, from “intermediaries”, who do not. I prefer, however, to see all people and artefacts in the network as actors, but with different amounts of power. 3. As Activity-Theory terms also have common general meanings, they are enclosed in single quotes throughout this article. 4. Jones and Arsenijević (2005) and the present study set different parameters. The former examines translations and metatexts of and about Bosnia-based poets 1993–2003, and the latter translations of Bosnia-based and diaspora poets 1996–2006. 5. Format after Abdallah (2005).

References Primary sources Agee, Chris. 1998. Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia. Newcastle: Bloodaxe. Bahtijaragić, Rifet. 2004. Oči u hladnom nebu / Eyes to the Cold Sky. Translators unknown. Wuppertal: Bosanska riječ – Das bosnische Wort. Bajgorić, Halil and Foley, John Miles. 2004. The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Becirbey as Performed by Halil Bajgorić. Translated by John Miles Foley. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Web: www.oraltradition.org/zbm, visited August 2006. Centennial High School. 2006. “Izet Sarajlić: Inheritance, necrology of the nightingale; Mirsad Sijarić: To discuss”. Eastern European Literature: Bosnia. www.isd12.org/chs/LitText/ Eastern-Europe.htm, visited July 2006. Dizdar, Mak. 1999. Kameni spavač / Stone Sleeper. With English translations by Francis R. Jones. Source text originally published 1973. Sarajevo: Kuća bosanska. Dizdar, Mak. 2002. “Bilingual selections from Stone Sleeper”. Translated by Francis R. Jones. In Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar, Amila Buturović (ed.), 180–198. New York: Palgrave.



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Dizdar, Mak. 2006. “Hiža of Mile, Apple blossom, Beneath the things, Lilies, Note on the shield”. Translated by Keith Doubt, Omer Hadžiselimović and Luisa Lang Owen. Spirit of Bosnia 1 (1). http://www.spiritofbosnia.org/?lang=eng&x=3, visited July 2006. Duraković, Ferida. 1998. Heart of Darkness. Translated by Amela Simić and Zoran Mutić. Freedonia, NY: White Pine. Duraković, Ferida. 2000. “Balkan Literatures: Bosnia”. Macedonian PEN. http://www.pen.org. mk/balkan/bosnia, bisited July 2004. Kambasković-Sawers, Danijela. 2005. “Six poems from Balkan homes”. Translated by Danijela Kambasković-Sawers. Gangway 36. http://www.gangway.net/36/gangway36.Balkan.html, visited July 2006. Manojlović, Radmila. 1996. Sjećam se / I Remember: Writings by Bosnian Women Refugees. Translators unknown. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute. Mehmedinović, Semezdin. 2003. Nine Alexandrias. Translated by Ammiel Alcalay. San Francisco, CA: City Lights. Mostar Wave. 2000. “Poetry”. Mostar Wave. www.stradanove.net/mostar/poetry/paada240200e 09.htm. Mulhallen, Karen. 1996. Belgrade, Former Yugoslavia and the Body Politic. Special Issue of Descant 27 (3). Web: “Contents and Extracts: Belgrade, Former Yugoslavia, and the body politic, Descant 94, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fall 1996”. Descant. www.descant.on.ca/contents.cfm?id=61, visited July 2004. Osti, Josip. 1999. The Vineyard Path. Translated by Mia Dintinjana. Chattanooga: University of Rennessee. Sidran, Abdulah. 1997. The Blindman Sings to his City. Translated by Dubravka Dostal. Sarajevo: Međunarodni centar za mir. Sijarić, Mirsad. 1998. “To discuss and To imagine”. crossXconnect 4 (2). http://ccat.sas.upenn. edu/xconnect/v4/i2/t, visited August 2006. Sijarić, Mirsad. 2003. “20 poems”. University of Iowa International Writing Program. http:// www.uiowa.edu/čiwp/WRIT/documents/SIJARICPoemsformattedOct24_000.pdf, visited August 2006. Simić, Goran. 1996. The Sorrow of Sarajevo. Translated by David Harsent. Treharne, Cornwall: Cargo. Simić, Goran. 1997. Sprinting from the Graveyard. Translated by David Harsent. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simić, Goran. 2003. Immigrant Blues. Translated by Amela Simić. London, Ontario: Brick. Simić, Goran. 2003. “Selected poems”. Goran Simic. http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/ goransimic/poems.html, visited July 2006. Simić, Goran. 2005. From Sarajevo with Sorrow. Translated by Amela Simić. Windsor, Ontario: Biblioasis. Simić, Goran and Sutherland, Fraser. 1998. Peace and War. Translated by Amela Simić. Toronto: privately published. Szombáthy, Bálint. 1996. “After Auschwitz, after Sarajevo: The poetry of three Sarajevan poets”. Left Curve 20. www.leftcurve.org/lc18-20pgs/aftersarajevo.html, visited June 2004. Vidan, Aida. 2003. Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls: The Traditional Ballads of Bosnian Women. Translated by Aida Vidan. Cambridge, MA: Milnan Parry Collection of Oral Literature.

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Secondary sources Abdallah, Kristiina. 2005. Actor-network theory as a tool in defining translation quality. Paper presented at the Conference ‘Translating and Interpreting as a Social Practice’, University of Graz, Austria. Abramson, Paul R. 1992. A Case for Case Studies. Newbury Park, CA / London: Sage. Axel, Erik. 1997. “One developmental line in European activity theories”. In Mind, Culture and Activity: Seminal papers from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, Michael Cole, Yrjö Engeström and Olga Vasquez (eds), 128–146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biblioasis. 2006. “From Sarajevo with Sorrow”. biblioasis. http://www.biblioasis.com/product_ info.php?cPath=21&products_id=37, visited July 2006. Bly, Robert. 1983. The Eight Stages of Translation. Boston, MA: Rowan Tree. Brewer, John D. 2003. “Reflexivity”. In The A-Z of Social Research, Robert L. Miller and John D. Brewer (eds), 260–262. London: Sage. Buturović, Amila. 2002. Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar. New York: Palgrave. Buzelin, Hélène. 2004. “La traductologie, l’ethnographie et la production de connaissances”. Meta XLIX (4): 729–746. Buzelin, Hélène. 2005a. Opening the black box: Towards a study of translation as a production process. Paper presented at the Conference ‘Translating and Interpreting as a Social Practice’, University of Graz, Austria. Buzelin, Hélène. 2005b. Unexpected allies: How Latour’s network theory could complement Bourdieusian analyses in translation studies. The Translator 11: 193–218. Campbell, David. 1998. National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Engeström, Yrjö and Miettinen, Reijo. 1999. “Introduction”. In Perspectives on Activity Theory, Yrjö Engeström and Reijo Miettinen (eds), 1–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gentzler, Edwin. 2002. “Translation, poststructuralism and power”. In Translation and Power, Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler (eds), 195–218. Amherst & Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Goffman, Erving. 1970. Strategic Interaction. Oxford: Blackwell. Goffman, Erving. 1971. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. First published 1959. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Göpferich, Susanne. 2005. Streamlining documentation processes and its impact on the workplace quality of technical communicators and translators. Paper presented at the Conference ‘Translating and Interpreting as a Social Practice’, University of Graz, Austria. Jones, Francis R. 2000. “The poet and the ambassador: Communicating Mak Dizdar’s Stone Sleeper”. Translation and Literature 9 (1): 65–87. Jones, Francis R. 2004. “Ethics, aesthetics and décision: Literary translating in the wars of the Yugoslav succession”. Meta 49 (4): 711–728. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v49/ n4/009777ar.pdf, visited 3 July 2006. Jones, Francis R. and Arsenijević, Damir. 2005. “(Re)constructing Bosnia: Ideologies and agents in poetry translating”. In Translation and the Construction of Identity: IATIS Yearbook 2005, Juliane House, M. Rosario Martín Ruano and Nicole Baumgarten (eds), 68–95. Seoul: IATIS.



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Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mahmutćehajić, Rusmir. 2000. The Denial of Bosnia. Translated by Marina Bowder and Francis R. Jones. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Ó Dochartaigh, Niall. 2002. The Internet Research Handbook. London: Sage. Ryder, Martin. 2003. What is actor network theory? carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ ant_dff.html, visited July 2005. Ryder, Martin. 2005. “Actor Network Theory”. http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ act_net.html, visited July 2005. Tymoczko, Maria. 2003. “Ideology and the position of the translator: In what sense is a translator ‘in between’?” In Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology – Ideologies in Translation Studies, María Calzada Pérez (ed.), 181–201. Manchester: St. Jerome. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence. 1998. The Scandals of Translation. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence. 2000. “Translation, community, utopia”. In The Translation Studies Reader, Lawrence Venuti (ed.), 468–488. London: Routledge. Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman. Weissbort, Daniel. 1989. Translating Poetry: The Double Labyrinth. London: Macmillan. Weissbort, Daniel. 2004. From Russian with Love: Conversations with Joseph Brodsky. London: Anvil.

Notes on contributors

Paul F. Bandia is an Associate Professor in the Department of French at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, where he teaches Translation Studies. His interests lie in postcolonial theory, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, cultural theory and history. He has published widely in the fields of translation studies and postcolonial francophone literatures and cultures. He is the co-editor of Charting the Future of Translation History (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2006). [email protected] Georges L. Bastin, PhD in Translation Studies from the Université de Paris III, is Associate Professor in the Département de linguistique et de traduction at the Université de Montréal. Before he was Head of the Translation and Interpretation Department at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. His research interests lie in the fields of translation pedagogy and translation history. He is the author of ¿Traducir o adaptar? [Translate or Adapt?], of two entries of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies and has published in META, TTR, The Translator, La linguistique, The Interpreter’s Newsletter and other journals. He heads the Research Group on Translation History in Latin America (http://www.histal. umontreal.ca) and edited two META special issues on translation history (vol. 49, nº 3 and vol. 50, nº 3). He co-edited Charting the Future of Translation History (University of Ottawa Press, 2006). [email protected] Lisa Rose Bradford teaches Comparative Literature at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata and works as visiting professor of Translation Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Her doctoral degree was completed at the UC Berkeley (“A Generation of Castaways: A Study of the Translation Process in Four Argentine Poets of the 1970s”), and since then she has edited three compendiums on translation and cultural studies, Traducción como cultura, La cultura de los géneros, and Dispositio/n No. 51, 2000. She is presently directing a project on publication politics and editing an anthology of U.S. women’s poetry in Spanish. [email protected]; [email protected]

328 Notes on contributors

Cemal Demircioğlu is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at Okan University, Istanbul, Turkey. He completed his BA and MA in Modern Turkish Literature at Boğaziçi University where he worked as Lecturer, and obtained his PhD in Translation Studies from Boğaziçi University in 2005. His main research interests are the history of translation in Ottoman and modern Turkish society and Ottoman concepts and practices of translation. [email protected] Home-stay visits and holidays in former Yugoslavia during the 1970s inspired Francis R. Jones to take a BA in Serbo-Croat and German at Cambridge University. He then researched modern Yugoslav poetry at Sarajevo University (1977– 1978), where he began translating. From Serbian and Bosnian he has published seven book-length translations of poetry, and co-translated three books of political prose. He also translates from Dutch and Hungarian. He is now Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, specialising in translation studies. [email protected] Denise Merkle teaches translation history and theory as well as literary translation at the Université de Moncton (Canada). She obtained her doctorate (thesis topic: Flaubert’s and Zola’s experiences with French and British censorship) in 1999 from Queen’s University at Kingston. She is continuing her target-oriented research on Victorian translations of primarily French authors using DTS methodology with a pronounced sociological and psychological component. She has published articles in TTR, Excavatio and Babel, as well as chapters in books. Her secondary research interest is translation and minority, especially in the Canadian context. [email protected] John Milton teaches English Literature and Translation Studies at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of O Poder da Tradução [The Power of Translation] (republished as Tradução: Teoria e Prática [Translation: Theory and Practice]; O Clube do Livro e a Tradução [The Clube do Livro and Translation], and Images of a Trembling World, a travel book on Japan). He has also edited Emerging Views on Translation History in Brazil; and, with Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres, Tradução, Retradução e Adaptação [Translation, Retranslation, and Adaptation]. [email protected]; [email protected] Thelma Médici Nóbrega is a professional translator specializing in subtitling. She has a PhD from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC), a biobibliography of Haroldo de Campos. She is at present organizing Haroldo’s archives. [email protected]



Notes on contributors 329

Carol O’Sullivan holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge on the topic of authorship and translation. She teaches Italian and translation theory at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests range widely within translation studies and include authorship, censorship, and the paratexts of translation. Recent and forthcoming publications include articles on Italian crime fiction and the sonnets of Giuseppe Belli in English; Italian versions of Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabelle; and French and German translations of Blasket Island autobiography. [email protected] Outi Paloposki, PhD, University of Helsinki. Research interests: translation history, methodology in Translation Studies. One of the editors of a two-volume History of Translation in Finland, to be published in 2007. [email protected] Maria Eulália Ramicelli teaches British and American Literature at the Federal University of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. She researches on Comparative Literature, focusing on the circulation of British fiction and ideas in nineteenth-century Brazilian periodicals. [email protected] Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar teaches Translation Studies and Interpreting at Boğazıcı [Bosphorous] University, Istanbul. She is also a professional conference interpreter. She has published articles on the translation of mass fiction and translation and ideology. She has also published the book Kapılar [Gateways]. [email protected]; [email protected] Akiko Uchiyama is a Lecturer at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland in Australia. She mainly teaches translation courses in the MAJIT (Master of Arts in Japanese Translation and Interpreting) program. Her research interest includes postcolonial translation studies and translated girls’ literature. [email protected] Christine Zurbach, Associate Professor at the University of Évora, Portugal, is an expert in Theater Studies and Translation Studies. She has a PhD in Drama Translation (1997) published as Tradução e Prática do Teatro em Portugal de 1975 a 1988 [Drama Translation and Practice in Portugal from 1975 to 1988] (Lisboa, Colibri, 2002). She is a researcher at the Centro de História de Arte (Theatre Studies) at the University of Évora and is a member of the Editorial Board of Sinais de Cena [Scene Signs] (APCT). [email protected]

Index

1870 Elementary Education Act  87 A Abdallah, Kristiina  304, 322 Abdülhamid II  138, 152, 153 Abramson  307 abridging; abridgement  63, 67, 93, 99, 111, 114, 199, 205 acceptability  114, 132, 289, 294 Activity-and Social GameTheory  13, 314, 301, 304, 320 Actor Network Theory  13, 79, 301, 304, 312, 316, 319, 320 Adapting; adaptation  5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 46, 53, 63, 132, 140, 191, 199, 205, 223, 229, 259, 292, 294, 295 Aeschylus  220 African Writers Series (AWS)  4 Agee  307 Aguirre, Raul Gustavo  233, 238, 239, 240, 247 Albahari  318, 319 Albers  262 Alceu  271 Alcman  271 Alfonsín, Raúl  243 Amado, Milton  261 Andrade, Mario de  236, 261 Andrade, Oswald de  12, 261, 263, 271, 272 anglomania  47 Antepara, José María de  36 anthropophagy  12, 233, 252, 272, 273 anti-nationalist  302 Apollinaire  238 Apollodorus  220

Apuleius  107, 114, 117 Aristaenetus  118 Aristophanes  115, 283, 287, 290, 294 Aristotle  218, 220 Armani, Horacio  238 Arseven, Celal Esat  177 Artaud  239 As duas órfãs  56–57 Asante, Molefi Kete  226 Ashbery, John  244, 246 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal  171–173, 186 Auden, W. H.   236, 244 Avni, İsmail  141 Aymard, André  213 B Bachelard, Gaston  213 Baeza, Ricardo  236 Bahr, Herman  198, 199 Bahtijaragić  321 Bajarlia, Juan Jacobo  238 Bajgorić and Foley  311 Baker, Mona  100, 191, 280 Bandeira, Manuel  257 Bandia, Paul  3, 13, 14, 79, 133 baroque  268, 269, 272, 273 Barrie, J. M.  5, 15 Barthes, Roland  267, 274 Bashō  268 Bassnett, Susan  12, 13, 47, 114 Bastide, Roger  262 Bayar, Celal  177 Bayley, Edgar  238 Beats  249 Beckett, Samuel  236 Bell & Daldy; George Bell and Sons  108, 109, 112, 117, 125 Bellegarde, P. A.  51, 59

Bellessi, Diana  244, 245 Bello, Andrés  25, 33, 38 Bengi, Işın  132, 142, 143, 157 Benjamin, Walter  245, 260, 269 Bense, Max  259 Bere’shith  270 Berk, Özlem  137, 157, 158, 184 Berman, Antoine  9, 13, 189 Bernal, Martin  224, 225, 226, 227 Besant, Annie  117 Bianco, Pepe  235 Biblioteca Americana (La)  37–38 Bill, Max  261 Bioy Casares Adolfo  16, 235, 237 Bishop, John Peale  237 Bjornson  4 Blackwood’s Magazine  44 Blanco White, José María  35, 38 Blanco  268 Bly  307 Boccaccio; Decameron  107, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 123 Bogue, David  109 Bohn, Henry  9, 15, 107–129 Boisgobey, Fortuné de  89, 96 Boleyn, Anne  6, 7 Bonaparte, Napoleon  213 Bondarev, Yuri  202 Book of Job  270 Boom  248 Borges, Jorge Luis  16, 233–238, 239, 248 Born, Bertran de  264 Bosnia  14, 301, 305, 307, 313, 314, 318, 321

332 Agents of Translation

Bosnia and Herzegovina  301 Bosnian  306, 322 Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS)  301, 302, 306, 322 Bossa Nova  264 Boulez  261 Bourdieu, Pierre  8–10, 11, 92, 100, 163, 164, 229, 230, 231 Bowdler, Thomas; bowdlerism  87, 88, 90, 92, 98, 100, 101, 114, 115, 121 Bradlaugh, Charles  117 Brascó, Miguel  234 Brazilian fiction  53, 56–57, 59 Brazilian men of letters  43, 50–51, 53, 56–59 Brazilian Modernist Movement  261 Brazilian Translation Forum  13 Brecht, Bertolt  16, 267, 282, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289, 290, 292 brechtian model  282 Breton  239, 241 Broumas, Olga  244 Brownlie, Siobhan  189 Bukowski, Charles  244 Bunyan, John  195 Burke, William  30–31 Burton, (Sir) Richard  87–88, 116 Burton, Isabel  93 Buson  268 Buturović  313 Buzelin, Hélène  9, 11, 303, 304, 314, 320 C Cabral de Melo Neto, João  263, 271 Cabrera Infante  262 Cage, John  258 Campbell, Lord John  97, 125 Campos, Augusto de  2, 10, 12, 257, 258, 261, 263, 264, 265, 274, 275 Campos, Haroldo de  2, 10, 12, 16, 257–275 Camus, Albert  235, 248 Canada, Canadian  2, 13, 315, 318, 319, 320, 321

Candido, Antonio  16, 262, 272, 273 cannibalism  12 Canonical  320 Capriolo, Ettore  5 Carnation Revolution  16, 285 Carpentier, Alejo  236 Carta de Jamaica  29 Carver, Raymond  244, 246 Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC-SP)  274 Catullus  107, 113, 115, 118–126, 271 Cavalcanti, Guido  260, 264 censorship  3, 50, 86–88, 90–91, 92, 100, 103, 242, 279, 285 Centro Cultural de Évora  16, 279–299 Cervantes, Miguel de  115, 126, 140 Césaire, Aimé  217, 218, 227 Cevdet, Ahmed  141 Chambers, Arthur  198, 199 Chamoiseau, Patrick  3 Champollion, the Younger  213, 214 Champollion-Figeac  213, 215 Char, René  238, 239, 241 Charron, Marc  13 Chekhov, Anton  202, 203 Chevrel, Yves  96 Chouraqui, Andre  270 Churberg, Waldemar  200–201 circulation of texts  43–44 civilized/uncivilized  67–75, 78, 80, 81, 175, 180, 194 Cixous, Hélène  10 Classical Library  107 Clifton, Lucille  244 Clima  262 Colburn, Henry  45 Colburn, William  92, 99, 102 Colombeia  27–28 Colombiano, El  25, 37 Companhia das Letras  13 Concrete poetry  257, 258, 263, 271, 274 constraints  189, 190, 191, 206 Constructivism  262 contracts  88, 192, 196

Corneille, Pierre  139, 141, 142, 144, 149, 151 Correspondence; letters  21, 26, 27, 28, 32, 97, 103, 192, 196–204, 207, 214, 266, 268 Cortázar, Julio  236, 268 Creeley, Robert  244 Croat  306 Croatian  322 Cronin, Michael  100 Cronista, O  50, 53, 59 Cuba  232 Cubism  261 cultural repertoire  280 cultural translation  43, 46, 85 cultural turn  2, 303 cultural value  281 Cummings, E. E.  10, 236, 239, 240, 244, 265, 266 Curtis, Alexander E.  227 Czarniawska, Barbara  193 D d’Ablancourt, Perrot  9 Damas, Léon Gontran  217 Daniel, Arnaut  264, 265 Daniş, Hüseyin  141 Dante  264, 268 Darío, Rubén  245, 263 “Datsua-ron”  77–80, 81 Daudet, Alphonse  89, 92 Dayton Treaty  302 decentralization  288 Defoe, Daniel  195 Denham, Sir John  8 Derrida, Jacques  262, 267, 274 Diani, Marco  165 Diário de poesia  16, 229, 230, 238, 243–246, 249, 250 Diário do Rio de Janeiro  59 diaspora  303, 306, 309, 315, 319, 321 Dickens, Charles  54, 59, 198, 199 Dickinson, Emily  239, 240, 263 Diodorus  213 Diop, Cheikh Anta  14–15, 209–227 Dirty War  232 Dizdar, Mak  307, 311, 312, 313, 314



domestication  194, 199, 207 Donne, John  264 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor  202 Drummond de Andrade, Carlos  236, 238, 239, 241, 271 Dryden, John  8 Du Bois, W. E. B.  225, 226 Duraković  314 Dutch  56, 57, 65, 68, 321 E Éboué, Eugénie  217 Éboué, Félix  217 Ecclesiastical Library  108 Eclesiastes  270 Eco, Umberto  262, 268 Edinburgh Review  44 editors  1, 21, 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 97, 101, 110, 112, 117, 118, 121, 141, 164, 183, 192, 195, 235, 310, 312, 314, 316, 317, 319, 320 Einstein  15, 212, 217, 222 Ekrem, Recaizade Mahmud  137 Eliot, George  91–92, 97 Eliot, T. S.  235, 236, 252, 263 Éluard, Paul  236, 238, 239, 241, 263 Elytis  239 Engestrom and Miettinen  304 Eskelinen, Martta  202 Español, El  35 ethics  169, 191, 206 European Library  109 Even-Zohar, Itamar  133–136, 154, 156, 158, 164 Evin, Ö. Ahmet  138, 158 F Faulkner, William  13, 236, 248 Faustino, Mario  265 Fedin, Konstantin  202, 203 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence  244 Ferry, David  244 Feuillet, Octave  87, 89, 140, 146 FirstSearch  307 Fleming, Brendan  87, 90, 97–98, 100, 102 Fondebrider, Jorge  244, 245

Index 333

foreignization  15, 194, 197, 233, 238 Forster Act  87 Forster, E. M.  235, 248 Foz, Clara  13 França, Jean Marcel Carvalho  52, 60 France, Anatole  195, 198 Frenssen, Gustav  197 Frobenius  217 Frondizi, Arturo  232 Fuentes, Carlos  236 Fukuzawa, Yukichi  2, 10, 63–83 Futurism  261, 262 G Gabinete de Leitura  53, 59 Gaboriau, Émile  89 Galaxias  258 Galibert, L.  46, 48 Game Theory  13 García de Sena, Manuel  34 García Helder, Daniel  245 García Márquez, Gabriel  236 gate-keepers  10, 13, 231, 248 gauchesca  233 Gelman, Juan  234, 242, 243, 249 Genesis  270 Genet, Jean  236 Gentleman’s Magazine  112 Gentzler, Edwin  12, 304 Geração de 45  257, 261, 263 Giddens, Anthony  190 Gide, André  236 Gil, Gilberto  275 Ginsberg, Allen  243, 244 Girri, Alberto  233, 235 Gissing, George  91 Godard, Barbara  13, 191 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  111, 113, 118, 141, 142, 170, 172, 179, 180, 246, 263, 267, 269 Goffman, Erving  305 Goffman’s Social Game Theory  301, 305 Gogol, Nikolay  195, 202, 205 Goldsmith, Oliver  195 Gomes Machado, Lourival  262 Goncharov, Ivan  202, 203

Góngora  268 González Tuñon, Raúl  242 goods and products  298 Google  308 Göpferich  320 Gorky, Maxim  195, 202, 203 Gouanvic, Jean-Marc  13 Grahn, Judy  244 Grammont, Count de  116, 117 Grande Sertão: Veredas  270 Greenblatt, Stephen  6, 10, 229, 230, 246 Gréville, Henry (pseud. Alice Durand)  89 Griaule, Marcel  213 Grünewald, Jose Lino  265 Gruss, Irene  243 Guevara, Che  232 Guimarães Rosas  270, 271 Guinizzelli, Guido  264 Günyol, Vedat  184 H H. D.  244 Hardy, Thomas  91 Harraden, Beatrice  198 Harsent, David  314, 315, 320 Hayyam, Omar  141 Heidegger  10 Heinemann  4–5 Henry VIII  6–7 Herodotus  213, 215, 216, 218, 220, 227 heterogeneous community  306 Hickie, William James  115 Hirayama, Yō  76–77, 79–80 Hölderlin  263, 269 Hollo, J. A.  203 Holton, Brian  313, 314 Holz, Arno  267 Homburger, Lille  213 Homer  101, 271 Hopkins, Gerald Manley  258 Horace  111, 212, 223, 271, 287, 291, 293 Howe, Susan  244 Hozo, Dževad  313 Hughes, Langston  236 Hugo, Victor  140 Huidobras  238

334 Agents of Translation

Huidobro, Vicente  238 Hungarian  321 I Ibsen, Henrik  4 identity  3, 4, 6, 19, 20, 31, 53, 57, 58, 122, 150, 163, 214, 217, 220, 223, 226, 231, 233, 242, 247, 248, 250, 272, 306, 322 Iessiênin  267 Igarashi, Hitoshi  5 Index Translationum  307 indirect translation  296 Infante, Cabrera  268 İnönü, İsmet  177, 181, 182 interference  57, 100, 193, 194, 232, 285, 294 intermediary texts  292, 294 International Association for Translation and Interpreting Studies (IATIS)  16 intervention  134, 174, 249, 250, 251, 271, 279, 281, 286, 295, 296, 297, 298 Ivo, Lêdo  261 J Jakobson, Roman  260, 261, 267, 274 Jalava, Antti  200–201 James, Henry  235 Jeffreys, Dr.  210 Jew; Jewish  233, 319 Joliot-Curie  216, 217 Jones and Arsenijević  306, 307, 322 Jones, K.  47–48, 50, 60 Jornal do Comércio  59 Joyce, James  10, 253, 264, 266 K Kalima, Jalo  202 Karadžić, Radovan  302 Karadžić, Vuk  301 Kavafis  271 Keats, John  258 Kelly, Walter K.  114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121, 125 Kemal, Namık  137 Kerouac, Jack  244 Khliébnikov  267

Kilkerry, Pedro  264, 272 Kilpi, Volter  197 Kivi, Aleksis  205 Kock, Paul de  140, 146, 147 Konkka, Juhani  14, 192, 193, 201–206 Korolenko, Vladimir  196 Koskinen, Kaisa  191 Krohn, Aune  206 Krohn, Helmi  206 Kubitschek, President Juscelino  264 Kylliäinen, Antti  199 L Laertinius, Diogenes  220 Lagrimal trifuca, El  243 land agitation in Ireland  97, 100 Lane-Mercier, Gillian  13 Langevin, Paul  217, 223 Latour, Bruno  9, 11, 304 Lawrence, T. E.  236 Le Goff, Jacques  162, 174 Lefevere, André  3, 5, 47, 72, 113–115, 122–125, 147, 164, 190, 192, 197, 280, 295, 296 Legman, G.  88 Leroi-Gourdan, André  213 Leskelä-Kärki, Maarit  206 Lettre aux Espagnols-Américains  14, 19, 21, 28 Levertov, Denise  244 Lezama Lima  268 Li Po  268 Lispector, Clarice  10 location  242, 245, 309, 310, 312, 313, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321 Louis XIV  3 Lucian  220 Ludmer, Josefina  233 Lugones  239 M MacDonald, Kevin C.  226, 227 Macedonian  306 Macedonio  243 Machado de Assis  261 MacKenzie, Compton  91 Mahmutćehajić  306, 313, 314 Maiakovski  267

Make it new  259, 272 Mallarmé  10, 266, 267, 268 Malraux, André  236 Marcabru  264 Marcellinus, Ammianus  220 Marlowe, Christopher  89 Marvell, Andrew  264 Marx, Karl  190 Matos, Gregório de  272, 273 Maupassant, Guy de  4, 99 Mazrui, Ali  225 McGill University  13 Medici  3 Meiji Restoration  65, 66 Meireles, Cecilia  236 Menard  239, 240 Mendes, Murilo  236, 241 Mendes, Oscar  261 Menem, Carlos  232 Meschonnic, Henri  9, 270 Mevlana  170, 172–173, 177, 178, 181, 186 Mevlevi Order  166–170, 177, 185, 186 Meylaerts, Reine  9 Michaux  239 Midhat, Ahmed  15, 131–159 Mier, Servando Teresa de  34 Milton, John  133, 154, 158, 191 Minerva Brasiliense  59 Miranda, Francisco  10, 19–42 Mirror, The  44 Mobili, Jorge  238, 239, 253 Mondrian  262 Monegal, Emir Rodriguez  262 Montale Eugenio  236 Monteiro Lobato, Jose Bento   5, 10, 15 Montepin, Xavier de  140 Montparnasse, Kiki de  243 Moore Marianne  236 Moore, George  86, 89, 91, 94, 97, 100 Moore, Marianne  244 Moraes Vinicius de  236 moral authority  86–87, 90 Morgenstern, Christian  267 Morkot, Robert G.  211, 212, 221, 222, 227 Mudie, Charles E.  86, 91 Muir  236



Mulhallen  318 multi-poet  309, 316 Munday, Jeremy  101 Münif Paşa  138, 156 Murena, Héctor  233 Museo Universal  53–54 N Nabizade, Nazım  137 Nabokov, Vladimir  236 Nana  92–94, 96–99, 101 Nariño, Antonio  33 National Vigilance Association (N.V.A.)  86, 97–99, 101 nationalist  319 Navarre, Marguerite de; Heptameron  107, 113, 115 Necib, Asım  141 Negroni, Maria  244 Nesin, Aziz  5 networks  301–325 New Historicism  6 New Monthly Magazine  44–45 Niedecker, Lorine  244 Niterói  59 Njoya  210 Noël  119, 124 Noigandres  261, 262 norms  8, 9, 86, 90, 92, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108, 116, 117, 143, 162, 163, 189, 190, 191, 206, 282, 284, 285, 286, 289, 294, 295 Nott, John  120, 121, 126 Nouss, Alexis  13 Nygaard, William  5 O Ó Dochartaigh  307 O’Hara Frank  244 Ocampo Victoria  16, 229, 235–238 Ocampo, Silvina  16, 233, 235, 236 Odorico Mendes  271 Ohnet, Georges  89 Oppen, George  44 orthography  199, 204 Ortiz, Juan L.  243 Osti  315 Ottoni, Jose Eloi  270 Ovid  27, 114, 123, 124, 271

Index 335

Oxford History of Literary Translation into English  107 Özön, Mustafa Nihat  132, 159 Öztuna, Yılmaz  170–171 P paideuma  263, 264, 266, 267 Paker, Saliha  10, 132, 135, 137, 142, 146, 156, 157, 158, 159 Paley, Grace  244 Pallares-Burke, M. L.  46, 48 Panova, Vera  202, 203 Paolera, Felix della  236, 238 Parker, M.  45, 61 Parmenides  271 Pasternak, Boris  239, 267 Patron; patronage  1, 2, 3, 5, 133, 161, 164, 178, 191, 197 Pavese  239 payadores  233 Payne, John  115, 116 Paz, Octavio  262, 268 Peirce, C. S.  259 Peitieu, Guilhem de  264 Penguin Modern Classics  5 Perlongher, Néstor  243 Perón Juan Domingo  232, 241 Perón, Eva  241 Peronismo  232 Persius  271 Pessoa, Fernando  239, 261 Peter Pan  5, 10, 15 Petrarch  6, 7, 8 Petronius  107, 113, 114, 117, 118, 123 Pezzoni, Enrique  235 Phaedrus  112 Philological and Philosophical Library  108 Pickwick Papers  54–55 Piglia, Ricardo  246 Pignatari, Décio  257, 258, 261, 263, 265, 274 players  13, 21, 301, 305, 313, 317, 320, 321 Poe, Edgar Allan  260, 261 Poesía Buenos Aires  229, 230, 238–242, 243, 248, 250 Ponge, Francis  236 Poole, J.  49, 59 Poole, Stanley Lane  116

popular theatre  288 Portebois, Yannick  87, 92, 101 positionality  303, 309, 320, 321 Pot-Bouille  93–94, 96, 99 Pound, Ezra  10, 244, 249, 259, 265, 266, 271 prefaces  191, 204 preliminary norms  206, 286 print journals  307 private case  87–88, 103 public service theatre  281, 284, 292 publishers  4, 5, 8, 191–206, 274, 301–322 Punch  112–113 purism  194 Pushkin, Alexander  195 Pym, Anthony  163, 190, 191, 280 Q Qohélet  270 Quasimodo, Salvatore  236 Queen vs. Hicklin  97–98 Quevedo  268 R Rabelais  94, 115, 117 Racine, Jean  141, 142, 144 Radical Civic Party  232 Radical Civic Union  232 Rado, Şevket  132, 159 Raine  236 Rakosi, Carl  244 Rasim, Ahmed  141 Raven, The  261 Read, Herbert  236 reception  4, 5, 6, 101, 163, 198, 199, 281, 282, 285, 288, 291, 295, 296, 297 recreation  12, 259, 260 Redondo, Victor  243 Regency  52, 56 Remuneration; fees  99, 194, 200, 204, 205–206, 252 Repertorio Americano, El  38 representation  4, 13, 62, 64, 67, 70, 72, 78–79, 80–81, 220, 236, 248, 266

336 Agents of Translation

Republican People’s Party  171, 181, 182 researcher bias  307 retranslating; retranslations  200, 202, 203, 204, 207 Reuter, Fritz  198 Reverdy  238, 239 Revista Nacional e Estrangeira  51, 59 Revue Britannique  14, 43–44, 46–51, 53–54, 56, 58–61 Rexroth, Kenneth  244 Reznikoff, Charles  244 Rich, Adrienne  244 Riđanović, Midhat  313 Rilke, Rainer Maria  243, 258 Rimbaud, Arthur  239, 240, 258, 263, 265 Robinson, Douglas  191 Rochester, Earl  8 Roscio, Juan Germán  34 Rosenberg, Mirta  244, 245 Rosenthal Mirta  247 Rousseau, Madeleine  218 Rulfo, Juan  236 Rushdie, Salman  3, 8, 13 Russian semiotics  274 S Sabri, Hüseyin  141 Sackville-West, Vita  236 Sager, Juan  1 Sakamoto, Rumi  73, 78, 79 Şahabeddin, Cenab  141, 157 Samoilovich, Daniel  16, 229, 243–246 Sappho  271 Sarajevo  302, 316, 319, 322 Sarduy, Severo  262, 268 Sartre Jean-Paul  10, 236 Satanic Verses  13 Saulnier, L.  46–47 Sayar, Ahmet Güner  169, 181 Schanaiderman, Boris  267 Schiller  102, 109, 110, 113 Schwarz, Luis  13 Schwitters, Kurt  267 Scientific and Antiquarian Libraries  108 Scots  314 Şemseddin, Sami  137, 139

Senghor, Léopold Cédar  217, 218, 227 Serb  306 Serbia  318 Serbian  301, 319 Serbo-Croat  322 Servant’s Magazine  44 Sevük, İsmail Habib  139, 159 Sexton, Anne  244, 246 Shakespeare, William  3, 6, 87, 114, 116, 141, 142, 179, 241, 253, 279, 280, 283, 284, 286, 290, 294, 295 Shapiro Karl  236 Shaw, Ian  225, 226, 227 Shirvanzade, Alexander  203 Siculus, Diodonus  220 Sidran, Abdulah  322 Silva Ramos, Péricles Eugenio da  261 Silva, João Manuel Pereira da  51, 59 Silva, Joaquim Norberto de Sousa e  56–57, 60 Silva, Josino do Nascimento  51, 59 Simeoni, Daniel  8, 9, 163 Simić, Amela  315, 320 Simic, Charles  244 Simić, Goran  307, 315, 316, 320, 321 Simon, Sherry  13 Şinasi, İbrahim  138 single-dead-poet  309, 311, 312, 320 single-living-poet  309, 314 Sitwell, Edith  236, 263 Slovenian  306 Smith, Samuel  98 Social Game Theory  304 Söderström, Werner  201 Song of Songs  270 Sor Juana de la Cruz  268 source-poet  319 Sousândrade  264, 272 South Atlantic War  232 Southampton, Earl of  3 Soyinka, Wole  3 Spanish Civil War  241 Speirs, Dorothy  87, 91, 93, 102

Speirs, Dorothy and Yannick Portebois  102 Spender, Stephen  236 Standard Library  107 Stegagno-Picchio, Luciana  262 Stein, Gertrude  258 Stevens, Wallace  236, 239, 240, 244 Stockhausen  262 Strabo  218, 220 Stramm, August  267 Sue, Eugène  140 Suffolk, Duke of  6 Suomalainen, Samuli  14, 193–200, 205–206 Suppanen, Aatto  200–201 Sur  16, 229, 230, 232, 235–238, 242, 248, 250 Surrey, Earl of  6 Süssekind, F.  58, 61 Swift, Jonathan  195 T Tanpınar, Ahmed Hamdi  132, 135, 139, 140, 159, 170 Tansel, Fevziye Abdullah  132, 159 Tanzimat  10, 131–159 Tatius, Achilles  220 téléscopage  95–96 téléscopage and censorship  96 Tendryakov, Vladimir  203 Tercüme  179, 181 Terence  112 Terre (la)  92–94, 96–98, 101 Tevfik Fikret  172 Theuriet, André  87, 92 Thomas, Dylan  235, 236, 263 Todorov  274 Tolstoy, Leo  195, 203 Toury, Gideon  8, 100, 136, 145, 154, 156, 158, 159, 164, 189, 190, 206, 303 Tower of Babel  270 Transblanco  268 transcreation  12, 259, 269 Translation Bureau  14, 161, 162, 171, 175, 177, 178–181, 183–184 translumination  269 Tropicalia  264, 275 Tsvietáieva, Maria  267



Turgenev, Ivan  195, 198, 203 Turkish Humanism  176, 179, 180 Tymoczko, Maria  12, 303, 304, 320 Tzara  239, 241 U Ulunay, Refi Cevad  181 Ünaydın, Ruşen Eşref  170 Ungaretti, Giuseppe  236, 239 University of Essex  13 Uriburu, Jose F.  232 V Valéry, Paul  235, 236, 258, 260 Vargas Llosa, Mario  236 Vargas, Getúlio  10, 15 Veblen, Thorstein  233 Veloso, Caetano  275 Venuti, Lawrence  247, 304, 306, 320 Vergara, José María  34 Verlaine, Paul  263 Verne, Jules  195, 198, 199 Vieira, Else  12 Village Institutes  161, 162, 171, 175, 178, 184

Index 337

Virgil  271 Viscardo y Guzmán, Juan Pablo  14, 19, 21 visibility  3, 5, 112, 191, 247, 310 Vizetelly, Ernest  92, 94, 97, 99–100, 102 Vizetelly, Henry  5, 9, 15, 85–105, 113 Volney, Count Constantin de 215, 216, 227

Williams, William Carlos  244, 249 Woodsworth, Judith  13 Woolf, Virginia  235–236, 248 Woolgar, Steven  11 Wright, Richard  218 Wyatt, Sir Thomas  6–8

W Wadensjö, Cecilia  305 Wang Wei  268 war  15, 21, 23, 47, 64, 65, 69, 76, 77, 79, 102, 149, 166, 168, 169, 181, 182, 201, 232, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 243, 248, 249, 251, 252, 288, 301–325 Webern  262 Weissbort, Daniel  307 Wells, H. G.  91, 195 Weltliteratur  267 Whitman, Walt  244 Wilbur, Richard  244 Wilcock, J. R.  233, 236 Williams, Tennessee  244

Y Yasukawa, Junosuke  64, 76 Yrigoyen, Hipolito  232 Yücel Eronat, Canan  167, 176 Yücel, Can  167 Yücel, Hasan-Âli  5, 19, 14, 161, 162, 165–186 Yugoslav  303, 306, 307, 319 Yugoslavia  302, 306, 309, 321

X Xul  243

Z Zeami  268 Zola, Émile  9, 86–102, 113, 140, 142 Zona  243 Zschokke, Heinrich  198 Zukofsky, Louis  244

Benjamins Translation Library A complete list of titles in this series can be found on www.benjamins.com 84 Monacelli, Claudia: Self-Preservation in Simultaneous Interpreting. Surviving the role. Expected April 2009 83 Torikai, Kumiko: Voices of the Invisible Presence. Diplomatic interpreters in post-World War II Japan. 2009. x, 197 pp. 82 Beeby, Allison, Patricia Rodríguez Inés and Pilar Sánchez-Gijón (eds.): Corpus Use and Translating. Corpus use for learning to translate and learning corpus use to translate. x, 151 pp. + index. Expected February 2009 81 Milton, John and Paul Bandia (eds.): Agents of Translation. 2009. vi, 337 pp. 80 Hansen, Gyde, Andrew Chesterman and Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast (eds.): Efforts and Models in Interpreting and Translation Research. A tribute to Daniel Gile. 2009. ix, 302 pp. 79 Yuste Rodrigo, Elia (ed.): Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation. 2008. xii, 220 pp. 78 Chiaro, Delia, Christine Heiss and Chiara Bucaria (eds.): Between Text and Image. Updating research in screen translation. 2008. x, 292 pp. 77 Díaz Cintas, Jorge (ed.): The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation. 2008. xii, 263 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 76 Valero-Garcés, Carmen and Anne Martin (eds.): Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting. Definitions and dilemmas. 2008. xii, 291 pp. 75 Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Daniel Simeoni (eds.): Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies. Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury. 2008. xii, 417 pp. 74 Wolf, Michaela and Alexandra Fukari (eds.): Constructing a Sociology of Translation. 2007. vi, 226 pp. 73 Gouadec, Daniel: Translation as a Profession. 2007. xvi, 396 pp. 72 Gambier, Yves, Miriam Shlesinger and Radegundis Stolze (eds.): Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies. Selected contributions from the EST Congress, Lisbon 2004. 2007. xii, 362 pp. [EST Subseries 4] 71 St-Pierre, Paul and Prafulla C. Kar (eds.): In Translation – Reflections, Refractions, Transformations. 2007. xvi, 313 pp. 70 Wadensjö, Cecilia, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova and Anna-Lena Nilsson (eds.): The Critical Link 4. Professionalisation of interpreting in the community. Selected papers from the 4th International Conference on Interpreting in Legal, Health and Social Service Settings, Stockholm, Sweden, 20-23 May 2004. 2007. x, 314 pp. 69 Delabastita, Dirk, Lieven D’hulst and Reine Meylaerts (eds.): Functional Approaches to Culture and Translation. Selected papers by José Lambert. 2006. xxviii, 226 pp. 68 Duarte, João Ferreira, Alexandra Assis Rosa and Teresa Seruya (eds.): Translation Studies at the Interface of Disciplines. 2006. vi, 207 pp. 67 Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Zuzana Jettmarová (eds.): Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting. 2006. viii, 255 pp. 66 Snell-Hornby, Mary: The Turns of Translation Studies. New paradigms or shifting viewpoints? 2006. xi, 205 pp. 65 Doherty, Monika: Structural Propensities. Translating nominal word groups from English into German. 2006. xxii, 196 pp. 64 Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta: Expertise and Explicitation in the Translation Process. 2005. xx, 295 pp. 63 Janzen, Terry (ed.): Topics in Signed Language Interpreting. Theory and practice. 2005. xii, 362 pp. 62 Pokorn, Nike K.: Challenging the Traditional Axioms. Translation into a non-mother tongue. 2005. xii, 166 pp. [EST Subseries 3] 61 Hung, Eva (ed.): Translation and Cultural Change. Studies in history, norms and image-projection. 2005. xvi, 195 pp. 60 Tennent, Martha (ed.): Training for the New Millennium. Pedagogies for translation and interpreting. 2005. xxvi, 276 pp. 59 Malmkjær, Kirsten (ed.): Translation in Undergraduate Degree Programmes. 2004. vi, 202 pp. 58 Branchadell, Albert and Lovell Margaret West (eds.): Less Translated Languages. 2005. viii, 416 pp.

57 Chernov, Ghelly V.: Inference and Anticipation in Simultaneous Interpreting. A probability-prediction model. Edited with a critical foreword by Robin Setton and Adelina Hild. 2004. xxx, 268 pp. [EST Subseries 2] 56 Orero, Pilar (ed.): Topics in Audiovisual Translation. 2004. xiv, 227 pp. 55 Angelelli, Claudia V.: Revisiting the Interpreter’s Role. A study of conference, court, and medical interpreters in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. 2004. xvi, 127 pp. 54 González Davies, Maria: Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom. Activities, tasks and projects. 2004. x, 262 pp. 53 Diriker, Ebru: De-/Re-Contextualizing Conference Interpreting. Interpreters in the Ivory Tower? 2004. x, 223 pp. 52 Hale, Sandra: The Discourse of Court Interpreting. Discourse practices of the law, the witness and the interpreter. 2004. xviii, 267 pp. 51 Chan, Leo Tak-hung: Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory. Modes, issues and debates. 2004. xvi, 277 pp. 50 Hansen, Gyde, Kirsten Malmkjær and Daniel Gile (eds.): Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies. Selected contributions from the EST Congress, Copenhagen 2001. 2004. xiv, 320 pp. [EST Subseries 1] 49 Pym, Anthony: The Moving Text. Localization, translation, and distribution. 2004. xviii, 223 pp. 48 Mauranen, Anna and Pekka Kujamäki (eds.): Translation Universals. Do they exist? 2004. vi, 224 pp. 47 Sawyer, David B.: Fundamental Aspects of Interpreter Education. Curriculum and Assessment. 2004. xviii, 312 pp. 46 Brunette, Louise, Georges Bastin, Isabelle Hemlin and Heather Clarke (eds.): The Critical Link 3. Interpreters in the Community. Selected papers from the Third International Conference on Interpreting in Legal, Health and Social Service Settings, Montréal, Quebec, Canada 22–26 May 2001. 2003. xii, 359 pp. 45 Alves, Fabio (ed.): Triangulating Translation. Perspectives in process oriented research. 2003. x, 165 pp. 44 Singerman, Robert: Jewish Translation History. A bibliography of bibliographies and studies. With an introductory essay by Gideon Toury. 2002. xxxvi, 420 pp. 43 Garzone, Giuliana and Maurizio Viezzi (eds.): Interpreting in the 21st Century. Challenges and opportunities. 2002. x, 337 pp. 42 Hung, Eva (ed.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4. Building bridges. 2002. xii, 243 pp. 41 Nida, Eugene A.: Contexts in Translating. 2002. x, 127 pp. 40 Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta and Kenneth Hyltenstam (eds.): Language Processing and Simultaneous Interpreting. Interdisciplinary perspectives. 2000. xvi, 164 pp. 39 Chesterman, Andrew, Natividad Gallardo San Salvador and Yves Gambier (eds.): Translation in Context. Selected papers from the EST Congress, Granada 1998. 2000. x, 393 pp. 38 Schäffner, Christina and Beverly Adab (eds.): Developing Translation Competence. 2000. xvi, 244 pp. 37 Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja and Riitta Jääskeläinen (eds.): Tapping and Mapping the Processes of Translation and Interpreting. Outlooks on empirical research. 2000. x, 176 pp. 36 Schmid, Monika S.: Translating the Elusive. Marked word order and subjectivity in English-German translation. 1999. xii, 174 pp. 35 Somers, Harold (ed.): Computers and Translation. A translator's guide. 2003. xvi, 351 pp. 34 Gambier, Yves and Henrik Gottlieb (eds.): (Multi) Media Translation. Concepts, practices, and research. 2001. xx, 300 pp. 33 Gile, Daniel, Helle V. Dam, Friedel Dubslaff, Bodil Martinsen and Anne Schjoldager (eds.): Getting Started in Interpreting Research. Methodological reflections, personal accounts and advice for beginners. 2001. xiv, 255 pp. 32 Beeby, Allison, Doris Ensinger and Marisa Presas (eds.): Investigating Translation. Selected papers from the 4th International Congress on Translation, Barcelona, 1998. 2000. xiv, 296 pp. 31 Roberts, Roda P., Silvana E. Carr, Diana Abraham and Aideen Dufour (eds.): The Critical Link 2: Interpreters in the Community. Selected papers from the Second International Conference on Interpreting in legal, health and social service settings, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 19–23 May 1998. 2000. vii, 316 pp. 30 Dollerup, Cay: Tales and Translation. The Grimm Tales from Pan-Germanic narratives to shared international fairytales. 1999. xiv, 384 pp.

29 Wilss, Wolfram: Translation and Interpreting in the 20th Century. Focus on German. 1999. xiii, 256 pp. 28 Setton, Robin: Simultaneous Interpretation. A cognitive-pragmatic analysis. 1999. xvi, 397 pp. 27 Beylard-Ozeroff, Ann, Jana Králová and Barbara Moser-Mercer (eds.): Translators' Strategies and Creativity. Selected Papers from the 9th International Conference on Translation and Interpreting, Prague, September 1995. In honor of Jiří Levý and Anton Popovič. 1998. xiv, 230 pp. 26 Trosborg, Anna (ed.): Text Typology and Translation. 1997. xvi, 342 pp. 25 Pollard, David E. (ed.): Translation and Creation. Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918. 1998. vi, 336 pp. 24 Orero, Pilar and Juan C. Sager (eds.): The Translator's Dialogue. Giovanni Pontiero. 1997. xiv, 252 pp. 23 Gambier, Yves, Daniel Gile and Christopher Taylor (eds.): Conference Interpreting: Current Trends in Research. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interpreting: What do we know and how? 1997. iv, 246 pp. 22 Chesterman, Andrew: Memes of Translation. The spread of ideas in translation theory. 1997. vii, 219 pp. 21 Bush, Peter and Kirsten Malmkjær (eds.): Rimbaud's Rainbow. Literary translation in higher education. 1998. x, 200 pp. 20 Snell-Hornby, Mary, Zuzana Jettmarová and Klaus Kaindl (eds.): Translation as Intercultural Communication. Selected papers from the EST Congress, Prague 1995. 1997. x, 354 pp. 19 Carr, Silvana E., Roda P. Roberts, Aideen Dufour and Dini Steyn (eds.): The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community. Papers from the 1st international conference on interpreting in legal, health and social service settings, Geneva Park, Canada, 1–4 June 1995. 1997. viii, 322 pp. 18 Somers, Harold (ed.): Terminology, LSP and Translation. Studies in language engineering in honour of Juan C. Sager. 1996. xii, 250 pp. 17 Poyatos, Fernando (ed.): Nonverbal Communication and Translation. New perspectives and challenges in literature, interpretation and the media. 1997. xii, 361 pp. 16 Dollerup, Cay and Vibeke Appel (eds.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3. New Horizons. Papers from the Third Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, 1995. 1996. viii, 338 pp. 15 Wilss, Wolfram: Knowledge and Skills in Translator Behavior. 1996. xiii, 259 pp. 14 Melby, Alan K. and Terry Warner: The Possibility of Language. A discussion of the nature of language, with implications for human and machine translation. 1995. xxvi, 276 pp. 13 Delisle, Jean and Judith Woodsworth (eds.): Translators through History. 1995. xvi, 346 pp. 12 Bergenholtz, Henning and Sven Tarp (eds.): Manual of Specialised Lexicography. The preparation of specialised dictionaries. 1995. 256 pp. 11 Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet: Comparative Stylistics of French and English. A methodology for translation. Translated and edited by Juan C. Sager and M.-J. Hamel. 1995. xx, 359 pp. 10 Kussmaul, Paul: Training the Translator. 1995. x, 178 pp. 9 Rey, Alain: Essays on Terminology. Translated by Juan C. Sager. With an introduction by Bruno de Bessé. 1995. xiv, 223 pp. 8 Gile, Daniel: Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training. 1995. xvi, 278 pp. 7 Beaugrande, Robert de, Abdullah Shunnaq and Mohamed Helmy Heliel (eds.): Language, Discourse and Translation in the West and Middle East. 1994. xii, 256 pp. 6 Edwards, Alicia B.: The Practice of Court Interpreting. 1995. xiii, 192 pp. 5 Dollerup, Cay and Annette Lindegaard (eds.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 2. Insights, aims and visions. Papers from the Second Language International Conference Elsinore, 1993. 1994. viii, 358 pp. 4 Toury, Gideon: Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond. 1995. viii, 312 pp. 3 Lambert, Sylvie and Barbara Moser-Mercer (eds.): Bridging the Gap. Empirical research in simultaneous interpretation. 1994. 362 pp. 2 Snell-Hornby, Mary, Franz Pöchhacker and Klaus Kaindl (eds.): Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline. Selected papers from the Translation Studies Congress, Vienna, 1992. 1994. xii, 438 pp. 1 Sager, Juan C.: Language Engineering and Translation. Consequences of automation. 1994. xx, 345 pp.