Some translators have of course expressed strong personal identities. However, there must remain doubt as to whether their particularity was wholly compatible with the attaining of equivalence. Literary translating is the field where we usually find protests on this point. A few examples might suggest why.
In Robert Lowell's version of Rimbaud's poem 'Ma Bohème' (1969:87) we find the line:
Tom Thumb the dreamer, I was knocking off my coupled rhymes
This "I was", together with the addition of "coupled" (Rimbaud only mentions "rimes"),15 allows an informed reader to recall both the French poet's early poetic forms and Lowell's own prosodic practice, particularly the coupled rhymes used in his translation of Phèdre. And yet, if such connections are made, is the text still being read as a translation? Probably not, especially if we know that the psycho-erotic adjective "coupled" has been added, that Lowell is thus
speaking more in autobiographical than translational mode, and that the text appears in a volume called Imitations, the title of which expressly avoids the term "translation". Then again, for the reader unable or unwilling to attach value to any of that, perhaps this is a translation, and a particularly engaging translation at that.
Here we do not really have to decide such cases. We merely indicate the kinds of doubts that are raised and the ways they can be used to talk about the limits of translation. Here we are dealing with maxims that can be broken. As in Grice, the maxim of first-person displacement produces meaning through its transgression.
A similar case, commented by Susan Bassnett (1991:56–57), involves the following lines from Petrarca's sonnet CCLXIX:
Rotta è l'alta colonna e'l verde lauro
Che facean ombra al mio stanco pensero
[Broken is the tall column and the green laurel
That gave shade to my tired thought]
This was rendered by Wyatt as
The pillar pearished is whereto I lent
The strongest staye of myne unquyet mynde
Petrarca was lamenting the deaths of Cardinal Giovannio Colonna (“l'alta colonna") and of Laura (“il verde lauro"). According to Bassnett,
Wyatt's translation stresses the “I", and stresses also the strength and support
of what is lost. Whether the theory that would see this sonnet as written in
commemoration of the fall of Cromwell in 1540 is proven or not, it remains
clear that the translator has opted for a voice that will have immediate impact
on contemporary readers as being of their own time. (1991:57)
Thanks to play on the edge of representational maxims, translational discourse can include political use of literary allusion and still remain translational for those who do not grasp the allusion. This is akin to the way uncomfortable ideas can be expressed through pseudotranslations (ostensible translations for which there is no source text): "Don't blame me", says the subversive author expressing culpable thoughts, "I'm only the translator... go shoot Petrarca!" In fact, seen in this light, the existence of an actual source becomes of little importance. The purpose of much translation is precisely to import voices for ideas that cannot be expressed directly, in the same way as any management structure trying to introduce change will tend to bring in outside experts to give voice and authority to the innovation.
Let us accept that the operator "... translates as..." allows certain functional ambiguities with respect to the referentiality of first-person pronouns. This implies no more than a capacity to allow two reception strategies to activate the same pronoun in two contradictory ways. The "I" of the translation may refer to the source-text author (as we would normally expect) or it may refer to the author who, although the translation is signed as a translation, also has an authorial voice for whatever receiver is able to perceive it. So a translation may also be received as a non-translation. And no greater mysteries need lie therein.
上一篇：Overt Translation 显型翻译的概念
下一篇：Operational Model 操作模式概念
微信公众号搜索“译员”关注我们，每天为您推送翻译理论和技巧，外语学习及翻译招聘信息。