Observation on Systematic Synonym izing
The need to use another word in place of the more obvious, more simple, more neutral one (have- experience; go-walk; sweep-whip) may be called the syn-onymizing reflex-a reflex of nearly all translators. Having a great stock of synonyms is a feature of 'good style' virtuosity; if the word 'sadness' appears twice in the same paragraph of the original text, the translator, offended by the repetition (considered an attack on obligatory stylistic elegance), will be tempted to translate the second occurrence as 'melancholy.' But there's more: this need to synonymize is so deeply embedded in the translators soul that he will choose a synonym first off: he'll say 'melancholy' if the original text has 'sadness' and 'sadness' if the original has 'melancholy.'
We concede with no irony whatever: the translator's situation is extremely delicate: he must keep faith with the author and at the same time remain himself; what to do? He wants (consciously or unconsciously) to invest the text with his own creativity; as if to give himself heart, he chooses a word that does not obviously betray the author but still arises from his own initiative. I am noticing this right now as I look over the translation of a small text of mine: I write 'author,' and the translator translates it 'writer'; I write 'writer,' and he translates it 'novelist'; I write 'novelist,' and he translates it 'author'; where I say 'verse,' he says 'poetry'; where I say 'poetry,' he says 'poems.' Kafka says 'go,' the translators, 'walk.' Kafka says 'no element,' the translators: 'none of the
elements,' 'no longer anything,' 'not a single element.' This practice of synonymization seems innocent, but its systematic quality inevitably smudges the original idea. And besides, what the hell for? Why not say 'go' when the author says 'gehen'? O ye translators, do not sodonymize us!
Let's look at the verbs in the sentence: vergehen (went by-from the root gehen, go); haben (have); sich verir-ren (go astray); sein (be); haben; ersticken mussen (must suffocate); tun konnen (can do); gehen; sich verirren. Thus Kafka chooses the simplest, the most elementary verbs: go (twice), have (twice), go astray (twice), be, do, suffocate, must, can.
Translators tend to enrich the vocabulary: 'never ceased to experience' (for 'have'); 'thrust,' 'advance,' 'go a long way' (for 'be'); 'walk' (for 'go'); 'find' (for 'have').
(What terror the words 'be' and 'have' strike in all the translators in the world! They'll do anything to replace them with words they consider less routine.)
That tendency is also psychologically understandable: what can the translator get credit for? For fidelity to the authors style? That's exactly what the readers in the translator's country have no way of judging. On the other hand, the public will automatically see richness of vocabulary as a value, as a performance, a proof of the translator's mastery and competence.
Now, richness of vocabulary is not a value in itself. The breadth of the vocabulary depends on the aesthetic intention governing the work. Carlos Fuentes' vocabulary is nearly dizzying in its richness. But Hemingways is extremely narrow. The beauty of Fuentes' prose is bound up with richness, the beauty of Hemingway's with narrowness of vocabulary.
Kafka's vocabulary too is relatively restricted. That restriction has often been explained as one of Kafka's asceticisms. As his anti-aestheticism. As his indifference to beauty. Or as the cost exacted by Prague German, a language withering from being torn away from its popular roots. No one was willing to grant that this bareness of vocabulary expressed Kafka's aesthetic intention, that it was one of the distinctive marks of the beauty of his prose.
A General Remark on the Problem of Authority
For a translator, the supreme authority should be the author's personal style. But most translators obey another authority: that of the conventional version of 'good French' (or good German, good English, etc.), namely, the French (the German, etc.) we learn in school. The translator considers himself the ambassador from that authority to the foreign author. That is the error: every author of some value transgresses against 'good style,' and in that transgression lies the originality (and hence the raison d'etre) of his art. The translator's primary effort should be to understand that transgression. This is not difficult when it is obvi-
ous, as for example with Rabelais, or Joyce, or Celine. But there are authors whose transgression against 'good style' is subtle, barely visible, hidden, discreet; as such, it is not easy to grasp. In such a case, it is all the more important to do so.
Stunden (hours) occurs three times-repetition preserved in all three translations;
gemeinsamen (mutual) twice-repetition eliminated in all three translations;
sich verirren (go astray) twice-repetition preserved in all three translations;
die Fremde (strange) twice, and then once die Fremdheit (strangeness)-in Vialatte: 'a l'etranger' (abroad) once, 'strangeness' replaced by 'exile'; in David and in Lortholary: once 'foreign' (as an adjective) and once 'foreignness';
die Luft (the air) twice-repetition preserved by all three translators;
haben (have) twice-the repetition exists in only one of the translations;
weiter (farther) twice-this repetition is replaced in Vialatte by repetition of the word 'continue'; in David by the (weak) repetition of the word 'still'; in Lortholary, the repetition has disappeared;
gehen, vergehen (go, went by)-this repetition (admittedly difficult to preserve) has disappeared in all three translations.
In general, we see that translators (obeying their schoolteachers) tend to limit repetitions.
The Semantic Meaning of Repetition
Twice die Fremde, once die Fremdheit: with this repetition the author introduced into his text a term with the quality of a key notion, a concept. If the author develops a lengthy line of thought from this word, repeating the word is necessary from the semantic and logical viewpoint. Suppose that, in order to avoid repetition, a Heidegger translator were to render 'das Sein' once as 'being,' next as 'existence,' then as 'life,' then again as 'human life,' and finally as 'being- there.' Never knowing whether Heidegger is speaking of a single thing under different names or of different things, we would have not a scrupulously logical text but a mess. A novel's prose (I am speaking, of course, of novels worthy of the name) demands the same rigor (especially in meditative or metaphorical passages).
