Translation and Acting
What these “scripted disciplines” have in common
I’ve always known that translation is innately derivative work. In other words, a translation simply cannot exist independently of the source material from which it is translated. However, it’s slowly starting to sink in that there are disciplines and careers which are also “scripted,” just like translation.
Consider acting. Even if the most skilled actor throws the immense weight of his heart and soul behind a spectacular performance, some of what he portrayed was not his. Sure, maybe he can improvise and thus make his acting personal—but at the end of the day, no one can deny that the words he spoke were not his. Those belong to the screenwriter, or perhaps the author of the book upon which that movie was based. Thus, while the actor does get credit for breathing life into the words, his performance was ultimately derivative.
Translation is, of course, the same way. The translator’s job is to render what has been conveyed in one language into another, preferably as neatly as possible. An exercise like this involves, by definition, creating something that is derivative of something that preceded it.
How much freedom does the translator have in performing his task? In other words, how beholden is he to the source text? It depends on how comfortable he is with exercising poetic license—but that itself is a fine line to walk. If he gets too liberal in his rendition, he might be accused of doing less translation and more interpretation. This is the sort of criticism that Edward Fitzgerald’s “translation” of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat has received over the years.
I suppose there’s nothing inherently wrong with this practice, but it’s a different exercise that yields a fundamentally different result: translation produces a result is largely faithful to the source text, while interpretation doesn’t always do this.
There are certainly other pursuits that are scripted in some way. Poetry, novels, and paintings tend to be based on an idea, another person’s work, or some sort of inspiration. Singers often sing other peoples’ words. Where is the originality in this largely derivative world?
Perhaps it’s the creator’s brand that gives his or her creation that tinge of originality—the novelist’s diction, the painter’s technique, the actor’s range of genuine emotion. So, too, is the case with translation. The source text is fixed, permanent and unchanging—but the possibilities for rendering it into another language are limitless. One need look no further than Tolstoy’s immortal Anna Karenina, which has been translated into English 11 times since its original publication in 1877. The most recent of these translations, by Marian Schwartz, is being published later this year. It looks like the limitless affordances of language are allowing people to continue to unearth still-latent subtleties in these classic texts. Each and every one of these is a unique contribution, with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Perhaps this is the balance: that there is nothing totally original or totally derivative. Rather, it might be that most creative pursuits in this world require constant adjustment of these scales to strike that genuinely real chord. Maybe this is how we can bring things into this world that are at once inspired but also unique.
