A REVIEW OF THE SPEECH ON THE ART OF TRANSLATION MERVE ŞENOL ÖZDEMİR

On the Art of Translation is originally a speech delivered by Hugo Friedrich on July 24, 1965 in Heidelberg, which was reprinted by Carl Winter Universitätsverlag in 1965. Hugo Friedrich, theorist of German literature, is known for his studies and works on French literature, and his essay on modern poetry has brought him international fame.

On the Art of Translation, translated into English by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, focuses on literary translation and different approaches to the notion of literary translation throughout history. The first aspect of literary translation that Hugo Friedrich touches upon is the reality of untranslatability from one language to another in terms of boundaries that exist between languages.

TYPES OF UNTRANSLATABILITY Catford distinguishes two types of untranslatability: linguistic and cultural. “On the linguistic level, untranslatability occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the target language for a source language item” (Bassnett, 2002). In Catford’s terms cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the target culture of a relevant situational feature for the source language text.

Hugo Friedrich, on the other hand, urges mostly upon linguistic untranslatability in his speech as he goes on saying that “translators find themselves constantly restricted by those language boundaries and by the pressing necessity to remain, as closely as possible, faithful to the original text” (Friedrich, 1965). Regarding untranslatability, Popovic, who also distinguished two types of untranslatability without making a separation between the linguistic and the cultural, defined untranslatability as follows (cited in Bassnett, 2002):

A situation in which the linguistic elements of the original cannot be replaced adequately in structural, linear, functional or semantic terms in consequence of a lack of denotation or connotation. and A situation where the relation of expressing the meaning, i.e. the relation between the creative subject and its linguistic expression in the original does not find an adequate linguistic expression in the translation.

Hugo Friedrich proceeds by asking some significant questions that he attempts to give answers to on the following pages. Some of these questions are “Is translation something that concerns the cultural interaction of an entire nation with another?, Does translation resurrect and revitalize a forgotten work, or does it just keep a work alive to satisfy tradition?, Do translators pay close attention to the differences inherent in languages or do they ignore them?

THE ROMANS Hugo Friedrich carries on with his speech by addressing the notion of literary translation in Europe, with translatorial actions carried out by the Romans in the name of strenghtening their literature and philosophy by the help of translating their Greek models.

Cicero put forward his approach to translating the speeches of Attic orators as follows (cited in Munday, 2001): And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or as one might say, the figures of ‘thought’, but in language which conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word- for-word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language.

Justifying his own translations by citing the authority of Cicero, St Justifying his own translations by citing the authority of Cicero, St. Jerome’s strategy towards translation was to render not word-for word, but sense-for-sense since a word-for-word translation cloaked the sense and meaning of the original by following so closely the form of the source text in the traget text. In short, it is not difficult to say that Cicero and St. Jerome, in their translations, reflected the general stylistic features and most importantly the meaning of the foreign words.

EIGTEENTH CENTURY APPROACHES On the later pages, we see that Friedrich moves on to the translation theory that emerged at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century. He progresses stating the German and French traditions by speaking of Diderot and D’Alembert in France and Schleirmacher and Humboldt in Germany, who discussed the matter in a systemic manner and placed it in a larger context of history and lingusitics.

Imitation, in translation theory, means the exact opposite of what it means in ordinary English. For translation theory, through linguistic history, imitation is “doing something totally different from the original author, wandering too far and too freely from the words and sense of the source language text” (Robinson, 1998(2001)). Imitation can be regarded same as Dryden’s third category sense-for-sense translation, imitation.

“D’Alembert commented extensively on translation difficulties, seeing imitation as a suitable basis for the act of translation” (Robinson, 1998(2001)). Imitation and adaptation should not be regarded as betrayal but as a means of adjusting the foreign work to suit contemporary tastes and linguistic elements of the target language.

In German tradition, the romantic concept of translation was systematically analysed by Friedrich Schleiermacher. “It was recognised that despite the lexical and syntactical differences between languages, an affinity existed among their internal structures” (Friedrich, 1965). For the art of translation, Schleiermacher and Humboldt established the norm of moving toward the original, perhaps even a changing into the foreign for the sake of its foreigness.

Accordingly, “Humboldt claimed that the creative stylistic power of the original had to become visible in the translation and that a stylistic transplantation fo the source language into the target language must take place” (cited in Friedrich, 1965).

Hugo Friedrich finishes by stressing the current practitioners of translation (1960s), who rarely follow the theories of Schleiermacher and Humboldt. These practitioners often elevate the stylistic features of the original text in translation instead of maintaining them. However, regarding the premise of Humboldt, if all the power comes from the original, then should we also accept the notion that the stylistic features of the translation must conform to those of the original even when the original text is written in an ordinary and lower-class style?