Based on Howell’s interview and the text, including the foreword and translator’s preface, do you see _Hagar before the Occupation/Hagar after the Occupation_ as a work of “thick translation”? What in the text or Howell’s interview informs your response?
Hi Adrienne,
ReplyDeleteI really think your question is a good one, and something I was thinking about as I was reading the Foreword, Preface, and the poems. My first instinct was to say no, Howell's work is not "thick translation," because she very much seems to come to Al-Jubouri's poetry as an outsider-- someone without the rich cultural experiences/knowledge and without much knowledge of the language from which the poetry originates. How can someone practice "thick translation" without significant contextual knowledge? Howell's translation project seems to be one of admiration, as she writes in the "Translator's Preface," "the Iraqi poet who could write this poem without recoil, I thought, might be writing equally fearless poetry about the American invasion and occupation of her country" (xvii). Then, after she admits to working closely with Qaisi who she says acted as a "literal translator," she brings up the conflict of choosing "between the preservation of a cultural heritage and the job of interpreting it" (xix). But how can she even have real access to preservation if she doesn't really know the culture/language from which she is working, except via the translation of another?
Despite this first reaction, I decided to return to Appiah's essay to remind myself of how he describes "thick translation." He writes that it's "translation that seeks with its annotations and its accompanying glosses to locate the text in a rich cultural and linguistic context" and a translation that moves past an attempt at "easy tolerance" and instead towards the "undertak[ing of] the harder project of a genuinely informed respect for others" (399). I think, in many ways, Howell's collaborative translation project does do this---she seems after the harder project (i.e. her constant dialogue with both Qaisi and Al-Jubouri), and it seems her project was born out of genuine respect for the work and writer she translates. Howell seems to be a translator who recognizes her weaknesses and works to the best of her ability to overcome them via collaboration. The fact that her work is also "'Amal al-Jubouri Approved'" (xx) means something, I think. Thus, this pushes me to ask---in what ways do collaborative translation projects get us closer to "thick translation"? In what ways do we then read collaborative projects alongside the work of single translators? Which kind of work is preferable to us as readers?
I think collaborative work is necessary when one translates to or from a language that he/she has learned from books and never have had a chance to experience first hand. However, I doubt that the extent of collaboration with Qaisi was enough to enable Howell to "locate the text in its... cultural and linguistic context", or probabl,y Qaisi is not the right person to collaborate with. All we know about him is that he knows English better than Howell knows Arabic and that he is a committed Muslim. We do not know whether he was raised in an Arab country, has lived in Arab country, or he has graduated from a school where the language of instruction is Arabic. We do not hear his voice either in the preface or in any other kind of note. Howell does not even report any suggestions or comments made by him on translating the text.
Deletethe best that can be said about Howell's translation is that it is an attempt at thick translation.
Hi Dawlat, your response made me think about the Venutti article we read and the invisibility of the translator. I wondered, after reading your post, in what ways we might be experiencing Qaisi as invisible in this work. It seems like people are eager for more information about him, particularly after we learn(ed) that Howell does not have fluency in Arabic. Is the way his work is represented common for collaborators? I don't know. Maybe other translators wouldn't have given their collaborator as much credit at Howell did. I don't know, but I can tell from folks' posts that it's a lingering question, as it is for me too.
DeleteBecky, fantastic! I'm sorry I won't get to all of your questions, but I'm glad you brought up this issue of collaboration. My instinct is that collaborative translation projects might get us closer to thick translation by providing an opportunity for the translator to complicate her knowledge of "linguistic context" and, by working with someone who knows better the arriving language. Could the very act of collaboration also counteract the kind of "easy tolerance" Appiah mentions? Could the "genuinely informed respect for others" he talks about be a dividend of working collaboratively? I think so, as collaboration could provide a checks and balances system for the translator's sense of cultural and linguistic context.
DeleteWhen I first read your question, Adrienne, I thought back to the "Notes" section at the end of the book, which I do think serves to provide some context and perhaps make this a thickER translation than others. I found it puzzling, though, that Howell didn't provide any indication as to which poems that had notes associated with them (I know an asterisk in the middle of a line would be a distraction, but perhaps something at the bottom of the page or on the "Contents" page?). Instead, I just stumbled upon a collection of notes after I'd read the poems, and found myself flipping back to see how that context changed my reading of the poem.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that Howell's collaboration with Qaisi led her to include most of these notes, so to answer your questions Becky, I do think that collaboration leads to a thicker translation, particularly if you don't have an intimate knowledge of the language and culture you're translating from.
Hi Liz, I like this idea of a "thickER" translation and really appreciate your response to Becky's questions here. I had a very similar response to reading the notes section, too. I found myself fumbling through them, trying to go back to the poems they referred to in order to reorient my understanding. I wondered why they hadn't been provided as footnotes, where I might have integrated that information in the moment, as opposed to going back after the fact. I'm sure there could be a good reason for it, but it seemed inelegant at the time.
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