I thought Watson’s comparison of translation to working bread dough to be particularly interesting in light of the works of Spivak and Appiah that we read last week, which were largely about translation theory and seeking out the native meaning of the text you’re translating. If I were to try to clumsily continue that analogy, I suppose Appiah and Spivak were more concerned with determining the ingredients a baker had put into bread dough (and trying to recreate that dough) than in kneading the dough. By that I mean that though both acknowledge that a translation is a new creation, they emphasize determining the context and intention of the original work that you’re translating.
Frankly, I don’t know that I agree with Watson. I respect that that can be one approach to translation, but to me, what Watson describes (and what Howell creates) feels more like a translation-interpretation because of this approach.
I thought Watson’s comparison of translation to working bread dough to be particularly interesting in light of the works of Spivak and Appiah that we read last week, which were largely about translation theory and seeking out the native meaning of the text you’re translating. If I were to try to clumsily continue that analogy, I suppose Appiah and Spivak were more concerned with determining the ingredients a baker had put into bread dough (and trying to recreate that dough) than in kneading the dough. By that I mean that though both acknowledge that a translation is a new creation, they emphasize determining the context and intention of the original work that you’re translating.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I don’t know that I agree with Watson. I respect that that can be one approach to translation, but to me, what Watson describes (and what Howell creates) feels more like a translation-interpretation because of this approach.