Against Translation(libertiesjournal.com)
libertiesjournal.com
Against Translation
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/against-translation/
54 comments
That's why translation is its own art when done well. I've seen it done both ways, and both have their place.
I remember watching fan subbed anime around twenty years ago that kept all the idioms intact, but also but notes onscreen which you could pause to read, explaining a bit of what it meant and how it was supposed to be used.
I also remember more recently reading the dark forest trilogy, which is translated by an author that is amazing in his own right, and you can tell. That example is also extremely interesting because you can clearly feel a very non-English and non-western philosophy at play that the translator allows to come through, while also making everything very clear to an English reader.
Things like this are what translations of famous works in history (such as the Odyssey and the Illiad) are often referred to along with which translation it is. IIRC there was actually a new translation of some of these works within the last decade where it was translated to by much more modern English, which was supposed to be a very fun read. I always meant to get around to trying one of those, but honestly forgot until just now.
I remember watching fan subbed anime around twenty years ago that kept all the idioms intact, but also but notes onscreen which you could pause to read, explaining a bit of what it meant and how it was supposed to be used.
I also remember more recently reading the dark forest trilogy, which is translated by an author that is amazing in his own right, and you can tell. That example is also extremely interesting because you can clearly feel a very non-English and non-western philosophy at play that the translator allows to come through, while also making everything very clear to an English reader.
Things like this are what translations of famous works in history (such as the Odyssey and the Illiad) are often referred to along with which translation it is. IIRC there was actually a new translation of some of these works within the last decade where it was translated to by much more modern English, which was supposed to be a very fun read. I always meant to get around to trying one of those, but honestly forgot until just now.
I'd translate "I fought my way to the top" into "Я прохавал эту жизнь с низов". Though the latter reeks of gopnik mentality.
A good example of this is the translations of Asterix and Obelix - so much of the humor is puns which don’t translate, so they have to rework the jokes to make new puns - and it works surprisingly well.
A particularly interesting note is that Asterix and Obelix actually gets different English translations for the US and UK markets, and they frequently rework the puns differently, presumably due to idiomatic differences.
This happens frequently in anime translations as well.
That is true. One famous example where perhaps this went wrong are the jam doughnuts in pokemon. The heroes are eating some rice balls (onigiris) on the screen and perhaps to make the snack more relatable the US dub translates it as jam doughnuts. Which was probably a good choice when one can only see the script, but when on one can see something which is clearly not a jam doughnut it causes some confusion. :)
Similarly somehow in the Hungarian translation of the Harry Potter books they translated Slytherin's Locket as Slytherin's padlock. (which was probably just a mistake) And when in later books it become clear by the character's interactions that it is very much not a padlock they just changed the translated name like it never happened. :D
I don't envy translators. It is a really hard business. Especially for dubs, they don't just have to match the meaning and the emotion, but also have to match the lip flaps too. Not easy at all.
Similarly somehow in the Hungarian translation of the Harry Potter books they translated Slytherin's Locket as Slytherin's padlock. (which was probably just a mistake) And when in later books it become clear by the character's interactions that it is very much not a padlock they just changed the translated name like it never happened. :D
I don't envy translators. It is a really hard business. Especially for dubs, they don't just have to match the meaning and the emotion, but also have to match the lip flaps too. Not easy at all.
I'm seeing many dismissive comments, and as this seems to be due to the length of the piece, I would warmly recommend anyone interested in languages, literature (and especially their cross-cultural implications) to set it aside to read when they have the time. It is a very beautiful article, whose form is inescapably related to its content. It voices an unease which I suspect will feel familiar to many international, non-English-native readers (like me), as well as native English speakers (like the author).
An aspect of this conversation which I feel is particularly relevant for many of us here: the perception of language as simply a means to communicate information, a tool to be optimized with respect to its purpose, as though "information" existed in a vacuum. In my experience, this perception is particularly strong among speakers of dominant languages (languages either in which things are most likely to be spoken, or into which things are routinely translated to reach a broader audience), but it can also infuse in "dominated" language groups. I've seen this first hand among close relatives who delude themselves into thinking they have as much expressive power in English as in their native language, which they don't, not just because of their inability to speak it (though that plays a part) but because their life experience hasn't "soaked" in the English language, or (maybe) vice-versa.
One expression that I will long meditate from the article, and which I think applies more broadly than just literature "the continuous encounter of young people with a tradition".
(the irony is not lost on me that I have to write this comment in English. Maybe you see the irony but, if you only speak English, this irony is probably of a different color than the one I see, without value judgment)
An aspect of this conversation which I feel is particularly relevant for many of us here: the perception of language as simply a means to communicate information, a tool to be optimized with respect to its purpose, as though "information" existed in a vacuum. In my experience, this perception is particularly strong among speakers of dominant languages (languages either in which things are most likely to be spoken, or into which things are routinely translated to reach a broader audience), but it can also infuse in "dominated" language groups. I've seen this first hand among close relatives who delude themselves into thinking they have as much expressive power in English as in their native language, which they don't, not just because of their inability to speak it (though that plays a part) but because their life experience hasn't "soaked" in the English language, or (maybe) vice-versa.
One expression that I will long meditate from the article, and which I think applies more broadly than just literature "the continuous encounter of young people with a tradition".
(the irony is not lost on me that I have to write this comment in English. Maybe you see the irony but, if you only speak English, this irony is probably of a different color than the one I see, without value judgment)
The piece was beautiful, and very much worth the long read. I think if it had some kind of reading time estimate at the top of the article, the random-click-throughs may be less put off. I've been maning to do that for pieces I plan on writing. When picking up a book you can feel how long a read it is, flipping through a magazine you can see how many pages an article is. A single scrolling web page that you click to, blindly, can ambush you from a time cost..
Agree 100%. My own biography parallels that of the author, and his insights make perfect sense to me.
English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English speaking country and I watch movies and tv shows without subtitles.
So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constantly use my kindle dictionary to look for non usual words for birds, plants, etc that I never stumbled upon before.
If I do this for a language that I invested 20+ years of serious media/book consumption I’m absolutely out of luck reading anything in French or, god forbid, Russian (two of my favorite literary countries).
Yeah, I will never have that deep soul bonding connection with Russian authors that only those who speaks their beautiful language can experience, but I had enough experience reading good translations in my mother tongue and reading the original in English that I’m confident that It’s not a huge loss.
So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constantly use my kindle dictionary to look for non usual words for birds, plants, etc that I never stumbled upon before.
If I do this for a language that I invested 20+ years of serious media/book consumption I’m absolutely out of luck reading anything in French or, god forbid, Russian (two of my favorite literary countries).
Yeah, I will never have that deep soul bonding connection with Russian authors that only those who speaks their beautiful language can experience, but I had enough experience reading good translations in my mother tongue and reading the original in English that I’m confident that It’s not a huge loss.
I can't speak about French, but IMHO a lot of what Russian classical authors describe can only be deeply understood if you grew up in the region and have seen it with your own eyes. Mentality-wise, I don't think anything really has changed in the last 200 years. It still resonates as strongly as it probably had back then.
To be honest you're not alone, I read a lot of different kind of things and recently I've been reading older books, or book set in the past at least.
I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.
I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.
'Omnibus' may be more familiar, but 'charabanc' will likely be challenging to younger native speakers too. And then in this category there are the 'brougham', 'phaeton', 'trap', 'hansom', and 'dog-cart', the latter of which can of course refer to a cart pulled by a dog, but often means yet another type of horse-drawn carriage.
I fully expect most readers nowadays will just go 'ah, they got into some conveyance pulled by horses' rather than having a clear image of the specific carriage referred to.
Reading works by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, etc. really expands your horsey vocabulary.
I fully expect most readers nowadays will just go 'ah, they got into some conveyance pulled by horses' rather than having a clear image of the specific carriage referred to.
Reading works by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, etc. really expands your horsey vocabulary.
Speaks as if "translation" doesn't happen in reading in native languages. A word's meaning can change every other decade, when I'm reading something in native tongue I'm constantly rationalizing what I read into my own words, which I would categorize as translation. Some good translators' work might even convey more accurate original intent than reading natively yourself because they're supposed to study the context of the writing thoroughly.
One interesting point I heard from a Lex Friedman podcast is it'll be interesting to do a database of diffs between different translated versions of the same literatures. I think stuff like this can greatly aid people's understanding of the original intents.
One interesting point I heard from a Lex Friedman podcast is it'll be interesting to do a database of diffs between different translated versions of the same literatures. I think stuff like this can greatly aid people's understanding of the original intents.
> One interesting point I heard from a Lex Friedman podcast is it'll be interesting to do a database of diffs between different translated versions of the same literatures. I think stuff like this can greatly aid people's understanding of the original intents.
This is quite common in many religious circles. For example if you read an interesting verse in the bible you can gain a much deeper insight by looking at multiple of the dozens of translations available. Of course it can't beat a deep understanding of the original language and culture, but it scales much better (even with just the bible we are talking about two ancient languages and cultures spanning a decent area and thousands of years, while the sum of the translations gives you an approximation from just reading English).
This is quite common in many religious circles. For example if you read an interesting verse in the bible you can gain a much deeper insight by looking at multiple of the dozens of translations available. Of course it can't beat a deep understanding of the original language and culture, but it scales much better (even with just the bible we are talking about two ancient languages and cultures spanning a decent area and thousands of years, while the sum of the translations gives you an approximation from just reading English).
> There was no doubt that there was a lot in our collective past that was shameful — though how this made us different from every other nation was never clear to me. What was clear was that feeling ourselves to be the worst was — like feeling ourselves to be the best — characteristic of our particular form of national narcissism. And I thought that, if we were going to turn our backs on our patrimony, we ought to do it consciously. We ought, at the very least, to know what that culture was, what it had been
Wise words.
Wise words.
Having read Murakami first in English then in Japanese then years later again in Japanese after living in the culture each was a different but worthwhile experience. The last was in some ways least exciting because I realized that characters I had thought of as fascinatingly original or quirky just referred to tropes or stereotypes in the broader culture. I don’t think any literature really gives an accurate sense of another culture unless you have other base knowledge. I’m interested in Russia somewhat but I read Dostoveysky almost as occuring in some universal European setting, I don’t read for the details of Russian culture.
This was my experience when I watched and rewatched the anime film Spirited Away over the years. It is a fantastic film, to be sure, but I hadn't realized how much he borrowed from the existing culture of Japan until I learned more about Japanese religion and culture generally. It wasn't wholly invented myth, as it appeared to me as an American child.
Murakami's a really interesting one when it comes to translation. He wrote his first novel in English, despite not speaking English very well, and then translated it back to Japanese for publication.
I really enjoyed the linked essay, but I think the playfulness with which e.g. Murakami can pick up English as a brush in a toolbox raises a lot of interesting questions about whether translation guilt is warranted. Doesn't appropriation work both ways? Would a bakery attack make any sense in a Japanese culture without European bread? And speaking of the idea of denatured business English... so many of Murakami's images, sounds and references get their charge by playing with the mixing of western and Japanese culture, both the corporate and the artistic/literary/musical sides of each. I see it as similar to what French impressionism and cuisine did with their Japanese counterparts, an expansion and exchange of culture without one necessarily eroding the other.
I really enjoyed the linked essay, but I think the playfulness with which e.g. Murakami can pick up English as a brush in a toolbox raises a lot of interesting questions about whether translation guilt is warranted. Doesn't appropriation work both ways? Would a bakery attack make any sense in a Japanese culture without European bread? And speaking of the idea of denatured business English... so many of Murakami's images, sounds and references get their charge by playing with the mixing of western and Japanese culture, both the corporate and the artistic/literary/musical sides of each. I see it as similar to what French impressionism and cuisine did with their Japanese counterparts, an expansion and exchange of culture without one necessarily eroding the other.
Something I enjoyed about reading Murakami both in Japanese and in translation is that there are a couple of translations of "Norwegian Wood". Seeing how two translators (Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin) handled the translation into English gave me different views of how one could approach Japanese from an English perspective (my native tongue).
I feel like I once heard of Jay Rubin say something like, if you don't know japanese, you've never read a word of Murakami, you've read Rubin. I suppose it's obvious but it did make me stop and think about how distant japanese actually is from English.
I can't actually find any reference to him saying this though.
I can't actually find any reference to him saying this though.
I love reading books in their native language, especially when there is no translation available. It's like having a key to an exclusive world that others can't access. It is, however, quite a bit of work to learn a new language simply to be able to read works in that language and I'm not sure if it provides much value aside from a smug sense of being educated and multilingual.
Yes and if you like that, try listening to audiobooks in a different language. I’ve been struggling to learn Russian for a while now, and listening to Brothers Karamazov in the native language is fascinating in a way I can’t describe. I consistently feel like I’m being put under a spell.
I found languages that are distant (English - Chinese) are generally harder to translate, and languages that are closer are much easier (English - Dutch, Chinese - Korean).
Some people are against translation, some people are okay with it, but it mostly boils down to the meaning of the text itself and the two languages that people are working with.
Things are easier to translate: 1) describe something objective like scientific fact or mechanism like "water is made up by hydrogen and oxygen" 2) communicate with commands like "pass me that bottle of water". It's possible to translate legal documents or business requirements faithfully if the translator knows the two of the language really well.
Things are hard to translate:
1) Puns: "Nothing right is left, and nothing left is right".
2) Aesthetics: Chinese people especially love to use the word "big/great/grand", it can be beautiful in Chinse but usually sounds awkward in English.
3) Contexts: like many Chinese people today would still use a lot of ancient idioms, which is a compact four-character format that describes an ancient story that happened millennials ago, and they're referring to the moral of those stories. Korean also use a lot of those idioms which make things much easier to translate.
4) Culture: This is the key difference, everybody knows it but it's always more than I assumed. Say there's a talk from a successful person talking about his experience - an American would probably focus on how hardworking he/she was, while a Chinese would very likely focus on rendering the bitterness he/she has encountered during the process (it has something to do with the Eastern Asian Buddhism background, and takes a lot of footnotes to make things clear to the Western audience). At the end of the day, it's not the languages that are different - it's the things that people talking about that are different.
Some people are against translation, some people are okay with it, but it mostly boils down to the meaning of the text itself and the two languages that people are working with.
Things are easier to translate: 1) describe something objective like scientific fact or mechanism like "water is made up by hydrogen and oxygen" 2) communicate with commands like "pass me that bottle of water". It's possible to translate legal documents or business requirements faithfully if the translator knows the two of the language really well.
Things are hard to translate:
1) Puns: "Nothing right is left, and nothing left is right".
2) Aesthetics: Chinese people especially love to use the word "big/great/grand", it can be beautiful in Chinse but usually sounds awkward in English.
3) Contexts: like many Chinese people today would still use a lot of ancient idioms, which is a compact four-character format that describes an ancient story that happened millennials ago, and they're referring to the moral of those stories. Korean also use a lot of those idioms which make things much easier to translate.
4) Culture: This is the key difference, everybody knows it but it's always more than I assumed. Say there's a talk from a successful person talking about his experience - an American would probably focus on how hardworking he/she was, while a Chinese would very likely focus on rendering the bitterness he/she has encountered during the process (it has something to do with the Eastern Asian Buddhism background, and takes a lot of footnotes to make things clear to the Western audience). At the end of the day, it's not the languages that are different - it's the things that people talking about that are different.
Of course it would be great to read books in their native language, but is it better to get a reasonable translation of a book, or no translation at all? That is the question.
If you take some authors with multiple translations over many decades, e.g. Proust or Hugo, you can see that the early translations are actually very rough, and only recently are we seeing very high quality.
The main problem is that language translation is forever imperfect. If you look at Proust's French, there is no direct translation into English for the way it is written because no English person writes in that manner, so the translator has to make a lot of hard decisions to make the book enjoyable.
My French isn't strong enough to read native Proust (god, I wish it was), but then you have things like Hugo which is 1800s French and I'm sure even modern French kids have some trouble reading it.
If you do read a translated book, PLEASE find the best translation before you purchase. I'll give you an example...
This Les Mis book has the same illustration on the front (public domain) as the musical poster, so it looks official: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Signet-Classics-Victor-Hug...
But it is a miserable 100 year old translation spruced up a bit. You will probably hate the book and hate your life if you try to read it. It boasts that it is unabridged because that seems like a thing you would want, but...
This new translation by Penguin is like night and day: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp...
It is somewhat "abridged" because the translator took the bold step of tearing out 50 pages of the book - that are basically just the author going on a rant and has nothing to do with the story - and translated them and stuffed them in the appendix. This was a smart move, and went above their job title to produce a much more readable work.
tl;dr: read more great foreign books; always check you are getting the best translation before you start
If you take some authors with multiple translations over many decades, e.g. Proust or Hugo, you can see that the early translations are actually very rough, and only recently are we seeing very high quality.
The main problem is that language translation is forever imperfect. If you look at Proust's French, there is no direct translation into English for the way it is written because no English person writes in that manner, so the translator has to make a lot of hard decisions to make the book enjoyable.
My French isn't strong enough to read native Proust (god, I wish it was), but then you have things like Hugo which is 1800s French and I'm sure even modern French kids have some trouble reading it.
If you do read a translated book, PLEASE find the best translation before you purchase. I'll give you an example...
This Les Mis book has the same illustration on the front (public domain) as the musical poster, so it looks official: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Signet-Classics-Victor-Hug...
But it is a miserable 100 year old translation spruced up a bit. You will probably hate the book and hate your life if you try to read it. It boasts that it is unabridged because that seems like a thing you would want, but...
This new translation by Penguin is like night and day: https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp...
It is somewhat "abridged" because the translator took the bold step of tearing out 50 pages of the book - that are basically just the author going on a rant and has nothing to do with the story - and translated them and stuffed them in the appendix. This was a smart move, and went above their job title to produce a much more readable work.
tl;dr: read more great foreign books; always check you are getting the best translation before you start
My view on translations is that if literary luminaries such as Gabriel García Márquez and Vladimir Nabokov both think that the English versions of their work fully stand up to the test (which they are both on record as stating), then that is good enough for me.
I am not monolingual. I know what it feels like to read in different languages, and here's the thing: The words? The grammar? Easy. You can learn enough to stumble through a newspaper in a matter of months.
The culture behind the language? That is what takes decades to acquire, and if you don't have it, I 100% guarantee you will get a more accurate reading of the author's intent in a well-translated work than you ever would lurching your way though the native text.
I am not monolingual. I know what it feels like to read in different languages, and here's the thing: The words? The grammar? Easy. You can learn enough to stumble through a newspaper in a matter of months.
The culture behind the language? That is what takes decades to acquire, and if you don't have it, I 100% guarantee you will get a more accurate reading of the author's intent in a well-translated work than you ever would lurching your way though the native text.
Slightly related: Tove Jansson (author of the Moomin books) related that the process of working with her English translator on an early book had been revelatory, in exploring what she was actually meaning to say to the extent that she reckoned that by the end the translation was an improvement on the Swedish original.
That's interesting: I checked out one of the early Moomin books in French translation once (the first chapter or so in the bookstore), and it was strikingly blander than the English version. It was like they were phoning it in. (My French is a second language, but still, I checked the English side by side and it didn't seem to be just me.)
Oh, I loved the Moomin books as a child! I read them in English, and the language use was a delight; I didn't even realize they were a translated work until I got older. How fun to learn that a quality translator worked closely with the author to keep the magic alive in a different form.
> The culture behind the language? That is what takes decades to acquire, and if you don't have it, I 100% guarantee you will get a more accurate reading of the author's intent in a well-translated work than you ever would lurching your way though the native text.
This is definitely true, especially the further a culture is from your own. Japanese culture especially has all sorts of features that will whooosh! over the heads of most people reading those books in translation. It's not that you won't enjoy a book in translation, it's just that you're never getting 100% of what a native will get it from it. We have to just accept that. We don't have enough hours in our lives (right now) to study a language to native level and live in that culture to native level simply to enjoy a book.
This is definitely true, especially the further a culture is from your own. Japanese culture especially has all sorts of features that will whooosh! over the heads of most people reading those books in translation. It's not that you won't enjoy a book in translation, it's just that you're never getting 100% of what a native will get it from it. We have to just accept that. We don't have enough hours in our lives (right now) to study a language to native level and live in that culture to native level simply to enjoy a book.
Tangentially. As someone who has only read the old Signet version of Les Mis, I find it interesting that you think it isn't as good. When I read it, I was very impressed with Hugo's prose (or at least, filtered through the translated lens). It was not like reading anything I had ever previously read. Sounds like I need to check out the new one then too :)
Please do. Les Mis was the first book my wife sent me in jail. I read the Penguin version and then one of the guys in my cellblock showed me the Signet one and said he was struggling with it. I read a bunch of it and was highly disappointed.
I found this piece extraordinarily insightful, and it resonated with so much I have observed in my own life. I read it from start to finish.
Just since we're all on the topic, anyone with an interest in literary translation owes it to themselves to read the book This Little Art by Kate Briggs.
This was too long for me to understand. The author should just get to the point they want to make.
The bigger issue is there's like five entirely separate theses that he kind of tries to ramble through in a single article that should've been split up. Some of his points are excellent but some of them are silly and childish, the products of someone who lives in academia and not the real world.
It's a narrative, not a technical manual. I found it beautifully written and filled with insight.
Beautifully written as it is, it's missing huge chunks of the picture. How can you talk that much about translation, natives and learned speakers, international and immersive culture, and never once mention the internet? This would have been an immensely powerful essay in 1985. Now it seems like a dusty tome in a corner of the library with a burned-out lightbulb. It has insights, sure, but he's not living in the same world we are.
I think, in a way, that was exactly his point. And I have a feeling I might be living more in his world than in yours.
His thinking isn't bad, though. I would enjoy having his insights without ignoring the elephant in the room.
It's odd that in the whole course of this very long article, Moser doesn't use the word "power" in describing the relationship of English and its literature to the rest of the world, or the relationship of the language and literature to its own speakers. Most of his laments and descriptions of decline, the fraught and tricky questions of bringing books and authors into English, boil down to a question of power -- economic and geopolitical power -- and yet he never quite comes out and says that.
Mizimura's "defense" of her writing against English; the elevation that occurs for a non-English writer when they are translated into English; the perceived "universality" of English; the resultant cultural guilt of English speakers: these are manifestations of power.
Likewise, the deracination of English, its divorce from specific place and people, is a result of power. He seems to think it is a result of a change in the culture: "I began to wonder if the culture that threatened other languages was hollowing out English, too. That culture goes by many disparaging names. It was called “corporate,” “capitalist,” “neoliberal”; it was taught as “Business English.” It was the vehicle of the infrastructure, for the most basic communication: for checking into a hotel, sending an email, participating in a sales conference."
But this is not a cultural problem, it is a power problem. Power in our current (American) society is inherent in the infrastructure he mentions. It exists within the movement of capital, within corporate law, within lobbying, within international trade. Language becomes hollowed out and denatured in this situation, because there is no culture, culture is not required to run the machines of power.
Likewise the observation that the international literature that we're comfortable with (I say "we" here, as I am also a white, middle-aged, middle-class, American literary translator) reads much like our own. We seek out foreign literature that feels like it was written for us: it feels that way because it was written by and for an equivalent socioeconomic class, one that simply hails from a different country. Moser says we might benefit more from reading literature from Paris, Texas than we would from Paris, France: that is because this putative literature from Texas comes from a world that does not have power. It is more educational to reach across power boundaries than it is to reach across language boundaries -- if all you end up finding in the latter case is your international peers.
He describes a language as an old city, and says very emphatically that what is needed to keep that city in good repair is people, the participation of people and their community. But that is exactly what we don't need in middle and upper class America. We do not have culture. We have structures of power, and culture is surplus to its purposes. The English language as we speak it now seems flat and vacuous because it is not strictly necessary; it is providing no vital function. Tweets and memes are sufficient for us, because almost nothing that matters in the system we live in depends on the skillful, thoughtful use of language. There's no sense in mourning young people's lack of reading habits. Nothing they find in those books will tell them how they might live in the world. The books are no longer necessary to them in a way that they might have been necessary to earlier generations.
This is an overly pessimisstic statement of the situation! And I am only partly Marxist -- I do not believe that it's all down to economics. But I believe we've created a machine, which we live inside of, which requires us to exercise very few of our human faculties in order to sustain its operation. It is no surprise if we start to lose those faculties.
Mizimura's "defense" of her writing against English; the elevation that occurs for a non-English writer when they are translated into English; the perceived "universality" of English; the resultant cultural guilt of English speakers: these are manifestations of power.
Likewise, the deracination of English, its divorce from specific place and people, is a result of power. He seems to think it is a result of a change in the culture: "I began to wonder if the culture that threatened other languages was hollowing out English, too. That culture goes by many disparaging names. It was called “corporate,” “capitalist,” “neoliberal”; it was taught as “Business English.” It was the vehicle of the infrastructure, for the most basic communication: for checking into a hotel, sending an email, participating in a sales conference."
But this is not a cultural problem, it is a power problem. Power in our current (American) society is inherent in the infrastructure he mentions. It exists within the movement of capital, within corporate law, within lobbying, within international trade. Language becomes hollowed out and denatured in this situation, because there is no culture, culture is not required to run the machines of power.
Likewise the observation that the international literature that we're comfortable with (I say "we" here, as I am also a white, middle-aged, middle-class, American literary translator) reads much like our own. We seek out foreign literature that feels like it was written for us: it feels that way because it was written by and for an equivalent socioeconomic class, one that simply hails from a different country. Moser says we might benefit more from reading literature from Paris, Texas than we would from Paris, France: that is because this putative literature from Texas comes from a world that does not have power. It is more educational to reach across power boundaries than it is to reach across language boundaries -- if all you end up finding in the latter case is your international peers.
He describes a language as an old city, and says very emphatically that what is needed to keep that city in good repair is people, the participation of people and their community. But that is exactly what we don't need in middle and upper class America. We do not have culture. We have structures of power, and culture is surplus to its purposes. The English language as we speak it now seems flat and vacuous because it is not strictly necessary; it is providing no vital function. Tweets and memes are sufficient for us, because almost nothing that matters in the system we live in depends on the skillful, thoughtful use of language. There's no sense in mourning young people's lack of reading habits. Nothing they find in those books will tell them how they might live in the world. The books are no longer necessary to them in a way that they might have been necessary to earlier generations.
This is an overly pessimisstic statement of the situation! And I am only partly Marxist -- I do not believe that it's all down to economics. But I believe we've created a machine, which we live inside of, which requires us to exercise very few of our human faculties in order to sustain its operation. It is no surprise if we start to lose those faculties.
> Most of his laments and descriptions of decline, the fraught and tricky questions of bringing books and authors into English, boil down to a question of power
In my view, "power" is simply not the kind of stuff that these complex and nuanced concerns could possibly "boil down to", even in principle. It's a rather ambiguous word that could easily point to a wide, even unlimited variety of social dynamics, featuring very different sorts of affordance (in the sense of "power to achieve X"), influence or perhaps the effect of physical, material constraints. These more detailed dynamics are what should be inquired upon and interrogated to try and figure out what, if anything, they're "boiling down" to. I suspect that this might boil down to a simple change in the material structure of society, like "communication used to be hard and this forced cultures apart from each other; the exact opposite is going on today, where people are actively seeking to disregard these former boundaries, even at some cost in cohesion and social/cultural development at the smaller scale."
People might argue either way whether or not the word "power" can usefully summarize these developments. Ultimately, it just seems to obscure more than it clarifies.
In my view, "power" is simply not the kind of stuff that these complex and nuanced concerns could possibly "boil down to", even in principle. It's a rather ambiguous word that could easily point to a wide, even unlimited variety of social dynamics, featuring very different sorts of affordance (in the sense of "power to achieve X"), influence or perhaps the effect of physical, material constraints. These more detailed dynamics are what should be inquired upon and interrogated to try and figure out what, if anything, they're "boiling down" to. I suspect that this might boil down to a simple change in the material structure of society, like "communication used to be hard and this forced cultures apart from each other; the exact opposite is going on today, where people are actively seeking to disregard these former boundaries, even at some cost in cohesion and social/cultural development at the smaller scale."
People might argue either way whether or not the word "power" can usefully summarize these developments. Ultimately, it just seems to obscure more than it clarifies.
I don't generally have a problem with long-form, but if your article has a title that implies there's an argument in there, I feel like you owe it to the reader to at least give some idea of what that argument is within the first 5 paragraphs.
After reading the whole thing, I got the distinct impression that the author probably strongly dislikes readers who want (or are used to!) an argument presented in the first 5 paragraphs.
I only made it 1.5 paragraph's in. I quit reading at "vomity."
I mean, maybe I prepared myself because the title itself suggests a complexity, but I felt the length was both warranted and necessary to make its case.
aaroninsf(2)
That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other. I was just watching Family Guy and remembered this scene where Peter responds "I know my way around a joke or two" to a question "who's the funniest dude in the house?" or something to that effect[1]. The phrase "to know one's way around something" doesn't exist in Russian in its literal form. Speaking of "ways", the phrase "I fought my way to the top" is another one that doesn't have a direct Russian counterpart. These phrases are the product of English speaking mind. Russian has its own unique phraseology that usually gets butchered when ported into English. The point is what one thinks sounds cool in one's native tongue doesn't have to sound just as cool in the target language as natural languages never sat down at a round table to agree to have 100% linear correspondence between each other. By the way, in one Russian translation of that Family Guy episode they make up their own (I should say funny) joke instead of translating "I know my way around a joke".
[0] Obviously, you can replace "Russian" with any other ethnicity/nationality and "English" with any other language.
[1] "To that effect" or "along those lines" are yet other English phrases that do not stand in one-to-one correspondence with any idioms in Russian.