Sense in Translation

Essays on the Bilingual Body

Caroline Rabourdin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000767278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This innovative and interdisciplinary work brings together six essays which explore the complex relationship between linguistic translation and spatial translation and argue for an understanding of linguistic translation as an embodied phenomenon.

Integrating perspectives from philosophy, multilingual poetry and literature, as well as science and geometry, the book begins with a reading of translators Donald A. Landes' and Richard Howard's own notes on the translation and interpretation of the French words sens and langue. In the essays that follow, Rabourdin intertwines insights from both phenomenology and translation studies, engaging in notions of space, body, sense, and language as filtered through a multilingual lens and drawing on a diversity of sources, including work from such figures as Jacques Derrida, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Poincaré, Michel Butor, Caroline Bergvall, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Louis Wolfson and Lisa Robertson. This interdisciplinary thematic perspective highlights the need for an understanding of the experience of translation as neither distinctly linguistic or spatial but one which fluidly allows for the bilingual body to sense and make sense.

This book offers a unique contribution to translation studies, comparative literature, French studies, and philosophy of language and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in these fields.

1 Translators’ Notes

On Translating ‘Sens’ and ‘Langue’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception and Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale

During the course of my research I have read many introductions to translated texts only to discover self-justified attempts at clarification, contextualisation and processes of disambiguation; and in some cases, what the translated text loses is precisely this precious ambiguity. The desire for clarification, motivated by the illusion of a language where meaning would be universal and fixed, destroys thought’s complexity. It forbids connections, fluidity, movement. It works against language, not with language. I wish simply to note here the difficulties that others have encountered in translating some key terms often referred to in the following essays from French to English.

One of the most striking examples of the destructive need for disambiguation can be found in the English translation of Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (1916), where ironically, the key word, the fundamental word even of Saussure’s theory, is subjected to such reduction. In his preface to Course in General Linguistics (1983), published some 70 years after the publication of the original French text, translator Roy Harris makes the distinction between langue and langage, which seems appropriate given the importance of the distinction in Saussure’s theory:

On crossing the Channel Saussure has been made to utter such blatantly unSaussurean pronouncements as ‘language is a form, not a substance’. Surprisingly few have seen that it is not at all necessary to make heavy weather of the distinction between langage and langue provided one respects the important semantic difference in English between using the word language with and without an article.

(1983, xiii–xiv)

But a couple of pages later he writes the rather perplexing lines:

Finally, some of the central problems of interpretation of the Cours de linguistique générale hinge on the fact that the word langue seems to be used in a variety of ways. […] The result is that even the technical uses of the term langue sometimes seem to be at odds with one another. To what extent this is due to unwitting vacillation on the part of Saussure or his editors is a matter for debate.

(1983, xv–xvi)

Harris goes on to identify two possible solutions to what he describes as the problem: the first solution would be “to fix upon a single all-purpose translation of the word langue and stick to it throughout, leaving the reader to cope with the complexities of interpretation for himself” and the second solution, adopted in his translation, is “to indicate the full range of implications associated with the term langue by using different renderings in different contexts.” And so the English translation is dotted with expressions such as ‘linguistic structure’ and ‘linguistic system,’ where the original simply uses the word langue, all in the name of clarity. Finally he admits:

Varying the translation of a key theoretical term may perhaps be objected to in principle on grounds of inconsistency. But the inconsistency in this case is superficial; whereas in compensation one gains the possibility of expressing nuances and emphases in Saussure’s thought which would otherwise risk being lost to the English reader.

(1983, xv–xvi)

In doing so, Roy Harris has explicitly stripped the Cours of one of its crucial nuances. That the distinction between langage/langue, rendered with the distinction language/a language, be subtle and easily missed is obvious and unquestionable, but what the English reader loses here is the connection, or more precisely the connotation, between langue and langage in French. What the reader is given with translations such as linguistic structure and linguistic system is an interpretation that does not give the reader the chance to choose – actively – between one and the other meaning. The reader loses the right to make sense of the text themselves. The proximity of the words langue and langage in French asks the reader to oscillate between meanings; what Harris calls an ‘unwitting oscillation’ cannot reasonably be unwitting since, as I believe, the experience or act of oscillation itself should remain part of the text. The astonishing thing here is the admission by the translator himself that his interpretations have replaced langue for the sake of simplification, in order to alleviate or even eradicate difficulty in the text.

In his translation of Roland Barthes’ Image, Music, Text, Stephen Heath (1977) encounters the same problem, but deals with it slightly differently. In the Translator’s Notes, he explains a series of difficulties he has come across during the translation:

Langue/parole – The reference here is to the distinction made by the Swiss linguist Saussure. Where parole is the realm of the individual moments of language use, of particular ‘utterances’ or ‘messages’, whether spoken or written, langue is the system or code (‘le code de la langue’) which allows the realization of the individual messages. As the language-system, object of linguistics, langue is thus also to be differentiated from language, the heterogeneous totality with which the linguist is initially faced and which may be studied from a variety of points of view, partaking as it does to the physical, the psychological, the mental, the individual and the social. It is precisely by delimiting its specific object and fixing as its task the description of that object (that is, of the langue, the system of the language) that Saussure founds linguistics as a science. […] The problem in translation is that in English ‘language’ has to serve both langue and langage. Langue can often be specified by translation as ‘a’ or ‘the language’ or again as ‘language-system’ (in opposition to the ‘language-use’ of parole), but I have included the French term in brackets in cases where the idea of the analytic construction of a language-system is being given crucial stress […].

(1977, 7–8)

As well as serving as a useful reminder of Saussure’s concepts and terminology, Heath explains how he dealt with the tandem langue/langage, which like Roy Harris, he describes as a ‘problem’ to be solved. Heath has chosen to introduce the article ‘a’ or ‘the’ before language as a way of distinguishing langue from langage, just as Roy Harris suggested but eventually rejected. He also chose to retain the original French word into the text, whether it be langue or langage, in a more direct and slightly intrusive way – but one widely accepted in translation practice – with the use of square brackets. Brackets, footnotes, endnotes, are the only tropes of the ‘visible’ translator. Here, the translator is at work, and the invisible process of translation is made visible. The space of footnotes, pages of introductory notes and prefaces are spaces in the translated book where the translator is explicitly visible, and the only space where s/he is not subordinate to the author of the text s/he is working with. It is a space of his/her own, even if still about the translation. Translator Brice Matthieussent goes as far as making the footnotes central to the text in his book Vengeance du traducteur (2009), where extended footnotes take the place of the translated text.

Looking back at Harris’ and Heath’s notes, however, one can’t help but notice how they both fail to mention that langue is also part of the body in the French language, a body part: the tongue. This observation, of course, would not be helpful or necessary to their intended process of disambiguation. It is worth noting nonetheless since it adds to the ambiguity in the French version, an ambiguity, polysemy, which does not translate into English. And so this dimension of the langue is lost to the English reader. Langue, contrarily to what Harris or even Heath might think, is not only a ‘language-system or code,’ but also, and I would say primarily, a part of the body. Any child learning French at an early age would learn the word ‘langue’ alongside other body parts such as ‘œil,’ ‘nez,’ ‘oreille’ or ‘bouche’ [‘eye,’ ‘nose,’ ‘ear’ or ‘mouth’], blissfully unaware that the word langue is also the ‘language-system’ or code she/he is learning when saying those words. And so the langue is one of the instruments of langue. The role of the tongue is discussed in great detail in Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale. In the chapter dedicated to phonology, one can read a quasi-medical description of the cavité buccale, indicating how certain movements of the tongue contribute to the making of specific sounds. The description is purely mechanical. It is fair to note that Saussure is not usually remembered for his lectures on anatomy, and the editors admit to having added to Saussure’s original lectures.¹ In a note (Saussure 1919, 66), they explain that Saussure’s original description was rather succinct and that they found it necessary to supplement it with information from Otto Jespersen’s Lehrbuch der Phonetik (1904). The extensive technical description of the vocal apparatus in the Cours is accompanied by the following graphic illustration.

Figure 1.1 Diagram in Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (Paris: Payot 1916, 67).

Whether Saussure had intended it or not, the Cours have ultimately severed the tongue/mouth and nasal cavity from the rest of the body. Isolating the tongue, cleft and teeth certainly helps in decomposing their respective movements but the separation appears somewhat arbitrary. The lungs, although mentioned in the description, are not shown in the illustration. The head stands alone, disconnected from the rest of the body and it is worth noting that this depiction stands in clear contrast to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s description of the body as expression involving the entire body in Phénoménologie de la perception (1945).

Saussure’s ambition, as we know, is to establish linguistics as a science, built empirically and objectively. And we know also of Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “Phenomenology’s most important accomplishment is […] to have joined an extreme subjectivism with an extreme objectivism” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 20). For his research Merleau-Ponty himself draws from a variety of disciplines, whether scientific or literary for instance. In the introduction to Phénoménologie de la perception, he sets out to redefine sensation, which he qualifies as the most confused notion there is. Yet he adds that sensation is also the most fundamental to the understanding of the phenomenon of perception. Here, he lays the foundations of phenomenology on an ambiguity, on moving grounds, defying any accepted definition of the notion of sensation. He undertakes his description of sensation by describing the notion in relation to science and philosophy, thus putting an end to the traditional opposition between the lines of thought. This way, instead of emerging in the lineage of one discipline or in opposition to the other, phenomenology creates a new space between these disciplines and emerges in a truly relational situation. If sensation has different interpretations and developments in physiology, biology and psychology, Merleau-Ponty embraces them all.

We understand then, that the word ‘sens’ may have perplexed many a translator attempting to translate Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception. Donald Landes admitted to having decided to undertake a new translation because of his frustration at the handling of the word in Colin Smith’s existing translation. For Landes, Smith simply fails to acknowledge the polysemy of the word sens, as he writes in the Introduction:

One of the first motivations for a new translation was the previous translator’s non-systematic treatment of Merleau-Ponty’s use of sens and signification. Sens is a difficult term to translate, as it means ‘meaning’, ‘sense’ and ‘direction’. Wherever the context has allowed I have translated it as ‘sense’, which in English preserves the richness of the French term, while reserving ‘meaning’ for Merleau-Ponty’s occasional use of the construction vouloir dire (to ‘mean’ or, literally, to ‘want to say’).

(2012, xlviii)

Whereas we might disagree with the translation of vouloir dire into meaning, because it lacks the notion of intentionality which Merleau-Ponty insists on, the persistence [insistence] on the use of ‘sense’ however has definitely improved the translation and the text indeed reads better than the previous translation, to the French reader at least. Implied in this polysemy is the fact that ‘meaning,’ ‘sense’ and ‘direction’ cannot be studied independently of one another in our search for sense, but must be seen in relation to one another and can only exist with one another. The words relate to each other in movement, in our oscillation between the three possible significations when we talk about sense.

Reading Alain Berthoz’ book title Le sens du mou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Translators’ Notes: On Translating ‘Sens’ and ‘Langue’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception and Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale
• 2 Sense in Translation: Geometrical Translation as an Embodied and Sensory Practice
• 3 The Expanding Space of the Train Carriage: A Phenomenological Reading of Michel Butor’s La modification
• 4 Making Sense of Caroline Bergvall’s Poetry: The Space between les langues and Lecercle’s Philosophy of Nonsense
• 5 Louis Wolfson’s Reformed Body
• 6 The Political Bilingual Body: One’s Right to the Other Language
• Index