Translational Spaces

Towards a Chinese-Western Convergence

Yifeng Sun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000337563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Übersetzen & Dolmetschen

This book explores the concept of space, or rather spaces, in relation to translation, to construct a conceptual framework for research to better understand and solve translation problems. A number of interrelated spatial perspectives on translation supported by empirical evidence are presented to help better understand the complexities between China and West in cultural exchanges and to offer a way of explaining what happens to translation and why it takes on a particular form. In the chequered history of Chinese-Western cultural exchange, effective communication has remained a great challenge exacerbated by the ultimate inescapability of linguistic and cultural incommensurability. It is therefore necessary to develop conceptual tools that can help shed light on the interactive association between performativity and space in translation. Despite the unfailing desire to connect with the world, transnational resistance is still underway in China. Further attempts are required to promote a convergence of Chinese and Western translation theories in general and to confront problems arising from translation practice in particular. This work will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies around the world, as well as those working in cultural studies and cross-cultural communication studies.

1
Translation and spaces

Introduction

This chapter intends to explore the concept of space, or rather spaces concerning Translation Studies, a conceptual framework for research to better understand and solve translation problems. Translation takes place in a space between two languages but also emanates from and operates within different spaces. Further, translation entails movement from one site to another, in whose process the creation/production of spaces allows for multiple representations. In order to make translation work better, it is necessary to adopt a broad definition of the concept of spaces. Here the concept of space(s) is understood not only as the bridging of a gap or distance between two languages and cultures but, more importantly, as a tangible strategy to understand and disentangle exactly what happens to translation. It is sometimes necessary to shift focus from process to space in exploring ways to negotiate and enhance the availability of linguistic and stylistic resources by addressing varying degrees of polarity between accuracy and acceptability. The perennial challenge to reconcile the conflicting demands of both needs requires a series of spaces to handle the substantial amount of intricate negotiation and mediation that are required. Translation leads to an assemblage that mediates the recognition of incommensurability, multiplicity and, ultimately, the inherent irreducibility of meaning. Given the semantically uncertain and aesthetically precarious position of translation, translators need to traverse varied spaces while working with multiple cultural codes and conventions. Only through a heightened awareness of the polymorphic interfaces between linked national, social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic spaces can it become possible to produce a translation version that is reasonably balanced and coherent.

Space and spaces

As a fertile conceptual tool, a miscellany of spatial metaphors has been closely associated with Western translation theory (Guldin 2016: 48). However, they all seem to refer to linear transference rather than multi-dimensional representation. There is thus a need to present a reconceptualization of translational spaces to illuminate the underlying multifaceted causes behind translation problems. Translation is first and foremost concerned with the space of distance between the source and target texts, and between the linguistic and cultural systems thus represented, as well as the author and the translator. Moreover, it entails translocation from one geographical or cultural space to another, depending on and complicated by a multitude of interrelated factors. It can be observed that the spatialization of translation remains under-theorized and unsystematically treated. Its theoretical importance and practical significance warrant further investigation and wider recognition. More specifically, it is the spatialization of linguistic resources and cultural knowledge that can shed light on understanding the nature of translation.

Notably, translation is encapsulated by a continual process of recontextualization, and subsequent reconceptualization must be built on this awareness with a focus on enabling translation to function at least proximately if not exactly maximally. Since different cultural and knowledge systems are intertwined in intersecting with one another, if more spaces are made available, mediation and negotiation in translation can be significantly enhanced to become more effective. Since translation is subject to constraints arising from demands for both accuracy and readability, its success depends on whether such constraints can be overcome. With the growing demand for cross-cultural communication, it is increasingly felt that translatability cannot be taken for granted, and translation is an unremitting struggle against various degrees of untranslatability. Indeed, as an impossible necessity, translation establishes the nexus between the possible and the impossible. Apart from its functional role in empowering translation practice, a spatial concept about translation has the potential to gain more explanatory power, and a working understanding of space should thus be obtained. Growing diversity and global interconnectedness require and create more conceptual and operational spaces with unprecedented and profound implications. Transnational spaces bring into play transnational and transcultural challenges and experiences encompassing difference as well as commonality. There is not an overarching theory for capturing all the aspects of space. Kant famously contends that “space is essentially one” and that “the manifold in it, and therefore the general concept of spaces, depends solely on [the introduction of] limitations” into one general space (quoted by Hatfield 1990 : 90). There are, however, claimed/created spaces involving the practices of inclusion and exclusion, and admittedly they are concurrent and interacting, as well as overlapping and branching. Translation covers more than one-dimensionality that contains corresponding spatial relations and correlations. William J. Spurlin argues that “translation also includes the spaces where various cultural systems, in addition to language, intersect, converge, and transform” (Spurlin 2017 : 173). Further, the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are linked to merging and division. For Homi Bhabha, the “third space,” as an in-between space, is an overarching singular concept. However, it must be pointed out that it cannot be an all-embracing one. The third space provides a different site away from both source and target texts, and in this site different forces operate into hybridization. Moreover, the “third space” is said to be an indication of a contact zone (Pratt 1992: 6), which eventually results in hybridity, or as Bhabha later would prefer, a continuous process of hybridization. Yet before and during hybridization, translation must necessarily operate at different levels and as a result in dissimilar spaces. For example, as Ovidio Carbonell puts it, cultural translation involves an exotic space (Carbonell 1996 : 79). The third space emerges out of two cultures in translation, each of them inhabiting in its own cultural space. The concept of spaces should be viewed conceptually or metaphorically to better elucidate what happens in translation, which engenders the dynamic reconfiguration of connectivity by invoking a series of discrete but related spaces intertwined with linguistic conceptualizations, cultural representations, and signifying processes in connection with beliefs and values. This also problematizes the singular of space predicated on the assumption that there is only one single space involved in translation, which would overlook the fact that it is in reality the aggregation of spaces.

Walter Benjamin compares the relationship between the original and the translation to a tangent and a circle (Benjamin 2000 : 22). Translation must “touch” the original as Benjamin explicitly states in this simile. These touches occur “at the infinitely small point of the sense of the original, thereupon pursuing its course according to the laws of fidelity and in the freedom of linguistic flux” (Benjamin 2000 : 22). The act of touching lies at the heart of “fidelity” to disallow unwar-ranted deviation, yet significantly, “freedom” is also found to be prerequisite to translation. The point mentioned by Benjamin is small and can be related to the image of fragments, which suggests a sense of destruction. However, there is only one possibility that source and target languages can intersect at a certain point, namely the translation and the source text being completely equivalent. This can rarely be the case, of course, since the two may well have moved on separate trajectories. Nevertheless, it is still possible to prompt translation to keep in touch with the original, and no less importantly, to increase the frequency of the tangent touching the circle. Moreover, although the points of contact can be sparsely distributed, it is possible to capture them, even though only fleet-ingly and to a small extent. The elusiveness or non-fixedness of the original, in tandem with latent variables interminably activated and emerging, shows that as “a relational process,” translation consists essentially of movement in an effort to capture the meaning of the original, which is, on the other hand, not exactly possible due to the non-fixed nature of the original (Waggoner 2012 : 197).

By implication, it is through a series of spaces traversed by the movement of translation that the relations of distance and proximity are restructured and transformed. Inevitably, translation induces spatial displacement, interactively engaging with the multitudinous spaces in relation to culture, ideology, politics, and aesthetics. It is thus necessary to theorize space(s) in relation to translation as is demonstrated in a series of questions posed by Robert-Foley:

What lies in between languages in translation? Is that space (if it is a space at all) empty or full, visible or invisible, loud or quiet? Is it a lost space full of unknown truths waiting to be uncovered, or a new space waiting to be created?

(Robert-Foley 2016: 905)

This may imply a degree of vagueness and uncertainty, but points to possibilities associated with translational space. The centrality of the concept of space to translation is exemplified by the palpable need to develop it as a multi-dimensional concept to make out different ways in which translation enters into dialogue with different linguistic and cultural realities.

The special relevance of spaces to translation can be seen as a useful determinant in perceiving perspectives and subsequent spatial representations. Translation brings into place different perspectives, some of them imperceptible, and these perspectives naturally bear directly on the strategies and approaches subsequently adopted. Therefore, cross-cultural perspectives can be limited one way or another, thus causing an impediment to the opportunity to choose or create appropriate spaces. Sometimes perspectives can be held to be spaces for achieving their corresponding purposes. These spaces are both physical and virtual in nature, with conceptual or metaphorical dimensions. For this reason, their boundaries are not always clear or definite, and it may well be impossible to distinguish or separate these spaces, which can also cut across diverse types of boundaries. Moreover, what is important is that these spaces should be properly coordinated to bring out their operational and functional potentials. If properly chosen and interconnected with the resources available, a network of experimental, explorative, and diagnostic operational spaces can be constructed and applied. Spaces can overlap and are rarely isolated. The concept is necessarily a collective one because when one space ends and another space begins, this may continue until a feasible and optimal solution is obtained. Through the development of operational spaces, the systematic disempowerment of translation can be avoided or ameliorated. Different translators may tackle and solve problems in a plurality of different sets of spaces. As a result, their approaches are correspondingly different, and therefore a different degree of empowerment or disempowerment can be observed.

Meanwhile, it is also important to establish a spatial understanding of the operation of translation in dealing with untranslatability. In this regard, thick translation has emerged as a pragmatic solution by providing intervening paratextual spaces to accommodate the necessary amount of linguistic and/or cultural information, typically in the form of description and explication, in attending to references and allusions contained in the original, thus making translation less restrictive and thus more perceptible. Given the objectively irreducible distance between source and target texts in both linguistic and cultural terms, to resort to “thickness” points to the apparent lack of an inherent space to accommodate the requisite amount of information for adequate communication, be it linguistic or cultural, which makes necessary cultural and linguistic explication. It can be construed as a creditable, albeit sometimes perhaps misguided, attempt to carve out a significantly larger space to remove constraints. Furthermore, the switching between different spaces heralds an irreducible desire to capture more facets of the original without inevitably resorting to thick translation or annotated translation, which after all hampers readability and is detrimental to the literary value inherent in the original.

To put it another way, translation problems can be appropriately placed in a most suitable space to be better tackled. Different types of meaning, be they denotative, connotative, figurative, or other types, require different approaches in translation. And such approaches are best designed and employed in and from different spaces. Clearly, a different space (or more spaces) is needed to cross a seemingly uncrossable space embodied in references and allusions. It is worth noting that space is inextricably linked to possibilities. To be able to function properly, translation necessarily vacillates between proximity and distance, and in so doing, a series of spaces are mapped out and explored and perhaps traversed as well in order to work out the best obtainable solutions.

The so-called transfer of meaning takes place at the risk of losing depth and dimensionality. To start with, it is advisable to spatially understand ontological dimensions that are aligned with one another in spatial relations, considering the fact that unfolding of meaning over time through rereading and rewriting engenders time-space transfiguration in response to external contextual dimensions in an unmediated form. A multi-dimensional conceptualization of complex spatial interactions is informed by the potential for infinite possibilities. The “contact zone” involved in translation is defined by Mary Louise Pratt as “the space and time where subjects previously separated by geography and history are co-present” (Pratt 1992: 7). It should not come as a complete surprise to recognize the necessity to refocus attention on what makes translation possible and workable in terms of both accuracy and acceptability.

The concept of interconnected spaces includes such salient attributes as diversity, sensibility, flexibility, and so on and is used as a lens for rethinking how translation is done and presented to illustrate the concept as a remedial strategy that can be useful in dealing with dysfunctional or disempowered translation. The production and reproduction of spaces increase the capacity for resilience and resourcefulness. It can also be said that a spatial form is not only an organic whole of entity form and a void form in the real space but also a subjective judgment of the existence of factors in an ideological space. The interdependence between these spaces holistically reflects a range of potentially ostensibly competing but also complementary strategies and practices. It is thus very necessary to develop a spatial perspective on translation to gain a better understanding of how translation can be done more resourcefully.

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s much-quoted spatial metaphor about translation entails a mutually exclusive movement: the translator either brings the original to the target reader or takes them to it (Schleiermacher 2012 : 43). These spatial movement strategies were motivated by cultural politics, and it should be placed securely in a historical space: Schleiermacher only encouraged one movement: to take the target reader to the original, which is supposed to be stationary and unchanged. Although the third way of translating is precluded, translation methods are more than two, which suggests multiple movements, practices, and spaces can be involved. More importantly, it is often the combination of these methods and manifestations that define and shape the experience of translation. What this clearly shows is that the concept of space is dynamic rather than static and heterogeneous rather than homogeneous. It is also susceptible to changing and changed circumstances and contexts in which spatial configurations are constantly generated. On this account, translational spaces are malleable, continually expanded or reinvented to meet the need or challenge arising from a given situation, which explains their unabated relevance to translatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Translation and spaces
• 2 Distance and temporality
• 3 Cosmopolitan space and transnational resistance
• 4 Translation and world literature
• 5 Spatial translatability
• 6 Multicultural contextual spaces
• 7 Spatial trajectories of “back” translation
• 8 Deconstruction and translation research
• 9 Empowering translation
• Conclusion
• Index