FOUND IN TRANSLATION: A CASE STUDY AND REVIEW OF LUCY JONES’ TRANSLATION OF REIMANN’S GESCHWISTER INTO ENGLISH
As might be expected from the title of this essay, the purpose is to debunk the myth of ‘lost in translation’, not so much in the cinematic version, but in the maxims of linguistic relativism, of which an extreme version is stated by Kramsch (2009):
The more people speak English around the world the less people understand one another. So it’s this irony that we’re moving into an era where more and more people speak English and yet less and less do they understand one another because through English they are thinking, they speak English but they think French, or they speak English and they think Hindi. And so it becomes an invisible multilingualism behind the English that they speak and I think applied linguistics has a lot to contribute to that understanding of what it means to have a multilingual mentality, a multilingual competence.
http://pterodactilo.com/numero6/?p=541A
Equally, in an essay by Thomas (2002) entitled ‘Roger Bacon and Martin Joos: Generative Linguistics’ Reading of the Past’ the likes of Chomsky and Joos are accused of being hardcore apologists for Bacon’s assertion that ‘the substance of grammar is one and the same for all languages, even if there are accidental variations’ while a more reasonable stance would be that of the American (Boas) descriptive tradition that states that ‘languages could differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways’ which Joos in particular took issue with. While Thomas has also other axes to grind (including the suspicion that Chomsky and Co. have misunderstood Bacon), the main point seems to be that Generative Linguistics is treating descriptivism unfairly in its dismissal of it.
Having brought up in the descriptivist tradition myself at the University of Auckland in the 1980s – and having been sidelined as a pro-Chomskian linguist (Sperlich, 2006) – I have noted the irony of Austronesian descriptivists in particular in that they put a lot of effort into reconstructing proto-languages, assuming that modern Austronesian or at least Oceanic languages evolved from a single proto-Austronesian or proto-Oceanic language. While mainly concentrating on proto-phonology and a proto-lexicon, there is implicit the notion that a single grammar was at the heart of it. Indeed, there is research into the accusative to ergative drift in Polynesian languages (e.g. Hohepa, 1969), as an example of a syntactical evolution.
What really sets the two opposing camps apart in modern parlance is the question of how language arises from the brain. While Chomsky and Co. argue for biolinguistics which presumes that there is a language faculty in our brain like a physiological organ, and as such makes all humans alike in their acquisition of language (a combination of nature and nurture), while the other camp (functionalists, pragmatists, cognitivists and other) claim that language is a learnt behaviour (à la Skinner) or at least a product of cognition that arises purely as ‘nurture’ (in terms of cultural communication). If so, then given the many cultural permutations, both past and present, plus the many idiosyncrasies of individuals, we could conclude, that ultimately, we cannot truly understand anything anyone is saying, even so we follow certain learnt cultural and sub-cultural norms like addressed in pragmatics, e.g. Levinson’s (2000:76) conversational implicature:
Speaker’s maxim: Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows ….
How such a maxim is interpreted by various cultures, let alone individual preferences, does set up an almost impossible cross-cultural, cross-linguistic communication, as claimed by Kramsch above. As a cynic one can, of course, argue that this is indeed the case, given the present state of the world and its history as a never-ending battle ground, in words and deeds. Talking past each other even within a single language would be evidence for language per se not working at all. On the other hand, there cannot be any doubt that language as a uniquely human feature, however acquired, has set us apart from the animal kingdom, elevating us to a degree whereby we can understand nature, harness nature, and even rise above nature. If the latter is the case, we do indeed live up to the mythological analogy whereby ultimate knowledge is the preserve of the gods and as such humans cannot be permitted to attain it. Given the astounding progress in technological innovation, from space travel to sequencing our DNA, we should hold language as the sole source of such knowledge in high respect. That we shoot ourselves in the foot by potentially making the planet uninhabitable for us, we can also lament the power of language to sink so low.
Let us now assume that linguistic relativism is the cause for all the negative aspects of a learnt language use, we can understand Chomsky’s effort to debunk Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour as a potential tool for the fascist enterprise that manipulates our behaviour to such a degree that we can become concentration camp operators. Not that language as a biological organ in the brain prevents us from genocidal stupidity but at least it reinforces the maxim that all people are born equal, and that racism, sexism and classism are learnt behaviours that can be unlearnt in the right environment that is in harmony with nature (even when nature is indifferent to human needs). As such we can only expand Marx’s call for ‘workers of the world to unite’ to people of the world to unite and use our languages for the common good. For while languages may initially divide us, it is a lucky coincidence that we can understand all languages of the world if we put our mind to it. The idea is not that we should all speak the same language (as dreamt up by advocates of Esperanto) but that we celebrate the diversity of language, based on criteria that are logical and understandable. For example, we can appreciate the Innuit languages for having an intricate vocabulary for snow and ice, and associated metaphors and figures of speech, which native speakers of Ecuador have no idea about. When two such speakers meet in their respective environments, they soon figure out what is what and why, and how to TRANSLATE from one language to the other.
And so, I come to the main point of this essay: TRANSLATION between languages is possible because we share a common humanity and possibly a universal grammar in our heads that allows us to fully acquire and/or learn a second/foreign/heritage/etc. language. People who live in areas where different languages border each other have always been bilingual and ever since the world has become a global village (at least in the positive sense) all languages border each other, and we all should become polyglots. Unfortunately, there are people, and even linguists, who seem to discourage the acquisition of another language as an impossibility, giving credence to those who do try but find it too hard or claim to have no talent for languages. For the latter category of people, there is however an easy solution: read it in translation. There is nothing lost in translation, but everything is found in translation. Obviously, translation as a professional activity requires skills that can only be obtained by prolonged study and practice, including the absolute conviction that translation from one language to the other renders the original as good if not better in the translation. Of course, one can argue about the finer points and critique translators who do a bad job because the job is poorly paid or develop an aversion to the original text because they come to disagree with the content.
In any case it occurred to me that after reading Brigitte Reimann’s Siblings (as reviewed in my blog https://wolfgangsperlich.blogspot.com/2023/09/ ) I should obtain the original German version and then compare it to the English translation. Being bilingual between German and English (the former being my native language) and being trained in both descriptive (mainly Oceanic) and generative linguistics, and being a lexicographer, I should be able to make a reasonably good fist of it even though I am not trained as a translator per se (but having worked as a p/t translator on occasions, mainly reviewing technical translations between German and English and vice versus). Also being of an age whereby I experienced the German divide into East and West (residing in the latter) and for a time in the 1970s living in West-Berlin, I have a personal viewpoint. Finally, as self-proclaimed socialist and connoisseur of socialist realism in world literature I am acutely aware of the importance of TRANSLATION to make literature a universal enterprise that can be enjoyed by all despite of not knowing the various languages of the originals. Indeed, contrary to the linguistic relativists, I am convinced that, for example, reading Dostoyevsky in English or German has taught me more about aspects of Russian culture than I would have learnt by studying Russian language. In other words, language does not determine culture and culture does not determine language. Of course, there are feedback loops, but they can always be disentangled from language in terms of diachronic research. Taking Russia as an example again, the various upheavals in her cultural and political history are no doubt mirrored to some degree in the vocabulary of the Russian language, but nobody can seriously claim that it has influenced or changed Russian syntax. Similarly, I read that OED has now included ‘Chinese dragon’ as an entry to differentiate between the Western concept of dragons as monsters and the Chinese concept of dragons as auspicious symbols. Such cultural vocabulary items are no doubt of value for cross-cultural understanding, but this has nothing to do with cross-linguistic understanding of say, English and Mandarin, as languages per se, especially at the level of syntax. Again, by reading Chinese Literature in English translation will inform me about aspects of Chinese culture more than studying Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu or Hakka (just to mention a few Chinese languages).
As such a mono-lingual English speaker will derive great cultural and political understanding about the two Germanies in the 1960s, especially from the point of view of East-Germany, when reading Reimann’s Siblings. It is my contention that not a single word was lost in the translation from German by Lucy Jones and if anything, a great deal was gained. To back up my claim, let us look at some examples from the two texts.
Memorable literary openings are legendary, from Dicken’s ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …’ to Reimann’s ‘Als ich zur Tür ging, drehte sich alles in mir’. Such openings are memorable because of the succinct language used: simple syntax and simple words to express a clear and straightforward meaning. No doubt Lucy Jones was aware of this when she translated it as ‘As I walked to the door, everything in me was spinning’.
Now, if you were into English-German/German-English comparative syntax, you would notice that Jones translated the past-tense ‘drehte’ as the past-continuous ‘was spinning’. Given that German does not have the continuous/progressive aspect, should Jones have used the literal translation of ‘span’ instead? Is this a case of linguistic relativism? Will the German learner of English never truly understand the English language because he/she cannot conceive of a continuous/progressive aspect? Will the English learner of German feel pity for native speakers of German because they lack a piece of syntactic equipment that is so obviously useful in English? Is English therefore superior to German? Or perhaps it is the other way around? Don’t English speakers understand that verbs in themselves express continuous versus non-continuous action? Are they so simple minded that they need a syntactic overlay that makes it clear that the verb ‘to spin’ is always a continuous action? We Germans are clever enough to do without it. So, in my mind it is easy to see how linguistic differences end up as bizarre cultural and cognitive differences that are said to be impossible to bridge, giving rise to the worst kind of propaganda used by insane political and religious fundamentalists all too well known in the present tense as in the past.
The point that Jones, as a good translator, knows is that idiomatic language is perfectly transferable from one to the other language by using the appropriate syntax that may or may not differ between the two languages. When syntax does differ, as in the opening sentences above, there is no point in asking why that should be – is it a question of diachronic syntax? – and simply employ synchronic syntax that achieves idiomatic expression. Nothing is lost, everything is gained.
The same argument applies to the next sentence (with glosses):
Er sagte: “Das vergesse ich dir nicht.”
He said: “This forget I you not.”
He said, ‘I won’t forget this.’ (as translated by Jones)
If anything, this demonstrates how different German and English can be, putting paid to the myth that since German and English are closely related languages – English is said to be a Germanic language – it should be comparatively easy to learn each other’s languages. Sure, there are many similarities in syntax and lexicon but so are many differences. Comparing English to Mandarin, one can say the same, precisely because there is a universal grammar that has many possible surface realisations – hence differences in different languages – but the differences are neither ‘without limit nor unpredictable’ as claimed by linguistic relativists, i.e. differences are not logically impossible. The Mandarin equivalent of the English sentence above is much more similar in syntax to English than to German, and nobody in typology would argue that English and Mandarin are related:
Zhè wǒ bù huì wàng jì.
This I will not forget
Perhaps Jones should have had a closer look at the German verb ‘vergessen’ which also has the connotation of ‘forgive’ and as such can take a dative object ‘dir’ as in the perhaps better English equivalent of ‘This (betrayal) I will not forgive you’. Note the semantics of the English ‘forget’ which implies and as such often is in the future tense as in Jones’ ‘I won’t forget this’, i.e. in this context it would not be idiomatic English to say it in the present tense ‘I don’t forget this’ while in German the present tense use is OK as it also implies the future. These intricacies of possible translations do however not distract from the basic message which as clear in the German version by Reimann, as it is in the English one by Jones. Incidentally, you may note that the Mandarin verb ‘wàng jì’ (to forget) also doesn’t take a dative object (like English) and would require a different verb like ‘yuán liàng’ (to forgive) as in:
Zhè wǒ bù huì yuán liàng nǐ
This I will not forgive you
This types of comparative analysis in terms of translation are not focussed so much on syntax but more on equivalent idiomatic expression which may be based on quite different syntactic constructions. Translation does not mean ‘literal translation by glossing every word and syntactic function’ which is reserved for purely linguistic-syntactic comparisons. Nevertheless, a good translator will be aware of the syntactic implication and will choose an idiomatic translation that is as close as possible in terms of syntactic construction.
One way a translator can clarify difficult or unusual words or expressions, is to append notes, an exercise also known as annotation. There is an ancient scholarship attached to this idea, namely hermeneutics which deals with the interpretation of texts, especially biblical, philosophical and legal. So, not only do we translate between languages we also have to interpret what we say and write in our native language. We all know that in the legal profession there are endless arguments about what such and such a law really means, how it is interpreted, how it is applied. Apparently dating back to Socrates, words have the power to reveal or conceal and can deliver messages in an ambiguous way, so we need arbiters to decide which is which. Does this extend to translators in the modern age? Is Reimann an apologist for Stalinist atrocities? Why does she betray her brother to stay in the DDR? Is the capitalist system of the West (as in West-Berlin in the 1960s) an obscene display of ill-gotten wealth? On which side is Lucy Jones, the translator? Perusing her not insubstantial online presence, not too many clues emerge. Most reviews of the Siblings are very complimentary with brief comments on a translation job well done. Only in one review in the LRB by one Michael Hofman is there a mention of her translation being ‘flawed’ without any explanation given followed by a quite bizarre exposition on Reimann’s life and work in the ‘totalitarian’ DDR. To Jones’ credit, she deflects various interviewers’ suspicions that a published writer in the DDR must have towed the party line and written in the genre of socialist realism prescribed by Soviet Russia. Readers being puzzled by Reimann’s apparent defence of socialism over capitalism are reminded that socialism (Marxism) is a universal idea, applicable to any place at any time. I doubt Jones is a Marxist by persuasion, more likely a sort of middle-of-the-road British Labourite, who can be unequivocal in her condemnation of the DDR’s Berlin border wall, as she writes in footnote 13, that ‘the alternative would have been to face a mass exodus’. Well, isn’t Reimann’s novel pointing to the other ‘alternative’ that there were sufficient numbers of real socialists in the DDR to keep the utopia afloat? As to her footnotes in general she says (having used them extensively in her translation of Reimann’s diaries):
I carried that approach over to the translation of the fiction, as I felt that the flow should be smooth, and I didn’t want readers to get lost in rabbit holes trying to figure things out, because it took me quite some time to understand certain contexts, and I did extra research with a separate document open. Then I thought, if I can give readers the benefit of my research in a small, succinct footnote, what could be better than that? I tried to keep them short, and I think there are only thirty in total, none of them longer than two lines. They were a last resort—only included if the translation couldn’t somehow reflect a reality that contemporary readers would understand. Footnotes are quite unusual, but they have had a bit of a revival even in fiction, with both advocates and detractors. However, I think it’s good to help readers understand something in a few words—which might otherwise take them out of the story if they had to look it up—and the good thing about endnotes is that readers can ignore them if they choose to, as they are separate from the text.
As to technical details concerning translation in general or in the context of the Siblings, I have not found many clues either. There are some comments when asked how she dealt with Reimann’s humour:
I mean, I have to say what I’ve translated aloud, and try it out on other people. I might test a line or two on real-life people around a dinner table. When David Sedaris does a reading, he’ll draw a skull in the margin if nobody laughs, and then he’ll edit the joke out, because it didn’t work. Something could look great to you on the page, but then it’s dead in the water when you say it aloud.
There is also the mention that she wants to mirror Reimann’s immediacy of ‘voice’ which is supposed to be an outstanding feature of her writing. I am not sure what ‘voice’ exactly means, apart from the grammatical term that distinguishes between active and passive voice. I suppose it is true that both German and English versions convey a sense of the present, of being with and in the story, of sharing the ups and downs of the narrator, of being conflicted, of being a real human(ist), a real socialist. To that degree Jones must have absorbed many of the doctrines of her German teacher at the University of East-Anglia, WG Sebald, who as a noted academic, writer and translator transcended both English and German worlds of literature. Not that I know much about Sebald, except from the incredible coincidence of being sent – while writing this essay – a link to an essay about Sebald, written by an old high school (Gymnasium Hohenschwangau) friend of mine from whom I hadn’t heard in ages. Perhaps Jones could translate it into English:
Zum 21. Todestag. Il ritorno della memoria, oder: Die Reise zu W. G. Sebalds Grab, von Peter Winkler (2022)
https://www.literaturportal-bayern.de/journal?task=lpbblog.default&id=2882
Life is full of surprises, as seems to be the case with Jones’ ‘education’ that led from one unlikely place to another:
https://transfiction.eu/lucy-jones/education/
So, what about the rest of the translation, word by word, having only touched on the first few sentences? Since some commentators mentioned the supposedly clever ending of the novel which returns to the beginning, closing the circle, as it were, let us look at the translation equivalent of these last lines:
Mein Bruder musterte mich stumm und mit einem Ausdruck von Neugier, und nach einer Weile sagte er, fragend und in einem Ton, der mich mit zitternder Hoffnung erfüllte: “Was seid ihr bloss fur Menschen?”
To provide some context for those who haven’t read the novel, Elizabeth’s brother has been persuaded not to leave the DDR for the BDR, so this is the conclusion. First, I present my version on how I would translate this final passage into English:
My brother eyed me silently with an expression of curiosity, and after a while he said, questioningly and in a tone which filled me with a trembling hope: “What kind of people are you anyway?”
Now for some fun let’s try Google Translate, since automated translation is all the vogue these days:
My brother looked at me silently and with an expression of curiosity, and after a while he said, questioningly and in a tone that filled me with trembling hope: “What kind of people are you?”
And here is the real thing by Lucy Jones:
My brother eyed him silently with an expression of pensive wonder. After a while, he said quizzically, in a tone of voice that filled me with trembling hope, ‘What kind of people are you anyway?’
Given the straightforward text in German, one can only expect differing nuances in translation which nevertheless reveal something of a certain style of translation. The Google effort is of course very bland but does a good job as a basic translation. Translation machines are getting better by the minute but as they are based on statistical matching, they lack all originality (I have written on this subject at various times in my blog). One of the questions of translation is if the translator should, if at all possible, improve on the text by leaving out or inserting words or phrases to arrive at an idiomatic expression: an example here would be the question why Reimann put an ‘und’ (and) in the first part of the sentence, seemingly being unnecessary, as both me and Jones left it out. Only Google dutifully left it in place. Next the question on how to translate the verb ‘musterte’ which in German is quite uncommon, with a miliary connotation, i.e. when called up for military service there is a close inspection of their health which cynics compare to buying a horse, checking its teeth. Both Jones and I chose ‘eyed’ while Google looked at its data base and found that ‘mustern’ is most often translated as ‘to look’ – majority use rules, which can be quite boring. “ … mit einem Ausdruck von Neugier’ I go with the boring and fairly literal Google translation of ‘… with an expression of curiosity’ while Jones throws in a much more stylistic ‘… with an expression of pensive wonder’. Well done, I say. ‘… fragend …’ (from ‘Frage’ = question) is literally translated by me and Google as ‘questioningly’ and on reflection I find this awkward and much prefer Jones’ ‘quizzically’. We all agree on the ‘trembling hope’. For the final punchline both Jones and I hit the jackpot by adding the colloquial emphatic ‘anyway’ while Google fails miserably.
I could go to town and annotate Jones’ text from beginning to end – and might have to do so if the text attains biblical proportions, or better still, becomes included in the Marxist literary canon of social realism, perhaps with the likes of Brecht and Gladkov (the latter mentioned by Reimann’s protagonist and as explained in detail in Jones’ footnote 1.). At this stage I can only say that Jones’ translation is an excellent piece of work, as good if not better than the original text, notwithstanding, of course, that Reiman wrote the novel and Jones merely translated it into English, making an important work of German literature accessible for English speakers. That something akin is already in progress for the German versions, might as such not be a surprise. Having discovered a partial, original handwritten manuscript of the Geschwister in 2022, the new version published in 2023 makes use of this material, amending the earlier published versions. In an extensive addendum to the novel, the editors explain how they re-inserted words, phrases and passages that had been cut from the earlier publications in the DDR. It’s not that there was whole-scale censorship at play that forced Reimann to cut out unpalatable sections – indeed the consensus seems to be that surprisingly (sic) there was not much censorship at all, apart from some minor improvements which Reimann herself had credited the editor with ‘Er verbessert und streicht auch nicht …’ (He improves and he doesn’t cut.). Reimann herself struggles with her manuscript and makes various stylistic changes (like cutting unnecessary adjectival phrases) but as the current editors (2023) discovered, there were some cuts that might have been ‘suggested’ by the literary authorities at the time, like some phrases that implied more people leaving the DDR than generally acknowledged, as well as some remarks about her loyal friend Joachim, including his admiration for Tito (the then Yugoslav president) who by then was persona non grata by the Soviet authorities on account of Tito’s independent politics. It seems questionable though that some of Reiman’s own cuts were re-inserted and changes were reversed, on the spurious grounds that if there was evidence of ‘politisch Misliebiges geglattet oder der frische Erzahlton Reimanns nach damaliger Mode ‘litererarisiert’ werden sollte (p.212)’ (smoothing out undesirable politics or making Reimann’s narrative tone more ‘literary’ according to the fashion of the time). How can the current editors be the arbiters of such self-imposed criteria? Apparently, the now famous author of The Master and Margarita had some protection from Stalin himself. Should we burn Bulgakov’s oeuvre because Stalin liked some of it? Should we do the same with Reimann’s novels because they passed the Soviet-style censorship of the DDR? To make such literary works more palatable for the contemporary (capitalist) market by cutting, improving, and changing the text in its original published form, may just be the beginning of it. I say, leave the text alone but if you wish to publish an annotated version in the tradition of hermeneutics, go ahead – it may be of interest to those who desire a particular interpretation that suits their own ‘knowledge of the world’ – or the lack of it.
REFERENCES
Hohepa, Patrick W. (1969). The Accusative-To-Ergative Drift in Polynesian Languages.
The Journal of the Polynesian Society Vol. 78, No. 3 pp. 295-329.
Sperlich, W. B. (2006) Noam Chomsky. Reaktion Books, London.
Other online sites about Jones and Reimann consulted:
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-monocle-weekly/the-monocle-weekly-61/
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/michael-hofmann/no-room-at-the-top
https://wordswithoutborders.org/contributors/view/lucy-renner-jones/
