Translatability in Literature

Works of literary art in the US are littered with references to the problem of translation--direct and indirect. My impression is that literary artists have been aware of this issue longer than anthropologists, perhaps (duh!) because story tellers have focused on the tools of their trade since the earliest times, before writing was invented. And likely some of those early story tellers were travelers who brought back strange tales of other ways of life and language.

Two recent references I have encountered hold some interest.

In Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, Archer, a married man, has fallen in love with Madame Olenska, married also, who has escaped from her brutal Polish husband in Europe and is seeking a divorce from him, shocking many upon her return and re-entry into the highest levels of New York City society. Archer will not leave his wife and he has, at the behest of others, convinced Olenska to drop the divorce she seeks, for propriety's sake. Late in the story, she asks Archer, "Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your mistress---since I can't be your wife?"

He is taken off-guard at the "crudeness" of the question, perhaps by its openness and frankness and he fumbles for an answer: "I want---I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that---categories like that---won't exist."

Her answer? "Oh, my dear---where is that country? Have you ever been there?"

I think that Edith Wharton would have been very comfortable with the claim that much of our lived reality is socially constructed. There is something very Whorfian about Archer's answer: that behavior is shaped by the language that we use, by the social categories that have been constructed for us in our language.

Different languages, different categories, different patterns of behavior, different constraints, different opportunities, the universality of linguistic hegemony, the particularity: how it plays out in each culture. At once, the issue or problem of translatability comes to the fore. The world he talks about is a world in which the distinction between wife and mistress would carry no weight, have no meaning.

A second example that I recently encountered, in a book that I do not recommend, but which has sold a lot of copies (the very reason I did read it, to see what the fuss was about) is the Arab word, Maktub.

In Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, the sheepherder and protagonist is told Maktub by the merchant for whom he is working.

"What does it mean?" the boy asks.

"You would have to have been born an Arab to understand. But in your language it would be something like 'It is written' " is the answer.

I don't think that either the author or the character meant to make the claim that some understanding of language is inescapably genetic (but in an age where science is showing more and more clearly how much of brain develop occurs, in humans, after birth, it is an interesting question that I wonder is not being seriously asked somewhere, though the minefields in such a venture are fairly clearly demarcated). So genetic no, but you have to be raised in an Arab family, presumably in the Arab world to catch the full weight of the word. I hope to explore ideas like these, the most important of the two is the focus on differences between distinctions made from language to language and how these local distinctions regulate and make possible differing behaviors in the cultures that they sustain.

A horrible tale has emerged recently in Cambodia. It has to do with the question of what does it mean to rape a woman. In the US this question has long been tortured by questions of consent or non-consent (and how one goes about proving that), the role of alcohol and drugs, issues of age of consent, and so on. In this case, two policemen 'raped' a 19-year old woman who had come to visit her sister who ran a Karaoke parlor. One held the girl down, while the other had sex with her, then they traded places, the second failed in his attempt. The girl escaped, weeping. On these facts the non-consensual nature of the act seems inescapable. But the policemen defended themselves in two ways -- and their defense has so far been accepted. They will not be prosecuted.

In the first instance, they claim, the girl was not a virgin. Therefore it was impossible to rape her (apparently this is a widely held belief, though strongly disputed of course in the NGO and Human Rights community here).

In the second instance, since they had already paid $250 of compensation to the family, therefore they could not be prosecuted (though the compensation paid was an admission on its own that they had done something wrong, something requiring compensation to be paid).

As outsiders and guests it is hard not to be astonished and astounded by these arguments, by this distinction. If the belief were not so widely held, one might think these guys just made it up, and you would never, ever think that anyone would buy into it. Their boss has. The police hierarchy has. The courts and prosecutors so far have. This is not just an instance of impunity, which of course it is, at its essence, but one that is aided and abetted by a different way of thinking about sex with unmarried women. (And the story really deserves so much more intense investigation than this summary provides. I know so many questions are being begged here. The Cambodia Daily (5 November 2009, page 2) story says: "Phnom Penh municipal Police Chief Touch Naruth said that the case of the two men has not been forwarded to the courts for prosecution because the alleged victim was not a virgin.")

But we don't have to go outside our own language to see how this works. The Law: great legal debates are typically over what distinctions have legal weight in arbitrating between legal and illegal behavior. Religion: there are elements of the practice of Christianity in Catholic Churches that do not translate well or at all into the Protestant Church. It is not just differences in rules, but in the dominant categories of belief and the distinctions that regulate what appropriate action (proper worship, for example) might be. To choose one, from thousands of possible doctrinal differences, think about the role of Jesus' Mother Mary in the Catholic Church versus a general Protestant doctrine. Different beliefs, different behavior, both spiritual need and action shaped by belief, founded on doctrinal possibilities. (Think about "Saints", not translatable into "Protestantism").

One final note, and here I go back to Coelho, who manages to say quite a few intelligent things in a very implausibly plotted and philosophically suspect book.

Near the end of the book, as they prepare to depart from each other, the boy asks the Alchemist why he has not taught him any of the him many wonderful things he knows. He tells the Alchemist that he had actually read some books on Alchemy, but learned nothing.

"There is only one way to learn," the Alchemist answered. "It's through action."

Most of what I have learned about the Khmer language, and by extension, about the Khmer culture is through action, working with Cambodians, talking to them, arguing with them, trying to get things done or make things happen with them. You can't learn these kinds of lessons in a classroom.

(For example, I have been shopping for a used motor-bike for a student we sponsor. I have learned that the Cambodians have a very clear hierarchy of motor-bikes, with prices that follow the preferences. In the US we would think basically of companies and brands, here, the questions are: was it made in Japan, or is it a Japanese product but made in Thailand (same company, same brand, less trusted, lower price) or made in China (even lower price, reflecting the limited market for that, even if it is a Honda, very highly respected here, but to a foreigner the end product of the manufacturing process would be indistinguishable from the same product directly exported from Japan). Was it bought new in Japan, used in Cambodia and now on sale again, or was it bought new in Japan, used in Japan, and then exported to Cambodia (the later will always cost more and be preferred, and there is a Khmer word for that kind of motorbike that sums up all of that description, and makes it easy to talk about it.)

But anthropologists have known this a long time and I am sure that real linguists do also. It is just that literary artists have been thinking about it, perhaps not as systematically, but for a lot longer.

Read more...