Review: THE TRANSLATOR'S ENDLESS TOIL

Reviewed Work(s): The True Interpreter: a History of Translation Theory and Practice in
the West by L.G. Kelly; Pisarze polscy o sztuce przekładu, 1440–1974. Antologia [Polish
Writers on the Art of Translation, 1440–1974: an Anthology] by Edward Balcerzan
Review by: CHRISTOPHER KASPAREK
Source: The Polish Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1983), pp. 83-87
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts &
Sciences of America
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 REVIEW ARTICLES

CHRISTOPHER KASPAREK

THE TRANSLATOR'S ENDLESS TOIL

L.G. Kelly, The True Interpreter: a History of Translation Theory and

Practice in the West, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1979. Pp. 282.

Edward Balcerzan, ed., Pisarze polscy o sztuce przektadu, 1440-1974.

Antologia [Polish Writers on the Art of Translation, 1440-1974: an Anthol
ogy], Poznah, Wydawnictwo Poznahskie, 1977. Pp. 502.

Translation is, etymologically, a "carrying across" or "bringing across":

the Latin translatio derives from transferre (trans, "across" + ferre, "to
carry" or "to bring"). The modern European languages have generally
formed their own equivalent terms for this concept after the Latin model: the
English "translation," the Spanish translacion and traduccion, the French
traduction, the Italian traduzione, the Portuguese and Rumanian terms (de
rived from the kindred Latin traducere, "to lead across" or "bring
across"), the German Ubersetzung (a "putting across") and its Swedish,
Danish and Norwegian cognates, the Russian pyehryehvod (a "leading
across" or "putting across") and its Serbo-Croatian cognate, and the mod
ern Polish przeklad (a "putting across") and its Czech cognate?all these
are variations on the same Latin theme. The other Polish term tlumacz,
tlumaczenie comes from the Turkish tilmuz via the German Dolmetsch. And
the Greek term for translation, metaphrasis (a "speaking across"), has
supplied English with "metaphrase," meaning a literal, or word-for-word,
translation, as contrasted with "paraphrase" (a "saying in other words").
The latter Greek terminological distinction was adopted by John Dryden
(1631-1700), who represented translation as the judicious blending of these
two modes of phrasing when selecting in the target language "counter
parts," or equivalents, for the expressions that have been used in the source
language:
When [words] appear . . . literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they
should be changed. But since . . . what is beautiful in one [language] is often barba
rous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a trans
lator to the narrow compass of his author's words: 'tis enough if he choose out some
expression which does not vitiate the sense.

83

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84 The Polish Review

However, Dryden cautioned against the license of "imitation," i.e. of

adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life ... he has no
privilege to alter features and lineaments. . ." This general formulation of
the central concept of translation?equivalence?is probably as adequate as
any that has been proposed ever since Cicero and Horace, in the first cen
tury B.C., cautioned against translating "word for word" (verbum pro
verbo).
It is perhaps a pity that Dryden"s terms?"metaphrase" and "para
phrase"?have not been adopted by Louis Kelly, who uses "formal equiv
alent" and "dynamic equivalent," respectively. One can "paraphrase";
how does one "dynamic-equivalent"? Indeed, a minor flaw of Kelly's book
is an excessive tendency to terminological and intellectual obeisance before
academic authorities, as when he discusses the "symbol," "symptom" and
"signal" functions of translations (terms borrowed from Karl Buhler). Still,
even with its pedantries, Kelly's book is the best existing history of transla
tion theories and practices that have obtained in the West (i.e. in Western
Europe and North America). Especially valuable are numerous translation
excerpts, illustrating the author's arguments, which will be appreciated by
readers conversant with Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Perhaps the most striking conclusion that may be drawn from Kelly's
study is that, occasional theoretical diversities notwithstanding, the actual
practice of translators has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some
extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the Middle Ages, and
adapters in various periods?especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th
century?translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking
equivalents?"literal" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary?for
the original meaning and other crucial "values" (e.g. style, verse form,
concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech articula
tory movements) as determined from context. In general, translators have
sought, where possible, maximally to preserve the context itself by
reproducing the original order of sememes, and hence word order?when
necessary, reinterpreting the actual grammatical structure. The grammatical
differencess between fixed-word-order languages (e.g. English, French,
German) and free-word-order languages (e.g. Greek, Latin, Polish) have
been no impediment in this regard. Where the target language has lacked
terms that are found in the source language, translators have borrowed them,
thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the ex
change of caiques (French for "carbon copies") between languages, and to
their importation from Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and other languages,
there are few concepts that are "untranslatable" among the modern Euro
pean languages.
It may be noted here that the Polish language, having assimilated the
greater part of its Latin-derived expressions to Polish roots, is more readily
comprehensible, spellable, and pronounceable when read, to an average na

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The Translator's Endless Toil 85

tive Pole than is English to a native Anglophone. English, having developed

in an ethnically stratified society of Germanic peasants, French nobles and
Latin-using clergy, and having grafted alien expressions onto the native lin
guistic trunk rather than assimilating them, to this day retains a greater de
gree of linguistic stratification and internal tension. English is of course, as
one consequence of its mixed heritage, "richer" than Polish (and perhaps
any other language) in synonyms; for example, where Polish has only the
one adjective krolewski, English has three adjectives: the Germanic
"kingly," the French "royal," the Latin "regal." Where there is such pro
liferation of synonyms, each word comes to occupy a distinct "ecological
niche"?is used in a somewhat different context, and therefore sense. Thus,
while the two (or, for that matter, any two) languages take the measure of
basically similar realities, each presents the results in different units, in ac
cordance with its own scales, thus yielding different quantities, or values. In
general, the greater the contact and exchange that has existed between two
languages, or between both and a third one, the greater is the ratio of meta
phrase to paraphrase that may be used in translating between them; however,
due to shifts in ecological niches, a common etymology may sometimes be
misleading as a guide to actual current meaning in one or the other language:
"sympathy" and the Polish sympatia, though both derive from the same
Greek word, are not always the same thing?the now more usual English
sense being conveyed in Polish by the assimilated wspotczucie. Indeed,
while the concepts of meta- and para-equivalents are extremely useful in
translation practice, their theoretical definition is not as clear-cut as might be
wished. Some 20th-century linguists have termed the two types of equiva
lence "formal" and "dynamic": formal equivalence is defined as corre
spondence between linguistic units, independent of any idea of content (can
there be equivalence without context or content?); dynamic equivalence is
defined as the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message.
Both types of equivalence can coexist in the same item, and this?as Kelly
notes?is not as rare as some proponents of free translation would contend.
The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between
cultures has been discussed at least since Terence, in the second century
B.C. However, the translator's role is by no means a passive and mechani
cal one, and consequently has also been compared with that of the artist. "It
is not clear," says Kelly, "when translators began to lay claim to the status
of artist." The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation that
one finds in critics as early as Cicero. Dryden observed that "Translation is
a type of drawing after life . . ." Comparison of the translator with a musi
cian or actor goes back at least to Samuel Johnson's remark about Pope
playing Homer on a flageolet, while Homer himself used a bassoon.
In any case, translation is no easy art. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon
wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both lan
guages, as well as the science that he is to translate; and finding that few

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 86 The Polish Review

translators did in fact have the requisite knowledge, he wanted to do away

with translation and translators altogether. According to Kelly, the first per
son to assume that one translates satisfactorily only toward one's own lan
guage seems to have been Martin Luther; certainly since Herder, in the 18th
century, it has been axiomatic that one will work only toward his own lan
guage. Further compounding all these requirements and restrictions upon the
translator is the fact that not even the most complete dictionary or thesaurus
can ever be a fully adequate guide in translation: Alexander Tytler, in his
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1790), emphasized that assiduous
reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than dictionaries. (We
should add that the same point, but also including listening to the spoken
language, had already been made in 1783 by Onufry Andrzej Kopczynski,
member of Poland's Society for Elementary Books, who was called "the
last Latin poet.")
In view of the rigorous preparation and ongoing effort that are required
for translation, one may infer that it takes many years' practice to become an
accomplished translator. Kelly cites no figure, but in this reviewer's experi
ence ten years, after one has already acquired a good basic knowledge of
both languages and cultures, seems a minimum.
It would be useful if other scholars extended Kelly's work to non
'*Western" translation theory and practice. While this would likely not alter
the major conclusions that may be drawn from this book, it would help in
redressing the inevitable misconception that only Western Europeans and
North Americans have translated or theorized about translation. For the Pol
ish section of the project, an indispensable source would be Edward
Balcerzan's anthology of Polish writings on translation.
The earliest extant Polish piece on translation is an anonymous, astonish
ingly erudite foreword (possibly by Andrzej Galka of Dobczyn, dean of
Cracow University) to a treatise on Polish spelling by Jakub Parkoszowic of
Zorawica, written about 1440. Already present, at the dawn of Polish
theorizing on translation, are the most fundamental elements and many of
the most venerable authorities that were to be discussed over the next five
and a half centuries, up to our own day:

Therefore let the foundation of our discourse be the words written in the dialog
Timaios by the divine philosopher Plato: "We are given language, that the judg
ments of our minds may become an object of exchange among men."" Aristotle in
Book I of Politica says: "Man is a creature political, domesticated, capable of
communicating his ideas to others, to wit, by vocal signs."" He indicates the same in
Book I of Peri hermeneias [About Interpretation], when he says: "Thus these are vo
cal signs for sentiments that form in the soul"* . . .
Language is diverse, its diversity originally having arisen from the diversion of the
tongue of the sons of Noah who had been building a tower; in the words of Holy
Writ [Genesis 11:7-9 ?C.K.]: "Let us go down and confuse the tongue of the sons
of Noah, that none may understand the voice of his neighbor. And so the Lord scat
tered them from that place over the entire earth, and they ceased building the city;

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The Translator's Endless Toil 87

wherefore its name was called Babel, because there was confused the language of all
the earth.". . .
[E]rrors in translation stem principally from the incompetence of translators. It
should also be pointed out that sometimes we must of necessity [render differently],
as is proper to each language, a saying or idiom in different languages that express
one and the same thought by different sounds and a different arrangement of sounds.
So for example in Latin one may say, cerevisia defecatur seu purgatur [beer is
cleared up or cleansed?C.K.], and the Polish translator will similarly say, "piwo
sie ustawa, piwo sie czysci" ["beer settles, beer is cleansed"?C.K.]; at other times,
however, this is impossible, for example the Latin expression, panis comeditur
[bread is consumed (figuratively, "is wasted")?C.K.] renders the thought well, but
if the Polish translator were to write, "chleb sie je" ["bread is eaten"?C.K.], he
would be expressing the thought falsely. It is the same way with other expressions;
for example, the Latin expression, proicias per domum [throw across the house] may
be expressed in German as werf heber haus, where the preposition heber signifies
"over the house"; but if the translator understands [the Latin per] in the sense,
"through the middle of," "through the inside of," he will say, werf durch haus,
thereby understanding that the house has two open doors across from each other,
through which something is to be thrown. But the Latin language has only one ex
pression, proicias per domum, making no distinction between the one and the other
understanding of the matter. In spite of this, by the agency of the mind we may
translate one and the same expression [according to the circumstances] in the one or
the other sense and thus, despite the misleading ambiguity of the expressions, arrive
at the actual truth. St. Jerome [c. 340-420 A.D., author of the Latin Vulgate
Bible?C.K.] writes [truly] to Pammachius about the attributes of a good translator,
citing various testimonies and examples of various translators and authors, such as
[Marcus] Tullius [Cicero?C.K.], [Publius] Terentius [Afer, c. 190 - c. 159 B.C.:
Terence, Roman adapter of Greek comedies?C.K.], Hilary [of Poitiers, d. 368
A.D.?C.K.], which show that every experienced translator ought diligently to strive
to translate not word for word, but in translating to render faithfully and properly the
sense of the thing.
The same is said by Horace: ' The faithful translator does not attempt to translate
word for word." That, however, is not equally easy for all, as St. Jerome writes: "It
is not easy to translate the writings of others in such a way that places that have been
well expressed in the foreign language will retain the same decorum in translation,
since every language has different properties of its expressions."

If "the West" can boast a comparable statement on the nature of transla

tion written at so early a date, Kelly gives no hint of that.
It seems fitting to close with a citation from an essay, published in 1803,
by Ignacy Krasicki?Poland's La Fontaine, bishop of Warmia, poet, author
of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek:

Translation ... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not
the labor and portion of common minds; [it] should be [practiced] by those who are
themselves capable of being actors [dzialacze], when they see greater use in trans
lating the works of others than in their own works, and hold higher than their own
glory the service that they render to their country.

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