Mori Ōgai on translation and fallacy

I've been thinking a lot about translation lately, in large part because I reviewed the Dalkey Archive Best European Fiction 2010 anthology for the Quarterly Conversation (forthcoming, I'll let you know when it comes forth).  What seemed most interesting to me about that collection was the idea that there ever is a kind of fiction that can be classified as "European"; and the kinds of stories contained in that volume seem to suggest that translation can be a means of turning disparate cultures into one big melting pot. Then I read this piece on Néojaponisme-- a translation of Mori Ōgai 森鴎外’s Honyaku ni tsuite「翻譯に就いて」 (”On translation”), published in 1914 for a collection of essays on literary technique-- and it sort of complicates that idea, dealing, as it does, with a Norwegian text and Japanese as the target language.

Ōgai talks about the virtues of being "wrong" in translation-- adding or detracting from the original text; of most interest, I think, is the final section in which he contemplates how far a translation should go into the source culture. On translating Ibsen's A Doll House, he writes:

The sweets that Nora eats I translated makuron マクロン. Write rather amedama 飴玉, I was told. Advice like this simply boggles the mind. Tins of almond macaroons have been shipped here in great number so that you may buy them at Aokido whenever you please. Reflect, if you will, on the difference in situation between a woman of the West eating a macaroon and a child of Japan eating an amedama. I recall one scene in a novel by someone-or-other wherein two female university students in Paris’s Latin Quarter munch on macaroons as they trade stories of heartbreak. To switch those macaroons for amedama, of all things — well, it would certainly be comical. The gist of such teachings is that item should appear in translation as appropriately chosen items unique to Japan, but as for myself, I strive to avoid things unique to Japan, the better to produce an extraordinary effect. Furthermore, we only consider here cases where there is an appropriate corresponding item. When uniquely Japanese and inappropriate items appear, the results are quite unbearable.

To be continued when the QC review runs.

Comments

[george]

the question is, are they eating macarons, those little sandwichy cookies so popular in France, or the hard, oversweet, coconutty macaroons of my childhood?

http://brassknucklebaking.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/macarons.jpg

http://www.inspirational-motivational-quotes.com/images/Macaroon-Recipe-Passover-2008.jpg

[Kay]

I have put a link to this in the Weblog at SWET (http://www.swet.jp/) -- do you or I add it to the links to weblogs that reference this post?

[Aishoka]

It's a very interesting dilemma! And George's point is valid too. It's not much point keeping macaroon if the target readership either won't know what it is, or will imagine something different from that intended - but in any case it's ridiculous to replace it with something inappropriate. Perhaps it's best to consider what it is and what function it serves within the text, and come up with something that evokes a similar image for the readers?

[Alice]

Really fascinating dilemma...

[Helen]

This kind of dilemma reminds me of the discussions we had during my Translation Studies MA about "foreignising" and "domesticating" translation techniques, as explored by theorist Lawrence Venuti.
I personally prefer to leave cultural specifities in the text. That's surely why readers pick up books in translation, to be transported to another culture and discover things about it, no? Footnotes can always be used to elaborate if a term is so alien to a reader.