Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Harley. Nowhere special in particular, I just saw it above a shop and I liked the way it sounded. The shapes your mouth has to make, the release of the second syllable.

Virgil belonged to a particular time and place. Isn’t it more unfaithful to strip all that away, to make him speak like any Englishman you might run into on the street?’

‘Is it not also unfaithful to make Virgil sound like a stuffy foreigner, rather than a man you would happily carry on a conversation with?

‘Recall how Herder attacks the French neoclassicists for making Homer a captive, clad in French clothes, and following French customs, lest he offend. And all the well-known translators in Persia favoured the “spirit” of translation rather than word-for-word accuracy – indeed, they often found it appropriate to change European names into Persian and replace aphorisms in the target languages with Persian verse and proverbs. Was that wrong, do you think? Unfaithful?’

Schleiermacher argued that translations should be sufficiently unnatural that they clearly present themselves as foreign texts. He argued there were two options: either the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author towards him.

‘Which seems right to you? Do we try our hardest, as translators, to render ourselves invisible? Or do we remind our reader that what they are reading was not written in their native language?’ ‘That’s an impossible question,’ said Victoire. ‘Either you situate the text in its time and place, or you bring it to where you are, here and now. You’re always giving something up.’

‘Can we never communicate with integrity across time, across space?’