Translating Myself and Others

by Jhumpa Lahiri

I think of writing and translating as two aspects of the same activity, two faces of the same coin, or maybe two strokes, exercising distinct but complementary strengths, that allow me to swim greater distances, and at greater depths, through the mysterious element of language.

The question has led to a realization: that while the desire to learn a new language is considered admirable, even virtuous, when it comes to writing in a new language, everything changes. Some perceive this desire as a transgression, a betrayal, a deviation.

In order to conquer any foreign language, one needs to open two principal doors. The first is comprehension. The second, the spoken language. In between, there are smaller doors, equally relevant: syntax, grammar, vocabulary, nuances of meaning, pronunciation. At this point, one gains relative mastery. In my case, I dared to open a third door: the written language.

don’t wish to live, or write, in a world without doors. An unconditional opening, without complications or obstacles, doesn’t stimulate me. Such a landscape, without closed spaces, without secrets, without the presence of the unknown, would have no significance or enchantment for me.

I already knew that writing in a new language resembled a sort of blindness.

A language, a person, a country: everything is renewed only thanks to contact, closeness, and mixing with the other.

A translation is nothing if not a process of elimination. For every sentence I constructed, I had to discard numerous possibilities.

A translation surgically alters the text’s identity, insisting upon a foreign linguistic DNA, requiring a transfusion of alternate grammar and syntax. The generational bond between texts is indisputable. One descends from the other, and thus they remain connected, as distinct as they may be. Translation is an act of doubling and converting, and the resulting transformation is precarious, debatable even in its final form. Starnone’s text remains the parent that spawned this translation, but somewhere along the road to its English incarnation, it also became a ghost.

Translation has always been a controversial literary form, and those who are resistant to it or dismiss it complain that the resulting transformation is a “mere echo” of the original— that too much has been lost in the process of traveling from one language into another.

a sound that, as a result of moving in a certain way and encountering a barrier, “returns,” replicating a portion of the original sound. We must be careful, however, not to equate the word echo with simple repetition. The verb Ovid attributed to Echo, once condemned, is not repetere but reddere, which means, among other things, to restore, to render, to reproduce.

part of the translator’s task is to “listen” to a text by carefully reading it, absorbing its meaning, and repeating it back. The translator reproduces words already written by duplicating them. Like Echo, the translator’s art presupposes the existence of an original text, and also presupposes that much of what makes that text beautiful and unique in the original will be impossible to maintain in another linguistic context.

Far from a restrictive act of copying, a translator restores the meaning of a text by means of an elaborate, alchemical process that requires imagination, ingenuity, and freedom. And so, while the act of repeating, or echoing, is certainly pertinent to the subject of translation, it is only the starting point of the translator’s art.

the act of desiring, of falling in love, which, under ideal circumstances, is what instigates the impulse to translate. Passion, as I said, was what moved me to translate Lacci, and everything I have translated since.

The trick to a good translation is to be unable to recognize which is which. The minute a translation “feels” or “sounds” like a translation, the reader jumps back and accuses it, rejects it. The enormous expectation we place upon translation is that it sound “true.”

The ongoing, updated echo of translation is critical to sustaining great works of literature, to celebrating and spreading their significance across space and time.

My Italian is considered an echo in that it is weaker, wanting, and for some readers, also unsettling. But this is precisely what happens when a border is crossed, when a new language—or culture, or location—is experienced and absorbed. To immigrate is to observe carefully and copy certain cues.

They share the same vital organs. They are conjoined twins, though, on the surface, they bear no resemblance to one another. They have nourished and been nourished by the other. Once the translation was in progress, I almost felt like a passive bystander as they began sharing and exchanging elements between themselves.

Translation, too, is a dynamic and dramatic transformation. Word for word, sentence for sentence, page for page, until a text conceived and written and read in one language comes to be reconceived, rewritten, and read in another. The translator labors to find alternative solutions, not to cancel out the original, but to counter it with another version.

the word for “translation” in Italian, has a second meaning: it is a bureaucratic term which refers to the transportation of individuals who are under suspicion or detained. The discovery of this second meaning both bewildered and amazed me.

that is, such a translator should expertly know two civilizations and be able to introduce one to the other through the language historically specific to that civilization.” The translator, in other words, has a role in the making of history.

whether the reciprocal translatability of various philosophical and scientific languages is a ‘critical’ element that belongs to every conception of the world or whether it belongs (in an organic way) only to the philosophy of praxis.”

Gramsci, Language, and Translation,

Translating means understanding, above all, how words slip and slide into each other, how they overlap, how they end up producing a fertile lexical promiscuity. Even the meaning of synonym, from the Greek σύν/syn- (to express, identify) and ὄνομα/onoma (name), suggests a type of translation, for a translation does nothing but give a different and, at the same time, fundamentally equal meaning to a pre-existing text. A translation, like a synonym, literally creates more pathways and more sense.

Lingua is born and comes to flower only thanks to the sap that lingue provides, just as each of us is the fruit of two people, two different sources, not to mention all the other influences that enter in and define us beyond our parents.

Bellos, David. Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.