Considering Rothenberg’s task of translating poetry and in a sense, translating a culture, I began questioning the impact of translation on authorship and intended meaning. Authorship is an intriguing topic to me and I would like to use this essay to question and discuss how translation and sound recordings are related to text collation. Using the chapter on “Editorial Procedure” in William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott’s An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, I will consider text collation in its attempt to truly reconstruct authorial intent in creating critical editions.
Translation of a text can significantly alter meaning, as we saw in the discussion of Rothenberg’s translations. This essay will question how translation can be separated from authorship and when the translator exceeds his or her authority in deciding what to translate and how to translate it. I will also question if it is possible to translate a text without authority on the subject. In the translation process, is authorial intent lost or miscommunicated, and how does this impact the critical edition when translations are ultimately included in creating the textual apparatus.
Furthermore, this essay will explore the impact of sound recordings on textual collation. Addressing the recordings and translations as a project in academic anthropology as presented by Frank Boas, I will consider how sound recordings and translations are representative of the study of human culture and how these types of transmission impact the “spirit of the text.” I will explore the questions of whether translating meaning is more important than trying to maintain a literal word for word transcription. By including or excluding translations and a sound recording of the author reading his or her text, does the spoken text differ from the written text and, if so, which is more closely connected to authorial intent? How does excluding a sound recording alter the meaning, even though the written words may not change? This essay will ultimately question whether the editorial procedure of comparing notes and constructing trees and a textual apparatus is sufficient in formulating authorial intent, or does the inclusion of a sound recording and exclusion of a literal translation more fully complete the process and create a better critical edition.
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Sabrina:
ReplyDeleteI like the exploration of translation and sound recording in relation to text collation. We can think of texts as translated recordings of sound a priori. So, how does Proctor Williams and Abbott’s text rely on a notion of sound inscription and voice? Second, how is the notion of authorship and authority tied to a particular concept of sound and voice? i.e. does text collation require this concept of sound and voice as authority in order to make itself possible? Doesn’t the spirit of the text require both an original voice and its transfer – already a vexed notion, of both original and transmittal. How is sound being understood? For one thing: it propagates across space and medium but also doesn’t lose itself on the way.
A good topic. Keep it grounded in claims about text collation, e.g. in relation to the Williams and Abbott text.
Hi Sabrina--very interesting topic. I'm curious to see how authority or authorship could be altered based on a recording (or a translation or a translation of a recording, or if hearing it sounded from the author impacts how the translation is done, or if the translation is simply for the sound, and what that would mean for the authority... so much going on!). Regarding Sandy's last comment, I think that's a good idea, too--to keep the essay centralized around your initial text collation claim so that you can get all of this taken care of in conference length. Looks like a fun project!
ReplyDeleteHi Sabrina--
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I'm going to be much help here. But the paper does sound incredibly interesting. When I think of translation, I think of poetry---because I'm a poet that reads a lot of poetry, and a decent amount of that poetry is in translation. Most of what I've been exposed to is always one poet translating another poet's work into another language. And I think this is very important to the translation---that the translator be a poet, someone that has a deep understanding of language and poetics. And also someone who can really understand authorial intent and make decisions about how best to preserve it. However, I think it's inevitable that the translation is being "authored" in this process, because at every moment a decision is being made. And I've found that certain poet's translations always end up sounding like their own work. I also find it interesting when multiple poets translate the same poem and the end-result is a group of drastically different poems. Is the "best" one of the group the one that is closest to authorial intent. Or is the "best" one the poem that works most effectively in whatever language it's been translated into?
Sorry. I don't think this really helps your paper. But this is all I know about this stuff.
--Matt