Today we are going to explore the question “What is a translation?”
We decided to present some very interesting metaphors to illustrate “translation”:
“My translation becomes a re-creation that reflects the original, just as the sea can reflect the sky with its moving stars, shifting clouds, gestations of the moon and migrating birds – but ultimately, the sea is not the sky.”
(Sholeh Wolpé)
“I’ve been thinking about translation as a kind of adoption, as when one adopts a child. You take her from her home context, love, and care for her, teach her what you know, and then, when she gets big enough and, you hope, has learned enough from you to live on her own, you introduce her to the world and hopes she can thrive.” (Russell Valentino)
“Translating a literary work can be seen as similar to what a horticulturist does by taking a rare plant out of its natural environment and bringing it to life and making grow and blossom in a foreign one.” (John Balcom)
“Most of the time I feel like a conduit . . . There’s an input (for example, an Arabic poem), and there’s an output (an English poem), and I’m the space where the transformation from one to the other occurs.”
(Kareem James Abu-Zeid)
What does translation mean to you? How do you view translation?
I think about translation as a telephone wire that needs to be untangled in order to transmit the message from one side to the other side of the line, from one language and culture to another language and culture.
These are very interesting definitions for the word “translation”. It is important to learn about these definitions. I believe it broadens our understanding of the important role that translation has in our globalized lives and all the misconceptions it carries.
I like the example of the “House of Mirrors,” where translators find themselves reflecting and being reflected in the original text and the translation while conveying meaning from one context to another. Translators identify with the original text as readers do. Afterall, translators are also readers and their cultural knowledge and beliefs can be transferred to the target text by their choices of words and expressions.
I like to think about translation as the classical example of the bridge, connecting two places and cultures.
Translation is the process of conveying a message in a way that receivers fully understand it and feel like it was written in their own native language.