Translation Theory

The Sorcerer’s Stone 1 حجر الفيلسوف

Many translators do not care to have their work critiqued in the open, so I want to start by expressing my admiration for this work. Raja Abdallah (رجاء عبد الله ) translated the first two books, three and four by another translator, and each of the others had their own translators. I will not speculate on the reasons for the change, but I would have tried to stick with one translator for the entire series in order to keep a consistent voice. I have not read them all yet, just the first two, so I will have to address that as it comes. There are a few things that jump out at me as a reader from the very beginning of the Arabic version of the book. Most of which are negative and persist throughout the entire translation. Before I go into those things that I do not particularly care for, let is begin with the positive. I am sure no one will mind if I quote the first full paragraph:
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
Here is the Arabic:

تفخر أسرة «درسلى» والتي تقيم في المنزل رقم 4 بشارع «بريفيت» بأنها أسرة طبيعية.. وهى فعلا كذلك، لا أحد نتصور أن تتورط مثل هذه الأسرة فى أية أمور عامضة أو مريبة!

And finally, a back-translation. I am going to perform these back-translations a bit more literally than I would normally want to do. This is to demonstrate the translation techniques used by Abdallah. I want to reiterate; I have great admiration for anyone who tackles the translation of a book, especially one as well-known and well-loved as Harry Potter. I will be pointing out differences in how I might have done it, but remember that I am not a native speaker of Arabic, and I would not even consider myself a very skilled Arabic writer. That is, after all, part of why I want to go through this exercise. Reading and analyzing these texts will help me develop my own skills. Hopefully I will gain an audience and start to hear feedback on my commentary. Back to the issue at hand:
The Dursla family, which resides in house number 4 on Privet Drive, is proud that it is a normal family.. It really is, no one would imagine that this kind of family would be involved in any strange or mysterious issues!
Here are the things you will notice, and I left them there on purpose to illustrate.

  • Dursla – the translator here follows a convention that I have seen in many places and that I suspect is widely accepted. The Arabic letter ي ya’ in the final position gives the long “ee” sound, as in “Dursley”. The Arabic letter ى, without the two dots underneath, is actually an alif (the ‘ah’ sound), and not a ya’. This means that, were I to have read the Arabic version of the book before reading the English or seeing the movie, I would think the family name was “Dursla” not “Dursley”. As one proceeds, other Arabic words that must end in ya’ use the alif instead (fi, which means “in” is fa, ‘hiyya’, the feminine she or it, is ‘ha’, but these are obvious to any reader). Though it is widely used, I personally do not care for it. The two-dot version of the letter is under the “D” on the keyboard, the non-dotted alif is the letter “N”. No shifting or special characters required.
  • Two dots, but a different kind: You’ll see that the first sentence ends with two periods instead of one. In my head this makes it feel like an incomplete ellipsis. I feel like the whole book is breathless and full of incomplete sentences because of this. This appears to be a publisher (and probably broader than the publisher) accepted form; each of the seven books uses the two-dot sentence ending (more frequently in the first couple of books, less so in the last book of the series). By contrast, the Arabic translation of Hunger Games uses only a single period to end a sentence.
  • On punctuation, the translator seems to love exclamation points. Far more than J.K. Rowling does. This first paragraph ends with one. One could argue, I suppose, that it is for emphasis rather than exclamation; in that scenario the exclamation point takes the place of the phrase “they just didn’t hold with such nonsense”.
  • Quotation marks. I applaud the use of the French-style chevrons rather than English-style quotation marks. I think they suit Arabic text much better, though it is a bit awkward to put them in (in Word and in Open/LibreOffice one must use insert symbol). On the other hand, reading further into the book we find that quotation marks are used around non-Arabic words, but are not used for actual quotations – real quotations have no special punctuation to separate them.

These are the issues in the first paragraph. They are present throughout the entire book; at least it is consistent! Consistency means that the reader’s eyes can adjust to these points, and move on.
Now to the point where I hang it all out here. Everyone feel free to laugh behind your hands or right out loud. Here is how I would translate this. I expect that my biggest problem here is going to be the one that most beginning translators (and, though I consider myself a professional – and have a certification from the American Translators Association – in translating from Arabic into English, I am a beginner when going into Arabic) suffer from: overly literal work.

يفخر السيد والسيدة درسلي، سكان منزل رقم 4، شارع بريفيت، بأنهما عاديين كاملين، وممتنان على ذلك. هم من آخر الناس الذين ممكن تتصورهم يتورطون في أمور غامضة أو عجيب لأنهم لا يقبلا سخافة من ذلك النوع.

Back translation:
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, residents of house number 4, Privet drive, are proud to be completely normal, and they are grateful for that. They are among the last people you could imagine being involved in anything mysterious or strange because they do not accept that kind of silliness.
Or, at least, that was what I was going for.

Literary Translation, Culture, and maybe Ethics

pigpenI have just started reading the Arabic translation of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, translated by Said Hassanieh, reviewed and edited by the Arabization and Programming Center (سعيد الحسنية and مركز التعريب والبرمجة), and published by Arab Scientific Publishers, Inc. (الدار العربية للعلوم ناشرون).

Before I get into the meat of the issue, let me first be clear: This is not about Islam or any nutjob conspiracy about creeping Sharia or Islamization. This is about translation of a very popular Western novel into Arabic.

I cruised along, enjoying myself – I’ve read the books in English and seen the movies that have come out – until I got to the first flashback scene where Katniss remembers meeting Peeta behind the bakery. Peeta’s family has a pig; this is part of the story because Peta is instructed to throw some bread to the pig – no spoilers, OK?

In the Arabic translation it says:

اعتقدت أنه كان يراقبني في أثناء سيري بمحاذاة حظيرتهم التي احتوت على الحيوان المقزز الذي يربّونه

[I thought he was watching me as I walked along the pen that contained the filthy animal they were raising]

The original:

He must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held their pig

The word “pig” comes up a few more times in the same passage, and each time the translator uses the “filthy animal” euphemism. So, why is it a big deal? I am well aware that Islam considers pigs unclean and forbids eating them. But really, this is a symptom of a larger problem, what appears to be a decision that when translating things into Arabic, anything that might offend Muslims must be toned down. One other example that comes to mind is the Arabic dub of the movie Ratatouille. In that movie, wine becomes juice, even when the characters on screen are becoming obviously intoxicated by it. To see the food critic asking juice recommendations to go with his fresh serving of reality, ultimately to select a fresh, cold apple juice (a red liquid served in a wine glass, from a wine bottle) just boggles the mind.

Certainly observant Muslims would not have wine with their dinner or raise pigs behind a bakery. That is their choice, and their cultural norm. But to make the characters in books and movies who are clearly exhibiting non-Islamic behavior seem to be observant, or to think that one can avoid insult by using a euphemism… Well. I don’t think it is right. Part of why we read non-fiction books is to have adventures in our imaginations, to experience new things and see new points of view.

I don’t think it is right as a translator, regardless of my personal faith. If I were translating a book from Arabic into English, let’s say a sci-fi or speculative fiction novel set in an alternate universe or a future in which Islam is the predominant religion, and there is some off-hand reference to something that would be perfectly normal in Islam, but which might seem odd for a Western non-Muslim audience in the story. Let’s say a group traveling somewhere pauses to pray; though other than these kinds of things there is no overt reference to Islam. As a translator, I would leave it in. No reason not to. On the other hand, were I to westernize the story, I could change that pause to a rest break, or references to the prophet into references to a war hero from long ago or some other type of role model.

It would not be right. To me, the fact that the family is raising a ‘filthy animal’ demonstrates to the reader that they are not Muslims, and the word خنزير (pig) would not make that any worse. Just like the fact that the French characters in Ratatouille drinking wine is a simple, normal expression of French culture that did not budge the film from its “G” rating here in the U.S.

Having said all of that, part of the company name given credit for editing is “Arabization”. Maybe they feel this sort of thing is appropriate; but if so it should probably be “Islamization”, as I know many Arab Christians who enjoy both wine and pork products

Having said all of that, I would welcome level-headed, non-religious debate about whether it is appropriate for translators to change literary devices that could be offensive to their target audience.

** UPDATE

Said Hassanieh contacted me through Twitter; I’m thrilled to know he is looking! He said he consciously made the choice to avoid using ‘pig’; and that is good enough. I am simply happy to know that there was real consideration behind the issue. As long as the choice was made intentionally rather than a knee-jerk fear of upsetting the audience, I am alright with the choice they make. Obviously, I am not paying for or performing this translation. I still stand by what I said above; I think one of the biggest things that sci-fi/fantasy offers to all of mankind is the opportunity to place us outside our comfort zones in a safe place – within our own minds and imaginations – but it gives us a way to think about things and, possibly, expand our horizons.

In Other Words, Part 1

Coffee shop readingThis series of blog posts will deal with a translation textbook titled In Other Words – A Coursebook on Translation by Mona Baker.

I have a small group of fellow translators with whom I will be working through this book. No matter how much experience we have, we can all benefit from making some effort to improve ourselves. This book, and our little book club, represent one way we can continue our professional development. I’ll be using this blog, or at least this series of blog posts on it, as an online place for us to chat about what we read and what we learn; or what we disagree with and why.

So for now, I’ll get going with chapter one, the introduction.

Mona Baker starts out with the purpose of the book and discussing the issues facing the “professionalization” of translation.

Part of the problem facing translators is that there is a long-standing image of a translator as someone advanced in years, cloistered in a room full of musty books, but who – in younger and more vigorous days – was widely traveled and experienced in several career fields. Like Baker, I have no wish to disparage those who came to translation in this fashion. Bilingual adventurers with a flair for both languages can, and often do, make wonderful translators. The issue facing those of us who come to this career younger – and my experience kind of splits the difference, I’ll get into that later – is the feeling among the other type that we can’t possibly know enough to be good. Taking some college courses, or other classes on translation, and just jumping in… well, that just isn’t how it’s done. Baker goes a bit farther in combatting this life-experience is the only way mindset:

“The ability to translate is a gift, they say: you either have it or you do not, and theory (almost a dirty word in some translation circles) is therefore irrelevant to the work of a translator. . . . [T]o take the analogy with medicine a step further: if we accept this line of thinking we will never be seen as anything but witch doctors and faith healers.”

A bit harsh, perhaps, but witch doctors and faith healers worked for many, many generations of man’s existence. I’m sure that many of the incredible and renowned translators of yore were translators by happenstance rather than by selected profession; often operating based on a desire to spread their faith or to understand a foreign culture – again, the adventurer/translator. Today we have professional doctors, regimented education, and examination boards. There is no reason why we should not have professional translators. Organizations like the American Translators Association in the U.S. and similar organizations in U.S. states and regions, Canada, Europe and elsewhere in the world are making strides. Certification examinations and continuing education requirements bring us at least to the level of certified experts in the field of computers and networking. Just as with the field of technology starting in the 1990s, more and more colleges are starting to offer higher-level degrees in foreign language and translation.

Baker goes on to describe how professionalism requires us to engage in a greater degree of introspection. We have to analyze how we do what we do; to break it down to its parts and build it back up again. Over the course or reading through this book, that is exactly what we will be doing.

And a discussion of professionalism would be half-done if we do not discuss ethics. Translators have to be faithful to the source text, sensitive to the target language and translate the meaning into a form appropriate to the target audience. Different types of translation will require or permit different kinds of freedom. Poetic imagery can be shifted to match the target culture in order to convey the right feelings; or it may be translated exactly in order to retain the feeling of `otherness’ in an attempt to teach the reader about the source culture.

So more on all of it later, but here is where we start!