The Contact Between Text, Mind, and One's Own Word
in a Translation Workshop*
By Leandro Wolfson,
scientific and literary translator,
Argentine
leandrow@arnet.com.ar
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 We translators work in the field
of communication by way of the word.
"Communication" and "word" are linked to the very
essence of what is human.
In the past few years, a productivist
pragmatism which presents itself as an unquestionable
and universally valid doctrine seems to be subjecting
human exchanges to the empire of its economical laws.
All pursuits are reduced to their lucrative and income-producing
aspects. From a purely professional perspective, translation
has now come to be thought of as a way of earning
a living, while the historical role it had within
human evolution as a means of communication through
the word is forgotten. I'm far from proposing that
the practical aspects of the profession be neglected,
but in my opinion if the transcendent humanistic character
of our work is not taken into account in the first
place and mere profitability is sought, the very essence
of our profession is distorted.
The purpose of this paper is to present
a way of conducting a translation workshop so as to
make the most of this reciprocal learning environment
[ámbito de enseñaje], not only
with reference to the subject at hand but also with
regard to the spirit with which the work is undertaken.
The goal is to reaffirm translation as a spiritual
endeavor. To this end, I will enumerate the stages
into which I usually divide my courses, after which
I will show what role I assign to the spirit in each
of these stages.
First, however, I must clarify some
of the terms I will use in this brief exposition.
Because I am a translator, that is to say, a staunch
investigator of meanings, the meanings of words have
a special weight for me. When I write, no matter what
the subject is, I take care to be explicit about what
I understand each word to mean. In the alchemy of
speech, even the most common terms pass through personal
alembics, and each one of us is a unique living dictionary.
I will clarify, then, what I mean
by "workshop," "contact," "text," "mind," and "one's
own word," just as they appear in the title. I will
also have to indicate what I mean by reciprocal learning
environment, a phrase I have just used.
The term workshop is of a material
and illustrious lineage. In Latin a workshop is called
astellarium, the origin of astillero
[shipyard] in Spanish, which in French gave rise to
atélier, as in that of a carpenter,
modiste, painter, or sculptor. "A place where one
carries out manual labor," according to María
Moliner's definition.1Its
etymology speaks of practical tasks and in no way
means free of theory, as Aristotle well knew and as
we were reminded, more recently, by Valentín
García Yebra.2
Theory is part and parcel of practice, is inserted
in it, intertwined with it, it penetrates and sustains
it. However, in a workshop it very rarely comes to
the fore.
Some characteristics distinguish the
workshop environment, as I view it, from other places
designated for translation practice. They are the
following:
- A workshop is not part of a program
of academic studies. It is extracurricular.
It is not governed by grades, points, credits, or
exams. It is not a course taken to comply with certain
curricular requirements but rather a voluntary encounter.
- A workshop is a place for bilateral
communication between the coordinator and the participants,
for "reciprocal learning," [enseñaje]
as set forth in the formula by Argentine thinker
and psychoanalyst Enrique Pichon Rivière,3
that is, for him4
who is teaching to learn and for him who is learning
to teach, "rejecting—as Nicolás Bratosevich
rightly says, referring to literary workshops—the
temptation of the magisterial class and the illuminated
voice."5
- In a workshop one does not inculcate
knowledge in the way a traditional course does;
rather, ways of reading, interpreting, and communicating
are discussed freely. A certain creative liberty,
a departure from the necessarily stricter framework
of formal education reigns therein, though it does
not imply that no method is used. To set up a radical
opposition between the concept of creative freedom
and that of method is as fallacious as drawing a
strong dividing line between theory and practice.
A workshop is meant to be an experience in reflective
practice, a practice that is in no way detached
from reasoning and analysis, but that does seek
to free itself from previous "theories," remaining
unconditioned by a strict and coherent system of
ideas, as a theory normally is. The intention is
for the workshop to serve not only to assimilate
techniques, skills, or knowledge from the outside
but to acquire an attitude vis-à-vis texts,
a way of working with them that could serve as a
model for future professional undertakings.
- A translation workshop is an intermediate
entity between a language course and a literary
workshop. I would say it is a space to learn to
read and write: to write like a writer and to read
as only a translator can do it. Borges put it very
succinctly: "The translator is a very close reader."6
But the translator is also a rapporteur7
and a writer working within certain fixed limits.
Whether it is a question of a poem, a short story,
a computer manual, or a birth certificate, translating
is always a literary operation. Naturally, the translator
is subject to the golden rule of being faithful
to the original text; this is the translator's model
of beauty, his aesthetic ideal, as Milan Kundera
rightly points out.8
But aside from this, the translator's manipulation
of what resources are available in the target language
places him clearly as a language craftsman, one
who must avail himself of the same linguistic abilities
as a creative writer. What I will say from here
on is therefore applicable to any type of workshop,
not only a literary translation workshop, regardless
of the subject matter or the type of texts used.
Heretofore we have been concerned
with the term workshop. I would now like to
discuss what I mean by mind. According to epistemologist
Gregory Bateson, the mind is not enclosed within the
limits of a person's body. The mind originates in
the group one lives in and directs itself toward that
group. The mind is an ecological matter.9
I believe that the Batesonian concept of mind can
be translated as espíritu [spirit].
I bring this terminological variant up for two reasons:
(1) There is an intellectualist tradition
present in the use of the term mente [mind]
in the Spanish language according to which mind
is taken as a synonym of intellect. However,
when I say that a contact between minds takes place
in the workshop, I am not referring only to a process
of reasoning but to the entire conglomerate of sensations
and emotions that accompany our ideas in our daily
translating. Besides, this contact between minds is
something more than a contact between isolated individuals,
for language, in fact, belongs to no one: it is a
social patrimony. In the same sense, the language
philosopher Jerome Bruner asserts that we have to
stop conceiving of one's being as a unique, lasting
nucleus and start to conceive of it rather as "parceled
out in texts and conversations, localized within a
community of learning."10
(2) The phenomenon generated in the
group transcends the acquisition of information and
knowledge and, if the approach is correct, gives rise
to an exchange of another order. In the workshop,
when we concern ourselves with the Word, in
particular with one's own word, we are tackling a
topic that is in no way secondary and the magnitude
of which frequently surpasses us. It is a question
of communication between minds or mental communication,
nothing more nothing less; or, if I may suggest after
all the aforesaid preambles, a question of spiritual
communication.
I would also like to clarify the term
text. This is simpler, since decades of discourse
analysis have shown us that énoncé
is one thing and énonciation another;
the first is the text and the second the discourse;
the first one is mere printed type and the second
all the life it contains, all the communication it
embodies. In the workshop we are not concerned with
texts as dead entities, but with the reflections of
texts in each participant, that will in turn give
way to a new text, the translated one, which should
contain the same life as the original.
Having made these clarifications,
let us see what the material process in the workshop
is and how it can be used in a spiritual way.
I will enumerate the stages: (1) A
text is handed out for translation accompanied by
a brief instruction about the source and intended
readership. (2) Each participant should draft a first
version at home and bring it to the following meeting.
(3) During this meeting, oral comments are encouraged
regarding the content of the original text. (4) One
participant reads a paragraph of his translation,
sentence by sentence, while the others follow along,
first with the original and then with their own. (5)
All questions and comments that point to dissimilarities
between the different versions are formulated. (6)
The coordinator asks for a clean copy of the corrected
translation for the next class. (7) At the next meeting,
the coordinator collects the translations, reviews
them at home, and returns them with his own comments
at the following class.
In these seven stages, the process
undertaken with each "text" is completed in its materiality.
But it can be the origin of other, very diverse, mental
contacts. I will go back to these steps one by one
to see what there is or may be beneath the dry letter.
(1) A text is handed out for translation
accompanied by a brief instruction about the source
and intended readership.
Given what has been said, one never
hands out a text for translation. One hands out what
at the time of writing was a living communication
of one human being with his contemporaries or with
his future fellow human beings, a communication that
at that time had a purpose, fulfilled a function,
and may have been impregnated with enormous expressiveness.
The brief instruction about the source and intended
readership urges, in the present, a reenactment of
the dialogue that the author sustained in the past
with his audience and transforms it into a new living
communication. What one must seek is compenetration
with the text, literally speaking: to penetrate it
and let oneself be penetrated by it, until it becomes
a very part of oneself.
(2) Each participant should draft
a first version at home and bring it to the following
meeting.
The fact that each person must produce his own version
for the workshop, a place of receptivity and voluntary
attendance, of uncensored acceptance, leads to the
internal shaping, at the time of translating, of the
image of an attentive and friendly receptor—a
benign interlocutor. This is the first prerequisite
for translating in the most proficient way one is
capable of. The creativity of the translator,
a fundamental element of his proficiency, depends
on this image being successfully established throughout
the workshop, dislodging that of other excessively
critical, despairing, or invalidating voices.
This ties in with the need to restore the workshop
participant's confidence in his own word. Frequently,
misdirected grammar or language courses leave in their
wake a jumble of idiomatic cripples. By placing excessive
stress on rules and norms, without a correlative stimulus
of creativity, some teachers inculcate their pupils
with a constraining and repressive attitude about
their potential as speakers of a language. It is then
nearly a task of therapeutic rehabilitation to restore
the translator's lost confidence in his capacity for
expression in order for him to regain the idiomatic
treasures buried in his inner memory and circulate
more freely among the signified and signifiers that
inhabit within him—sometimes without his awareness.
(3) At the beginning of this meeting, oral comments
are encouraged regarding the content of the original
text.
As a step previous to the checking and evaluation
of the translation, the oral recounting is the best
way to verify that the function, intent, and style
of the text have been correctly grasped, without which
it is very likely that the translation will fail.
Useful guides at this stage are questions such as
those suggested by Bénard and Horguelin: Who
wrote the text? For whom? How? Why? and the most important
of all, With what intent?11
The purpose of recounting is not only to demonstrate
good comprehension of, or compenetration with, the
original but also to situate the translator in his
function as communicator, as Hatim and Mason
call him.12
"A translation is reported speech," Roman Jakobson
wrote.13
During the recounting, the coordinator should pretend
that he knows nothing about the message, so that the
participant pushes to the extreme his grasp of what
is essential in the text and the communicative situation,
as well as his capacity for synthesis and expressive
ability.
(4) One participant reads a paragraph of his translation,
sentence by sentence, while the others follow along,
first with the original and then with their own.
We thus reach the most delicate of the workshop stages,
a process that demands a clear assessment by the coordinator
of the intellectual effort involved, in order to facilitate
it or alleviate it. When a participant reads his version,
and after that a different version is read by another
one, each person must simultaneously retain in his
consciousness three utterances (the original added),
among which a complex series of comparisons and search
for equivalencies must be made. These steps cannot
be carried out all together; if the process is to
be satisfactory, it is best to divide it as follows.
4a. When a participant reads his translation of the
paragraph, the rest should follow along with the original,
putting their own versions completely aside. It is
an opportunity to pull away from one's own translation
and, with as much objectivity as possible, to evaluate
what a fellow participant has done. It is a moment,
then, of detachment from the ego, and of generosity.
It is also an excellent time for the coordinator to
help fine-tune the collective ear and to detect the
most important errors that may have been made, distinguishing
these from secondary deficiencies.
4b. In asking the same participant to repeat his
translation sentence by sentence, the others now look
at their own versions, seeking to discern where these
are significantly different from the read-aloud one
and whether the latter contributes something worth
being taken into account.
Let us now proceed to the fifth stage.
(5) All questions and comments that point to
dissimilarities between the different versions are
formulated.
In a climate of recognition for what was done well,
the precise pointing out of what is comparable or
equivalent in different versions, by way of contrast
with preferable or outstanding solutions, affords
the type of discernment that we are trying
to inculcate. The possibility that one term or expression
can be translated in many valid ways gives rise to
an expressive pluralism that is one of the greatest
fruits of a translation workshop, a source of collective
idiomatic enrichment—including, of course, that
of the coordinator. It should be a democratic interchange,
not an authoritarian imposition. In this sense, I
would like to recall what has been said by the Argentine
therapist and thinker José Bebchuk with regard
to the process of psychotherapy: "Do I want to live
in a world in which I am the one who knows and the
patient obeys me as one obeys authority? Do I want
to coexist with my interlocutor so that he/she grants
me power in exchange for what I know? Do I want to
behave like an authority that produces change in the
other without going through a mutual collaboration?"14
An open attitude toward the potential contribution
of everyone, removing the coordinator from the position
of having the preferred truth, is one of the conditions
for conducting the workshop experience and at the
same time the one that permits to gain the most positive
elements from it.
(6) The coordinator asks for a clean copy of the
corrected translation for the next class.
When the individual mind retires into privacy after
the experience of the ecological mind, it does so
accompanied by the voices of the group. Nevertheless,
one's own word need not be lost. If the work of discernment
has been well done, each participant will know what
to retain and what to change in his original version.
Making a clean copy of the first version affords the
opportunity of a new "virtual" meeting with the group
(with fellow participants and the coordinator), where
recollection of what was discussed in class allows
a keener sense of judgment to be applied to choices
without giving up one's own personality.
It is often said that the translator should disappear,
that he should not be perceived as such; that the
ideal is for the reader not to realize that the translator
exists and to have the sensation of reading the author
directly. I also believed in this illusion and aimed
for this ideal, until someone told me that he used
to recognize my translations even when my name was
omitted. It seems that I have a style of translating.
I have accepted my unavoidable idiolect. I am an intermediary,
not a nothing. Though I may try to hide, my word gives
me away.
(7) At the next meeting, the coordinator collects
the translations, reviews them at home, and returns
them with his own comments the following class.
Here, it is the coordinator who maintains a new "virtual"
meeting with the participants through their translations,
and it is essential that he learn to adapt to each
one's own word. The same idea may be transmitted in
as many diverse ways as there are participants in
the group, and the skill of the coordinator as a reviewer-trainer15
consists in accepting the other's word, his way of
expression, to the fullest possible degree in order
to show how to make his version approximate what can
be considered most faithful and natural.
Before returning the translations that have been
reviewed, the coordinator may mark some general problems
or the ones worth sharing. Oral comments on these
difficulties should be done in an anonymous fashion.
The faults noted have no name; the problem of one
participant is the problem of the group. Pointing
out a mistake made is not only useful for the person
who made it; for the others, it is the time to reflect
on the problems that anyone could have in translating,
or in the face of a similar case. It is a warning.
Finally, let us highlight the pedagogical importance
of noting not only the faults, but rather, with no
less emphasis, the achievements; the discoveries;
the apt, original, or novel solutions; the fruits
of creativity.
I have exposed, very briefly and in general terms,
a model of work. This scheme can be utilized in small
groups of four to ten persons who get together regularly
over a period of two or more months in two- or three-hour
meetings. If the workshop is of a longer duration,
it would be appropriate to intercalate every so often
a "text" to translate without an ensuing discussion
in class, in order to follow up on the evolution of
each individual. Shortening some steps and introducing
some modifications in the basic procedure, it is possible
to work similarly with larger groups, of up to 30
persons, who get together once a month or sporadically
for more lengthy meetings.
Beyond the diverse formats available, what is important
is to keep in mind the tenets that preside over this
way of working. To recapitulate, they have to do with
acknowledging translation as an act of human communication,
valuing the enriching contact between minds that the
workshop environment fosters, and respecting each
person's idiosyncrasy expressed in what is most unique:
his own word.
Footnotes
*
Paper read (in Spanish) at the Second Latin American
Conference on Translation and Interpretation, organized
by the Colegio de Traductores Públicos de Buenos
Aires, April 23-25, 1998. The author thanks Judith
Ravin for her help in the translation of this paper
into English. 1
"Taller," in María Moliner, Diccionario
de uso del español, Madrid, Gredos, 2 vols.,
1966. 2
"La teoría sola es estéril, y la práctica
sin teoría, rutinaria y ciega." (Theory alone
is sterile, and practice without theory, routine and
blind.) Valentín García Yebra, Teoría
y práctica de la traducción, Madrid,
Gredos, 2 vols., 2nd. ed., 1984, p. 16.
3
Enrique Pichon Rivière, El proceso grupal.
Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social,
Buenos Aires, Nueva Visión, 1989, p. 14. The
word "enseñaje" has been coined through
the blending of "enseñanza" (teaching)
and "aprendizaje" (learning).
4
The masculine pronoun is used for the sake of brevity.
It refers to both genres, of course.
5
Nicolás Bratosevich, Taller literario. Metodología/Dinámica
grupal/Bases teóricas, Buenos Aires, Edicial,
1992, p. 15.
6
Quoted by his translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni;
see my article "I Know You Know," ATA Source,
Vol. 28, 1998, pp. 1 and 13-14.
7
See Brian Mossop, "The Translator as Rapporteur:
A Concept for Training and Self-Improvement," Meta,
vol. 28, # 3, 1983, pp. 244-247.
8
"A translation is only beautiful when it is faithful.
It is the passion for faithfulness that distinguishes
the authentic translator." Milan Kundera, "Traducción
y pasión por la palabra," Gaceta de la Traducción,
# 1, 1993, p. 78.
9
See Gregory Bateson's two seminal works, Steps
to an Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature.
10
Jerome S. Bruner, Acts of Meaning, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1990.
11
Jean-Paul Bénard and Paul A. Horguelin, Pratique
de la traduction: version générale,
Montreal, Linguatech, 1979, p. 25.
12
Basil Hatim and Ian Mason, The Translator as Communicator,
London, Routledge, 1997.
13
Roman Jakobson, "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,"
in R. A. Brower, ed., On Translation, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1959. See also Mossop, op.
cit.
14
Bebchuk, J., "Proceso y resultado en psicoterapia,"
Sistemas Familiares, Vol. 13, # 13, November
1997, p. 58.
15
For more on this topic, see my article "Revision as
a Teaching Experience," Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Conference of the American Translators Association,
1997, pp. 163-171.
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