LITERARY TRANSLATOR AND THE CONCEPT OF FIDELITY.

The Literary Translator and the Concept of Fidelity:

Kirkup's Translation of Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir as a Case Study

Kolawole, S. O. and Salawu, Adewuni
Department of French, University of Ado-Ekiti, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria

 Retrieved at http://translationjournal.net/journal/46lit.htm

Introduction

Literary translation implies the translation of all genres of literature, which include prose, drama and poetry. Johnson (1999:1) describes literature as 'an apparently nebulous body of knowledge in oral or written form, an imitation of life, which reflects civilization and culture, and which covers every angle of human activities-culture, tradition, entertainment, information among others.' It is one of the great creative and universal means of communicating the emotional, spiritual and intellectual concerns of humankind.

Literary translation has to do with translating texts written in a literary language, which abounds in ambiguities, homonyms and arbitrariness, as distinct from the language of science or that of administration. Literary language is highly connotative and subjective because each literary author is lexically and stylistically idiosyncratic and through his power of imagination, he uses certain literary techniques such as figures of speech, proverbs and homonyms through which he weaves literary forms.

The literary translator is therefore the person who concerns himself with translation of literary texts. A literary translator, according to Peter Newmark (1988:1) generally respects good writing by taking into account the language, structures, and content, whatever the nature of the text. The literary translator participates in the author's creative activity and then recreates structures and signs by adapting the target language text to the source language text as closely as intelligibility allows. He needs to assess not only the literary quality of the text but also its acceptability to the target reader, and this should be done by having a deep knowledge of the cultural and literary history of both the Source and the Target Languages.

Literary translation may be said to have the greatest number of peculiar problems. Problems in literary translation largely depend on who is translating and what he knows.

The problems of literary translation include cultural, linguistic, psychological, deceptive cognates, equivalence, and style.

Language and culture are closely related and one is indispensable to the other. In fact, language acquires its meaning from the country's culture. A single language may cross several culture borders. For instance, English and French are Indo-European languages but belong to different cultures. There are generally problems in the translation of cultural words in a literary text unless there is a cultural overlap between the source language and the target language. It is not enough for a translator to know what words are used in the target language; he must also make the reader understand the sense as it is understood by the reader of the original. For instance, in a text where there is a cultural focus, there can be translation problems due to the cultural gap between the source and the target languages.

The meaning of a single word or expression is largely derived from its culture. Therefore, translation, being a simple linguistic process, a cultural understanding comes into play because the translator is supposed to produce equivalence and where this does not exist, problems occur. Okolie (2000:208) affirms that:

"Most of African literature is a rendering of 'living manners'...If translated by someone who is not conversant with or close to the culture and the specifics that make it alive, then the translation resulting horn such a text fails to communicate the spirit of the culture producing a sterile, literal translation, which does not re-create or reproduce the people."

The translator is expected to creatively exploit the altered cultural, linguistic and literary context in order to realize the different potentials of the target language in an act or literary creation since translation is an intercultural activity.

Linguistically, each language has its own metaphysics, which determines the spirit of a nation and its behavioral norms, and this is what is known as linguistic relativity or the Whorfian hypothesis. Benamjn Lee Whorl, quoted by Penn ( 977:2 17) believes that 'the background linguistic system (...) of each language is itself the shaper of ideas....' This means that language directs our intellect and even our sensory perception. Since words or images may vary considerably from one group to another, the translator needs to pay attention to the style, language and vocabulary peculiar to the two languages in question in order to produce an 'exact' translation of the source language text.

The literary translator also faces the problem of style. Style is not an easy term to define, however, it can readily be said that style is how one says a thing. In other words, style is the way in which something is written or said, as distinct from its subject matter. Naturally, each language poses its own problems of style, but the practical considerations that go into the making of translation do not seem to differ much from one translator to another.

The Interpretative Theory and the literary Translation

The interpretative theory of translation, also known as the theory of sense translation (1976:4) and semantic /communicative translation (1988:39) was developed at the ESIT (Ecole Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs) of the University of Paris III and made popular by Mesdames Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer. The Interpretative theory implies that the totality of the sense of the source text is understood and transmitted. This means that the interest of comparison of languages only has a limited interest for the analysis of translation. It is not the languages that are translated but the texts, that is, the discourse, in a bid to communicate.

According to Seleskovitch (1976:23-42), the invariant part of translation which is the sense has a contextual and dynamic value. It is the synthesis of style, connotation, the message and all which play significant roles in communication process to produce the sense. The interpretative theory therefore postulates that any reading done is part of the comprehension process of a text. The reader develops an interpretative process whereby he mobilizes all the cognitive operations whose product is the fully understood meaning.

Through the Interpretative theory (comprehension-deverbalization- reexpression), the process goes through reformulation, because all that is required is finding the same meaning in the target language. This is what Hurtado-Albir (1991:72) calls 'sense equivalence.' A translator is then described as being faithful in the interpretative conception of translation if he is faithful to the sense and not necessarily to the words and expressions in the Source Language Text.

Concept of Fidelity in Translation

Guralnik (1979), in Webster's English Dictionary, writes that "faithfulness/fidelity" means "the quality of being accurate, reliable, and exact." In that case, the meaning that best matches the source text's meaning is the one that best complies with the precision, accuracy, conformity to the original (adhesion to a fact, or to an idea). Translation implies a high degree of demand for exactitude, so that there can be effective communication between different languages and cultures. Fidelity as a key word in translation has been understood and interpreted in many ways by different translators. To some translation critics of translation, faithfulness in translation is just a word-for-word transmission of message from the source text to the target text, while some believe that fidelity to the source text is adopting the free, idiomatic method in passing on the message. On the other hand, unduly free translations may not necessarily be considered as a betrayal or infidelity. This is because sometimes they are done for the purpose of humor to bring about a special response from the receptor language speakers.

Fidelity in translation is passing of the message from one language into another by producing the same effect in the other language, (in sense and in form), in a way that the reader of the translation would react exactly as the reader of the original text. The relationship of fidelity between the original and its translation has always preoccupied translators, but the problem is, as far as translation is concerned, one should decide to whom, to what the supposed fidelity pertains. Is it fidelity to the proto-text, to the source culture, to the model of the reader, or to the receiving culture? Is it possible to have exactly the same translation of the same text done by different translators? And/or to what extent can a translator be accurate or exact in his translation? The majority of translators agree that translators should be adequately familiar with both the Source and the Target Language, but there is a less agreement on 'faithful' translation and the way in which linguistics should be employed.

Amparo Hurtado-Albir (1990:118) defines fidelity in relation to three things, which are (1) What the author means to say, (2) The target language and (3) the reader. According to her,

Fidelity is three-fold relationship to the author's intentions, to the target language and to the reader of the translation is indissociable. If one remains faithful to only one of these parameters and betrays the remaining ones, he cannot be faithful to the sense. (Our translation).

Faithfulness to the original means faithfulness not only at the level of words, the content, and the period, but also at the level of the author and the genesis of the meaning (sense) he is transmitting. To understand the sense of a text, therefore, the translator must grasp the intent of the author. As we demonstrate in this paper, James Kirkup, in his translation of Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, shows both linguistic and extra- linguistic familiarity with the author and his works. It is this extra-linguistic knowledge that provides him with the cognitive complement necessary for his work.

Camara Laye wrote L'Enfant noir as a student in France. Having run out of money and as a result of his loneliness in Paris, he developed a nostalgic feeling for home and especially for the events of his youth as they came flooding his memory. He began to write the memories of his childhood in Kouroussa and Tindican and this is what is contained in this well-known novel, which recaptures his past. A masterful literary translator, James Kirkup, translated virtually all of Camara Laye's novels, viz: L'Enfant noir in 1954 as The African Child, Le Regard du roi in 1955 as The Radiance of the King,Dramouss in 1970 as A Dream of Africa and Le Maître de la Parole (1978) as the Guardian of the Word (1980).

A close study of L'Enfant noir (The African Child) reveals to the reader that the work is an autobiography. The contents of the novel show that it is more of a narration of events of Laye's life. L'Enfant noir tells the story of an African child and his subsequent emergence to manhood and his final departure for France. The episodes of Laye's life are artistically narrated by Laye.

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Last updated on: 05/20/2014 01:34:57