Gideon Toury
Tel Aviv
University (Israel)
Enhancing Cultural Changes
By Means of Fictitious Translations
I
At this point in the evolution of culture theory, very few would contest the claim that change is a built-in feature of
culture. Implied is not only that cultures are changeable in principle,
so to speak, but also that, given the time, every single cultural system
would indeed undergo some change. In fact, a culture which would have failed
to show change over a considerable period of time is bound to get
marginalised and become obsolete, if not stop functioning as a living culture
altogether. At the same time, cultural systems are also prone to manifest a
certain resistance to changes, especially if they are deemed too drastic.
When renewal seems to involve such changes, they may well be rejected in an
attempt to maintain what has already been achieved; in other words, retain
whatever equilibrium the culture has reached. Innovation and conservation
thus appear as two major contending forces in cultural dynamics.
One `big' hypothesis which has been put forward in an attempt to reconcile
these two extremes claims that new models do manage to make their way into an
extant cultural repertoire in spite of the system's inherent resistance to
changes if and when those novelties are introduced under disguise;
that is, as if they still represented an established option within the
culture in question. Inasmuch as the cover is effective, it is only when
penetration of products and production processes pertaining to the new model
has been completed that the receiving culture would appear to have undergone
change, often bringing it to the verge of a new (and different) state of
equilibrium. Needless to say, the process as such may take a while. Also, it
tends to involve a series of smaller, more intricate changes, which may not
be recognised as changes as they are occurring. Even something which appears
to represent a cultural `revolution' would thus normally be found to have
followed an evolutionary process.1
A lot of this tends to go unnoticed by the average person-in-the-culture,
precisely because many of the potentially new products s/he may encounter in
daily life have been disguised as standing for something else, much more
established, much less alien, and hence much less of a threat to the
culture's stability. By contrast, those who act in accordance with the new
model, and produce the behaviour which will be paving the way for its
ultimate reception, often do realise its explosive potentials. It is
precisely out of such a realisation that they may decide to conceal the true
nature of their behaviour, namely, in an attempt to introduce whatever
innovations they may entail in a controlled way, and in smaller doses, so
that they may go unnoticed by the masses, or those who dominate the culture
while all this is happening, until the innovations have been [partly]
incorporated into the culture and are no longer felt as a potential threat.
My intention in this paper is far from claiming that this is the only way
a new model may make its way into a cultural repertoire (because I don't
believe it is). On the other hand, I have no wish to devote too many efforts
to modifying - and necessarily complexifying - the `disguise' hypothesis
either (for instance, by specifying the conditions under which it is more or
less likely to gain [or lose] validity). What I'll be doing instead would
amount to adding some weight to the very feasibility of such a `big',
overarching hypothesis as a possible explanation of cultural dynamics; and I
will do so on the basis of one kind of evidence: the creation and
utilisation of fictitious translations (also known as
pseudotranslations); a recurring type of cultural behaviour which I have been
preoccupied with for almost twenty years, and from changing points of view.2
II
As has been demonstrated so many times, translations which deviate from
sanctioned patterns - which many of them certainly do - are often tolerated
by a culture to a much higher extent than equally deviant original
compositions. Given this fact, the possibility is always there to try and put
the cultural gatekeepers to sleep by presenting a text as if it were
translated, thus lowering the threshold of resistance to the novelties it
may hold in store and enhancing their acceptability, along with that of the text
incorporating them as a whole. In its extreme forms, pseudo-translating
amounts to no less than an act of culture planning - a notion which,
as I have been claiming lately, deserve to be given much higher prominence in
Translation Studies than has normally been the case; at least while trying to
account for translation behaviour under specific circumstances, that is, as a
descriptive-explanatory tool.3
Be that as it may, it is clear that recourse to fictitious translations
entails a disguise mechanism whereby advantage is taken of a
culture-internal conception of translation: not an essentialistic
`definition' (that is, a list of [more or less] fixed features, allegedly
specifying what translation inherently `is'), but a functional conception
thereof which takes heed of the immanent variability of the notion of
translation: difference across cultures, variation within a culture and
changes over time.
The underlying assumption here is that a text's systemic position (and
ensuing function), including the position and function which go with a text's
being regarded as a translation, are determined first and foremost by
considerations originating in the culture which actually hosts it. Thus, when
a text is offered as a translation, it is quite readily accepted bona fide as
one, no further questions asked. By contrast, when a text is presented as
having been originally composed in a language, reasons will often manifest
themselves - e.g., certain features of textual make-up and verbal
formulation, which persons-in-the-culture have come to associate with
translations and translating - to at least suspect, correctly or not, that
the text has in fact been translated into that language.
Within such a so-called `target culture', any text which is regarded as a
translation, on no matter what grounds, can be accounted for as a cluster of
(at least three) interconnected postulates:
(1) The Source-Text Postulate;
(2) The Transfer Postulate;
(3) The Relationship Postulate.4
Regarded as postulates, all three are posited rather than factual; at
least not of necessity. It is precisely this nature of theirs which makes it
so possible for producers of texts, or various agents of cultural
dissemination, to offer original compositions as if they were translations:
neither the source text nor the transfer operations (and the features that
the assumed `target' and `source' texts are regarded as sharing, by virtue of
that transfer), nor any translational relationships (where the transferred -
and shared - features are taken as an invariant core), have to be exposed and
made available to the consumers; not even in the case of genuine
translations. Very often it is really the other way around: a `positive'
reason has to be supplied if a text assumed to be a translation is to be deprived
of its culture-internal identity as one.
Thus, it is only when a text presented (or regarded) as a translation has
been shown to have never had a corresponding source text in any other
language, hence no text-induced `transfer operations', shared (transferred)
features and accountable relationships, that it is found to be `what it
really is': an original composition disguised as a translation. To be sure,
this is a far cry from saying that a translation proved to be fictitious has
`no basis' in any other culture, which is not necessarily true either: like
genuine translations, fictitious ones may also serve as a vehicle of imported
novelties. However, to the extent that such a basis can be pointed to, it
would normally amount to a whole group of foreign texts, even the
[abstractable] model underlying that group, rather than any individual
text.5
From the point of view of any retrospective attempt to study
pseudo-translating and its implications, a significant paradox is precisely
that a text can only be identified as a fictitious translation after the veil
has been lifted, i.e., when the function it was intended to have, and
initially had in the culture into which it was introduced, has already
changed; whether the fact that it used to function as a translation still has
some reality left or whether it has been completely erased from the culture's
`collective memory'. Only then can questions be asked as to why a disguised
mode of presentation was selected in the first place, and why it was this
particular language, or cultural tradition, that was picked as a `source', as
well as what it was that made the public fall for it for a longer or a
shorter period of time. At the same time, if any historically valid accounts
are to be attempted, the text will have to be properly contextualised. In
other words, it will have to be reinstated in the position it had occupied before
it was found out to be fictitious. (Of course, there may exist
myriad fictitious translations, with respect to which the mystification has
not been dispelled, and maybe never will be. These texts can only be tackled
as translations whose sources have remained unknown; but then, so many genuine
translations are in that same position, especially if one goes back in time.
Moreover, there is no real way of distinguishing between the two, which - in
terms of their cultural position (that is, from the internal point of view of
the culture which hosts them) - tend to be the same anyway.)
By contrast, the lifting of the veil itself, and the circumstances under
which it occurred, form an integral part of the
story we are after. Thus, when an under-cover mission has been accomplished,
there is little need for that cover any more. On the contrary, sometimes a
wish may arise precisely to publicise the way by which the new
dominating group (or individual) have managed to `outsmart the establishment'
and smuggle in its own goods. All this does not rule out the possibility that
the veil could also be lifted prior to a successful fulfillment of the task:
This may certainly happen. After all, a strategy's success is never
guaranteed. In cases like this, fulfillment may well be stopped, or even
reverted, which constitutes another important aspect of any attempt to study
cultural dynamics.
III
To be sure, a fictitious translation is not necessarily just presented
to the public as if it were a genuine one (which - based as it is on
make-believe alone - would still represent a disguise, but a rather
superficial one indeed). In many cases, the text is produced `as a translation'
right from the start. Entailing as it does the possibility of putting the
claim that the text `is' indeed a translation to some kind of test, this
would certainly count as a far more elaborate form of disguise.
Thus, features are often embedded in a fictitious translation which have
come to be habitually associated with genuine translations in the culture
which would host it, and which the pseudo-translator is part of, on occasion
so much as a privileged part; whether the association is with translations
into the hosting culture in general, or translations into it of texts of a
particular type, or, more often, translations from a particular source
language/culture. By enhancing their resemblance to genuine translations,
pseudo-translators simply make it easier for their textual creations to pass
as translations without arousing too much suspicion.
Interestingly enough, due to the practice of embedding features in
fictitious translations which have come to be associated with genuine
translations, it is sometimes possible to `reconstruct' from a fictitious
translation bits and pieces of a text in another language as a kind of an
`possible source text' - one that never enjoyed any textual reality, to be
sure - as is the case with so many genuine translations whose sources have
not (or not yet) been identified. In fact, as is the case with parodies
(which are akin to them in more than one respect), fictitious translations
often represent their fictitious sources in a rather exaggerated manner, which
may render the said reconstruction quite easy as well as highly univocal. It
is simply that the possibility, if not the need to actually activate an
`original' in the background of a text is often an integral part of its
proper realisation as an `intended translation', and hence of the very
disguise involved in pseudo-translating.
No wonder, then, that fictitious translations are often in a position to give
a fairly good idea as to the notions shared by the members of a community,
not only concerning the position of translated texts in the culture
they entertain, but concerning the most conspicuous characteristics of
such texts as well; in terms of both textual-linguistic traits as well as
putative target-source relationships. "The point is that it is only when
humans recognise the existence of an entity and become aware of its
characteristics that they can begin to imitate it",6
and overdoing-in-imitation is a clear, if extreme sign of such a recognition.
One final remark of a general nature: There is no doubt that putting forward, even producing a text as if it were a translation
always involves an individual decision. However, such a decision will
inevitably have been made within a particular cultural setup which is either
conducive to pseudo-translating or else may hinder recourse to it. No wonder,
then, that there seem to be circumstances which give rise to a multitude
of fictitious translations, often from the same `source' tradition, and/or
executed in a similar way, thus introducing into the culture in question a
true model whose cultural significance is of course much greater than that of
the sum-total of its individual (i.e. textual) realisations. Such a
proliferation always attests to the internal organisation of the culture
involved and very little else. In particular, it bears out the position and
role of [genuine] translations, or of a certain sub-group thereof, within
that culture, which the pseudo-translators seem to be putting to use, trying
to deliberately capitalise on it.
For instance, Russian Literature of the beginning of the 19th century was
crying out for what became known as `Gothic novels'. In order not to be
rejected, however, the texts put forward as novels of this type had to draw
their authority from an external tradition, and a very particular one, at
that: the English Gothic novel. As Iurij Masanov has shown, in response to
this requirement - a reflection of the internal interests of Russian
literature itself which had very little to do with the concerns of the
English culture - a great number of books were indeed produced in Russia
itself - and in the Russian language - which were presented, and accepted, as
translations from the English. Many of those were of `novels by Ann
Radcliffe', who was at that time regarded in Russia as the epitome of the
genre.7
In a similar vein, a former Tel Aviv student, Shelly Yahalom, has argued
convincingly that one of the most effective means of bringing about changes
in French writing of almost the same period was to lean heavily on
translations from English, genuine and fictitious alike, with no real
systemic difference between the two.8 As a third example of an
overriding tendency towards pseudo-translating I would cite the work of
another former student at Tel Aviv University, Rachel Weissbrod, who
demonstrated the decisive role fictitious translations, mainly `from the
English' again, have played in establishing particular sectors of
non-canonised Hebrew literature of the 1960s, most notably westerns, novels
of espionage, romances and pornographic novels, where - as previous attempts
had shown - undisguised texts of domestic origin would almost
certainly have been considered inappropriate and relegated to the culture's
extreme periphery, if not totally ejected from it.9
IV
If by `culture planning' we understand any attempt made by an individual, or
a small group, to incur changes in the cultural repertoire, and the ensuing
behaviour, of a much larger group,10 pseudo-translating would
surely count as a case of cultural planning, especially in its most radical
forms. Let me conclude by outlining three instances of pseudo-translating
exhibiting growing extents of planning along various dimensions.
(a) Papa Hamlet
In January 1889, a small book was published in the German town of Leipzig,
whose title-page read:
Bjarne P. Holmsen
PAPA HAMLET
Uebersetzt
und mit einer Einleitung versehen
von
Dr. Bruno Franzius
The book opened with the translator's preface - the Einleitung
announced on the cover - a rather common habit at that time, especially in translations
which made a claim of importance. The preface itself was typical too. In the
main, it consisted of an extensive biography of the author, Bjarne Peter
Holmsen, claimed to be a young Norwegian, but one of the central passages of
the preface discussed the difficulties encountered by the translator while
dealing with the original text and the translational strategies he chose to
adopt. It even expressed some (implicit) concern that a number of deviant
forms may have crept into the German text in spite of the translator's
prudence, forms which would easily be traceable to Norwegian formulations.
During the first few months after its publication, Papa Hamlet
enjoyed relatively wide journalistic coverage: It was reviewed in many German
newspapers and periodicals, where it was invariably treated as a translation.
The claim was thus taken at face value, precisely as could have been
expected. At the same time, none of the reviewers, mostly typical
representatives of the German cultural milieu of the turn of the century, had
any idea about Bjarne Peter Holmsen and his literary (or any other) career.
In fact, all of the information they supplied - which current norms of
reviewing encouraged them to do - was drawn directly from the preface
supplied by the translator, whose doctoral degree must have enhanced the
trust they placed in it, as did the fact that the author's biography seemed
to correspond so very closely to what would have been expected from a
contemporary Scandinavian writer. Comical as it may sound,
at least one reviewer went so far as to draw conclusions from the author's
portrait, which appeared on the book's jacket. Quite a number of reviewers
also referred to the translation work and its quality, in spite of the fact
that none of them detected - or, for that matter, made any serious attempt to
detect - a copy of the original; all on the clear assumption that a book
presented as a translation actually is one.
Unless, of course, there is strong evidence to the contrary.
And, indeed, a few months later, counter-evidence began to pile up, until
it became known that Papa Hamlet was not a translation at all. Rather,
the three stories comprising the small book were original German texts, the
first results of the joint literary efforts of Arno Holz (1863-1929) and
Johannes Schlaf (1862-1941). (The portrait on the jacket - a visual aspect of
the overall disguise - belonged to a cousin of Holz's, one Gustav Uhse...)
Thus, towards the end of 1889 it was the uncovered disguise which
became a literary fact (in the sense assigned to this notion by the Russian
Formalist Jurij Tynjanov11) for the German culture. However, an
essential factor for any historically valid account of the case is
that, for several months, Papa Hamlet did serve as a translation.
Although factually wrong, this identity had been functionally effective;
among other things, in enhancing the acceptance of what the two authors
wished to achieve, and for whose achievement they decided to pseudo-translate
in the first place.
Thus, Holz's and Schlaf's main objective was to experiment in freeing
themselves - as German authors - from what they regarded as the narrow
confines of French naturalism and getting away with this breach of sanctioned
conventions. And they chose to do so by adopting a series of models of
contemporary Scandinavian literature as guidelines for their writing, which
were considered `naturalistic' too, only in a different way.
At that time, Scandinavian literature was indeed rapidly gaining in
popularity and esteem in Germany.
As such, it was in a good position to contribute novelties to German
literature, and ultimately even reshape its very center. However, when Holz
and Schlaf were writing Papa Hamlet, German original writing was still
firmly hooked to the French-like models. This made it highly resistant to the
new trends, so that Scandinavian-like models were still acceptable only
inasmuch as they were tied up with actual texts of Scandinavian origin; in
other words, translations.
Disguising a German literary work which took after Scandinavian models as
a translation was thus a most convenient way out of a genuine dilemma, where
both horns - giving up the very wish to innovate as well as presenting the
unconventional text as a German original - were sure to yield very little.
Nor was this the only case of fictitious translation in modernising German
literature at the end of the 19th century, notably in the same circles where
Holz and Schlaf then moved, which may well have reinforced their decision to
pseudo-translate.
The two authors were quite successful in attaining their goal too: Papa
Hamlet indeed introduced `Scandinavian-like' novelties into German
literature, many of them disguised - at least by implication - as instances
of interference of the Norwegian original. A non-existent original, to be
sure. In fact, the book came to be regarded as one of the most important
forerunners of so-called konsequenter Naturalismus, a German brand of
naturalism which owes quite a bit to Scandinavian
prototypes. A successful instance of transplantation by any standard, due to
an ingenious act of planning!
(b) Book of Mormon12
A more extreme case of planning is represented by the Book of Mormon
(1830): Here, the innovations which were introduced by means of a text
presented (and composed) as a translation gave birth to an altogether new
Church, which brought in its wake a redeployment of much more than just the
religious sector of the American culture. One cannot but wonder what history
would have looked like, had Joseph Smith Jr. claimed he had been given golden
plates originally written in English, or had everybody taken the claim he did
make as a mere hoax! (According to one Mormon tradition, the golden plates
looked very much like a piece of 19th century office equipment, a kind of a ring
binder...)
To be sure, it is only those who bought the claim that the Book of
Mormon was a genuine translation from an old, obsolete (or, better still,
obscure) language, nicknamed `reformed Egyptian' - in spite of the enormous
difficulties in accepting such a claim13 - who were also willing
to accept its contents as well as the sacredness associated with it. As a
result, it was not the entire American culture which absorbed the innovation.
Rather, a relatively small group partly detached itself from mainstream
culture and formed what became known as "The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints". Moreover, the new Church developed not only due to a
marked refusal to lift the veil connected with the Book of Mormon, but
actually due to an ongoing struggle to improve the disguise and
fortify it; in other words, make the Book look more and more like a
genuine religious book, which - according to previous traditions in the
Anglo-American cultural space - had to be a translation.
Another aspect of the novelty of the Book of Mormon could well be
literary. Thus, it has been claimed that
the book is one of the earliest examples of frontier fiction, the first long
Yankee narrative that owes nothing to English literary fashions . . . its
sources are absolutely American. (p. 67)
In fact, in the 19th century there have been persistent allegations that use
had been made of a lost manuscript of a novel by one Solomon Spaulding, which
was supposed to have been stolen and passed on to Joseph Smith.14
The possible literary intentions notwithstanding, it is clear that the
producers of the Book of Mormon, struggling to establish a third Testament,
took advantage first and foremost of large portions of the tradition of Bible
translation into English. Regard the way the Book as a whole was
divided into lower-level `Books', and especially the names that were given to
the latter; for instance,
First (and Second) Book of Nephi
Book of Jacob
Book of Mosiah.
Obviously, there is nothing `natural' about that division or the book names,
nor can there be a doubt that both conventions were taken over from the biblical
tradition.
As to the subdivision of each individual `Book' to `Chapters' and
`Verses', it too was modelled on the Bible (more correctly: its English
translations, because Smith didn't even claim to know either Hebrew or
Greek). However, this subdivision didn't even exist when the Book of
Mormon first came into being. Rather, it was imposed on the English text
some fifty years later, not even by the original pseudo-translator himself.
There can be little doubt that this was done in a (rather successful) attempt
to further reduce the difference between the Book of Mormon and the
other two Testaments, thus enhancing its `authenticity' and adding to its
religious authority. Within the group which had already formed around the Book,
that is. Can there be any doubt that what we are facing here is a whole
series of gradual planning moves connected with a particular conception of
translation?
To be sure, it is not all that clear what Smith had in mind when the
Church was not yet in existence; not even whether he initially planned a
religious work with a historical narrative at its base or just a
historically-oriented narrative with some religious overtones. Moreover, in
spite of the detailed story about how he received the golden plates and
translated them, on the title-page of the first edition of the Book of
Mormon he chose to refer to himself as `author and proprietor'. Only in
later editions was the reference changed to `translator'. By contrast, it is
very clear what happened to the Book in future times; namely, in a
secondary, much more focussed act of planning. In the same vein, references
were later added to `prophecies' which mentioned in the Book, which
`had come true', as so many missionary groups have been doing in their
versions of the New Testament (and "The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints" has indeed adopted a strong missionary orientation).
The names used in the Book constitute another feature which reveals
a biblical model:
Of the 350 names in the book he [Smith] took more than a hundred directly
from the Bible. Over a hundred others were biblical names with slight changes
in spelling or additions of syllables. But since in the Old Testament no
names began with the letters F, Q, V, W, X, or Y, he was careful not to
include any in his manuscript. (p. 73)
To which one could add those names (such as Mosiah) that end with the
syllable ah, imitating a common ending in Hebrew whose retention has
become part of standard transliteration of truly biblical names even in cases
where the Hebrew closing h is silent, and hence phonetically
superfluous.
Finally, in terms of its linguistic formulation, the Book of Mormon
is an extreme case of what I have called `overdoing it vis-à-vis the source
it is modelled on', which is so typical of fictitious translations. Take, for
example, the way quotations from the Bible were used in the Book: As
is well known, occasional quotation from the Old Testament has already been
one of the literary devices of the New Testament, but it was used quite
sparsely. By contrast, about 25,000 words of the Book of Mormon
consist of passages from the Old Testament, and about 2,000 more words were
taken from the New Testament. As Fawn Brodie, Smith's biographer, put it (p.
58), it is almost as if, whenever "his literary reservoir
.·.·. ran dry .·.·. he
simply arranged for his Nephite prophets to quote from the Bible". To be
sure, Smith often "made minor changes in these Biblical extracts, for it
seems to have occurred to him that readers would wonder how an ancient
American prophet could use the exact text of the King James Bible".
However, "he was careful to modify chiefly the italicised interpolations
inserted for euphony and clarity by the scholars of King James; the
unitalicised holy text he usually left intact". In the same vein, the
phrase "and it came to pass" [= it so happened], which is typical
to the book's style, appears at least 2,000 times (p. 63), which is really a
lot!
(c) The `Kazakh Poet' Dzhambul
Dzhabayev
In the most extreme of cases, planning may be so much as imposed on a society
from above, by agents endowed with the power to do so; most notably political
institutions in a totalitarian society. This is precisely the way
pseudo-translating was used, misused and abused in Stalin's Soviet
Union, a famous case in point being the patriotic poetry of
Dzhambul Dzhabayev.
During the first decades after the Soviet Revolution, an old Kazakh folk
singer named Dzhambul Dzhabayev (1846-1945) became famous throughout the
Empire. Yet, nobody has ever encountered that man's poems in praise of the
regime in anything but Russian, a language he himself didn't speak. Several
of those poems were translated into other languages too, most notably in East Germany,
always from the Russian version.
Now, at least since the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovitch
"as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov"15 it has
become common knowledge that the Russian `translations' of Dzhambul's poems were in fact written
"by an entire brigade of Russian poetasters" (derogatory noun -
Shostakovitch's), who, in turn, didn't know any Kazakh. Some of the real
authors were actually rather well-known figures in Soviet letters, which is
why they were assigned the job in the first place: they knew only too well
what the authorities expected of them and of their poems. The team
"wrote fast and prolifically", Shostakovitch goes on, "and
when one of the `translators' dried up, he was replaced by a new, fresh
one". "The factory was closed down only on Dzhambul's death", which was made
known throughout the world; that is, when he could no longer be taken
advantage of in person. Luckily enough (for the planners), he lived to be
ninety nine.
Evidently, the Soviet authorities resorted to this practice in a highly
calculated attempt to meet two needs at once, each drawing on a different
source: The poems had to praise `the great leader' and his deeds in a way
deemed appropriate. People of the Russian intelligentsia were in the
best position to do that. On the other hand, the new norms which were then
being adopted in the Soviet Union demanded
that "the new slaves .·.·. demonstrate
their cultural accomplishments to the residents of the capital", in
Shostakovitch's harsh formulation (p. 164). Consequently, an author for the
concoction had to be found in the national republics such as Kazakhstan,
and not in the Russian center; and in case a suitable one couldn't be found,
one had to be invented.
In this case, as in many others, the invention was not biographical:
a forgery of such magnitude - the invention of a person that has had no form
of existence whatsoever - would have been too easy to detect, with all the
ensuing detrimental consequences. However, it most certainly was a functional
kind of invention.: The required figure was thus not made up as a person, but
rather as a persona; namely, the `author' in the Kazakh language of a growing
corpus of poems which, in point of fact, came into being in Russian. The
invented persona was superimposed on an existing person, among other things,
in order that someone could be present in the flesh in selected occasions,
thus enhancing the `authenticity' of the poems as well as that of their
[fictitious] author.
Significantly, comparable methods were used in music, [folk] dance, and
several other arts too, which renders the use of fictitious translations in
Stalin's Soviet Union part of a major culture-planning operation, and a very
successful one, at that (from the point of view of those who thought it out):
mere disguise systematically turned into flat forgery.
Notes
1. Zohar Shavit. "The Entrance of a New Model into the System: The Law
of Transformation". In: Karl Eimermacher, Peter Grzybek and Georg Witte,
eds. Issues in Slavic Literary and Cultural Theory. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1989, 593-600.
2. E.g. Gideon Toury. "Pseudotranslation as a Literary Fact: The Case of
Papa Hamlet". Hasifrut/Literature 32 (1982), 63-68 [in
Hebrew]; "Translation, Literary Translation and Pseudotranslation".
Comparative Criticism 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, 73-85; Descriptive
Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
1995, Excursus A. Others have also tackled this phenomenon, although from
slightly different angles; most notably: Julio César Santoyo. "La traducción como técnica
narrativa". In: Actas del IV Congreso de la Asociación Española de
Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (Salamanca, del 18 al 21 de Diciembre de 1980).
Salamanca:
Ediciones universidad, 1984, 37-53; Anikó Sohár. "`Genuine' and
`Fictitious' Translations of Science Fiction and Fantasy in Hungary".
In: Lynne Bowker, Michael Cronin, Dorothy Kenny and Jennifer Pearson, eds. Unity
in Diversity?: Current Trends in Translation Studies.
Manchester: St. Jerome, 1998, 38-46.
3. Two papers of mine, both dealing with this issue, will soon be published.
They can also be found on the Internet: Gideon Toury. "Culture Planning
and Translation". Forthcoming in: Alberto Alvarez Lugris et al., eds. Proceedings of the Vigo Conference "anovadores de nós -
anosadores de vós". URL: http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/~toury/works/gt-plan.htm;
"Translation as a Means of Planning and the Planning of Translation: A
Theoretical Framework and an Exemplary Case". Forthcoming in: Saliha
Paker et al., eds. Proceeding of the International Conference
"Translations: (Re)shaping of Literature and
Culture", Bogaziçi University, Istanbul.
URL: http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/~toury/works/plan-tr.htm
4. For more details see: Gideon Toury. Descriptive Translation Studies and
Beyond. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995, 31-35; "The
Notion of `Assumed Translation': An Invitation to a New Discussion". In: Henri Bloemen, Erik Hertog and
Winibert Segers, eds. Letterlijkheid / Woordelijkheid : Literality /
Verbality. Antwerpen/Harmelen: Fantom, 1995, 135-147.
5. Thus, one possible way of settling the long dispute over the authenticity
of Macpherson's Ossianic poetry - one of the most influential cases of
pseudo-translating in the history of European Literature - is precisely to
maintain that it is various elements of a whole tradition of Gaelic
oral poetry which underlies it rather than a finite number of instances of
performance, let alone one particular (source) text in the Gaelic language
for each and every English (target) text. -- See now: Fiona Stafford and
Howard Gaskill, eds. From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic Translations. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA:
Rodopi, 1998.
6. Carl James. "Genre Analysis and the Translator". Target
1:1 (1989), 35.
7. Ju.I. Masanov. "Lozhnye perevody". In his: V mire psevdonimov,
anonimov i literaturnykh poddelock. Moskva, 1963, 99-106. -- By an
interesting coincidence, a few decades earlier, the English Gothic novel
itself had come into being at least in part under disguise, most notably
another famous fictitious translation, Horace Walpole's The Castle of
Otranto (1764). But this was
truly a historical `accident'.
8. Shelly Yahalom. Relations entre les littératures française et anglaise
au 18e siècle. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University [M.A. Thesis; in Hebrew],
1978, 42-52; 74-75.
9. Rachel Weissbrod. Trends in the Translation of Prose Fiction from
English into Hebrew, 1958-1980. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University [Ph.D. Dissertation; in
Hebrew], 1989, 94-99; 355-356.
10. See the sources mentioned in fn. 3 as well as: Itamar Even-Zohar.
"Culture Planning and Cultural Resistance". URL:
http://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/papers/plan_res.html
11. Jurij Tynjanov. "Das
literarische Faktum". In his: Die literarischen Kunstmittel und die
Evolution in der Literatur, tr. Alexander Kaempfe. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1967, 7-36 [Russian original: 1924].
12. All quotations in this Section have been taken from: Fawn M. Brodie. No
Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Eyre
& Spottiswoode (Frontier Library), 1963 [11945]. (Page numbers
are given in brackets.)
13. To be sure, all this occurred a short while after the Egyptian part of
the famous `Rosetta Stone' had finally been deciphered. Even laymen heard
about this achievement, mostly through the local press. Many developed
`romantic' ideas towards it, which may serve as a partial explanation for
Smith's selection of his `source language'; especially as a substantial part
of the truly biblical stories took place in Egypt or in connection with it
anyway. At the same time, even if they saw some blurred pictures of the Stone
in a newspaper, the majority had very little idea as to what the deciphered
language was like, either in form or in usage. In fact, when Smith was later
asked to present some of the `Egyptian' characters he had seen on the
original golden plates, he produced a piece of paper which resembled nothing;
certainly no hieroglyphs. (The paper is reproduced in Brodie's biography of
Smith [fn. 12], facing p. 51.)
14. See Brodie (fn. 12), 419-433.
15. Dmitri Shostakovitch. Testimony: The Memoirs o Dmitri Shostakovich, as
related to and edited by Solomon Volkov, tr. Antonina W. Bouis. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1979, 161ff.
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