I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of translation since class. In the video In My Language (2007, Baggs), Amelia Baggs includes the text “A Translation” at the 3:13 mark. They identify the preceding portion of the video as having been “in my native language” while explaining that the rest of the video is “A Translation”. The usage of the word “a” instead of “the” signifies that this translation recognizes itself as something which does not exhaust the translated material.
We know that in the act of translation something is left unexpressed by the translator, and that something in excess of the original material is introduced. What I think is so potent about this video is that it includes “a translation” in order to map out and critique the neurotypical requirement for translatability as a sign of value. One identifies the translation as something which is inextricable from the transmission style of pedagogy: what is transmitted must be transmittable to a very particular subject position: white, cis, straight, neurotypical, male.
I guess the problem isn’t simply translation but the tendency to pretend that that which exists in excess of translation is something unimportant: it takes as the starting point the idea that what is valuable is neurotypical, is white.
-joshua w
We know that in the act of translation something is left unexpressed by the translator, and that something in excess of the original material is introduced. What I think is so potent about this video is that it includes “a translation” in order to map out and critique the neurotypical requirement for translatability as a sign of value. One identifies the translation as something which is inextricable from the transmission style of pedagogy: what is transmitted must be transmittable to a very particular subject position: white, cis, straight, neurotypical, male.
I guess the problem isn’t simply translation but the tendency to pretend that that which exists in excess of translation is something unimportant: it takes as the starting point the idea that what is valuable is neurotypical, is white.
-joshua w
So beautifully said, Joshua! I really like the concept of "transduction," which you can find in the work of Gilbert Simondon. Transduction speaks to a (chemical) shift in state that creates a new process. The premise of translation is indeed, as you suggest, a belief in a clean slate, a neutral state, that carries without trouble the movement from x to y. What happens, we might ask, when translation becomes transduction? What does the new process produce? What does it make thinkable? In Amelia's video, she does this work of transduction when she makes us uncertain about the place of language in experience while still holding onto the term - "in my language." What is this language that she speaks of, and what kind of process must be activated to have access to it? What is created in this passage toward new forms of process?
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ReplyDeleteHi, Joshua!
ReplyDeleteI’ve been thinking a lot about your comment and I have to say that I slightly disagreed with your view on translation as part of the problematic that presupposes a neurotypical society. In fact, translation, from my perspective, is rather part of the answer to such problem. I strongly believe that translation is a tool of communication that lays the path for a conversation to arise across cultures inextricably linked with my personal experience as an immigrant. The very “problem” of translation, as you pointed out, is what is left unexpressed and what is added to it. Such particularity of translation is not a problem but rather, the very essence of the practice. Indeed, the work of the translator is precisely to adapt what is being translated, taking into account the targeted audience to which is directed and its cultural and social context, in order to convey as faithfully as possible, the meaning/soul of said translation, whether that is by omission, addition or modification (I come from a family of translators). So, in this particular case, the translation that is being made in Amelia’s work do appears to be directed, in your own words, to a “white, cis, straight, neurotypical, male” audience, which is not inexorably linked to translation, but rather to whom Amelia’s work is targeting. Such translation is only reflecting the neurotypical social context in which her work is embedded and by underlying the need of “A Translation”, her work is putting forward the necessity of conversation across the artist and her audience (neuro typical and white). In other words, the “excess” that you mentioned is not created by translation, much less exists in it. It is an excess fabricated by “the idea that what is valuable is neurotypical, is white” (borrowing yet again your own words) and exists within our line of thoughts as a norm and which obviously we are trying to challenge through our reflections/writings/conversations and through this seminar as well in a parallel way to Amelia’s work. That being said, my argument can portrait translation as a practice that does not have a social commitment which is definitely not my intent. I know it is an art in itself to be able to find the right words to express ideas coming from one particular social and cultural context and language to another. What I am trying to say is that translators are just a conduit or massagers if you like. As Erin mentioned in class, when we say "I get it", in reality, we do not get it because we all experience things differently. So, translation is just trying to help us "get it” somehow…at least that is the way I see it…
Mariana,
(first generation immigrant who feels very strongly about translation :p)
Thanks Mariana! So much to think about here. I think we are talking about two different things that have points of contact. There is a difference, I think, between two texts in translation where both languages are intelligible and function in a register of preexisting value. An example of this would be the academic translation of one of my books. My books are written in English, the language of passage. When I say it is a language of passage, what I mean is that it carries an expectation of legibility. People who speak English *assume* others will understand and generally consider those who don't lacking. In this sense, English is a colonial language. When my work is translated, it moves into another realm. Sometimes I understand where it moves (in languages I also speak) but other times the work is simply foreign. Translation creates a movement toward other modes, toward other ways of understanding and situating thought in language. But English remains the strong centre from which this understanding emerges and is sustained. The work of translation in this context is one that I deeply value: I love the feeling of other ways of thinking moving with my own, and I deeply appreciate the commitment of the translator, who, at her best, moves with the rhythm of the thinking itself and leaves part of herself behind in that thinking.
ReplyDeleteWhen Amelia writes "a translation," she is referring to a different gesture, one that I think Joshua describes well. She is speaking of what is interminably lost in translation. She is speaking of the burden of having to translate because no one will give value to the kind of language she already speaks. That is to say, her language will never be recognized *on its own* as having value. Only the spoken (English) voice can make the passage toward value (and, it is crucial to underline that this passage through the voice is the *only* thing that allows her to become human in the voice of the neurotypical/colonizer. This is something that often comes up in the discourse of race, disability, neurodiversity, feminism, gender etc: that legibility is mediated by existing structures that carry the power of bestowing value.
Ferreira also addresses the concept in the last paragraph of Toward a Black Feminist Poethics. She writes:
"a Black Feminist Poethics - inspired by Octavia Butler's female characters - reads Blackness to expose the ruse of Reflection and Recognition, the yielding of the self-contained and coherent image of the Subject, which necessitates and lives off the translation of the historical effects of the colonial architectures that allowed the expropriation of the total value produced by native lands and slave labor (juridico-economic effect) into the mental (moral and intellectual) deficiencies (natural lack) signified by the Category of Blackness every time it is articulated to justify otherwise untenable deployments of racial violence" (p.94).
Here translation operates between the two above possibilities, as a call for difference and an accounting of how knowledge moves. In my view, the best practice of translation is one that is affected by the process it undertakes, and that way, becomes transduction.
I can see that I focused all my attention exclusively to languages without giving it a second thought on how Amelia’s “language” cannot be translated because it is a state of being, we cannot learn it, only experience it and that is where the problem lies, how can I see what she sees? How can I experience what is like to be her? Is it even possible to do so?... Thank you so much for your comment Erin, I think I fully understand Joshua’s comment now and I’ll definitely do more research on transduction!!!!
ReplyDeleteMariana