Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T23:50:51.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tanga, Tunic, Cleaver: On Things in Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2023

Tal Goldfajn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores things in translation, examining what translation does to things and what happens to things in their trajectory in translation. Although translation scholars have posed useful questions about how to translate realia, I take a different approach here. When objects circulate among different groups of people, they are transformed in defiance of their material stability. The linguistic analysis of translations may allow us to observe from a unique perspective not only what kind of force things have at different times in different societies but also how the materially stable objects can actually be different things in different translation scenes. Translations of material objects offer, then, a charged locus of study, generating special, valuable knowledge about cultural contact and transfer, as well as about cross-cultural and transethnic misunderstandings. The essay focuses on three case studies from English retranslations of the landmark nineteenth-century Brazilian novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, by J. M. Machado de Assis, as well as retranslations of biblical Hebrew narratives. By contextualizing particular linguistic references to clothing and artifacts, I demonstrate that translation imbues these ostensibly stable material objects with new cultural significances and valuations: language effectively remakes them.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 138 , Issue 3 , May 2023 , pp. 454 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. W. W. Norton, 1996.Google Scholar
Alvstad, Cecilia, and Rosa, Alexandra Assis. “Voice in Retranslation: An Overview and Some Trends.” Target, vol. 27, no. 1, 2015, pp. 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arendt, Hanna. The Human Condition. U of Chicago P, 1958.Google Scholar
Barton, John. A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book. Viking, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berk Albachten, Özlem, and Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir, editors. Perspectives on Retranslation: Ideology, Paratexts, Methods. Routledge, 2019.Google Scholar
Berman, Antoine. “La retraduction comme espace de traduction.” Palimpsestes, vol. 13, no. 4, 1990, pp. 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Elliger, K. and Rudolph, W., Gesamtherstellun Biblia-Druck, 1977.Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. Other Things. U of Chicago P, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Bill., editor. Things. U of Chicago P, 2004.Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Brown, Things, pp. 1–21.Google Scholar
Brownlie, Siobhan. “Narrative Theory and Retranslation Theory.” Across Languages and Cultures, vol. 7. no. 2, 2006, pp. 145–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Peter. “Conclusion: The Meaning of Things.” The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, edited by Gaskell, Ivan and Carter, Sarah Anne, Oxford UP, 2020, pp. 619–33.Google Scholar
Carelman, Jacques. Catalogue d'objets introuvables. 1969. Balland, 1984.Google Scholar
Coldiron, A. E. B. Printers without Borders: Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance. Cambridge UP, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Michael. Translation and Globalization. Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Rochberg-Halton, Eugene. The Meaning of Things. Cambridge UP, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dant, Tim. “Fetishism and the Social Value of Objects.” The Sociological Review, vol. 44, no. 3, 1996, pp. 495–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deane-Cox, Sharon. Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Interpretation. Bloomsbury, 2014.Google Scholar
Goldfajn, Tal. “The Translator and the Pea: On Emotions and Objects in Translation.” Intersemiotic Perspectives on Emotions: Translating across Signs, Bodies and Values, edited by Petrilli, S. and Routledge, M. Ji, 2023, pp. 45–62.Google Scholar
Guerini, Andréia, editor. Retranslation in Context. Special issue of Cuadernos de Tradução. Vol. 39, no. 1, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halkin, Hillel. “How to Judge Robert Alter's Landmark Translation of the Hebrew Bible.” Mosaic, 4 Feb. 2019, mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2019/02/how-to-judge-robert-alters-landmark-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible/"mosaicmagazine.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian. Entangled: An Archeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. “Making Culture and Weaving the World.” Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Graves-Brown, P. M., Routledge, 2000, pp. 50–71.Google Scholar
Katz, A. J. “CNN Releases Fifteen-Second Ads: ‘A Mask Can Say a Lot about the Person Who Wears It, but Even More about the Person Who Doesn't.’” TVNewser, 31 July 2020, www.adweek.com/tvnewser/cnn-releases-15-second-spot-a-mask-can-say-a-lot-about-the-person-who-wears-it-but-even-more-about-the-person-who-doesnt/450252/.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language and Communication, vol. 23, 2003, pp. 409–25.Google Scholar
Kharina, Alla. Realia in Literary Translation: A Quantitative and Qualitative Study of Russian Realia in Norwegian and English Translations. 2018. U of Oslo, PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Appadurai, Arjun, Cambridge UP, 1986, pp. 64–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kujamäki, Pekka. “Finnish Comet in German Skies: Translation, Retranslation and Norms.” Target, vol. 13, no. 1, 2001, pp. 45–70.Google Scholar
Kujamäki, Pekka. “Übersetzung von Realienbezeichnungen in literarischen Texten.” Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science, edited by Wiegand, Herbert Ernst, Walter de Gruyter, 2004, pp. 920–25.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Porter, Catherine, Harvard UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Leppihalme, Ritva. “Realia.” Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Gambier, Yves and Doorslaer, Luc van, John Benjamins Publishers, 2011, pp. 126–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Littau, Karin. “Translation and the Materialities of Communication.” Translation Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 82–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. Epitaph of a Small Winner. Translated by Grossman, William L., Noonday, 1952.Google Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas. 1881. Penguin Books / Companhia das Letras, 2014.Google Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Translated by Rabassa, Gregory, Oxford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Translated by Thomson-DeVeaux, Flora, Penguin Books, 2020.Google Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Translated by Costa, Margaret Jull and Patterson, Robin, Liveright, 2020.Google Scholar
Machado de Assis, J. M. Posthumous Reminiscences of Braz Cubas. Translated by Percy Ellis, E., Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1955.Google Scholar
Meskell, Lynn. “Introduction: Object Orientations.” Archaeologies of Materiality, edited by Meskell, , Blackwell Publishing, 2005, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Blackwell Publishing, 1987.Google Scholar
Nida, Eugene A. “Linguistics and Ethnology in Translation-Problems.” Word, vol. 1, no. 2, 1945, pp. 194–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Object Lessons.” Bloomsbury, 2023, www.bloomsbury.com/us/discover/superpages/academic/object-lessons-us/.Google Scholar
Olsen, Bjornar. “Scenes from a Troubled Engagement: Post-structuralism and Material Culture Studies.” Tilley et al., pp. 85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietz, William. “The Problem of the Fetish.” Anthropology and Aesthetics, vol. 9, 1985, pp. 5–17.Google Scholar
Pritz, Ray. The Works of Their Hands: Man-Made Things in the Bible. United Bible Societies, 2009.Google Scholar
Pym, Anthony. Translation Solutions for Many Languages: Histories of a Flawed Dream. Bloomsbury, 2016.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Roberto. Um mestre na periferia do capitalismo: Machado de Assis. Duas Cidades, 1990.Google Scholar
Septuagint. Elpenor, www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/default.asp.Google Scholar
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” 1917. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, edited by Lemon, Lee T. and Reiss, Marion J., U of Nebraska P, 1965, pp. 3–24.Google Scholar
Speiser, E. A. The Anchor Bible: Genesis. 3rd ed., Doubleday, 1987.Google Scholar
Stahl, Brower. “Material Histories.” The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, edited by Hicks, Dan and Beaudry, Mary C., Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 150–72.Google Scholar
“Tanga.” Diccionario da lingua brasileira, by Luiz Maria da Silva Pinto. Typographia de Silva, 1832. Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin, digital.bbm.usp.br/view/?45000038026&bbm/5414#page/870/mode/2up.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. “The Case of the Misplaced Ponchos.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 4, no. 1, 1999, pp. 5–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Harvard UP, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson-DeVeaux, Flora. Toward a New Translation of Mémorias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. 2019. Brown U, PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Tilley, Christopher. “Part I: Theoretical Perspectives: Introduction.” Tilley et al., pp. 7–12.Google Scholar
Tilley, Christopher, et al., editors. Handbook of Material Culture. Sage Publications, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. “Retranslations: The Creation of Value.” Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice, Routledge, 2013, pp. 96–108. Originally published in the Bucknell Review, 2004.Google Scholar
Wagstaff, Bethany Joy. Redressing Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: Material Cultural Approaches. 2017. U of Exeter, PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Weiner, Annette B., and Schneider, Jane, editors. Cloth and Human Experience. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Young, Diana. “The Colours of Things.” Tilley et al., pp. 173–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar