What is a “Relevant” Translation?

Jacques Derrida
Translated by Lawrence Venuti
Summary
Venuti/Derrida begins claiming the impossibility of traducing the title. In the first place because
once can’t decide the source language to which it is answerable and in the second place in what
sense it travels between guest and host. Moreover, we don’t know if the word “relevant” is really
one word, a single word with a single meaning, or if, homonym or homophone of itself. Thus, what
Derrida/Venuti propose under this title is a laborious approach that wants to indicate the motif of
labor as the transferential and transformational travail, not only in the sense of psychoanalysis but
also as the neutral motif of translation as transaction and transfer.
The vocable “relevant” has all the traits of a word. Infact a word remains a mysterious thing,
precarious and not quite natural. As well, this word “relevant” carries in its body an ongoing
process of translation. Infact, even if it is imported into the French language, this word of Latin
origin is now rather English in its current usage, in its currency. This Frenchification is not strictu
senso a translation and in this title serves to qualify translation and to indicate what a translation
might be obliged to, namely relevant. What is most often called “relevant”? whatever feels right,
pertinent, welcome, appropriate, opportune, coming right at the moment when you expect it or
corresponding to the object to which the so-called relevant action relates, as a relevant
translation. Therefore, a relevant translation would be quite simply a good translation, a version
that does its job inscribing in the receiving language the most relevant equivalent for an original.
The language that is the most right, appropriate, pertinent, adequate, opportune, and so on.
The verb relever brings him back to an experiment in translation in which he was engaged more
than thirty years, first between German and French, then more recently between English and
French. The fact that this French word could have been operated in a single language or between
three languages seems to have been an incalculable stroke of luck and to avoid the risk of saying
irrelevant things about translation, he preferred to prowl around a small word rather than engage
anew. Moreover, he chose this title because of its untranslatability through a single word. As a
matter of fact, he does not believe that anything can ever be untranslatable or translatable. How
can one dare say that nothing is translatable and by the same token that nothing is
untranslatable? Because of the condition of a certain economy that relates the translatable to the
untranslatable, in which economy signifies two things, property and quantity. Property means the
translation is always an attempt to transport home in its language, in the most appropriate way
possible, the most proper meaning of the original text, while quantity, when one speaks of
economy, one always speaks of calculable quantity. A relevant translation is a translation whose
economy, in these two senses, is the best possible, the most appropriating and the most
appropriate possible. How does a principle of economy permit one to say two apparently
contradictory things at the same time? To understand this, it is necessary to imagine two extreme
hypotheses: if to a translator who is fully competent in at least two languages and two cultures,
you give all the time of the world and you clarify and teach the semantic content and forms of the
text to be translated, there is no reason for him to encounter the untranslatable. If you give
someone who is competent an entire book, filled with translator’s notes, to explain everything
that a phrase or two or three words can mean, there is really no reason for him to fail to render
the intentions, connotations and semantic overdeterminations, of what is called the original. Of
course, this operation is not what is called a translation worthy of the name, the translation of a
work. To make legitimate of the word translation, it must be quantitatively equivalent to the
original, apart from any paraphrase, explication, analysis, and the like. Here he’s not talking about
of quantity in general or of quantity in the prosodic sense (meter, rhythm, caesura, rhyme) but he
is referring to counting the number of words. The philosophy of translation today aspires to be a
philosophy of the word. At the beginning of translation there is the word. However, this has not
always been the case. In fact, in De Optimo genere oratorum, Cicero freed translation from its
obligation to the verbum, its debt to word-for-word. The operation of translation did not consist in
taking the word literally, but it was enough to transmit the idea, the figure, the force. Also St.
Jerome, who with Luther was on the fathers of a certain translation ethics, affirms that the sense
of translation is to express not word by word but sense by sense. Even if he had been tempted to
make an exception for the mysterious order of words in the Bible. In recent times, a so-called
literal translation hasn’t been a translation that renders letters or even only what is termed the
sense, but rather a translation that stays as close as possible to the equivalence of “one word by
one word” and thereby respects verbal quantity as a quantity of words. Therefore, when several
words occur in one or the same acoustic of graphic form, translation encounter an insurmountable
limit. In fact, a homonym or homophone is never translatable word-to-word. Thus, it is necessary
to resign oneself to losing the effect, the economy or to add a gloss, or a note which confesses the
impotence of failure of the translation.
This word “relevant”, this present participle that functions as a predicate, here has the task of
defining the essence of translation. On the one hand to know what a relevant translation can
mean and be, it is necessary to know hat the essence of translation, its mission, its goal, is. On the
other hand, a relevant translation is assumed to be better than a translation that is not relevant. A
relevant translation is held to be the best translation possible. Thus, the definition of the essence
of translation, is implicated in the definition of a relevant translation. So, the question “What is a
relevant translation?” would return to the question “What is a translation?”. But if they mean the
same thing, then one should discard the word “relevant” and forget it. But in this case, it has been
kept. This because of two things: on the one hand, this word has been indispensable in translating
several words originating in several languages, starting with German; on the other hand, this word
has become untranslatable for the same reason.
The English word can be found in The Merchant of Venice. Everything in the play can be
retranslated into the code of translation and as a problem of translation. And this can be done
according to three senses that Jakobson distinguishes: interlinguistic, intralinguistic and
intersemiotic – as for example between a pound of flesh and a sum of money. At every moment,
translation is as necessary as it is impossible. The subject of the play became the task of the
translator, his impossible task, his duty, and debt. At least for three or four reasons:
1. First all translations imply an oath of fidelity to a given original;
2. Then there is the theme of economy, calculation, capital, and interest;
3. In The Merchant of Venice, as in every translation, there is also an impossible but
incessantly alleged correspondence between the pound of flesh and money.
4. This impossible translation is related to the Jew Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity,
since the traditional figure of the Jew is situated on the side of the body and letter, while
St. Paul the Christian is on the side of the spirit of the sense, or interiority. This relation of
the letter to the spirit, of the body of literalness to the interiority of the sense is also this
conversion called translation.
Shylock recalls that he promised under oath to respect the original text, the pound of flesh.
This oath blinds him to heaven, he can’t break it without perjuring himself. In the name of the
letter of the contract, Shylock refuses the translation and Portia offers him three times the sum
of money he is owed in exchange of the pound of flesh. If you translate the pound of flesh into
money, you will have three times the sum owed. But he refuses again because he cannot
perjure himself. He refers to language, to a tongue of man incapable of being measured. Thus,
the oath is a promise that human language cannot undo. And it is stronger than man in man. In
human language, the element of translation is an inflexible law that at once prohibits the
translation of the transaction but commands respect for the original literalness or the given
word. This seems true of the law of translation in general. No sin is more serious than perjury
and Shylock repeats that he cannot perjure himself confirming the first oath. This is called
fidelity, which is the very essence and vocation of an oath. When I swear, I swear in a language
that no human language has the power to make me perjure. Thus, the oath passes through
language, but it passes beyond human language. This would be the truth of translation.
In 4.1. Portia, asks Antonio to confess the bond, the contract and his response is “I do”, which
means Yes, I confess, I acknowledge, I recognize, I confirm. It is a sentence as extraordinary as
a “yes”. This utterance implies not only an “I” who does what it says while saying it, confirming
that he himself is the very person who has understood the question, but it is also the same
person as the one posing the question. We think and mean the same thing. After his
confession, the response falls like a verdict “Then must the Jew be merciful”. This short
sentence simultaneously signs both the economy and the genius of Shakespeare. It can be
considered an immense allegory that recapitulates the entire history of forgiveness, the entire
history between the Jew and the Christian.
Portia thus, faced with Antonio recognition, the Jew must be merciful, compassionate, capable
of forgiving, of erasing the dept. But the Jew does not understand Portia’s reasoning, he
entirely refuses to understand this logic and then he grows indignant: “in virtue of what
obligation should I show myself merciful?”. The word translated by “obligation” is compulsion,
which signifies an irresistible impulse or constraining power. As response, Portia does a grand
panegyric of the power forgiveness. This speech defines mercy, forgiveness, as the supreme
power. It is a power above power, a sovereignty above sovereignty. This is why mercy is the
king’s attribute, the absolute privilege of the monarch, and as this power is above power, so
the monarch’s attribute is at the same time above him and his sceptre. This might passe
beyond humanity even as it passes through humanity, just as language does. Here the two
discourses echo or mirror one another, that of Shylock the Jew and Portia the Christian. Both
place something (the oath, forgiveness) above human language and beyond the human order.
What is, finally, a discourse on translation (possible/impossible) is also a discourse of prayer on
prayer. Prayer and forgiveness have the same provenance and the same essence. Shylock is
frightened by this exorbitant exhortation, to renounce his right and his due. He is being asked
to do more than he can and more than he even has the right to grant, given the bond that
obliges him beyond every human link. He, who is presented as a diabolical figure, it is being
possessed in the name of the transcendence of grace. There is a willing of elevating him above
everything but in reality, it is a ruse to distract him, to make him forget what he is owed and
punish him cruelly. The goal of this ruse is to make Shylock loses everything in this translation
of transaction, the monetary signs of his money and the literal pound of flesh. Even his
religion, since when the situation takes a bad turn, he will have to convert to Christianity, to
translate himself (convertere) into a Christian after being forced to implore the doge for mercy
on his knees. The doge of Venice pretends to grant him this pardon to show how superior his
generosity as a Christian and a monarch is to that of the Jew. As for the rest, Shylock is totally
expropriated, half of his fortunes goes to Antonio, half to the State. And then, to receive a
reduction of the penalty and avoid total confiscation, the doge adds a condition, that is Shylock
repent: if he gives proof of humility while repenting, his penalty will be reduced, and he will
have only a fine to pay. Portia protested this offer because the penalty of confiscation is
reduced for what Shylock owes the State, but not for what he owes Antonio. Then Shylock
rebels and refuses the pardon at this price preferring to die. So, he lost everything and left the
scene. The profits are split, and the doge implores Portia to dine with him. She refuses humbly
begging his person because she must travel out of town. And the doge orders that she/he
must be paid or rewarded for her/his services. This gratuity is a wage and Portia knows it she
has been paid for performing well in a scene of forgiveness and pardon as a mercenary of
gratitude, or mercy. No one could express the “mercenary” dimension of “merci” better than
Shakespeare who has been charged with anti-Semitism for a work.
Just after saying “Then must the Jew be merciful” and after Shylock protests by asking “On
what compulsion must I?”, Portia begins to speak again. In her speech, mercy is not
commanded, is free. Like rain, it happens, or it doesn’t, but it’s a good rain, gentle. Forgiveness
isn’t calculated but it is good, like a gift, because mercy comes from forgiving. The person who
forgives is, like forgiveness itself, very high, above the person who asks for forgiveness. There
is a hierarchy, and this is why the metaphor of rain is important, since forgiveness is given from
above to below.
Thus, Mercy becomes the monarch, Portia says, but even better than his crown. But while the
crown manifests temporal power, forgiveness is a spiritual power. It is interior, spiritual,
situated in the king’s heart and not in his exterior attributes. Portia speaks as a Christian and
wants to convert Shylock to Christianity, in persuading him to forgive. The power to pardon
interiorized in mankind is what Portia calls divine: it will be God-like. This earthly power that
most resembles God is that which “seasons justice”, which “tempers” justice with forgiveness.
“tempers” is Hugo’s translation for “seasons”. It isn’t an erroneous choice: in fact it means “to
season”, to mix, to modify, to dress food or to affect a climate. However, he replaced this
translation with another that it will not be a relevant translation, but it will tie together three
gestures at once. He translated “seasons” as “ relève”.
1. First justification: relever conveys the sense of cooking suggested here. It is a question of
giving taste, a different taste that is blended with the first taste, remaining the same while
altering it, but also adding to it more taste. This is precisely what Portia says: mercy keeps
the taste of justice while cultivating it, changes it without changing it.
 2. Second justification: relever expresses elevation. Mercy elevates justice, it pulls it toward a
height higher than the crown, the sceptre and power.
3. Third justification: to reconcile what would render this translation relevant to the motif of
justice. In 1967, to translate a crucial German word with a double meaning, to suppress
and to elevate, he had proposed the noun relève and the verb relever. This allowed to
retain the double motif of the elevation and the replacement that preserves what it denies
or destroys.
When Portia says that mercy seated on the interior throne in the king’s heart, is an attribute of
God himself and therefore mercy resembles a divine power at the moment when it elevates,
preserves and negates justice. This does not mean that mercy comes only from one person who is
called God. As soon as there is mercy the so-called human experience reaches a zone of divinity:
mercy is the genesis of the divine but also the site of pure translation.