Retranslations: The Creation of Value

By Venuti, Lawrence

Article excerpt

Inscriptions and Institutions

TRANSLATION, like every cultural practice, involves the creation of values, linguistic and literary, religious and
political, commercial and educational, as the particular case may be. What makes translation unique is that the value-
creating process takes the form of an inscribed interpretation of a foreign-language text, whose own values inevitably
undergo diminution and revision to accommodate those that appeal to domestic cultural constituencies. Translation is an
inscription of the foreign text with intelligibilities and interests that are fundamentally domestic, even when the translator
maintains a strict semantic equivalence with the foreign text and incorporates aspects of the foreign-language cultural
context where that text first emerged. (1) Retranslations constitute a special case because the values they create are likely
to be doubly domestic, determined not only by the domestic values which the translator inscribes in the foreign text, but
also by the values inscribed in a previous version. Of course, retranslations may be inspired primarily by the foreign text
and produced without any awareness of a preexisting translation. The cases to be considered here, however, possess this
crucial awareness and justify themselves by establishing their differences from one or more previous versions.

These differences may first be introduced with the choice of a foreign text for retranslation, but they subsequently
proliferate with the development of discursive strategies to retranslate it. Moreover, both the choice and the strategies are
shaped by the retranslator's appeal to the domestic constituencies who will put the retranslation to various uses. A typical
case is the choice of a foreign text that has achieved canonical status in the translating culture. The sheer cultural authority
of this text--the Bible, for instance, the Homeric epics, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's plays, or Cervantes's Don
Quixote--is likely to solicit retranslation because diverse domestic readerships will seek to interpret it according to their
own values and hence develop different retranslation strategies that inscribe competing interpretations. Here the choice of
the text for retranslation is premised on an interpretation that differs from that inscribed in a previous version, which is
shown to be no longer acceptable because it has come to be judged as insufficient in some sense, perhaps erroneous,
lacking linguistic correctness. The retranslation may claim to be more adequate to the foreign text in whole or part, which
is to say more complete or accurate in representing the text or some specific feature of it. Claims of greater adequacy,
completeness, or accuracy should be viewed critically, however, because they always depend on another category, usually
an implicit basis of comparison between the foreign text and the translation which establishes the insufficiency and
therefore serves as a standard of judgment. This standard is a competing interpretation.

The issue of readership is especially important with retranslations that are housed in social institutions. Generally, a
translation that circulates in such a setting contributes to the identity formation of the agents who function within it, to
their acquisition of values that constitute qualifications, and so a translation can affect the operation and reproduction of
the institution. (2) Retranslations are designed deliberately to form particular identities and to have particular institutional
effects. In religious institutions, retranslations help to define and inculcate orthodox belief by inscribing canonical texts
with interpretations that are compatible with prevailing theological doctrine. In academic institutions, similarly,
retranslations help to define and inculcate valid scholarship by inscribing canonical texts with interpretations that currently
prevail in scholarly disciplines.

Retranslations can thus maintain and strengthen the authority of a social institution by reaffirming the institutionalized
interpretation of a canonical text. …

Length: 5,416 words

……………………………..
Retranslation refers to the action of "translating a work that has previously been translated into the same
language" or to the text itself that was retranslated.[1] Retranslation of classic literature and religious
texts is common. Retranslation may happen for many reasons, e.g., in order to update obsolete language,
in order to improve the quality of translation, in order to account for a revised edition of the source text,
or because a translator wishes to present a new interpretation or creative response to a text. [2] This is most
common in poetry and drama.
The translation scholar Lawrence Venuti has argued that texts with very great cultural authority, including
"the Bible, [...] the Homeric epics, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's plays, or Cervantes' Don
Quixote are likely to prompt retranslation because different readerships in the receiving culture may have
different interpretations, and may want to apply their own values to the text." [3]
Retranslation is common in subtitling.[why?] It is less common in dubbing and the response from viewers is
not always positive.[4]

Different ways of using the term[edit]

The term 'retranslation' has been used to means various things, including indirect translation, also known
as relay translation, where a text is translated into one language and then that translation is translated into
a further language. In translation studies, the accepted meaning is now as a new translation into the
same target language of a previously translated work.[5] The traditional conceptualization holds that the
process is linear[6] or chronological, with retranslation always taking place after the first translation.
[7]
Modern usage, however, does not always imply this[7] and may be demonstrated in the following
examples:

 Retranslations occurring simultaneously or near-simultaneously so that it is difficult to determine

the first from succeeding translations.[8]
 Retranslations produced in the same language but different markets such as French and French
Canadian.[8]
 Retranslations made on the assumption that previous translations are not acceptable. [6]

Retranslation hypothesis[edit]
In a 1990 issue of the translation journal Palimpsestes, Paul Bensimon and Antoine Berman posited what
is known as the "retranslation hypothesis". They argued that the first translation of a text into a given
language tends to adapt the text to the norms and conventions of the target language and culture, while
later translations tend to stay closer to the original, because if a text is translated again it is because its
status in the new culture has prompted a second (or further) translation. [9][10]
The hypothesis has been tested by a number of subsequent scholars who have suggested that it is
too simplistic. In an article on retranslation in Finland, Paloposki and Koskinen argue that although many
retranslations do conform to Berman and Bensimon's model, "there are no inherent qualities in the
process of retranslating that would dictate a move from domesticating strategies towards more
foreignising strategies."[11]

Well-known retranslations[edit]
The first translation by H.M. Parshley in 1953 of Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex (Le
Deuxième Sexe), has been much criticised.[12] A new translation by Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chevalier appeared in 2009 and was felt by many critics to be a more accurate representation
of de Beauvoir's text.[13] As some commentators have pointed out, however, when a translation has been
enormously influential it can be hard to argue that it is somehow a failure. [14]
Many classic Russian novels have been translated a number of times; in recent years Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky have produced well-received retranslations of works including Dostoevsky's The
Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina.[15] Translations
of Russian novels are often compared to early influential, but widely criticised, versions by Constance
Garnett.
A new translation of Grimm's Fairy Tales appeared in 2014, entitled The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of
the Brothers Grimm and published by Princeton University Press. The editor and translator was Jack
Zipes, who included all 156 stories from the first editions of 1812 and 1915, many of which were omitted
from later editions and translations because of their disturbing subject matter. [16] The new translation
revealed the extent to which previous translations had been censored, or based on censored source texts.
[17]

Retranslations in other media[edit]

The 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) was released on DVD in
the United States with subtitles different from those seen in movie theaters. This led to a number of
complaints and the theatrical subtitles were restored to later issues of the DVD. [18][19]
Timur Bekmambetov's 2004 film Night Watch was shown in cinemas with specially designed subtitles
which blended with the action.[20] When the film was released on DVD, some viewers were disappointed
to find that these subtitles had been replaced with more conventionally formatted subtitles. [21]
The subtitler Lenny Borger has resubtitled a number of French classics for Rialto Pictures, including La
grande illusion, Rififi and Children of Paradise. Speaking about Children of Paradise, Borger said that
"it's like what they say about translations of great literature- every new generation should have a new
translation."[22]

References[edit]

1. ^ Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, 'Retranslation' in Mona Baker & Gabriela Saldanha

(eds.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2nd ed.) p. 233
2. ^ Isabelle Vanderschelden, 'Re-Translation' in Olive Classe (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia
of Literary Translation into English (2000, vol.2) p. 1155
3. ^ Lawrence Venuti, 'Retranslations: The creation of value' in Bucknell Review 47(1)
(2004), pp. 25-38
4. ^ Campagna anti-ridoppiaggio
5. ^ Kaisa Koskinen and Outi Paloposki, "Retranslation" in Luc van Doorslaer & Yves
Gambier (eds.) Handbook of Translation Studies, vol.1. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, 2010, pp. 294-298
6. ^ Jump up to:a b Baker, Mona; Saldanha, Gabriela (2009). Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies, Second Edition. Oxon, UK: Routledge. p. 235. ISBN 9780415369305.
7. ^ Jump up to:a b Hansen, Gyde; Malmkjær, Kirsten; Gile, Daniel (2004). Claims,
Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress,
Copenhagen 2001. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. p. 37. ISBN 9027216568.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b Gambier, Yves; Doorslaer, Luc van (2010). Handbook of Translation
Studies, Volume 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. p. 294. ISBN 9789027203311.
9. ^ Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, 'Retranslation' in Mona Baker & Gabriela Saldanha
(eds.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2nd ed.) p. 233
10. ^ Outi Paloposki and Kaisa Koskinen, 'A thousand and one translations: Revisiting
retranslation' in G. Hansen, K. Malmkjaer, D. Gile (eds.) Claims, Changes and Challenges in
Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Copenhagen 2001.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004, pp. 27-38
11. ^ Outi Paloposki and Kaisa Koskinen, 'A thousand and one translations: Revisiting
retranslation' in Gyde Hansen, Kirsten Malmkjaer, Daniel Gile (eds.) Claims, Change and
Challenges in Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Copenhagen
2001. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004, pp. 27-38
 12. ^ Moi, Toril, "While we wait: The English translation of The Second Sex" in Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 27, no. 4 (2002), pp. 1005–1035.
13. ^ Smith, Joan, "The Second Sex", in The Independent (London).
14. ^ Crowe, Catriona, "Second can be the best". The Irish Times
15. ^ Abramovich, Alex. "Russian-to-English translators turned Oprah
stars", Newsdayarticle, July 31, 2004, reproduced in EIZIE. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
16. ^ Princeton University Press website
17. ^ Alison Flood, "Grimm brothers’ fairytales have blood and horror restored in new
translation", The Guardian, 12 November 2014
18. ^ Let The Wrong Subtitles In To LET THE RIGHT ONE IN?!
19. ^ US Distributor Of 'Let The Right One In' Says They'll Fix Subtitles, But No Exchanges
20. ^ The director Timur Bekmambetov turns film subtitling into an art
21. ^ Michael Reuben, HTF Blu-ray Review: NIGHT WATCH / DAY WATCH
22. ^ Lenny Borger, The Paris Interview

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Retranslation in Context

Article (PDF Available) · January 2019 with 485 Reads

DOI: 10.5007/2175-7968.2019v39n1p10
Cite this publication

Piet Van Poucke

Ghent University
https://creativecommons.org/lice
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2019v39n1p10
RETRANSLATION IN CONTEXT
Piet Van Poucke
Ghent University, Belgium
Guillermo Sanz Gallego
Ghent University / Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
Retranslation, in its double sense of “the act of translating a work that has previously been translated into the same language” and “the result of
such an act, i.e. the retranslated text itself” (Tahir Gürçağlar 2009: 233), has constituted a considerable share of the translation market worldwide
since the Middle Ages. Canonical literary (and religious) works have always been translated and retranslated into several languages, and this is
clearly still the case in many cultures. However, despite the abundant number of retranslations available for research purposes, Translation
Studies has only recently shown a serious interest in this matter. The academic discussion of the retranslation of literary works was actually
initiated in 1990, when Bensimon and Berman edited a special issue of Palimpsestes on ‘Retraduire’, in which they raised some of the central
research topics of what has later been coined as Retranslation Theory (cf. Brownlie 2006). By now, the phenomenon has attracted a number of
researchers, evidence of which is the entry ‘Retranslation’ in the second edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies in 2009,
still absent in the first edition of 1998, and Koskinen & Paloposki’s chapter in the Handbook of Translation Studies (2010). More recently,
Deane-Cox (2014) devoted an monograph to the topic of literary retranslation, and Target published a special issue on “Voice in Retranslation”
(2015, edited by Alvstad and Assis Rosa).

References:
Alvstad, C., Assis Rosa, A. (2015). “Voice in retranslation. An overview and some trends.” Target 27 (1), 3-24.
Bensimon, P. (1990). “Présentation.” Palimpsestes 4, ix–xiii.
Berman, A. (1990). “La Retraduction comme espace de traduction.” Palimpsestes 4, 1–7.
Brownlie, S. (2006). “Narrative theory and retranslation theory.” Across Languages and Cultures 7 (2), 145-170.
Deane-Cox, S. (2014). Retranslation. Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation. London/New Delhi/New York/Sydney: Bloomsbury.
Koskinen, K., Paloposki, O. (2010). “Retranslation.” In Y. Gambier, L. van Doorslaer (eds) Handbook of Translation Studies, Volume 1.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 294–298.
Tahir Gürçağlar, Ş. (2009). “Retranslation.” In M. Baker, G. Saldanha (eds) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Second edition.
London/New York: Routledge, 233-236.

One could have thought that Isabelle Collombat was rather

provocative and courageous when in 2004, at the turn of the new
st
century, she already proclaimed the 21 century as the “Age of
Retranslation”. Her judgement was based on the finding that a
“wave” of (literary) retranslations was occurring at the beginning
of the new century, and that that wave was motivated by a number
of “translatorly concerns” (1) among which could be discerned: the
ageing of previously translated texts, ideological considerations in
connection with changing cultural norms, and the ever continuing
search for the perfect translation, which Berman (2-3) called the
“great translation” (“grande traduction”) in his seminal article
on retranslation in 1990. The three aforementioned motives for
retranslation share at least one overarching consideration – the
translator’s desire to leave a trace in cultural history by creating
a personal, contemporary, fully acceptable and at the same time
artistically innovative interpretation of the big works of ‘World
Literature’. With the number of canonized literary works growing,
the number of retranslations should, indeed, increase as well.
However, the activity of retranslating texts is obviously not
a new phenomenon. Retranslations have always constituted a
considerable share of the global translation market ever since
the Middle Ages. Not only canonical literary works, but also
11
Cad. Trad., Florianópolis, v. 39, nº 1, p.
religious, political, historical and philosophical texts have always
been translated and retranslated into several languages, and this
process has only increased with time. A decade and a half after
Collombat’s daring claim, it is difficult to determine whether the
st
21 century will actually produce considerably more retranslations
than the ages that have passed, but we do know that retranslation,
indeed, has become a very common practice and, recently, a
serious topic of inquiry in the context of Translation Studies, as
well as within Literature Studies.
th
When Palimpsestes devoted its entire 4 volume (1990) to the
theme of “retranslation” (“Retraduire”), it was up to the editors
of the volume, Antoine Berman and Paul Bensimon, to outline the
possibly problematic nature of the concept, often overlooked as an
object for thorough scholarly investigation. At that point Berman
suggested a few lines of analysis that have become major sources
of inspiration in the course of time: the so-called ‘Retranslation
Hypothesis’, the concept of “great translation”, and the related issue
of ageing of translations, to name only a few well investigated lines.
In the wake of this initial impetus there followed a long
‘comet’s tail’ of studies on retranslation, mainly focused
on literary retranslation, that first took the form of separate
theoretical articles and case studies, and later on merged into
a number of special volumes on retranslation – Palimpsestes 4
(1990), Cadernos de Tradução (2003), Palimpsestes 15 (2004),
Target (2015) and now this latest issue of Cadernos de Tradução.
“Retranslation” has by now also been included as an entry in the
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (Tahir Gürçağlar
2009) and the Handbook of Translation Studies (Koskinen &
Paloposki 2010). Finally, retranslation is also the central topic
of a growing number of monographs and collections of articles,
as for instance Banoun & Weber Henking (2007), Kahn & Seth
(2010), Monti & Schnyder (2011), O’Driscoll (2011), Pokorn
(2012), Béghain (2013), Courtois (2014), Deane-Cox (2014),
Douglas & Cabaret (2014), Cadera & Walsh (2017) and Berk
Albachten & Tahir Gürcaglar (2018).
12
Cad. Trad., Florianópolis, v. 39, nº 1, p. 10-22, jan-abr, 2019.
Retranslation in Context
A detailed overview of research lines developed so far within
the study of retranslations is given by Alvstad & Rosa in their
introduction to the special issue of Target on Voice in Retranslation
in 2015. Themes related to retranslation, but still insufficiently
explored at this moment include the history of literary retranslation
and its relationship to the history of literary translation, the specific
role of the different agents involved in the process (translators,
publishers, editors, censors, reviewers, and readers) and the
importance of retranslation in the canonization process of literary
works that belong to the category of ‘World Literature’. A number
of different motives for retranslation have been defined, but some of
them (e.g. ageing, adaptation to changing cultural and ethical norms,
the role of ideology) still lack thorough empirical underpinning. In
the same vein, economic considerations for retranslation must also
be examined (e.g. the cost-effectiveness of publishers’ investments
in retranslations instead of revising or simply reediting an existing
translation), together with the reviewers’ and readers’ appreciation
of the (expected) improvement.
Specific research into the different aspects of retranslation, from
the decision to retranslate to the reception of a retranslated work, can
still shed additional light on a broad range of related questions. In
a number of cases translators decide to self-retranslate a text: How
is this reflected in the paratext and to what extent is the translator
 willing to ‘correct’ his/her own translation? Is ‘indirect translation’
a form of retranslation? And what is the impact of an intermediate
translation on the final product? Are ‘cold retranslations’ (made
well after the publication of the source text) fundamentally different
from ‘hot translations’ (made immediately after its publication)?
Indeed, a number of macro-level issues invite further reflection
as well: Do central and peripheral literary systems adopt different
policies towards retranslation? Are retranslations fundamentally
different from earlier translations, or would it be more accurate to
regard them as ‘revisions’, and how is this related to questions of
authorship and plagiarism?
Citations (1)
References (10)
 Introduction: Mutability in Retranslation

Chapter

o May 2019
o Özlem Berk Albachten

o Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar

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Toward a Rethinking of Retranslation

Françoise Massardier-Kenney
Pages 73-85 | Published online: 18 Dec 2015

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 https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2015.1086289

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Françoise Massardier-Kenney
Françoise Massardier-Kenney is Director of the Institute for Applied Linguistics at Kent State
University, and administers BS through PhD programs in translation. She has translated works of fiction
from nineteenth-century authors (Sand, Staël, Duras). Her most recent translations include the
novel Valvèdre by George Sand (2007) and Towards a Translation Criticism by Antoine Berman. She is
also the author of articles on translation and French culture and literature, and the co-author
of Translating Slavery. Gender and Race in French Women’s Writing, 1783–1823 . She is the General
Editor of the American Translation Association Scholarly Translation Series and co-editor of the
journal George Sand Studies. She teaches graduate courses in literary translation, research and writing
methods for translators, a legal and commercial translation and cross-cultural competency.

(Re)translation Revisited
 Isabelle Desmidt
Vezi pdf

Manual de Kaisa Koskinen & Outi Paloposki

Retranslation (as a product) denotes a second or later translation of a single source text into the same target language. Retranslation (as a process)
is thus prototypically a phenomenon that occurs over a period of time, but in practice, simultaneous or near-simultaneous translations also exist,
making it sometimes hard or impossible to classify one as a first translation and the other as a second translation. Some scholars also discuss
indirect or relay translations in the framework of retranslation, but this usage is likely to be more misleading than useful, and for the purposes of
this article, we only refer to multiple translations into one language as retranslations.

References
Aaltonen, Sirkku
2003 “Retranslation in the Finnish Theatre.” In Tradução, retradução e adaptação, John
Milton & Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres (eds). Special issue of Cadernos de tradução 11: 141–159.
TSB

Berman, Antoine
1990 “La Retraduction comme espace de traduction.” Palimpsestes 13 (4): 1–7.
Brisset, Annie
2004 “Retraduire ou le corps changeant de la connaissance. Sur l’historicité de la

traduction.” Palimpsestes 15: 39–67. T S B .

Brownlie, Siobhan
2006 “Narrative Theory and Retranslation Theory.” Across Languages and Cultures 7 (2): 145–

170. TSB

Chesterman, Andrew
2000 “A Causal Model for Translation Studies.” In Intercultural Faultlines, Maeve Olohan (ed.), 15–
27. Manchester: St. Jerome. T S B

Collombat, Isabelle
2004 “Le XXIe siècle: l’âge de la retraduction.” Translation Studies in the New Millennium. An
international Journal of Translation and Interpreting 2: 1–15.

Deane-Cox, Sharon
2014 Retranslation. Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation. London: Bloomsbury.

Du Nour, Miryam
1995 “Retranslation of Children’s Books as Evidence of Changes in Norms.” Target 7 (2): 327–

346. TSB

Flotow, Luise von

2009 “This time ‘the Translation is Beautiful, Smooth and True’: Theorizing Retranslation with the Help
of Beauvoir.” In Translation in French and Francophone Literature and Film, James Day (ed.), French

Literature Series 36: 35–50.

Gambier, Yves

1994 “La Retraduction, retour et détour.” Meta 39 (3): 413–417. TSB

Koskinen, Kaisa & Outi Paloposki

2003 “Retranslations in the Age of Digital Reproduction”. In Tradução, retradução e adaptação, John
Milton & Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres (eds). Special issue of Cadernos de tradução 11: 141–159.
TSB

Kujamäki, Pekka
2001 “Finnish comet in German skies: Translation, retranslation and norms.” Target 13 (1): 45–

70. TSB

Monti, Enrico & Peter Schnyder

(eds) 2010 La retraduction. Proceedings of the International conference held in Mulhouse, December 2–
5, 2009. Paris: éditions Orizons.

Pokorn, Nike K
2012 Post-Socialist Translation Practices. Ideological Struggle in Children's

Literature. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.. BoP

Paloposki, Outi & Kaisa Koskinen

2004 “Thousand and One Translations. Retranslation Revisited.” In Claims, Changes and
Challenges, Gyde Hansen, Kirsten Malmkjaer & Daniel Gile (eds), 27–38. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins
2010 “Reprocessing texts. The fine line between retranslating and revising.” Across Languages and

Cultures 11 (1): 29–49. TSB

Pym, Anthony
1998 Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome. T S B

Susam-Sarajeva, Şebnem
2006 Theories on the Move. Translation’s Role in the Travels of Literary Theories. Amsterdam & New
York: Rodopi. T S B

Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz

2008 The Politics and Poetics of Translation in Turkey, 1923–1960. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.
TSB

Vanderschelden, Isabelle
2000 “Why Retranslate the French Classics? The Impact of Retranslation on Quality.” In On Translating
French Literature and Film II, Myriam Salama-Carr (ed.), 1–18. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi.

Venuti, Lawrence
2004 “Retranslations: The creation of value.” In Translation and Culture, Katherine M. Faull (ed.).
Special issue of Bucknell Review 47 (1): 25–38. T S B

Related articles
 Relay translation
 Sociolinguistics and translation

 Translation criticism

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id=Cs4SBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=retranslation&source=bl&ots=MPs6G-
qu1R&sig=ACfU3U1kKcuZ46MjOidpMz2hJR7w_lAOcQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwik-
8aYv7HqAhUEAxAIHfaSApU4FBDoATADegQIChAB#v=onepage&q=retranslation&f=false

Confronting the retranslation hypothesis: Flaubert and Sand in

the British literary system

Deane2011.pdf (1.970Mb)

Date
01/07/2011

Author
Deane, Sharon Louise

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The phenomenon of retranslation (the repeated translation of a given work into a given target language) is widespread in practice,
and yet its motivations remain relatively underexplored. One very prevalent justification for this repetitive act is encapsulated in
the work of Antoine Berman who claims that an initial translation is necessarily 'aveugle et hésitante' (1990: 5), while retranslation
alone can ensure 'la « révélation » d řune oeuvre étrangère dans son être propre à la culture réceptrice' (1995: 57). This dynamic
from deficient initial translation to accomplished retranslation has been consolidated into the Retranslation Hypothesis, namely
that 'later translations tend to be closer to the source text' (Chesterman, 2004: 8, my emphasis). In order to investigate the validity
of the hypothesis, this thesis undertakes a case study of the British retranslations of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Sand's La
Mare au diable. A methodology is proposed which allows the key notion of closeness to be measured on both a linguistic and a
cultural axis. Given Flaubert's famous insistence on 'le mot juste', Madame Bovary serves as a basis for an examination of
linguistic closeness which is guided by narratology and stylistics, and underpinned by Halliday's (2004) Systemic Functional
Grammar. On the other hand, Sand's ethnographical concerns facilitate a study of cultural closeness: here, narrativity (Baker,
2006) informs an analysis of how Berrichon cultural identity is mediated through retranslation. In both cases, the thesis draws on
paratextual material (Genette, 1987) such as prefaces and advertisements, and on extra-textual material, namely journal articles
and reviews, in order to locate specific socio-cultural influences on retranslation, as well as highlighting the type and extent of
interactions between the retranslations themselves. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the Retranslation Hypothesis is untenable
when confronted with the polymorphous behaviour of retranslation, both within and without the text.

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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5494

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 Literatures, Languages, and Cultures PhD thesis collection

Résumés
 Flaubert and the retranslation of Madame Bovary
Sharon Deane

FrançaisEnglish
Dans toute l’œuvre de Flaubert, c’est Madame Bovary qui a connu la fréquence de retraduction la plus haute dans la littérature britannique. Une étude de ces retraductions montre comment et quand elles sont
apparues au sein d’une configuration socioculturelle et économique en train d’évoluer. Cette approche historique réexamine les hypothèses admises jusqu’à présent en ce qui concerne le rôle de la retraduction : au
lieu d’une trajectoire simple, d’une première traduction déficiente vers une retraduction récente et parfaite, nous découvrons un paysage plus complexe. Avec Madame Bovary, nous pouvons évaluer jusqu’à quel
point sont brouillés les critères de la retraduction, et identifier les signes d’un retour en arrière, les luttes pour se distinguer des traductions précédentes, aussi bien que l’impact collectif de ce corpus.

PDF

1The history of the British translations of Madame Bovary1 begins in very close proximity to Flaubert himself, with the author proclaiming the very first version, carried out under his own gaze by Juliet Herbert,
English governess to his niece, to be no less than a “chef d’œuvre” 2. However, Flaubert’s attempts to secure a publishing deal in London for the translation are thwarted, leading him to turn his back on the
endeavour of translation with the declaration that he is “prêt à abandonner tout” 3. He thereby seals the fate of Herbert’s work which never makes an appearance in print and has long since been lost in the annals of
obscurity. And yet this faltering start does not set the tone for the subsequent fate of Madame Bovary translations in the British literary system; rather, from amongst Flaubert’s entire body of work, it is
indeed Madame Bovary which has undergone the highest volume of retranslation. In specific, the novel has been translated, in full, seven times 4, over a period which spans from the end of the nineteenth century
to present day, while a plethora of reprints and re-editions has further served to ensure its consistent presence throughout this time.

 5 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 5.

 6 Ibid.

 7 Ibid.

2In light of this multiplicity of versions, it is important to investigate the role which retranslation has played in the dissemination of Flaubert and Madame Bovary in Britain. While the general phenomenon of
retranslation is widespread, current thinking with regard to its causes and implications tends to be somewhat restrictive in its scope. One of the most dominant theories on retranslation has arisen from the work of
Antoine Berman who presents a rationale for retranslation which is grounded in the notion of “la défaillance originelle” 5, whereby any initial act of translation is deemed to be “aveugle et hésitante” 6.
Consequently, retranslation responds to the notion that “[i]l faut tout le chemin de l’expérience pour parvenir à une traduction consciente d’elle-même” 7, thus boasting a restorative function which resides in the
forward momentum of improvement. Accordingly, the initial translation of Madame Bovary should reveal itself to be deficient, while this assumed teleological progression ought to lead us towards ever more
accomplished versions.

 8 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)

3This then begs the question as to whether the British retranslations of Flaubert’s work follow such a straightforward, chronological trajectory. In order to fully explore the dynamics of these texts, the present
paper will adopt an historical approach; while Berman focuses on intrinsically textual issues, it is crucial to realize that retranslation is a complex, multifaceted process of transmission, substitution and duplication
which is played out, over time, against the shifting background of a literary system. To this end, the retranslations of Madame Bovary will be explored in reference to Bourdieu’s concept of the literary field, this
“champ de luttes de concurrence”8, paying particular attention to the struggles and interactions between the extant retranslations as a means of determining whether or not accomplishment can truly be framed in
terms of the restoration of the source text. In order to identify the prevailing attitudes towards Flaubert and Madame Bovary, as well as the extent and nature of synergy between the retranslation, a paratextual
analysis will be undertaken which draws on Genette’s distinction between the peritext and the epitext. In the first case, the supporting material, such as prefaces, introductions or notes, found within the various
editions of the work often reveals the attitudes held by the translator and/or publisher with regard to Flaubert, the source text and other translations thereof; in the second case, the opinions inscribed in external
elements, e.g. journal articles, reviews, advertisements, will also bear witness to the changing status of the author, his works and the retranslations. As opposed to a comparative linguistic study, this socio-cultural
and historical approach to retranslation allows a more comprehensive survey of the way in which Madame Bovary has been diffused and received over time in Britain.

Entry Conditions
 9 Op. cit., p. 7.

 10 Terry Hale, “Readers and Publishers of Translations in Britain”, The Oxford History of Literary Tra (...)

4That the two literary systems of France and Britain were closely interlinked during the nineteenth century is beyond doubt; writers, ideas, styles and genres circulated relatively freely between the two poles. But
to begin with, this mutual influence owed very little to translation. As Bourdieu notes, the literary field is based on a “principe d’hiérarchisation interne” 9 whereby each entrant occupies a position relative to its
perceived degree of symbolic capital; given that “the wealthiest and most literate segment of society could read much foreign literature without the help of translation” 10, as was most certainly the case as far as
French was concerned, it follows that the educated elite, who occupied a dominant position in the internal hierarchy, granted prestige to the French source texts themselves, marginalizing translation to a peripheral
position. However, in order to fully set the scene for the first published translation of Madame Bovary into English, it must be said that such incorporation of French literature in its original form was tempered by
a latent distrust of foreign morality. Such suspicion is nowhere more evident than in the ultra-conservative Quarterly Review which in 1862 denounces Madame Bovary, side by side with Napoleon III, purporting
that:

 11 “Les Misérables”, The Quarterly Review, 112, 224, October 1862, p. 272-273.

his era enervated the minds of its inhabitants with a literature as filthy, as frivolous, and as false as ever sapped the morals of a nation, or made the fortune of a publisher. Such works as ‘Madame Bovary’, […] poisoned by the
nastiness of a prurient mind and set out with all the artifice of a showy pen, are not so much outrages on decency as signs of the times amid which they crawled out of the dunghill – their author’s brains 11.

 12 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)

5Thus, while the symbolic capital of French source texts may have been considerable in the higher echelons of society, the literary field is at the same time susceptible to pressure from the “champ de pouvoir”,
whose agents “ont pour enjeu la transformation ou la conservation de la valeur relative des différentes espèces de capital” 12; for the moral authorities of Britain, what then is at stake in this latter part of the
nineteenth century is to prevent the spread of this pernicious threat from abroad amongst all levels of society.
 13 Ibid., p. 33.

 14 George Saintsbury, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, April 1878, 23, 136, p. 577.

 15 N. H. Kennard, “Gustave Flaubert and George Sand”, Nineteenth Century: a monthly review, 20, 117, N (...)

6Notably, there is a gap of almost thirty years which separates the publication of the source text and the appearance of the initial British version in 1886, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, daughter of Karl
Marx, and published in London by Vizetelly & Co. Undoubtedly, the prevalence of the above conditions held the translation at bay, and may perhaps go some way to explaining why Flaubert himself was unable
to fix a publisher: any interested parties would already have had access to his work in the original, whilst an act of translation may have attracted the unwanted attention of the censors. But, a literary system is in a
constant change of flux, and one of the major driving forces is “l’apparition de nouvelles catégories de consommateurs qui, étant en affinité avec les nouveaux producteurs, assurent la réussite de leurs produits” 13.
Thus, as a new mass reading public emerges in Britain in the wake of educational reforms, publishers begin to produce cheaper works of fiction: one way in which to meet this growing new demand for affordable
and popular literature is supplement ones catalogue with translation, not least since uncertain and unforced copyright laws and the low rate of pay for translators meant that this option was a cost-effective one.
Likewise, the moral threat posed by Flaubert appears to have lessened with time; already by 1878, the shockwaves created by the author’s trial in Paris have subsided as critic and academic George Saintsbury
claims that “the prosecution is now defended by nobody”14, while in the year of Marx-Aveling’s translation, Flaubert is being classified as “one of the high priests” of fiction 15.

 16 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Émile Zola: Novelist and Reformer, John Lane, London, 1904, p. 257.

 17 Ibid., p. 286.

 18 Much research has been undertaken into Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s translation of Madame Bovary. For a d (...)

7However, despite the field appearing ripe for Madame Bovary towards the end of the century, the history of the Marx-Aveling translation is a turbulent one. To begin, Vizetelly & Co., established in 1880 and
therefore a relatively new entrant into the publishing world of London, came under attack by the National Vigilance Society, formed “ostensibly for the purpose of protecting boys and girls against what was called
‘pernicious literature’”16. Their primary grievance was the company’s translations of Zola, notably versions of L’Assommoir, Germinal and Le Ventre de Paris, and Henry Vizetelly found himself twice convicted
on charges of obscenity. Indeed, Madame Bovary was itself implicated in the charges, but given the apparent turn in critical opinion, “the summons respecting that work was eventually adjourned sine die”17.
Ultimately though, the publisher who had first introduced Madame Bovary to the masses was unable to recover financially from the prosecutions, and the company was ruined. Secondly, the fate of the Eleanor
Marx-Aveling herself lends an additional layer of pertinence, in particular the translator’s suicide by prussic acid which bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Emma 18.

8Moreover, the translation itself has attracted no shortage of criticism. On its publication in 1886, a review in The Athenaeum greats the efforts of Marx-Aveling unfavourably:

 19 “Novels of the Week”, The Athenaeum, 3075, October 1886, p. 429 f.

Mrs. Aveling has done her work with more zeal than discretion. […] The translation is laborious, but unequally effective. Mrs. Aveling seems to have thought it incumbent on her to translate as far as possible word for word, and this
can never result in anything but an unsatisfactory version when two languages so different in genius as French and English are concerned. Besides, even her word-for-word system has not been successfully carried out. […] [W]hen a
writer takes such superhuman trouble as Flaubert did to choose exactly the words and phrases that suited his meaning, and no others, it is incumbent on his translator not to be content with a mere approximation 19.

 20 Eleanor Marx-Aveling, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, Vizetelly & Co., London, 1886, p. xxii.

9Such charges are even echoed by the translator herself who claims in her introduction to the Vizetelly edition that “no critic can be more painfully aware than I am of the weaknesses, the shortcomings, the
failures of my work. […] It is pale and feeble by the side of the original” 20. This self-effacing stance may have conformed to the norms of the era, whereby a translator lauded the primacy of the original, but it
nevertheless serves to propagate the viewpoint that this version is in someway defective, seemingly substantiating Berman’s claims.

 21 This phenomenon is not unique to Britain. Emily Apter also notes “the curious survival of this earl (...)

 22 Peter France, “French”, The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 4, 2006, p. 241

10But in the face of its supposed flaws, the translation has thrived in the British literary system, having been taken up by a further nine different publishers and reissued a total of fifteen times, with the most recent
reprint appearing in 200721. Besides the evident economic incentive of an expired copyright, the frequency with which this version has been reprised by publishers would suggest that the translation has an appeal
that extends beyond its reputation of “mak[ing] little attempt to match Flaubert’s highly worked style” 22. This quantitative evidence in itself suggests that the teleological progression of retranslation may be
somewhat more confused than previously assumed.

 23 Eleanor Marx-Aveling, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, Vizetelly & Co., London, 1886, p. vii.

 24 George Saintsbury, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, 23, 136, April 1878, p. 580 f.

 25 Peter France & Kenneth Hayes, “The Publication of Literary Translation: An Overview”, The Oxford Hi (...)

11Before turning our attention towards the concrete challenges which appeared in the form of retranslations, it is first important to examine in more depth the status which the Marx-Aveling translation attributes
to itself as “the first English one of ‘Madame Bovary’” 23. It is significant that the British public had, in actual fact, access to a partial translation of some key passages of the work as early as 1878 when George
 Saintsbury published an essay on Flaubert in the Fortnightly Review. Here, Saintsbury incorporates the translation of three lengthy passages from the work; an extract from I.7 (in which Emma questions her
decision to marry Charles) is employed as a means of illustrating Flaubert’s style, while two passages are taken from II.12 (where Charles’ dreams for the future are juxtaposed against those of Emma) in support
of what Saintbury holds to be a “masterpiece of ironical contrast” 24. Furthermore, this practice was not uncommon in such British periodicals where “reviews covered both foreign literature, sometimes offering
extracts newly translated by the reviewer, and English translations”25; the Saintsbury translation can thus be accredited as the first real point of entry granted to the source text.

12Unquestionably, Marx-Aveling’s version can still lay claim to the status of the first definitive translated version; but on superficial level, the boundaries of retranslation become blurred since her work now
incorporates what can be defined as a retranslation of the above passages. In his survey of the various moments of translation, Berman outlines a chain reaction commencing the moment a work is read in its
original form in the receiving system, after which point:

 26 Take for example Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Doctor’s Wife, 1864.

elle peut être publiée sous une forme « adaptée »26 si elle « heurte » trop les « normes » littéraires autochtones ; puis vient le temps d’une courageuse introduction sans prétention littéraire (destinée généralement à ceux qui étudient
cette œuvre) ; puis vient le moment des premières traductions à ambition littéraire, généralement partielles et, comme on sait, les plus frappées de défectivité ; puis vient celui des (multiples) traductions. [my emphasis]

13Following these categories, it can be argued that both the partial Saintsbury version, with its emphasis on the literary merit of Flaubert, and the Marx-Aveling version can be located under the heading of
‘première traduction’; this lack of distinction attests to the ambiguity which can then pervade any examination of retranslations.

 27 Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx, volume 2: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898. London, Lawrence and Wishart, 19 (...)

 28 This article was published again in 1891 in George Saintsbury’s Essays on French Novelists, London, (...)

14Furthermore, this typography becomes even more disordered when we realize what occurs in the J. M. Dent reprint of Marx-Aveling’s translation, first issued in 1928. In her biography of Marx-Aveling, Kapp
remarks in passing that Dent drops the original introduction to the work 27; however, this exclusion merits a closer investigation. In fact, not only is the introduction removed, but it is also replaced by Saintsbury’s
aforementioned article28, retaining his translation of the three passages. Nor does the substitution end there; rather, an exploration of the text itself reveals that the Marx-Aveling passages have also been removed
and replaced by those which Saintsbury has translated and which now appear in the new introduction. No mention of this strategy is made in any of the paratextual material which accompanies the edition, and as
such, this stealthy act of grafting one version onto another means that the Dent reprint has issued a translation which, in effect, is a hybrid. Once again, the straightforward movement from defective initial version
to retranslation is distorted when held up to scrutiny.

 29 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)

15And so, what of the more clearly defined retranslations? Implicit in Berman’s conception of retranslation is the idea that each new version will surpass and displace that which has gone before; this evolution
further resonates with the Bourdieusian phenomenon of the ‘lutte de définition’, whereby “[u]n des enjeux centraux des luttes littéraires (etc.) est le monopole de la légitimité littéraire” 29. In other words, each new
retranslation will challenge extant versions for the right to become the definitive, legitimate translation, eclipsing all others, and if we follow Berman’s history-as-progress model, the newer the retranslation, the
better equipped it will be to reinforce its challenge.

 30 Ernest Newman, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, 58, 348, December 1895, p. 813.

16But the rush to take up this gauntlet of retranslation is not in evidence at the turn of the century: in 1895, Ernest Newan writes in the Fortnightly Review that “[i]f translation be any index to the English
appreciation of a foreign author, it cannot be said that Flaubert’s following in this country is very large” 30. Not only are retranslations slow in appearing, but the uptake on the very act of initial translation is also
sluggish at best. It may well be that the fate of Vizetelly & Co. has left a lingering taste in the mouths of other publishers, and as a consequence, neither Madame Bovary nor other works by Flaubert, are not yet
destined for mass, popular consumption.

17Such reticence may indeed explain both the delay in the appearance of the first retranslation and its form: published in the Lotus Library series of Greening & Co. in 1905 and “done into English” by Henry
Blanchamp (almost two decades after the Marx-Aveling translation), this version is, like that of Saintsbury, partial. However, on this occasion, the guiding principle may have been one of brevity, if not of
expurgation, particularly towards the end of the novel: gone is the obsequious portrayal of Homais in the company of Dr. Larivière, gone is the vigil held by Homais and M. Bournisien at Emma’s deathbed, and
gone is the blind beggar, with chapter ten ending thus:

 31 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Henry Blanchamp, London, Greening & Co., 1905, p. 250.

Presently M. Bournisien was seen crossing the market place with the holy oil for Extreme Unction. The sacred function took place with all the usual ceremonies, and just as it was over, another convulsive fit seized Emma, and she fell
back on the mattress, and when they went up to her, she had ceased to live31.

 32 Ibid., p. 263.

 33 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Émile Zola: Novelist and Reformer, London, John Lane, 1904, p. 249.

18Similarly, the novel is brought to an abrupt end with the words “[h]e fell to the ground; he was dead” 32, with no post-mortem for Charles, no banishment of Berthe to the cotton mill and no croix d’honneur for
Homais. Judging by the size of the work (8°) and its relatively low price tag of 1/6d, it is to be presumed that this particular Lotus Library series, which also issued translations of Maupassant, Musset and Zola,
had a more popular audience in its sights. Whether the cuts made to the source text were done so out of a sense of catering for this new readership – whose attention spans were perhaps not so developed as those
of the literary elite –, or out of a sense of cautious propriety is unclear. Nonetheless, in respect of this latter point, it is evident that, while religiously sensitive material may have been deliberately removed, all
seduction scenes and a good part of the death scene remain intact. Writing in 1904 on his father’s publishing endeavours, Ernest Vizetelly alludes to the lack of demand for “works of high repute in France”, rather
“it soon appeared that if French fiction was to be offered to English readers at all it must at least be sensational” 33; lack of paratextual evidence means that the particular strategies of Greening & Co. can only be
surmised, but this edition may wish to strike a balance between readability, titillation and decorum. As to its persistence, the Blanchamp translation is only reissued twice (1910; 1929) and hereafter falls into
obscurity. Conversely, it is framed chronologically on both sides by re-editions of the Marx-Aveling translation; thus, this initial translation appears to have staved off any challenge presented by the newcomer
and resists being superseded. Moreover, the abridgement affected in the Blanchamp retranslation leave it more akin to Berman’s description of a defective, partial first translation than that of the actual first full
version.

 34 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)
 35 Holbrook Jackson, “Flaubert in English”, Bookman, 75, 447, 1928, p. 202.

 36 Ibid.

19With the subsequent new retranslation comes a new approach, not to mention a conspicuous attempt to break with the previous versions, or in the words of Bourdieu, “se faire un nom” 34. In 1928, J. Lane, The
Bodley Head issue a translation of Madame Bovary, carried out by J. Lewis May and presented in a luxurious, illustrated edition. Although ungenerously described by one reviewer as “one of those unfriendly
monumental tomes which make a meretricious bid for popularity at Christmas time” 35, the same nevertheless welcomes the translator’s efforts, claiming that “Mr. May has given us ‘Madame Bovary’ in a more
becoming English dress than any of those who have hitherto attempted the ‘insurmountable’ task”36. Furthermore, the article proffers an interesting reflection on the state of Flaubert translations at that time:

 37 Ibid.

If we had treated France as badly as we have treated Flaubert, diplomatic relations might have been cut off. […] [A]lthough we have in English a complete Anatole France, a nearly complete Proust and the beginning of a complete
Stendhal, we have no complete Flaubert. It is in fact far worse than that; we have scarcely any translations of any of his works which begin to give him adequate representation in our language; some of the attempts to translate him are
beneath contempt, the remainder survive by lack of competent opposition 37.

 38 J. Lewis May, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, London, J. Lane Bodley Head,1928, p. xvii-xix.

20Notably, it is within this category of ‘competent opposition’ that the May version actively seeks to inscribe itself, and no where is this tactic more evident than in the translator’s introduction to his work. Here, it
is stated in no uncertain terms that “Flaubert, at least so far as Madame Bovary is concerned, has not been particularly well served by his translators”, who “have failed to recognise the nature and importance of
the task before them” and despite May’s normative protestation that he “alas! could only dimly and imperfectly express” 38, Flaubert’s style, the prevailing implication is that this version takes up the mantle,
serves Flaubert well and, in so doing, ought to dispense with those flawed attempts that have come before. What then comes to light in this retranslation is the very earliest evidence of overt antagonism towards
other extant versions within the literary field, namely a challenge as to their legitimacy.

 39 Frank Arthur Mumby, Publishing and Bookselling, 5th edition, London, J. Cape, 1974, p. 323.

 40 Ibid., p. 357.

21In spite of such lofty ambitions, the appearance of the May retranslation does not succeed in securing a dominant position for itself, nor does it mark a rupture in the established order of things: reprinted only
once in 1931 by J.Lane Bodley Head, and then reissued three times (1950; 1953; c.1959) by relatively obscure publishing houses, this particular translation still pales in quantitative comparison against the deluge
of reprints of the Marx-Aveling version. Indeed, over the period of the next two decades alone, the initial translation will appear at a rate of almost once ever two years (1928; 1930; 1932; 1934; 1936; 1941; 1946;
1949; 1952), alternating between the two main publishing companies of J. M. Dent and J. Cape until 1941, then adopted by the Camden Publishing Co. and Nonesuch Press for the remaining years. Of course, this
prevalence is in large part circumstantial: spanning the dark decade of the thirties, World War II and its aftermath, this concentration of reprints certainly responded to the gloomy financial climate, as well as to
the shortages, economic or otherwise, as imposed by the war: no copyright restrictions on the Marx-Aveling version means no need to commission a costly and a time-consuming new translation. In addition, both
the Dent and Cape imprints catered for a well-defined market. As far as the former was concerned, the Everyman’s Library was targeted precisely at everyone so that “[t]he knowledge to be derived from the series
would benefit not only men like J.M. Dent himself, who had little formal education, but anyone, of whatever standard of education, was willing to continue learning” 39. Jonathan Cape, in turn, “wanted the reader
to have the benefit of the cheapest possible prices” 40, issuing pocket-sized editions in the Traveller’s Library Series. Thus, the guiding principles were those of accessibility and price, and the readership
undoubtedly overlapped. Furthermore, the previous criticism of the Marx-Aveling version may even have stood in its favour; if accessibility was indeed a concern, then a translation of little or no renown in more
highbrow circles would thereby have been less daunting and exerted a greater appeal to the mass reading public. In many regards, the initial translation becomes the only viable option.

22The following two new retranslations appear in quick succession: Hamish Hamilton issues a version by Gerard Hopkins in 1948, while Penguin launches its Alan Russell translation in 1950. Hopkins’s Madame
Bovary is integrated into the Novel Library series which, according to the work’s dust jacket, boasts a policy of presenting, “at a price within the bounds of every reader’s purse, novels of excellence”. Its
appearance under this particular guise is, however, fleeting. Nevertheless, the Hopkins translation is taken up by Oxford University Press in 1959: it is at this point that we can note the very beginnings an evident
competition between the houses of Penguin and OUP as far as the publication of Madame Bovary is concerned, a competition, moreover, which is still ongoing and which has been successful in halting the re-
edition of any other version (save that of Marx-Aveling on two occasions).

23To begin with, there are certainly no obvious paratextual signs of altercations between the Russell and Hopkins translations; the former takes the opportunity in his introduction to the context in which Madame
Bovary was written, including an overview of the life, concerns, troubles and works of Flaubert: there is no allusion to any other translation attempts. Contrary to the Hamish Hamilton edition, Hopkins is given a
voice in the OUP text; in his foreword, the tact is somewhat different, and although he briefly outlines a history of the source text, the bulk of his thoughts are centred on the translation problems specific to
Flaubert (the ‘mot juste’; syntax; the use of the imperfect tense; sociolect). Nor does he make any reference to other versions. Yet these two strategies tacitly attest to the differing agendas of the two publishing
houses. Little needs to be said about the paperback revolution set in motion by Penguin, whose philosophy was to issue books to the masses that were at once well-designed and affordable, while OUP set their
sights on a more academic market, although not exclusively so. As such, the general introduction of the Penguin edition and the more specialized bent of the OUP foreword both speak to their respective
audiences. However, it is significant that by now Madame Bovary has found her place in the literary canon, with the two publishers issuing the work in series dedicated to the Classics; therefore, some overlap in
readership is to be expected. Judging by an advertisement in 1959 for Madame Bovary which states that “[t]hese good looking volumes are so cheap, yet they last a lifetime”, it appears that OUP are indeed
encroaching on the Penguin market, also staking a claim for design and affordability, but setting themselves apart by emphasizing durability. This subtle posturing may also explain the lack of reference to other
versions in each of the prefaces: rather than draw attention to potential alternatives, an implicit rejection of their existence may go some way to securing ones own survival.

 41 Pierre Bourdieu, Réponses, Paris, Seuil, 1992, p. 123.

 42 Gerard Hopkins, “Foreword”, Madame Bovary, OUP, 1959, p. viii.

24However, as the economic struggle for survival in the publishing worlds becomes fiercer, the vying for dominance becomes more overt. In 1981, OUP take the decision to reissue a revised version of Hopkins’s
translation, replacing his foreword with an extensive introduction by the Oxford academic Terence Cave, and including a wealth of explanatory notes. Inherent in this move is a conscious attempt to appeal to a
specifically academic market, along with evidence that the publishers hold with the ‘new equals improved’ ethos. In the first case, the new paratextual material can be regarded as an act of symbolic violence,
whereby the aim is to create “la croyance dans la légitimité des mots et des personnes qui les prononcent” 41. In opposition to the Hopkins foreword in which he claimed that “[t]ranslation is always a difficult art –
a matter of inspired hit or miss. […] [T]he difficulties assume enormous and insurmountable proportions” 42, no aspersions are cast as to the quality of the translation in the revised version; rather, the intellectual
weight of the introduction bolsters its claim to legitimacy. Secondly, the publishers initiate a tactic of renewal which will be perpetuated in the years to follow, and which appears to be intuitively attune to
Berman’s model of retranslation.

25Penguin responds to this revision by upping the ante, and in 1992 they replace their oft reprinted Russell version with an entirely new translation by Geoffrey Wall. This too is framed by a comprehensive
introduction, albeit pitched at a more general level, and by a considerable number of notes. However, where it moves away from the OUP edition is in its engagement with and acknowledgement of earlier
translations:
 43 Geoffrey Wall, “A Note on the Translation”, Madame Bovary, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1992.

Translating afresh the already translated classic, the translator is drawn into dialogue with his or her precursors. Though I was working on different principles, and though I have found that I eventually disagreed with some of their
most cherished efforts, I have profited from the posthumous conversation of three previous translators of Madame Bovary: Eleanor Marx, Alan Russell and Gerard Hopkins 43.

 44 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)

 45 Geoffrey Wall, “Retranslating Madame Bovary”, Palimpsestes, 15, 2004, p. 95.

 46 Ibid., p. 96.

26This reflection on the act of retranslation is telling in many ways: firstly “afresh” has connotations of progress, of betterment, and inscribes the version into Berman’s specific vision of retranslation; secondly, in
this literary field where “exister, c’est différer” 44, the self-positioning (based on differentiation and disagreement) in relation to his precursors is pertinent; thirdly, this is the only occasion on which there is
explicit recognition of the fact that the translator has in fact drawn on the work of others, thereby emphasizing the arteries of influence which may be posited between extant versions. In his article,
“Retranslating Madame Bovary”, Wall elaborates further on this conversation, explaining that “[w]henever I got stuck I would turn to them […] I discovered a happy plurality of voices available to me” 45.
However, such influence is only given limited reign, and as with the above note, a chord of dissention is struck: “for all their virtues, neither Hopkins nor Russell were to be trusted”, while Marx-Aveling’s
translation “falls down at those moments where Flaubert has invested, imaginatively, in his subject-matter” 46. Thus, the dominant concern is one of symbolic capital; divulging the restricted influence of other
versions certainly disrupts the teleological sweep of Berman’s hypothesis on retranslation since interference from precursors suggests a backwards move, but it is ultimately in the spirit of contradistinction that the
Wall translation reveals itself.

 47 Available online. [Accessed on 1st December 2009].

 48 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 4.

 49 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, 3rd edition, OUP, 1998, p. 396.

27Which finally brings us to the most recent version of Madame Bovary: mirroring Penguin’s move, OUP produce a brand new version by translator Margaret Mauldon in 2004. According to the publisher’s
online catalogue, “[t]he new translation by award-winning translator Margaret Mauldon replaces the slightly old-fashioned one by Gerard Hopkins”, while “[r]espected critic and writer Malcolm Bowie has written
a wide-ranging and original new introduction to the novel” 47. Once more, the symbolic capital to be gleaned from the prestige of the translator, and from that of paratextual authors, is brought to the fore.
However, the allusion to the “old-fashioned” Hopkins version also points to another key consideration in the study of retranslations: the ageing of the ST. In this instance, OUP are acting on the presumption that
the outdated language of the work which first appeared in 1950 necessitates a new version for modern times. As such, their actions apparently confirm the universal feature put forward by Berman that “alors que
les originaux restent éternellement jeunes […], les traductions, elles, ‘vieillissent’” 48, but is nevertheless debatable as to what extent this ageing of language should be interpreted as a deficiency, especially with
regard to the translation of nineteenth century works. This is especially significant in light of the initial translation, where the traces of its temporal origins mark it with a certain authenticity; as Steiner comments
on the Marx-Aveling work, “[r]ead now, what is frequently an imperceptible version is steadied by its period flavour” 49, thus, despite its shortcomings, it is this characteristic of agedness which may have
contributed to the continuation of this initial translation. However, a certain degree of collusion in the perpetuation of the idea that translations need to be updated or renewed can be surmised in light of the
activities of both OUP and Penguin. With the introduction of each fresh challenge comes the opportunity to occupy a position of greater prestige or authority; by defining the terms of the game, these publishers
ensure the potential for future moments of rupture, and with it, the chance to dominate.

 50 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 5.

 51 See Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A history of translation, London, Routledge, 19 (...)

28In addition, the prevalence of OUP and Penguin over the last fifty years seems to have halted the appearance of retranslations in other imprints. Whether this is indicative of the fact that these two houses have
produced versions of what Berman terms a “grande traduction”, namely one which “pour un temps, suspend la succession des retraductions” 50, remains to be seen. An alternative explanation to this suspension is
the grandeur accorded to these works, not as a result of any inherent linguistic excellence, but as a consequence of the symbolic capital which the publishers have in abundance. It is worth remarking that, around
the same time as OUP and Penguin come to saturate the market, there is also a significant decline – if not an outright halt – in translation reviews. This phenomenon undoubtedly ties in with Venuti’s assertion of
the ‘invisibility of the translator’ 51, but it also points to the tendency to willingly confer authority onto these publishing institutions, issuers and guardians of the literary canon; their legitimacy is such, there is no
perceived need to question their retranslations (or as Venuti might see it, no interest in questioning). In turn, this leaves the way open for these leading publishers to specify themselves when the time is right to
retranslate; viewed in this light, retranslation is far removed from concerns over textual deficiency, instead it plays a fundamental role in the power struggles of the literary system.

A world of possibilities
 52 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. (...)

29Whereas the above survey takes into account the history of individual (re)translations, it is also crucial to note that, far from effacing one another, the texts co-exist within the same parameters of the literary
system. They form a certain collective, presided over by the immutable title of Madame Bovary. However, since the system in which they reside evolves through rupture and diversity, there is a risk that works
will suffer from what Bourdieu terms “l’usure de l’effet” 52, from a stagnation which will confine them to a much less prestigious position. It is precisely in this context that retranslation can be attributed a further
role: one of rejuvenation, not in terms of updating language, but of reinforcing the heterogeneity which characterizes this multiplicity of texts. So, rather than restricting retranslations to the task of displacing those
which have gone before, they may also function together in order to ensure the survival of the source text itself.

 53 Alan Hodge, “Note”, Madame Bovary, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1950, p. vii.

30Likewise, the multifarious representations of the work highlight the richness embodied in the source text itself. As Alan Hodge, editor of the Hamish Hamilton edition, remarks, “ Madame Bovary is a book
which can be read many times: as with a medieval tapestry, each glance reveals some illuminating collocation of scene and story not seen before” 53. Therefore, the sheer scale of potential alone can be regarded as
a catalyst for retranslation; each new translation casts the world of the original in a different light, and it is this inconsistency in perspective that allows the versions to exist side by side. Individually, we are
presented with a glimpse into the complex universe of Flaubert’s masterpiece; collectively, that vista expands and grows more intricate.
 54 Pierre-Marc de Biasi, “What is a Literary Draft ? Toward a Functional Typology of Genetic Documenta (...)

31On a final point, it should be recognized that this vital rethinking of retranslation can be aided by logic evidenced in the field of genetic criticism. According to Pierre-Marc de Biasi, “the rough draft allows us
to be present at the birth of the motivations, strategies and metamorphoses of writing” 54. What we have here is a line of enquiry that concentrates on the transformations and mutations which precede the fixed
text; if we then mirror this logic, taking the source text as the invariable point of departure, retranslations can be compared to rough drafts since they too are a series of re-workings and metamorphoses wherein
various motivations and strategies can be pinpointed, and are also unfixed in the sense that the opportunity for new versions or interpretations never ceases.

 55 Daniel Ferrer, “Le matériel et le virtuel : du paradigme indiciaire à la logique de mondes possible (...)

32The fluid mutability of the rough draft then allows for a comparable viewpoint on to the unfolding process of creation, rather than on the end result; this outlook can certainly be extended to a given corpus of
retranslations, with each text representing a different and comparative stage in a translational process of creation. Daniel Ferrer states that “la matérialité textuelle de l’œuvre est évidemment altérée ou bouleversée
par le moindre ajout à l’univers représenté. C’est pourquoi il faut sans doute considérer que les différentes versions, même très proches, renvoient toujours à des mondes différents” 55; it is this notion of “different
worlds”, also expressed as different modalities or degrees of existence or possible worlds, which can help inform our framing of retranslations. Rather than entities which chronologically restore the linguistic or
the cultural specificity of the original, they are individual and different worlds, albeit rotating around the same axis, but worlds which nevertheless have wavering depictions of the meanings, the style, the structure
of the source text, and which often bear the mark of the conditions in which they were born. By diverting attention away from the twin poles of source text and target, and towards a more encompassing
examination of the retranslations as a corpus in their own right, genetic criticism can provide a model that is richer and less rigid that the teleological and strictly textual inferences proposed by Berman.

33In sum, this survey of the British retranslations of Madame Bovary has demonstrated that the tangle of socio-cultural and economic variables which exist within the literary field has exerted a definite pressure
on the moments of (re)translative production for the work, as well as on the material form in which the versions appear, and on the institutions which issue the texts. From the moment the work leaves its source
context, it becomes subject to and shaped by the currents and trends which prevail in the receiving system. Subsequently, it is clear that any discussion of the phenomenon of retranslation cannot be restricted to
the binary division between defective initial translation and accomplished current retranslation; the teleological trajectory moves off-course when grafted into the dynamics of the British literary system. In view of
partial and supplanted translations, the very definition of a starting point becomes problematic. Also, the assumed forward progression loses momentum once we take into account certain reversals, namely acts of
abridgement and the use of preceding versions as models. Furthermore, the ‘new and improved’ ethos must be regarded with some degree of suspicion when it becomes implicated into the power struggles of the
field and is championed by those in positions of dominance. Finally, it is fundamental that retranslations be examined both on an individual and a collective basis; by drawing on the genetic concept of ‘worlds of
possibilities’, we can clarify how this multiplicity of texts serve as a means of revitalizing the canonical source text, whilst affording a maximum degree of exposure to the rich diversity of Madame Bovary.

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Document annexe

 appendix (application/pdf – 62k)

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Notes

1 See Appendix.

2 Gustave Flaubert, letter to Ernest Duplan, 12 juin 1862, Correspondance, tome III, Paris, Gallimard, « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », 1991, p. 222.

3 Ibid.

4 This bibliographical survey will limit itself to those versions which were produced by a British translator and issued by a British publisher. It will not take into account translations which were imported from the U.S.

5 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 5.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 5.

9 Op. cit., p. 7.

10 Terry Hale, “Readers and Publishers of Translations in Britain”, The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 4, 2006, p. 36.

11 “Les Misérables”, The Quarterly Review, 112, 224, October 1862, p. 272-273.

12 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 5.
13 Ibid., p. 33.

14 George Saintsbury, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, April 1878, 23, 136, p. 577.

15 N. H. Kennard, “Gustave Flaubert and George Sand”, Nineteenth Century: a monthly review, 20, 117, November 1886, p. 693.

16 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Émile Zola: Novelist and Reformer, John Lane, London, 1904, p. 257.

17 Ibid., p. 286.

18 Much research has been undertaken into Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s translation of Madame Bovary. For a discussion on the translator’s Marxist reading of the novel, and an examination of the parallels between Eleanor and Emma,
see Emily Apter’s “Taskography: Translation as Genre of Literary Labour”, PMLA, 2007, 122, 5, p. 1403-1415, as well as Denise Merkle’s “Intertextuality in Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s A doll’s house and Madame Bovary”, Babel,
2004, 50, 2, p. 97-113.

19 “Novels of the Week”, The Athenaeum, 3075, October 1886, p. 429 f.

20 Eleanor Marx-Aveling, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, Vizetelly & Co., London, 1886, p. xxii.

21 This phenomenon is not unique to Britain. Emily Apter also notes “the curious survival of this early translation despite a long history of criticism” in the US where it appeared several times in revised form. See Emily Apter,
“Biography of a translation: Madame Bovary between Eleanor Marx and Paul de Man”, Translation Studies, 1,1, 2008, p. 73-89.

22 Peter France, “French”, The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 4, 2006, p. 241.

23 Eleanor Marx-Aveling, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, Vizetelly & Co., London, 1886, p. vii.

24 George Saintsbury, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, 23, 136, April 1878, p. 580 f.

25 Peter France & Kenneth Hayes, “The Publication of Literary Translation: An Overview”, The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 4, 2006, p. 143.

26 Take for example Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Doctor’s Wife, 1864.

27 Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx, volume 2: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898. London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 99.

28 This article was published again in 1891 in George Saintsbury’s Essays on French Novelists, London, Percival.

29 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 14.

30 Ernest Newman, “Gustave Flaubert”, Fortnightly Review, 58, 348, December 1895, p. 813.

31 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Henry Blanchamp, London, Greening & Co., 1905, p. 250.

32 Ibid., p. 263.

33 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Émile Zola: Novelist and Reformer, London, John Lane, 1904, p. 249.

34 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 24.

35 Holbrook Jackson, “Flaubert in English”, Bookman, 75, 447, 1928, p. 202.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.
38 J. Lewis May, “Introduction”, Madame Bovary, London, J. Lane Bodley Head,1928, p. xvii-xix.

39 Frank Arthur Mumby, Publishing and Bookselling, 5th edition, London, J. Cape, 1974, p. 323.

40 Ibid., p. 357.

41 Pierre Bourdieu, Réponses, Paris, Seuil, 1992, p. 123.

42 Gerard Hopkins, “Foreword”, Madame Bovary, OUP, 1959, p. viii.

43 Geoffrey Wall, “A Note on the Translation”, Madame Bovary, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1992.

44 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 24.

45 Geoffrey Wall, “Retranslating Madame Bovary”, Palimpsestes, 15, 2004, p. 95.

46 Ibid., p. 96.

47 Available online. [Accessed on 1st December 2009].

48 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 4.

49 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of language and translation, 3rd edition, OUP, 1998, p. 396.

50 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction”, Palimpsestes, XIII, 4, 1990, p. 5.

51 See Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A history of translation, London, Routledge, 1995.

52 Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 89, 1, 1991, p. 34.

53 Alan Hodge, “Note”, Madame Bovary, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1950, p. vii.

54 Pierre-Marc de Biasi, “What is a Literary Draft ? Toward a Functional Typology of Genetic Documentation”, Yale French Studies, 89, 1996, p. 29.

55 Daniel Ferrer, “Le matériel et le virtuel : du paradigme indiciaire à la logique de mondes possibles”, Available online. [Accessed 1st December 2009].
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Auteur

Sharon Deane
University of Edinburgh

INTERVIEWSJune 5, 2018
“Translation and Retranslation”: A Conversation
between Roja Chamankar & Emily Beyda
illustrations by Jade Fusco (DMZL)

Mainstream English language publishers are notoriously myopic when it comes to reading and
printing literature in translation. For the most part, our canonical translations are centuries old,
and not taken directly from the original text, but are rewritings of rewritings of rewritings, a sort
of intergenerational game of telephone. I was interested in taking a look at this process of
translation and retranslation by working with Roja, a friend of a friend who just happened to be a
fantastic poet in her own right, to co-translate the work of Farooq Farokhzad, a writer whose
work had been important in Roja’s life and development as a poet. Together, we hoped to
examine the structures of thought and meaning that lay beneath the surface of translation work.
What values do we (intentionally or unintentionally) impose on translated language? How does a
line, a whole poem, shift to accommodate the systems of meaning hidden in the language it is
translated into? How does it preserve the values or responses of the language it is translated
from? As we worked, in a series of meetings in a series of libraries, where we lent our heads
together and whispered about word choice, we talked about language, culture, and identity, the
magic that the process of translation can have, and the way that words delineate the spaces our
thoughts fill, creating different interior selves in each of our different tongues. Those
conversations gradually grew into Suspended Whispers, a book of Roja’s poems that the two of
us worked together to translate from Persian to French (our shared language) and then into
English, and, in time, the email conversation excerpted here:

EMILY BEYDA

You’re multilingual, but choose to primarily write in your mother tongue,

Persian. Have you ever attempted to write in either French or, now, English? If
so, how were those experiences different from writing in Persian?

ROJA CHAMANKAR

This is not a choice that I have intentionally made. Persian is my native language. I
love it because it is the language I’ve grown up with, I’ve gone to school with, I’ve
talked in, I’ve dreamed in, and I’ve lived in. French and English are the languages that
I have been learning intentionally, because of my interests.

I have decided to write in French and English but the problem is exactly that: I do not
decide to write in Persian. Writing in Persian is a natural part of me and my life. But
I’d love to write one day in French or English without intention or decision. On the
other hand, poetry is not just a string of words in a language. Each word in a poem
carries with itself a history and a culture, and so the poet must deeply live in that
history.

Sometimes I wish I was a musician or a painter to be free from the barriers of

language. Especially I feel like this when I am working on a poem in which I know
its language-games and techniques might not be conveyed in any language other than
Persian.

The poems that you and I translated together into French have such a distinct
voice. While we were working on them, were you thinking of them more as
translations or as new poems that you were creating, inspired by the original
iterations?

Well, we chose short poems that were visual and imaginal, not linguistic poems, but
during our work you tried to find some equivalent in English. So, we tried to re-create
them in English. While we were working on them, I was thinking of them as
translations, to reach a new form for the poems. For me, going from Persian to French
is a very intellectual, structured process. But it’s not just about finding the equivalent
words. For each poem it’s different, sometimes it’s a process of transposition, and
sometimes it feels like a new poem.

I know that in the past we’ve spoken about the difficulties of translation, that we
both feel there is no true translation but transformation, in which poems
undergo a sort of alchemical process to become a new poem in each language
they are translated into. Were you aware of this transformation process in our
work together, particularly in the Persian to French translations?

Each language has its own structure and culture. For example in the first poem I used
the adjective “Gel-Aalud” [muddy] for water, because in Persian “getting a fish from
muddy water” is an idiom that means “to find an advantage in a sad situation.” But
we decided to select “des eaux troubles” in French or “troubled waters” in English
because it has an equivalent meaning. Idioms like these are particularly difficult to
translate because they depend on cultural context. You need to find a contextually
appropriate equivalent. Or another example, in the fourth poem I have written, “Take
care of the sole of your feet because there is a broken sentence here.” Literally
translated from Persian the line would be “care of the soul of your feet” with the
understanding that those feet are bare. But we have no equivalent to that phrase in
English or French, so we created another concept, adding the lines “pieds nus” or
“barefoot” to make it more clear while preserving the image.
Do you think that your academic interest in language and film has had any
impact on the way you approach language in your own work?

Sure. Because the language of my poems is a visual language and I use a lot of
cinematic tendencies in my poems. For example, in cinema we have the editing
technique of jump cut. A critic once said that I extensively use this technique in my
poems. Maybe this comes from cinema.

As a poet who has worked with a number of different translators over your
career, how would you say your understanding of the translator-writer
relationship has altered over the years? How have those experiences differed
from translator to translator? Have there been any constants?

I have had very different experiences with different translators. Basically, I always see
translation as re-creation, or as a new reading of a poem. It is an interpretation of what
the poem can be. So, every new translation of a poem of mine excites me as a new
poem that is simultaneously far from and close to me. For example, the great
experience that we had together was like this. And sometimes, while reading my
poem in another language, I feel like I am participating again in the process of
creating it anew.

Interior page from Suspended Whispers

Roja Chamankar’s next volume of poems, Dying in a Mother Tongue, is out this November from
University of Texas Press.

***

Emily Beyda is a translator, fiction writer, food advice columnist, and mail artist based in Austin, Texas, where she is at work on her first novel.

Born in Borazjan in southern Iran in 1981, Roja Chamankar is a poet-filmmaker currently residing in Austin, Texas. She has an MA in
Dramatic Literature from the University of Art in Tehran, and another MA in Cinema from the University of Strasbourg. She has published nine
books of poetry in Persian, co-written two books for children, and translated a collection of poems by Henri Meschonic from French into Persian.
Her works have been translated into half a dozen languages and she has won a number of national and international awards for her poetry.

Jade Fusco paints, performs, philosophizes, sings, and makes art video. Her pseudonym as creatrix is DMZL, as in “damsel;” yet she is not in
distress but rather, in delight; her practice is inspired by a vision of community and collaboration, of theatre and celebratory expression, of taking
one’s freedom in hand and not waiting to be saved. In January of 2016, she chose to migrate south to Austin, TX to explore a new home base, and
hone in on her vision as a multi-sensory artist.

Multi-Retranslation corpora: Visibility, variation, value, and

virtue ............................................................................................................................................................
Tom Cheesman Department of Languages, Swansea University, UK Kevin Flanagan Department of
Languages, Swansea University, UK and SDL Research, Bristol, UK Stephan Thiel Bauhaus University
Weimar, Germany and Studio Nand, Berlin Jan Rybicki Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian
University, Poland Robert S. Laramee Department of Computer Science, Swansea University, UK
Jonathan Hope Department of English, Strathclyde University, UK Avraham Roos Amsterdam School of
Culture and History, University of Amsterdam, the
Netherlands .......................................................................................................................................

Abstract Variation among human translations is usually invisible, little understood, and under-valued.
Previous statistical research finds that translations vary most where the source items are most
semantically significant or express most ‘attitude’ (affect, evaluation, ideology). Understanding how and
why translations vary is important for translator training and translation quality assessment, for cultural
research, and for machine translation development. Our experimental project began with the intuition that
quantitative variation in a corpus of historical retranslations might be used to project quasi-qualitative
annotations onto the translated text. We present a web-based system which enables users to create
parallel, segment-aligned multi-version corpora, and provides visual interfaces for exploring multiple
translations, with their variation projected onto a base text. The system can support any corpus of variant
versions. We report experiments using our tools (and stylometric analysis) to investigate a corpus of forty
Correspondence: Tom Cheesman, Department of Languages, Swansea University, SA2 8PP, UK. E-mail:
t.cheesman@swansea.ac.uk Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2017. The Author
2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EADH. This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited. 739 doi:10.1093/llc/fqw027 Advance Access published on
23 August 2016 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-abstract/32/4/739/2669776 by
guest on 03 July 2020 German versions of a work by Shakespeare. Initial findings lead to more questions
than
answers. ...........................................................................................................................................................
......................

1 Introduction Our project began with a simple observation and an intuition. The observation: in any set
of multiple translations in a given language, variation among them varies through the course of the text.
Some text units or chunks (at any level from word, say, up to chapter or character part in a play) are more
variously translated than others. The intuition: this variation can be used to project an annotation onto the
translated text, indicating where and how the extent of translation variation varies. This is the essence of
our online system. It uses a ‘Translation Array’ (a parallel multi-translation corpus, aligned to a ‘base
text’ of the translated work) to achieve ‘Version Variation Visualization’. Here, ‘version’ encompasses
any text which can be at least partly aligned with others. But the website strapline is: ‘Explore great
works with their world-wide translations’.1 If multiple translations of a work exist, then the work is
enduringly popular and/or prestigious, canonical or classic, in the translating culture: typically ‘great
works’ of scripture, literature, philosophy, etc.2 Interest in comparing such works’ multiple translations is
surprisingly limited. Some large aligned retranslations corpora are publicly accessible online (works of
scripture),3 but user access is limited to two parallel texts, and no analytic tools are provided. No similar
resources exist for any secular works at all, yet. This reflects the notorious ‘invisibility’ of translators and
translations in general (Venuti, 2008). A key aim of our project is to make them visible. Retranslations
are successive translations of the ‘same’ source work, often somehow dependent on precursor
(re)translations. The source works concerned are mostly unstable texts in their original language: what
translators translate varies and changes. And so does how they do it. The gamut runs from word-for-word
renderings to very free adaptations or rewritings with little obvious relation to the source. Relay
translation—via a third language—introduces further variation. If translations are reprinted or otherwise
re-used, they tend to be changed again. Venuti (2004) argues that retranslations (more than most
translations) ‘create value’ in the target culture.4 A first translation of a foreign work creates awareness of
it. If retranslations follow, the work becomes assimilated to the target culture. If retranslations multiply,
each both reinforces the value and status of the work in the target culture, and extends the range of
competing interpretations surrounding it. Retranslations therefore throw up questions going well beyond
linguistic and cultural transfer, concerning ‘the values and institutions of the translating culture’, and how
these are defended, challenged, or changed (Venuti, 2004, p. 106). Within Translation Studies,
‘retranslation studies’ is underdeveloped, despite its fundamental importance for translation, linguistics,
and communication, as well as comparative, transnational cultural studies. As Munday (2012) argues,
retranslations are important resources, because no single utterance or text exists in isolation from
alternative forms it might have taken. Any extant text is surrounded by a ‘penumbra’ of ‘unselected
forms’ (Munday, 2012, p. 13, citing Grant, 2007, pp. 183–4); so any translation is surrounded by ‘shadow
translations’ (Johannson, 2011, p. 3, citing Matthiessen, 2001, p. 83). Sets of translations by different
translators (or the same translators at different moments) make visible at least some otherwise unselected
forms. This offers scope for studying ‘the value orientations that underlie these selections’ (Munday,
2012, p. 13). Our project seeks to go even further: from the how and why of variation among translations,
back to the varying capacity of the translated text to provoke variation. The article is organized as
follows: Section 2 reviews related work, including statistical studies in translation variation. Section 3
presents our software project, covering our Aligner, Corpus Overviews (including stylometric analysis),
and our key innovation: an interface deploying ‘Eddy T. Cheesman et al. 740 Digital Scholarship in the
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algorithms to explore translation variation. Section 4 presents findings of experiments using the software.
Section 5 offers concluding comments. 2 Related Work There has been little digital work on larger
retranslations corpora, involving works of wide intrinsic interest, and none designed to facilitate access to
multiple translations, and the translated work, together with algorithmic analyses. Ja¨nicke et al. (2015)
take in some ways a similar approach, but their ‘TRAViz’ interface offers a very different mode of text
visualization, is monolingual (shows no translated text), and works best with more limited variation and
shorter texts (see Section 3.3). Lapshinova-Koltunski (2013) describes a parallel multi-translation corpus
designed to support computational linguistic analyses of differences between professional translations,
student translations, Machine Translation (MT) outputs, and edited MT outputs. Shei and Pain (2002)
proposed a similar parallel corpus, with an interface designed for translator training. These projects only
offer access to filtered segments of the text corpus, and do not envisage exploring variation among
retranslations. Altintas, Can, and Patton (2007) used two timeseparated (c.1950, c.2000) collections of
published translations of the same seven English, French, or Russian literary classics into Turkish, to
quantify aspects of language change. This raises the question whether such translations ‘represent’ their
language. Corpus-based Translation Studies (Baker, 1993; Kruger et al., 2011) has established that
translated language differs from untranslated language. We also know from decades of work in
Descriptive Translation Studies (Morini, 2014; Toury, 2012) that retranslations vary for complex genre-,
market-, subculture-specific and institutional factors, and individual psychosocial factors, involving the
translators and others with a hand in the work (commissioners, editors), and their uses of resources
including source versions and prior (re)translations. There is no consensus on defining such factors and
their interrelations. The conclusion of a manual analysis of eight English versions of Zola’s novel Nana is
typically vague: (...) specific conditions (...) explain the similarities and differences (...). The conditions
comprise broad social forces: changing ideologies and changing linguistic, literary, and translational
norms; as well as more specific situational conditions: the particular context of production and the
translator’s preferences, idiosyncrasies, and choices. (Brownlie, 2006, p. 167) The basic lesson is that
translation is a humanities subject. Translators are writers. As Baker warns: Identifying linguistic habits
and stylistic patterns is not an end in itself: it is only worthwhile if it tells us something about the cultural
and ideological positioning of the translator, or of translators in general, or about the cognitive processes
and mechanisms that contribute to shaping our translational behaviour. We need then to think of the
potential motivation for the stylistic patterns that might emerge from this type of study. (Baker, 2000, p.
258) Her comment is cited by Li et al. (2011, p. 157), in their computationally assisted study of two
English translations of Xueqin Cao’s Hongloumeng. 5 They conclude: corpus-assisted translation
research can go beyond proving the obvious or the already known as long as meta- or para-texts are
available for the analysis. The extent and depth of such analysis of course depends on the amount of
information available in the form of meta- or other texts. (Li et al., 2011, p. 164) Genuine understanding
of cultural materials requires knowledge and critical understanding of many other materials, to assess how
multi-scale human factors shape texts and the effects they have (had) in their cultural world. Non-digital
studies in retranslation underline the importance of such shaping factors. Deane-Cox (2014) and
O’Driscoll (2011) both recently Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No.
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on 03 July 2020 investigated large sets of English retranslations of 19th-century French novels. They
detail at length the historical contexts of each retranslation, its production and reception, and analyse short
samples linguistically or stylistically. Deane-Cox’s overall argument disproves the ‘Retranslation
Hypothesis’ put forward by Antoine Berman (1990, p. 1). Berman argued that over time, successive
retranslations should tend to translate the source text more accurately. In fact—as we will see—this may
hold for a first few retranslations, but when they multiply, the hypothesis no longer holds. This is partly
because retranslators who come late in a series must be more inventive, to distinguish their work from
that of precursors and rivals. The desire for distinction is a great motivator (Mathijssen, 2007; Hanna,
2016). Critical translation studies pays close attention to such specific contextual factors, viewing each
translation as an act of intervention in a particular moment in a particular place in the geographical and
social world, and a trace of a translator’s (and associated agents’) both conscious and unconscious choices
(Munday, 2012, p. 20). As Munday argues, translation is essentially an evaluative act. Translator’s
decisions are based on evaluations of the source text, of the implicit values of its author and intended
audience, and of the expectations and values of the intended audience of the translation. 2.1 Statistical
Studies Statistical studies of differences between translations confirm this perspective, and also rain on
the MT parade. They show that variation is greatest both in the most semantically significant units of a
text, and in the units which are most expressive of values and affect. Babych and Hartley (2004)
measured the stability of alternative translations at word and phrase level in English versions of 100
French news stories by two professional translators. They found a strong statistical correlation between
instability and the scores of linguistic items in the source text for salience (tf.idf score) or significance (S-
score; see Babych et al., 2003). The more important an item is for a text’s meaning, the less translators
tend to agree about translating it (though each one is consistent in using their selected terms). Babych and
Hartley deduce that ‘highly significant units typically do not have ready translation solutions and require
some ‘‘artistic creativity’’ on the part of translators’, and that this necessary ‘freedom’ makes translation
fundamentally ‘‘‘non-computable’’ or ‘‘non-algorithmic’’’ (Babych and Hartley, 2004, p. 835, citing
Penrose, 1989). They conclude that there are: fundamental limits on using data-driven approaches to MT,
since the proper translation for the most important units in a text may not be present in the corpus of
available translations. Discovering the necessary translation equivalent might involve a degree of
inventiveness and genuine intelligence. (Babych and Hartley, 2004, p. 836) Munday (2012, pp. 131–54)
studied seventeen English translations of an extract from a story by Jorge Luis Borges: two published
translations and fifteen commissioned from advanced trainee translators. Four in five lexical units varied.
Invariance was associated with ‘simple, basic, experiential or denotational processes, participants and
relations’ (p. 143). Variation mainly occurred in ‘lexical expression of attitude’, i.e. affect/emotion,
judgment/ ethics, appreciation, or evaluation (p. 24). Variation was greatest at ‘critical points’, where
‘attitude-rich’ words and phrases ‘carry the attitudinal burden of the text’ and communicate ‘the central
axiological values of the protagonists, narrator or writer’ (p. 146)—again, in effect, the semantically most
significant items. Translations vary most at points of greatest semantic and evaluative/attitudinal salience.
MT has a long way to go, then. Its problems include identifying attitude, affect, or evaluation in a text to
be translated. In a chapter on MT and pragmatics, Farwell and Helmreich (2015) discuss lexical and
syntactic differences in 125 Spanish newswire articles translated into English by two professional
translators: 40% of units differed, and 41% of differences could be attributed to the translators’ different
‘assumptions about the world’ (rather than assumption-neutral paraphrasing, or error). One example is
this headline: Acumulacio´n de vı´veres por anuncios sı´smicos en Chile T. Cheesman et al. 742 Digital
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Hoarding caused by earthquake predictions in Chile Translation 2: Stockpiling of provisions because of
predicted earthquakes in Chile (Farwell and Helmreich, 2015, p. 171) The translations make vastly
different ideological, political, evaluative assumptions. ‘Hoarding’ suggests a panicky, irrational
population, responding to rumours of an unlikely event. ‘Stockpiling’ (by the population, or the civil
authorities?) is a prudent response to credible (scientific experts’?) warnings. It is impossible—without
‘meta- or para-texts’—to disentangle whether the translators impute different values to the mind of the
source text creator, or to its intended readers, or to the anticipated readers of the target text, and/or
whether they express their own psychological and ideological values. ‘Acumulacio´n’, here, has major
evaluative implications which could not be predicted without area-specific political and economic
expertise. Perhaps a multi-retranslation corpus could be used to discover which items provoke variation,
as a proxy for such knowledge? If not, what would it discover? 3 Project Description A multi-
retranslation corpus will contain versions of various kinds; complete, fragmentary, edited, adapted
versions; versions derived from (a version of) the original-language translated work, or from
intermediaries in the translating language, and/or other languages; versions in various media; for various
audiences (popular, scholarly, restricted); in mono-, bi-, or plurilingual formats; from various periods and
places; produced and received under various economic, political, institutional, and cultural-linguistic
conditions. An obvious lay question is: Which one is best? But the problem is already clear: By what
criteria, or whose, do we judge? Models for assessing professional translations (House, 1997) are
predicated on full and precise rendering of the source, but work less well with creative genres, where such
‘fidelity’ is often subordinated to effect in the target culture. Retranslations of poetry, plays, novels,
religious, or philosophical works can be very successful (i.e. ‘good’, for many people) without being at all
complete or accurate. A related question is: Why do most retranslations have brief lives (just one
publication, or media or performance use), while others—backed by some institutional authority—
become canonical, and have many editions, revisions, and re-uses, over generations? Does the answer lie
in linguistic, textual qualities of the translation, measured in terms of its relation to the original work? Or
in some qualities of it, measured in relation to alternative versions or other target culture corpora? Or does
it lie solely in institutional factors? Our project does not comprehensively address these questions. It grew
out of a particular piece of translation criticism, and the intuition that digital tools could be developed to
explore patterns in variation among multiple (re)translations, in themselves, in relation to target cultural
contexts, and in relation to the translated work. Before knowing any of the above-mentioned studies,
Cheesman wanted to find ways to compare a large collection of German translations and adaptations of
Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice (see corpus overviews in section 3.2
below).6 His interest was as a researcher in German and comparative literature and culture. He had
worked on a recent, controversial version of Othello (Cheesman, 2010), and wondered how it related to
others. He manually examined over thirty translations (1766–2010) of a very small sample: a fourteen-
word rhyming couplet, a ‘critical moment’ which is rich in affect, evaluation, and ambiguity (Cheesman,
2011).7 His study showed how differences among the translations traced a 250-yearlong conversation
about human issues in the work— gender, race, class, political power, interpersonal power, and ethics.
Could digital tools help to explore such questions and communicate their interest to a wider public? The
couplet he had selected was clearly more variously translated than most passages in the play. So he
wondered if we could devise an algorithmic analysis which would identify all the most variously
translated passages, to steer further research. A proof-of-concept toolset (‘Translation Array Prototype’)
was built, using as test data a corpus of thirty-eight hand-curated digital texts of Multi-retranslations
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translations and adaptations of part of the play: Othello, Act 1, Scene 3. This is about 3,400 continuous
words of the play’s 28,000, in English: 392 lines and 92 speeches (in Neill’s 2006 edition). The restricted
sample size was due to restricted resources for curating transcriptions, and translation copyright
limitations. Versions were procured from libraries, second-hand book-sellers, and theatre publishers (who
distribute texts not available through the book trade). Digital transcription stripped out original formatting
and paratexts (prefaces, notes, etc). The transcriptions were minimally annotated, marking up speech
prefixes, speeches, and stage directions. The brief for the programmers (Flanagan and Thiel) was to build
visual web interfaces enabling the user to: align a set of versions with a base text and so create a parallel
multi-version corpus;8 obtain overviews of corpus metadata and aligned text data; navigate parallel text
displays; apply an algorithmic analysis to explore the differing extent to which base text segments
provoke variation among translations; customize this analysis and create various forms of data output to
support cultural analyses. 3.1 Aligner An electronic Shakespeare text was manually collated with a recent
edition, to give us a base text inclusive of historic variants.9 Then we needed to align it segmentally with
the versions. Existing open tools for working with text variants (e.g. Juxta collation software)10 lack
necessary functionality; so do existing computer-assisted translation tools; perhaps such software could
be adapted; at any rate we built a web-based tool from scratch. The developer, Flanagan, explains its two
main components: Ebla: stores documents, configuration details, segment and alignment information,
calculates variation statistics, and renders documents with segment/variation information. Prism: provides
a web-based interface for uploading, segmenting and aligning documents, then visualizing document
relationships. Areas of interest in a document are demarcated using segments, which also can be nested or
overlapped. Each segment can have an arbitrary number of attributes. For a play these might be ‘type’
(with values such as ‘Speech’, ‘Stage Direction’), or ‘Speaker’ (with values such as ‘Othello’,
‘Desdemona’), and so on. (Flanagan in: Cheesman et al., 2012) Hand- or machine-made attributes such as
‘irony’, ‘variant from source x’, ‘crux’, ‘body part y’, ‘affect z’, ‘syllogism’, ‘trochee’, and
‘enjambement’ are equally possible. But all would require time-consuming tagging. In fact, we have
worked only with ‘type: Speech’. Segment positions are stored as character offsets within documents, and
texts can be edited without losing this information (transcription errors keep being discovered).
Segmented documents are aligned in an interactive WYSIWYG tool, where an ‘auto-align’ function
aligns all the next segments of specified attribute. For Othello, every speech prefix, speech and ‘other’
string is automatically pre-defined as a segment of that type. Any string of typographic characters in a
speech can be manually defined as a segment and aligned. Thiel and colleagues at Studio Nand built
visual interfaces on top of Prism, including paralleltext views tailor-made for dramatic texts (base text
and any translation), and the ‘Eddy and Viv’ view discussed below (Section 4). Thiel (2014b) documents
the design process. He also sketched a scalable, zoomable multi-parallel view of base text and all aligned
versions, an overview model which remains to be developed as an interface for combined reading and
analysis (Thiel, 2014a).11 3.2 Corpus overviews Visual overviews of a corpus support distant readings of
text and/or metadata features. We devised three. An online, interactive time-map of historical geography
shows when and where versions were written and published (performances are a desideratum); it
identifies basic genres (published books for readers, books for students, theatre texts), and provides bio-
bibliographical information (Thiel, 2012). A stylometric diagram is discussed in Section 3.2.2 (Fig. 2).
‘Alignment maps’ depict the information created by segment alignment (Fig. 1). T. Cheesman et al. 744
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Alignment maps of thirty-five German Othello 1.3 (1766–2010) Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship
in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2017 745 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-
abstract/32/4/739/2669776 by guest on 03 July 2020 3.2.1 Alignment maps Alignment maps, developed
by Thiel, are ‘barcode’- type maps which show how a translation’s constituent textual parts (here:
speeches) align with a similar map of the base text. Figure 1 shows thirty-five such maps, in
chronological sequence. Each left-hand block represents the English base text of Othello 1.3, the right-
hand block represents a German text, and the connecting lines represent alignments in the system. Within
each block, horizontal bars represent speeches (in sequence top to bottom) and thickness represents their
length, measured in words; Othello’s longest speech in the scene (and the play) is highlighted. Small but
significant differences in overall length can be noticed: translations tend to be longer than the translated
texts, so it is interesting to spot versions which are complete yet more concise, such as Gundolf (1909).
We can see which versions, in which passages, make cuts, reduce, expand, transpose, or add material
which could not be aligned with the base text. In the centre of the figure, the German translation
(Felsenstein and Stueber, 1964) of the Italian libretto (by Boito) of Verdi’s opera Otello (1887) is a good
example of omission, addition, and transposition. Omissions and additions are also evident in the recent
stage adaptations on the bottom line. Zimmer (2007), like Boito, assigns Othello’s long speech to multiple
speakers. In our online system, these maps serve as navigational tools alongside the texts in Thiel’s
parallel-text views. Each bar representing a speech is also tagged with the relevant speech prefix, so any
character’s part can be highlighted and examined. Aligned segments are rapidly, smoothly synched in
these interfaces, assisting exploratory bilingual reading. 3.2.2 Stylometric network diagram Figure 2
depicts a stylometric analysis of relative Most Frequent Word frequencies in 7,000-word chunks of forty
German versions of Othello, carried out by Rybicki using the Stylo script and the Gephi visualization
tool.12 The network diagram shows (1) relations of general similarity between versions, represented by
relative proximity (clustering), and (2) similarities in particular sets of frequency counts, represented by
connecting lines; their thickness or strength represents degree of similarity. These lines (edges) can
indicate intertextual relations: dependency of some kind, including potential plagiarism. Directionality
can be inferred from date labels on nodes. For example, the version by Bodenstedt (1867) (near top
centre) was revised in the strongly connected version by Ru¨diger (1983). This confirms data on his title
page. Other results, as we will see, are more surprising: spurs to further research. The x/y axes are not
meaningful. The analysis involves hundreds of counts using differing parameters: the diagram is a design
solution to the problem of representing high-dimensional data in a twodimensional plane. Removing or
adding even one version produces a different layout and can re-arrange clusters. Moreover, the analysis
process is so complex that we cannot specify which text features lie behind the results. Broadly, though,
the diagram can be read historically, right to left: a highly formal poetic theatre language gives way to
increasingly informal, colloquial style. Nine versions are revisions, editions or rewritings of the canonical
translation by Baudissin (originally 1832, in the famed ‘Schlegel-Tieck’ Shakespeare edition; see: Sayer,
2015). Most are quite strongly connected and closely clustered, but the apparent stylometric variety is a
surprise. The long, weak line connecting the cluster to the heavily revised stage adaptation by Engel
(1939) (upper left) is to be expected, but the length and weakness of the connection with Wolff’s (1926)
published edition (lower right) is more of a surprise. His title page indicated a modestly revised canonical
text, but stylometry suggests something more radical is going on.13 Above all, this analysis reveals the
salience of historical period. Distinct clusters are formed by all the early C19 versions (mid-right),
arguably all the late C19 versions (top), most of the late C20 versions (lower left), and all the C21
versions (far left). The C21 versions are all idiosyncratic adaptations (cf. Fig. 1, bottom line). It is
surprising to see how similar they appear, in stylometric terms, relative to the rest of the corpus. And what
do the strong links among them indicate? Mutual influence, plagiarism, common external influence?
What about the lines leading from Gundolf (1909) (low centre) across to T. Cheesman et al. 746 Digital
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(1972), to Laube (1978), to Gu¨nther (1995)? Gu¨nther is the most celebrated living German Shakespeare
translator: do these lines trace his debts to less famous precursors? Period outliers are also interesting.
Zeynek (?-1948) appears to be writing a C19 style in the 1940s. The unknown Schwarz (1941) is
curiously close to the famous Fried (1972). Rothe (1956) (extreme bottom left) is writing in a late C20
style in the 1950s. This throws interesting new light on the notorious ‘Rothe case’ of the Weimar
Republic and Nazi years: he was victimized for his ‘liberal’, ‘modern’ approach to translation (Von
Ledebur, 2002). Genre is salient, too. A very distinct cluster, bottom right, includes all versions designed
for study and written in prose (rather than verse). This includes our two earliest versions (1766 and 1779)
and two published 200 years later (1976, 1985). Strongly interconnected, weakly connected with any
other versions, this cluster demonstrates the flaw in the approach of Altintas et al. (2007). Differences in
the use of German represented by distances across the rest of graph cannot be due to any general
historical changes in the language. They reflect changes in the specific ways German is used by
translators of Shakespeare for the stage, and/or for publications aimed at people who want to read his
work for pleasure. 3.3 The ‘Eddy and Viv’ interface Overviews are invaluable, but the core of our system
is a machine for examining differences at small scale. The machine implements an algorithm we called
‘Eddy’,14 to measure variation in a corpus of translations of small text segments. Eddy’s findings are
then aggregated and projected onto the base text segments by the algorithm ‘Viv’ (‘variation in
variation’). In an interface built by Thiel, on the basis of Flanagan’s work, users view the scrollable base
text (Fig. 3: left column) and can select any previously defined and aligned segment: this calls up the
translations of it, in a scrollable list (Fig. 3: Fig. 2 Stylometric analysis of forty German Othellos Node
label key: Translator_Date. Prefix: Baud ¼ version of Baudissin (1832). Suffixes: _Pr ¼ prose study
edition. No suffix ¼ other book. _T ¼ theatre text (no book trade distribution). _X ¼ theatre text, not
performed (only version by a woman). Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol.
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by guest on 03 July 2020 right columns). The list can be displayed in various sequences (transition
between sequences is a pleasingly smooth visual effect) by selecting from a menu: order by date; by the
translator’s surname; by length; or (as shown in Fig. 3) by Eddy’s algorithmic analysis of relative
distinctiveness. Eddy metrics are displayed with the translations, and also represented by a yellow
horizontal bar which is longer, the higher the relative value. We defined ‘segment’, by default, as a
‘natural’ chunk of dramatic text: an entire speech, in semiautomated alignment. Manual definition of
segments (any string within a speech) is possible, but defining and aligning such segments in forty
versions is time-consuming. In future work we intend to use the more standard definition: segment ¼
sentence (not that this would simplify alignment, since translation and source sentence divisions
frequently do not match). Eddy compares the wording of each segment version with a corpus word list:
here the corpus is the set of aligned segment versions. No stop words are excluded; no stemming,
lemmatization, or parsing is performed. Flanagan explains how the default Eddy algorithm works: Each
word in the corpus word list [the set of unique words for all versions combined] is considered as
representing an axis in N-dimensional space, where N is the length of the corpus word list. For each
version, a point is plotted within this space whose coordinates are given by the word frequencies in the
version word list for that version. (Words not used in that version have a frequency of zero.) The position
of a notional ‘average’ translation is established by finding the centroid of that set of points. An initial
‘Eddy’ variation value for each version is calculated by measuring the Euclidean distance between the
point for that version and the centroid. Flanagan in Cheesman et al. (2012–13) This default Eddy
algorithm is based on the vector space model for information retrieval. Given a set S of versions {a, b,
c ...} where each version is a set of tokens {t1, t2, t3 ... tn}, we create a set U of unique tokens from all
versions in S (i.e. a corpus word list). For each version in S we construct vectors of attributes A, B, C ...
where each attribute is the occurrence count within that version of the corresponding token in U, that is: A
¼ X jaj j¼1 aj ¼ Ui Fig. 3 Eddy and Viv interface (Colour online) T. Cheesman et al. 748 Digital
Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2017 Downloaded from
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further vector Z to represent the centroid of A, B, C ... such that Z ¼ Ai þ Bi þ Ci ð Þ ... jSj Then, for a
version a, the default Eddy value is calculated as: Eddy ¼
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi X jUj i¼1 jZi Aij 2 vuut This default Eddy
formula is used in the experiments reported below, coupled with a formula for Viv as the average
(arithmetic mean) of Eddy values. Other versions of the formulae can be selected by users,15 e.g. an
alternative Eddy value based on angular distance, calculated as: Eddy ¼ 2cos1 AZ IAIIZI Work remains
to be done on testing the different algorithms, including the necessary normalization for variations in
segment length.16 Essentially, Eddy assigns lower metrics to wordings which are closer to the notional
average, and higher metrics to more distant ones. So, Eddy ranks versions on a cline from low to high
distinctiveness, or originality, or unpredictability. It sorts commonor-garden translations from
interestingly different ones. Viv shows where translators most and least disagree, by aggregating Eddy
values for versions of the base text segment, and projecting the result onto the base text segment. Viv
metrics for segments are displayed if the text is brushed, and relative values are shown by a colour
annotation (floor and ceiling can be adjusted). As shown in Fig. 3, the base text is annotated with a colour
underlay of varying tone. Lighter tone indicates relatively low Viv (average Eddy) for translations of that
segment. Darker tone indicates higher Viv. Shakespeare’s text can now be read by the light of translations
(Cheesman, 2015). Sometimes it is obvious why translators disagree more or less. In Fig. 3, Roderigo’s
one-word speech ‘Iago -’ has a white underlay: every version is the same. The Duke’s couplet beginning
‘If virtue no delighted beauty lack...’ (the subject of Cheesman’s initial studies), has the darkest underlay.
As we knew, translators (and editors, performers, and critics) interpret this couplet in widely varying
ways. In the screenshot, the Duke’s couplet has been selected by the user: part of the list of versions can
be seen on the right. MTs back into English are provided, not that they are always helpful. Unlike the
TRAViz system (Ja¨nicke et al., 2015), ours does not represent differences between versions in terms of
edit distances, and translation choices in terms of dehistoricized decision pathways. Our system preserves
key cultural information (historical sequence). It can better represent very large sets of highly divergent
versions. The TRAViz view of two lines from our Othello corpus (Ja¨nicke et al., 2015, Figure 17) is a
bewilderingly complex graph. With highly divergent versions of longer translation texts, TRAViz output
is scarcely readable. Crucially there is no representation of the translated base text. The Eddy and Viv
interface is (as yet) less adaptable to other tasks, but better suited to curiosity-driven cross-language
exploration.17 4. Experiments with Eddy and Viv 4.1 Eddy and ‘Virtue? A fig!’ To illustrate Eddy’s
working, Table 1 shows Eddy results, in simplified rank terms (‘high’, ‘low’, or unmarked intermediate),
for thirty-two chronologically listed versions of a manually aligned segment with a very high Viv value:
‘Virtue? A fig!’ (Othello 1.3.315). An exclamation is always, in Munday’s terms, ‘attitude-rich’,
burdened with affect; this one is a ‘critical point’ for several reasons. ‘Virtue’ is a very significant term in
the play, and crucially ambiguous: in Shakespeare’s time it meant not only ‘moral excellence’ but also
‘essential nature’, or ‘life force’, and ‘manliness’.18 The speaker here is Iago, responding to Roderigo,
who has just declared that he cannot help loving the heroine, Desdemona: ‘... it is not in my virtue to
amend it’. Roderigo means: not in my nature, my power over myself, my male strength. But Iago’s
response implies the moral meaning, too. Then, Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the
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‘Virtue? A fig!’ in thirty-two German translations (1766–2012) Numbers ‘Eddy’ rank Length rank
Translations Back-translations Sources Intertexts 1 Tugend? Pfifferling. Virtue? [Not worth a]
chanterelle. Wieland 1766 (S) (P) 2 H Tugend!—Den Henker auch! Virtue!—[To Hell with] the
executioner too! Eschenburg (ed. Eckert) 1779 (S) 3 L L Tugend? Possen! Virtue? Buffoonery! Schiller
and Voss 1805 (P) Cf. #4, #11 4 L Tugend? Narrenspossen! Virtue? Fools’ buffoonery! Benda
1826/Ortlepp 1839 5 L Tugend! Abgeschmackt! Virtue! Vulgar! Baudissin [Schlegel-Tieck] 1832 (P) 6
Tugend? Zum Henker! Virtue? To the executioner! [ ¼ be damned!] Bodenstedt 1867 7 Tugend? Leeres
Gefasel! Virtue? Mindless drivel! Jordan 1867 8 Tugend? Wischiwaschi! Virtue? Drivel! Gildemeister
1871 9 L L Tugend! Aeh! Virtue! Ugh! Vischer 1887 10 Tugend! Pfeif drauf! Virtue! Whistle on it! [ ¼
Don’t give a damn for it] Gundolf 1909 11 L L Tugend! Possen! Virtue! Buffoonery! Baudissin (ed.
Wolff) 1926 12 L Tugend! Dummheit! Virtue! Stupidity! Engel 1939 (T) 13 Energie? Ein Schmarren!
Energy? Nonsense! [dialectal: S German] Schwarz 1941 (T) Cf. #23 14 L Tugend! Ach was! Virtue! Oh
come on! Baudissin (ed. Brunner) 1947 (S) 15 H H Nicht die Kraft! Zum lachen! Not the strength!
Laughable! Zeynek ?-1948 (T) 16 L ‘Tugend’? Quatsch! ‘Virtue’? Nonsense! Flatter 1952 17 Tugend?
Weiße Ma¨use! Virtue? White mice! Rothe 1956 18 Macht? Dummes Zeug! Power? Stuff and nonsense!
Schaller 1959 19 Tugend? Keine Feige wert! Virtue? Not worth a fig! Schro¨der 1962 20 Tugend? fick
drauf Virtue? fuck it Swaczynna 1972 (T) 21 H H In deiner Macht? Ach was! In your power? Oh come
on! Fried 1972 (P) Cf. #23, #27... 22 Tugend! Ein Quark! Virtue! Quark! [soft cheese/nonsense]
Lauterbach 1973 (T) Cf. #27 23 Macht? Schmarren! Power? Nonsense! [dialectal: S German] Engler
1976 (S) 24 H H Nicht in deiner Macht? Son Quatsch! Not in your power? What nonsense! Laube 1978
(T) Cf. #27 25 Tugend! Ein Dreck! Virtue! Filth! [Crap] Ru¨diger 1983 (T) 26 L L Tugend? Quatsch
Virtue? Nonsense Bolte and Hamblock 1985 (S) 27 H H Nicht in deiner Macht? Quark! Not in your
power? Quark! Gu¨nther 1995 (P) Cf. #31, #32. 28 H Da kannst du lange beten You can pray a long time
[ ¼ Not until the cows come home] Motschach 1992 (T) 29 L Affenkram Ape-rubbish [ ¼ Crap!] Buhss
1996 (T) 30 H H Charakter? Am Arsch der Charakter! Character? Character my arse! Zaimoglu and
Senkel 2003 31 H H Nicht in deiner Macht? Quatsch! Not in your power? Nonsense! Leonard 2010 (T)
32 Nicht in deiner Macht! Not in your power! Steckel 2012 H and L indicate highest (H) and lowest (L)
seven Eddy value rankings and length rankings. Alternative translations to ‘Tugend’ ¼ ‘virtue’ are
underscored. Sources: ¼ now in print. (S) ¼ study text. (T) ¼ no book trade distribution (theatre text).
Intertexts: (P) ¼ prestigious, influential. T. Cheesman et al. 750 Digital Scholarship in the Humanities,
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by guest on 03 July 2020 the phrase ‘A fig!’ is gross sexual innuendo. ‘Fig’ meant vagina. The expression
derives from Spanish and refers to an obscene hand gesture: intense affect (see Neill, 2006, p. 235). (The
expression ‘I don’t give/care a fig!’ was once commonplace, and often used euphemistically for ‘fuck’, a
word Shakespeare never uses.) The lowest and highest seven Eddy rankings are indicated. Eddy’s lowest-
scoring translation is ‘Tugend? Quatsch’ (#16, #26). ‘Tugend’ is the modern dictionary translation of
(moral) ‘virtue’. ‘Quatsch’ is a harmless expression of disagreement: a bowdlerized translation
(bowdlerization is clear in most versions here).19 The Eddy score is low because most translations (until
1985) use ‘Tugend’ and several also use ‘Quatsch’. Eddy’s highest score is for ‘Charakter? Am Arsch der
Charakter!’ (#30). This is Zaimoglu’s controversial adaptation of 2003, with which Cheesman’s work on
Othello began (2010). No other translation uses those words, including the preposition ‘am’ and article
‘der’. ‘Charakter’ accurately translates the main sense of Shakespeare’s ‘virtue’ here, and ‘Arsch’ fairly
renders ‘A fig!’ This is among the philologically informed translations of ‘virtue’ (as ‘energy’, ‘strength’,
‘power’), a series which begins with Schwarz (1941) (#13). It is also among the syntactically expansive
translations, with colloquial speech rhythms, which begin with Zeynek (?-1948) (#15).20 Both series
become predominant following the prestigious Fried (1972) (#21). Reading versions both historically and
with Eddy, in our interface, makes for a powerful tool. Here the historical distribution of Eddy rankings
confirms what we already know about changes in Shakespeare translation. The lowest mostly appear up
to 1926. The highest mostly appear since 1972 (recall Figure 2: lower left quadrant). Ranking by length in
typographical characters is not often useful, but with such a short segment its results are interesting, and
similar to Eddy’s. Most of the shortest are up to 1947, and most of the longest since 1972: that shift
towards more expansive, colloquial translations, again. Similar historical Eddy results are found for many
segments in our corpus. An ‘Eddy History’ graph, plotting versions’ average Eddy on a timeline, can be
generated: it shows Eddy average rising in this corpus since about 1850. This may be a peculiarity of
German Shakespeare. It may be an artefact of the method. But it is conceivable that, with further work,
the period of an unidentified translation might be predicted by examining its Eddy metrics. Eddy and Viv
results for any selected segments, based on the full corpus or a selected subset of versions, can be
retrieved and explored in several forms of chart, table, and data export. The interactive ‘Eddy Variation’
chart, for example, facilitates comparisons between one translator’s work and that of any set of others
(e.g. her precursors and rivals). It plots Eddy results for selected versions against segment position in the
text; any version’s graph can be displayed or not (simplifying focus on the translation of interest); when a
node is brushed, the relevant bilingual segment text is displayed. Eddy’s weaknesses are evident in Table
1, too. It fails to highlight the only one-word translation (#29), or the one giving ‘fig’ for ‘fig’ (#19), or
the one with the German equivalent of ‘fuck’ (#20), expressing the obscenity which remains concealed
from most German readers and audiences. We still need to sort ordinary translations from extraordinary
and innovative ones in more sophisticated ways. Eddy also fails to throw light directly on genetic and
other intertextual relations. Some are indicated in the ‘Intertexts’ column in Table 1: the probable
influence of some prestigious retranslations is apparent in several cases, as is the possible influence of
some obscure ones. Such dependency relations require different methods of analysis and representation.
Stylometric analysis (Section 3.2.2) provides pointers. More advanced methods must also encompass
negative influence, or significant non-imitation. Table 1 shows—and this result is typical too—that the
canonical version (#5), the most often read and performed German Shakespeare text from 1832 until
today, is ‘not’ copied or even closely varied. That is no doubt because of risk to a retranslator’s
reputation. Retranslators must differentiate their work from what the public and the specialists know
(Hanna, 2016). The tool we built is a prototype. Eddy is admittedly imperfect. But its real virtue lies in
the power it gives to Viv, enabling us to investigate to what Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the
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features and properties might correlate with differences among translations. Even that is only a start, as
Flanagan points out: Ebla can be used to calculate different kinds of variation statistics for base text
segments based on aligned corpus content. These can potentially be aggregated-up for more coarse-
grained use. The results can be navigated and explored using the visualization functionality in Prism.
However, translation variation is just one of the corpus properties that could be investigated. Once
aligned, the data could be analysed in many other ways. (Flanagan in: Cheesman et al., 2012–13) 4.2
‘Viv’ in Venice An initial Viv analysis of Othello 1.3, involving all the ninety-two natural ‘speech’
segments, was reported (Cheesman, 2015).21 It found that the ‘highest’ Viv-value segments tended to be
(1) near the start of the scene, (2) spoken by the Duke of Venice, who dominates that scene, but appears
in no other, and (3) rhyming couplets (rather than blank verse or prose). There are twelve rhyming
couplets in the scene; two are speech segments; both were in the top ten of ninety-two Viv results. No
association was found between Viv value and perceptible attitudinal intensity, or any linguistic features.
We did find some high-Viv segments associated with specific cross-cultural translation challenges.
Highest Viv was a speech by Iago with the phrase ‘silly gentleman’, which provokes many different
paraphrases. But some lower-Viv segments present similar difficulties, on the face of it. There was no
clear correlation. Still, four hypotheses emerged for further research. Hypothesis 1: Based on rhyming
couplets having high Viv-value: retranslators diverge more when they have additional poetic-formal
constraints.22 Hypothesis 2: Based on finding (1) above: retranslators diverge more at the start of a text
or major chunk of text (i.e. at the start of a major task). Hypothesis 3: Based on finding (2) above:
retranslators diverge more in translating a very salient, local text feature in a structural chunk (in this
scene: the part of the Duke) and less in translating global text features (e.g. here: Othello, Desdemona,
Iago). Hypothesis 4 relates to ‘low’ Viv findings. It was somehow disappointing to find that speeches by
the hero Othello and the heroine Desdemona, including passages which generate much editorial and
critical discussion, had moderate, low, or very low Viv scores. Famous passages where Othello tells his
life story and how he fell in love with Desdemona, or where Desdemona defies her father and insists on
going to war with Othello, surely present key challenges for retranslators. Perhaps passages which have
been much discussed by commentators and editors pose less of a cognitive and interpretive challenge, as
the options are clearly established.23 This hypothesis could be investigated by marking up passages with
a metric based on the extent of associated annotation in editions and/or frequency of citation in other
corpora. For now, we have speculated that the hero’s and heroine’s speeches in this particular scene do
exhibit common attitudinal, not so much linguistic, but dramatic features. In the low-Viv segments, the
characters can be seen to be taking care to express themselves particularly clearly; even if very emotional,
they are controlling that emotion to control a dramatic situation. Perhaps translators respond to this ‘low
affect’ by writing less differently? But it is difficult to quantify such a text feature and so check Viv
results against any ‘ground truth’. There is another possible explanation: in the most ‘canonical’ parts of
the text (here: the hero’s and heroine’s parts), retranslators perhaps tread a careful line between
differentiating their work and limiting their divergence from prestigious precursors.24 Such ‘prestige
cringe’ would relate to the above-mentioned negative influence, or non-imitation of the most prestigious
translations (Section 3.4). Precursors act, paradoxically, as both negative and positive constraints on
retranslators. Hypothesis 4: in the most canonical constituent parts of a work, Viv is low, as retranslators
tend to combine willed distinctiveness with caution, limiting innovation. In the initial analysis, the groups
of speeches assigned highest and lowest Viv values had suspiciously similar lengths. Clearly the
normalization of Eddy calculations for segment length leaves T. Cheesman et al. 752 Digital Scholarship
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abstract/32/4/739/2669776 by guest on 03 July 2020 Table 2 ‘Viv values’ in two liners in Othello 1.3
generated by twenty German versions (continued) Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the
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be desired. The next and latest analysis focused on segments of similar length to investigate our
hypotheses. 4.3 ‘Viv’ in two liners Table 2 shows the grammatically complete two-line verse passages in
Othello 1.3, plus prose passages of equivalent length,25 in Viv value rank order. A subcorpus of twenty
translations was selected for better comparability.26 The text assigned to each major character part here is
reasonably representative of their overall part in the scene, counted in lines: Brabantio (sample eighteen
lines [nine couplets]/ total sixty-one lines) 0.3, Desdemona (10/31) 0.32, Duke (22/67) 0.33, Iago (14/65)
0.21, Othello (20/ 108) 0.19. Hypothesis 1 seems to be confirmed, though more work needs to be done to
prove it conclusively: high Viv value correlates with poetic-formal constraint. In the column ‘Form’ in
Table 2, blank verse is the default. Unsurprisingly, rhyming couplets appear mostly in the top half of the
table, including five of the top ten items. Translators enjoy responding to the formal challenge of rhyming
couplets in self-differentiating ways; and they must so respond, or else they very obviously plagiarize,
because these items are rare in the text and highly noticeable, for audiences or readers. Hypothesis 2 is
not confirmed: scanning the column ‘Running order’, there is no sign that translators differentiate their
work more at the start of the scene, as they embark on a new chunk of the task. That could have been
interesting for psycholinguistic and cognitive studies of translation (Halverson, 2008). Hypothesis 3
seems to be confirmed, but we need much more evidence to be sure we have discovered a general pattern.
Scanning the column ‘Speaker’, the Duke’s segments are more variously translated than those of other
speakers. Even if we exclude rhyming couplets, the Duke is over-represented in the upper part of the
table. Brabantio and Iago also have some very high-Viv lines, but their segments are distributed evenly up
and down the table. Not so with the Duke, who is the salient, local text feature in this scene and no other.
Table 2 Continued T. Cheesman et al. 754 Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2017
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2020 Hypothesis 4 also seems provisionally confirmed. Othello is strikingly low-Viv, mostly. Desdemona
tends to be low- to mid-Viv. Translations of their parts differ ‘less’ than other parts, at this scale. Why?
We do not know. It could be ‘prestige cringe’ (Section 4.2). But it could also be specific to this text.
Othello in particular refuses ‘affect’ in this scene, as he does throughout the first half of the play: he is in
command of everything, including his emotions. He echoes a much discussed line just spoken by
Desdemona (‘I saw Othello’s visage in his mind’, 1.3.250) when he says to the Duke and assembled
Senators that he wants her to go to war with him, but: I therefore beg it not, To please the palate of my
appetite, Nor to comply with heat—the young affects In me defunct—and proper satisfaction. But to be
free and bounteous to her mind: (...) (Othello 1.3.258–63) This is one of the play’s cruxes—passages
which editors deem corrupt and variously resolve (here, ‘me’ is often changed to ‘my’, ‘defunct’ to
‘distinct’, and the punctuation revised).27 Translators also resolve this passage variously, depending in
part on which edition(s) they work with; but—as measured by Viv—not very variously, compared with
other passages. Can it be that textual ‘affect’ is relatively less, because that is the kind of character, the
mind, the ‘virtue’ Othello is projecting? 5 Concluding Comments Findings which only confirmed what
was already known would be truly disappointing (though we do need some such confirmation, to have
any faith in digital tools). Digital literary studies should provoke thought. A classic example is Moretti’s
discovery of a rhythm of 25–30 years in the emergence and disappearance of C19 novelistic genres,
which he uneasily ascribed to a cycle of biological-sociocultural ‘generations’: I close on a note of
perplexity: faute de mieux, some kind of generational mechanism seems the best way to account for the
regularity of the novelistic cycle—but ‘generation’ is itself a very questionable concept. Clearly, we must
do better. (Moretti, 2003, p. 82) So too with ‘Translation Arrays’ and ‘Version Variation Visualization’:
we must do better. We wanted to demonstrate that this sort of approach opens up interesting possibilities
for future research.28 Of course one big difference between Moretti’s work and ours so far is one of
scale. His team works with tens or hundreds of thousands of texts and metadata items. We are working
with a few dozen versions of one play, in one target language, because that is what we have got,29 and
only a fragment of the play, because we chose to make the texts publicly accessible, which entails
copyright restrictions (and some expense). Our approach requires time-consuming text curation
(correction of digital surrogates against page images),30 permission acquisition, and manual segmentation
and alignment processes (more sophisticated approaches including machine learning will speed these
up).31 Moretti experimentally ‘operationalizes’ predigital critical concepts such as ‘character-space’ or
‘tragic collision’ (Moretti, 2013), by measuring quantities in texts: digital proxies or analogues. Eddy and
Viv, on the other hand, are measuring relational corpus properties which have no obvious pre-digital
analogue. What could they be proxies for? Eddy makes visible certain kinds of resemblance and
difference, certain sequences, patterns of influence and distinctiveness. Critically understanding these still
depends on understanding ‘para- and meta-texts’ (Li, Zhang and Liu, 2011). Viv’s contribution is even
less certain: we won’t know whether its results correspond to anything ‘real’ about translated texts’
qualities, or those of translations, or of translators, until we have studied many more cases. Eddy and Viv
analysis, as implemented, is crude. We can imagine training next-generation Eddy on human-evaluated
variant translations. We can envisage experiments with lemmatization, stopword exclusion, parsing,
morphosyntactical tagging,32 diverse automated segment definitions, text analytics, and plugging in other
corpora for richer analyses. When does a translator’s use of language mimic a Multi-retranslations Digital
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style, when is it innovative, in what way? We can map texts to Wordnets, historical dictionaries and
thesauri. We can model topics, analyse sentiments. We can explore consistency and coherence within
translations, usage of less common words, word-classes, word-sets, grammatical, rhetorical, poetic,
prosodic, metrical, metaphorical features, and so on. We can generate intertextual and phylogenetic trees.
We can perhaps adjust Viv for historical sequence, and weight for the complex effects of influence,
imitation, and intentional nonimitation. Given multi-lingual parallel corpora, we can project a cross-
cultural Viv. The more sophisticated the analysis, the greater its scope, the greater the cost of text
preparation and annotation, and the greater the challenge in creating visual interfaces which offer value to
non-programmers. For text resources on a scale which might justify such investment, we must next look
to scripture. Then we will need experts in God’s domain, as well. Funding This work was supported by
Swansea University (Research Incentive Fund and Bridging the Gaps), and the main phase of software
development was funded by a 6-month Research Development Grant in 2012 under the Digital
Transformations theme of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), reference AH/J012483/1.
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Notes 1. ‘Version Variation Visualization: Translation Array Prototype 1’ at
http://www.delightedbeauty.org/ vvvclosed. Further project links: www.tinyurl.com/ vvvex. Alternative
prototype tools were also built: see Geng et al., 2011, 2015. See further: Cheesman, 2015, 2016, and
Cheesman et al., 2016. 2. The existence of multilingual (re)translations can indicate both popularity and
prestige, as in publishers’ blurbs for novels ‘translated into X languages’. For the Stanford Literary Lab,
translations index popularity (AlgeeHewitt et al., 2016, p. 3). But ‘multiple’ retranslations often also
mean prestige: some are included in institutional curricula, reviewed in ‘high-brow’ media, etc. 3. For
example, 1,096 versions of the Bible in 781 languages at www.bible.com or approx. 170 versions of the
Quran in forty-seven languages at http://al-quran. info. See Long (2007) and Hutchings (2015). 4. Venuti
(2004) focuses on retranslations which deliberately challenge pre-existing translations. Our corpus is not
so restricted. 5. See also Wang and Li (2012): digitally supported analysis of two Chinese translations of
James Joyce’s Ulysses. 6. For details of the forty plus German texts used, see www.delightedbeauty.org
(‘German’ page). 7. ‘If virtue no delighted beauty lack, / Your son-in-law is far more fair than black’
(Othello 1.3.287–8). Multilingual translations of this are crowd-sourced by Cheesman at:
www.delightedbeauty.org. 8. This remains less easy than we would wish. Roos is working with Eran
Hadas on a more user-friendly corpus-creation, segmenting and aligning interface, in the course of a study
of English translations of the Hebrew Haggadah from the C18 to now, also using tools such as TRAViz
(Ja¨nicke et al., 2015) and Word2Dream (Hadas, 2015). See Roos, 2015, and
http://www.tinyurl.com/JewishDH. 9. Cheesman collated MIT’s ‘Moby’ Shakespeare (http://
shakespeare.mit.edu) with Neill’s edition (2006) for added dialogue and modern spellings. We chose to
sample Othello 1.3 partly because the English text is stable between editions, at the level of speeches and
speech prefixes, if not at the level of wording (except at 1.3.275–6—see Neill, 2006, p. 232); also for its
variety of major character parts. 10. http://www.juxtasoftware.org. Juxta helps map phylogeny, with the
aim of (re)constructing an original or an authoritative edition. We cannot study retranslations with any
such aim. There is no right translation. There may be a canonical translation, but users feel free to revise
it, because it is ‘just’ a translation. 11. The potential value of this interface to support explorations of text-
analytic features is illustrated by the ‘Macbthe’ interface (Thiel, 2015): users explore a zoomable map of
‘Macbeth’ with a log likelihood lemma table, following the impetus of Hope and Witmore (2014). See
also Thiel’s (2010) earlier work. 12. See: Eder et al. (2016) and stylometric translations analyses by
Rybicki (2012) and Rybicki and Heydel (2013). 13. On the ‘fine line between retranslation and revision’
see: Paloposki and Koskinen, 2010. There is no research on Wolff, or indeed on most of the translators
here. 14. Cheesman named Eddy after (1) a formula he primitively devised as ‘PD’, adapting tf.idf
formulae (see: Cheesman and the VVV Project Team, 2012, p. 3), (2) his brother Eddy, and (3) the idea
that retranslations are metaphorical ‘eddies’ in cultural historical flows. 15. Formulae available: A:
Euclidean distance; B: Cheesman’s original, primitive formula; C: Viv as standard deviation of Eddy; D:
Dice’s coefficient; E: angular distance. 16. ‘A normalisation needs to be applied to compensate for the
effect of text length, [so] we calculated Multi-retranslations Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol.
32, No. 4, 2017 759 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-abstract/32/4/739/2669776
by guest on 03 July 2020 variation for a large number of base text segments of varying lengths, then
plotted average [Euclidean] Eddy value against segment length. We found a logarithmic relationship
between the two, and arrived at a normalisation function that gives an acceptably consistent average Eddy
value regardless of text length’ (Flanagan in Cheesman et al., 2012–13). Eddy formula E (angular
distance) appears to address the length normalization problem to some extent. 17. Stephen Ramsay
commented on the ‘graceful and illuminating’ interface that ‘prompts various kinds of ‘‘noticing’’ and
encourages an essentially playful and exploratory approach to the ‘‘data’’’ (personal correspondence, 26
May 2014). 18. Neill glosses ‘virtue’ as ‘moral excellence’, ‘manly strength and courage’, and ‘inherent
nature’ at 1.3.287; ‘power, strength of character’ at 1.3.315 (Neill, 2006, p. 233 and 235—see there also
for ‘fig’). 19. Roos (2015) uses Eddy and Viv to explore bowdlerization in English Haggadah texts. 20.
Zeynek died in 1948; his translations are undated. 21. Stylometry and common sense recommended
narrowing the corpus to give less ‘noisy’ results. I excluded prose study versions, adaptations with
extensive omissions, contractions, expansions and additions, C18 and C19 versions, including all versions
of Baudissin (1832), leaving fifteen versions: Gundolf (1909), Schwarz (1941), Zeynek (?-1948), Flatter
(1952), Rothe (1956), Schaller (1959), Schro¨der (1962), Fried (1972), Swaczynna (1972), Laube (1978),
Ru¨diger (1983), Motschach (1992), Gu¨nther (1995), Buhss (1996), Wachsmann (2005). 22. The norm in
German Shakespeare translation is that formal variation in the original (prose, blank verse, rhymed verse,
or another metrical scheme) should be replicated or analogously marked. Roos (2015) reports similar
findings for the Haggadah: rhyming verse sections have higher Viv, if translators use rhyme. 23. We
thank a DSH referee for pointing out this possibility. 24. Roos (2015) similarly finds lower Viv value in
Bible quotations (the most canonical segments) in Haggadah translations. 25. Based on the two-line verse
segments found manually, the length range was set at 60–100 characters. Iago’s lengthy prose speeches
include more examples than were segmented and aligned. 26. Baudissin (five versions, 1855–2000) was
added to the corpus previously used, to recognize this translation’s enduring relevance. 27. See: Neill,
2006, p. 231. The MIT text (from an 1860s edition) is quoted, but with Neill’s line-numbering. 28. We
also envisage training applications. An interface enabling trainee translators and trainers to compare
versions would have great practical value, as an adjunct to a computer-assisted translation system and/ or
an assessment and feedback system. 29. Shakespeare retranslations are found at scattered sites. Larger,
curated corpora are accessible in Czech and Russian: c.400 aligned texts (twenty-two versions of Hamlet)
at http://www.phil.muni.cz/kapradi; c.200 texts (twelve versions of Hamlet) at http://rus-shake.
ru/translations. 30. The term ‘surrogate’ is taken from Mueller (2003–14). Ideally our system would
include page images. 31. Roos is working on this with Eran Hadas. 32. Difficulties include in-text
variants (e.g. in critical editions, or translators’, directors’, and actors’ copies) and orthographic variations
(archaic and variously modernized forms; ad hoc forms fitting metrical rules; other non-standard forms).
Rather than standardize texts to facilitate comparisons, the machine should learn to recognize underlying
equivalences. T. Cheesman et al. 760 Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2017
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2020

Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

By contrast with the linear progression model that informs the retranslation hypothesis put forward by
Berman and others, later research on retranslation portrays it as a field marked by a constant struggle
between individuals and institutions for the control and production of new interpretations. Venuti
maintains that retranslations undertaken with the awareness of a pre-existing translation ‘justify
themselves by establishing their difference from one or more previous versions’ (2003: 25). This
difference can be traced in the retranslation strategies that inscribe competing interpretations formed
on the assumption that previous versions are no longer acceptable (ibid.: 26). This assumption is
usually based on social or ideological premises, rather than an evident linguistic or literary lack in the
previous translations. Venuti offers the example of English translations of Thomas Mann’s works,
which became a site of open rivalry between academia and commercial publishers in 1995, with each
party defending a competing interpretation of Mann’s source texts (2003: 27). Pym draws a distinction
between two types of retranslations. ‘Passive retranslations’ are separated by geographical distance or
time and do not have a bearing on one another (1998: 82), whereas ‘active retranslations’ share the
same cultural and temporal location and are indicative of ‘disagreements over translation strategies’,
challenging the validity of previous translations (ibid.: 82-3). A number of case studies have revealed
the resistance and tension that mark active retranslations. In her study of the Turkish translations of
works by Roland Barthes, Susam-Sarajeva (2003) argues that retranslations carried out during the
fifteen years between 1975 and 1990 were not prompted by linguistic change or the ageing of previous
translations; rather, they were initiated by translators who were trying to create an indigenous Turkish
discourse on literary criticism. She maintains that ‘retranslations may also emerge as a result of a
synchronous struggle in the receiving system to create the target discourse into which these
translations will be incorporated’ (ibid.: 5). In the same study, Susam- Sarajeva draws attention to an area of retranslation
that has been largely ignored, namely the ‘non-existence’……..