Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.768

AUTHOR: Delphine Grass
TITLE: Translation as Creative–Critical Practice
SERIES TITLE: Elements in Translation and Interpreting
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Marijana Javornik Čubrić

SUMMARY

Elements in Translation and Interpreting presents innovative studies on the theory, practice and pedagogy of translation and interpreting. In Translation as Creative-Critical Practice, Delphine Grass challenges the separation between practice and theory in translation studies by analyzing creative-critical translation experiments.

Traditionally, translation studies as a discipline has been organized around a clear separation between theory and practice. According to the author, creative-critical writing is a growing field at the crossroads between research and creative practice which seeks to use a wide range of genres and media to engage with writing about art and literature.

In the Introduction, the author asserts that she aims to attempt to deconstruct the relationship between theory and practice in translation studies by exploring translation practices as a form of critical thinking on the nature of translation. She argues that creative-critical translation is an experimental approach to translation practice as a method of research into wider theoretical concepts pertaining to translation equivalents and the differences between languages and cultures.

The volume is divided into three parts, followed by a Conclusion. In the first part titled The Translation Memoir as Autotheory, the author discusses how the division between practice and theory in translation comes under scrutiny in ‘autotheoretical’ translation memoirs predominantly written by women, in which they explore their experience of the relationship between practice and theory in translation. The term ‘autotheory’ appeared in the 2010s and it refers to writings in which memoir and autobiography are fused with theory and philosophy. This combination of theory, philosophy and autobiography is indebted to feminist writing and activism. In Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism, Lauren Fournier extended the meaning of the term, stating that it refers to the integration of theory and philosophy with autobiography, the body, and other so-called personal and explicitly subjective modes and applying it to other disciplines and practices and arguing that the divisions between art and life, or theory and practice, were blurred by many artists a long time ago. Grass suggests that autotheoretical works challenge the neutrality of the critical ‘I’, which judges translations on the grounds of invisibility and transparency, challenging the position of authority of theory over the practice by confronting this distinction with translators’ social existence. She analyzes several translation memoirs by different authors, such as Corinna Gepner, Kate Briggs and Diane Meur. The translation memoir by Kate Briggs is called The Little Art and in it, she explores her approaches to translating Roland Barthes’ works from French into English. The little art from the title refers to an art attending to all the small differences, and Grass concludes that in this context, translation can be redefined as a subject or task with the attentiveness it requires. She also acutely observes that Briggs experiments with language in order to translate her experience of translating Barthes. In her translation memoir Entre les Rives Diane Meur, a writer and translator, explores her translational practice and offers an example of receiving a letter criticizing her translation from the writer whose work she was translating. The letter made her realize that she was the one signing the translation and therefore the one responsible for her translation choices. Grass observes that a translation in her name but which did not belong to her would be a way of abdicating her critical agency as a translator.

The second part is titled Performative Translations. The term performativity stems from J. L. Austin’s theory of performativity, also known as speech act theory, in which Austin distinguished between statements that can be true or false, and performatives that cannot. A performative is an utterance which performs an action. Grass argues that translation has also the ability to perform its own translatedness by acting out the transformative encounters of the source text with another language, culture and temporality. This means that some translations have performed themselves as artistic practice, or in other words, it means the translations that force us to pay attention to the artfulness of the translation. In this part Grass analyzes the works by Charles Bernstein, Erin Moure, Karoline Bergvall and Anne Carson. Among other examples, she examines Charles Bernstein’s poem ‘A Test of Poetry’ and its translations into several languages. The poem is based on a letter written by the Chinese translator to Bernstein while attempting to translate his works and is composed of questions to the author about the meaning of certain expressions in his poems. The poem and its translations seem to test the idea that poetry cannot be translated which is attributed to Robert Frost. Bernstein responds that poetry is what is found in translation. While examining Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s works, the author notes that rather than filling the gaps behind the fragmented archival materials, Carson performs the translator’s desire for the source text through the framing and foregrounding of gaps, silences and absences in the target texts. The analyzed examples show that performative translations show source and target cultures as changeable places which translation can transform.

The third part deals with Transtopias, defined by the author as translation art and literary translations which use experimental forms of translations to challenge normative representations of place and identity funneled by the nation. Grass warns that, although the term echoes the term ‘utopia’, transtopias do not refer to translation in utopian terms. According to the author’s viewpoint, transtopian works make visible the paradoxes inherent to translation conceived as the management of stable, pre-existing differences. As a creative-critical approach to geographies of belonging, transtopias remind us that translations can rewrite pre-existing differences.

EVALUATION

In this concise and well-written volume, Delphine Grass encourages the reader to re-examine the established role of a translator as an intercultural expert and go-between whose task is to transmit a message more or less passively, and effectively shows that a translator is much more than that. She reminds us that every translation is different and that translators have ceased to be invisible or unmentioned. It is a fact that many people choose books based not only on the author but the translator as well. Some translations are truly artistic and literary subjects in their own right, as the author reminds us. What she calls performative translations are those that make translations visible as art. Transtopias are translations that go far beyond bridging existing differences between target texts and source texts; they are the ones that contest and rewrite these differences.

Grass challenges the traditional postulates of the field of translation studies, aiming to inspire renewed activity in translation as a field of political and theoretical engagement through practice. One of the most inspiring ideas that she offers is that it is possible to view translation failure as a site of cultural production and resistance. In her concluding remarks, Grass advocates for the pedagogical applications of translation as creative-critical practice in current curricula.

The greatest value of this well-written and highly interesting volume is its ability to make the reader contemplate the nature of translation and the role of translators, reminding us that some of the greatest literature we have all ever read was probably translated for us. Anyone interested in new approaches to translation studies and translation as a creative and critical practice would benefit from reading this volume.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Marijana Javornik Čubrić is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb and a translator. She holds a PhD in legal linguistics and has authored several LSP textbooks.