This article was downloaded by: [190.250.154.

15]
On: 08 November 2013, At: 07:23
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Translation Review
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrv20

What Is Translation?
Rainer Schulte
Published online: 10 Sep 2012.

To cite this article: Rainer Schulte (2012) What Is Translation?, Translation Review, 83:1, 1-4, DOI:
10.1080/07374836.2012.703119
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2012.703119

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

WHAT IS TRANSLATION?
Rainer Schulte

Everybody who makes something new does harm to something old.

Downloaded by [190.250.154.15] at 07:23 08 November 2013

Igor Stravinsky

To understand translation in an immediately accessible form, one might start with George Steiners
statement from his study of translation After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation: All acts
of communication are acts of translation. In an extended sense, one can say that we are all constantly engaged in some form of a translation process. Our speech, our perceptions, our ideas, our
facial expressions, our movements, and our interpretations are all products of a complex translation
dynamic. There is hardly any daily activity that does not involve some form of translation. We must
consider verbal, visual, and musical interpretations as acts of translation. In communication with other
people, we translate sound and physical gestures to understand the full content of a conversation. The
actor translates the spoken word into the performance on the stage as sound, gesture, and movement.
The pianist translates the notes of the score to the piano, and the conductor translates the spirit of an
orchestral score for the musicians, who in turn give life to the notes they read in the scores. The same
can be said about writers, composers, and visual and multimedia artists, who translate their visions
into the possibilities of their respective medium; not to mention the translation that takes place from
one medium to the next: novels into lm, musical sounds into visual images, and images into musical
sounds. It would be dicult to nd human activities that are not in one form or another involved in
the act of translation.
What is translation? is immediately connected to the other question, Why does translation
matter? Edith Grossman has eloquently discussed that aspect in her recently published study by the
same title. A short quote from the book gives the reader a sense of how important translation is for
any civilization: Translation expands our ability to explore through literature the thoughts and feelings of people from another society or another time. It permits us to savor the transformation of the
foreign into the familiar and for a brief time to live outside our own skins, our own preconceptions
and misconceptions. It expands and deepens our world, our consciousness, in countless, indescribable ways.1 Translation does matter in a global world where nations and languages interact on a
daily basis. However, the concept of translation and the practice of translation are still being treated
as stepchildren in the academic world, and the general audience has little idea of what is involved
in the delicate process of carrying texts from a foreign language into English. Part of that problem
resides with the translators themselveswe as translators have failed to educate the public. The same
might be said for the diculties that audiences encounter when faced with modern music. To a great
extent, works of twentieth-century composers are not very accessible to the listener. Like the translators, composers and music critics have failed to provide audiences with the necessary skills and tools
to open up entrances into the works of modern composers.
To better understand the conceptual frame of translation, the image of the bridge can illuminate the inherent function of translation. As we cross the bridge from one language or culture to
another, a series of considerations come into play. We begin the crossing of the bridge with the social

Translation Review 83: 14, 2012

Copyright The Center for Translation Studies
ISSN: 0737-4836 print/2164-0564 online
DOI: 10.1080/07374836.2012.703119

Downloaded by [190.250.154.15] at 07:23 08 November 2013

RAINER SCHULTE

and cultural baggage of the original cultural landscape. As we progress across the bridge, preparations have to be made to be ready for the new landscape on the other side of the river. The other side
is the unknown, the foreign that we try to understand, interpret, and communicate with. Yet, we
cannot assume that the landscape on the other side has been shaped by the same cultural, historical,
and social traditions as the language of origin. Our premises of interaction within our own traditions
of language and culture are in all probability not the same as those we will encounter in the foreign
landscape on the other side of the river. In view of that reality, one could create the maxim: translation
is always driven by transformation and a never-ending dialogue with the other.
In the process of crossing the bridge, a mental transformation has to take place. We have to
understand that the ways we orchestrate our daily lives, our approaches to cultural phenomena,
and our reactions to social behavior are probably not the same as we leave the bridge and enter
a new language and cultural environment. In other words, we have to undergo a transformation
and not take our ways of thinking and understanding for granted if we want to nd entrance into
a new culture and a new mode of interpreting the world. In that sense, we can say that translation is
neither the original language nor the receptor language. Translation is that which happens in the
crossing of the bridge, that which is transformed in the act of crossing. We need to stay open to
the foreign to initiate dialogue and understanding. On a more philosophical level, the concept of
translation comes closest to the pulse of the present, since no two moments are the same, and we
have no choice but to translate ourselves, ideally speaking, continuously, from one moment into the
next.
In a deeper philosophical sense, translation deals with the challenge of carrying complex
moments across language and cultural borders, and, therefore, translators always navigate in realms
of uncertainty. Words are very fragile, and no word can ever fully express the nature of a situation
or an emotion. Furthermore, as soon as a word enters into contact with another word, certain new
associations of meaning are created that transcend the original denition of a word. Therefore, each
translation is the making of yet another meaning that comes to take shape through the interpretive
approach and insight of the translator. The premise of all translations remains the same. Each translation is the variation of yet another translation, which excludes the notion of ever arriving at the only
denitive translation. The dialogue with the text continues with each reading and, therefore, with
each attempt at a translation. This recognition constitutes the basic challenge and also the frustration
of the translation process. The challenge lies in the hope of uncovering a new interpretive insight that
has not previously been seen by the translator and therefore stimulates the creative imagination of
the translator (and ultimately of the reader). The frustration derives from the intuitive comprehension
of words, images, and metaphors and the experience of paralysis for not being able to nd correspondences in the new language. Challenge and frustration speak to each other in the daily life of every
translator. Ultimately, translation lives on the attempt to produce analogous correspondences and
not identical ones.
There is a slight dierence between the writer and the translator. The former starts with a blank
page that will have to rely on the imaginative powers of the writer, whereas the translator starts with
an already existing page that has to be recreated in the new language. If the writers activity could
be called creative, then the translators activity would be re-creative. The translators emotional
and interpretive involvement with the text is no less intense than the writers struggle with the blank
page. One might call their work an attempt to reach silence after having tasted the fruits of total
involvement in the imaginative creation and re-creation of texts.
Translations come to life through the interpretive perspective of the translator. Yet, one has to
keep in mind that there is no such thing as the only denitive translation of a text. Situations in a
source-language text will never nd an identical reproduction in the receptor language. As there are
variations of interpretations, there are variations of translations with each new translation of the same
text. Or, otherwise formulated, the insight of not being able to produce the total reconstruction of a

Downloaded by [190.250.154.15] at 07:23 08 November 2013

WHAT IS TRANSLATION?

foreign text in a new language prompts translators to bring yet another interpretive perspective to
the work under consideration.
A short excursion into the presence of multiple translations will further clarify the importance of
the translators interpretive perspective and how it aects the reception and understanding of a foreign work transplanted into English. The performance of multiple interpretations is not restricted to
the verbal realm. One only needs to think of the numerous musical or theatrical performances of artistic works. Rainer Maria Rilkes poem The Panther and Charles Baudelaires poem Correspondences
have both been translated more than a dozen times. We should also keep in mind the many translations of bible verses. For a moment, it is necessary to reect on the tremendous importance
and power of having access to multiple translations and performances. The dynamics of languages
change, words assume new semantic associations, and the aesthetic and emotional needs of human
beings vacillate. Each translator responds to those variations and tries to revitalize the inherent power
through the very pulse of the present language. Therefore, each new translation engages the reader
to re-enter the poem from a dierent angle and experience the poem anew. When a word of the original language is translated dierently by ve translators of a poem, then the reader is prompted not
only to recognize the dierences, but also to contemplate how each interpretive perspective by the
translator widens the understanding of the poem.
The same comments can be made about musical performances. A new interpretation of J. S.
Bachs Italian Concerto renes the listening abilities of people. Every dierence in a new performance
will heighten the listeners level of attention and thereby bring them each time closer to the work
itself. Every new translation of a poem or new performance of the musical work renes the interpretive
sensitivity and perhaps the enjoyment of the reader or listener.

*****
The translations of verbal, visual, and musical texts have gained clearly dened boundaries in the past
decades as to their critical and practical dimensions. Many scholarly monographs and articles have
been dedicated to these topics. At times, some of the scholarly studies have perhaps reached a somewhat high level of abstraction that does not necessarily provide particularly helpful guidelines for the
translators art and craft. It can be assumed that the translator is the most qualied person to talk
about the practice of translation and its theoretical dimensions. In the future, more translators should
be encouraged to reect on their own translation processes in critical language and certainly be motivated to review translations. The eld of reviewing translations in both journals and newspapers can
only be characterized as totally inadequate. Historically speaking, the most illuminating insights about
musical and literary works have generally been drafted by writers and composers.
The discussions about translation thinking, translation methodologies, and the art and craft of
translation will continue as a major force to promote intercultural communication in a global world.
A glance into the immediate future, however, will require thought about how digital technology will
change the eld of translation studies, rst in the realm of text interpretations and then in the way
readers and translators will interact with texts. Digital technology oers something that was not available before. Philosophically speaking, translation constantly traces connections between one and the
other, between one language and another, and, therefore, is built on movement. Until now, it was
not feasible to record that movement. With the ascent of digital technology, not only can the movement of the translation process be recorded and xed in some tangible form, but also the reader can
move from a xed position to a modifying interaction with the text. Translation as movement will be
reconrmed as a basic concept of translation, and the movement can be recorded through the digital
technology for the rst time in the history of translation studies.
The digital universe allows us to present the interpretation of texts in the most comprehensive
way. We can create objects that contain verbal, visual, musical, and sound components that will allow

RAINER SCHULTE

a person to approach the object from various perspectives to create a multiple sensory experience.
Thus, the digital technology allows us to create a more total understanding of a work and, at the same
time, a possibility to establish a continuous interaction with the work. Perhaps the concept of the
Gesamtkunstwerk will nd a new reality as a Gesamtverstndnis of a work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rainer Schulte is editor of Translation Review. He is the founder of the Center for Translation Studies at The
University of Texas at Dallas and co-founder of the American Literary Translators Association.

NOTE

Downloaded by [190.250.154.15] at 07:23 08 November 2013

1.

Grossman, Why Translation Matters, 14.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
GROSSMAN , EDITH . Why Translation Matters. New Haven: Yale University Press.