Deutscher & Schleiermacher Readings – Aaron

I have heard the theory that languages dictate the way we think a number of times throughout my life, and I have always been extremely skeptical. Language is a way of communicating our thoughts; it is nonsensical to say that our thoughts are a way to inform language. After all, it is nonsensical to say that without language, we would have no thoughts.

Thankfully, I have also heard this theory discredited a few times before, and I am glad that Deutscher discredits it too. Of course, it is not hard to believe that language does have some influence on the way we view the world, and Deutscher shows that this is indeed the case. But I do think it is too simplistic to say that some of these characteristics, such as gendering objects, or viewing the world through absolute cardinal directions versus relative directions, are influenced solely by language itself. I think it is equally valid to say that these habits are simply ingrained in the culture to begin with, and the language simply reflects those traits.

Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between, that both language and culture are intertwined, and not separate. These traits are as much part of the culture of its speakers as much as it is part of their language, and these traits both reinforce each other and evolve with each other. For example, a speaker of Guugu Yimithirr uses cardinal directions not just because it is enforced by their language, but because it is a part of their culture to do so, and it is reflected in their language. Of course, learning that language is how that way of thinking gets engrained in the speaker's mind.

Perhaps that's a pedantic nuance, but it seems to me significant enough to mention.

Schleiermacher & Deutscher - Dawson

 I actually vaguely remember reading the Deutscher article back in high school.  The analogy of the Guugu Yimithirr seeing the world through cardinal directions has lived with me ever since.  Interestingly, this article really reminds me of what we have been learning in LJ 410 - The History of the Japanese Language.  Most likely, it was first the culture that changed to see the world in this way, for some cultural evolution or practical purpose.  Due to this, the language then slowly followed suit over generations, each change in the language reinforcing that way of thinking as opposed to other ways of thinking, much like a feedback loop.  Of course, that is just conjecture based on what we have learned in LJ410 about language change, and what I learned studying the changes in first person pronoun use in terms of class and gender over time for LJ410.  It really is fascinating though.  It is just as he said - the main difference in the way we see the world from different languages is based in what our language obliges us to think.  Although I do believe that the obligation likely comes first, and then the language change follows, locking in the obligation.  For example, the Japanese language started out almost entirely neutral in both gender and status (we see only fragments of Keigo having developed by the Nara Period, mostly used only for the highest elites and gods), but as Japanese society became more stratified, the language shifted to become more stratified as well, locking in stark differences via politeness and class based dialects.  And as gender roles became more defined, particularly in the Edo Period, gender based differences appeared where they did not exist previously.  Then, these get locked in, and reinforced by the language itself, since now people are obliged to think in that way.  Although, they can always change back.  As we are seeing now, hierarchical based differences died out during and post-Meiji period as the feudal society was abolished, and now even gender based differences are dying out, as equality becomes a societal value.  So our language does shape the way we think about our world, but the reverse is also true.  If we change the way we think about our world, our language follows suit - and this is really quite intuitive when you think about it!

The second reading is such a large burst of knowledge wrapped in hard to read 19th century prose that it is a bit hard to digest it all.  The biggest thing I really latched onto was his notion that trying too hard to make the translation of the foreign language sound natural can 'damage' the native language, and that there are 'bad' and 'good' language changes, and being sloppy can make the 'bad' changes occur.  I suppose he means that by translating these foreign sentence structures and phrasings in certain ways to make them work while not necessarily being fully correct in the native language, these can be absorbed and change the language itself.  This is also something we discussed in LJ 410.  Japanese has changed dramatically in many ways over the past 100 years due to the influence of direct English translations entering the nation.  But I actually strongly disagree with Schleiermacher here, in that this is not a bad thing!  At all!  Language change is natural.  Languages will borrow and change from the influence of other languages.  As any historical linguist will tell you, this is a perfectly natural process that is neither good nor bad, and thus is not something the translator should necessarily concern themselves with. This notion of 'purity' in languages is a foolish, outdated notion, and strongly reflects the fact that he lived and wrote this 200 years ago.  Schleiermacher’s worry makes sense within his nationalist-romantic framework, where language is seen as a cultural treasure requiring protection, but there is a reason that view no longer holds any water in modern linguistics.  There is absolutely no 'pure' or 'correct' form of any language.  And any language can handle these changes, regardless of how 'flexible' the language is, no matter if Schleiermacher claims otherwise.  Languages evolve in complex, advanced ways.  If a language cannot 'handle' a change, then either that change won't be adopted, or the language will adapt in the ways necessary to adopt it.  This was basically the ABC 101s of historical linguistics in that it was the very first thing we learned in LJ 410.  I believe that you can represent the foreignness of the language and of the original author's worldview and themes and imagery and way of thinking without worrying about this.  You can do that and still make it an enjoyable, natural enough sounding read in the native language.  

Once society is open to foreign ideas, like he said, readers will be able to appreciate the foreignness via word choice, sentence structures, and cultural ideas present in the translated text.  There is no additional need to avoid certain sentence structures and word choices and cultural ideas for need of avoiding this 'poisoning' of the original language.  In fact, it seems like he wants his cake and to eat it too, in that he emphasizes very heavily the need to keep this foreignness, yet in the same exact section fearmongers about this 'poisoning!'  I think it's perfectly fine to express some of the foreignness in the way that you structure sentences or paragraphs.  I think many readers will appreciate that, depending on the medium, if they are sufficiently open to foreign ideas to enjoy translations, which Schleiermacher deems necessary for translations to be successful in the first place.  And if that ends up changing the native language, I do not think that is a bad thing, whatsoever.  I would say that the translator does have the right to toy with the native language if it suits the needs of making a better translation that gives a feeling closer to the original - as long as the result remains readable and stylistically acceptable for the medium.  But yes, it is obviously impossible to do this 'perfectly,' and no matter what, especially for people who know the foreign language as a second language, they will tend towards their native language, thus losing nuance.  That is an inevitability.  There are language barriers even between people who speak the same language!  Also, while things involving more culture might be harder to translate, I do not think that immediately equals impossible.  They are absolutely still translatable.  It is just that the resulting translation would require its audience to be very open to foreign ideas, and would inevitably have a lower ceiling of quality (loss of nuance drastically increases) than other pieces of work.  None of this is to say I disagree with Schleiermacher's other points.  He brings up a lot of very valuable theory relevant to translation, and I have to say that I do agree with everything else.  I just very firmly disagree with him on this particular point, and felt compelled to point out how his view on that merely stems from an outdated view of language.  In short, Schleiermacher’s fear of linguistic damage reflects outdated ideas of linguistic purity, whereas modern linguistics sees change as natural. His broader translation theory remains valuable, but this particular concern does not hold up under contemporary linguistic understanding.

I do apologize for writing such a long post...  I got a little carried away...

Dawson Maska

Thoughts on readings - Elaine

Reading Guy Deutscher’s “You Are What You Speak” and Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “On the Different Methods of Translating” made me reflect on how language not only describes the world but quietly builds it. In Deutscher’s essay, I was fascinated by his argument that our mother tongue does not limit what we can think, but rather what we must constantly pay attention to. His examples—like how some Aboriginal languages use cardinal directions instead of left or right—made me realize how language trains perception. It reminded me that speaking a language is not just communication; it is living inside a certain worldview.

Schleiermacher’s essay connected this idea to translation. His distinction between moving the reader toward the writer (foreignization) and the writer toward the reader (domestication) helped me see translation as a form of negotiation between minds shaped by different linguistic habits. I was particularly struck by how Gregory Rabassa’s translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude embodies Schleiermacher’s ideal: he lets English readers feel the rhythm and strangeness of the writer's world instead of smoothing it into something familiar. Reading the two texts together made me see that understanding across languages is always partial, but that partiality is what makes it human. Language both separates and connects us, shaping how we see, translate, and imagine one another.

Schleiermacher & Deutscher - Oscar

I found Schleiermacher's descriptions of his two purported methods of translation - the idea of the translator as a middleman, either pulling the reader closer to the author or placing the author closer to the reader - to be a nice encapsulation of the various concerns, obstacles, and techniques discussed in many readings beforehand. Plenty of agonizing over impossible choices, struggles over the expression of something that simply isn't possible in another language, and even fighting with the reading public over what is considered a valid or accessible translation. However, one thing I hadn't seen as much in our readings was the discussion over personal bias: "not letting himself slip, even unconsciously, into a pertinacious one-sidedness because his inclinations bid him favor one artistic element above all the others!"

Considering this with Deutscher's articles over the influence of language over our personal way of thought, it seems that it might be impossible to ever accurately convey an author's primary image without fraying edges or off-centering - Deutscher's examples of differing gendered views and perceptions of space through geographic vs. egocentric systems tell us that while speakers of these languages are not bereft of other concepts, they are predisposed to consider the world around them in those terms. Therefore, for example, when translating a Spanish text into English, the Spanish speaker would need to go against that inherent method of thought and replace all inanimate object genders with "it" - however, that removes an entire plane of how the author perceives the world, and how that perception affects the work itself. Even if all inanimate objects kept their respective gender markers, would it even be able to convey the same expression experienced by Spanish speakers to English speakers, considering how native English speakers would never have developed those tinted glasses to perceive the world through?

Schleiermacher and Deutscher -- Alex

 Schleiermacher claims there are only two ways of translation: bringing the reader to the author by preserving the "foreignness" of the text at the cost of an "smoothness" in the target language, or bringing the author to the reader by rewriting the text in the target language. He claims the latter option is only suitable for "light" texts, and "real" translation must "reveal the foreign" -- doing the second approach for "serious" texts only undermines the integrity of both languages. 

However, I think the Deutscher article suggests that both approaches have major limitations due to the different structures of languages. He gives an example with Matses, which requires the speaker to specify how the learned the information they are conveying. If someone were translating from Matses to English, it would be easy: the translation would read "I heard that..." or "I saw...", etc. based on the original. Going the other way, however, is hard. If I said "the chicken crossed the road", how would a Matses translator know how I acquired that information? They must know, otherwise they risk misrepresenting information, a.k.a. lying. This isn't a question of bringing who to who or writing in who's voice -- it is a problem of integrity and . If Matses is too "niche" of language, Turkish has the same language structure, therefore the problem is "real". 

Nonetheless, I think Schleiermacher's first approach does do "better" at handling these differences than the second approach because it takes in and "allows" these differences to make the translation unnatural. For example, the way how gendered pronouns shape their descriptors -- a strong bridge VS. a beautiful bridge -- this may sound unnatural in another language, but it makes grammatical sense -- there's nothing "fundamentally wrong", if you will. It's like allowing errors to exist and claiming it's "part of the strategy". However, in situations like the Matses example, perhaps the translator must take some liberty themselves to infer information from the text and make their translation grammatically and integrally correct.

Hibbett Reading – Aaron

In these readings, I love when translators talk about errors in translation that they have made or come across. It makes them look more human in relation to their craft, and helps remind me that it's okay to make mistakes, or not know certain things, in my own translations.

(On that topic, I found his description of his "painful" error quite interesting, about how he didn't understand how a sozu worked, which led him to incorrectly describe this function. I feel that most people today know about this device, even if they don't know what it's called.)

I thought his talk about how he translated the manji symbol to also be quite interesting. It's interesting how sometimes a translator has to concern themself with something that is completely normal in one culture but might approach some problematic lines in another. In this case, however, it makes complete sense. Although making changes in a scenario like this might seem like it's compromising the faithfulness of the original, I would argue that it makes the translation more faithful than a more literal one, since it avoids the negative connotations that the original isn't designed to have in the first place.

HIbbet Reading-Allen

 What I found most interesting was choosing between naturalizing and estrangement when translating Tanizaki’s works. Furthermore, Tanizaki’s books often involve themes of masochism and themes connected to traditional works like Genji Monogatari, which further complicates interpretation. Hibbett debated how to approach translating Tanizaki’s stories and pointed out two paths. One way is to make the translation natural for the intended audience, but this may lose some authenticity from the original. The second way is to try to preserve the strange essence, but it may feel awkward if not translated well. Take, for example, translating The Key—how can one convey the difference between katakana (masculine) and hiragana (feminine)? Personally, I would change the tone of the sentences with more masculine or feminine words, but I liked how the author tries to create a “waspish and wicked undertone.”