2.11 Reading---Yide Cai

This week’s readings made me think a lot about what it means to encounter a text before it has been framed, named, and domesticated by translation history. I was especially struck by learning that In Search of Lost Time was long known in English as Swann’s Way. If I understand this correctly, that title feels surprisingly underwhelming. It narrows the scope of Proust’s project into something anecdotal and character-driven. 

I was also intrigued by the suggestion that early exposure to previous translations or even to scholarship surrounding the text might actually be counterproductive for a translator. Being immersed too early in other people’s language and interpretive choices can tether one’s imagination, making it difficult to hear the text on its own terms. There is something compelling about the idea of approaching a work first with a naïve, almost “pure” attention, before absorbing the accumulated opinions that surround it. In that sense, translation begins as an act of listening rather than of expertise.

Then it's funny that we are doing almost the opposite: learning about the author, the language, the poetic tradition, and existing translations before attempting our own. Yet I also recognize why this approach makes sense in a pedagogical context, especially for those without extensive translation experience. Without this scaffolding, many of us might feel not freer, but more constrained, unsure where to begin, and paralyzed by the openness of the task.

The discussion of foreignization returns here. But because French and English occupy relatively equal positions within the Western literary canon, the politics feel less imperial. Still, the risk remains. Foreignization can become a kind of shortcut allowing a translation to “look” French through syntax or diction, even though Proust’s prose would not have registered as particularly exotic or “French” to his original readers. In that sense, foreignization can paradoxically distort the text, creating an effect that is more about the target reader’s expectations than about the source text itself.

From these readings, it seems that translation at the end is a discipline not a theory or a set of rules. You can only reach the integrity and trust through practice.