_culture, Lang, And Trans

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1/6

Trustees of Indiana University

Anthropological Linguistics

Cultures, Languages, and TranslationsAuthor(s): Zdenk SalzmannReviewed work(s):Source: Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 2, No. 2, Translation between Language and Culture:A Symposium Presented at the 1959 Meetings of the American Anthropological Association(Feb., 1960), pp. 43-47Published by: The Trustees of Indiana Universityon behalf of Anthropological LinguisticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30022241.

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2/6

CULTURES,

LANGUAGES,

AND

TRANSLATIONS

Zdenkk Salzmann

Sedona,

Arizona

If

we

agree

to

the

twofold

proposition

that

(1)

language

is an

autonomous

part

of culture

and

(2)

translating

between

languages

is

putting

them

to

a

test

of

equivalence

-

then

we

are

implicitly

raising

a

number

of

interesting

questions

concerning

the

relations between the terms in

the

title of this

paper.

I shall

try

here to deal

briefly

with some

of

these

questions.

TRANSLATIONS

From

a

functional

viewpoint,

one

may

distinguish

three

types

of

trans-

lations

-

morphologic, practical,

and

aesthetic.

1

The main

purpose

for

translating

a

language

morphologically

is

to

elucidate

its

structure at the

level

of

the

smallest

meaningful

elements

that

constitute

it.

Since

there

is

no

necessary

one-to-one

relationship

between

the

morphemes

of

any

two

languages,

morphologic

translation

is

nonequivalent

to

its

original

(though

of

course a

particular

short

sequence

of

morphemes

in

a

language

may

be

rendered

equivalently

by

a

specific

translation).

Examples

of

morphologic

translation are

plentiful

and

are

customarily

found

together

with

sample

texts

appended

to

grammars

of

previously

unanalyzed

languages.

A practical translation is carried out when a message is adequately

transmitted

by

means

of a

code

different

from

that of

the

source.

Good

practical

translations should be

equivalent

to the

original

and

generally

they

are;

at

any

rate,

with some

effort

they

easily

can be.

In recent

years,

an

increasing

number of

significant

technical articles

have been

translated

into

other

languages;

such

translations

are

practical

and

their

equivalence

is often

indirectly

but

rigorously

attested

by

experiments

in

the

many

branches

of

natural

science.

When

a

source

(or

more

specifically

and

most

commonly

a

literary

work

of

art)

is

translated

with

special

care

to

generate

a

comparable

total

effect,

an

aesthetic

translation

has

been

attempted.

Although

equivalence

between

a

literary work of art and its translation is attainable (one may argue with Croce

and

others

contrariwise

on

purely

theoretical

grounds),

it can

only

be

approxi-

mated

when

dealing

with

lyrical

poetry

and

paronomasia.

The

following

poem

by

Konstantin

Biebl,

one of

the

chief

representatives

of

Czech

pure

lyrical

poetry

from

the

period

between the

two

World

Wars,

serves as

an

excellent

example

of the

tremendous

difficulty

that

aesthetic

translations

may pose.

Apart

from a

synesthetic

element,

each

of the first

43


3/6

44

Anthropological

Linguistics,

Vol.

2,

No.

2

five

lines is

built around one

particular

vowel

phoneme,

the last

line

around

a

diphthong

(both

'y'

and

'i'

of the

written Czech

represent

the

i

phoneme).

My

practical

translation

is

appended;

the

graphic

arrangement

of the

original

was

preserved

to facilitate

comparison.

SKALA2

TyEinky

v

tichych

i

bi'och

liliich

ve

svgtlezelen4m

svStle

zelenO

Lolo

Lolo

tma

pada

na

jantar jak

zlata

harfa

v

barvich

sala

ut

smutku

purpur

strun

Jdou loukou tmou

SCALE

Stamens

in silent and white lilies

in

the

light-green light

of

green

Lola

Lola

darkness

falls

upon

amber

like a

golden

harp

with color

glows

the

yellow

of

sadness

the

purple

of

strings,

They

walk

through

a meadow in

darkness

For

an

example

of close

approximation

if not

equivalence

in

aesthetic

translation

we

may

draw

from Leonard

Bloomfield's

translation

of

Gerhart

Hauptmann's

Vor

Sonnenaufgang.

3

In order to

preserve

the

paronomasia

of

the

original,

based

on a

defective

articulation

of

dental

stops

by

one of

the

drama's

characters,

Bloomfield

rendered

"Sie

hatte

nur

noch

einen

einzigen,

langen

Zahn

-

da

sollte

es

immer

heipen;

Tr6ste,

tr6ste

mein

Volk

und es

kam

immer

heraus:

'R6ste,

'r6ste

mein

Volk

"

as

"She had

only

one,

solitary,

long

tooth

-

and she

tried

to

sing:

'In

the

Lord

put

I

my

trust' and it

always

sounded like

'In the

Lord

put

I

my

rust

"

CULTURES

AND

TRANSLATIONS

While it

is

generally recognized

by

literary

critics

and

historians that

aesthetic

translations

play

an

important part

in

the

development

of

national

literatures,

the

impact

of

practical

translations

upon

culture

has,

on the

whole,

been

seriously

underestimated or

neglected by

both

anthropologists

and

linguists.

And

yet

there

are

many

instances in

the

history

of

nations

and

entire culture areas

in

which

profound

changes

in a

pattern

of culture were

wrought

not

by

conquest

or contact

but

by linguistic

means

-

translations.

An excellent

example

of such an

impact

is found in

the cultural

histories

of

the

Moslem world and of

Europe

during

the

Middle

Ages.

Within a

relatively


4/6

Cultures,

Languages,

and

Translations

45

short

period

of time

during

the

Abbasside

caliphate

a

great

number of

prac-

tical translations

into

Arabic of

mathematical,

astronomical,

medical,

and

other

writings

from

various

sources

were

completed.

This

undertaking

was

of

such

intensity

that

it

was carried

out not

only by

interested

scholars

but

by

a whole

staff

of

translators at

Baghdad

who

were

highly

respected

and

publicly

supported. Thus, by the end of the ninth century, most of the classical Greek

writings

had

been

rendered

into

Arabic either

directly

or from

Syriac

trans-

lations. As a result of

this

prodigious

activity,

few

aspects

of

Islamic

culture

were

unaffected.

It

is

a most

interesting

quirk

of

history

that

this enormous debt to

the

West

was

soon to

be

repaid

with

much

interest

by

Islam to a

Europe

oblivious

of much

of its

splendid

Greek

heritage

-

repaid

by

means of

translations.

Spain,

Sicily,

and

southern

Italy

became

the

centers of this second

current

of

translating,

this

time from

Arabic

into

Latin.

Corresponding

to

Baghdad

of the

ninth

century,

Toledo

of

the twelfth

century

boasted

not

only

one of the

greatest

medieval

translators,

Gerard

of

Cremona,

but

a

whole

college

of

translators under the patronage of Raymond, Archbishop of Toledo. This

transmission,

through

Arabic,

of the

original

Hellenic

cultural

fund,

enriched

by

many

new

elements

(e.g.,

Moslem

elaborations

in

medicine and

chemistry

and the

Hindu

zero),

gave

a

powerful

impetus

to a

more direct

study

of Greek

civilization.

Thus

practical

translations

had

their share

in

precipitating

the

ultimate

passing

of

medieval

culture.4

LANGUAGES

AND

TRANSLATIONS

The effect

of translations

upon

languages

into which

translations

are

made

is

likewise

of

considerable

interest and

should

receive

more

attention

from anthropological linguists. Recently many heretofore unwritten

languages

have

been

very

seriously

and

competently

studied

by

missionary

linguists

whose

ultimate

purpose

is to

introduce

Christianity

to

pagan

peoples

by

trans-

lating

certain

portions

of

the

Scriptures

or

the entire

Bible into

their

languages.

Any

such

competent

translation

implies

language

standardization and

conse-

quently

a

new

set of

factors

to

which

both

the

language

and the

rest

of the

culture

will

necessarily respond,

particularly

if

the

scriptural

translation is

associated

with

the

introduction

of

literacy

and

other

urbanizing

elements;

and inasmuch as

standardization

tends

to reduce

the

rate of

change

and the

extent of

variation,

it

will

increase

stability

on

every

plane

of the

language

system

in

question.

The

significance

of

Biblical

and other

translations

for

languages

of

literate societies has

always

been

appreciated,

particularly by

linguistically

oriented

students of literature.

A brief

example

will therefore

suffice:

At

the

beginning

of the

Czech

National

Revival toward the end of the

eighteenth

century,

the

Czech

language

and

other

cultural

institutions

suddenly

found

themselves

facing

tasks which

could

not

be

carried

out

successfully

without a

major

effort

to

compensate

for the

decline

suffered

during

the

preceding

period.

Under these

circumstances

the

rehabilitation

of the

Czech

language

became

of

crucial

importance.

By

the

time of

the second

generation

of

Revivalists,

this


5/6

46

Anthropological

Linguistics,

Vol. 2,

No.

2

pivotal

cultural

enterprise

was

given

leadership

by

Josef

Jungmann,

whose

monumental

Slovni'k esko-ngmecho

[Czech-German

Dictionary]

as well as

his

many

contributions

to modern Czech scientific

terminology

and his

pioneering

translations

of

literary

masterpieces

from

half a

dozen

European

languages

earned

him

a

national

standing

commensurate

to

that of

Hus and

Comenius. It is no exaggeration to state that the syntactic and lexical

foundations

of Modern

Standard

Czech were laid

by

Jungmann's

translations.

CULTURES,

LANGUAGES,

AND

TRANSLATIONS

When

language

is

said

to

be

an

autonomous

part

of

culture,

autonomy

is

usually

extended

to

the

phonemes

and

morphemes

as

such,

to

their

hiearchical

and/or

sequential

ordering,

and to the

changes

which these

units

and

consequently

their.mutual

relationships

undergo;

the lexical

and

semantic

features

of a

language

are

generally

held

to be

closely

correlated to the

rest

of

the

culture,

possibly

as a

result

of the broad influence

of

the

stimulating

ethnolinguistic hypothesis of Whorf. What appears to be frequently forgotten

is

that

all

cognitive

experience

may

be

linguistically

coded without

an

appreciable

loss

of

information,

regardless

of

the

language.5

What is

therefore

impressive

is

the

practical

translatability

of

languages.

At

present,

the

Scriptures appear

in a

new

language

at the rate

of

more than

one a

month,

according

to

a

recent

pamphlet

of the

American

Bible

Society.

The fact that these

practical

translations are

equivalent

(by

the

exacting

standards of the

translators)

means that because

every

language

readily

employs

lexical

innovations

peculiar

to

itself,

no

language

fails

to

measure

up

in

an acculturation

situation.

6

On

the

other

hand,

aesthetic

translations of

specific

original

sources

can

only

be

approximations;

they

fail to achieve

equivalence

for

very

much the

same reasons which cause

morphological

translations to be

intrinsically

non-

equivalent.

To translate

the

advertising slogan

"Better

buy

Buick"

into

another

language

may

be

more

difficult than to

render

a short

story.

In

his

Mirror for Man Kluckhohn relates the

following

experience:

Once

in

Paris

I

saw

a

play

called "The Weak

Sex."

I

found it

charmingly

risque.

A

year

later

in

Vienna I

took

a

girl

to see a

German translation

of

the same

play.

Though

she

was no

prude,Iwas

embarrassed because the

play

was

vulgar

if

not

obscene

in

German.

7

This

observation cannot

be

taken to mean

that French

is

inherently

risque

where

German

is

inherently

vulgar

or

obscene.

What the

example

points

up

is

that either the

particular

translation of the

play

was

not

functionally

equiva-

lent to the

original

or that references which Frenchmen find

amusingly sug-

gestive

Austrians find outside the bounds

of

propriety.

If it is now remarked that

I

have

departed

from

the theme of this

sym-

posium,

I

should

reply

that

translation between

language

and culture

is


6/6

Cultures,

Languages,

and

Translations

47

sometimes associated

with

translations

and that

my

brief remarks

perhaps

have

not

been

altogether

irrelevant.

NOTES

1. For another discussion of the functions of translations and of

equivalence

see

Joseph

B.

Casagrande's

article

The

Ends

of

Translation,

IJAL

20. 335 - 340

(1954)

.

2.

Quoted

from

Konstantin

Biebl,

Di'lo

(Praha,

1952),

Vol.

I

(1926-

1929),

p.8

(Collection

"Zlatfmi

fethzy").

3.

Before

Dawn:

A

Social

Drama,

Poet

Lore

20.241-315

(1909).

4. Much information about

these

translations

and

translators

is

found

in

George

Sarton's

Introduction

to

the

History

of

Science,

Vol.

I:

From

Homer

to

Omar

Khayyam

(Baltimore,

1927)

and

Vol. II

(Part

I

and

2):

From Rabbi

ben

Ezra

to

Roger

Bacon

(Baltimore,

1931).

5.

For

a

discussion of this

point

see

Roman

Jakobson's

stimulating

paper

On

Linguistic

Aspects

of

Translation

in

On

Translation,

ed.

Reuben

A.

Brower

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1959),

pp.

232-239.

6.

See also

my

article

The

Problem of

Lexical

Acculturation,

IJAL

20.

137-

139

(1954).

7.

Clyde

Kluckhohn,

Mirror for

Man

(New York, 1949),

p.

155.

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