Translation is generally accepted to be the move of an idea from one form to a novel one in order to open it up to a new audience, in its most traditional sense it means moving the idea from one language to another.
One problem associated with the process of translation is loss. When being translated the original has something of its essence removed, the culture, time, place and relationship with its author is irretrievably lost when it is dismantled, cross examined and ultimately rebuilt in a new form. Translation does have a nostalgic element therefore; we mourn what is lost in the original.
‘No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener’ (Benjamin, The task of the Translator, 1968 p. 60). What Benjamin argues is that every form which the original might be translated has an essential core, not merely information. It has nothing to say. ‘It tells very little to those that understand it’ (Benjamin, The task of the Translator, 1968, p.60), so what of those who do not understand it? They merely receive a translation of the information. ‘While content and its language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royalty robe with ample folds’ (Benjamin, The task of the Translator, 1968 p. 75) language is stuck in the context of time and culture. But translation in itself is an original, which Benjamin describes as the afterlife of the original. Every translation takes place after the original and can never have the same essence. Take the broken vessel. Once broken down and all the parts assessed, no matter how true to the original the new vessel is pieced back together, it will not be the original, but a new vessel. Therefore we can gain from a translation, not just lose out. He ultimately argues that ‘it is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another’ (Benjamin, The task of the Translator, 1968 p. 80).
In his The Image of Proust, Benjamin notes that what is remembered is infinite. This poses another issue for translation. Different, infinite memories will be taken by the translator in their interpretation of the original, that the original author intended. Likewise, the reader of the translation will reinterpret the text and any notion of the original is lost. Proust himself rejected this notion of loss in translation. Rebecca L. Walkowitz quotes Proust ‘to each sentence we attach a meaning, or at any rate a mental image, which is often a mistranslation’ (Marcel Proust, 1958, p. 194-5). In fact Proust enjoyed the misinterpretations and translations in real life scenarios and used mistaken cultural identity for his own amusement. As Benjamin records he once dropped in on Princess Clermont- Tonnerre and insisted upon staying until his medication was brought. His lengthy description of his house, including the mention of it being the only house on the street with a light still burning, without giving the street name or house number would have been recognised to all in Belle Époque France as the codified description of a brothel. It is ironic that such a description now wouldn’t be recognised and the joke would be lost.
We can find criticism for Benjamin’s theory in contemporary art practice. Rory MacBeth is a graduate from Central St Martins, who is interested in mistranslation and misinterpretation. The last two years of his working life have been devoted to The Wanderer his translation of an iconic Kafka novella from German to English without any previous knowledge of its content or the German language. He doesn’t even use a dictionary. If what Benjamin and Proust theorise is accepted, then it must also be accepted that MacBeth will produce a piece which echoes the original, but becomes its own original; essentially that it will be a good translation. Art journalist Sean Ashton praises Macbeth’s translation for its reliability commenting, ‘just as there is never an absolute semantic fidelity between a conventional translation and an original text, so with Macbeth’s unorthodox translation, there can be no absolute semantic infidelity’ (Sean Ashton, MAP Magazine, 19, Autumn, 2009).
Translation does not stop at language. There are endless considerations when translating art from one form to another. Take the painting by way of example. Mia Johnson argues for a ‘cognitive model for the specific and detailed processes of apprehension, analysis, reflection, and production that occur during the perception of a three-dimensional object or array in the real world and its translation into drawing or painting’ (Johnson, 1993, p. 85). Between the third and second dimension, so much is lost and gained. The new original, the painting, is created and with it a new essence that must be translated. What is lost is that ‘moment’ when painter, subject and painting objects are at work in harmony to produce the painting. Aesthetic translations are also an issue in art historical practice. In her essay on Dutch copies of imported Chinese porcelain in the 15th century, Clare Le Corbeiller insists that we should see Delft ware as a translation of their Asian blue and white counterparts, not as forgeries. They should be recognised as art in their own right. She echoes Benjamin in her defence of Delft ware, commenting ‘For as a rule we are not satisfied with a literal translation from one language to another; we require not a point-by-point correspondence, but an equivalence of intention-of spirit, of effect’ (Le Corbeiller, 1968, p. 270).
Text translated to image occurs frequently in art history writing as images constantly need to be communicated to and conjured in others. Reading Proust is like attending a feast, every sentence is a delicious insight into Proust’s own sight owing to his rich visual language. The form of the text is equally as important as the content for conveying image. Benjamin describes how Proust would have preferred his work to be presented ‘in one volume in two columns and without any paragraphs’ (Benjamin, p. 203) so it would visually emulate his idea that his memories were woven into the tapestry of his writing. This idea can also be found in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He uses text to play out the child’s innocent confusion between the terms ‘tail’ and ‘tale’ (figure 2). Of course by doing this, it becomes both and the sense of confusion is translated successfully to the audience.
In modern art one piece by Joseph Cornell captures the idea of the form and content of the text translating into an image. Cornell was principally a collector of found objects, but his transformation of everyday items such as pipes, stopwatches, paper, buttons and shells into visual poems of fantasy, memory and dreams. He had a desire to get into the box, to cut himself off from the rest of the world and cocoon himself in a childlike eternity. ‘Unable to get into the box, Cornell could only achieve childhood unsatisfactorily as nostalgia’ (Mavor, 2007, p. 38). In his 1943 piece The Crystal Cage, Cornell stepped away from his three dimensional craft to create a ‘verbal/visual exploration’ for a magazine. The pages reveal images and documents presented in a scrapbook-like manner, which continue Cornell’s interest in collecting. Interwoven in this structure is a short essay which tells the story of Bérénice, a little girl who persuades her parents to take a Chinese Pagoda back to her native New England for her. She moves herself into this Pagoda and constructs a fantasy world with creatures from her study of the skies. The Calligram of the Pagode de Chanteloup (1943) (figure 1) appears within the magazine as Cornell’s realization of Bérénice’s dream world.
Like his boxes, Cornell encases a rambling string of unpunctuated words into the pagoda shape ‘trumpets crowns pet crows... Blue grotto of Capri... Sunday afternoon flowers calliopes Giants Causeway...’ thus creates the image of childhood fantasy from his text.
To appeal to contemporary art once more, text translated to image is an effective tool used by artist Laure Provoust. She Uses text both as the image and to arouse an unconscious image. Her recent installation at London’s Frieze art fair attempted to bruise unconscious insecurities by teasing the individuals rational conscious to look to her work for guidance (figure 3).
Placed around the cattle market of an art fair, which received an estimated sixty thousand visitors last weekend, Provoust’s signs allure to being official guidance as to where to look, where to be cajoled to next, where you are. Instead they are hand-painted with slogans such as ‘Ideally in this room would be a busy African market’ and ‘The fifth floor is wonderful’. What she achieves is a sense of confusion and displacement. Instead of receiving the help you seek, you are slapped with a harsh realisation that you do indeed feel as though you are in an African market. Of course there is no fifth floor, which confuses and wounds the recipient of Provoust’s cruel trick. The harshest perhaps is ‘Ideally here your mother would be waiting for you’- sparking an involuntary, uncomfortable familiarity; the memory of being lost as a child.
Until December 2011 a new film commission will be running at the International Project Space in Birmingham. It is Laure Provoust’s translation of Rory MacBeth’s mistranslation The Wanderer, from written word to film installation, Betty Drunk. If you want to be truly lost in translation, I recommend you go. If he would, I’m sure Proust would do and I’m sure he would enjoy it.
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