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cuss three facets of translation and the revelations it aspires to dis-
close. The first of these, of course, are the familiar linguistic discov-
eries that we make during the working process. Secondly, there are the
cultural differences and similarities revealed by the texts through
which, as this translator hopes, we come to know one another better.
Finally, there are the revelations that my work has brought me on a
personal level.
Human language is the one specific characteristic that sets us
apart from other living creatures and should thus, logically, offer our
species a great chain of solidarity. Sadly enough, however, the spoken
word is all too often (perhaps even more often than not?) the great
divider among people even when they speak the same language. We
only have to think of Roland Barthes s statement that language is a
form of communication intended to avoid communicating; we only
have to think of the political doublespeak we hear every day of our
lives, where friendly fire and collateral damage hide the truth of
violent death. We get in trouble over language and people kill each
other over words. How often do we find ourselves saying: That is not
what I meant, You don t get it, do you? What is that supposed to
mean? So what you re saying is... followed by having to translate
into our own language that which was just said. These are but a few of
the infinite ways that prove we are not communicating well, or at all.
This comes down to the anecdotal: I know you think you understood
what you thought I said, but I think what you thought you understood
is not what I said. And this happens when we are speaking the same
language presumably, although there are, of course, countless forms of
English, including several officially known today as the New
Englishes (Crystal). Any thorough reading of a text out of the past
of one s own language and literature is a manifold act of interpreta-
tion, wrote George Steiner in After Babel. He continued, In the great
majority of cases, this act is hardly performed or even consciously
recognized (17).
How complex, then, is the interchange and subsequent attempt at
really grasping what is being said or written in a language that is not
our own. The significance of the Old Testament story of the construc-
tion of the Tower of Babel and its dire consequences hasn t changed
de Jager 87
much over the millennia. Translation has played a central (though
often unrecognized) role in human interaction for thousands of years,
writes David Crystal (11). Tis pity if the case require / (...) that in
the end / We speak the literal to inspire / The understanding of a
friend, says Frost. How well this pertains to the double task that we
as translators must fulfill, no matter what the literary text or poem,
which is to be literally faithful both to the author s words and intent as
well as to good writing in the new language, which in my case is
(American) English. Gregory Rabassa, the eminent translator of Latin
American literature, wrote years ago: Ear is important in translation
because it really lies at the base of all good writing. Writing is not
truly a substitute for thought, it is a substitute for sound. [...] [W]hen a
person writes, he is speaking, and when a person reads, he is listen-
ing (82). If this is true, as I believe it is, then translators are listeners
first and speakers second. This, too, imposes a double duty on us, and
in the re-writing that is the re-speaking of what I ve heard I rely
heavily on instinct, on the memory, and on both the intellectual and
musical comprehension of what I have heard. Human interaction and
mutual understanding, the final purposes of translation, after all, are
based first on hearing and listening. At the newly opened Quai Branly
Museum in Paris, where some of the floors and hallway walls are cov-
ered with one- or two-line aphorisms, I discovered one that in five
simple words applies marvelously to the translator s task: Entendre
avec l oreille de l autre. Once I have heard my text with the ear of
the other, I must then hear it again in my own language, which hap-
pens almost unconsciously at first. Only then can I embark on turning
my source text into English first, into fine writing second. This is al-
ways a balancing act, a balancing act that time and experience never
render any easier, as my students used to ask with hope in their voice.
Each author in any language has a different voice; each text is a new
text that poses different problems, even when a same author has
created it. A supposedly and often deceptively easy text still holds
pitfalls of one sort or another, nothing can ever be taken for granted,
the one misplaced preposition will obscure meaning, and the one erro-
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