Murder or Triage?

hi bob. i always appreciate your insights and engagement as you process things over time. In fact, I sometimes covet your patience :). I like this image of triage, particularly with respect to the urgency of the situation and the often otherwise than conscious selections we are making all along the way. Yet, the notion of saving whatever we can smacks to me of an archic situation. What is it we are saving? I wonder if I too often communicate this murder image in archic ways that make it easy to imagine a violence against a text, an original even. The murder, or we could call it dehumanization, I hear in Levinas is not a violence against an original; rather, the murder is in the allegiance to the reign of an original (arche). In this framing, even the foreignization techniques I read in Venuti are largely murderous, to the degree that they aim to surface an original as the locus of meaning making. In fact, I've been dying to ask you and Marlon about your read of Venuti. What is it that becomes visible in his foreignizing approaches, the translator? the translation? the original? anyway, it is my deeply human encounters with you and Marlon and Elsa and others that have challenged my overly totalizing reading of Levinas's critique of the western philosophical tradition of mastery and comprehension. I began my preparations for this SBL session imagining that all translation is inevitably murderous, but because i have seen the infinite humanness with which you do your work, i have been challenged to imagine more. Translation has all the potential in the world to be human, not murder. Yet, translating alterity smacks of a murderous endeavor unless we can imagine translation as something otherwise than the archic and consumptive comprehension schemes of the knowledge enterprise of the western philosophical tradition.

Thanks to Michael for his willingness to interact with others about his SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) presentation. Thanks to Bob for the fine questions and comments. And thanks to you both for modeling what I personally hope is only a beginning of interaction in MAP and elsewhere on issues of (Bible) translation. Here are some brief observations. Both metaphors (murder and triage) involve violence. In the first, the translator is a perpetrator; in the second, the translator is a rescuer. I think this (violence) would be a helpful theme to consider with regard to Bible translation. Translators portrayed as rescuers to save what they can in translation does seem to support the preeminence of the original. In worn out language, it's a concern for what is lost in translation. For decades, however, translation theorists have been discussing what is gained in translation. The commitment of Bob and many of us to minority language communities would support what is gained in translation, how newness enters into the conversation. Rather than rescuing, translation can be viewed as rewriting. This would support the role of the translator's agency. We know, however, that translators are not the only agents involved in Bible translation: publishers, donors, host communities, etc. These other agents do not leave translators at peace to do whatever they want. Even if a translator sees her role as a triage physician, the results of her work could be considered evidence for murder. I continue to be intrigued (or haunted) with Levinas' "saying and the said." Is it possible to translate the saying without the result being the said? In part this question is why performance is appealing to me with regard to translation. The real time of the performance event and interaction of the audience with the performer(s) create something new and if done well, the result might not be "the said" but the life-giving "saying."

Nice point James makes about what is gained in translation. It is some of what I was groping toward when I said "...and sometimes, good things come of it." It is an open question for me whether we could and should abandon or at least downplay the violent language of murder and/or triage in relation to translation. It would be nice to take a more hopeful perspective. Still, I think we can agree that translation is a messy business.

I was waiting for Michael answer but since I haven´t had one yet, I will put my thoughts on writing here. One of the reason I wanted to wait before commenting is that I'm way behind you guys and have a lot to learn yet, but anyways... as a Pastor and student of translation this is what I've been thinking: It is more murder than triage: talking from a pastoral perspective I´ve been in the situation where sometimes I have to "save" (triage?) what I can from the text (giving my yet limited knowledge) because some decisions that the translators made don´t (from my point of view) suit, for whatever reasons. Which leaves me with a bunch of questions regarding how someone takes those decisions without thinking on a community of believers that are addressed one and again with phrases like "In our translations said this but a better way to translate it would be...", I have said that a lot and I´ve listened to preachers and pastors and teachers saying that a lot too... which feels really uncomfortable, if you think about it... So murder and triage (more murder than triage) or backwards. And... a question regarding that "murder or triage" language: doesn't that put us in a position of superiority in front of the text, the writers of the text, and the listeners and readers of it? It is an honest question, and I really expect your answers and your corrections in case my ignorance just made an explosion here. Thanks!

Bob, So, what you're trying to say is that translation is triage and then the readers/listeners/teachers do a second triage (or murder?) of whatever translation they have in hand? Fortunately? I just want to understand, :-)

Like James, I am not completely happy with the violent metaphors of either triage or murder. Violence of course does take place at all intersections of understanding, most of all at the first intersection between an "original" experience and the immediate perception/interpretation of it. But we can look at it the other way around: creativity also takes place, as well as authenticity and at least attempts at loyalty (to text, to audience, to self, etc.). At some point down this road I retreat back to simpler and more pragmatic approaches (skopos, for example), and risk not only doing violence again but the probability that I will be seen (perhaps rightly) as not even being aware of it.

I agree that murder or triage can be limiting and inaccurate. A translation is not so much murder or even triage, but more of a preliminary and even adequate introduction to a text. One has to begin somewhere and one does not lose the message just because one reads a translation (i.e. texts can be rather robust). But somewhere along the line one may begin to look for more, such as research into socio-historical context and, perhaps, learning the language for oneself. Even when one learns the language, the text is not exhausted. What one learns is always provisional. I think that we need to be more content with provisionality. I don't think any scholarship would be able to exist if people did not at some point say, "what I know is enough to make some preliminary statements." Otherwise no one would write any articles at all, since their limited knowledge of some of the relevant material might change conclusions. But scholars often do not content themselves with making provisional statements where they probably ought. As someone above said, MAP is not about a reservoir of knowledge, but is about an encounter . . . perhaps many encounters. All this is why in my own work I try to cite and qualify as much as possible so that my readers/students know how much of what I say is verifiable and how much is my sense of things based on my experience. (I say this as a teacher of Greek and Latin). I want them to know the ambiguity of the text, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that what the text has to say can, in fact, be known to a significant degree. But to address Fausto, I also try to stress to my students that one has to be very careful when saying, "the Greek really says," in contradiction of modern translations. You said it makes you uneasy and I want my students to realize that the best way to really get it is to spend their lives reading Greek. Because so many pastors don't do this (and those that do seem to only read Biblical Greek in the most limited sense) pastors often don't know what they are talking about when they say that a passage "really should be translated" in such an such a way. That said, there really are places in which one wonders why the translators chose a specific translation in contradiction to seemingly normal ways of understanding certain Greek constructions (and sometimes individual words). Fausto, I would be interested in having discussions of specific passages.