If I look for spadix in a Latin dictionary, I’ll find that it is a bay horse (that is, reddish-brown) but also that – botanically speaking – it is a frond torn from a palm tree. A dictionary is at most a starting-point. The real problem is to develop the ability to see the world as the poet saw it, and this will be the final effect of an interpretation of a text. After that, the choice of the right term can be either target-oriented (so that we shall translate ‘reddish-brown’) or source-oriented – and we shall choose spandix, to oblige our reader to feel das Fremde, which will oblige the reader to think of an archaic chromatic universe.
Once again, it will be a matter of negotiation between the translator, the reader and the original author, whose unique voice should remain in the text.

This is what I have tried to say, more or less, in the course of this book. Faithfulness is not a method which results in an acceptable translation. It is the decision to believe that translation is possible, it is our engagement in isolating what is for us the deep sense of a text, and it is the goodwill that prods us to negotiate the best solution for every line. Among the synonyms of faithfulness the word exactitude does not exist. Instead there is loyalty, devotion, allegiance, piety.

NOTES

1. Walther Benjamin, ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, 1923, now in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972). English tr., ‘The task of the translator’, in Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 15–25.
2. Jacques Derrida, ‘Des tours de Babel’, in J. Graham, ed., Differences in translation (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1985), pp. 209–48.
3. The Search for the Perfect Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
4. Cf. Iván Guzmán de Rojas, Problematica logico-lingüística de la communicación social en el pueblo Aymara, mimeo, Con los auspicios del Centro internacional de la Investigaciónes para el desarrollo del Canada, s.d.
5. Eugene Nida, Componential Analysis of Meaning. An Introduction to Semantic Structures (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1975), p. 75.
6. I tried a first approach to this problem in A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1976), p. 80. Then I continued in my lecture ‘Kleur als een semiotisch probleem’, Mondriaanlezing lxxxi (1982), translated into English as ‘How culture conditions the colours we see’, in Marshall Blonsky, ed., On Signs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins / Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).
7. Arthur Linksz, Physiology of the Eye (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1952), ii, 52.
8. Marshall Sahlins, ‘Colors and Cultures’, Semiotica xv/i (1975), pp. 1–22.
9. Harold C. Conklin, ‘Hanunóo Color Categories’, Southern Journal of Anthropology ii (1955), pp. 339–42.
10. It remains to ascertain if a Hanunóo speaker, starting from his own system, would be able to understand our own. Without making any hypothesis about the advantage of a given system, considered as more flexible than others, I suspect that a Hanunóo coming to Europe would behave similarly to a European Daltonist: he would adapt his sensations to our linguistic habits and would probably say red when Europeans say so.

Index

tr. in bold refers to a translation example.
Aldington, Richard: Sylvie (Nerval; English tr.) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7
Allais, Alphonse: Un drame bien parisien ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Almansi, Guido ref 1
AltaVista: automatic translation experiments ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6
Angelini, Patrice Dyerval: Montale poem (French tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Aristotle: Rhetoric ref 1; Poetics ref 2, ref 3
Arnold, Matthew ref 1
Austen, Jane ref 1
Averroes (Ibn-Rushd): Poetics tr. ref 1, ref 2
Babelfish see AltaVista
Barthes, Roland ref 1
Bartholomew of Messina: Rhetoric tr. ref 1
Baudelaire, Charles ref 1
Beckett, Samuel ref 1
Benjamin, Walther: ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ ref 1, ref 2
Berman, Antoine: La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge lointain ref 1
Berti, Luigi: . . . ‘Prufrock’ (Italian tr.) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Bertonio, Ludovico: Arte de Lengua Aymara ref 1
Bible (Ecclesiastes’ tr.): contemporary ref 1, ref 2
King James ref 1, ref 2
Luther ref 1, ref 2
Vulgata ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Bloom, Harold ref 1
Bologna, University of ref 1
Borges, Jorge Luis 116: ‘The Quest of Averroes’ (also El Aleph) ref 1
Čale Kneževic, Morana: The Name of the Rose (Croatian tr.) ref 1
Campion, Jane: Portrait of a Lady (adapt.) ref 1
Camporesi, Piero: Il libro dei vagabondi ref 1
Camus, Albert: La peste ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Carmina Burana (medieval text) ref 1
Carta Capuana (early Italian document) ref 1, ref 2
Casablanca (film) ref 1
Cendrars, Blaise: Prose du transsiberien ref 1, ref 2
Ceronetti, Guido: Ecclesiastes (Italian tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote ref 1
Chouraqui, André: Ecclesiastes (French tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Coena Cypriani (medieval literary pastiche) ref 1, ref 2
Collodi, Carlo: Pinocchio ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4
Conklin, Harold C.: ‘Hanunóo Color Categories’ ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Conrad, Joseph: Typhoon ref 1, ref 2
Contini, Gianfranco ref 1
Costiukovich, Helena: The Name of the Rose (Russian tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Curtius, Georg ref 1
dal Fabbro, Beniamino: La Peste (Italian tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Dalton, John ref 1, ref 2
Dante Alighieri: sonnet ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4; Divine Comedy ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10, ref 11
De Luca, Erri: Ecclesiastes (Italian tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Debussy, Claude: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune ref 1, ref 2
Degérando, Joseph-Marie ref 1
Derrida, Jacques: L’écriture et la différence ref 1
Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield ref 1
Disney, Walt: Pinocchio (film) ref 1, ref 2; Fantasia (film) ref 3
Draghi, Bernardo: Moby Dick (Italian tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Dumas, Alexander (Le comte de Monte-Cristo) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10
Eco, Umberto
translations:
Le comte de Monte-Cristo (Dumas) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6
Un drame bien parisien (Allais) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Exercices de style (Queneau) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4
Sylvie (Nerval) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10, ref 11, ref 12, ref 13, ref 14
Ars Magna (Lull), essay on ref 1, ref 2
Baudolino ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10
Foucault’s Pendulum ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10, ref 11
The Island of the Day Before ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10, ref 11, ref 12, ref 13, ref 14, ref 15, ref 16, ref 17, ref 18, ref 19, ref 20, ref 21, ref 22, ref 23, ref 24
Kant and the Platypus ref 1
The Limits of Interpretation ref 1
The Name of the Rose ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10
The Quest for a Perfect Language ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4
The Role of the Reader ref 1, ref 2
Eliot, T. S.:
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6
The Waste Land ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Farnsworth-Munsell (colour discrimination test) ref 1
Favorinus (philosopher) ref 1, ref 2
Fink, Guido ref 1
Forster, E. M. ref 1
Foucault, Michel: Les mots et les choses ref 1
Frank, Nino: ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ (Finnegans Wake; Italian tr.) ref 1
Fronto, Marcus Cornelius ref 1, ref 2
Gadamer, Georg ref 1, ref 2
Gadda, Emilio Carlo: Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana ref 1
Gellius, Aulus: Noctes Acticae ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6
Germi, Pietro: Un Maledetto imbroglio (film) ref 1
Gide, André ref 1
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ref 1
Greimas, J. (Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary; co-ed.) ref 1
Halévy, Ludovic: Sylvie (Nerval; English tr.) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7
Halpern, Daniel ref 1
Hamlet (Shakespeare) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Heaney, Seamus ref 1, ref 2
Heidegger, Martin ref 1, ref 2
Herman the German: Rhetoric tr. ref 1; Poetics tr. ref 2, ref 3
Hjelmslev, Louis ref 1, ref 2: Prelegomena to a Theory of Language ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Hofstadter, Douglas: Le Ton beau de Marot ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Homer ref 1; Iliad ref 2
homonymy ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Humboldt, Wilhelm von ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7
Hutcheon, Linda: A Poetics of Postmodernism ref 1; Foucault’s Pendulum, comment on ref 2, ref 3
hypotyposis ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7
ibn Hazm (10th/11th cent. writer) ref 1
interpretants ref 1
intertextual irony ref 1, ref 2; double coding ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9
Jackson, Katherine: Montale poem (English tr.) ref 1, ref 2
Jakobson, Roman ref 1, ref 2, ref 3; ‘Linguistic aspects of translation’ ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8
James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady ref 1
Jameson, Fredric: Un drame bien parisien (English tr.) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
John of Garland: Poetria Nova ref 1
Joyce, James: ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ (Finnegans Wake) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5; Ulysses ref 6, ref 7
Kroeber, Burckhart (German tr.):
Baudolino ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6
Foucault’s Pendulum ref 1, ref 2
The Island of the Day Before ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4
The Name of the Rose ref 1, ref 2
Lamb, Charles and Mary: Tales from Shakespeare ref 1, ref 2
Lampedusa, Tomasi di: The Leopard ref 1
language:
colour and cultural systems ref