What it means to translate - Part 1: Perfect language and European Babel
The last essay that Iâve ever had to work on at Uni is probably one the most interesting ones. It was for a class called âTranslating the Nationâ and it was taught by an Irish professor, named ClĂona NĂ RiordĂĄin.Â
The last bit of work that she had us do was to comment the following sentences :
« Repenser lâEurope Ă partir des « entre »-mondes, autour du seul triptyque qui prĂ©pare lâavenir : traduction, migration, hybridation.
Autoriser le multiple pour lâavenir, penser les attachements et les loyautĂ©s plurielles, voilĂ le sens de cette langue des langues. »
« Rethinking Europe using âin-between worldsâ, with the only triptych that prepares us for the future: translation, migration, hybridation.
Allowing multiplicity, thinking and reconsidering ties and loyalties; that is the true meaning of this language of languages. »
These sentences originate from an article written in 2014, in Le Monde newspaper, by Camille de Toledo et Heinz Wismann.Â
So why am I talking about an essay I wrote several years ago ? Because it might have been the essay which had the deepest impact on me. I learnt a lot about what it means to translate when you live on a linguistically diverse continent like Europe but where English has become the lingua franca. In Europe, despite the European Union recognising 24 working languages, the EU has a certain bias towards a limited set of European languages, namely English, French and German. For instance, the European Central Bank works solely in English, while the European Court of Justice has French as its working language.
Something that is worth-noting about Translation and Europe is that Translation is a legacy of European linguistic translation. Indeed, the authors of the article, de Toledo et Wismann, frame Translation as being a âlanguage of languageâ, a âperfect languageâ. The Search for that Perfect Language is a centuries-old endeavour by European proto-linguists.Â
Umberto Eco, Italian linguist, philosopher and translator, in his 1993 essay The Search of the Perfect Language in the European Culture actually establishes a list of linguistic entreprises which aimed at retracing or reconstructing the original language of humans. In the early endeavours, the quest for a perfect language was fundamentally religious; getting closer to the original, primal language was getting one step closer to God.
This vision of the perfect language implies that it is perfect because it was ontologically true. It was close to what God had intended. Because of this belief, many thought that Hebrew was the proto-language from which all others branched out. The perfect language was thought at the time time to be a direct means of communication with God.
One camp, who Guillaume Postel (1510-1581); a French linguist, diplomat, and religious universalist represented, thought that the perfect language was fundamentally a religious effort. The perfect language would bring its speakers closer to God. However, later in Europeâs history, a second vision of what the perfect language should be arose. This new stance is embodied by Doctor Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859-1917), a Polish ophthalmologist and creator of the Esperanto language. While the religious effort to find the perfect language could analysed as vertical aspirations, towards God, the perfect language as Zamenhof conceived it was horizontal, for it created bridges between citizens.Â
Traumatised by the dire consequences of wars (death, separation, hatred, isolation), Doctor Zamenhof created a language in which he placed much hope, for he named it Esperanto, meaning âhopefulâ. Zamenhof wanted to put into the world a language that people of different linguistic backgrounds could speak. His goal was to create ways for Europeans to communicate with each other. By incorporating elements from Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, Zamenhof was aiming at creating a middle-ground for these speakers. Esperanto, in its noble objectives, resembles de Toledo and Wismannâs ideal description of what Translation should be.
If a perfect language is no longer an instrument of religious elevation but a tool to create unity, there is, in European history, one language that did so: Yiddish. Wismann and de Toledo explain that, in their eyes, Yiddish is a truly European language for it was spoken by a vast number of people throughout Europe; from eastern France to western Russia.
Wismann and de Toledo argue that Yiddish was close to a perfect language because not only was it spoken by millions of people throughout Europe but also, like Translation, Yiddish allowed for multiple loyalties. A Yiddish speaker is not limited to its national identity (that of a German, Pole or Russian). Yiddish is still very much associated with Judaism (âYiddishâ literally means âJewishâ) so
any speakers of the languages, whether they were secular, cultural Jews or deeply pious, Yiddish was the language of the Jewish people in Europe.
However, thanks to its distribution, it meant that all those speakers were not localised in one single country. Although they spoke the same language, with many different dialects (see the map above), they were still citizens of their country. Instead of seeing Jewish people and Yiddish speakers being torn between two identities; âbeing a Jewâ and âbeing a nationalâ, it should be seen as Yiddish offering the opportunity to have several allegiances.
This is why in my essay I called Yiddish a European Babel. Unfortunately, following the Holocaust, Yiddish was put on its deathbed. It is estimated that 85% of the Jews who were killed were Yiddish speakers, according to Solomo Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (1984, page3. Hamburg: Buske). In other words, Hitlerâs genocidal plans destroyed the European Babel situation.
Therefore, Translation as it is conceived by the authors, is European to the core because it is deeply rooted within a centuries-old intellectual history and because it is promoting what the most inclusive âperfect languagesâ have done; allowing millions of people exchange across nations and speak to one another while enabling these speakers to feel part of different communities. With its universal nature and promotion of multiple allegiances, Translation is the heir to languages like Yiddish and Esperanto. Wismann and de Toledoâs projection is also a token of secular humanism; rejecting the religious views of a unique language meant to approach God, they want it to be universal, not ontologically perfect. Furthermore, Translation aims at undoing the damage that the mythical drama created by the Babel events. Finally, it aims at healing the wounds that WWII made. For these reasons, Translation corresponds to a humanist vision.
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