Assistant professor of Arabic Spencer Scoville spoke at a Humanities Center colloquium on pseudotranslation in modern Egyptian literature.
PROVO, Utah (November 6, 2014)—What do we do with translations that aren’t completely faithful to the original work? At a Humanities Center colloquium, Arabic professor Spencer Scoville explains the complications and value of translations.
Scoville’s interest falls into two aspects: first, the agency of the translator and what is learned about them as an agent in creating literature; and second, translation and pseudotranslation. “Pseudotranslation pretends to be something it’s not,” said Scoville. “Why would an author produce something themselves and then label it a translation, giving credit to someone else?”
Often with multiple readings of a translated text, readers get caught up with concerns of fidelity – how true is the translation to the original? But Scoville isn’t as concerned with the translator’s fidelity as he is with the choices that the translator makes. “As we put these two texts together, we want to see the translator in between the two texts,” said Scoville.
Scoville said that the Arabic term for translation is “’arraba,” which means to make something Arabic. Translators make changes and alterations to communicate cultural differences between the original text and the culture of the reader.
After reading a translator’s preface, Scoville said, “Translators are comfortable with the fact that they are creating the translation, and they’re going to make their own changes. There’s no sense of doubt or confession.”
He gave the example of Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti, a prolific essayist, author and translator. Al-Manfaluti didn’t speak any other language besides Arabic. Scoville explained that when he found an author he wanted to translate, he would have friends read the story then tell it to him. He would jot down the plot outline and then translate the story into Arabic.
“So we have a French text and Arabic text, and we can see the gap between them is quite wide,” said Scoville of one particular al-Manfaluti translation.
He said that many of the changes made are social and cultural changes – making the story more acceptable to Arab readers. “There are a few moments in the story where al-Manfaluti takes the French text and does something very different with it. Emerging nationalism in Egypt is important to him so he infuses those ideas into the story,” Scoville explained.
Scoville asked, “Is this an ethical practice?” It’s a difficult question. Al-Manfaluti isn’t pseudotranslating “because he doesn’t claim it to be something it’s not. But what is it then? It does seem like a deformed product, and yet there’s something literary about the decisions that al-Manfaluti made. It’s a space for original cultural production,” said Scoville.
He added, “The primary thing I take away from this is the notion that the translator is an agent, that translation is a creative process. With translation, we often get caught up talking about the texts, but every translator is tied to a cultural context. By looking at ‘translations’ — or something like a translation —like these, we can try to understand this literary project that they’re a part of — what is the translator doing in moving a text from one cultural context to another.”
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—Stephanie Bahr Bentley (B.A. English ’14)