polylingualism as reality and translation as mimesis

8/10/2019 Polylingualism as Reality and Translation as Mimesis

1/20

Porter nstitute for Poetics and Semiotics

Polylingualism as Reality and Translation as MimesisAuthor(s): Meir SternbergSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 4, Translation Theory and Intercultural Relations (Summer -Autumn, 1981), pp. 221-239Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772500.

Accessed: 08/01/2015 15:54

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Pressand Porter Institute for Poetics and Semioticsare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to Poetics Today.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Thu, 8 Jan 2015 15:54:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=dukehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1772500?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1772500?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke


2/20

POLYLINGUALISM AS REALITY

AND TRANSLATION AS MIMESIS*

MEIR

STERNBERG

Poetics nd

Comparative iterature,

el

Aviv

I

Translators

and

theorists

f

translation

naturally

ecall

with

gratitude

he

incident of

the Tower

of

Babel

-

as

the

felix

culpa

responsible

for

the

crisscross

f

interlingual

hasms which

they

are

constantly

rged

to

survey

and

as

far

as

possible

to

bridge.

The

attitude

f

writers o

this

ociolinguistic

turning-point

s,

however,

ess

uniform nd

certainly

more

ambivalent.

rue,

it

has

widened their

ange

of

both

materials

nd

devices

far

beyond anythingconceivable in a statewhere "the whole earth was of one

language

and of

one

speech."

But

from

nother

viewpoint,

his

very

asset

may

be

regarded

as

a

liability

r at

least

a

mixed

blessing.

For

the

disruption

f

the state

of

world-wide

inguistic

omogeneity

as

made the

profusion

nd

confusion f

tongues

not

only

a

verbal

but also

an

existential

act,

nd,

in

addition o

the

basic tasks of

referring

o

extraverbal

eality

nd

reporting

erbal

messages

within

he same

code,

it

has laid on

each

language

the

burden of

reporting

messages

originally

ncoded

in

other

languages.

This

forms

of

course

the

common

source

of

all

translational

roblems.

But what

should

be

noted

is

that the complications risingare intratextual s well as intertextual nd

representational

s

well as

communicative.

These

complications

manifest

themselves

o

some extent

wheneverwe

try

not,

as

in

standard

ranslation,

to

substitute ur own

discourse

for

an

utterance

made

in

another

anguage,

but to

incorporate

his

utterance nto our own

discourse. Such

framing

nd

juxtaposition

of

differently-encoded

peech

are,

however,

particularly

om-

mon

within

the fictive

worlds created

in

literature,

with

their

variegated

referential

ontexts,

frequent

shiftsfrom

milieu to

milieu,

abundance

of

dialogue

scenes,

and

keen

interest

n

the

language

of

reality

nd

the

reality

*

Paper presented

t

Synopsis

1:

"Translation

Theory

and

Intercultural

elations,"

held

at

the

Porter Institute

for

Poetics

and Semiotics

in

collihborati)on

with

the M. Bernstein Chair of

Translation

Theory,

Tel Aviv

University,

7 March-1

April

1978. Previousversion

n

Degrds

16

(1978).

?

Poetics

oday,

Vol. 2:4

(1981),

21-239

This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Thu, 8 Jan 2015 15:54:07 PM

All use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/20

222

MEIR STERNBERG

of

language.

Literary

rt

thus

finds

tself

onfronted

y

a

formidable

mimetic

challenge:

how to

represent

he

reality

of

polylingual

discourse

through

communicative

medium

which

is

normallyunilingual.'The

interlingual

ensionbetween

language

as

represented

bject

(within

the

original

or

reported speech-event)

and

language

as

representational

means

(within

the

reporting

peech-event)

s

primarily

mimetic ather

than

communicative.

n

this,

object-sensitive

eporting

adically

differs rom

the

gratuitous

lternation r

arbitrary

lending

of

linguistic

ehicles

in

multi-

lingual

literature:

t

poses

such communicative

problems

as

intelligibility

only

in

so

far

as some

attempt

s made to

rise to the

mimetic

hallenge.

Since

this

tension between

object

and

medium or

inset

and

frame rises

in

principle regardless

of the

polyglot

qualifications

of the

audience,

it

obviously ould not be resolvedeven ifthe authorwere to communicaten a

lingua

franca,

ike Greek

in

ancient

times,

Latin

in

the Middle

Ages,

or

the

more recent

Esperanto.

For the

raison

d'etre

of these is

not to

bridge

the

gaps

of

representation

ut to

remove the

barriers

o

communication,

ften

with

a

view

to

ultimately

urning

ack the

wheel

of

time

to

a

pre-Babel

state

of

universal

unilingualism.

ut

in

the

absence

of

a

drastic

eveling hange

n

social

reality,

whichComrade

Stalin indeed saw as

a

necessary

ondition

or

universal

anguage,

they

all

face the same

exigencies

s

any

other

anguage

in

rendering

heterolingual

iscourse.

Nor can

this

ntratextual

ension

be resolved

by

the

equally

attractive

ut

perhaps

even moremillennial ision of languageas an abstract pirit ather

than

a

concrete

substance,

put

forward

by

Clemens,

the monk

serving

s

narrator

n

Thomas

Mann's

Der Erwdhlte

The Holy Sinner):

Es ist

ganz

ungewiss,

n

welcher

Sprache

ich

schreibe,

b

lateinisch,

franz6sisch,

eutsch

der

angelskichsisch,

nd es ist auch das

gleiche,

enn

schreibe

ch

etwa auf

thiudisch,

ie die

Helvetien

ewohnenden

lamannen

reden,

o

steht

morgen

ritisch uf dem

Papier,

und

es ist

ein

britunsches

Buch,

das

ich

geschrieben

abe.

Keineswegs ehaupte

ch,

dass

ich die

Sprachen

lle

beherrsche,

ber ie rinnen

ir

neinander

n

meinem

chreiben

nd

werden ins,niimlichprache.Denn so verhilt s sich,dass derGeistder

Erzahlung

in

bis

zur Abstraktheit

ngebundener

eist

st,

dessen

Mittel

ie

Sprache

n

sich

nd

ls

solche,

ie

Sprache

elbst

st,welche

ich lsabsolut etzt

und

nicht

iel

nach

diomen

nd

prachlichen

andesg6ttern

ragt.

as

ware

a

auch

polytheistisch

ndheidnisch.

ott

st

Geist,

nd

fiber

en

Sprachen

stdie

SpracheChap.

1).

ISince

I am concerned here with the

linguistic diversity

or

uniformity

of the

utterances

(usually

made

by

different

speakers)

within

the

world

of a

single

text,

I

deliberately

avoid the

sociolinguistic

terms

"multilingual"

and

"monolingual,"

which are

(and

should

he)

used

to

characterize

the

linguistic

range

of a

single speaker

or

community.

In

contrast,

a

work

may

be

said

to

represent

a

polylingual reality

of discourse even

though

each individual

speaker

or

milieu is

strictly

monolingual,

and to

represent

a

unilingual reality

of discourse even

though

each

speaker

is

potentially

multilingual.

The terms are thus

complementary.

I have also added

the term

"heterolingual"

to denote

a

foreign language

(or

dialect)-

usually

a

language

other

than

that

of

the

reporting

speech-event.




4/20

POLYLINGUALISM AND TRANSLATION

AS MIMESIS

223

[It

is

quite

uncertain

in

what

language

I

write,

whether

Latin, French,

German

or

Anglo-Saxon,

and

indeed it

is

all the

same;

for

say

I

write

Thiudisch,

such as

the Germans

speak

who

live in

Helvetia,

then tomorrow

British stands on the

paper

and it is a Breton book I have written.

By

no

means

do

I

assertthat

possess

all

the

tongues;

but

they

run

all

together

n

my

writing

nd become one

-

in

other

words,

anguage.

For

the

thing

s

so,

that

the

spirit

of narration

s

free

to

the

point

of

abstraction,

whose

medium

s

language

n and

for

tself,

anguage

tself,

which ets tself

s

absolute and does

not

greatly

are

about

idioms

and national

inguistic

ods.

That

indeed

would

be

polytheistic

nd

pagan.

God is

spirit,

nd above

languages

s

anguage

trans.

H.

T.

Lowe-Porter).]

Having

enjoyed

the

irony

of

finding

n

original

and

a

translated

version of

a

tale that aspires to the condition of "language in and for itself," we can go

on to

ask

whether Clemens

is

really

so

innocent

as

he

sounds.

It is no

doubt

appropriate

that

Clemens,

who

emphatically

introduces

himself as

the

incarnation

("Inkarnation")

of

the

spirit

of

story-telling,

hould dream

of

communicating

in a

medium

that

incarnates the

spirit

of

language.

What

is

more,

his vision

of a

language

above

languages

derives not

simply

from

his

artistic

and

religious

ideals

of

communication,

but

equally

from

the

embarrassingly polylingual

nature

of his world. After

all,

this means

of

evading

the

mimetic

pressures

of "national

linguistic

gods"

would

not

be

such

a bad

solution

for

an

Irish

monk

writing

n a German

monastery

about

a

French

duke

brought up

on an

English

island and

finally

exalted to the

papacy

of Rome.

And

since

Clemens

himself

ultimately

bows

to the

necessity

of

imprisoning

the absolute

spirit

of

language

in the variable

clay

of

languages,

his

lesson,

including

the

clash between

his

(unilingual)

theory

and

his

(polylingual)

practice,

actually

serves

to

sharpen

and

illuminate

rather

than

eliminate

the writer's

predicament.

To descend

from

the

heights

of

utopia

to the lowlands

of

reality,

the

problem

of

heterolingual

or

translational mimesis

can in fact be

variously

circumvented

by

three

drastic

procedures:

1.

referential

restriction;

2.

vehicular matching; 3. homogenizing convention.

Referential

restriction onsists

in

confining

the

scope

of the

represented

world

to

the limits of

a

single, linguistically

uniform

community

whose

speech-patterns correspond

to those

of

the

implied

audience,

sometimes

to

the

point

of

excluding

interdialectical

as well as

interlingual

tensions,

as

in

the

novels

of Jane

Austen.

Vehicular

matching,

on

the other

hand,

far from

avoiding

linguistic

diversity

or

conflict,

accepts

them as

a

matter

of

course,

as

a fact of

life and

a

factor

of

communication,

and sometimes

even

deliberately

seeks

them

out

-

suiting

the variations

in

the

representational

medium

to the variations

in

the

represented

object.

Such

consistent

matching is quite common in scholarly works, the proceedings of interna-

tional

conferences or

the

daily operations

of

bilingual

societies;

but it

may

also

be

found

in

different

varieties

of

polyglot

art,

whether

Jean

Renoir's

bilingual

film

La

grande

illusion or

G. B.

Shaw's

polydialectical

Pygmalion.

In




5/20

224

MEIR STERNBERG

all

these

instances,

he framed

heterolingual

r

polylingual

peech-events

re

replicated

and

in

this sense

given

full

communicative

utonomy,

while the

overt role

of

the

reporting peech-event

s limited to the

provision

of

bridging

inks,

nterscenic

ummary

r

possibly

no more thanthe inverted

commas

of

quotation.

The

recourse

to

the

homogenizing

onvention,

inally,

retainsthe freedom

of

referencewhile

dismissing

he resultant

ariations

n

the

language

presumably

poken by

the characters

s an

irrelevant,

f

not

distracting,

epresentational

actor.Alice

does

not find

t

strange

o hear the

White

Rabbit

muttering

o itself

n

English,

and there s indeed

no reason

why

she

should.

After

all,

doesn't Balaam's ass break

into

pure

Biblical

Hebrew

and

doesn't

La Fontaine's

fox

bring

to bear

on the

poor

raven

all

the rhetorical

resources

of

French? Even

more

extreme,

such

linguistic

uniformity aybe not simply conventionalmeasure ofsimplificationuta

vital

basis

for the

work's overall

structuring

nd

functionality:

n

Shakes-

peare's

Antony

and

Cleopatra,

the

development

of the most

complex

figurativepatterns

known

to

literary

art

hinges

on the

anti-historical

Englishing

of the

polylingual

discourse held

in

the

world

of

Romans

and

Egyptians.

This

principle

f

intratextual

tandardization

s,

then,

diametrical-

ly

opposed

not so much

to that of vehicular

matching

s to the

vehicular

promiscuityypical

of

macaronic

writing

from

he

medieval

muwas'ah

to

Joyce's

Finnegans

Wake

-

where shifts

of medium are

mimetically

gratuitous

and

polylingual

means are often

flagrantly

ummoned

to

represent

unilingual

realityof

discourse.2

What s common

o

the threediverse

representationaltrategies

s

that ach

manages

in

its

own

way

to

eliminate

the

complications

f

imitating

oreign

("heterolingual")

speech.

Vehicular

matching

ubstitutes

he literalness

nd

thoroughness

f

reproduction

or the

stylization

nd

selectivity

f

mimesis,

quoting

each

speech

in

its

original

wording

so

as to effect s

perfect

correspondence

s

possible

between

the

signified

olylingualism

f

reality

and

the

signifying

olylingualism

f the

text. Whereas

both referential

restriction

nd

homogenizing

onvention

ustify

heir dherence

to

unilingual

communication y resorting o a simplifyingevice that enables themto

preclude

or neutralize

one of

two

factors

presupposed

by

each

act of

mimesis:the

one,

in

realistic

erms,

y

standardizing

he mitated

bject;

the

other,

n

aesthetic

terms,

by

standardizing

he

imitating

medium.

Therefore,

f

these three

primary

heoretical

possibilities

referential

vehicular

homogenizing

vehicular

restriction

matching

convention

promiscuity

object unilingual

polylingual

polylingual

variable,

ossibly

unilingual

medium

unilingual

polylingual

unilingual

polylingual

2

For

an

account

f

he

atter

henomenon,

which

s

outside

my

resent

oncerns,

ee

Forster,

970.




6/20

POLYLINGUALISM AND

TRANSLATION

AS

MIMESIS

225

indeed

reflected

he

facts

of

literary ractice,

therewould

be

hardly

any

room left

for

translational

mimesis.

n

fact,

however,

he

very xtremity

hat

renders

these

relationships

uch

clear-cut theoretical

categoriesveryfre-

quently

lso

disqualifies

hemfor

erving

s viable artistic

trategies.

ach

of

the

three either

demands

or

sacrifices oo

much. Referential

restriction

imposes

such

severe constraints

n the

selection

of

extraverbal s well

as

purely

verbal

material s

must

prove

unacceptable

to

any

artist

nterested

n

the

development

of

certain

polyvalent

hemes

say,

Henry

James's

nterna-

tional

conflict

f

manners)

nd/or

n

the

interaction f

language

and

culture

(as

in

Swift or

Nabokov)

and/or

in

the

mimetic

effect

f

sociolinguistic

variety (even

by

way

of

dialectal

tensions,

as

in

Fielding

or

Zola,

or

registerial

shifts,

as

in

Henry

Cecil's

novels of

litigation). Large-scale

vehicularmatching, n the other hand, so inconsistentwith the normal

conditions f

communication,

may

n

some

periods

and

genres

be

thought

o

divert

attention

from

more

important

matters

and to

require

too

much

polyglot

expertise

on

the

part

of

the

author and

his

reading-public.

While

the

adherence

to

the

homogenizing

onvention,

which

may

be

thought

o

require

too

little,

isks

paying

an

even

heavierrealistic

rice

than

referential

restriction,

recisely

because its

unilingual

vehicle

is

artificially

nd

indis-

criminately

oupled

with a

polylingual

enor

and

the

statics

of

the

reporting

speech

glaringly

ontrast

with

the

dynamics

of

the

framed

code-switching.

Literature,

ike

politics,

s the art

of

the

possible.

No

wonder, then,

that

literarypractice is marked,above all in

referentially-oriented

enres

like

fiction

nd

drama,

by

the

spirit

f

mimetic

ompromise,

manifesting

tself n

various

mixtures,

ombinations

and

contextual

adjustments

of

the basic

possibilities.

The

mixed

representation

of

polylingual

or

heterolingual

discourse

may

ultimately

be

reduced, however,

to

four

distinct

ypes

or

procedures

of

translational

mimesis,

ying

between

the

polar

extremes

of

vehicular

matching

nd

homogenizing

onvention.

1)

Selective

reproduction

akes

the form

of

intermittent

uotation

of

the

originalheterolingual iscourseas utteredby thespeaker(s),or in literature,

as

supposed

to

have been

uttered

by

the

fictive

peaker(s).

And

from

he

functional

iewpoint,

t

usually

operates

as a

kind

of

mimetic

ynecdoche.

The

Biblical

Book

of

Ezra,

for

instance,

suddenly

incorporates

nto

the

Hebrew

narrative

(4.6

if)

the

correspondence

("written

in

Aramaic")

between

the

enemies

of

Israel

and

Artaxerxes

king

of

Persia:

the

reproduction

f

the

documentary

vidence n

the

original

Aramaic

heightens

the

tale's

impression

of historical

authenticity,

ot

with

regard

to

the

reproduced

parts

alone

but

also to

other

speech-events

including

the

famous

proclamation

by

Cyrus,

with

which

the

book

starts)

hat

have

been

standardizedbywayof unilingual ranslation.And thesame combination f

selective

matching

and

selective

leveling

devised

in

this

ancient

tale

repeatedly

shows

itself n

more

modern

works.

Consider War

and

Peace,

whose

Russian

text is

interspersed

with

segments

of

reported

speech




7/20


8/20

POLYLINGUALISM

AND

TRANSLATION

AS MIMESIS

227

"source

--

translation"

often

implies

a

lower

standard

of

bilingual

competence

than

the

sequence

"translation

-

source,"

though

neither

orm

is common in

the

strictly olyglot

rt

of the

past.

Reproduction,

inally,

oes not

necessarily

mean accurate

reproduction.

t

may

turn out

less than

impeccable

by

linguistic

tandards:

either

uncon-

sciously,

s

in

many

cases of

anachronism r

dialectal

hotch-potch

r

other

forms

of

authorial

blundering,

or

deliberately,

as

when

by

a

typical

dual-language

trick,

Mr.

Shandy

mistranslates

Amicus Plato

sed

magis

amica

veritas"

to

equal

"Dinah

was

my

aunt

but

Truth

is

my

sister"

(Tristram

handy,

Vol.

I,

Chap. 21).

And

even

when

perfectly

cceptable

from

he

linguistic

iewpoint,

eproduction

may

still

nvolve

gross

distortion

or

daring

manipulation

rom

he

factual

nd

compositional

iewpoints.

hus,

the intertextual llusions ostensibly signalled by Stendhal's polylingual

epigraphs,

ike

the

Aramaic

sayings

that

color

the Yiddish

discourse

of

Scholem

Aleichem's

famous

dairyman,

re

often

pure

invention.

Not

to

speak

of

less

extreme

varieties

of

deviant

allusion

and

internal

misquotation

cf.

Sternberg,

1976).

Which

is to

say

that

in

dealing

with

translational

mimesis n

general

and

selective

reproduction

n

particular,

we

must

take

into

account the

variables

of

implied

literary,

bi-literary

nd

bi-cultural

s

well as

purely ilingual

ompetence.

2)

A

more

oblique

and

varied

type

of

translational

mimesis is

verbal

transposition the poetic or communicative wistgiven to what socio-

linguists

all

bilingual

nterference.

ransposition

s

mimetically

more

oblique

than

reproduction,

ince

it

suggests

polylingual

r

heterolingual

peech

in

and

through

n

ostensiblyunilingual

medium

rather

han

directly

ncorpo-

rates

such

speech

into

an

openly

mixed

framework.

And

it

is

also

more

varied,

since its

polylingual

r

heterolingual

uggestiveness

erives

from

he

narrator's

the

"translator's")

uperimposing

n

the

translated

uotation

one

or

more of a

variety

of

features

and

patterns

distinctive

f

the

source

language

but

unacceptable

n

the

target

anguage

this

montage

ccording-

ly producingan interlingual lash of the two codes withinthe transposed

utterance.

The

devised

translational

nterference

may

relate to

any

verbal

level or

aspect

at

which

the

two

languages

involved

are

less

than

perfectly

isomorphic.

he

jarring

ffect

f

transposed

peech

may

for

nstance

be

due

to

the

retention

r

imitation

f

what

becomes in

the

target

anguage:

(a)

phonic

or

orthographic

diosyncrasyas

with

wift's

word

Houyhnhnm,"

which,

however

normal

within

he

phonological

tructuref

the

anguage

of

horses,

s

simply

eyond

he

articulatoryower

of

mere

Yahoos

like

us;

or,

tocite

a more

prevalent

henomenon,

he

arrying

verof

he

low"

or

foreignntonationsftheoriginal peaker ntothefabric fthetranslated

discourse);

nd/or

(b)

grammatical

irregularity

nd

ill-formedness

whether

by

way

of

discrepancies

n

concord

or

tense

or

aspect,

unnatural

r

ambiguous

word




9/20

228 MEIR

STERNBERG

order,

or

the

ruthlessly

tandardized

morphology

aimed

at

in

the

nightmarish

orld

f

George

Orwell's

1984);

and/or

(c)

lexical deviance

(as

with

the

literally

rendered

Spanish

idioms in

Hemingway's

orWhom heBell

Tolls);

and/or

(d)

to

move

from

he

unacceptable

o

the nfelicitousnd

from

he

specific

o

the

general,

even

stylistic

eatures

hat

are

contrary

o

the

"spirit

f

the

language"

(as

when the

proverbial

Russian

emotionalism urfaces

n

the

dialogues

of

Rebecca West's

The Birds

Fall

Down,

or

when he

unEnglish

flourishes

hroughout

omerset

Maugham's

"The

Man with

heScar" are

at last

explicitly

scribed

by

the

narrator o

his

Guatemalecan

nformant:

"I

have

translated

what

he

told

me

as

well

as I

could,

but have made

not

attempt

o

tone

down his rather

igh-flownanguage").

But

whatever ts

modes

and

combinatory

echnique,

ranspositionignificant-

ly

differs rom

overall

and

local)

matching

n that t

is not

so much

a

literal

reproduction

f

substance

s a

stylized

mimesis

f

form;

r

from he

reader's

viewpoint,

not so

much

a

heterolingual

atum or

directly

bserved

fact

s an

interpretive ypothesis ccounting

orverbal

tension,

eviance

and

incompati-

bility

within

given unilingual

iscourse

n

terms

f

the

reporter's

elective,

mimetically-orientedmis)rendering

f an

originally eterolingual

tterance.

The

transpositional

ypothesis

s

not

only

more

attractive han the obvious

genetic

lternative

ut

lso

presents

subtler

ommunicative

tructure,

ue

to ts

differentistributionf linguistic eaturesbetweenthe twospeech-events

postulating

less

drastic

degree

of

reporting

nterference ith

the

quoted

material

and

correspondingly

llowing

the

heterolingual

speech greater

autonomy

f

point

f

view.

What

a

genetic

hypothesismight

ismiss s authorial

error

within

n

otherwise

homogenized

framework s as a

rule

much more

satisfactorily

xplained

s

covert

nterlingual

nd

interperspectival

ontage

n

the

part

of

a narrator

reporter,

ranslator)

eliberately

mixing

hecodes

of

the

frame

inhabited

by

himself

nd

his

audience)

and the nset

inhabited

by

the

fictive

peaker

and

his

addressee)

n

the nterests f

representational

ividness

andcomplexity.

However,

ust

as

a

polylingual

medium

may

be

used

(as

in

macaronic

writing)

in

the

bsence

of

a

corresponding

olylingual

bject

or

shift

ithin he

projected

reality,

o

every

act

of

bilingual

nterferences

not

necessarily

n

instance

f

mimetic

ransposition.

or

both

the

reporter

ithin he

represented

ramework

and

certainly

he

reportee

within he

represented

rameworkre as

liable

as

the

rest

of

humanity

o

sociolinguistic

ccidents.

On

the

one

hand,

though

what

have

just

called the

genetic hypothesis

s no doubt

less

integrative

han the

mimetic,

t cannot

be ruled

out

categorically

least of

all,

whenwe have

to do

with uthors

who

like

Conrad

or

Nabokov)

choose

to write n a

language

other

than heir wnor,what s morecommon,n dialects hey o notfullyommand.

Interestingly

nough,

hese re

among

the

writersmost ddicted o

translational

mimesis,

o

that

one sometimeswonders

where

literary trategy

nds and

linguistic

elf-defense

egins.

But from ime

to

time

we

come across verbal




10/20

POLYLINGUALISM

AND

TRANSLATION

AS

MIMESIS

229

peculiarities

hat

must

learly

e

accountedfor n

terms

f authorial

lip

rather

than

deliberate

hift o

themedium

mployed

y

the

original

peaker.

On

the other

hand,

the

original real

or

fictive)peakersmay

themselves

e

responsible

or

mposing

n a

foreign

anguage

he

various eatures

nd

patterns

peculiar

to their

native

tongue,

r even

theother

way

round.

Thus,

n

Conrad's

Lord

Jim,

Stein's

sentence

structure

"To

my

small

native

town

this

my

collection

shall

bequeath,"

"One

thing

lone can

us from

being

ourselves

cure")

is

twisted nto

the

verb-stopped

word

order

favored

by

his

native

German;

the

same

result is

produced

by

a more

complicated

process

of

transmission

n

the

speech

of the

Jugoslavian

otel-keeper

n

Oliver

Bleek's

Protocol

or

Kidnapping:

"If

you

will

wait

until

my

lothes

put

on,

I

will

with

your uggagehelp,"

he

said,

getting

ll theverbs

nicely

tucked

away

at the end ofhis

phrase

and sentence.

Maybe

he

thought

n

Serbian,

translated

t

nto

German,

nd

then nto

English

(Chap.

21).

Nabokov's

Pnin

uperlatively

xemplifies

he

ravages

f

foreign

ccent:

If

his

Russian was

music,

his

English

was

murder.He

had

enormous

difficulty

("dzeefeecooltsee"

in

Pninian

English)

with

depalatization,

never

managing

o

remove

heextra

Russian

moisture rom

'sand

d'sbefore

he

vowelshe

so

quaintly

softened.

His

explosive

hat"

("I

never

go

in

a hat

even in

winter"'

differedrom

the

common

American

pronunciation

f

"hot"

[...]

only

by

ts

briefer

uration,

and thus oundedverymuch ike theGermanverbhat has). Long o's withhim

inevitably

ecame

short

ones:

his

"no"

sounded

positively

talian,

and

this

was

accentuated

by

his

trick

f

triplicating

he

simple

negative

"May

I

give

you

a

lift,

Mr.

Pnin?"

"No-no-no,

have

only

wo

paces

from

ere"

Pnin,

Chap.

3).

Pnin's "two

paces

from

here"

brings

us to the

level of

lexis,

variously

deformed

out

of

shape

by

Conrad's

half-caste

captain,

"

whose

flowing

English

seemed

to

be

derived from a

dictionary compiled

by

a

lunatic"

(Lord

Jim,

Chap.

23);

or

by

the

doctoral

candidate

in

Molibre's

Le

Malade

imaginaire,

with

his

verbally

as

well

as

medically preposterous

panacea

"Clysterium

donare,/Postea

seignare,/Ensuitta purgare": or by Henry James's M. Nioche, whose

"vocabulary,"

the

narrator

of

The

American

informs

us,

"was

defective

and

capricious.

He

had

repaired

it

with

large

patches

of

French,

with

words

anglicized

by

a

process

of

his

own,

and with

native

idioms

literally

ranslated."

So

it

s

not

entirely

n

est

that

Nioche

is

told

by

his

prospective

pupil,

the

American

Christopher

Newman,

that

"listening

to

your English

[...]

is

almost a

lesson

in

French"

(Chap.

4).

Still,

though

James and

Bleek

actually

describe

their

characters'

speech

as the

product

of

translation,

all

these cases

of

mixed

speech

must

nevertheless

be

sharply

distinguished

from

our translational

mimesis

of

heterolingual

discourse.

They may indeed be "translational" in the sense of resultingfrom nterlingual

operations;

they

may

also be

"mimetic"

both

as

tokens

of

existing

verbal

models

and

as

more or

less

verisimilar

representations

of

discourse;

and

they

are

of

course

indicative of

a

polylingual

reality.

But

these

similaritiesin

interlingual




11/20

230

MEIR

STERNBERG

montage

erveto

highlight

hecrucialdifferenceetween

mimetic

ransposition

and

sociolinguistic

nterference. his difference

may

be

brokendown ntothe

followingcomplex

of factors:

(a)

communicative

tructure:

wo

distinct

speech-events,

hatbetween he

original peaker

ndhisaudience

being

et nto

the

framework f

the

reporter

nd his

addressee,

as

opposed

to

a

single

speech-event;

(b)

locus

of

different

odes: distributedbetween the

two

speech-events,

ith

he

reported

ne

possibly

wholly nilingual,

s

opposed

to

co-existent

ithin

he

bilingual

peaker's

mind;

c)

source

f nterlingualonflict:

the

reporter's

elective

and usually

deliberate)

ubstitution

f

the forms'and

features

f his

own code for

those

of the

original

tterance,

s

opposed

to the

bilingual's usually

nvoluntary)

roduction

f a

double-coded

utterance,

hose

genesis

s sometimes

escribed s the

peaker's

faulty

mental translation"

f a

message fromhis native into a foreign anguage; (d) mode of existence f

speaker's

utterance

s

actually

nunciated:

artly

n absentia

s

opposed

to

fully

in

praesentia.

Sociolinguistic

nterference,

herefore,

ust

like

the

code-switching

f

equilingual

r

diglossic

peakers,

s

not an instance

ut n

object

of

translational

mimesis

amenable

to all the modes

of

heterolingual

manipulation,

rom

vehicular

matching

to

homogenizing

convention.

This

practice,

variously

manifested

n all the works

have

ust

cited,

s

overtly

ointed

out

by

James's

narrator:

The

language

poken

by

M. Nioche was

a

singular

ompound,

which

shrink

rom

he

attempt

o

reproduce

n

its

ntegrity,"

ince "the

result,

n the

formnwhichhe inall

humility

resentedt,wouldbe scarcely omprehensible

to

the

reader,

o

that

have

ventured

o trimnd sift

t."

3)

Conceptualreflection

s

even

further

emoved

than

transposition

rom

he

concrete

texture

f the

original

discourse:

what t retains

s not

so much

the

verbal

forms

f

the

foreign

ode

as

the

underlying

ocio-cultural

orms,

emantic

mapping

of

reality,

and distinctive

eferential

ange,

segmentations

nd

hierarchies.

onceptual

reflection

hus ies at the crossroads

f

language

and

reality.

Qua

mimetic

ypothesis,

herefore

and it is

important

o note

that

reflection,iketranspositionndunlikematching,s anhypothesishat xplains

verbal

idiosyncrasy

within

an

ostensibly

unilingual

message

in terms

of

perspectival

diversity

nd communicative

montage

- its

discovery

and

validation

may

require

various

kinds,

degrees

and combinations

f

reading-

competence.

Sometimes

he

conceptual

lashhas

a

precise

inguistic

ocus

r

grammatical

realization.

hus,

when

the

holy

rkofthe

onvenant

s

brought

nto

he

amp

of

Israel,

the

Biblical

narrator

uotes

the

houting

f the

frightened

hilistines:

Woe

unto s

who

hall

eliver s

outof hehand

f hese

mightyods

Elohim]?

these re

the

gods Elohim]

hatmote

he

Egyptians

ith ll the

plagues

n

the

wilderness.

II

Samuel,

.8:the

King

amesersionshere ccurate,lmostiteral)

At

first

lance,

the

heterolingualism

fthe

original

peech

seems

to have

been

homogenized

utof

existence

y

way

ofnarratorial

ntrusion.

he

only

inguistic




12/20

POLYLINGUALISM AND TRANSLATION AS

MIMESIS 231

clue of

translational

mimesis

ere

s the

arring

ote

ounded

by

the

Philistines'

repeated

reference

o theGod

of

srael

through

he

plural

form

= gods)

of that

veryword (Elohim) which a Jew would use as singular = God). But this

deviance in nominal

categorization

eflects

conceptually

nd

perspectively

charged

distinctive

feature,

the

foreignness

f

the utterance

being

thus

foregrounded

hrough

twofold ension

etween

he

Jewish

udience

within

he

narrativeframe

and the

Philistine

peakers

within

he

narrative

nset: the

informational

iscrepancy

between the

enlightened

nd

the

ignorant the

plagues

were

actually

nflicted

n

Egypt,

ot

n

the

wilderness)

nd

thenormative

discrepancy

etween he

monotheisticnd the

polytheistic.

In

other

cases,

the mimetic

iscrepancy

s

reflected

n

terms

f

the semantic

structure

r

limits

f

the

two

anguages

n which

he

reported

nd

the

reporting

speech-eventsre encoded,as whentheLilliputians, holly nacquaintedwith

many

phenomena

which

Western ulture

akes

for

granted,

ave to fall

back on

ingenious

guessing

nd

lengthy

ircumlocution

n

order to refer

o Gulliver's

watch:

A

globe,

alf

ilver,

nd

half

f

ome

ransparent

etal:

or

nthe

ransparent

ide

we

sawcertain

trange

igures

ircularly

rawn,

nd

thought

e

could

ouch

hem,

untilwe found

ur

fingers

topped

ith

hat

ucid ubstance.

e

put

his

ngine

o

our

ars,

whichmade

n

ncessantoise

ike hat

f

water-mill:nd

we

onjecture

it

s either omeunknown

nimal,

r

the

god

that

e

worships:

ut

we are more

inclinedo the

atter

pinion,

ecausehe

assured

s,

if

we

understandim

ight,

forheexpressed imselfery mperfectly)hat eseldom idanythingithout

consulting

t

Part

,

Chap.

).

Elsewhere,

the

conceptual

reflection

s based

on

the lexical

or

referential

deficiency

of

the

target

rather

than

the

source

language,

as when

the

half-Russian

eroine

of

The

BirdsFall Down

mentions

he

many

oving

names

conferred

n

oil

by

the

OrthodoxChurch:

the

holy

il,

the

oil of

gladness,

he

oil of

sanctification,

royal

robe,

a

seal of

safety,

he

delight

f the

heart,

n

eternal

oy,

the

oil

of

salvation"

Chap. 9).

Most

often,

however,

this mode

of

intratextual

ranslation

mplements

indicators that are verballymuch less definite r codified,producingthe

impression

f

heterolingualism

hrough

ulturally

ypical or

typified) opics,

interests, ttitudes,

ealia,

forms

f

address,

fields

f

allusion,

r

paralinguistic

features ike

gesticulation.

4) Explicit

ttribution,

inally,

s a

direct tatement

n

the

reporter's

or

even

the

reportee's)

part

concerning

he

language

or

some

aspect

of

the

anguage)

n

which

he

reported

peech

was

originally

made.

We

have

already

een

more han

one

instance of it

conjoined,

in

the form

of

generalization,

with

other

translational

ypes:

for

xample,

n

the

narrator's

omments

n

Pnin's

phonetic

or Nioche's lexical aberrations.But attributionmay also appear by itself,

unsupported

and

unexemplified

by

even the

faintest hade

of

mimetic

"showing"

and

consisting

n

pure

narratorial

telling"

-

whether

bout the

heterolingual

ature fthe

discourse s a whole

e.g.,

"He

spoke

n

French")

r,




13/20

232

MEIR

STERNBERG

more

specifically,

bout

the

standardization f

some

heterolingual

omponent

(as

when

Shaw

notes

in

Pygmalion

hat "this

desperate attempt

o

represent

[Liza's]

dialectwithout

phonetic lphabet

must

be abandoned s

unintelligible

outside

London").

A

typical

esult

f ts

horoughgoingpplication

s

that,

when

the

quoted

speakers

within he

represented

eality

re themselves

ilingual as

in

Eric

Ambler's

A Kind

of

Anger),

the omission of

an

overt notice makes

it

impossible

o

determine

n

which f

the

possible anguages

certain

ialogue

s

conducted.

Another s

what

may

be

called

standardization

t a

second

remove,

usually

due

to a

double

communicative

raming:

narrator's tandardized

quotation

in

his

language)

of a character's tandardized

uotation

in

his

own

language)

of

another

haracter's

peech in

a third

anguage).

n

extreme

ases,

therefore,

ttribution

merges

nto the

pole

of

homogenizing

onvention

n all

that oncerns heuncontestednilingualismftherepresentational edium nd

is

distinguished

rom his

pole

only

n the

"mimetic"

wareness f

the

poly-

or

heterolingualism

f

the

represented

bject, signalled through

he

occasional

references

o

linguistic

iversity.

II

What is common

o

the

different

ypes

r

categories

f

ntratextual

ranslation

is,

then,

that

the

interference

ith the

reported

heterolingual peech-event

produces

a

verbally

and

communicatively

mixed

quotation,

combining

he

perspectives

f

the

ntrusive

arratorwithin

he frame nd

the

original

peaker

within he inset.But in viewof thedifferencesn the

degree

of

quotational

interference,

t

is

tempting

to

range

the four

categories

we

have

just

distinguished

long

a scale

flanked

y

thetwo

imiting

ases:

vehicular

selective

verbal

conceptual explicit

homogenizing

matching

reproduction

ransposition

reflection attribution

convention

I

I

I

I

Such

gradation

ooks

straightforward

nough,

but it

may

prove

misleadingly

static

nd

simplifiedis-a-vis

he

variablesofcommunication

nd above all

the

intricacies

f

poetic

icence nd mimetic

modeling.

First,

t

goes

without

aying

that

the

scale

classifies

ypes

or

aspects

of

translational

mimesis

ather han

texts

r

textual

egments.

t

is

not

only

that

each

of the ntermediate

evices

s

in itself

ecessarily

mixed

n

that

t

forms

selective

or

stylized

ombination

f

the two

poles,

but

that

t

may variously

coexist

nd

nteractwith

he thers

within

given

extual

ramework.

abokov's

Pnin,

or

nstance,

uns

p

and

down

the

gamut ccording

o tsvariable

ims

nd

needs,

n

complete

disregard

or

he

decorums

f

consistency.

Moreover,

t s

by

no means

necessarily

rue

hat

he

movement

rom

ight

o

left oincideswith n increasingpproximationotheoriginal tterance,r with

an

increasing

ense

or

expectation

f

reconstructability,

r with

n

increasing

complex

of

re-translational

rerequisities.

Apart

fromthe textual

factors f

quantitative

cope

and

presentational

ontinuity,

t

s

worth

oting

hat he

wide




14/20

POLYLINGUALISM

AND TRANSLATION

AS MIMESIS

233

variability

n

the

kind

nd

degree

of

mplied i.e.,

required) eading-competence,

which

we have

already

seen to

operate

within

single

type

of

translational

mimesis,pplieswith t east qual force o therelations etween ifferentypes.

Conceptual

reflection,

hen

implemented

n the scale of science

fiction

r

James's

nternational

ovels,

certainly

mplies

higher

tandard f

bicultural

competence

on the reader's

part

thanthe

transposition

r

reproduction

f

interspersed

lich6 or

allusion.

And

while

minimal

ilingual

ompetence

may

suffice

o

follow

reproduced peech,

tsreconstruction

n the

ight

f

transposed

clues

may

require

fuller,

ecause

more

ctive,

ommand f the

mplied

ource

language.

More

generally,

ince

literary

tudies,

notably

ncluding

he

study

of the

artistic

epresentation

f

reality,

eriously

uffer

rom

he failure

o

distinguish

formal mode and functional ystem, want to emphasizethatthisscale is

gradated

n

purely

ormal

erms.

What

such

a

scale

can

reasonably

e

expected

to do is to

arrange

set

of

mimetic

evices

ccording

o their

istance

rom

he

concrete erbal

texture

f the

heterolingual

iscourse

aking

lace

or supposed

to have taken

place)

within

he

represented

eality

or,

n

terms

f narrative

point

of

view,

according

o their

osition

between

showing"

nd

"telling."

As

such,

t

may

fford

fairly

seful

escriptive

nd

typological

ool,

enabling

s

to

establish he

nventory

f

representational

evices vailable to

a

given

writer

r

period

or

style

or

tradition,

o

compare

different

orpora

n

selectional

nd

combinatory

ange

e.g.,

formulaic

arrative s.

modern

novel,

ournalistic

s.

scholarly

writing,

erbalartvs.the

yncretic

medium f the

cinema),

rto trace

historical

evelopments

n

terms

f

shifts

n

translational

epertoire.

he

point

is, however,

hat

he

absolute

ocation

of

a device

or

for

hat

matter

he

text's

whole

gamut

of

devices)

can in

itself ell

us

very

ittle

bout ts

actual

mimetic

effect

r

force r

function,

hich an

never

be

determined

priori

ut turns

n

each

case

on a

large

omplex

of

variables

nd

constraints

general

nd

specific,

historical

nd

poetic,

sociolinguistic

nd

generic,

textual

and

contextual.

n

different

ontexts,

he

ame translational orm

may

erve

different

unctions

nd

the

ame function

may

be

served

by

different

orms.

Accordingly,when we pass fromthe typology o the functionalityf

translational

mimesis,

we

pass

from

ts

haracterization

s a

set

of

ocal

reporting

devices

placed

in

a

static

nd

autotelic

hierarchy

o

its

ntegration

s

a

textual

component

nd in

terms

f

a

fluid

ystem

f

ntratextual

elations.

n

literary

rt,

this

nterdependence

f

elements

ndicates bove

all

the

recognition

hat

the

realism f

polylingual

iscourse like therealism f

discourse

n

general

nd of

all

nonverbal

objects

within

the

represented

framework

cannot

be

understood

part

from

he

text's verall

referential

trategy,

f

which t

s both

miniature

nd a

part

or

means.

Translational

mimesis

eing

miniature

means

that,

ust

ike

thefictive orld

as a whole, tsrealismmust e udgednotby omeabsolutenorm f reality" ut

in

close

reference o

the

reality-models

uggested

by

the

generico-historical

context nd

built into

the work

itself.One of

the

many mplications

f this

parallel

is

that

to

classify or

even

worse,

condemn)

a work

as

unrealistic

or




15/20

234

MEIR

STERNBERG

failing

o

resort

o

translational orms

hat

re

n

fact

historically

naccessible

r

functionally

rrelevant

if

not

detrimental)

o

it

would

be

as

absurd

as the

common

practice

f

raising

he

tick f

realism"

gainst

workwhose

whole

in

actually

onsists

n

eaving

ut certain

reas

of

reality

hat

re beneath ts

notice,

outside

ts existential en

or

beyond

ts artistic

ounds.

On

the

other

hand,

t

would

be

just

as absurd

to

praise

a work

s realistic

or

mploying

ranslational

devices

that are

in fact

automatic

within

ts

tradition r

forced

on it

by

the

mimetic

nd

expressive nadequacies

of

ts

target

anguage.

Each work

nherits

and

establishes

certain

ange

of

heterolingual

r heterodialectal

epresenta-

tion;

and

it

s the

nterplay

f

possible

and

actual,

conventionalnd innovative

forms hat

etermines

tsrealistic

ffect,

ot he

distribution

f

those orms

long

some external

nd

eternal

cale.

In extremecases, especiallythatofworksadheringto the homogenizing

convention,

here

may

be no

more

than

single

device at work.

But

even

then,

despite

the

seemingly

ommon

epertorial

imitation,

ne

must

not

ose

sight

f

the markeddifferences

n

effect etween

representational

estrictedness

where

polylingualism

s not conceived

of

as

a

constitutive

r

distinctive imension

f

reality,

as

in

many

ancient

and

medieval

narratives),

communicative

restrictedness

as

when the

two

languages

are far removed

in

structure

r

resources),

nd

self-imposed

estriction

poetic

constraints,

eneric

considera-

tions,

rhetorical

acticsor individual

preference,

s in

journalistic

writing

r

children's

iterature).

he same

is

essentially

rue f works

with

n

enlarged

r

more

densely populated

scale. Biblical narrative,for example, though

quantitatively

ess

developed

than

modern literatureboth in

range

of

translational

devices

and

in

the

frequency

of

their

mplementation,

ften

produces

in

this

respect

a

sharper

sense

of

realismwhen its

performance

s

properly

iewed

against

the

background

f

the

homogenized

discourse

n

the

Canaanite

tradition.

nd

when

coupled

with

hefactors

hat

have

already

been

discussed,

ike the

mplied

tandard

f

bilingual ompetence,

he

variability

f

literary

nd communicative

ontexts

forcefully

stablishes

that there is

no

necessary

orrespondence

etween

mimetic

orm nd

mimetic unction.

This conclusion is further einforced y a second parallel between the

microcosm

f translational

mimesis

nd the macrocosm

f

overall

referential

strategy,

amely,

the

significance

f the

internal

tructuring

f

the elements

composing

ach

system.

Thus,

in

order

to

determine he function r force

or

centrality

f

translational

mimesis

t

s as

important

o

tracethe distribution

f

heterolingual

elements

along

the textual

sequence

as

to

analyze

their

representational

orms

or their

overall

statisticaldistribution

mong

the

different

ormal modes.

The latter

procedures

may by

themselves

prove

misleading,

ince there

s

often notable

similarity

etween the

tendency

o

open

the

work

with circumstantial

vocation

of fictive

eality,

with

view

to

producing firstmpressionfrealism, ndthe endencyo ntroducetanearly

stage

a

heavy

and

particularized

oncentration

f translational

evices

(see

Sternberg,

1978:

217ff.).

Moreover,

the

importance

of

tracing

he internal

ordering

nddistribution

f

these

devices shows tselfn the treatment

f ocal




16/20

POLYLINGUALISM

AND

TRANSLATION AS

MIMESIS

235

instances s

well

as the

work's

whole

heterolingual

orpus.

n Book

III,

Chapter

11

of

Tristram

handy,

for

example,

Tristram

uotes

and

translates,

n

a

dual-language ext, ishopErnulphus's welfth-centuryormula f xcommuni-

cation,

ontaining

uchhorrible

nd

preposterous

urses

s:

Maledictus

it

vivendo,

moriendo...

manducando,

ibendo,

suriendo,

itiendo,

jejunando,

dormitando,

ormiendo,

igilando,

mbulando,tando,

edendo,

jacendo,

perando,

uiescendo, ingendo,

acando,

lebotomando.

May

he be

cursed

n

iving,

n

dying...

n

eating

nd

drinking,

n

being

ungry,

n

being hirsty,

n

fasting,

n

leeping,

n

lumbering,

n

walking,

n

tanding,

n

itting,

in

ying,

n

working,

n

resting,

n

pissing,

n

hitting,

nd

n

blood-letting.

The

sceptical

reader

may

convince himself f

the literal

uthenticity

f

this

fantastic-lookingocument through ndependentresearch,while the less

sceptical

will

be

satisfied

ith

terne's

unning

ote that As

the

genuineness

f

the

consultation

f

the

Sorbonne

pon

the

question

of

baptism,

was

doubted

by

some,

and

denied

by

others,

'twas

thought roper

o

print

he

original

f

this

excommunication:

or the

copy

of which

Mr.

Shandy

returns hanksto

the

chapter

clerk

of

the dean

and

chapter

of Rochester."

But

once

convinced,

t

becomes much

easier

n

the

sequel

to trick

hereader

nto

believing

or

at

least

suspending

disbelief)

in

the

genuineness

of

the

equally preposterous

nd

similarly

uoted-and-translated

Tale

of

the

Nose"

bySlawkenbergius,

hich

s

in

fact

ntirelypocryphal.

he moral

pointedby

such

temporalmanipulationsconsists, hen, n the extent o whichmimesis

may

be a matter fdistributive

pattern

ather

han

distributional

tatistics,

f

rhetorical

tructure

ather

han

material

eproduction,

f

contrived ffect

ather

han

uthenticated

act.

Mimesis s

structured

ffect nd

impression

rings

s

to

a third

spect

of

the

parallel.

The

realistic

orce

f

polylingual

epresentation,

ike

thatof

the

text's

simulacrum

f

reality

s

a

whole,

is

relatively

ndependent

f

the

objective

(verbal

and

extraverbal)

acts s

viewed and

established

by

scientific

nquiry.

What

is

artistically

more

crucial

than

inguistic

eality

s

the

model(s)

of

that

reality

as

internally atterned

or

invoked

by

the

individual work

and/oi-

conventionallyashionedby the literary raditionnd/or onceivedofbythe

reader

within

the

given

cultural

framework.

The

most

extreme

case

of

subordination f

external

actuality

o nternal

modeling,

ften

concomitant

f

a

fictiveworld

regulated

y

a

logic

that

harply

eviatesfrom

hatof

everyday

life,

s

the fabrication f

languages

that

have

never

been known

o man:

the

languages

f

Lilliput,

Brobdingnag

r

Houyhnhnmland

n

Gulliver's

ravels

r

George

Orwell's

Newspeak

re

elaborately

ifferentiatedrom

tandard

nglish

("Oldspeak") by

ts

three

egisters

nd its

phonetic,

honological,

rammatical,

lexical

and

semantic

tructure.

owever

fantastic,

hese

fictive

anguages

re

invested

with

uch

xistential

ightness

nd

nternal

oherence s

cannot

but

give

theirvarious modes of "translation"an eerie mimeticpower withinthe

framework of

the

"polylingual"

reality-model.

Much

more

often,

the

internalized

rientation f

literary

mimesis

ssumes

the

less

extreme

orm f

manipulating

he actual

ratherthan

postulating

he

nonexistent.A

typical




17/20

236

MEIR

STERNBERG

example

s

Ian

Fleming's

epresentationof

egro

dialect

n

the

James

Bond

saga.

To

dismiss

is

rendering

s

grossly

naccurate

s to

miss he

whole

point,

nd

not

simply

because

we have

to

do

here

with a

genre

of

popular

literature.

o

Fleming,

uch

foreign

peech

is not a

dialectological

roblem

but

a

rhetorical

tool

-

a

possible

source

of local

color and

picturesque

ffect.

As

in all

other

cases where

he

scandalized

his

critics

y dragging

n

bits nd

pieces

of realiawith

a show of

expertise,

leming nvisages

reader

who

cannot

pick

holes

in

this

facade

of

vraisemblance,

nd

even

f

he

could,

would

know

better

han o make

a

fuss bout them

s

long

as

he

got

his

money's

worth

n

other

ways.

As

textual

omponent,

owever,

ranslational

mimesis

tands o

the

text

nd

particularly

he text's

overall

referential

trategy

ot

only

as

microcosm

o

macrocosmbut also as

part

to

whole

or

as

means

to

end.

And this further

diversifiesand complicates its functionalvariability.The interplayof

translational nd

extraverbal mimesis

may yield

a

variety

of means-end

combinations,

ll

of them

ndeed bidirectional

n

principle

but

with

widely

different

oals

and dominants. ere

I

can

only

mention

wo

ypical

imiting

ases

and

some

intermediate

ossibilities. olylingual

epresentation

s sometimes

more

or

less

strictly

ubordinated

o

the dramatic

nd rhetorical

eeds

of

the

overall

fictive

ction:

it

may

then

serve,

for

nstance,

o

lay

the

ground

for

a

comedy

f

errors,

o characterize

r

ust

abel

a

person

or

a

milieu,

o

sharpen

r

on

the

contrary

ttenuate

the

reader's sense

of existential

otherness

or

foreignness

r

multifariousness,

tc.

And

the need

to

implement

certain

functionna certain ontext

requently

xplains

ventherecourse oa particular

form

ut

of the

available

repertoire.

he

opposite

xtreme,

he

ubordination

f

extraverbal

eality

o the

development

f

polylingual

lay,

s not o common

n

a

large

scale

-

certainly

ot

in

drama

and

the

novel,

for

fairly

bvious

generic

reasons.

Still,

peaking

of

his

Lord

of

the

Rings,

J.

R. R. Tolkienrevealed

that

"he

long

ago

invented

ome

languages

out

of

pure

philological

nthusiasm;

s

they

eemed

to

work,

he

thought

t would

be

interesting

o invent

eople

who

spoke

them.

The

result

was the whole

thrilling

orld

of

dwarves,

lves

and

hobbits"

quoted

by

Forster,

1970:

88).

And there

s

no doubtthatthe

same

principle as a wealth f ocal andsporadicmanifestations:milieu s nvoked,

situation

s

staged,

speech

s

developed

beyond

he

requirements

f the

ction

or

fully

uoted

rather

han

summarized,

character

s

introduced

r

invested

with ertain

erbal

nd

psychological

eatures,

rimarily

n order o motivate

he

play

of

nterlingual

ensions.

In

between

these

poles,

we

have

a

spectrum

f more

actively

idirectional

relationships,

where

each

dimension

of mimesis

perates

simultaneously

r

successively)

s

means

and

end,

in the service

ofthe text'soverall

referential

strategy.

or

example,

Homer's

practice

f

homogenizing

he

anguage

of

his

dramatis

ersonae

correlates

with

is

practice

f

homogenizing

heir ulture:

he

GreeksandtheTrojanshavethe amegods, rms, ustoms,odesofhonor.And

these

wodimensions

fhis

poetic

modeling

f

reality

omplement

nd

reinforce

each

other

with considerable

thematic

gain

-

yielding

world-picture

f

universal

validity, rojecting

he common

aspirations

f humans

against

the




18/20

POLYLINGUALISM

AND TRANSLATION AS MIMESIS

237

background

f mortal

ate nd immortal

un,

nd

marking

ppositions

n

terms

of the essentials

f character

ather hanthe

accidentals f race.The worlds f

Swift'sGulliver's

ravels nd Orwell's1984, n the ther and, recharacterized

not

by

sociolinguistic omogeneity

ut

by

diversity,

nd it

s on thisbasis

that

language

and culture

variously

interact

in

the interests

of

the

overall,

normatively-chargedicture

f

ife.Here

the nvention

f

pecial anguages

nd

the

different

odes

of

translational

imesis erve

o

bring

ut the

polyvalence

f

culture,

while

at the same

time the

structuring

nd

unfolding

f

the

equally

invented)

xtraverbal

eality

re

influenced

y

the

de

polylingualism as reality and translation as mimesis

Documents