1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,240
Hello, I'm your host George Sanders and this is Humanity Matters Most.
2
00:00:09,240 --> 00:00:14,660
Here we explore behind the scenes of the research being conducted at the University of Houston
3
00:00:14,660 --> 00:00:17,420
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
4
00:00:17,420 --> 00:00:20,900
On this episode we have Richard Armstrong and Max Reinhardt.
5
00:00:20,900 --> 00:00:24,660
Both researchers have been working in the field of translations.
6
00:00:24,660 --> 00:00:29,340
Throughout this episode they'll be discussing why translations can vary and what the reception
7
00:00:29,340 --> 00:00:37,080
of translations can mean for today's culture and the legitimacy of languages.
8
00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:44,040
This is from Emily Wilson's very recent translation of the Iliad which just came out in 2023.
9
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:49,640
Goddess sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles son of Peleus which caused the Greeks
10
00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:56,160
immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades and made men the spoils
11
00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:03,640
of dogs a banquet for the birds and so the plan of Zeus unfolded starting with the conflict
12
00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:09,280
between great Agamemnon, Lord of Men and glorious Achilles.
13
00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:15,600
This is from Richard Wichtekers' The Iliad of Homer, a southern African translation.
14
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:21,180
And among them now stood up Nestor, in Corsi of Sandy Pilos, showing his good intention
15
00:01:21,180 --> 00:01:28,600
he spoke out, Comrades, Achaean Amacosi, this shade, if another Achaean spoke of it we would
16
00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:33,800
have turned him away and said he lied but as it is our leader saw the shade so come
17
00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:36,100
let's call the Achaeans into battle.
18
00:01:36,100 --> 00:01:41,960
So saying he led the way from the Andaba and standing up the scepter chief obeyed the shepherds
19
00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:43,400
of the people.
20
00:01:43,400 --> 00:01:47,900
Now the impies came just as the thrumming swarm of bees streamed from a hollow rock
21
00:01:47,900 --> 00:01:53,820
and on and on they come they fly in a cloud to the spring flowers and buzz about now this
22
00:01:53,820 --> 00:01:59,440
way and now that so the impies swarm from huts and ships marching across the deep sands
23
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:03,320
of the beach in ranks to the Andaba.
24
00:02:03,320 --> 00:02:08,240
So my name is Max Reynard, I teach in the Honors College at the University of Houston.
25
00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:13,200
I'm a comparatist by training, my research has gone into the South African Truth and
26
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:17,960
Reconciliation Commission and literature and theater in South Africa at that time and recently
27
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:22,520
I've been working on southern African translations of Homer's epics.
28
00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:27,160
And I've been happy to do this with you, I'm Richard Armstrong from the Department of Modern
29
00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:32,360
Classical Languages by training, I'm a classicist although I've also worked in modern languages
30
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:35,560
and I've been thinking about translation for some time.
31
00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:41,960
Richard, so translation can be studied from many angles, what is your trajectory towards
32
00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:43,200
how did you get there?
33
00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:49,640
So when you study classics you do a lot of translation because that is how you're tested.
34
00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:56,120
So inevitably your relationship with translation is intimate and yet punitive, it sort of feels
35
00:02:56,120 --> 00:02:57,800
that way, it's a test.
36
00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:02,580
And so the odd thing about people in classics is they do quite a lot of it but it wasn't
37
00:03:02,580 --> 00:03:06,800
sort of integrated into an official part of the field for some time, precisely because
38
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:14,200
the idea is you do scholarship and historical stuff and so the work of translation often
39
00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:16,360
didn't count for tenure and all of this.
40
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:20,640
And this is the thing that's really changed a lot that's been so very, very helpful.
41
00:03:20,640 --> 00:03:25,640
I also however did romance philology in addition to classical philology, meaning I was always
42
00:03:25,640 --> 00:03:31,600
interested in medieval and Renaissance literature and of course there's an awful lot of that
43
00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:35,880
based on classical sources that are being translated into vernacular languages.
44
00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:41,560
And this set me up really well for a trend that became really very productive when I
45
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:45,480
finished graduate school which is the study of classical reception.
46
00:03:45,480 --> 00:03:50,800
So reception is basically taking a different point of view from saying what is classical
47
00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:56,680
culture in the fifth century BC or the first century AD if you're a Romanist, and saying
48
00:03:56,680 --> 00:04:00,360
what have people made of classical culture through the centuries and the Middle Ages
49
00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:02,920
and the Renaissance and modern times.
50
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:07,120
And of course translation is a very, very important part of reception because it's how
51
00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:14,800
classical texts become productive and present in later cultures.
52
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:19,560
And so the interesting thing is we tend to think of classical education as something
53
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:24,360
in decline and yet more people than ever are reading Homer, right?
54
00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:26,840
And this is because they're reading it in translation.
55
00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:31,920
So the sort of reality of classical literature and the experience and accessibility of it
56
00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:34,200
is tied directly to translation.
57
00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:39,880
So now that we've all agreed it's okay to talk about translation.
58
00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:47,840
In the 1990s I was instrumental in setting up some panels on our professional organization.
59
00:04:47,840 --> 00:04:52,800
For six years we did that and then now it's a regular feature of our sort of Society for
60
00:04:52,800 --> 00:04:56,340
Classical Studies which is the big North American organization.
61
00:04:56,340 --> 00:04:57,340
And it's wonderful.
62
00:04:57,340 --> 00:05:01,360
It's been a wonderful change and one that's led to new energies because there are people
63
00:05:01,360 --> 00:05:06,520
who are doing translations and there are people who are doing sort of very transformative
64
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:10,320
things with the very idea of translation as well as the history of translation.
65
00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:11,320
Right.
66
00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:12,320
It's interesting.
67
00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:17,720
I come at it from a very different direction insofar as I'm from South Africa and was doing
68
00:05:17,720 --> 00:05:23,880
work in South African literature, more current contemporary South African literature.
69
00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:30,360
And then found myself working with, when I came to the United States with a lot of Homeric
70
00:05:30,360 --> 00:05:36,000
texts in English, so Lombardo and Fagel's and later on Emily Wilson, and reading these
71
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:42,160
texts occurred to me that they didn't have as much of a presence in South Africa as they
72
00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:46,080
do in the United States.
73
00:05:46,080 --> 00:05:50,320
And then finding out that there were these South African translations, the South African
74
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:56,600
linguistic context is one that is really in a sense defined by translation or the absence
75
00:05:56,600 --> 00:05:57,660
thereof.
76
00:05:57,660 --> 00:06:03,440
There are 12 official languages and there's a lot of people who speak one or two of them.
77
00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:09,760
There's a lot of people who speak seven or eight of them, but it's a place of disconnect
78
00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:12,680
as much as it is of connection.
79
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:18,640
And so thinking about translation within that context was really interesting to me.
80
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:25,160
And translations of these Homeric epics also, I think that's my primary interest in them
81
00:06:25,160 --> 00:06:27,040
is how they speak to that space.
82
00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:31,040
I think that's why our collaboration has been so helpful for me, because it's really important
83
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:36,680
to take this beyond just the European or North American context, in part because classical
84
00:06:36,680 --> 00:06:45,840
education was used for quite a while to kind of create an elite set of imperial operatives.
85
00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:53,160
And as a consequence, it's tainted with that sense that this is a European elite culture.
86
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:59,800
And yet, when we really look at what classical literature talks about, these are very powerful
87
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:02,840
themes that really can appeal to many.
88
00:07:02,840 --> 00:07:07,600
And so the idea of translation into all sorts of languages around the world gives people
89
00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,920
access to what was formerly just an elite cultural good.
90
00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:15,540
There's something powerful and liberating about that, but clearly it cannot be the way
91
00:07:15,540 --> 00:07:22,400
it was in the sense that we cannot look at it exclusively as one might have in the 19th
92
00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:23,400
century.
93
00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:24,400
Right.
94
00:07:24,400 --> 00:07:28,480
So why focus particularly on ancient epic poetry?
95
00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:33,520
Well, first of all, it's important to have a focus because translation is vast.
96
00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:37,600
It encompasses all the different genres and things that one could look at in antiquity.
97
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:45,120
I was asked once to co-edit a volume that would be this translation of Greek and Latin
98
00:07:45,120 --> 00:07:46,120
literature.
99
00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:47,220
And I said, no, thank you.
100
00:07:47,220 --> 00:07:52,880
Because to translate a play, for example, tragedy or a comedy, is very different from
101
00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:57,000
translating lyric poetry or translating epic poetry, which is also very different from
102
00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:00,080
translating philosophy or oratory or history.
103
00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:05,840
So the genres which are very well defined in the ancient world are a helpful way to
104
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:11,720
feel in a sense that you can organize and talk about roughly the same thing over a long
105
00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:13,080
period of time.
106
00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:18,640
The other thing is ancient epic was the sort of master genre of ancient poetry.
107
00:08:18,640 --> 00:08:25,800
It's the oldest poetry of antiquity, and it is productively studied, imitated, and translated
108
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:27,920
even throughout antiquity.
109
00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:32,680
So the engagement with epic is something absolutely central to ancient culture, even before we
110
00:08:32,680 --> 00:08:40,440
get to the Renaissance, for example, and the re-implantation of Homer in the Western tradition,
111
00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:43,900
of course, because during the Middle Ages, no one was reading Homer in the West since
112
00:08:43,900 --> 00:08:47,760
Homer was in Greek and they had to learn Greek all over again.
113
00:08:47,760 --> 00:08:51,000
The other thing that's really interesting and that fascinates me personally, and not
114
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:57,840
even people in classics are aware of it, is we have an ability to read Homer to this day
115
00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:02,240
in Greek precisely because it came with its own apparatus of translation.
116
00:09:02,240 --> 00:09:09,440
That is, there are these ancient commentaries and little marginalia that go very far back
117
00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:13,800
that had to be there because the language of Homer is weird.
118
00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:16,800
It's a very archaic, artistic, artificial language.
119
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:18,560
It was no one's native language.
120
00:09:18,560 --> 00:09:22,560
It's a poetic dialect literally made up of other dialects.
121
00:09:22,560 --> 00:09:29,840
And so for that reason, it remained comprehensible because it had its own system of internal
122
00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:31,260
translation.
123
00:09:31,260 --> 00:09:35,680
And then when the Romans became very enamored of Greek literature, they were using those
124
00:09:35,680 --> 00:09:41,680
same aids to create their understanding and many of the Roman elite were bilingual.
125
00:09:41,680 --> 00:09:46,480
But then when they created their own epic poetry, they took the meter from Greek and
126
00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:51,040
they took the style of diction and an idea about what epic poetry should be about and
127
00:09:51,040 --> 00:09:53,360
they adapted it to Latin.
128
00:09:53,360 --> 00:09:54,780
They also made translations.
129
00:09:54,780 --> 00:10:00,680
So all of this is to say, if you look just at ancient epic, you have a lot to talk about
130
00:10:00,680 --> 00:10:07,160
in terms of the internal translation processes of antiquity all the way into modern times.
131
00:10:07,160 --> 00:10:13,680
And that one single thread allows us to compare Renaissance Spain with 21st century South
132
00:10:13,680 --> 00:10:14,680
Africa.
133
00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:20,760
So again, if you're just interested in creating a longitudinal study, it's cleaner if you
134
00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,320
say, we're just going to look at the genre of epic.
135
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:27,600
Because theater, as you know very well, you're a man of the theater, right?
136
00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:29,360
It requires a context of performance.
137
00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:36,000
It requires an understanding that a theatrical translation cannot be something just on the
138
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:37,000
page.
139
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,480
It has to come to life before an audience.
140
00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:43,240
It has to really connect and quickly.
141
00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:47,900
Because if you lose an audience in the first 10 minutes, you're in that excruciating situation
142
00:10:47,900 --> 00:10:48,900
of just failure.
143
00:10:48,900 --> 00:10:54,160
Whereas, if you're translating lyric poetry or a philosophy or something, your audience
144
00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:56,240
sits quietly in a room reading it somewhere.
145
00:10:56,240 --> 00:10:57,600
So yeah, that's the main reason.
146
00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:02,120
Is it fair to say, and this question isn't on the list, so I'm just going to throw this
147
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:03,120
out there.
148
00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:04,120
Great.
149
00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:12,480
Is it fair to say that translating Homer's epic is in some senses, it has a lot of cache
150
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:16,680
to it.
151
00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:21,840
It's a monumental undertaking, and it's undertaken by people who really have huge ambition in
152
00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:23,840
the field of translation, right?
153
00:11:23,840 --> 00:11:24,840
Absolutely.
154
00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:26,140
I'm glad you raised that question.
155
00:11:26,140 --> 00:11:31,320
So this is what makes Homer different from other ancient epics, monumentality.
156
00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:34,920
And when I say monumentality, that doesn't mean simply that it's long, because there
157
00:11:34,920 --> 00:11:35,920
are longer texts.
158
00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:41,200
For example, there's a text of epic on the life of the god Dionysus called the Dionysiac
159
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:42,200
Ga.
160
00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:48,440
It has only just been translated into English for the first time in verse by a team of,
161
00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:51,920
I think, 20 or 30 translators.
162
00:11:51,920 --> 00:11:55,840
It's incredibly long, and even classicists don't really read it that much.
163
00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:56,920
So it's not that, right?
164
00:11:56,920 --> 00:12:00,800
The monumentality is these are thought to be the alpha texts of the Western literary
165
00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,200
tradition or world literature, depending...
166
00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:07,700
Now we tend to see Homer more in the light of world literature than just the Western
167
00:12:07,700 --> 00:12:08,700
literary tradition.
168
00:12:08,700 --> 00:12:14,920
But for centuries, if you could bag Homer and craft it into your language, what does
169
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:17,060
that say about you as a poet?
170
00:12:17,060 --> 00:12:22,040
You've scaled the great heights of Homer, and you've brought it to your time and your
171
00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:23,040
place.
172
00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:24,980
That still is very, very meaningful.
173
00:12:24,980 --> 00:12:27,600
And it's insanely productive in a way.
174
00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:32,560
So since the year 2000, there have been 33 translations of the Iliad and Odyssey into
175
00:12:32,560 --> 00:12:34,360
English alone.
176
00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:35,920
33.
177
00:12:35,920 --> 00:12:37,180
Clearly that's not needed.
178
00:12:37,180 --> 00:12:41,500
We have enough translations just looking back at the 20th century.
179
00:12:41,500 --> 00:12:46,880
They're readable 20th century translations that don't feel terribly antiquated.
180
00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:49,340
But this is the level of production we're looking at.
181
00:12:49,340 --> 00:12:54,280
People really want to move in this groove with Homer and prove themselves.
182
00:12:54,280 --> 00:12:59,600
It's also a very valuable commodity, again, because there are so many classes for world
183
00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:03,920
literature or classical literature or even English literature where people read Homer.
184
00:13:03,920 --> 00:13:10,720
So university presses will support the publication and production of translations.
185
00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:12,940
And again, I don't expect this to stop.
186
00:13:12,940 --> 00:13:17,240
So effectively to us, we might say the epic genre has become the translation of ancient
187
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:18,240
epic.
188
00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:23,520
That is to say, most English language poets are not gonna go up to a publisher and say,
189
00:13:23,520 --> 00:13:24,520
I've written an epic.
190
00:13:24,520 --> 00:13:28,040
A lot of publishers would say, no, thank you.
191
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:30,960
But there are exceptions that kind of prove the rule.
192
00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:33,840
Like Derek Walcott's Omeros, that's a wonderful thing.
193
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:40,200
But by its very title, it's sort of intertwining itself with Homer.
194
00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:42,240
And this is actually a related question.
195
00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:50,720
So if you have 33 different translations since 2000, how do you account for those translations
196
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:58,720
that rise to the top of the pile and make it into the contemporary canon, as it were?
197
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:02,000
It strikes me that they have to coincide with a moment, right?
198
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:03,580
I think it's partly that.
199
00:14:03,580 --> 00:14:10,360
It's partly the prestige of the press, of the translator, and how well they are set
200
00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:14,600
out and reviewed, what's the distribution network.
201
00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:19,560
The thing that is really actually amusing when you've read, let's say, 20 English translations
202
00:14:19,560 --> 00:14:23,560
of Homer, is to read the press packet, because they're all gonna say the same thing.
203
00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:30,640
Now for the first time, we have Homer fresh and clean, which has been said for every single
204
00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:31,640
translation.
205
00:14:31,640 --> 00:14:34,800
There are things, however, that are truly unique, and that we'll get into.
206
00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:41,320
For example, Emily Wilson, when she came out with her Odyssey in 2017, this coincided with
207
00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:42,480
the Me Too movement.
208
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:48,240
And she was the first woman to publish an entire translation of the Odyssey into English.
209
00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:51,720
And so this was seen as a very important event.
210
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:59,320
And we can talk more about that, but this would go to this idea that a translator may,
211
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:04,620
and his or her publisher may manufacture that moment by using everything they can.
212
00:15:04,620 --> 00:15:07,800
But fundamentally, this is a question of reception for the translation itself.
213
00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:08,800
What's the moment?
214
00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:10,320
Are people ready for it?
215
00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:16,000
Alexander Pope, very famously in the 18th century, was props to the first person to
216
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:20,000
be wealthy through translating, to become a rich man through translating.
217
00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:21,000
First and only, I believe.
218
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:22,000
Sorry?
219
00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:23,000
First and only.
220
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:27,360
I know, actually, I think some people make a good amount of money.
221
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:34,680
But what he did was very cleverly negotiated a contract with his publisher in such a way
222
00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:39,520
that he had exclusive rights to a subscription edition, which we happen to have here, the
223
00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:45,040
complete subscription edition in our library, which is a wonderful thing for people to go
224
00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:46,280
see.
225
00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:48,340
And he profited directly from that.
226
00:15:48,340 --> 00:15:50,920
But he had to scare up the subscriptions for that.
227
00:15:50,920 --> 00:15:54,280
And the list of the people who subscribed is printed in the book.
228
00:15:54,280 --> 00:16:00,400
So there you see, again, genuine material market process by which he was able to get
229
00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:07,400
some of the most significant people, socially speaking, to underwrite his project, literally.
230
00:16:07,400 --> 00:16:13,160
So that's what we mean, then, when we're talking about translation as a, quote, event in the
231
00:16:13,160 --> 00:16:20,680
target culture, rather than simply a direct copy in a different language of the original.
232
00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:21,920
Absolutely, yeah.
233
00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:26,680
And this is super important to understand how translation studies has changed.
234
00:16:26,680 --> 00:16:32,800
So for the longest time, people would assume that the original, which is not what we say
235
00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:40,520
in translation studies, we say the source text, that the original has a kind of preeminent
236
00:16:40,520 --> 00:16:47,620
weight to exist, and the translation must be the subservient copy, and the translator
237
00:16:47,620 --> 00:16:49,680
must be faithful.
238
00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:52,040
And if you are unfaithful, it's somehow you're bad.
239
00:16:52,040 --> 00:16:56,440
So this isn't really the way it's thought about for lots of reasons anymore.
240
00:16:56,440 --> 00:17:00,880
First of all, the reality, again, of a text like Homer exists largely in translation.
241
00:17:00,880 --> 00:17:06,800
There are those of us who read it, the Illidani Odyssey in Greek, we're a small number.
242
00:17:06,800 --> 00:17:09,880
Homer belongs to the world, right, through translation.
243
00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:13,660
And so first of all, if you just want to think kind of ontologically speaking, where does
244
00:17:13,660 --> 00:17:15,160
the text live, right?
245
00:17:15,160 --> 00:17:18,120
It lives in translation, and that's very important.
246
00:17:18,120 --> 00:17:23,840
Secondly, rewriting is a thing that's been greatly sort of revalorized in critical thinking
247
00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:25,320
for some time.
248
00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:30,280
People like Lefebvre, who used to be at UT Austin, talked a lot about this.
249
00:17:30,280 --> 00:17:33,480
Literary processes are constantly dealing with rewriting.
250
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:38,020
And when you say a text is an original, you might be giving it too much credit.
251
00:17:38,020 --> 00:17:40,640
You could translate a very derivative text.
252
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:44,840
You could translate a text that has nothing original about it, right?
253
00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:46,320
So that's the problem.
254
00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:50,440
So I like the word source text too, because it suggests that the text can be the source
255
00:17:50,440 --> 00:17:51,440
of many things.
256
00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:56,120
So for example, the Illidani Odyssey could be the source of a narrative.
257
00:17:56,120 --> 00:18:01,960
So instead of thinking it's a specific poetic form or style of language, that it's actually
258
00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:04,080
it's the story that's important.
259
00:18:04,080 --> 00:18:09,440
And so there's this interesting way in which translation can be a source, a very powerful
260
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:14,660
source for literary invention and rewriting, and has been for centuries.
261
00:18:14,660 --> 00:18:21,160
So you miss all of that if you simply want to cordon off the original, right, as something
262
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:25,120
sacred and inviolate, and think of the translation as merely something derivative.
263
00:18:25,120 --> 00:18:26,120
Right.
264
00:18:26,120 --> 00:18:33,600
I mean, interestingly, Homer himself, insofar as he did or did not exist, was some, you
265
00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:37,560
know, was pulling the text from an orator himself, right?
266
00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:41,220
Well, again, there are different ways to think about Homeric poetry.
267
00:18:41,220 --> 00:18:47,120
So we've talked about Homer being an alpha text, but my wonderful colleague and MCO,
268
00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:51,800
Casey Dway Harkney, is someone who's been very, very productive in the scholarship on
269
00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:54,640
oral poetry and thinking of it as an oral poem.
270
00:18:54,640 --> 00:18:58,240
For them, the Illidani Odyssey are omega texts.
271
00:18:58,240 --> 00:19:05,080
That is, they represent the last residue of a long oral tradition of poetry that was composed
272
00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:10,600
in performance and then gradually became recited sort of in a more scripted way.
273
00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:15,180
And even in the fifth century, if you were an Athenian, you would have heard portions
274
00:19:15,180 --> 00:19:20,620
of the story that makes up the Illidani Odyssey in performance, like at the Panatheneia Festival.
275
00:19:20,620 --> 00:19:26,540
And so you may not even have the idea of a text in mind, so much as there is this matrix
276
00:19:26,540 --> 00:19:31,760
of poetry that we call Homer, right, that you see performed and you know the stories
277
00:19:31,760 --> 00:19:37,160
and it may be on your pots, you know, the famous Greek pot paintings are full of mythological
278
00:19:37,160 --> 00:19:38,160
scenes.
279
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:44,240
So again, we have a very modern notion of what a book looks like and its sort of finite
280
00:19:44,240 --> 00:19:51,620
contours and also ideas about literary ownership that are different from oral poetry.
281
00:19:51,620 --> 00:19:54,120
So again, that's another reason why I find Homer exciting.
282
00:19:54,120 --> 00:19:55,120
Yeah.
283
00:19:55,120 --> 00:20:02,160
Now, this leads me to you though, because the thing that I found so unexpected is how
284
00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:07,840
a minority language situation can actually not necessarily be the underdog, but part
285
00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:09,360
of something very different.
286
00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:13,920
And maybe you can tell us about the research you've been doing on Afrikaans.
287
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:21,040
Yes, so Afrikaans by the way that it is often spoken about in the wake of apartheid, the
288
00:20:21,040 --> 00:20:28,280
sort of South African Jim Crow system for the sake of simplicity.
289
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:31,240
Afrikaans was very much seen as the language of the oppressor, of the language of the white
290
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:38,120
nationalists that kind of control the government and oppress the majority black population
291
00:20:38,120 --> 00:20:39,120
of South Africa.
292
00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:42,120
Now, let me say from the start, it wasn't just the Afrikaans, the English speaking
293
00:20:42,120 --> 00:20:47,040
South Africans were also entirely complicit and benefited greatly from apartheid, but
294
00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:54,840
it was really on the basis of the policy of apartheid that the Afrikaans, the Afrikaner
295
00:20:54,840 --> 00:21:01,740
people, the Afrikaner nationalists came to power in 1948 in South Africa.
296
00:21:01,740 --> 00:21:07,160
That is a remarkable ascent for Afrikaans as a language.
297
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:13,160
In 1948, it was only, we were only talking about 75 years in which, it had only been
298
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:20,520
about 75 years, 73 years since the first attempt was made to standardize Afrikaans.
299
00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:25,880
That history is really, really fascinating because Afrikaans really began as a Dutch
300
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:33,600
derived Creole language that was spoken predominantly by Malayan indentured servants and indigenous
301
00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:41,760
people and then the poor Dutch workers who were working in the kitchens and on the land
302
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:48,200
of the elite, Dutch, high Dutch speaking, Dutch East India Company kind of elites.
303
00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:50,240
That's why they called it a kitchen language.
304
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:52,200
They did.
305
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:54,080
And then the British occupied the Cape.
306
00:21:54,080 --> 00:22:04,320
There was this kind of sense of poor nationalism of people who wanted to move away from the
307
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:10,720
anglicizing, wanted to move away from the kind of anglicizing impulse.
308
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:18,040
They and so in 1875, this organization was established called the Dikhnutskap van de
309
00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:22,400
Rachte Afrikaners, which was the society of real Afrikaners.
310
00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:30,120
And it was clergymen and academics who wanted to codify, to standardize this language.
311
00:22:30,120 --> 00:22:39,240
And in order to do so, they sort of removed it from various dialects and variations of
312
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:46,240
Afrikaans that was spoken in the sort of southern part of the Cape province that were spoken
313
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,840
predominantly by people of color.
314
00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:54,840
Afrikaans is still to this day spoken by predominantly people of color in South Africa, but it is
315
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:59,760
a language that is associated with white ethnolinguistic nationalism.
316
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:06,160
So we see this kind of ascent of Afrikaans happening in the early part of the 20th century
317
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:12,760
from really a language of working class white people, this kind of standardized Afrikaans,
318
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:18,240
and working its way into universities and working its way into schools and working its
319
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,120
way into classical studies.
320
00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:27,840
And there was a man at the University of Stellenbosch, now Stellenbosch University, called JPJ van
321
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:35,880
Rensburg, who took it upon himself to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey into Afrikaans.
322
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:44,360
Huamadis Sa'ilias, he first published that in 1954, finished it in 1952, but published
323
00:23:44,360 --> 00:23:45,360
it in 1954.
324
00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:48,360
There's a story there too.
325
00:23:48,360 --> 00:23:55,080
What's interesting is 1948 was when Afrikaner nationalism really was in the ascent.
326
00:23:55,080 --> 00:24:03,320
And they had done that through a programmatic effort, bringing culture and industry, and
327
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:10,040
they created this history of the Afrikaner people that in many ways is very familiar
328
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:14,400
in the United States because it's all about pioneering and manifest destiny.
329
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:15,400
Four trekkers, right?
330
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:16,400
Four trekkers, right.
331
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:24,960
They had the Boer Republics and they were brutalized by the English and had to wrest
332
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:26,840
political control.
333
00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:33,840
And so they had to foment this identity, which they did around the idea of Afrikaner-dom,
334
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:37,120
around this ethno-linguistic language.
335
00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:44,920
And so JPJ van Rensburg was really the inheritor of that programmatic attempt.
336
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:49,440
And so he translated into a prose version.
337
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:54,520
And if you look at it, if you look at this edition, it's just a very high quality publication.
338
00:24:54,520 --> 00:25:02,120
It's gold-embossed faux leather in a sleeve, carton sleeve, a heavy cardboard sleeve.
339
00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:08,240
And it was actually sponsored by the Rembrandt Corporation, which was a tobacco corporation.
340
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:15,520
So it was industrially backed, this corporate backing for this Afrikaans prose translation.
341
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,040
And what the effort was, at the very front page, one of the things that he says and what
342
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:27,280
he wants to make very clear is that Afrikaans is what he calls the youngest of the European
343
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,640
languages.
344
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:36,120
This was an effort to push back against the idea that Afrikaans was a kitchen language.
345
00:25:36,120 --> 00:25:41,000
It was an effort to elevate Afrikaans alongside all the other European language.
346
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:48,300
He calls, crazily, he calls, he says, he talks about Onse, our part of the world, including
347
00:25:48,300 --> 00:25:55,120
South Africa, seemingly, in Europe, completely erasing the entire inconvenient continent
348
00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:58,000
between South Africa and Europe.
349
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:03,280
That's just what it's always amazed me, is you've helped me see this, which is to develop
350
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:09,560
a linguistic identity for Afrikaans, as on the one hand a group of people who are, in
351
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,600
a sense, indigenous to Africa, because the Afrikaners had been there long enough to feel
352
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:19,480
very rooted and to resent the British takeover and the Boer War and all of that.
353
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:27,640
At the same time, wanting to be European, but not exactly Dutch, because linguistically,
354
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,400
Dutch speakers could look down on their kitchen language.
355
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:35,960
I think this is a great example of translation as an event in the target language.
356
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,840
Being able to normalize something major, a literary monument like Homa into Afrikaans
357
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,560
is just part of that battle for dignity.
358
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:50,520
It's hard for me not to associate it with, as Afrikaner nationalism manifests itself,
359
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:54,000
you see the establishment of something like the Foortrecker Monument in Pretoria, which
360
00:26:54,000 --> 00:27:05,520
has these classically inspired friezes of Boer exploits on the Great Trek, which involved
361
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:10,920
writing back perfidious natives.
362
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:21,000
You see that attempt to impute the monumental classical identity onto this little population
363
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,160
of Afrikaans speaking white people on the southern tip of Africa.
364
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:32,720
What I find too is, if I compare that to Carlos Riva, this Catalan translator, you have the
365
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:38,000
idea of translation as something that can dignify a language that is searching for its
366
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,200
position.
367
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,120
The idea of the Catalans was, we want to make a European literature.
368
00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:46,680
We don't want to just translate things from Spanish, God forbid, into Catalan, but we
369
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:54,240
want to translate Homer and Dostoevsky and Gogol to be proper Europeans in this language.
370
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:59,720
You can see a similar logic working in the Afrikaans situation, but of course, with the
371
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:06,760
nefarious issue of using that as a way of imposing Afrikaans as a public language for
372
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:11,200
apartheid, which now we can transition to the second part of this, is what happens to
373
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,880
Afrikaans post-apartheid in the new South Africa.
374
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:15,880
Right.
375
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,120
Again, it's a complicated story.
376
00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:20,920
Apartheid is the home language.
377
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,760
About 60% of people who speak Afrikaans are of color.
378
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:29,440
40% standardized it and tried to use it as a...
379
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,000
There were two official languages.
380
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:39,520
Afrikaans was imposed as the medium of instruction that was the basis for the 1976 Soweto uprisings.
381
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,000
After apartheid ended, there was...
382
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:48,200
With the election of, I say ended, after apartheid officially ended with the election of Nelson
383
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:59,200
Mandela, there was this moment of reckoning, this moment where Afrikaans really was associated
384
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:08,760
with the past, was associated with this system of oppression.
385
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:14,920
Increasingly, there has been research about the origins of the language as not being based
386
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:21,280
in white identity, as not being something that is situated within ethno-linguistic Afrikanerdom,
387
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:27,080
but which is actually a legacy of South Africa, a legacy of the Malay people who were brought
388
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:28,560
to South Africa.
389
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,520
I was surprised to see that some of the first written literature is actually written in
390
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:35,040
Arabic script for the Malay Muslims.
391
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,080
That's right.
392
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:44,200
So there's this more and more efforts are being made to reclaim Afrikaans as a language
393
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:51,960
that is not just of the white oppressor, but is actually a living language with multiple
394
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:56,080
varieties and variants.
395
00:29:56,080 --> 00:30:02,600
JPJ von Rensburg's translation belongs to them too, is part of their legacy and heritage,
396
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,480
and laying claim to it is very much what they should be doing.
397
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:11,920
I think this is exactly the complicated issue of creolization, which has been talked about
398
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:17,040
a great deal in Caribbean literature that does involve actual creole languages, but
399
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:22,160
also the relationship between speakers of creole languages and European language literature.
400
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:28,400
I know this has been thought of a lot in the francophone world, but I think it's very relevant
401
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:29,400
clearly in South Africa.
402
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Well, let's talk about Richard Whitaker and English.
403
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:40,320
At the same time that Emily Wilson is publishing in North America, we have these extraordinary
404
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:46,720
translations by Richard Whitaker into what he calls Southern African English.
405
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,920
What is that about?
406
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:49,920
Goodness.
407
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:50,920
Yes.
408
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:58,920
So, when apartheid ended, as I said earlier, when we speak about an event in the target
409
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:04,760
culture, it's important to recognize that translations are responding to the moment
410
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:09,360
as much as they are responding to the source text.
411
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,960
Richard Whitaker was a professor at the University of Cape Town, which is one of the premier
412
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:15,320
universities in South Africa.
413
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:22,640
It used to be one of the English medium universities.
414
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:31,540
He's a classics professor, and there was a lot of pressure being put on the classical
415
00:31:31,540 --> 00:31:36,640
humanities, on humanities in general, like disciplines which were founded in the European
416
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:37,980
tradition, in the Western tradition.
417
00:31:37,980 --> 00:31:41,000
What do you have to contribute to the South African context?
418
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:42,000
That's a good question to ask.
419
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,680
It's a necessary question to ask.
420
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:52,760
How do these universities serve the people of the localities in which they reside?
421
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:57,560
Richard Whitaker, in his introduction to his Southern African translation, talks about
422
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:04,960
being dissatisfied with what he calls the Anglo-American translations, which he felt
423
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:10,600
didn't speak to the experience of his students.
424
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:19,560
He sets about creating what he calls a Southern African English translation.
425
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:26,680
It's a well-meaning effort, but it struggles insofar as it's still really traditionally
426
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:33,320
English in its structure, in the form, in the nature of the versification.
427
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:42,720
When he takes indigenous words, Afrikaans words, from the Oxford University Press Dictionary
428
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:48,920
of Southern African English on historical principles, and just drops these nouns in
429
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:50,520
here or there.
430
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:56,120
It doesn't have any kind of feel of South African English, but for the inclusion of
431
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,240
these indigenous nouns.
432
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:02,600
I know in reading it, I thought they were distributed rather randomly.
433
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:07,760
He'll drop in an Afrikaans word, and then something from Isisuru or Isiknosa, these
434
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:08,760
Bantu languages.
435
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:13,720
There doesn't seem to be a lot of logic always to what he's doing, but this, I think, is
436
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:22,840
a great idea to take that and put it against the background of so-called rainbowism.
437
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:29,120
How might that scattering of the 11 official languages, I know the 12th language is sign
438
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:32,400
language, he couldn't put that in there.
439
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:37,480
How might that reflect this problem of rainbowism, which has been talked about in post-apartheid
440
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,560
South Africa?
441
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:46,880
In the wake of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission happened, and there was this effort
442
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:50,800
to excavate this history of oppression and abuse.
443
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:58,080
There was also, alongside that, there was a real effort at nation building.
444
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:03,720
Desmond Tutu famously coined the phrase, the rainbow people of God, for South Africans,
445
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:08,560
the basic idea being that all these colors live alongside each other and get along.
446
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:15,080
In a way, what that did was that it sometimes had this effect of pulling South African culture
447
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:18,800
out of its particularity, out of its particular contexts.
448
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:25,880
After apartheid ended, there was an effort to come to terms with the horror and the human
449
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:31,000
rights abuses, that was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
450
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,200
There wasn't enough, I have to say, there wasn't enough economic redress.
451
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:35,200
People continue to suffer.
452
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:41,120
There is still, the majority of the economy is still held, but by the minority.
453
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:47,120
Part of that shift, as part of that shift, there was this real effort at nation building.
454
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:52,280
Rainbowism really is the most superficial version of that nation building.
455
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:56,920
It kind of treats all South Africans as equals, it talks about all South Africans as though
456
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:01,560
they all belong to the, quote unquote, rainbow people of God.
457
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:08,640
It has a way of just kind of flattening the differences into this milk toast version of
458
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,160
what South Africa supposedly is.
459
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:15,640
As if suddenly no one is poor anymore, or no one lacks access to education.
460
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,000
If they do that, really, we can still get along.
461
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,560
We can still be South African alongside each other.
462
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:25,920
But it's actually a way of denying the real differences and the real complexity of the
463
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:29,320
different relationships that are happening in those places.
464
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:33,480
When we talk about rainbowism, when I think about rainbowism as it relates to Wittekes
465
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:40,200
translation, I see somebody who I think is very well meaning in kind of embracing the
466
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:46,480
idea that Southern African English incorporates languages from all over the South African
467
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,800
cultural sort of fabric.
468
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:54,960
But what he really does is that he is kind of pulling these words out of their contexts
469
00:35:54,960 --> 00:36:00,600
and just including them without very much respect, seemingly for me, to what they particularly
470
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:02,640
refer to.
471
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:12,600
And so you have Afrikaans words alongside Isiklosa words, alongside Isisulu words, alongside
472
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:14,600
Portuguese inflected words.
473
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,560
And so all these words are kind of coming together.
474
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,920
And sometimes it's just confusing.
475
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:21,000
It's just confusing.
476
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:26,680
You don't know how to kind of make sense of the particular context that is being referred
477
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:33,040
to, but also all this within a context of a text which is speaking to a Greek culture
478
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:34,040
at the same time.
479
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:39,760
And for me, there's a kind of moment that's really indicative of this in the Dolinaya.
480
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:44,440
In book 10, there's a particular moment where Dolon, I think, is referred to as wearing
481
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:50,440
a helmet, a cap that is made out of weasel skin, and he wears the pelt of a wolf.
482
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:54,480
Whitaker translates that as a cap made out of meerkat pelt.
483
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:55,480
Meerkat.
484
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,080
Suricat, meerkat pelt.
485
00:36:58,080 --> 00:36:59,920
And the pelt of a wolf.
486
00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:02,500
But we have no wolves in South Africa.
487
00:37:02,500 --> 00:37:04,780
We have weasels, but we have no wolves.
488
00:37:04,780 --> 00:37:06,320
We have jackals or something like that.
489
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:15,240
So, meerkats and wolves on the same body, as though Dolin had sort of sourced his meerkat
490
00:37:15,240 --> 00:37:18,080
cap somewhere in Southern Africa.
491
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:24,240
I think we've discussed Emily Wilson's review of Whitaker's translation, where she says,
492
00:37:24,240 --> 00:37:25,600
I wish he'd gone further.
493
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:27,320
He hasn't gone far enough.
494
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:31,460
And I think there's something a little bit scared in Whitaker in a way, trying to figure
495
00:37:31,460 --> 00:37:40,840
out what the old sort of Anglo-African prof in Cape Town has to say to a younger generation.
496
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:46,120
I do really think it is marked by its moment.
497
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,840
And that's really what we're talking about when you think of translation as an event
498
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:50,720
in the target culture.
499
00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:54,520
I can come up with another example, though, that's very different that I've been thinking
500
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:55,520
a lot about.
501
00:37:55,520 --> 00:38:02,480
And this is a translation of the entire Iliad and the entire Odyssey into Ladino, Judeo-Spanish,
502
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,520
which is a dying language, effectively.
503
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,040
Spanish is doing quite well, of course, around the world.
504
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,960
And Judeo-Spanish, a very particular language that was spread all over the Mediterranean
505
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,960
after 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain.
506
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,560
And they took up in many cities in the Ottoman Empire.
507
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:24,120
Thessaloniki was the most Jewish city in Europe for a very long time.
508
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:30,560
And Moshe Haileon was a native of Thessaloniki and part of a population that was completely
509
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:34,040
liquidated in the Shoah during World War II.
510
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,240
He's one of the few survivors.
511
00:38:36,240 --> 00:38:41,320
And he went to Israel and lived his long life and began to write in his native Ladino, which
512
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:48,120
was the language still spoken on a daily basis, and gradually came to do traditional forms
513
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:52,120
of poetry to commemorate his Holocaust experiences.
514
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,760
But at the very end of his life in his 80s, starts translating Homer, because he's also
515
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:57,760
Greek, of course.
516
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:03,280
He grew up in Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, and was sort of denied a complete
517
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,200
education because of the Nazi takeover.
518
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:07,200
So it's really interesting.
519
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:11,600
Here you see a man writing in what is effectively a dying language to preserve it.
520
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:16,840
He wanted to write it in specifically Solonican Ladino.
521
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,700
He did not look at Spanish translations, which one could do.
522
00:39:20,700 --> 00:39:25,300
He looked at the Greek text, and he looked at all sorts of wordless and even a translation
523
00:39:25,300 --> 00:39:33,200
of the Bible in Ladino, deliberately to create his own monument to this liquidated community
524
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:34,460
and world.
525
00:39:34,460 --> 00:39:38,500
So he's doing something unprecedented that had never been done before in Ladino.
526
00:39:38,500 --> 00:39:42,120
He does it in dactylic examiner meter, which is amazing.
527
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:44,100
He doesn't do it in folkloric forms.
528
00:39:44,100 --> 00:39:49,360
He does it in something that is very much closer to the Greek to prove the vitality
529
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,420
of this language.
530
00:39:51,420 --> 00:39:54,160
And who knows who's going to read this?
531
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:58,460
But what's interesting is it was published only in Israel in a dual facing edition, not
532
00:39:58,460 --> 00:40:05,120
with the Greek, but with a facing modern Hebrew translation by another poet who is also a
533
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:06,500
Ladino speaker.
534
00:40:06,500 --> 00:40:11,440
And so there you see something, two Jewish languages that are asserting themselves as
535
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:15,480
secular languages, because of course, you know, they're talking about pagan gods.
536
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:18,920
These are things that they should not be doing, right, according to the Torah.
537
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,860
And these are defiant statement, right?
538
00:40:22,860 --> 00:40:24,780
It's very, very powerful.
539
00:40:24,780 --> 00:40:28,220
Well, this is a wonderful conversation.
540
00:40:28,220 --> 00:40:32,800
But one of the things that I was just wondering is, you know, we've come to close.
541
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:37,980
What do you think you're learning about translation beyond epic and especially, you know, in your
542
00:40:37,980 --> 00:40:42,680
work as a comparator and on African literature, et cetera?
543
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,140
Where do you see yourself being taken by this?
544
00:40:45,140 --> 00:40:54,520
I think when I think about Richard Whitaker, I see somebody who cares deeply about the
545
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:55,520
classical text.
546
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:56,520
He cares deeply about Homer.
547
00:40:56,520 --> 00:41:01,420
He cares deeply about finding ways to translate the significance of these texts into a South
548
00:41:01,420 --> 00:41:02,460
African context.
549
00:41:02,460 --> 00:41:08,260
And I think that part of the difficulty that he faces is that the South African context
550
00:41:08,260 --> 00:41:10,340
is really complicated.
551
00:41:10,340 --> 00:41:15,140
And there are many voices that are at odds with each other.
552
00:41:15,140 --> 00:41:20,320
And that when it comes to something like a national English, a Southern African English,
553
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:27,660
that it may perhaps not be up to a traditional idea of a translator sitting in a garret somewhere,
554
00:41:27,660 --> 00:41:32,860
you know, translating from one text into another.
555
00:41:32,860 --> 00:41:39,080
I'm really interested to think about what a translation that is sourced from the people
556
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:40,460
looks like.
557
00:41:40,460 --> 00:41:42,940
Well I think that's a really important point in South Africa.
558
00:41:42,940 --> 00:41:46,900
It's not as if Africa lacks epic traditions of its own.
559
00:41:46,900 --> 00:41:52,660
And again, we've also thought of this in relation to the great Zulu poet, Masisi Kunene, who's
560
00:41:52,660 --> 00:41:56,700
in the 1970s, published in English first, right?
561
00:41:56,700 --> 00:42:02,460
This epic on Shaka, the great warrior king of the Zulus, working a very different sort
562
00:42:02,460 --> 00:42:07,140
of mythic material, but along certain lines from Zulu tradition.
563
00:42:07,140 --> 00:42:11,580
And then posthumously, they published the Zulu edition, the Isi Zulu edition of this
564
00:42:11,580 --> 00:42:12,580
text.
565
00:42:12,580 --> 00:42:18,580
So I, for one, am really interested in looking beyond simply the production of classical
566
00:42:18,580 --> 00:42:24,340
epic as a literary commodity by an authorial translator who owns it and is going to get
567
00:42:24,340 --> 00:42:25,340
rich off it.
568
00:42:25,340 --> 00:42:26,340
That's right.
569
00:42:26,340 --> 00:42:30,180
And instead thinking about opening these to the world, right?
570
00:42:30,180 --> 00:42:35,380
As we think about world literature and try to complicate more our understanding of how
571
00:42:35,380 --> 00:42:37,420
literature circulates.
572
00:42:37,420 --> 00:42:44,980
Also because my great colleague Casey keeps reminding me this was a performance tradition.
573
00:42:44,980 --> 00:42:52,660
So what does it mean to reinsert Homer into performance and think about that via translation
574
00:42:52,660 --> 00:42:55,440
around the world?
575
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:59,860
Those are sort of new and exciting horizons that I think we can really get at, in part
576
00:42:59,860 --> 00:43:03,020
because there's just so much Homer to read.
577
00:43:03,020 --> 00:43:08,000
But the other point that I would say is we still have a huge problem pointed out by translation
578
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:11,900
scholars all the time, which is not enough is translated into English or other things.
579
00:43:11,900 --> 00:43:17,700
We don't need 33 new translations of Homer every 20 years.
580
00:43:17,700 --> 00:43:22,460
What we need is a lot more things from around the world being translated into English.
581
00:43:22,460 --> 00:43:28,380
And so that also is the task before us to raise that awareness.
582
00:43:28,380 --> 00:43:32,800
And I feel complicit sometimes with a system that squeezes out the topic of other literatures
583
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:37,220
precisely by focusing on Homer so much.
584
00:43:37,220 --> 00:43:39,540
But hopefully I can find a way out of that trap.
585
00:43:39,540 --> 00:43:40,540
Yeah.
586
00:43:40,540 --> 00:43:47,500
Whitaker is very aware of the praise poetry tradition in South Africa, the Mbongis.
587
00:43:47,500 --> 00:43:49,620
And he does speak to them.
588
00:43:49,620 --> 00:43:54,700
I'm just really interested to see what Homeric performance tradition in South Africa would
589
00:43:54,700 --> 00:43:55,700
look like.
590
00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:56,700
Yes.
591
00:43:56,700 --> 00:44:02,780
As opposed to a Homeric translation tradition in the archival sense of the word.
592
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:13,500
That wraps up our episode, which has been produced by the College of Liberal Arts and
593
00:44:13,500 --> 00:44:17,740
Social Sciences and the Center for Student Media at the University of Houston.
594
00:44:17,740 --> 00:44:22,140
We would like to thank the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and the Honors College
595
00:44:22,140 --> 00:44:23,780
for their participation.
596
00:44:23,780 --> 00:44:28,660
Our team consists of the host and producer, George Sanders, executive producer, Lariah
597
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:33,780
Smith, sound engineering from the Center for Student Media, and our intro and outro song
598
00:44:33,780 --> 00:44:36,180
was provided by Dizzy Gold.
599
00:44:36,180 --> 00:44:37,180
Thank you for listening.
600
00:44:37,180 --> 00:44:41,000
And if you'd like to learn more about our podcast or previous episodes, you can find
601
00:44:41,000 --> 00:45:00,060
us at www.uh.edu forward slash class.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,240
Hello, I'm your host George Sanders and this is Humanity Matters Most.
2
00:00:09,240 --> 00:00:14,660
Here we explore behind the scenes of the research being conducted at the University of Houston
3
00:00:14,660 --> 00:00:17,420
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
4
00:00:17,420 --> 00:00:20,900
On this episode we have Richard Armstrong and Max Reinhardt.
5
00:00:20,900 --> 00:00:24,660
Both researchers have been working in the field of translations.
6
00:00:24,660 --> 00:00:29,340
Throughout this episode they'll be discussing why translations can vary and what the reception
7
00:00:29,340 --> 00:00:37,080
of translations can mean for today's culture and the legitimacy of languages.
8
00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:44,040
This is from Emily Wilson's very recent translation of the Iliad which just came out in 2023.
9
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:49,640
Goddess sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles son of Peleus which caused the Greeks
10
00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:56,160
immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades and made men the spoils
11
00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:03,640
of dogs a banquet for the birds and so the plan of Zeus unfolded starting with the conflict
12
00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:09,280
between great Agamemnon, Lord of Men and glorious Achilles.
13
00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:15,600
This is from Richard Wichtekers' The Iliad of Homer, a southern African translation.
14
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:21,180
And among them now stood up Nestor, in Corsi of Sandy Pilos, showing his good intention
15
00:01:21,180 --> 00:01:28,600
he spoke out, Comrades, Achaean Amacosi, this shade, if another Achaean spoke of it we would
16
00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:33,800
have turned him away and said he lied but as it is our leader saw the shade so come
17
00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:36,100
let's call the Achaeans into battle.
18
00:01:36,100 --> 00:01:41,960
So saying he led the way from the Andaba and standing up the scepter chief obeyed the shepherds
19
00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:43,400
of the people.
20
00:01:43,400 --> 00:01:47,900
Now the impies came just as the thrumming swarm of bees streamed from a hollow rock
21
00:01:47,900 --> 00:01:53,820
and on and on they come they fly in a cloud to the spring flowers and buzz about now this
22
00:01:53,820 --> 00:01:59,440
way and now that so the impies swarm from huts and ships marching across the deep sands
23
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:03,320
of the beach in ranks to the Andaba.
24
00:02:03,320 --> 00:02:08,240
So my name is Max Reynard, I teach in the Honors College at the University of Houston.
25
00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:13,200
I'm a comparatist by training, my research has gone into the South African Truth and
26
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:17,960
Reconciliation Commission and literature and theater in South Africa at that time and recently
27
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:22,520
I've been working on southern African translations of Homer's epics.
28
00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:27,160
And I've been happy to do this with you, I'm Richard Armstrong from the Department of Modern
29
00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:32,360
Classical Languages by training, I'm a classicist although I've also worked in modern languages
30
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:35,560
and I've been thinking about translation for some time.
31
00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:41,960
Richard, so translation can be studied from many angles, what is your trajectory towards
32
00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:43,200
how did you get there?
33
00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:49,640
So when you study classics you do a lot of translation because that is how you're tested.
34
00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:56,120
So inevitably your relationship with translation is intimate and yet punitive, it sort of feels
35
00:02:56,120 --> 00:02:57,800
that way, it's a test.
36
00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:02,580
And so the odd thing about people in classics is they do quite a lot of it but it wasn't
37
00:03:02,580 --> 00:03:06,800
sort of integrated into an official part of the field for some time, precisely because
38
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:14,200
the idea is you do scholarship and historical stuff and so the work of translation often
39
00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:16,360
didn't count for tenure and all of this.
40
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:20,640
And this is the thing that's really changed a lot that's been so very, very helpful.
41
00:03:20,640 --> 00:03:25,640
I also however did romance philology in addition to classical philology, meaning I was always
42
00:03:25,640 --> 00:03:31,600
interested in medieval and Renaissance literature and of course there's an awful lot of that
43
00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:35,880
based on classical sources that are being translated into vernacular languages.
44
00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:41,560
And this set me up really well for a trend that became really very productive when I
45
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:45,480
finished graduate school which is the study of classical reception.
46
00:03:45,480 --> 00:03:50,800
So reception is basically taking a different point of view from saying what is classical
47
00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:56,680
culture in the fifth century BC or the first century AD if you're a Romanist, and saying
48
00:03:56,680 --> 00:04:00,360
what have people made of classical culture through the centuries and the Middle Ages
49
00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:02,920
and the Renaissance and modern times.
50
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:07,120
And of course translation is a very, very important part of reception because it's how
51
00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:14,800
classical texts become productive and present in later cultures.
52
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:19,560
And so the interesting thing is we tend to think of classical education as something
53
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:24,360
in decline and yet more people than ever are reading Homer, right?
54
00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:26,840
And this is because they're reading it in translation.
55
00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:31,920
So the sort of reality of classical literature and the experience and accessibility of it
56
00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:34,200
is tied directly to translation.
57
00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:39,880
So now that we've all agreed it's okay to talk about translation.
58
00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:47,840
In the 1990s I was instrumental in setting up some panels on our professional organization.
59
00:04:47,840 --> 00:04:52,800
For six years we did that and then now it's a regular feature of our sort of Society for
60
00:04:52,800 --> 00:04:56,340
Classical Studies which is the big North American organization.
61
00:04:56,340 --> 00:04:57,340
And it's wonderful.
62
00:04:57,340 --> 00:05:01,360
It's been a wonderful change and one that's led to new energies because there are people
63
00:05:01,360 --> 00:05:06,520
who are doing translations and there are people who are doing sort of very transformative
64
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:10,320
things with the very idea of translation as well as the history of translation.
65
00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:11,320
Right.
66
00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:12,320
It's interesting.
67
00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:17,720
I come at it from a very different direction insofar as I'm from South Africa and was doing
68
00:05:17,720 --> 00:05:23,880
work in South African literature, more current contemporary South African literature.
69
00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:30,360
And then found myself working with, when I came to the United States with a lot of Homeric
70
00:05:30,360 --> 00:05:36,000
texts in English, so Lombardo and Fagel's and later on Emily Wilson, and reading these
71
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:42,160
texts occurred to me that they didn't have as much of a presence in South Africa as they
72
00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:46,080
do in the United States.
73
00:05:46,080 --> 00:05:50,320
And then finding out that there were these South African translations, the South African
74
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:56,600
linguistic context is one that is really in a sense defined by translation or the absence
75
00:05:56,600 --> 00:05:57,660
thereof.
76
00:05:57,660 --> 00:06:03,440
There are 12 official languages and there's a lot of people who speak one or two of them.
77
00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:09,760
There's a lot of people who speak seven or eight of them, but it's a place of disconnect
78
00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:12,680
as much as it is of connection.
79
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:18,640
And so thinking about translation within that context was really interesting to me.
80
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:25,160
And translations of these Homeric epics also, I think that's my primary interest in them
81
00:06:25,160 --> 00:06:27,040
is how they speak to that space.
82
00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:31,040
I think that's why our collaboration has been so helpful for me, because it's really important
83
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:36,680
to take this beyond just the European or North American context, in part because classical
84
00:06:36,680 --> 00:06:45,840
education was used for quite a while to kind of create an elite set of imperial operatives.
85
00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:53,160
And as a consequence, it's tainted with that sense that this is a European elite culture.
86
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:59,800
And yet, when we really look at what classical literature talks about, these are very powerful
87
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:02,840
themes that really can appeal to many.
88
00:07:02,840 --> 00:07:07,600
And so the idea of translation into all sorts of languages around the world gives people
89
00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,920
access to what was formerly just an elite cultural good.
90
00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:15,540
There's something powerful and liberating about that, but clearly it cannot be the way
91
00:07:15,540 --> 00:07:22,400
it was in the sense that we cannot look at it exclusively as one might have in the 19th
92
00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:23,400
century.
93
00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:24,400
Right.
94
00:07:24,400 --> 00:07:28,480
So why focus particularly on ancient epic poetry?
95
00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:33,520
Well, first of all, it's important to have a focus because translation is vast.
96
00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:37,600
It encompasses all the different genres and things that one could look at in antiquity.
97
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:45,120
I was asked once to co-edit a volume that would be this translation of Greek and Latin
98
00:07:45,120 --> 00:07:46,120
literature.
99
00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:47,220
And I said, no, thank you.
100
00:07:47,220 --> 00:07:52,880
Because to translate a play, for example, tragedy or a comedy, is very different from
101
00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:57,000
translating lyric poetry or translating epic poetry, which is also very different from
102
00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:00,080
translating philosophy or oratory or history.
103
00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:05,840
So the genres which are very well defined in the ancient world are a helpful way to
104
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:11,720
feel in a sense that you can organize and talk about roughly the same thing over a long
105
00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:13,080
period of time.
106
00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:18,640
The other thing is ancient epic was the sort of master genre of ancient poetry.
107
00:08:18,640 --> 00:08:25,800
It's the oldest poetry of antiquity, and it is productively studied, imitated, and translated
108
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:27,920
even throughout antiquity.
109
00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:32,680
So the engagement with epic is something absolutely central to ancient culture, even before we
110
00:08:32,680 --> 00:08:40,440
get to the Renaissance, for example, and the re-implantation of Homer in the Western tradition,
111
00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:43,900
of course, because during the Middle Ages, no one was reading Homer in the West since
112
00:08:43,900 --> 00:08:47,760
Homer was in Greek and they had to learn Greek all over again.
113
00:08:47,760 --> 00:08:51,000
The other thing that's really interesting and that fascinates me personally, and not
114
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:57,840
even people in classics are aware of it, is we have an ability to read Homer to this day
115
00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:02,240
in Greek precisely because it came with its own apparatus of translation.
116
00:09:02,240 --> 00:09:09,440
That is, there are these ancient commentaries and little marginalia that go very far back
117
00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:13,800
that had to be there because the language of Homer is weird.
118
00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:16,800
It's a very archaic, artistic, artificial language.
119
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:18,560
It was no one's native language.
120
00:09:18,560 --> 00:09:22,560
It's a poetic dialect literally made up of other dialects.
121
00:09:22,560 --> 00:09:29,840
And so for that reason, it remained comprehensible because it had its own system of internal
122
00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:31,260
translation.
123
00:09:31,260 --> 00:09:35,680
And then when the Romans became very enamored of Greek literature, they were using those
124
00:09:35,680 --> 00:09:41,680
same aids to create their understanding and many of the Roman elite were bilingual.
125
00:09:41,680 --> 00:09:46,480
But then when they created their own epic poetry, they took the meter from Greek and
126
00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:51,040
they took the style of diction and an idea about what epic poetry should be about and
127
00:09:51,040 --> 00:09:53,360
they adapted it to Latin.
128
00:09:53,360 --> 00:09:54,780
They also made translations.
129
00:09:54,780 --> 00:10:00,680
So all of this is to say, if you look just at ancient epic, you have a lot to talk about
130
00:10:00,680 --> 00:10:07,160
in terms of the internal translation processes of antiquity all the way into modern times.
131
00:10:07,160 --> 00:10:13,680
And that one single thread allows us to compare Renaissance Spain with 21st century South
132
00:10:13,680 --> 00:10:14,680
Africa.
133
00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:20,760
So again, if you're just interested in creating a longitudinal study, it's cleaner if you
134
00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,320
say, we're just going to look at the genre of epic.
135
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:27,600
Because theater, as you know very well, you're a man of the theater, right?
136
00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:29,360
It requires a context of performance.
137
00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:36,000
It requires an understanding that a theatrical translation cannot be something just on the
138
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:37,000
page.
139
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,480
It has to come to life before an audience.
140
00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:43,240
It has to really connect and quickly.
141
00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:47,900
Because if you lose an audience in the first 10 minutes, you're in that excruciating situation
142
00:10:47,900 --> 00:10:48,900
of just failure.
143
00:10:48,900 --> 00:10:54,160
Whereas, if you're translating lyric poetry or a philosophy or something, your audience
144
00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:56,240
sits quietly in a room reading it somewhere.
145
00:10:56,240 --> 00:10:57,600
So yeah, that's the main reason.
146
00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:02,120
Is it fair to say, and this question isn't on the list, so I'm just going to throw this
147
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:03,120
out there.
148
00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:04,120
Great.
149
00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:12,480
Is it fair to say that translating Homer's epic is in some senses, it has a lot of cache
150
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:16,680
to it.
151
00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:21,840
It's a monumental undertaking, and it's undertaken by people who really have huge ambition in
152
00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:23,840
the field of translation, right?
153
00:11:23,840 --> 00:11:24,840
Absolutely.
154
00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:26,140
I'm glad you raised that question.
155
00:11:26,140 --> 00:11:31,320
So this is what makes Homer different from other ancient epics, monumentality.
156
00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:34,920
And when I say monumentality, that doesn't mean simply that it's long, because there
157
00:11:34,920 --> 00:11:35,920
are longer texts.
158
00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:41,200
For example, there's a text of epic on the life of the god Dionysus called the Dionysiac
159
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:42,200
Ga.
160
00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:48,440
It has only just been translated into English for the first time in verse by a team of,
161
00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:51,920
I think, 20 or 30 translators.
162
00:11:51,920 --> 00:11:55,840
It's incredibly long, and even classicists don't really read it that much.
163
00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:56,920
So it's not that, right?
164
00:11:56,920 --> 00:12:00,800
The monumentality is these are thought to be the alpha texts of the Western literary
165
00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,200
tradition or world literature, depending...
166
00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:07,700
Now we tend to see Homer more in the light of world literature than just the Western
167
00:12:07,700 --> 00:12:08,700
literary tradition.
168
00:12:08,700 --> 00:12:14,920
But for centuries, if you could bag Homer and craft it into your language, what does
169
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:17,060
that say about you as a poet?
170
00:12:17,060 --> 00:12:22,040
You've scaled the great heights of Homer, and you've brought it to your time and your
171
00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:23,040
place.
172
00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:24,980
That still is very, very meaningful.
173
00:12:24,980 --> 00:12:27,600
And it's insanely productive in a way.
174
00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:32,560
So since the year 2000, there have been 33 translations of the Iliad and Odyssey into
175
00:12:32,560 --> 00:12:34,360
English alone.
176
00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:35,920
33.
177
00:12:35,920 --> 00:12:37,180
Clearly that's not needed.
178
00:12:37,180 --> 00:12:41,500
We have enough translations just looking back at the 20th century.
179
00:12:41,500 --> 00:12:46,880
They're readable 20th century translations that don't feel terribly antiquated.
180
00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:49,340
But this is the level of production we're looking at.
181
00:12:49,340 --> 00:12:54,280
People really want to move in this groove with Homer and prove themselves.
182
00:12:54,280 --> 00:12:59,600
It's also a very valuable commodity, again, because there are so many classes for world
183
00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:03,920
literature or classical literature or even English literature where people read Homer.
184
00:13:03,920 --> 00:13:10,720
So university presses will support the publication and production of translations.
185
00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:12,940
And again, I don't expect this to stop.
186
00:13:12,940 --> 00:13:17,240
So effectively to us, we might say the epic genre has become the translation of ancient
187
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:18,240
epic.
188
00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:23,520
That is to say, most English language poets are not gonna go up to a publisher and say,
189
00:13:23,520 --> 00:13:24,520
I've written an epic.
190
00:13:24,520 --> 00:13:28,040
A lot of publishers would say, no, thank you.
191
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:30,960
But there are exceptions that kind of prove the rule.
192
00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:33,840
Like Derek Walcott's Omeros, that's a wonderful thing.
193
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:40,200
But by its very title, it's sort of intertwining itself with Homer.
194
00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:42,240
And this is actually a related question.
195
00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:50,720
So if you have 33 different translations since 2000, how do you account for those translations
196
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:58,720
that rise to the top of the pile and make it into the contemporary canon, as it were?
197
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:02,000
It strikes me that they have to coincide with a moment, right?
198
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:03,580
I think it's partly that.
199
00:14:03,580 --> 00:14:10,360
It's partly the prestige of the press, of the translator, and how well they are set
200
00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:14,600
out and reviewed, what's the distribution network.
201
00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:19,560
The thing that is really actually amusing when you've read, let's say, 20 English translations
202
00:14:19,560 --> 00:14:23,560
of Homer, is to read the press packet, because they're all gonna say the same thing.
203
00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:30,640
Now for the first time, we have Homer fresh and clean, which has been said for every single
204
00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:31,640
translation.
205
00:14:31,640 --> 00:14:34,800
There are things, however, that are truly unique, and that we'll get into.
206
00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:41,320
For example, Emily Wilson, when she came out with her Odyssey in 2017, this coincided with
207
00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:42,480
the Me Too movement.
208
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:48,240
And she was the first woman to publish an entire translation of the Odyssey into English.
209
00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:51,720
And so this was seen as a very important event.
210
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:59,320
And we can talk more about that, but this would go to this idea that a translator may,
211
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:04,620
and his or her publisher may manufacture that moment by using everything they can.
212
00:15:04,620 --> 00:15:07,800
But fundamentally, this is a question of reception for the translation itself.
213
00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:08,800
What's the moment?
214
00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:10,320
Are people ready for it?
215
00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:16,000
Alexander Pope, very famously in the 18th century, was props to the first person to
216
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:20,000
be wealthy through translating, to become a rich man through translating.
217
00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:21,000
First and only, I believe.
218
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:22,000
Sorry?
219
00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:23,000
First and only.
220
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:27,360
I know, actually, I think some people make a good amount of money.
221
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:34,680
But what he did was very cleverly negotiated a contract with his publisher in such a way
222
00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:39,520
that he had exclusive rights to a subscription edition, which we happen to have here, the
223
00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:45,040
complete subscription edition in our library, which is a wonderful thing for people to go
224
00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:46,280
see.
225
00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:48,340
And he profited directly from that.
226
00:15:48,340 --> 00:15:50,920
But he had to scare up the subscriptions for that.
227
00:15:50,920 --> 00:15:54,280
And the list of the people who subscribed is printed in the book.
228
00:15:54,280 --> 00:16:00,400
So there you see, again, genuine material market process by which he was able to get
229
00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:07,400
some of the most significant people, socially speaking, to underwrite his project, literally.
230
00:16:07,400 --> 00:16:13,160
So that's what we mean, then, when we're talking about translation as a, quote, event in the
231
00:16:13,160 --> 00:16:20,680
target culture, rather than simply a direct copy in a different language of the original.
232
00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:21,920
Absolutely, yeah.
233
00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:26,680
And this is super important to understand how translation studies has changed.
234
00:16:26,680 --> 00:16:32,800
So for the longest time, people would assume that the original, which is not what we say
235
00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:40,520
in translation studies, we say the source text, that the original has a kind of preeminent
236
00:16:40,520 --> 00:16:47,620
weight to exist, and the translation must be the subservient copy, and the translator
237
00:16:47,620 --> 00:16:49,680
must be faithful.
238
00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:52,040
And if you are unfaithful, it's somehow you're bad.
239
00:16:52,040 --> 00:16:56,440
So this isn't really the way it's thought about for lots of reasons anymore.
240
00:16:56,440 --> 00:17:00,880
First of all, the reality, again, of a text like Homer exists largely in translation.
241
00:17:00,880 --> 00:17:06,800
There are those of us who read it, the Illidani Odyssey in Greek, we're a small number.
242
00:17:06,800 --> 00:17:09,880
Homer belongs to the world, right, through translation.
243
00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:13,660
And so first of all, if you just want to think kind of ontologically speaking, where does
244
00:17:13,660 --> 00:17:15,160
the text live, right?
245
00:17:15,160 --> 00:17:18,120
It lives in translation, and that's very important.
246
00:17:18,120 --> 00:17:23,840
Secondly, rewriting is a thing that's been greatly sort of revalorized in critical thinking
247
00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:25,320
for some time.
248
00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:30,280
People like Lefebvre, who used to be at UT Austin, talked a lot about this.
249
00:17:30,280 --> 00:17:33,480
Literary processes are constantly dealing with rewriting.
250
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:38,020
And when you say a text is an original, you might be giving it too much credit.
251
00:17:38,020 --> 00:17:40,640
You could translate a very derivative text.
252
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:44,840
You could translate a text that has nothing original about it, right?
253
00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:46,320
So that's the problem.
254
00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:50,440
So I like the word source text too, because it suggests that the text can be the source
255
00:17:50,440 --> 00:17:51,440
of many things.
256
00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:56,120
So for example, the Illidani Odyssey could be the source of a narrative.
257
00:17:56,120 --> 00:18:01,960
So instead of thinking it's a specific poetic form or style of language, that it's actually
258
00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:04,080
it's the story that's important.
259
00:18:04,080 --> 00:18:09,440
And so there's this interesting way in which translation can be a source, a very powerful
260
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:14,660
source for literary invention and rewriting, and has been for centuries.
261
00:18:14,660 --> 00:18:21,160
So you miss all of that if you simply want to cordon off the original, right, as something
262
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:25,120
sacred and inviolate, and think of the translation as merely something derivative.
263
00:18:25,120 --> 00:18:26,120
Right.
264
00:18:26,120 --> 00:18:33,600
I mean, interestingly, Homer himself, insofar as he did or did not exist, was some, you
265
00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:37,560
know, was pulling the text from an orator himself, right?
266
00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:41,220
Well, again, there are different ways to think about Homeric poetry.
267
00:18:41,220 --> 00:18:47,120
So we've talked about Homer being an alpha text, but my wonderful colleague and MCO,
268
00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:51,800
Casey Dway Harkney, is someone who's been very, very productive in the scholarship on
269
00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:54,640
oral poetry and thinking of it as an oral poem.
270
00:18:54,640 --> 00:18:58,240
For them, the Illidani Odyssey are omega texts.
271
00:18:58,240 --> 00:19:05,080
That is, they represent the last residue of a long oral tradition of poetry that was composed
272
00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:10,600
in performance and then gradually became recited sort of in a more scripted way.
273
00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:15,180
And even in the fifth century, if you were an Athenian, you would have heard portions
274
00:19:15,180 --> 00:19:20,620
of the story that makes up the Illidani Odyssey in performance, like at the Panatheneia Festival.
275
00:19:20,620 --> 00:19:26,540
And so you may not even have the idea of a text in mind, so much as there is this matrix
276
00:19:26,540 --> 00:19:31,760
of poetry that we call Homer, right, that you see performed and you know the stories
277
00:19:31,760 --> 00:19:37,160
and it may be on your pots, you know, the famous Greek pot paintings are full of mythological
278
00:19:37,160 --> 00:19:38,160
scenes.
279
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:44,240
So again, we have a very modern notion of what a book looks like and its sort of finite
280
00:19:44,240 --> 00:19:51,620
contours and also ideas about literary ownership that are different from oral poetry.
281
00:19:51,620 --> 00:19:54,120
So again, that's another reason why I find Homer exciting.
282
00:19:54,120 --> 00:19:55,120
Yeah.
283
00:19:55,120 --> 00:20:02,160
Now, this leads me to you though, because the thing that I found so unexpected is how
284
00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:07,840
a minority language situation can actually not necessarily be the underdog, but part
285
00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:09,360
of something very different.
286
00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:13,920
And maybe you can tell us about the research you've been doing on Afrikaans.
287
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:21,040
Yes, so Afrikaans by the way that it is often spoken about in the wake of apartheid, the
288
00:20:21,040 --> 00:20:28,280
sort of South African Jim Crow system for the sake of simplicity.
289
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:31,240
Afrikaans was very much seen as the language of the oppressor, of the language of the white
290
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:38,120
nationalists that kind of control the government and oppress the majority black population
291
00:20:38,120 --> 00:20:39,120
of South Africa.
292
00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:42,120
Now, let me say from the start, it wasn't just the Afrikaans, the English speaking
293
00:20:42,120 --> 00:20:47,040
South Africans were also entirely complicit and benefited greatly from apartheid, but
294
00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:54,840
it was really on the basis of the policy of apartheid that the Afrikaans, the Afrikaner
295
00:20:54,840 --> 00:21:01,740
people, the Afrikaner nationalists came to power in 1948 in South Africa.
296
00:21:01,740 --> 00:21:07,160
That is a remarkable ascent for Afrikaans as a language.
297
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:13,160
In 1948, it was only, we were only talking about 75 years in which, it had only been
298
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:20,520
about 75 years, 73 years since the first attempt was made to standardize Afrikaans.
299
00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:25,880
That history is really, really fascinating because Afrikaans really began as a Dutch
300
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:33,600
derived Creole language that was spoken predominantly by Malayan indentured servants and indigenous
301
00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:41,760
people and then the poor Dutch workers who were working in the kitchens and on the land
302
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:48,200
of the elite, Dutch, high Dutch speaking, Dutch East India Company kind of elites.
303
00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:50,240
That's why they called it a kitchen language.
304
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:52,200
They did.
305
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:54,080
And then the British occupied the Cape.
306
00:21:54,080 --> 00:22:04,320
There was this kind of sense of poor nationalism of people who wanted to move away from the
307
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:10,720
anglicizing, wanted to move away from the kind of anglicizing impulse.
308
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:18,040
They and so in 1875, this organization was established called the Dikhnutskap van de
309
00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:22,400
Rachte Afrikaners, which was the society of real Afrikaners.
310
00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:30,120
And it was clergymen and academics who wanted to codify, to standardize this language.
311
00:22:30,120 --> 00:22:39,240
And in order to do so, they sort of removed it from various dialects and variations of
312
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:46,240
Afrikaans that was spoken in the sort of southern part of the Cape province that were spoken
313
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,840
predominantly by people of color.
314
00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:54,840
Afrikaans is still to this day spoken by predominantly people of color in South Africa, but it is
315
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:59,760
a language that is associated with white ethnolinguistic nationalism.
316
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:06,160
So we see this kind of ascent of Afrikaans happening in the early part of the 20th century
317
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:12,760
from really a language of working class white people, this kind of standardized Afrikaans,
318
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:18,240
and working its way into universities and working its way into schools and working its
319
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,120
way into classical studies.
320
00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:27,840
And there was a man at the University of Stellenbosch, now Stellenbosch University, called JPJ van
321
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:35,880
Rensburg, who took it upon himself to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey into Afrikaans.
322
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:44,360
Huamadis Sa'ilias, he first published that in 1954, finished it in 1952, but published
323
00:23:44,360 --> 00:23:45,360
it in 1954.
324
00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:48,360
There's a story there too.
325
00:23:48,360 --> 00:23:55,080
What's interesting is 1948 was when Afrikaner nationalism really was in the ascent.
326
00:23:55,080 --> 00:24:03,320
And they had done that through a programmatic effort, bringing culture and industry, and
327
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:10,040
they created this history of the Afrikaner people that in many ways is very familiar
328
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:14,400
in the United States because it's all about pioneering and manifest destiny.
329
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:15,400
Four trekkers, right?
330
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:16,400
Four trekkers, right.
331
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:24,960
They had the Boer Republics and they were brutalized by the English and had to wrest
332
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:26,840
political control.
333
00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:33,840
And so they had to foment this identity, which they did around the idea of Afrikaner-dom,
334
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:37,120
around this ethno-linguistic language.
335
00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:44,920
And so JPJ van Rensburg was really the inheritor of that programmatic attempt.
336
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:49,440
And so he translated into a prose version.
337
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:54,520
And if you look at it, if you look at this edition, it's just a very high quality publication.
338
00:24:54,520 --> 00:25:02,120
It's gold-embossed faux leather in a sleeve, carton sleeve, a heavy cardboard sleeve.
339
00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:08,240
And it was actually sponsored by the Rembrandt Corporation, which was a tobacco corporation.
340
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:15,520
So it was industrially backed, this corporate backing for this Afrikaans prose translation.
341
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,040
And what the effort was, at the very front page, one of the things that he says and what
342
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:27,280
he wants to make very clear is that Afrikaans is what he calls the youngest of the European
343
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,640
languages.
344
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:36,120
This was an effort to push back against the idea that Afrikaans was a kitchen language.
345
00:25:36,120 --> 00:25:41,000
It was an effort to elevate Afrikaans alongside all the other European language.
346
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:48,300
He calls, crazily, he calls, he says, he talks about Onse, our part of the world, including
347
00:25:48,300 --> 00:25:55,120
South Africa, seemingly, in Europe, completely erasing the entire inconvenient continent
348
00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:58,000
between South Africa and Europe.
349
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:03,280
That's just what it's always amazed me, is you've helped me see this, which is to develop
350
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:09,560
a linguistic identity for Afrikaans, as on the one hand a group of people who are, in
351
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,600
a sense, indigenous to Africa, because the Afrikaners had been there long enough to feel
352
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:19,480
very rooted and to resent the British takeover and the Boer War and all of that.
353
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:27,640
At the same time, wanting to be European, but not exactly Dutch, because linguistically,
354
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,400
Dutch speakers could look down on their kitchen language.
355
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:35,960
I think this is a great example of translation as an event in the target language.
356
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,840
Being able to normalize something major, a literary monument like Homa into Afrikaans
357
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,560
is just part of that battle for dignity.
358
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:50,520
It's hard for me not to associate it with, as Afrikaner nationalism manifests itself,
359
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:54,000
you see the establishment of something like the Foortrecker Monument in Pretoria, which
360
00:26:54,000 --> 00:27:05,520
has these classically inspired friezes of Boer exploits on the Great Trek, which involved
361
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:10,920
writing back perfidious natives.
362
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:21,000
You see that attempt to impute the monumental classical identity onto this little population
363
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,160
of Afrikaans speaking white people on the southern tip of Africa.
364
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:32,720
What I find too is, if I compare that to Carlos Riva, this Catalan translator, you have the
365
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:38,000
idea of translation as something that can dignify a language that is searching for its
366
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,200
position.
367
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,120
The idea of the Catalans was, we want to make a European literature.
368
00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:46,680
We don't want to just translate things from Spanish, God forbid, into Catalan, but we
369
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:54,240
want to translate Homer and Dostoevsky and Gogol to be proper Europeans in this language.
370
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:59,720
You can see a similar logic working in the Afrikaans situation, but of course, with the
371
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:06,760
nefarious issue of using that as a way of imposing Afrikaans as a public language for
372
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:11,200
apartheid, which now we can transition to the second part of this, is what happens to
373
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,880
Afrikaans post-apartheid in the new South Africa.
374
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:15,880
Right.
375
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,120
Again, it's a complicated story.
376
00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:20,920
Apartheid is the home language.
377
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,760
About 60% of people who speak Afrikaans are of color.
378
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:29,440
40% standardized it and tried to use it as a...
379
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,000
There were two official languages.
380
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:39,520
Afrikaans was imposed as the medium of instruction that was the basis for the 1976 Soweto uprisings.
381
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,000
After apartheid ended, there was...
382
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:48,200
With the election of, I say ended, after apartheid officially ended with the election of Nelson
383
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:59,200
Mandela, there was this moment of reckoning, this moment where Afrikaans really was associated
384
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:08,760
with the past, was associated with this system of oppression.
385
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:14,920
Increasingly, there has been research about the origins of the language as not being based
386
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:21,280
in white identity, as not being something that is situated within ethno-linguistic Afrikanerdom,
387
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:27,080
but which is actually a legacy of South Africa, a legacy of the Malay people who were brought
388
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:28,560
to South Africa.
389
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,520
I was surprised to see that some of the first written literature is actually written in
390
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:35,040
Arabic script for the Malay Muslims.
391
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,080
That's right.
392
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:44,200
So there's this more and more efforts are being made to reclaim Afrikaans as a language
393
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:51,960
that is not just of the white oppressor, but is actually a living language with multiple
394
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:56,080
varieties and variants.
395
00:29:56,080 --> 00:30:02,600
JPJ von Rensburg's translation belongs to them too, is part of their legacy and heritage,
396
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,480
and laying claim to it is very much what they should be doing.
397
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:11,920
I think this is exactly the complicated issue of creolization, which has been talked about
398
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:17,040
a great deal in Caribbean literature that does involve actual creole languages, but
399
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:22,160
also the relationship between speakers of creole languages and European language literature.
400
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:28,400
I know this has been thought of a lot in the francophone world, but I think it's very relevant
401
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:29,400
clearly in South Africa.
402
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Well, let's talk about Richard Whitaker and English.
403
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:40,320
At the same time that Emily Wilson is publishing in North America, we have these extraordinary
404
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:46,720
translations by Richard Whitaker into what he calls Southern African English.
405
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,920
What is that about?
406
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:49,920
Goodness.
407
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:50,920
Yes.
408
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:58,920
So, when apartheid ended, as I said earlier, when we speak about an event in the target
409
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:04,760
culture, it's important to recognize that translations are responding to the moment
410
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:09,360
as much as they are responding to the source text.
411
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,960
Richard Whitaker was a professor at the University of Cape Town, which is one of the premier
412
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:15,320
universities in South Africa.
413
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:22,640
It used to be one of the English medium universities.
414
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:31,540
He's a classics professor, and there was a lot of pressure being put on the classical
415
00:31:31,540 --> 00:31:36,640
humanities, on humanities in general, like disciplines which were founded in the European
416
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:37,980
tradition, in the Western tradition.
417
00:31:37,980 --> 00:31:41,000
What do you have to contribute to the South African context?
418
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:42,000
That's a good question to ask.
419
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,680
It's a necessary question to ask.
420
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:52,760
How do these universities serve the people of the localities in which they reside?
421
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:57,560
Richard Whitaker, in his introduction to his Southern African translation, talks about
422
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:04,960
being dissatisfied with what he calls the Anglo-American translations, which he felt
423
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:10,600
didn't speak to the experience of his students.
424
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:19,560
He sets about creating what he calls a Southern African English translation.
425
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:26,680
It's a well-meaning effort, but it struggles insofar as it's still really traditionally
426
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:33,320
English in its structure, in the form, in the nature of the versification.
427
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:42,720
When he takes indigenous words, Afrikaans words, from the Oxford University Press Dictionary
428
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:48,920
of Southern African English on historical principles, and just drops these nouns in
429
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:50,520
here or there.
430
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:56,120
It doesn't have any kind of feel of South African English, but for the inclusion of
431
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,240
these indigenous nouns.
432
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:02,600
I know in reading it, I thought they were distributed rather randomly.
433
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:07,760
He'll drop in an Afrikaans word, and then something from Isisuru or Isiknosa, these
434
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:08,760
Bantu languages.
435
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:13,720
There doesn't seem to be a lot of logic always to what he's doing, but this, I think, is
436
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:22,840
a great idea to take that and put it against the background of so-called rainbowism.
437
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:29,120
How might that scattering of the 11 official languages, I know the 12th language is sign
438
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:32,400
language, he couldn't put that in there.
439
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:37,480
How might that reflect this problem of rainbowism, which has been talked about in post-apartheid
440
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,560
South Africa?
441
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:46,880
In the wake of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission happened, and there was this effort
442
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:50,800
to excavate this history of oppression and abuse.
443
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:58,080
There was also, alongside that, there was a real effort at nation building.
444
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:03,720
Desmond Tutu famously coined the phrase, the rainbow people of God, for South Africans,
445
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:08,560
the basic idea being that all these colors live alongside each other and get along.
446
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:15,080
In a way, what that did was that it sometimes had this effect of pulling South African culture
447
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:18,800
out of its particularity, out of its particular contexts.
448
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:25,880
After apartheid ended, there was an effort to come to terms with the horror and the human
449
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:31,000
rights abuses, that was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
450
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,200
There wasn't enough, I have to say, there wasn't enough economic redress.
451
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:35,200
People continue to suffer.
452
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:41,120
There is still, the majority of the economy is still held, but by the minority.
453
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:47,120
Part of that shift, as part of that shift, there was this real effort at nation building.
454
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:52,280
Rainbowism really is the most superficial version of that nation building.
455
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:56,920
It kind of treats all South Africans as equals, it talks about all South Africans as though
456
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:01,560
they all belong to the, quote unquote, rainbow people of God.
457
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:08,640
It has a way of just kind of flattening the differences into this milk toast version of
458
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,160
what South Africa supposedly is.
459
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:15,640
As if suddenly no one is poor anymore, or no one lacks access to education.
460
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,000
If they do that, really, we can still get along.
461
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,560
We can still be South African alongside each other.
462
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:25,920
But it's actually a way of denying the real differences and the real complexity of the
463
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:29,320
different relationships that are happening in those places.
464
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:33,480
When we talk about rainbowism, when I think about rainbowism as it relates to Wittekes
465
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:40,200
translation, I see somebody who I think is very well meaning in kind of embracing the
466
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:46,480
idea that Southern African English incorporates languages from all over the South African
467
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,800
cultural sort of fabric.
468
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:54,960
But what he really does is that he is kind of pulling these words out of their contexts
469
00:35:54,960 --> 00:36:00,600
and just including them without very much respect, seemingly for me, to what they particularly
470
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:02,640
refer to.
471
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:12,600
And so you have Afrikaans words alongside Isiklosa words, alongside Isisulu words, alongside
472
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:14,600
Portuguese inflected words.
473
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,560
And so all these words are kind of coming together.
474
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,920
And sometimes it's just confusing.
475
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:21,000
It's just confusing.
476
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:26,680
You don't know how to kind of make sense of the particular context that is being referred
477
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:33,040
to, but also all this within a context of a text which is speaking to a Greek culture
478
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:34,040
at the same time.
479
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:39,760
And for me, there's a kind of moment that's really indicative of this in the Dolinaya.
480
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:44,440
In book 10, there's a particular moment where Dolon, I think, is referred to as wearing
481
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:50,440
a helmet, a cap that is made out of weasel skin, and he wears the pelt of a wolf.
482
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:54,480
Whitaker translates that as a cap made out of meerkat pelt.
483
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:55,480
Meerkat.
484
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,080
Suricat, meerkat pelt.
485
00:36:58,080 --> 00:36:59,920
And the pelt of a wolf.
486
00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:02,500
But we have no wolves in South Africa.
487
00:37:02,500 --> 00:37:04,780
We have weasels, but we have no wolves.
488
00:37:04,780 --> 00:37:06,320
We have jackals or something like that.
489
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:15,240
So, meerkats and wolves on the same body, as though Dolin had sort of sourced his meerkat
490
00:37:15,240 --> 00:37:18,080
cap somewhere in Southern Africa.
491
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:24,240
I think we've discussed Emily Wilson's review of Whitaker's translation, where she says,
492
00:37:24,240 --> 00:37:25,600
I wish he'd gone further.
493
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:27,320
He hasn't gone far enough.
494
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:31,460
And I think there's something a little bit scared in Whitaker in a way, trying to figure
495
00:37:31,460 --> 00:37:40,840
out what the old sort of Anglo-African prof in Cape Town has to say to a younger generation.
496
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:46,120
I do really think it is marked by its moment.
497
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,840
And that's really what we're talking about when you think of translation as an event
498
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:50,720
in the target culture.
499
00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:54,520
I can come up with another example, though, that's very different that I've been thinking
500
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:55,520
a lot about.
501
00:37:55,520 --> 00:38:02,480
And this is a translation of the entire Iliad and the entire Odyssey into Ladino, Judeo-Spanish,
502
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,520
which is a dying language, effectively.
503
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,040
Spanish is doing quite well, of course, around the world.
504
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,960
And Judeo-Spanish, a very particular language that was spread all over the Mediterranean
505
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,960
after 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain.
506
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,560
And they took up in many cities in the Ottoman Empire.
507
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:24,120
Thessaloniki was the most Jewish city in Europe for a very long time.
508
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:30,560
And Moshe Haileon was a native of Thessaloniki and part of a population that was completely
509
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:34,040
liquidated in the Shoah during World War II.
510
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,240
He's one of the few survivors.
511
00:38:36,240 --> 00:38:41,320
And he went to Israel and lived his long life and began to write in his native Ladino, which
512
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:48,120
was the language still spoken on a daily basis, and gradually came to do traditional forms
513
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:52,120
of poetry to commemorate his Holocaust experiences.
514
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,760
But at the very end of his life in his 80s, starts translating Homer, because he's also
515
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:57,760
Greek, of course.
516
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:03,280
He grew up in Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, and was sort of denied a complete
517
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,200
education because of the Nazi takeover.
518
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:07,200
So it's really interesting.
519
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:11,600
Here you see a man writing in what is effectively a dying language to preserve it.
520
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:16,840
He wanted to write it in specifically Solonican Ladino.
521
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,700
He did not look at Spanish translations, which one could do.
522
00:39:20,700 --> 00:39:25,300
He looked at the Greek text, and he looked at all sorts of wordless and even a translation
523
00:39:25,300 --> 00:39:33,200
of the Bible in Ladino, deliberately to create his own monument to this liquidated community
524
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:34,460
and world.
525
00:39:34,460 --> 00:39:38,500
So he's doing something unprecedented that had never been done before in Ladino.
526
00:39:38,500 --> 00:39:42,120
He does it in dactylic examiner meter, which is amazing.
527
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:44,100
He doesn't do it in folkloric forms.
528
00:39:44,100 --> 00:39:49,360
He does it in something that is very much closer to the Greek to prove the vitality
529
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,420
of this language.
530
00:39:51,420 --> 00:39:54,160
And who knows who's going to read this?
531
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:58,460
But what's interesting is it was published only in Israel in a dual facing edition, not
532
00:39:58,460 --> 00:40:05,120
with the Greek, but with a facing modern Hebrew translation by another poet who is also a
533
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:06,500
Ladino speaker.
534
00:40:06,500 --> 00:40:11,440
And so there you see something, two Jewish languages that are asserting themselves as
535
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:15,480
secular languages, because of course, you know, they're talking about pagan gods.
536
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:18,920
These are things that they should not be doing, right, according to the Torah.
537
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,860
And these are defiant statement, right?
538
00:40:22,860 --> 00:40:24,780
It's very, very powerful.
539
00:40:24,780 --> 00:40:28,220
Well, this is a wonderful conversation.
540
00:40:28,220 --> 00:40:32,800
But one of the things that I was just wondering is, you know, we've come to close.
541
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:37,980
What do you think you're learning about translation beyond epic and especially, you know, in your
542
00:40:37,980 --> 00:40:42,680
work as a comparator and on African literature, et cetera?
543
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,140
Where do you see yourself being taken by this?
544
00:40:45,140 --> 00:40:54,520
I think when I think about Richard Whitaker, I see somebody who cares deeply about the
545
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:55,520
classical text.
546
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:56,520
He cares deeply about Homer.
547
00:40:56,520 --> 00:41:01,420
He cares deeply about finding ways to translate the significance of these texts into a South
548
00:41:01,420 --> 00:41:02,460
African context.
549
00:41:02,460 --> 00:41:08,260
And I think that part of the difficulty that he faces is that the South African context
550
00:41:08,260 --> 00:41:10,340
is really complicated.
551
00:41:10,340 --> 00:41:15,140
And there are many voices that are at odds with each other.
552
00:41:15,140 --> 00:41:20,320
And that when it comes to something like a national English, a Southern African English,
553
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:27,660
that it may perhaps not be up to a traditional idea of a translator sitting in a garret somewhere,
554
00:41:27,660 --> 00:41:32,860
you know, translating from one text into another.
555
00:41:32,860 --> 00:41:39,080
I'm really interested to think about what a translation that is sourced from the people
556
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:40,460
looks like.
557
00:41:40,460 --> 00:41:42,940
Well I think that's a really important point in South Africa.
558
00:41:42,940 --> 00:41:46,900
It's not as if Africa lacks epic traditions of its own.
559
00:41:46,900 --> 00:41:52,660
And again, we've also thought of this in relation to the great Zulu poet, Masisi Kunene, who's
560
00:41:52,660 --> 00:41:56,700
in the 1970s, published in English first, right?
561
00:41:56,700 --> 00:42:02,460
This epic on Shaka, the great warrior king of the Zulus, working a very different sort
562
00:42:02,460 --> 00:42:07,140
of mythic material, but along certain lines from Zulu tradition.
563
00:42:07,140 --> 00:42:11,580
And then posthumously, they published the Zulu edition, the Isi Zulu edition of this
564
00:42:11,580 --> 00:42:12,580
text.
565
00:42:12,580 --> 00:42:18,580
So I, for one, am really interested in looking beyond simply the production of classical
566
00:42:18,580 --> 00:42:24,340
epic as a literary commodity by an authorial translator who owns it and is going to get
567
00:42:24,340 --> 00:42:25,340
rich off it.
568
00:42:25,340 --> 00:42:26,340
That's right.
569
00:42:26,340 --> 00:42:30,180
And instead thinking about opening these to the world, right?
570
00:42:30,180 --> 00:42:35,380
As we think about world literature and try to complicate more our understanding of how
571
00:42:35,380 --> 00:42:37,420
literature circulates.
572
00:42:37,420 --> 00:42:44,980
Also because my great colleague Casey keeps reminding me this was a performance tradition.
573
00:42:44,980 --> 00:42:52,660
So what does it mean to reinsert Homer into performance and think about that via translation
574
00:42:52,660 --> 00:42:55,440
around the world?
575
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:59,860
Those are sort of new and exciting horizons that I think we can really get at, in part
576
00:42:59,860 --> 00:43:03,020
because there's just so much Homer to read.
577
00:43:03,020 --> 00:43:08,000
But the other point that I would say is we still have a huge problem pointed out by translation
578
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:11,900
scholars all the time, which is not enough is translated into English or other things.
579
00:43:11,900 --> 00:43:17,700
We don't need 33 new translations of Homer every 20 years.
580
00:43:17,700 --> 00:43:22,460
What we need is a lot more things from around the world being translated into English.
581
00:43:22,460 --> 00:43:28,380
And so that also is the task before us to raise that awareness.
582
00:43:28,380 --> 00:43:32,800
And I feel complicit sometimes with a system that squeezes out the topic of other literatures
583
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:37,220
precisely by focusing on Homer so much.
584
00:43:37,220 --> 00:43:39,540
But hopefully I can find a way out of that trap.
585
00:43:39,540 --> 00:43:40,540
Yeah.
586
00:43:40,540 --> 00:43:47,500
Whitaker is very aware of the praise poetry tradition in South Africa, the Mbongis.
587
00:43:47,500 --> 00:43:49,620
And he does speak to them.
588
00:43:49,620 --> 00:43:54,700
I'm just really interested to see what Homeric performance tradition in South Africa would
589
00:43:54,700 --> 00:43:55,700
look like.
590
00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:56,700
Yes.
591
00:43:56,700 --> 00:44:02,780
As opposed to a Homeric translation tradition in the archival sense of the word.
592
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:13,500
That wraps up our episode, which has been produced by the College of Liberal Arts and
593
00:44:13,500 --> 00:44:17,740
Social Sciences and the Center for Student Media at the University of Houston.
594
00:44:17,740 --> 00:44:22,140
We would like to thank the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and the Honors College
595
00:44:22,140 --> 00:44:23,780
for their participation.
596
00:44:23,780 --> 00:44:28,660
Our team consists of the host and producer, George Sanders, executive producer, Lariah
597
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:33,780
Smith, sound engineering from the Center for Student Media, and our intro and outro song
598
00:44:33,780 --> 00:44:36,180
was provided by Dizzy Gold.
599
00:44:36,180 --> 00:44:37,180
Thank you for listening.
600
00:44:37,180 --> 00:44:41,000
And if you'd like to learn more about our podcast or previous episodes, you can find
601
00:44:41,000 --> 00:45:00,060
us at www.uh.edu forward slash class.
