Shaking the yoke of fidelity

  “The dogma of fidelity has thick skin,” (119) writes Patrice Pavis in his essay, throughout which he carefully deconstructs long-accepted binaries used to conceptualize theatrical productions. This statement stood out to me, as I feel like we’ve been continuously grappling with the idea (or myth) of fidelity and ‘faithfulness’ in translation, particularly in regards to The Vegetarian, but also throughout all discussions of translation words. I cannot think of the last time I used the word “faithful” if not to describe my translation process (more in terms of lack of faithfulness, personally), so why does it persist in my vocabulary? Its thick skin, as Pavis puts it, makes it hard to escape the ever-present notion of a certain invisible judge assessing the faithfulness of that work, whether that judge is the author of the original, the reader, or ourselves. 

It is precisely because of my ongoing battle with the confines of fidelity that I particularly appreciated Jeremy Tiang’s talk. Tiang does not put fidelity at the forefront; he does not give it the attention it so often gets in discussions around creative translation/adaptation practices. Rather, he offers that as a translator, he sees his works as a “creative response” to the original. Comparing the role of the translator to that of the actor, he states that both have to consider not just what is being said, but how to say it. He rejects the idea of a work having a “pure meaning,” and rather than critiquing what specific translations do, he argues that the problem with translating theatre is not what translators are doing to the texts, instead, the problem lies in which voices are being heard. Tiang’s discussion of the lack of representation in the theatre scene and major theatres’ complicity in reproducing “cultural hierarchies” resonated strongly with me, and beyond the scope of theatre translations, I think this is applicable to most major publishing houses (recalling Prof. Micallef’s talk and her discussion of the lack of Turkish language translations). I also think back to Lydia Davis’s essay from last week, and while I admire her dedication to the craft and her articulate description of her process, I can’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed. With languages that are linguistically so different from English, like Arabic for example, we don’t even really have the privilege to embark on these careful explorations of ‘close translations,’ because a much larger degree of reconstruction is inherently necessary in producing any coherent result. In addition to his charming demeanor, I really enjoyed Tiang’s inclusive view of translation, and his advocacy for more equitable representation in translation.

- Luisa Bocconcelli