The controversies around The Vegetarian bring to light a lot of really interesting philosophical questions about the art of translation that, I imagine, every translator and writer-in-translation might have different answers to. Among them: What do we really mean when we speak of fidelity—to whom or what can a translation be faithful? And when we talk about translating with the goal of success in American/UK markets, how much is this a project of resisting cultural imperialism (by, as Smith says, bringing texts from lesser represented countries and writers to the English-speaking market), and how much might it contribute to it by shaping existing work into something more palatable for this market?
In these readings, as well as Jiayang Fan’s piece in the New Yorker, it strikes me as important that Han Kang seems happy with Deborah Smith’s translation, and that the two share in what seems like a deeply collaborative approach to translation. In the New Yorker piece, Fan describes their process as a kind of attempt at unearthing, from Han’s subconscious, what lies at the heart of the text—that the two of them engage in a kind of digging for meaning and feeling that lies beneath the text rather than the text itself. “One might compare it to the collaborative work of a writer and an editor; Han has said that the process, for her and Smith, involves considerable back-and-forth, ‘like having a chat endlessly.’”
I love the sound of this approach, and feel like ultimately preserving this felt core of a piece might be more important (and maybe more achievable?) than trying to reproduce linguistic or stylistic choices of the original in another language with different traditions and conventions. I wonder, though, how this process might be affected if one party does not have access to the larger, cultural subconscious that the other is informed by—the histories and collective experiences our individual ones are steeped in. I also wonder if a translation can be faithful to an individual writer’s intentions and wishes, but feel like a betrayal to a culture or community—especially when the individual writer has different stakes in the commercial and literary success in the English-speaking world than the community they’re writing from or about? I’m not necessarily talking about The Vegetarian, or source texts that themselves push against their own cultural norms, but translations that insert or elevate language, values, and themes that are more palatable to Western audiences than those in the original. How can those translating into English best approach this process when there’s still disproportionate power held in English language literary markets, which makes this dynamic inherently unequal?
The conversation around The Vegetarian seems really productive in having brought the complexities (and joys! and importance!) of translation into public discourse. And ultimately, I felt moved and convinced by Smith's essay, how she recognizes and owns that translations are, in fact, different works than the originals, and that this does not in any way minimize the original. Talking about the process, and all that can go wrong and right in it, reminds readers that translated works have always been, in some way, significantly reshaped through its translation. That, maybe, a translated text is something like the subconscious of one person, speaking through the body, mind, and voice of another.
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