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Chapter 8 | Michael Dorland
(continued)
Walter Benjamin in his essay “The Task of the Translator” argued to the effect that what translation permitted was the creation of something better than its original, because paradoxically truer to it. “... (T)ranslation[’s] ... goal,” he writes,
is undeniably a final, conclusive, decisive stage of all linguistic creation. In translation, the original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air, as it were. It cannot live there permanently... and it certainly does not reach it in its entirety. Yet, in a singularly impressive manner, at least it points the way to this region: the... hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages.... If there is such a thing as a language of truth, the tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all thought strives for, then this language... is — the true language. And this very language, whose divination and description is the only perfection a philosopher can hope for, is concealed in concentrated form in translations (1969: 75-77).
Now, obviously, I’m making use of Benjamin and his mystical language as a provocation. So I ask you these questions: could one turn this into cultural policy? And how? And should one? If the possibility strikes you as utterly futile, that is a measure of how far we have yet to go. If, on the other hand, it does not, then I recommend to you James Boyd White’s fine book of essays entitled Justice As Translation in which he discusses Canada as precisely such a possible site of what translation, law, and justice could be, somewhat in Benjamin’s sense of a “hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages” (1990). Or, if Benjamin’s idealism offends you, let me in closing turn to some recent observations by Eco (2001) that make many of the same points. 1) that studying translation is like studying bilingualism; 2) that translation is not only a matter of linguistic competence, but also of intertextual, psychological and narrative competence; 3) that translation is a special case of interpretation; 4) but not between two languages, but between two cultures (5, 13, 14). If this sounds at all familiar in the context of our cultural policy dilemmas, it is because these are some of the underlying — and unresolved — issues concealed therein.
references
Baudoin, Louis (1963), “La réception du droit étranger en droit privé québécois,” in L. Baudoin et al., Quelques aspects du droit de la Province de Québec, Paris, Cujas.
Benjamin, Walter (1969), Illuminations, New York, Schocken Books.
Dorland, Michael (1998), So Close to the State/s: The Emergence of Canadian Feature Film Policy, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Eco, Umberto (2001), Experiences in Translation, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Goodenough, Oliver (1998), “Defending the Imaginary to the Death,” Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 15, 1: 203-253.
Paquet, Gilles (1999), Oublier la Révolution tranquille: pour une nouvelle socialité, Montréal, Liber.
Saul, John Ralston (1997), Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century, Toronto, Viking.
White, James Boyd (1990), Justice As Translation, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Chapter 9 | Leon Bernier > |
