A Psychoanalytic Translation Experience*
Florencia Bernthal Raz**
“In short, the only transmissible thing there is, the style, is the only thing that matters because it is what remains to others, if anything is left. Above all, it is the only living thing one has to give”.
Abstract
Is the destiny of the written word to be read in one single way? In the present essay I will try to show how a faithful translation is affected by this notion. Furthermore, it will examine what constitutes an essay. Questions are raised concerning the method, the style, the politics and the object of the translation as the body of work achieves a different morph when it is translated into another language. I seek to conclude on the following: can we transmit when translating? Does transmission become an invention?
Keywords
Translation - Object - Transmission – Politics.
Submitted: November 2019. Approved: January 2020.
Boris Groys states, in The Politics of Immortality, that: "The history of a concept only truly begins when this concept becomes problematic, controversial," and continues "...it is at least the beginning of a suspenseful history" (Groys, 2008, 214).
A concept can be defined as the mental representation of an object - an abstract or generic idea or concept generalized from particular instances, something conceived in the mind as a thought or notion. In life, somebody else (the other) always brings his sole representation of events and of reality, but always, or almost always, a person tries to share, to give something of that representation or of that knowledge to the social other.
From this we understand the definition of a concept as what the other presents. But what interests us here is the written outcome of the concept, and, specifically, its translation. In other words: utilizing a concept as a starting point, how far can we stretch? What can a translation achieve? "Either the translator leaves the writer as quiet as possible and makes the reader go to meet him, or he leaves the reader as quiet as possible and makes the writer go to meet him", and I choose, with Schleiermacher, the uneasiness of the first option." (Cassin,2019, 40).
Psychoanalysis, as we know it in Argentina, rises historically from studies based on foreign authors. We came to know psychoanalysis through texts in another language or translations thereof. This implies that there was a previous reading of what is presented to the foreign reader. The issue is that as psychoanalysts, these texts have undoubtedly left a mark on us. At the same time, it is also true that the emphasis towards the own construction about Psychoanalysis as we think of it, believe in and practice, has been tinged with that translated material.
Therefore, problematizing a translation is the first step necessary in estimating what one can extract from it. As Groys said, and this is what I would like to point out: the rupture of that original idea and its suspension allows us to create something different from the same thing. The focus is no longer on the concept per se, but its functionality. It is not about the object but about its treatment and processing. The concern and difficulty of translation arise when dealing with the same object, can be translated (into another language), questioned and even transmitted with the same initial force and with a policy at stake.
I wonder: what occurs when the effort to pass something to ‘other’ must be written in another language?
Words serve to express, precisely, to traverse that distance that exists between those who pronounce them and those who receive them, giving way to questions. Words, therefore, pierce and touch a body as a consequence of their meaning. But it is important to understand that they are used here only for that particularity, because when from saying we move to writing, we do not use words but letters. There is an exact letter, a mark in place: a composition and not a mechanism.
In a translation, the letters are not foreign, they are not replaceable or decodable. They are the most accurate tool for constructing that text. In the best of cases, the other party will transmit something, and perhaps the letters will appear in a word, but we must be aware that the creation of something novel is an intention, never a guarantee.
From the foregoing, we can infer that the translation effort is not aimed at someone understanding and becoming familiar with what the translator produces. The effort is placed in passing something that, independently of the common (universal) understanding, seeks to convey something precise through letters. In the latter, the yearning for which is written to become transmissible. It is not a question of passing on a concluded, understandable, legible work to the other. Rather, it is, above all, an effort to convey? form? a body of work in which the non-literal, or identical, creation conveys something else.
I will try to separate the aforementioned into three parts:
Translation:
"Translation is a conceptual transplantation from a natural linguistic humus to another of different composition and always, to a certain extent, incompatible with the former one" (Braunstein, 2018).
In Latin traductio is defined as the action of guiding something from one side to another. Technically, translating implies the manipulation of knowledge, an accurate movement of a thing that changes places and results in transformation or equivalences.
Patricia Wilson said:
"As discursive practice consists basically in the substitution of a sequence of linguistic signs of the target language in order to enlarge the number of readers. This general definition of translation points to a dimension that is often forgotten in the face of the restricted nature of foreign language knowledge, and the debatable idea that, since translation is a ‘degraded’product of the original, the translator would be someone who reserves for himself the first time of a full reading in the author's language, and then distributes the ’waste’. In any case, the translation is not foreign, but the opposite: it makes readable in the receiving literature a text previously inscrutable in its foreignness." (Wilson, 2004, 275).
Thinking about the latter gives rise to a new instance: questioning. However, it needs to be said that in a literal translation, a faithful, twin and identical translation, the intention is for one and not for the other because there is no elaboration or possibility of questioning the passage from one conventional sign to another. The attempt to make it all understood in the same way, what from the very beginning is different, causes the work to lose value. Something is passed, without a doubt. One is aware that in a translation of these characteristics, what passes is empty - it is an object with no new content, if nothing of the one who receives it is at stake there.
In these terms, literality refers to a full package. Jacques Lacan referred to it as: integral transmission when teaching about the Matheme. When there are formulas there is consensus, but what about otherwise? Moustapha Safouan questions the universal: "Who could imagine the destiny of Europe if Latin had remained the language of literature, science, philosophy or theology? The end of Latin’s linguistic hegemony is worth considering in this context.” (Safouan, 2007, 49). Here we are undoubtedly in the field of conventional and in that territory the hegemony of a unique way of expression does not harbor any possibility of creation. This applies both to a text produced in the mother tongue and to a foreign language. One must ask oneself, what else is there to be done? Because otherwise we will be eternally trying to obtain faithful followers and not critical thinkers.
Problem-Untangle:
"…in Psychoanalysis a body of knowledge does not correspond to every truth" (Porge, 2016, 69).
Giving something to another without question is based on a complete idea of passage. Therefore, we must question a translation, a given truth or a concept, so that the other instance that I strive to delimit, is possible. Perhaps this is the most complex stage, because it is the dilemma, and, at the same time, the whole possibility of addressing the work of translation - clear bet to transform the discursive operation, the foreign characteristics of a language.
It is an operation in which something is extracted from that literal translation as an equivalency. This is what German García refers to when he says: "(...) this extraction formulated as a question, is about the other’s desire. “The enigma of Another desire emerges" (García, 1983, 100). This is a wake-up call in order to never forget that in a translation the interrogation of desire is in the field of the other and not on one’s.
Specifically: what can be extracted from the technical operation so that some of it reaches a new status?
The extraction of a letter is a decisive operation and is understood that (the letter) is untranslatable because it is the point where what a new one could create is at stake. An absence is decided and even sustained, in order to shed some light on what is intended to convey. "It is in the lack itself (the lack of a letter) where all the fertility of the operation dwells" (Porge, 2007, 215).
A different kind of material is created because a letter has been extracted. In this type of construction of a text, something is disarticulated - unhooked, discontinued, therefore a writing is revealed/undressed/unveiled. The crudity of those pieces remain and this is why, must be reinvented in order to be articulated again. If some of the latter happens, one’s position and location is novel.
I emphasize here that the intention of the translator is placed in the act of creation, in the act of saying. "The act itself, is by its own dimension, a saying" (Lacan, 1967-1968, 61) which entails an orientation. An orientation refers to an act, a policy that assembles the pieces to convey: a style. Erik Porge remarks: “Style, for Lacan, is an operator at the junction of the truth of the cure and the transmissible knowledge of this truth" (Porge, 2016, 42). I believe that the quotation is suitable, precisely to make us consider the distance that exists between what is given and what can be said about it. In short, the only transmissible thing there is, the style, is the only thing that matters because it is what remains to others, if anything is left. Above all, it is the only living thing one has to give.
3. Transmission:
“Transmitting is desiring to transmit and encountering the impossible of transmitting. Transmitting is transmitting the impossible to transmit'' (Porge, 2016, 39).
To begin with transmission’s journey, it is necessary to divest oneself of conventions and synthesized pre-concepts. It is not mandatory to speak in a foreign language in order to understand that when we try to convey something to someone, things get complicated if we are not speaking in context. But as we saw before, if one achieves the disarticulation of common grounds, one can aim for a text. Go deep into each word, to find a new one (in another language) that suits the writing and therefore ceases to be just an equivalent. It is a handcrafted work that disrupts the ideals of a text to establish something different and new. The translator activates something above and beyond what the author wrote, that only he brings to the table, adding in his action a possibility (to verify in the future) that transforms the operation. That is to say, the object of the authorship is not the same as the object of the translation. Passing from one language to another can produce knowledge that did not previously existed. It is a different body. Here, it interests me to think in terms of Faith as Soren Kierkegaard understands it in Fear and Tremor when he tells us "Faith begins precisely where reason ends". That is to say, we make use of that faith that implies a whole act of creation and fundamentally a true bet, because only in this way one goes out of one's own certainties to reach others. Barring this, the translator cannot cease to be literal. Having said this, it is fundamental that the translator is confident that he or she has something of their own to contribute, even if it is not clear what that is in fact. The phrase a leap of faith expresses precisely the distance that needs to be travelled.
If what is written after a translation is a creation, the two operations that take place in this passage are crucial: first, a decided extraction of a letter, second: what aggregates because as I anticipated before, this production requires a contribution. "A variation, a new version of the text is added"; "(...) Addition and subtraction imply that there are existent equivalences between languages but that actual identity between them is impossible..." (García,1983, 103). This is a very important clarification because a translation cannot be understood if there’s no acknowledgement of an impossibility. To know, what aggregates, in this case, never coalesces. The two written texts differ in composition and in meaning. It impossible to replicate the original. As mentioned before: one expresses with words. Psychoanalysis helps to think that in this action of translation, a way of operating and ordering what is at stake is through an object. This is not new because I have referred to the object throughout the present paper. Jacques Lacan named the object: a. The petit a has an ineludible responsibility towards an act, to the language to be used and at the same time is to be verified each time. This is the aggregate precisely because the object a is not in place to be translated, but yet to be given. It is there, though, to operate in order to thrill, touch, and move a body. A new letter to be created is possible, although with no guarantees of achievement. This is important, because there is no translation without transmission, as it is the last one which causes the first one.
At the beginning, I spoke of a facilitating operation where the language conventions allow equivalences and yet do not create a potential new significance. Then, in a function of disarming meaning, namely, the doing of the other, where something is extracted (letters) and there is a decided translation. Finally, there is a passage as a guiding axis. The passage in this instance does not ensure that the object that one passes on to the other has the desired effects of knowledge, but the bet is a valuable one. The act of faith is precisely in producing and introducing novelty in the other at the time of reading. In this third instance, transmission is reached because a new letter has been produced and the translation is completed.
To transmit in a foreign language implies the passage of a body, since the object entails the corporeality of the one who operates and goes towards another body that receives it as a novelty. For there is a new materiality that comes to supplement something that on the other side, at least, was not registered. Far from a merely technical matter, whoever does this is completely at risk there because one works in a language that is part of oneself. Passage is made to another body that will make a different use of the object, resulting in new interrogations of the work.
Questioning a written production is a direct inquiry into the object. The moment of location of the object is as important as its sustenance: this is the reason why we can start referring to an invention.
In short: each piece, each fragment to be translated, to be transmitted, is a new opportunity for the other and for oneself. In the second instance because the desire of the other is questioned and in this third moment because all the implication is in the level of the object. It is a permanent construction in relation to the use of the letter - its consistency.
To conclude:
The process of positioning myself in relation to a translation has been extremely complex. What is at stake when transitioning a piece of work to another language that is not of its own authorship are faces the difficulties of fidelity to the word of the other, but in the passage of what is one's own entails a greater difficulty because it involves the letters used and not words. It is from the object and its passage that I have been able to begin to work rigorously on this subject - value that is not limited to the other, but to oneself, that gives body, edge, to what is going to be translated. "(...) the translator always operates at the limit of the sequence" (García, 2008, 104).
It is no longer a question of being a different translator for each work. It is a logic that, thanks to psychoanalysis, that clarifies a unique position in the face of external variability and there, perhaps as a consequence, the verification of a style such as that of which Jacques Lacan was aware.
Although the act of translation is nothing more than saying that it is untidy and therefore naked, it is politics that always comes to tie the knot. The whole risky operation of transmission is guided by this compass. If at the end of a text in another language there was and occurred this possibility of knotting, what was expected happened indeed. Perhaps that is what authorizes the translator to do his work. To say, his policy.
* Abridge version of the original: Travesía de un psicoanálisis extranjero.
** Florencia Bernthal Raz is a Psychoanalyst based in New York City. She has a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the UNC (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba Argentina). She is a Board Member of Fundación Salto in Argentina. Editor and translator of the academic Journal Saltos. She is co-founder of Leap (Lacanian Encounter Association of Psychoanalysis) in the United States where the center of her work is in research, training and transmission of Psychoanalysis.
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