A Psychoanalytic Translation Experience*
“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”.
The most successful untranslation
Florencia Bernthal Raz / Javier Bolaños *
"Either the translator leaves the writer as calm as possible and makes the reader go to meet him, or he leaves the reader as calm as possible and makes the writer go to meet him," and I choose, with Schleiermacher, the uneasiness of the first option" (Cassin, 2019).
Because of their constitutive relevance, there are questions that we understand necessary to answer forcefully. Nevertheless, we also consider it crucial to continue sustaining them with equal forcefulness throughout our journey for the same reason. One of these, perhaps the most important, involves noticing critical thinking in translation work.
It is clear that clarifying and underlining the implications of the method that locates and organizes the point of articulation/disarticulation of the terms at stake allows critical thinking. In addition, to locate, at the same time, the outcome that critical thinking can obtain with translation and psychoanalysis is vital here.
Two essential elements connected to the latter are:
Untranslation and Transmission.
When someone sets out to translate, they must have read the text before writing. However, this is not so simple nevertheless obvious; reading and writing imply rigorous work that is hard to achieve.
The first, that of reading, implies doing it politically. It is not only a question of the sense or meaning of words; it is also a question of where someone is directing them. However, in the same way, it is also a matter of being clear about what to privilege when reading: and here, the difference between words and letters becomes vitally important. The letter carries the weight that we do not find in the articulation of words. Elevating the weight of the letters implies recognizing that their presence carries the function of imprints on a path to which forcibly (since that is not their nature) comes, in addition, a linking function in the making. To read letters in articulation seem to be the task to be performed. Therefore: how to read the weight in words? Primarily, it will not consist in understanding when reading. It will be necessary, therefore, to find an operator.
The second step of writing implies a manipulation, a use if preferred, of these letters because the only way to produce an unprecedented text is to go down the path of only seeking the comprehension that the chains of words are already striving to achieve. By the ways of meaning, we are not going to do more than produce equivalences. It is necessary to defer in order to refer. To write by counting those letters again. It would be a pity to be concerned with resembling dictionaries or technological translators in psychoanalysis.
The untranslation, or untranslatable, consists in dealing with those same letters that remain unfolded in the distance that is created, or established, between a sense that seeks to articulate them and a sound that intends to incarnate them. This distance leaves someone with the mission to use these arranged elements to consign and link and articulate them in another language. Therefore, we conclude that a psychoanalyst's translation is always more connected to the elements that allow him to practice psychoanalysis than its connection to the practice itself. The elements are critical.
In looking for some operator for the task mentioned above, we stumble upon the assumption that the authorship's object is not the same as that of translation, which seems untransferable. They come from different bodies, we say. However, we also know that a translation is possible because its transmission sustains it. Here is where the necessary original/copy tension comes into play.
Many could think that the originality and authenticity of any material results from the pure inventiveness of its author. The expectation is that this material will serve, a posteriori, as the model for making copies. If an original refers to a principle, the original/copy tension requires some resolution by verifying which appeared first. In this case, the copy indeed loses value, but it seems to recover it when we recognize that it is the copy that provides the quality for something to become original. So, which one comes first?
In addition, a copy generally does things that the original does not
it underlines new aspects of the original,
it settles on different edges,
it enlarges previously unilluminated areas,
it grasps details never highlighted before,
it extends them towards horizons that were unreachable for that original.
Jacques Lacan said: At the beginning, there is no origin; there is the place (Lacan, 2007). To establish that, at some point, to find that first place is to verify that it also refers. Perhaps the human being is not the most indicated to assert the value of a copy and should only limit himself to locate if it settled in. Then it will be proven, or not, the only significant thing that matters: if the copy is valuable.
Suppose that after being translated, the material is a new creation. In that case, it is necessary to point out its status: the extraction of a letter, to locate there (in another language) another new letter that, oriented by being an addition, allows a variation: "A variation, a new version, of the text to add" (García, 1983). We prefer to differentiate the addition from the newly completed version. The latter brings more elements to this argument.
As insinuated, a literal translation is the faithful, twin and identical translation made only for oneself. In the attempt to say everything, to understand the same, what is different loses value. Therefore, it is crucial to sustain an essence in the passage from the author to the translator—perhaps the most sensitive aspects of the text.
Psychoanalysis invites us to think about this in a translation. Operating and organizing elements, what passes from one side to the other happens through this addition, this aggregate. There is no doubt that something passes from one side to the other; we notice it in every translation. Nevertheless, we also notice that it is found in silence no matter how hard we seek it.
What is that essence that we must transmit to others? Oscar del Barco wondered, quoting René Char: absolutely nothing. Nothing is the most intimate element we possess. (Del Barco, 2010). Could it be that what is ours is, in fact, empty? Maybe yes, but it passes on regardless. It will consistently be transmitted. There is no content there but a shape. There is no more precise calling or realization about the untransmissible passage of a body.
Here is the key because there is no translation without transmission (the latter causes the former). Perhaps this authorizes the translator to carry out his work: locating and clarifying his politics.
As we said above, to work precisely. Baltasar Gracián encouraged a prudent man who, more than any other, should be ready both to the occasion that emerges and to the eventual configuration of the relations established in each situation to know how to act (Cantarino, Blanco, 2005). Suppose scientific knowledge sustains itself seeking reproducibility by keeping distant from the bodies and established places. In that case, the opposite and prudent operation outstands the liveliness of change and the uniqueness of action. Because of this, action acquires the utmost value.
It is necessary to clarify that the prudent man is in no way similar to the cautious one, who proceeds alertly, careful, and reserved, but rather the one who is aware that he must create in loneliness to sustain himself sustained in a precise word. He can calibrate the weight corresponding to the letter to come—never determined by hitting the target because it is unknown. Following Gracián's, we can conclude that the precise action needs that prudence to happen.
Undoubtedly, to do so, it will be necessary to decide which letter to lose, which letter to leave out of the new text to be written, and add a new one in its place.
Deciding is not to choose from a formed reflection; on the contrary, it means paying the cost of not having chosen. If this implies obtaining something, undoubtedly deciding is to pay the cost of that loss.
quotes translated by Florencia Bernthal Raz
Bibliography:
Cantarino, E. y Blanco E. Diccionario de conceptos de Baltasar Gracián, Madrid, Cátedra, 2005, p.210.
Cassin, B. “Elogio de los intraducibles”. En Elogio de la Traducción, Buenos Aires, El cuenco de plata, 2019, p.40.
Del Barco, O. El abandono de las palabras [], El cuenco de plata, 2010, p.40.
García, G. “Psicoanálisis y traducción”. En Psicoanálisis, dicho de otra manera, Valencia, Pre-textos, 1983, p.103.
Lacan, J. “Lugar, origen y fin de mi enseñanza” [1967]. En Mi enseñanza [2006], Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2007, p.14. Trad. De Nora A. González.