In the 16th century we see the question of domesticizing emerging in even more extreme forms – culminating in Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into vernacular German. Again, there were numerous other important translations, trends, schools and debates that took place during the prior centuries, but since this course is focusing mostly on the ways in which translation may be used as a form of creative writing, certain specific moments have been selected to illustrate relevant trends. Martin Luther’s translation was groundbreaking in that it was the first successful reader-oriented translation of the Bible that focused on ensuring that the vernacular German which it was translated into was natural and accessible to ordinary German-speaking readers. Again, it was revolutionary because it reflected spoken German and used idiomatic phrases that would be familiar to the German speaking public.
We will now jump ahead several centuries where we encounter yet another breakthrough in the history of translation. In 1813 the German scholar Schleiermacher gave his famous lecture ”On the Different Methods of Translating,” insisting that the translator should take a foreignization approach (which he also explained as ”bringing the reader to the author”), a claim which was rooted in, among other things, the cultural context of his time. He believed that the German language and culture needed to incorporate more foreign words because it had become stagnant and needed to be impacted and shaped in new ways so as to avoid the threat of French hegemony. Additionally, he argued for the need to ”respect” the author’s style and vision, claiming that domesticizing a translation risks losing the elements that make the author’s text in the S.L unique which readers may, as a result miss out on. Although, as in last week’s focus on the debate between Cartagena and Bruni, there are many interesting aspects to consider, not least those of a political nature, for the purposes of this course we will focus on Schleiermacher’s latter claim, namely, that readers risk missing out on key features and characteristics of the original S.L text if the translation is domesticized. Study the two translations from the Overture of Proust’s Swann’s Way one by C.K Scott Moncrieff and the more recent one by Lydia Davis. Which would you consider to be more domesticizing and which foreignizing? Explain your reasons. Which do you prefer? Again, explain your reasons:
C.K Scott Moncrieff ‘s translation of Swann’s Way:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7178/7178-h/7178-h.htm#link2H_4_0001
Lydia Davis’ translation:
Proust, Marcel – Swann’s Way_Ch1,2.pdf
Extra reading (New york Times article on Translating Proust): https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/business/worldbusiness/IHT-translating-proust-doing-it-swanns-way.html