IX. Read the story and answer the questions following it. Discuss it with your group mates. Diary of a pilgrimage

Jerome K. Jerome

Pantomime is to language what marmalade, according to the label on the pot, is to butter, “an excellent (occasional) substitute”. But its powers as an interpreter of thought are limited. At least, in real life they are so. As regards a ballet, it is difficult to say what is not explainable by pantomime. I have seen the bad man in ballet convey to the premiere danseuse by a subtle movement of the left leg, together with some slight assistance from the drum, the heart-rending intelligence that the lady she had been brought up to believe was her mother in reality only her aunt by marriage. But then it must be borne in mind that the premiere danseuse is a lady whose quickness of perception is altogether unique. The premiere danseuse knows precisely what a gentleman means when he twirls round forty-seven times on one leg, and then stands on his head. The average foreigner would, in all probability, completely misunderstand the man.

A friend of mine once, during a tour in the Pyrenees, tried to express gratitude by means of pantomime. He arrived late one evening at a little mountain inn, where the people made him very welcome and set before him their best; and he, being hungry, appreciated their kindness and ate a most excellent supper.

Indeed, so excellent a meal did he make and so kind and attentive were his hosts to him, that after supper, he felt he wanted to thank them, and to covey to them some idea of how pleased and satisfied he was.

He could not explain himself in language. He only knew enough Spanish to just ask for what he wanted – and even to do that he had to be careful not to want much. He had not got as far as sentiment and emotion at that time. Accordingly he started to express himself in action. He stood up and pointed to the empty table where the supper had been, then opened his mouth and pointed down his throat. Then he patted that region of his anatomy where, so scientific people tell us, supper goes to, and smiled.

He has a rather curious smile, has my friend. He himself is under the impression that there is something very winning in it, though also, as he admits, a touch of sadness. They use it in his family for keeping the children in order.

The people of the inn seemed rather astonished at his behaviour. They regarded him with troubled looks, and then gathered together among themselves and consulted in whispers.

“ I evidently have not made myself sufficiently clear to these simple peasants,” said my friend to himself. “I must put more vigour into this show”.

Accordingly he rubbed and patted that part of himself to which I have previously alluded and which, being a modest and properly brought-up young man, nothing on earth shall induce me to mention more explicitly –with greater energy than ever, and added another inch or two of smile; and he also made various graceful movements indicative, as he thought, of friendly feeling and contentment.

At length a ray of intelligence burst upon the faces of his hosts, and they rushed to a cupboard and brought out a small black bottle.

“Ah! that’s done it,” thought my friend. “Now they have grasped my meaning. And they are pleased that I am pleased, and are going to insist on my drinking a final friendly bumper of wine with them, the good old souls.

And he held the glass aloft and made a speech, in which he wished long life and many grandchildren to the old couple, and a handsome husband to the daughter, and prosperity to the whole village. They could not understand him, he knew; but he thought there might be that in his tones and gestures from which they would gather the sense of what he was saying, and understand how kindly he felt towards them all. When he had finished, he put his hand upon his heart and smiled some more, and then tossed the liquor off at a gulp.

Three seconds later he discovered that it was a stringent and trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed. His audience had mistaken his signs of gratitude for efforts on his part to explain to them that he was poisoned, or, at all events, was suffering from acute and agonizing indigestion, and done what they could to comfort him.

The drug that they had given him was not one of those common, cheap medicines that lose their effect before they have been in the system half an hour. He felt that it would be useless to begin anther supper then, even if he could get one, and so he went to bed a good deal hungrier and a good less refreshed than when he arrived at the inn.

Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be attempted by the amateur pantomimist.

1. Why did the hosts misunderstand the author’s attempts to express his gratitude?

2. What proves their hospitality and concern?

3. What makes the story humorous? What devices are employed by the author? How does the author’s name contribute to it?

4. What role do the author’s considerations about pantomime and ballette play both at the beginning and at the end of the text?

***

X. It is well known that translation helps peoples to contact with each other, to share their cultural values, due to translation we learn about the best examples of literature, their wonderful language and learn to admire them. Here are some considerations of K. Hewitt concerning it. Read the text, analyze it and discuss in pairs.

READING TRANSLATIONS

K.Hewitt

In the later part of the twentieth century, partly because of the economic dominance of the United States of America, partly because of the development of Information Technology, and partly because of the nature of the language itself, English has become the International World Language. Many people regard this as an intellectual disaster because of the damage done to other languages, particularly those spoken in small countries. Other people regard it as an intellectual disaster for the British. We are becoming more and more an monolingual country because ’other people’ expected to understand English. Certainly the British, like the Americans, have been unwilling to learn other languages; a far smaller proportion of the books we read have been translation, and we are ignorant about too much outside our own islands. (However of other languages continues to diminish.)

In Russia, although yours is also a major language, you have traditionally taken translation seriously. You have schools for translators, and immense intellectual attention is given to translation theory. Translators are known and quoted, including translators of English classics. Nevertheless, there seem to me, as an observer in your universities, schools and other institutes, to be a number of problems in the way that you have translated English literature and in your attitudes towards the practice of literary translation. In this chapter I speculate about these problems and their consequence for Russian readers.

Russians began translating contemporary works seriously in the eighteenth century. (The English had been doing so for much longer, but at that time English was not an important international language.) Eighteenth century Russians could have read Edward Young’s Night Thoughts. We think of Young as a minor poet now, but he was popular in the eighteenth century and the translators were responding to English evaluations. By the nineteenth century Russians were translating and publishing our major novelist, often within a year of their original publication in Britain.

Unfortunately, in the nineteenth century across Europe there seems to have been very little sense of scholarly responsibility among translators. In Britain, where our own Shakespeare’s work was censored, cut and outrageously altered, it is clear that ‘adapting’ books from foreign languages was common. For instance, we read your great classic novelist. Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, in adaptations from French tastes. No wonder we sometimes misunderstood what your writers were saying! British readers had to wait for Constance Garnett who published her first translations from the Russian in 1894 in order to read decent versions of these novelists.

Much the same attitude to translations seems to have existed in Russia in the nineteenth century. If a long English novel was published in a Russian thick journal, it might decide that that it could be ‘improved’. At any rate, nineteenth century. Russian versions of our ‘classic’ novels were often changed in ways which would have horrified their authors.

For example. Jane Eyre, published in 1847 in England, appeared in translation in Russia in1849. (In Notes of the Fatherland). The translation was wonderfully prompt. But Jane Eyre, (which is discussed in Part 3 of this book), although instantly popular in both countries, was a novel which shocked and disturbed many readers. It is extraordinarily outspoken for its period: it challenges traditional values, it attacks obedience and submissiveness, it sets individual truth and integrity above official approval, it probes into sexual and emotional honesty: and there are pages of passionate contempt for those who do not agree with the heroine. Not surprisingly, some critics thought that it should not get into the hands of young ladies.

In the Russian tradition, perhaps because Charlotte Bronte was not saying what was expected, the translator deaded to improve the novel. Much has been omitted or alrered, leaving a story which is smoother and more of a cliché. The romantic qualities remain – but what about the hard, awkward, Protestant honesty which makes this so much more than a ‘romantic novel’? That has largely gone.

My point is that this treatment of original texts was typical at the time. Today such presumptious translations would be of no more than historical interest if unabridged, unsimplified, decent translations were widely available for modern readers. But are they?

The habit of cutting inconvenient or difficult passages, either because of possible censorship, or because the translator does not understand what they mean, has certainly continued throughout much of the twentieth century in Soviet Russia. But there is also a much more insidious kind of simplification which makes nonsense of what literature is really doing. This is the tendency to use the obvious word or phrase foe the strange one, the word which fits in with the translator’s expectations for the one which disturbs those expectations – and generally to uphold what is socially approved and socially normal.

No doubt this happens everywhere; translators struggling with a difficult job will always tend to relax into traditional linguistic patterns and standard vocabulary. But there are reasons why translating from English into Russian can produce an excess of clichés and banalities for the readers.

Here are six reasons. Of course there are more.

For nearly seventy years it was difficult for Russians to have experience of Britain. Most of you could not come to Britain, and those who did were not able to move around freely. So your translators had no direct knowledge of the country and its culture.

Secondly, it was very difficult to talk to English native speakers, either in Britain or Russia, or to discuss with them in any detail the linguistic problems that translators faced.

Thirdly, the enormous efforts by so many of your population to learn English – often furtively from BBC programmes, for example – meant that there was (and is) a widespread version of English culture which is used as a source for translators, although it is really a Russianised English culture.

Fourthly, the new uses of International English have encouraged Russians who have quickly learnt about computers, business English and like to assume that they know English in depth. And many of them become translators although they do not understand literary English when used with any degree of subtlety and sophistication.

Fifthly, English nineteenth century literature and especially children’s literature has been widely read and very popular. Translations into Russian gave you a vocabulary for translating from English and expectations about our literature which are skewed in favour of the childish, the ‘amusing’ and emphasis on ‘types’ and a lack of adult irony.

Sixthly, Russians tend to hold to two beliefs: first, that nobody else in the world thinks and behaves as Russians do (so we can’t understand you) ; and secondly, that if you are puzzled about any piece of English (not just literature), the best person whom to seek advice is another Russian.

***