CHAPTER 3
Artists and Thinkers
Introduction
This chapter will focus on individuals who have contributed to the definition as well as development of homophonic translation. The purpose of presenting several practitioners of the translation is not to come up with its generic definition, but rather to stress the irreconcilable differences in the definition. One may agree on the most basic definition of homophonic translation (which I would in fact reduce to its necessary characteristic): a translation of sounds from one language to another.
The differences, however, cannot be overlooked: while for Louis Zukofsky, for instance, homophonic translation is a translation of “sense” and “sound,” for Charles Bernstein it is a translation of sound exclusively. Therefore, Zukofsky’s translation strives to achieve what all the other four translation strategies aim for: preservation or transformation of meaning (depending on a particular strategy), as well as imagery and as many poetical devices, i.e. rhymes, meter, etc. Therefore, the homophonic translation strategy is different among the other four because of its aim to translate sound to such a degree, but the actual goals of what should be translated are, in fact, the same.
In The Practice of Poetry, Charles Bernstein provides the following directions to practice homophonic translation:
Take a poem, or part of a poem, in a foreign language and translate it word for word according to what it sounds like in English. Try this with a language you know and then with one you don’t know. Don’t use a dictionary, just rely on what your ears hear and go from there. (Behn & Twichell, 1992:126)
To “translate word for word according to what it sounds like” is a part of the definition that is true for any homophonic translation. Yet, if the homophonic translation is to be done with the language one is not familiar with, none of the aims of the four strategies, as well as Zukofsky’s way of translating homophonically may be accomplished. Bernstein’s definition is thus even more distant from the canon of translations than Zukofsky’s.
I do not want to compare the two definitions and determine which of the two is more “useful,” “valuable,” or “appropriate,” as the definition depends on the background (i.e. artistic, philosophic, etc) and the intentions of the translator. Therefore, instead of evaluating the validity of each homophonic translation discussed in the chapter, an attempt will be made to respect the idiosyncratic definition of every translator and point out its specific features as well as to determine its aims and social and literary functions as a translation, and the meaning of “definition” is expanded: for the purpose of this paper. I have included a definition of every homophonic translator discussed in this chapter either as he or she proposed it, or as it, or as it emerges from practice. In most cases, the guidelines were not written down as they were not important: what counts is mostly the features and the effects or the use of homophonic translation. There are only a few cases where a set of guidelines was written down by the translators, and I will indicate these cases in the course of the chapter which, for the purpose of clarity, will be divided into several sections.
The first section will focus on one of a precursor of homophonic translation, Jean-Pierre Brisset, who has used it mainly for the defense and illustration of his linguistic and “scientific” theories. The second section will discuss a practical use of homophonic translation by a schizophrenic, Louis Wolfson who suffered from Anglophobia (hatred of English culture and language). In the third section, the “definition” of homophonic translation will be viewed from a more philosophical perspective as described by Willard E. Quine and Gilbert Harman, and will then move on to its use in nursery rhymes. The last two sections will focus on a more literary homophonic translation. The reason for discussing the literary translation in two sections is due to the fact that Celia and Louis Zukofsky’s approach to translation varies to a great degree from the more contemporary approach of David Melnick and Charles Bernstein: the former is more challenging, while the latter is more playful.
Jean-Pierre Brisset- Prince des Penseurs
Jean-Pierre Brisset was born in 1837. After serving in the French army for several years, he moved to Germany to teach German in a local high school in Magdeburg. Although he earned a good reputation as a teacher, he came back to France which he had missed a lot, and became a worker at a train station in a small town of Maine-et-Loire. It was there that God inspired him to write several volumes on religion, and Brisset proclaimed himself an angel and the discoverer of the true origin of men, who descend not from God, but from frogs. It was also there that he developed his linguistic principles and foundations that contrasted with received opinion, and the first examples of homophonic translation. First, Brisset’s controversial views on linguistic foundations will be discussed and linked to his specific definition of homophonic translation; then, specific features of his translations will be discussed along with the effect they produced on his contemporaries.
Brisset refuses to accept one of the basic linguistic principles, that of the origins of (romance) languages. It is commonly accepted that they originate from Latin, yet, according to Brisset, they do not stem from Latin, but from the French, Latin to him being an artificial language. Instead, romance languages to him share their roots in the French language, which is “alive,” i.e. spoken in everyday conversations and has the ability to evolve overtime. As he “points out, in such a language, words cannot be created in accordance with some artificial principles, but occur, “jump out” randomly
Dans le langage en émulsion, les mots sautent au hasard, comme dans les marécages primitifs nos grenouilles d’ancêtres bondissaient selon les lois d’un sort aléatoire. (...) La redecouverte des langues primitives n’est point le résultat d’une traduction; c’est le parcours et la répétition du hasard de la langue
(Foucault: 16).
In the forming language, words jump out randomly, like in the primitive swamps our frogs of ancestors leaped according to laws of the random nature. (...) The rediscovery of primitive languages is not at all a result of translation; it is the outcome? and the repetition of the randomness of language.
He therefore ignores Latin and proclaims that French is the base language for all other Romance and Anglo-Saxon languages. This conviction justifies his preoccupation with the French language, as oppose to other foreign languages, not only on the basis of his French nationality, but also because of the supremacy that he ascribes to French. It has to be acknowledged that he analyzes the similarity of grammar and vocabulary between languages, but, interestingly, his complex homophonic translations occur only in French, or in other words, he translates from French to French. This is a unique feature of his “definition” of homophonic translation, not commonly used by other practitioners of the translation discussed in this chapter.
Apart from his unique way of translation occurring within the same language, he attaches a lot of significance to the meaning resulting from translation. It is important to understand his definition of meaning, as it is not the literal meaning that his translations generate, but a so-called basic meaning, the meaning common to a given set of words, not to a single word. This is common to most homophonic translations that strive to preserve the meaning: one finds the basic, rather than a literal meaning.
In his work entitled Le Mystere de Dieu est Accompli, Brisset explains the occurrence of the basic meaning by adhering to a principle of sameness of sounds: if words consist of the same or similar sounds, their basic meaning is the same:
C’est là une merveille terrifiante qui montre la puissance sans bornes de l’Esprit de l’Eternel! Comment une telle lumière a-t-elle pu être cachée a l’esprit de tous les hômmes sur toute la terre? (...) Toutes les idée s qu’on peut exprimer au moyen des mêmes sons se rapportent à un même objet, à une idee commune, avec une force de vérité mathematique, d’une evidence absolue, generale ou accidentelle, positive ou negative (Le Mystere..., 48).
It is there, the terrific miracle, that shows the boundless puissance of the Eternal Spirit! How such a light could have been hidden from all the spirits of men on all the earth? (...) All the ideas that one may express with by means of the same sound refer to the same object, to a common idea, with the force of the mathematical truth, of the absolute evidence, general or accidental, positive or negative.
He has described it in his “Premiere Loi”, the First Law, illustrated by the following example, translated-- or rather explained by Lecercle according to Brisset’s comments-- into English on the right side of the French original, whereby the sameness of sounds in not preserved :
Les dents, la bouche. Teeth, mouth
Les dents la bouchent Teeth block the mouth
L’aidant la bouche The mouth helps this blocking
L’aide en la bouche Teeth are the help in the mouth
Laides en la bouche Teeth are ugly in the mouth
Laid en la bouche There’s something ugly in the mouth
Lait dans la bouche There is milk in the mouth
L’est dam le à bouche Damage is done to the mouth
Les dents-là bouche Block, or hide, these teeth!
(Lecercle, 1990:61)
The example illustrates how all the sentences that sound the same refer to the “teeth” and the “mouth” and all evolve around the basic meaning, in this case, the message, of “hiding” the teeth, damaged by “milk” and looking “ugly.”
Another, more complex example of Brisset’s translation will illustrate his masterful employment of the homophonic strategy and its preservation of relevant imagery. It will first be shown in the original French version, and will then be followed by the English literal translation, which will lose the relationship between sounds produced in the homophonic translation:
Où est-tu?—L’eau jai. Où est-tu logé? On l’eau j’ai, d’ai en l’eau; on logeait dans l’eau. L’ai eau jeu, loge. Nous loge ons, nous logeous dans la loge. Viens dans mon l’eau, dans mon lot, jeu mets en; dans mon logement. Eau loge ist, il est au logis. C’est ici mon lot, mon l’eau j’ai aie, mon logis. Le lot naturel de chacun c’est d’être loge. Eau loge, ils sont, aux loges, ils sont. (see Decimo).
Where are you?-- [from] the water burst forth. Where are you lodged? One [a pronoun, not a number] water has, from having [being in] water; we used to live in the water. I
have there the water play, lodge. We lodge ourselves [1] , we lodge in the lodge. Common in to my water, to my plot, play [I or you] put [go into the direction of]; into my lodging. Water lodge ist [2] , he is in a dwelling. It’s here, my plot, my water I have ie [3] , my dwelling. The natural fate of everyone is to be lodged. Water lodges, they are in lodges, they are.
Since Brisset’s homophonic translation consists of sounds as well as meaning, the syntax is largely distorted, it conforms to Lecercle’s Remainder Theory, rather than a commonly accepted set of grammar rules. The Remainder-like syntax is a common feature of homophonic translations, even if they do not consider the meaning, but only the sound of words. It is the sound that governs homophonic translations and everything else, i.e. syntax, meaning, or imagery have to be adjusted--either neglected or stretched out in order to render at least a basic meaning or imagery.
The syntax does not have to be distorted in every single sentence, but when the distortion is necessary in order to conform to the sound. A phrase “Où est-tu logẻ,” for instance, is a commonly used question; yet, “Nous loge ons” is not a grammatically correct expression, but the one invented by Brisset. Yet, the fact that it is understandable for others makes Brisset’s discourse” an enjoyable reading, since it shows how one may manipulate/play with the language, and how it arouses lots of speculations on the origins of such expressions. Is the quoted expression is strictly a pure chance of dividing a verb into two parts “loge” (the steam) and “ons” the ending that signifies the association with the pronoun “we;” or is it taken from German--which Brisset had to know quite well as he stayed in Germany for several years and wrote a number of comparative parallel examples from the German and the French--where a schematic form of a reciprocal verb in a plural first person sounds like wir (we) + Verb + Uns (ourselves), which, if transformed to French would sound like Nous Verb ons?
The answers may be numerous and perhaps I should leave the enjoyment of coming up with such speculations for the readers, and move to another feature of homophonic translation instead: that of inaccuracy of sounds. Although homophonic translation strives for accuracy in sound translation, there are always slight differences present in the translated text. In Brisset’s translation, for instance, there is “l’eau” and “lot,” which sound very similar, but not the same. The “eau” sound in French is a combination of the “o” and the “ou sounds, while the “o” sound has no “ou” resounding in it. It is, I suppose an “acceptable” sort of difference between the two sounds, but it cannot be unmentioned because to some homophonic translators it may be as big as a halftone or a quartertone is for a sound engineer.
While syntax and the accuracy of sound translation is usually distorted to some degree, elements such as meaning and imagery may be preserved, depending on the translator’s goals and abilities. Brisset’s imagery is quite vivid, as he does not simply choose words that sound the same, but that, if treated as part of the whole picture (i.e. a paragraph or stanza), they represent a certain image, which in this case, is an image of water with people living and “playing” in it, feeling at ease, as if water were their lodgings, not a temporary place of relaxation. The vivid imagery is not present in all homophonic translators and Brisset has to be given credit for it. As Michel Foucault points out,
Le mot n’apparait pas quand casse le bruit; il vient a naitre avec sa forme bien decoupee, avec tous ses sens multiples, lorsque les discours se sont tasses, recroquevilles, ecrases les uns vers les autres, dans la decoupe sculpturale du bruissement. Brisset a invente la definition du mot par l’homophonie scenique (Foucault: 34).
The word does not appear when the noise ceases; it is born with its shape well cut out (curved out), with all the multiple meanings, when the discourses have been sunken (melted together), curled up, crushed into one another into the sculptural form of rustling. Brisset has invented the definition of scenic homophony.
The scenic homophony has allowed Brisset to construct many more such vivid images, described at length, rather than abruptly mentioned and undeveloped. It is his belief in basic meaning, the meaning that occurs between words that share the same sounds, that has challenged him to translate homophonically. The scenic homophony has raised the difficulty of the translation, as it has imposed a presentation of a developed and quite detailed image.
Neither the scenic homophony, nor the homophonic translation in general brought Brisset much fame or scholarly recognition. His books did not sell very well and his ideas were ridiculed by many. Especially, because he conveyed or proved many of them through homophonic translation. They seemed, therefore, more puzzling and inaccessible than they could have been, had they been presented in a simpler form. Although even then he probably would not have many supporters, as his ideas were not very ordinary ones: they contradicted the current beliefs and they lacked scientific evidence.
One of the most controversial among his views is the idea that humans descend from frogs, not from God. The passage describing the water imagery was in fact describing the prove that we, the humans, have lived in water, because our ancestors were frogs. His constant reference to God, rather than scientific methods have made him a source of ridicule for the public.
The only title that he has ever received was that of Prince des Penseurs (Prince of Thinkers), given to him by a group of artists, writers, and philosophers such as Vildrac, Duhamel, Andre Salmon, Leon-Paul Fargue, Georges Chenneviere, Rene Arcos, Luc Durtain, Albert Doyen, Charles Picart-le-Doux who had organized themselves in a group called Amis de l’Abbaye. The Price was given not to any common persons, but to such innovative people as Mallarme, then Leon Dierx, then Paul Fort (see Decimo, chapter one). Brisset was recognized because of his innovations in several areas and was acclaimed “Renovateur de la philosophie biologique, des sciences religieuses et de la philologie.[renovator of biological philosophy, religious sciences, and philology].”
It was decided that the people could vote for the Prince des Penseurs until midnight on December 31st 1910. The votes would not be counted, however, until January 6th 1911, where the score would be officially announced in the Delta Café in Paris. Max Jacob and Réné Arcos were responsible for presiding over the elections. The results, announced before a large audience of writers, painters and students, have indicated thus:
Sur 330 votants, Bergson obtient un sixième des suffrages exprimés, soit 55 voix. Le Dantec: 12 voix. Marc Sangnier: 10 voix. Jean Jaurès: xx [number not clearly readable] voix. Antonin Dubost: pas moins de 6 voix. Émile Boutroux:: xx voix. Est élu « Prince des Penseurs », par 212 voix et contre son concurrent et collegue Bergson, est élu...Bil y a quelques secondes de silence et presque d’attente--M. Jean-Pierre Brisset. Cris de joie et applaudissements répondent à l’annonce de cette nouvelle
(Decimo, 1986).
Out of 330 voters, Bergson obtains a sixth of all cast votes, which is 55 votes. Le Dantec: 12 votes. Marc Sangnier: 10 votes. Jean Jaurès: xx [number not clearly readable] votes. Antonin Dubost: no less than 6 votes. Émile Boutroux:: xx voix. Is elected “Prince of Thinkers”, by 212 votes and against his competing candidate and colleague Bergson, is elected...--there are some seconds of silence and almost of waiting--Mister. Jean-Pierre Brisset. Cries of joy and applause is a response to the announcement of this news.
Brisset’s contribution to homophonic translation is immense, as he was one of the first practitioners of that kind of translation. His Premiere Lois proclaiming that there is always a kind of “basic meaning” in all the words that share the same sounds encouraged him to do a number of homophonic translations, from French to French. Although the sounds that result from a homophonic translation are not always accurate, and the syntax is a part of the Remainder theory, his translations describe a vivid imagery, which is not only a great achievement on a linguistic level, but also, for Brisset, a means of communicating his theories and/or theoretical proves. Both, homophonic translation and his “scientific discoveries” supported by the Eternal Spirit did not bring him much fame and recognition among traditional scholars in either linguistics nor biological science. Yet, there will always be someone like the enthusiastic audience at the Delta Café during the election night, who will remember Brisset as Prince des Penseurs.
Louis Wolfson (Lui Wolf-sonne)
C’était mon quarante-cinquième anniversaire de naissance. « Déjà » plus que vingt-cinq années
depuis que je suis « officiellement » déclaré dément. (Je répète: les Grecs disaient que le plus
grand bonheur qui puisse échoir a un homme, c’est de ne pas être ne--Nous avons eu la poisse.)
(Wolfson, Ma mère musicienne, est morte de maladie mélignante à minuit au milieu du mois
de mai mille977 au mouroir Memorial à Manhattan.)
This is my forty-fifth birthday anniversary. “Already” over twenty-five years since I was
“officially” declared insane. (I repeat, the Greeks said that the biggest fortune that could fall upon a man is not to be born--we had had a rotten luck.)
Louis Wolfson was born in New York in 1931. Diagnosed with schizophrenia at an early age, he spent most of his childhood in the psychiatric institutions where he began to study foreign languages. He soon discovered that learning languages came to him with an extreme easiness, and he was thus able to study several of them at the same time, i.e. French, Italian, German and Russian. It was partly because he devoured a passion for studying languages, and partly to save himself from the utter isolation from the real world. Since he was diagnosed with Anglophobia, hatred of one’s native language, he used other languages to translate any written or spoken aloud words from English into any other language--that is when homophonic translation proved extremely successful.
This section will present Wolfson’s “definition” of homophonic translation, which will be compared with Brisset’s, i.e. whether the source and the target languages are the same, and whether there exists any meaning in Wolfson’s translation. Then, specific features of Wolfson’s homophonic translation will be closely looked at, such as his definition of meaning. Finally, his use of homophonic translation will be presented and how it has influenced his relation to the “real” world, the world outside the mental institutions.
A significant difference between Wolfson and Brisset is set from the very beginning when one attempts to compare the two translators: while Brisset translates from French to French, Wolfson translates from English into several languages at the same time, i.e. in the same sentence, creating what Lecercle rightly calls “linguistic monsters” (see Lecercle, 1990:63). Lecercle brings up one of those “monsters” that Wolfson has included in his memoir, Le schizo et les langues, which comprises of a combination of several languages in a sentence, as well as alternative translations in brackets. When he overhears the remark of some workmen saying: ‘he’s a screwball,’ he translates it as:
{est }{un } { écrou }{Ball }
H(ou) i(l) {ist } {ein }
{achab}
{yest} {odin } {Schraube} {Balle}
(Ibid: 63)
The mixture of language is apparent in each bracketed part of the sentence, so, the word “is,” for instance, may be successfully translated into French “est,” German “ist,” and Russian “yest.” The word “écrou” means a “nut” in French, while “Schraube” means “a screw” in German, which are apparently two unrelated words. Nevertheless, there are different expressions in German that have probably led Wolfson to use it: a "Schreckschraube," literally a “scare-screw,” means “an ugly woman.” Also, "die Schraube machen" means, approximately, to go nuts, but only temporarily, i.e. because of being upset by something. What is interesting about the two words Wolfson have chosen is the fact that while “écrou” is a more accurate translation of the slang “screwball,” the German version renders a more literal translation, “Schraube” being simply a screw, having nothing to do with English slang. Only in connection with other words or expressions does “Schraube” have the approximate meaning that Wolfson was searching for, but the other words or expressions are not in his translation to supply the context.
This mediation of meaning provides the second element of Wolfson’s “definition” of homophonic translation, the attention he paid to meaning. A translated word or sentence could not, therefore, be translated only according to sound, from one language to another (or rather to the others), but some kind of meaning had to be attached to it. This is an extremely difficult task, even though Wolfson could choose among several languages that he knew. As Lecercle points out, looking for the meaning and the sameness of the sound in a translation is a “hard task:”
Rude tache, et qui se heurte au réel de la langue, car rien ne garantit qu’un mot d’une autre langue aura ầ la fois le même sens et le même son qu’un mot anglais donne: une langue est ce qu’elle est, et seul la hasard peut produire ces correspondances.
(Lecercle, 1995: 19)
Hard task, and which bumps against the real languages, since there is no guarantee that a word in one language will have the same sense and sound as a given English word: a language is what it is and only chance can produce these correspondences (parallels).
To accomplish the task, the definition of meaning has to be negotiated. One may, for instance, “compromise” on trying to find the basic meaning that Brisset was looking for. This means that it is enough to focus only on one meaning of a given word or sentence, or a group of sentences and leave out all the other possible meanings hovering around each word. Yet, one may as well negotiate the meaning, mediate between different instances of it, i.e. between “écrou Ball or balle” or “Schraube Ball or balle” to signify a “screwball.”
The mediation between meanings is not anymore based on the acceptance of one meaning; rather, it seeks to find an idiosyncratic meaning that is not always “correct,” i.e. “Schraube Balle” but that a translator is able to explain to himself or to the others, depending whether he/she does the translation for him/herself or for the others as well. Wolfson is doing it solely for himself, so that he can avoid processing English sounds and sentences in his head. Thus, for him idiosyncratic meaning seems to be more important than basic meaning. He does not need to compromise with anyone but himself, thus he can allow himself to create as obscure “linguistic monsters” as he pleases: he is not restrained by any syntactic or semantic rules, but can explore all possibilities of all the languages he knows. As Lecercle points out:
Aussi Wolfson se fait-il linguiste: pour augmenter ses chances de réussite, il lui faut ruser, apprendre a jouer avec les lois qui gouvernenet les langues, a les tourner et a les detourner. Cet activité est épuisante, mais elle est aussi passionnante source des plus grandes joies.
(ibid, 1995:19)
Also Wolfson made himself a linguist: to increases his chances of the achievement [of homophonic translation], he has to be cunning, to learn to play with the laws that govern languages, to turn them and turn them around again. This activity is exhausting, but it is also a passionate source of the greatest enjoyment.
He did use some basic principles for his translation, which was always a “word-to-word” translation--where each word is translated into a word from a different language--as opposed to Brisset, who often used syllables, joined and rejoined them together to create new words or expressions, i.e. in the discussed example of “lodging in water.”
Moreover, he most often tried to translate an English word into German, since the two languages are Anglo-Saxon and have many words that share a common meaning and similar sounds. Thus, the English “Wind” would easily be translated into German “Wind” (where “w” is translated as “v” in English), and “Wolf” in English would become “Wolf” in German. But even in such seemingly easy translations, the meaning had to be mediated.
The English word “Where,” for instance, Wolfson first translated as “wo” and “hier,” which in German mean “where” and “here” respectively. But he was not satisfied with this translation, since “hier” is more a response to the question “wo” rather than its continuation. Therefore, he came up with “woher”, meaning “from where.” (68-69)
An even more extreme and amusing mediation of meaning is illustrated in the following example, where he strives to translate his mother’s favorite song, the one she sang very often, and therefore the one that indeed required a homophonic translation from English, so that Wolfson could listen to it. The song was called “Good Night Ladies” and, while I suppose he did not have any difficulties with translating “Good Night” into the German equivalent of “Gute Nacht,” “Ladies” required a lot of mediation between meanings.
First, he translated the word “Ladies” into the German “Leute” [people] since, as he explained to himself,
Leute (...) qui veut dire gens, et les femmes sont certes des gens, en effet approximativement la moitie de tous les gens, et par conséquent l’étudiant des langues presque toujours et a peu près idiotiquement s’efforçait de convertir dans son esprit et instantanément l’anglais « ladies » (mot pluriel) en l’allemand « Leute » (=gens) quand il venait d’écouter ce premier,... (60).
Leute (...) which means people, and the women are certainly people, in fact, approximately half of all the people [are women], and as a consequence the student of languages [Wolfson] almost always, almost idiotically, forced himself to convert in his mind, and instantaneously the English ”ladies” (the plural word) into German “Leute” (=people) when he has heard the former [ladies].
Sound-wise, “Leute” and “Ladies” are quite similar; yet, without knowing what Wolfson’s reasoning behind this translation was, as well as the original title of the song it would be hard to guess whether the song “Good Night Leute” would actually be addressed to men, to women, or both. As Wolfson mediated, played with the meaning of “Ladies” and “Leute,” he eventually decided to replace it with the Russian “L’iudi” which is equivalent to German, but
Mais c’était plutôt que la russe « loudi » lui donnerait un peut de satisfaction s’il y pensait parce que d’une part ce vocable lui était alors une acquisition intellectuelle récente et que d’autre part et encore plus important, ce mot est un peu complique en ce que dans sa déclinaison la position de l’accent tonique change plusieurs fois et que le cas grammatical dit instrumental est un peu irrégulier: donc, apprendre complètement ce nom masculin pluriel russe serait. naturellement, plus significatif que de faire de même pour un nom plus régulier (62).
But it was rather the Russian word “loudi” [people] that gave him some satisfaction, whether, on one hand, he thought so because this word was his recent intellectual acquisition, and on the other hand, more importantly, because the word is a little complicated and in its declination, the position of the tonic accent changes several times, and its grammatical case is a little irregular: therefore, to learn this masculine plural Russian noun completely was naturally more significant than do the same for the more regular [German] noun.
But the idiosyncratic meaning is not the only major difference between Wolfson’s and Brisset’s use of homophonic translation: while the latter has used it to defend his linguistic and scientific theories, the former has used it for more practical purpose: to translate everything that he has seen written or heard in English and to be able to ensure his presence outside the mental institutions.
Several examples have already illustrated how practical, rather than literal or scientific, the use of his homophonic translation was. He translated sentences he overheard, i.e. “He is a screwball” spoken by the workmen, his mother’s favorite and often heard song, “Good Night Ladies,” and such often used words as “where.”
His survival in the world outside mental institutions was so dependant on homophonic translation, that he translated not only overheard phrases, or phrases addressed to him, but also labels he had seen by chance or by necessity. Labels that he had seen by chance were those that he did not anticipate seeing, i.e. new boxes or cans of food in the kitchen; the so-called “necessary labels” were those that he could not avoid seeing in order to live independently and prepare food for himself.
This is how he has translated the often unavoidable label that indicated “Vegetable oil” so that he could use it without thinking of the English word. Wolfson has instantly translated the label into the French “Huile Vegetal,”
Laquelle expression se prononce vedjtebel oil (les deuxième et troisième e sont caducs, et le o ouvert et bref et le i ouvert et fugitif forment une diphtongue tombante) et laquelle veut dire huile végétale (51). [But even more visibly,] L’expression anglaise pour huile végétale, vegetable oil, ressemble apparemment au terme équivalent en français et elle est similaire aussi a une expression allemande du même sens: vegetabilisches Ol [écrit Oel facultativement]: prononcer veghetabiliches eul, ou, pour le premier mot, l’accent d’intensité est sur la quatrième syllabe (bi), le deuxième i est ouvert et donc bref et le troisième e est faible (52).
Which expression is pronounced vedjtebel oil (the second the third e’s are mute, and the o is open and brief, and the i is open and short form a falling diphthong), and which means vegetable oil (51). [But even more visibly,] The English Expression “vegetable oil” apparently resembles the equivalent term in French and it is also similar to the German expression of the same sense [meaning]: vegetabilisches Ol [written optionally as Oel]: to be pronounced veghetabiliches eul, where, for the first word, the accent of intensification is on the fourth syllable (bi), the second i is open and thus brief, and the third e is weak.
Wolfson’s practical use of the homophonic method to translate sentences and labels is probably one of the reasons that explains his employment of idiosyncratic, negotiable meaning over the basis meaning of Brisset’s translations. Since for him it is necessary to translate each single word homophonically from one language into another, basic meaning would be quite useless, as he would have to abandon most of the words and focus only on several basic ones. The difficult task of translating sounds as well as sense of words is, nevertheless, understandable, if not, in his case, necessary to communicate any written text or spoken words to his own mind; a reliance solely on sounds would have been easier, but would not have carried over the meaning of words and would prevent Wolfson’s communication with the “outer” world altogether.
After his mother died in 1979, he decided to move to Montreal, where he would not be exposed to English on an everyday basis and where his hatred of the English language would not force him to constantly seek meanings and in the end, communication, in all the other languages he had studied as a schizophrenic child.
Philosophers of Homophonic Translation: Willard V. Quine and Gilbert Harman
What are commonly said to be communicated, apart from diseases, are ideas
(Quine, Quiddities, an Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary.)
Willard V. Quine, a prominent twentieth-century philosopher, places homophonic translation in the realm of basic human communication. This implies that every single person uses homophonic translation when communicating with another person. Quine’s definition of homophonic translation is thus different from Brisset’s, Wolfson’s, and most of the other translators in this chapter, therefore I have decided to introduce it in this section; I do not wish to explore this particular “branch” of homophonic translation in great detail, but show how divergent it is from the “definitions” already described in the pervious sections. Another reason for introducing this definition in this paper is that Quine’s concept of homophonic translation is a lot more accessible: if one attempts to do a research on homophonic translation, this “branch” accumulates the overwhelming number of matches.
Keeping that in mind, I will first show how Quine’s definition of homophonic translation differs from the other two “definitions” (Brisset’s and Wolfson’s), where a language of translation (source language is either equal or different from target language) and the meaning (i.e. basic or idiosyncratic) will be considered. Quine’s theory will also be presented as dominant in this particular “branch” of homophonic translation as compared to a more Remainder-like theory used by Gilbert Harman. Finally, Quine’s use of homophonic translation in communication will be contrasted with Brisset and Wolfson.
For Quine, homophonic translation occurs within the same language, i.e. translation from English to English. It may sound as if it were Brisset’s influence who also translated homophonically within the same language, yet, the similarities between the two definitions are so vague and general that this assumption is too far-fetched. In his book entitled Quiddities, an Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary, Quine places a definition of homophonic translation under the entry “Communication” and defines it thus:
An idea that has been occupying one mind gets duplicated, it would seem, in another mind. “Peering into the darkness of another’s mind,” in Santayana’s phrase, we cannot easily say how faithful the duplication is. Such is the vagueness of the very idea of IDEAS, q.v., indeed, that it is anybody’s guess what the form, content, and limits even of one of our own ideas might be said to be. Anybody’s guess including our own. (ibid,d:p).
“Duplication” of an idea (not sounds that formulate it) is the most important concept that determines Quine’s homophonic translation. The idea is first an utterance that one person has spoken and the other one has to “process,” understand or “internalize” in his/her mind. The process of homophonic translation takes place when the internalized idea is, Quine states, “guessed.” It can never be faithfully “duplicated,” but appropriated to some degree, from the context, for instance.
The process of “guessing” what the other person “means” takes place because humans live through varying life experiences, come from different backgrounds, develop within a different amount of time, etc. Their understanding for words, therefore, is never totally the same, but overlapping to a different degree. This concept may be explained by what Roman Jakobson has called “the Intralingual Translation” or “Rewording,” which is an “interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.” (Schulte and Biguenet, 145). Jakobson brings an example of a ‘bachelor’ and a ‘celibate’ which, for some may be associated with the same idea, that of being unmarried; for the others, however, there is an essential difference between the two words: while a “bachelor” may marry anytime in his life, a “celibate” has taken vows to remain unmarried. Nevertheless, both associations with a “celibate” and a “bachelor” are correct and it is through the process of homophonic translation that takes place between the interlocutors that the “correct” association is internalized.
Since the limits of homophonic translation are expanded by Gilbert Harman, I will introduce his views on the subject here and point out their Remainder-like character because of Harman’s insights on the language (communication) of thoughts, and then offer the explanation of Harman’s treatment of “meaning.” In his book Thought, Harman has developed a concept of homophonic translation which stems from Quine’s theory, but he adds a new dimension to it; he claims that homophonic translation occurs not only on a communication level between two speakers of the same language (Quine’s view), but also between their thoughts and the their actual utterances. The language of thoughts (i.e. mental states, such as beliefs, wishes, etc) is comprised of a structure, which is then translated into the outer language (i.e. verbal communication). As Harman suggests,
Just as various speech acts--promises, threats, warnings, and so forth--can involve instances of the same sentence of the outer language, various mental states--beliefs, desires, hopes, and so forth--can be instances of the same sentence of the inner language of thought (Harman: 58).
This kind of translation is not any more intralingual, as in Quine’s case, but “intersemiotic translation” or “transmutation,” which Jakobson defines as “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems” (ibid: 145). “The nonverbal sign systems” are, for instance pantomime performances, music composed as translation of written works, i.e. ballets, etc. The language of thoughts that Harman distinguishes is, presumably, nonverbal, and therefore fits under Jakobson’s intersemiotic translation. I do not wish to imply that Harman’s and Jakobson’s translation theories are in any way similar: it is only this particular kind of translation method distinguished by Jakobson that may serve as a way of explanation of Harman’s concept of translation between utterances and thoughts.
This is how Harman explains the difference between the thought and communication language on an sample sentence:
The statement that Benacerraf is wise refers to [Paul] Benacerraf, means that he is wise, and may or may not be understood by someone. None of these things in true of the belief that Benacerraf is wise, if “refer,” “mean,” and “understand” are used strictly in their ordinary senses. Although such a belief is about Benacerraf and represents him as wise, it does not in any ordinary sense refer to him, it does not mean that he is wise, and it is not understood or misunderstood by anyone (ibid, 59).
Harman makes a distinction between a “statement,” an utterance, and a belief in the person’s wisdom. While the statement carries a certain “meaning” with it, a belief, a mental, more tangible state does not “mean” that the person is wise; it merely “believes” in such an idea. My own more pragmatic explanation of the difference between the uttered language and the language of thought is that the former one is associated with “meaning” that is “spoken aloud” and the “meaning” of spoken words is revealed; the language of thought, however, is not heard by others and its “meaning” is not, or cannot be literal: rather, it is replaced with a belief about something.
For Quine, the meaning of a word may often be “guessed,” or “approximated” from the context of a conversation. As Quine points out, “Such cases require more than just ‘the homophonic method’ that is so fundamental to the very acquisition and use of one’s mother tongue (...).” They have to be supplied with “Meaning,” which is “...intuitive, uncritical, and undefined, but it is a piece with translation; what it registers is our reluctance under such circumstances to ‘translate’ the speaker’s English into our English by the normal tacit method of homophonic translation.” (Word and Object, p. 59)
Quine illustrates homophonic translation which requires the “intuitive” meaning with the phrase “Yes and no.” When it is heard without any preceding question, it may be understood as literally, i.e. that someone first affirms and then denies himself. Quine points out, however, that if the answer is contextualized, it will have a meaning, however “undefined or vague,” but still a meaning. In a response to a question “Do you understand the concept of homophonic translation,” for instance, the answer “Yes and know” will mean that one understands some concepts, while some may still seem vague; the answer in this case is an idiom and is understood by the two speakers.
It is interesting to point out that for Quine, the most important factor of “meaning” is its contextualization, not its basic or idiosyncratic characteristic discussed in the previous sections. One may argue that Quine’s “meaning” has to be idiosyncratic, like Wolfson’s, but while Wolfson has used it to explain or justify the meaning of a certain word solely for himself, Quine associates his “meaning” with dialogue, where, consequently, the meaning has to be understood by two speakers. As for Brisset’s concept of Basic meaning, he dismisses it as a result of “startling coincidences” between certain words, such as “aperitive, appetite”; “arch, architect”; (...) “insolent, insult »; « jubilant, jubilee, » etc. He proves that these words are related only by sound, not by etymology and are, therefore, not meant to be searched for basic meaning.
Harman’s concept of “meaning” as distinguished in the thought and communication languages are too “remainder-like,” abstract and underestimated by most philosophers. Even though the distinction of a thought language and a spoken language is an interesting addition to Quine’s concept of homophonic translation, it is not readily embraced by philosophers. It may partly be due to the fact that Quine is considered a leading twentieth-century philosopher, as suggested by Christopher M. Bache’s article, “Homophonic Translation and Disambiguation.” He criticizes Harman’s homophonic translation and believes [in the ordinary sense of the word] that Harman does not develop but “misinterprets” Quine’s theory of homophonic translation, since,
Where for Quine the concept applies to an interpersonal process, for Harman it also applies to an intrapersoanl process. This is obviously no small shift in usage which for that reason should have been brought more explicitly to his readers’ attention (36)
Harman’s theory is, therefore, criticized for building on Quine’s foundations and not exactly copying them, but expanding, or in Bache’s words “misunderstanding” them, instead of being appreciated for its innovative approach.
An important difference between Quine and Harman, and Brisset/Wolfson is that the former are philosophers who study the phenomenon of homophonic translation, but do not “use” it in a sense that Brisset and Wolfson have done, i.e. to defend or illustrate a certain theory, or to use it as a very practical device of translation. Their studies are more analytical and systematized than Brisset’s and Wolfson’s, for whom the homophonic translation has served a certain purpose, not a concept that they would define and develop.
Nevertheless, it cannot be said that Quine, and more abstractly, Harman did not practice homophonic translation themselves. Since they assume that homophonic translation is a “tacit” process that constantly occurs in our minds as a basic concept of human communication. Without it, humans would very likely be unable to understand each other, even if they spoke the same language. Quine himself, therefore, takes part in translating homophonically, changing at the same time the “status” of the translation: from being practiced only by a few thinkers or people with psychological illnesses, to being practiced by everyone who communicates with others. It no longer is laughed- or looked down at, but defined as a common practice, so common that “regular” people do not think about it when they actually employ it, unless they study it, like Quine.
Quine’s definition of homophonic translation, therefore, ascribed under the realm of communication, is significant because it assumes a role of a common, rather than rare, marginalized phenomenon. It is used by all humans in order to communicate, to understand each other with the use of contextualized meaning.
Nursery Rhymes
A homophonic translation of nursery rhymes is, like Brisset’s and Wolfson’s, a translation of text, not of communicated ideas as is the case with Harman. The translation of nursery rhymes, however, is more complex because of what I will call a disjunctive meaning, and a disjunctive imagery. I will define these terms using an example form Van Rooten’s Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames, The d’Antin Manuscript, Ormonde De Kay’s N’Heures Souris Rames, The Coucy Castle Manuscript and Gustav Hulme’s Moerder Guss Reims, the Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript; in the end, I will point out how the disjointed meaning and imagery contributes to the playfulness of the three texts.
Van Rooten translated the nursery rhymes from English to French and the example that follows is his translation of “Humpty Dumpty,” the original English version is to the left, while the translated to is one the right:
Humpty Dumpty Un petit d’un petit
Sat on the wall S’étonne aux Halles
Humpty Dumpty Un petit d’un petit
Had a great fall Ah! Degres te fallent
And all the king’s horses Indolent qui ne sort cesse
And all the king’s men Indolent qui ne se mene
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty Qu’importe un petit d’un petit
Together again. Tout Gai de Reguennes.
The literal translation of the French homophonic version is as follows:
A small of a small
Is impressed by Halles
A small of a small
Oh! Regress befalls you
Indolent who does not leave cease
Indolent who does not conduct himself
How important a small of a small
All Gai de Reguennes.
The literal translation of the text seems very remote from its original, the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme, and this is what I call a disjunctive meaning: the meaning that does not relate to the original. While “Humpty Dumpty” is a nursery rhyme about a small monster sitting on the wall, Van Rooten’s translation is an eleventh-century French manuscript which he has annotated for the contemporary audience, due to the changes in language, style, customs, etc that have taken place overtime. Not only the genres of the source- and the target language translations vary, but also their themes, therefore, the meaning of the two translations is completely different, disjointed.
At the same time, I want to stress the fact that the definition of the disjunctive meaning is introduced in order to signify a great difference in meaning between the two texts; it does not imply, however, that no other kind of meaning can be found to the manuscript, created, in fact, by idiosyncratic meaning that Wolfson was using. Van Rooten makes up lots of footnotes in order to “explain” the meaning of certain expressions, so that they fit into the context of the discourse. The first line, therefore, “a small of a small” is explained as “The inevitable result of a child marriage” (Ibid: 1), but could have meant many other things, depending on the intention of the author, i.e. a babushka, where each wooden doll is smaller than the other, meaning “un petit d’un petit”! Hadn’t Van Rooten provided his explanation, his intention would have been as vague as Wolfson’s when he had used “Good Night L’udi” (L’udi meaning People in Russian) to translate “Good Night Ladies.”
With the help of the idiosyncratic meaning, the discourse is quite “stable” as the story does not change from line to line, but is continued throughout the poem. The second line, for instance, informs the readers that the “un petit d’un petit” who arrives in Paris “Is amazed by Halles” which is footnoted thus: “The subject of this epigrammatic poem is obviously from the provinces, since a native Parisian would take this famous old market for granted” (Ibid: 1). The author also suggests that in the fourth line, “Ah, regress befalls you,” the newly-arrived boy behaves strangely--maybe because he is first time in Paris?--The footnote explains: “...we are led to believe that the poet writes of one of those unfortunate idiot-children that in olden days existed as a living skeleton in their family’s closet.”
The disjunctive and idiosyncratic discourse leads to the disjunctive and idiosyncratic imagery. The image of a “Humpty Dumpty” sitting on the wall, falling down or being put together by “the king’s horses” and “the king’s men” is not transported into Paris where a wandering “small of a small” is impressed by the Parisian market and is terribly intimidated. The latter image, however disjointed from the first one, is coherent: one can easily image a person who walks timidly in the streets of Paris.
In a book published several years later, De Kay’s homophonic translation of nursery rhymes can be also characterized by the disjunction of images and meaning, nonetheless having their idiosyncratic meaning and imagery at the same time. In his book N’Heures Souris Rames, The Coucy Castle Manuscript, one of the homophonically translated nursery rhymes sounds as follows:
If all the world were paper Ivre folle d’oừ orle doit s’appelle paille
And all the sea were ink Ane dol des six voisines que
If all the trees were bread and cheese En dol détruit sueur braie d’Anchise
What should we have to drink. Ouate! Cou d’hui doux fort, trine que.
In both examples of translated nursery rhymes, the actual translation method is a combination of Brisset’s syllabic, and Wolfson’s word-to-word translation. In a syllabic method, a syllable from the English (or any other source language) is transferred into a syllable or a sound which is a part of the word in another language. In a word-to-word method, one word is translated exactly into another. The beginning of the first line of De Kay’s translation, “If all the world...” illustrates a combination of the two: “if” is translated to “ivre” and “all” to “folle,” which illustrate a word-to-word method; “the world,” however, is translated into sounds from several words and even, parts of words, “d’oừ orle doit,” where the “oit” in “doit” is the sound that refers to the English sound “wa,” a part of “was.”
An innovation to this combined method is noticeable in Gustav Hulme’s translation of nursery rhymes from English into German, entitled Moerder Guss Reims, the Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript. One of the nursery rhymes along with Hulme’s homophonic translation will serve as an example:
Goosey Goosey, Gander Kuh! Sie Kuh! Sie kann der...
Whither shall I wander? Wer Du ja Wanduhr?
Up stairs and down stairs, Ab Staer, Sand Auenstaer,
And in my lady’s chamber. Sand im erledigt Schemper.
(Hulme, 1981: 3)
The first two lines follow the principles outlined above; the third one, however, contains what I call a homophonic enjambment. An enjambed line in a poem means that a part of the sentence is carried over to another line, but still leaves some space for the new sentence to begin in the same line. In this case, the third line of the actual text is not enjambed, “Up Stairs and down Stairs/ And in my lady’s chamber;” but the translation of the words is, since it runs over to the next line. This is how it looks like, when the lines are divided into English words in the German text: “Ab Staers and [d]Auenstaer/ s and im er ledigt Schemper.” The “s” from “downstairs” is carried over to the next line, facilitating the translation technique, making the language more flexible.
What is interesting is that Hulme did not create an annotated manuscript to create his idiosyncratic meaning and discourse but made a literal translation with an extensive commentary instead, appearing in the form of footnotes. The lines quoted above are translated thus:
Cow! You cow!
Who do you think you are,
You and your clock on the wall?
There is sand from the ram,
sand from the water-meadow ram
in the weak beer that I have just finished
(Ibid: 3).
The last two lines, apart from being translated, also include a commentary which may clarify their meaning: “The first part of this statement might almost be a quotation from the Psalms, but the second part is quite clearly a profane” (Ibid: 3).
It is important to remember, that all the definitions I have discussed in the chapter, such as disjunctive meaning and imagery, syllabic and word-to-word translation, and the homophonic enjambment are terms which I have derived from specific characteristic of homophonic translation. Nonetheless, these definitions are not only, most likely, unknown to the writers of the translators of the nursery rhymes, but also unusable to them: they have done the translations for pure enjoyment of language play and manipulation (i.e. assigning idiosyncratic meaning) and have not written down any guidelines for doing their translations, and their humorous footnotes may attest for that.
What makes all three books of translated nursery rhymes even more playful is the fact that in the introductions to the authors already set the disjunction between the “real” meaning, that of nursery rhymes, and their own meaning, which in Hulme’s case is a collection of stories about life, written in verse by Professor Leberwurst. The readers are informed that Professor Leberwurst’s two major books were devoted to sauerkraut, and only his last book was a collection of his poems, divided into four sections: poems on people’s ordinary life, poems on nature, poems on so-called dramatic events, such as “adventure with gripping sags of maidens in distress,” and the last section features “moralizing poems” that warn against “perils of excess:” gluttony, alcohol, bigamy.
The hints of Leberwurst’s poems having a different meaning than that annotated by the author are quite indirect, which adds more playfulness to the entire project He points to the possibility that the poems might have been collected, rather than actually written by the professor, which is the case with “real” nursery rhymes: “I confess that I am not really sure whether he wrote them all himself or whether he only collected them--like his other specimens [i.e. sauerkraut]Bin the course of his travels” (Hulme, 1981).
Similarly along with Van Rooten’s and De Kay’s homophonic translations of nursery rhymes, stories of the old manuscripts are fabricated, carrying their disjunctive meanings. Van Rooten comments on the difficulty of understanding an eleventh-century manuscript that he has annotated: “The cryptic phrasing, the disconnected thoughts, the mysterious allusions to places and people suggest at first an affinity to the prophetic quatrains of Nostradamus.” A few lines