Fidelity is the most basic ethical term in translation. Infidelity means betrayal of the original work and its author. An artist is expected to be faithful only to himself. An artist can be revolutionary; an artist can reject a tradition or a teacher.
This is how schools of art or writing or music come into being. This is what the history of art is all about. Betrayal and promiscuity are respected in an artist.
In the primary arts, there is no original to betray. You can take The Odyssey and do anything you want with it — write a play, a ballet, a novel, another poem even — and no one will say you were unfaithful to it, unless you make an absolute mockery of it. And most likely not even then. You have simply interpreted it according to your whims and the times you live in. You are an artist.
What about the secondary arts: performing music, directing plays, adapting novels into screenplays? Here there is an original: a musical composition, a play, a novel. A performer can be accused of getting it wrong, a director of going too far, an adapter of missing what made the novel great. But it’s rarely a question of fidelity; usually it’s a question of eccentricity, incompetence, misinterpretation, commercialism. A performer’s style strips a piece of music of its power; a director’s change of gender or time doesn’t work or is too clever for everyone’s good; an adapter cravenly sands over all the bumpy, provocative aspects of the novel. But even at their worst, they’re only misinterpreting, being experimental, selling out. They are first and foremost interpreters, and when they do a poor job, they are simply bad, incompetent interpreters. They have a style, are allowed a style. They take too many risks, or too few, but they are
allowed risks. The only thing truly at risk, as with the original artist, is reputation, because the performer, director, adapter
59 is also someone expected to express himself, to be revolutionary, to reject traditions and teachers. The literary translator is, however, not treated even as a secondary artist in this sense: he is not expressing himself and has no right to be revolutionary. Instead critics ask, Is the translation faithful to the original? Does it do justice to it? Does it betray it? Is it a reasonable facsimile? Are there any mistakes (and if so, they must be pointed out)? A director’s judgment might be mistaken, but he doesn’t make mistakes. A performer makes mistakes, but they do no harm to the original, and his “not doing justice” to the composition is less a matter of ethics than of personal competence and quirks. When a translator makes a mistake, or—even worse—boldly interprets, he has dealt a blow to the original. He is unfaithful, he is an abuser. He screws around, comes home in the middle of the night, and beats his wife. He is expected not to go out and fool around, but to stay home and be submissive. In fact, he is expected not to be a he at all, but a traditional she. She is a member of a helping profession, someone who nurses poems and stories into another language. This is what comes with the pleasures of service, the intimacy of submission. There is a serious double standard going on here: the translator is often unfaithful, the author never is. Why? Because although fidelity is a word that is used with respect to a person’s obligations to a spouse, who can be unfaithful himself, in the case of translation it is more a matter of a person’s obligations to her father, to someone who cannot be unfaithful back. Unlike in a marriage, the translator is the only one acting, the only one with obligations; the author has already done everything he has to do, and the original is the result of his completed act. The original can now only be acted upon. The original is an old father who must be taken care of, to whom obedience is owed, who has spent his life giving, giving, giving. Now it’s the translator’s turn to do her duty. Duty is the defining characteristic of a relationship based on one-way fidelity.
As John Dryden wrote a few hundred years ago, if a translator’s work is successful, “we are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say, the poor drudge has done his duty.”* The first commandment of literary translation is, “Honor thy original and thy author.”
60 You might be wondering, what could an author possibly be unfaithful to? As I said, the artist is considered to have no obligations except to himself (although various constituencies will attack him for nonartistic acts and statements). The artist is a hero without a country; because he fights for himself alone, he can be a traitor only if he sells out, and even then a traitor only to those who care about such things and can tell the difference. This is not the place to set forth my ideas about an artist’s obligations, about his responsibilities to his culture, to ethical standards, to artistic standards. But I think it is worth wondering if there are such obligations. It is worth questioning the Romantic assumption that the artist is a demigod, a father who gives birth to a work of art that has no mother. Even Coleridge’s passive image of the author as Aeolian harp gives the author no obligations, no chance of being unfaithful.
When people write or talk about translation, fidelity is always either on the tip of the tongue or in the back of the mind. Some people talk about how important fidelity is, while others try to defend themselves, in advance, against the accusation of betrayal. But in the little world of literary translation, people spend most of their time trying to define it. Fidelity to what or to whom? To what aspects of the original? To what extent? Think about it!!!!