TIME is, TIME was, TIME’s past

Time in Translation StudiesSirkku Aaltonen

University of Vaasa

I 1999 publicerade Jay Griffiths sin ”sidglans” på tid, där hon

kritiserade det sätt som tid dominerar allt vårt tänkande. Livet

för oss är lineär och framtiden följer en rak linje från nuet

framåt. Utvecklingen sker stegvist där diakroni leder till

synkronisk orörlighet. Verkligheten har visat sig vara annorlunda

och livet olineärt och oorganiserat. I min artikel analyserar jag

den påverkan som lineärt tänkande har haft på

översättningsstudierna från tre synvinklar. Först ser jag på

historieskrivandet av både översättandet och

översättningsstudierna. Lineärt tänkande syns också i analyser om

utvecklingen av översättningsteorier och sätten att se på den

själva processen av översättning. Anpassningar har varit

oundvikliga. Till sist tas fram den heliga kon i vår moderna

värld, hastighet. Hur syns allt sörre hastighet i översättning.

Hur ser framtiden som vi glider mot.

Introduction

The Greek god Chronos has given his name to the title of

this conference. And to many other conferences before

this. To many papers and studies, to lines of research.

Chronos has given his name to absolute time, linear,

chronological and quantifiable. The English word “time”,

meaning “timing” or “ending”, has been claimed to be one

of the most widely used nouns in the language.

Time is, time was, time’s past. How well we all know

that. Our lives are timed to the minutest detail.

Sometimes to the second. Every transaction is recorded.

Each ticket and money exchange is timed. There are clocks

everywhere, on buildings and in buildings, on mobile

phones and on computer screens. Blinking the date and

time, sometimes down to tenths of seconds. When we stop

in the local supermarket to do our daily shop, we check

the cartons, bottles and packets for dates and times. At

the checkout, the receipt will tell us the date and time

– to the minute. If we receive a message on the mobile

phone or on e-mail, we can check the time: 9:23: 37! Turn

on the radio, and you can check the time. Turn on the TV

in the morning, and you can check the time. Do you feel

tired when your alarm goes off? Hopefully not, because in

a couple of months’ time it will snatch away another hour

from your night’s sleep. Don’t worry; you’ll get it back

in the autumn. You’ll get summer time, but not summer. Or

wintertime without winter. Our first thought on most

mornings is “what’s the time? Am I late?” If you are,

you’d better move fast forward. (see Griffiths 1999: 3)

Chronos rules. In the academic world as well. He has

percolated every cranny in study and research. He forms

the backbone of individual disciplines. The road on which

scholars move. The ribbon they should follow. In neat

chronological order. Fast forward. Time is, time was,

time’s past. In 1999, Jay Griffiths published “a sideways

look at time” and the way it has come to dominate our

thinking. Read her book, if you have time.

Following Jay Griffiths, I would like to look at time as

well, but in a narrower sense. I would like to look at

the construct of time in my own field, translation

studies. As in so many other disciplines, time is an

important measure there as well. As in so many other

disciplines, its use is not unproblematic there either.

Adjustments need to be made, ideas rethought. Jay

Griffiths (1999: 1-2) claims that we constantly need to

make adjustments to our construct of time, as it is such

an imprecise tool. Or the earth’s time is so unreliable.

Too inaccurate. This applies to translation studies as

well.

In what follows I will look at the construct of time in

translation studies from three points of view. First I

will look at how a reasonably young discipline has

appropriated time in constructing its own history, using

both historic time and mythic time. History is a look

back; in the west it is a look at the road behind. To

understand where we are now, we need to know where we

have been. The deeper the roots, the better. But

unearthing the history of translation or translation

studies has not been simple.

A typically western way of thinking is linear. Progress

means moving forward on a straight line, and evolution

takes place through steps: step one, step two, cause –

effect, cause –effect, past – present –future. We start

from details, facts, and statistics to construct the big

picture. Following diachronic development and arriving at

a synchronic standstill. With the aim to construct the

mother of all flowcharts, where evolution equals movement

forward towards a goal or the accomplishment of a task.

This has been the case in translation studies as well,

and I will next look at some aspects where linear

thinking has been most visible. Assumptions of linearity

underlie the accounts of the evolution of translation

theories, but also some of its central concepts. Attempts

have also been made to apply linearity in the translation

process itself. Adjustments have in all the above cases

been necessary.

Finally, I would like to throw a speedy look at the holy

cow of contemporary western culture, speed, and the way

it has entered the field of translation as well. Speed is

speedily challenging all elements of the translation

process, the role of the translator, the role of

translations, and the role of translation. I will close

with a vision of future, the future we are moving

towards, in a linear progress with increasing speed.

I shall begin with the beginning. An academic dicipline

requires a history. To ascertain its identity and justify

its existence. How far back do the roots extend? How did

it all start? Once upon a time or 4500 years ago? For

translation studies, both a mythological and a historic

narrative are on offer. The first one is more democratic,

open to interpretation. Each to her/his own taste. The

latter is non-negotiable. Confined to experts, their work

hampered by the lack of evidence. (see Griffiths 1999:

55)

Mythic vs. Historic Time

The beginning: a mythological narrative

Myths are often about beginnings: “once upon a time”. An

Irish myth begins “Once upon a time, or below a time, in

the time that was no time, that is our time, or not,

there was ( . . . )“. Myths do not require evidence;

they are stored in the communal memory, and passed on by

the word of mouth. With adjustments if necessary. Their

medium is spoken culture, so often dismissed as

unreliable. Mythic time is slippery of meaning; it is

ambiguous. An imprecise tool. (see Griffiths 1999: 48-49)

Translation hinges on the mystery of many languages, of

the primal scattering of the languages. Why were the

languages scattered thus? Two main explanations are on

offer. One negative, the other positive.

Negative explanations look at the scattering of languages

as something that should never have happened. Or would

not have happened if only. . . . According to one

explanation, some awful error was committed, which

released a linguistic chaos. Somebody opened the box

Pandora offered. Did not think of the consequences and

all evil spilled out. According to the biblical

explanation, the scattering of languages is a punishment.

(see e.g. Steiner 1975: 57) It is a punishment for big-

headedness, for attempts to seize power. For losing all

sense of proportion. In John Milton’s words in Paradise

Lost:

God . . . comes down to see their city, . . . , and in derision setsUpon their tongues a various spirit, to razeQuite out their native language, and insteadTo sow a jangling noise of words unknown.Forth with a hideous gabble rises loudAmong the builders; each to other calls.Not understood . . . Thus was the building leftRidiculous, and the work Confusion named. (Milton 1887: 350-351 )

There is another line of explanations, which sees the

scattering of languages as a stroke of luck. One that may

have rescued humankind. One that did not release chaos or

gabble, but saved people of boredom and indifference.

According to a Hassidic version of the Babel story, the

scattering of languages is richness. In the beginning

everybody spoke the same language and everybody

complained. Men complained about the weather, women

complained about their husbands, and everybody complained

about their health. People became so used to the

monotonous litany of complaints that they no longer

listened to each other. It was in order to get away from

this indifference and boredom that people begun their

hopeless construction of the tower. The work was done in

deathly silence. Then God, who watched this waste with a

sad smile, in his infinite mercy, created all the

different languages, dialects and patois to reawaken a

curiosity. Our mind is more preoccupied with what it

cannot understand than with what it has already

understood; people that were ignored the day before

became all at once enigmatic, objects of speculation,

study and interest. (Cronin 2000: 57, 165) In both

versions, translation became necessary and translators

mediators.

In the biblical resolution the translator became the

saviour. The apostles were gathered in a room on the day

of the Pentecost. The sound of a “rushing mighty wind”

filled the room and there appeared unto them cloven

tongues like as of fire. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the

apostles began to speak in other tongues so that the

polyglot crowd who were drawn to the spectacle were

amazed because every man heard the apostles speak in

their own language. (Cronin 2000: 131-132)

A mediator can also become the villain and mediation

result in disasters and destruction. In The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide

to the Galaxy by Richard Adams, a Babel fish is small, yellow

and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the

universe. If you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can

instantly understand anything said to you in any form of

language. According to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the

poor Babel fish has caused more and bloodier wars than

anything else in the history of creation by removing all

barriers to communication between different races and

cultures. (Cronin 2000: 131)

Both narratives, the translator as a saviour or the

translator as a middleman of misery and hatred, have made

translation studies possible.

The beginning: a historic narrative

When exactly was the world created? Archbishop James

Ussher had the answer and published it in the Annals of the

World in 1650: “The World was created on 22 October, 4004

BC at six o’clock in the evening.” Dr John Lightfoot, the

expert of all experts in Victorian England, corrected

Ussher’s information in 1859: “man was created on 23

October 4004 BC at nine o’clock in the morning”. Unlike

myths, history is committed to experts. It is written by

victors and taught by experts. Non-negotiable. (Griffiths

1999: 53)

History is committed in writing. It depends on the

explicit and visible nature of written language. That

makes history most undemocratic. Today the linguists have

identified more than six thousand languages spoken all

over the world, but only a few hundred of these have a

literary tradition. Does translation exist in those five

thousand or so languages that do not have a literary

tradition? Has it existed in them in their past? Have

they had translators? Who were they? Do they have

theories of translation? Histories require detective work

that is, in many cases, impossible with contemporary

tools. There is so very little concrete evidence. Spoken

word is so imprecise and unreliable when history demands

precise accurate information (see Griffiths 1999: 55-56).

Translation studies is founded on three histories: the

history of translators, the history of translation, and

the history of ideas about translation. Some parts of

these histories will always remain inaccessible, because

the evidence is no longer there. Or maybe it never was.

Not in the form we would find acceptable. Human beings

have been living and dying for some four million years,

but they have been writing for fewer than six thousand.

With writing, history was born and so was translation.

(Delisle and Woodsworth 1995: 7)

Some evidence has been found, though. Archaeologists have

uncovered Sumerian-Eblaite vocabularies inscribed in clay

tablets that are 4500 years old. These bilingual lists

provide some evidence of the existence of translation.

(Delisle and Woodsworth 1995: 9) Scattered pieces of

information, which have helped to place the beginning

somewhere. Lucky for experts.

In theatre translation the earliest examples of the exchange of dramatic texts go back to the Roman translations of Greek drama. The first play written in Latin was probably a translation. The author, Andronikos (Romanized as Livius Andronicus), a slave from the Greek colony of Tarentum in southern Italy, was commissioned towrite his play for the Roman Games in 240 BC in order to celebrate the end of the first Great War against Carthage. That is where theatre translation began.

(Aaltonen 2000: 21) Square one. Ground zero of the tower of Babel.

It is most likely that translators have played a

significant role in the invention of writing, in giving

us a memory, in giving us history. Their own names have,

however, been mostly erased from this memory. Either

their contribution has not been recognized or it has not

been recorded. It is only in recent years that a major

effort has been made in translation studies to bring into

light some of the evidence, when contemporary translation

historiographers have unearthed names of translators who

have helped to develop systems of writing. Ulfila, born

around the year 311, is regarded as the inventor of the

Gothic alphabet; Mesrop Mashtots has been recorded for

having invented the Armenian alphabet sometime between

392 and 406, and the brothers Cyril and Methodius, who

lived in the ninth century, have been credited for having

invented the Cyrillic alphabet. (Delisle and Woodsworth

1995: 8-9, 11, 14-16) Further back we cannot reach. At

least not yet.

Systems of writing have then made it possible for later

generations of scholars to gather information about

translation. Provided it has been seen worth recording.

Or that somebody bothered to record it.

King Alfred the Great practised and promoted translation

in the 9th century England and has been regarded to

rescue the English language. He used English rather than

Latin as the language of education of his people, and

learned Latin so that he could translate, or commission

the translation of some key texts. His use of English in

his own translations and those he commissioned laid the

foundations for English prose. In the 14th century

England, Geoffrey Chaucer made a conscious effort to

write in English. He adapted many works from French and

laid the foundations for narrative poetry. He imported

the ballade, the romance, and the fableau into England.

(Delisle and Woodsworth 1995: 28-29) The Finnish

reformer Michael Agricola (1510-1577) was sent to

Wittenberg in 1536 to be trained to translate the Bible

into Finnish. Even before he left, he had started to

translate the New Testament into Finnish. Agricola also

published almost a quarter of the Old Testament, which

appeared in three volumes between 1551 and 1552. His

extensive literary production makes him the founder of

the written Finnish language. (Laitinen 1981: 110,

Häkli:

http//www.virtual.finland.fi./finfo/english/kirjaeng.htm

l)

The names of King Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer,

and Michael Agricola have been considered worth keeping

in national memories. The names of many others have

disappeared or never appeared there in the first place.

Moreover, there seems to be a pattern in the omissions.

In 1603, John Florio, the English translator of

Montaigne, made the link between translation and the

status of women explicit. Florio’s claim was

straightforward: since translations are always defective,

they must be female. A second order activity confined to

second-class citizens. This has gone on for long.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, translation

was seen, overall, as one of the few socially sanctioned

ways of writing open to women. Provided the text was

suitable and their names were not published. In England,

women were restricted to the translation of religious

texts, and when the work of a woman translator was

published, it was often anonymous. If it was known to be

by a woman, it was usually restricted to manuscripts

within the family circle. (Delisle and Woodsworth 1995:

149)

The names of women translators thus tend to come up

relatively late in translation historiographies. Mary

Herbert (1561-1621) translated the first secular play

ever to be translated into English (Robert Garnier’s Marc

Antoine), and around the same time Jane Lumley (1537-76)

translated the first surviving English version of

Euripides’s Iphigenia. Sara Austin (1793-1867) is regarded

as the first professional woman translator of note. She

translated various travelogues and medieval poetry from

French, German and Provencal. Constance Garnett (1861-

1946) single-handedly introduced English readers to

contemporary Russian authors such as Chekhov,

Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Gorky and Turgenev. (Delisle

and Woodsworth 1995: 149-151)

The first Finnish novel was written by a woman, Fredrika

Wilhelmina Carstens, who published Murgrönan in 1840.

Anonymously. (Forssell 1999: 286) And although we know

that Olga Aalto translated Tolstoi, Hilda Sorsa religious

literature, and Amanda Lydia Granfelt Enlightenment

literature in the 19th century, we know very little about

them and their lives and working conditions. (Kovala

1999: 305) Anni Levander was a prolific theatre

translator in the early years of the Finnish National

Theatre and so was Hilda Asp. Irene Mendelin, Aino

Malmberg, Alli Nissinen, Elisabeth Löfgren, Elvira

Willman, Saimi Järnefelt, and Maila Mikkola also helped

to create the repertoire for the early years of the

Finnish stage. (Aspelin-Haapkylä 1910: 322-352) The names

of these women have practically been erased from the

national memory. Or never admitted there in the first

place. Translation work was so poorly paid in the 19th

century that it was either a part-time activity or the

“hobby of housewives”, claims a recent article on

translation in Finland. (Kovala 1999: 305) In

translation, as in many other social and intellectual

activities in the history of the West, women appear as

less important contributors. Histories are written by

victors and taught by experts. Not by women. The mules of

the world with a double yoke: to be a translator and a

woman.

Linear time in Translation Studies

A typically western mode of thinking is linear rather

than holistic. We tend to see evolution as something that

takes place in stages. Problems are solved in stages too.

Attempts to see linearity in translation studies are

visible in a number of its aspects. The way its history

is written, the way some of the concepts have been

constructed and also the way the mental process of

translation has been seen. Linearity is, however, man-

made rather than natural, and adjustments have been

needed.

Linearity in the evolution of translation theories

The history of translators and translation reaches from

the present into the past. Both histories are on that

road we see when we throw a look back. In many places the

road is overgrown and almost disappears, but it is

nevertheless there. And it is a more or less straight

line. Translators are born and they die in neat

chronological order.

It is when we try to unearth the history of ideas about

translation or ideas about how translations should be

studied, that the road threatens to lose shape. There are

twists and turns, and sometimes the road seems to turn

back and form a loop. Ideas do not follow each other in

neat chronological order. They overlap and become

diffuse. The more extensive the focus, the less linear

the history. Still most historiographies insist on the

framework of linear evolution. Moving forward. Cause and

effect, cause and effect. Reaction upon reaction upon

reaction. Admitting that time is not synonymous with

progress, but insisting on linearity for clarity.

Insisting on imposing order where chaos threatens.

Reducing the big picture to its details.

According to a recent account by Andrew Chesterman (1997:

20-42), we can distinguish eight major stages in the

evolution of translation theory. The first stage goes

back to the classical Greek view of language as a

structure consisting of arranged parts. Translation was

seen as rebuilding, deconstructing meanings into words in

one language and reconstructing them into words of

another language. Words regarded as the smallest units of

meaning, stable and absolute. The following step was to

realise that words were too small to be used as building

blocks of meanings. Instead meanings had to be carried by

texts as a whole. At both stages, translations were

closely tied to their source texts and had no legitimate

existence apart from representing their sources. We enter

the third stage, when it was realised that not all texts

needed to be translated in the same way. Not all texts

needed to be mirror images of their source texts at all

cost. Non-sacred texts could be translated more freely

and priority given to the needs and tastes of their

readers. A reaction to the previous literalism. It did,

however, sow the seed of a counter-reaction: the fourth

stage brought back a respect for the source text. The

Romantic Movement disapproved of imitation, which it saw

to destroy the spirit of the original. Rather than

carrying the original to the reader the Romantics thought

the reader should be carried to the original. The fifth

stage saw translation as a linguistic operation, the

sixth as communication, the seventh stage relegated the

source to secondary status, and the eighth stage wanted

to look at translation as a cognitive process.

Diachronically, each stage responds partly to the

preceding one, synchronically of course, traces of

preceding ideas are observable at any given period.

Diachronic development leading to a synchronic

standstill, fragmentation.

A similar effort to pin translation theories of the

twentieth century on a linear, chronological backbone is

visible in Lawrence Venuti’s Translation Studies Reader (2000):

translation theory in the 1940’s and 1950’s was dominated

by the issue of translatability, in the 1960’s and 1970’s

by the concept of equivalence, and in the 1980’s

translation was seen as an independent form of writing,

distinct from the foreign text and from texts originally

written in the translating language. Finally, in the

1990’s theoretical approaches to translation multiplied

and research fragmented into sub-specialities. Diachronic

development leading on to a diversification and

synchronic standstill.

Although the above accounts of theories of translation

and translation studies by Chesterman and Venuti are made

to display a linear, limited pattern on the backbone of

chronology, both make concessions. Time may be linear,

evolution of ideas is not. Both admit that linearity in

their accounts is man-made, not natural. Andrew

Chesterman (1997) admits that “there is a good deal of

overlap, so that the stages are cumulative rather than

strictly successive: the stages primarily represent

clusters of ideas rather than historical periods” (20).

Also Lawrence Venuti concedes that theoretical trends can

be constructed according to different, even opposing

narratives of development. The order is in the eye of the

viewer. The emphasis can be on continuity and progress,

or it could just as well be on discontinuity and present

insufficiencies. A later theorist might be seen as posing

a problem for which earlier theories provide a solution.

(Venuti 2000: 5, 7) A road can bend back to a circle.

Conceptual Linearity

Attempts to see linearity are also visible in the way

some of the basic concepts in translation studies are

constructed. Already the very name of the activity,

translation, at the centre of the dicipline has the

inherent suggestion of linearity. Translation suggests

the carrying across of something from A to B, directional

movement, carrying words, carrying meanings or something?

The “carrying across” metaphor has its problems. If an

object, and it has been far from clear what this object

is, is carried from A to B, when it arrives at B, it can

no longer be found at A. In translation this is clearly

not the case. When a translator carries something from A

to B, s/he does not remove it from A. It is still there.

Adjustments have therefore been needed and made. One of

the most recent ones (Chesterman 1997: 8) is the

suggestion of replacing the metaphor with that of

extending or spreading rather than carrying across ideas

or meanings. Replication rather than linear movement,

adding value to a source text by increasing the number of

readers or readings of its ideas.

The two poles, the two basic theoretical concepts in

translation studies, the source text and the target text,

also suggest linearity. They suggest movement, which has

one obvious direction: from A to B, from the source to

the target. The source first, then the target. But is

that necessarily the true order? Researcher Pirjo Mäkinen

(2002: 3) has challenged the myth of the “logical” or

“natural” chronological order of the two concepts,

claiming that is not that simple to determine what comes

first and what follows. Linearity is in the eye of the

viewer.

Indeed, we do need the original to produce a translation.

Before we can produce a translation, we need to have the

text we are translating. The logical order of the

original and its translation is thus unambiguously

chronological. The relationship between the source and

the target is, however, more complicated than that.

Firstly, there can be no source text before it has been

translated. Only with the target text a source text is

born. Without a child, there can be no mother. Moreover,

for the reader, only the target text needs to exist. No

source text at all, as the reader of the target text does

not usually read the source text. If, for some reason,

the reader of a translation should want to read the

original after having read the translation, the reading

experience would be affected by the translation. The

first reading affecting the later one, the translation

creating a frame in which the source text is read.

(Mäkinen 2002: 3) Like seeing a filmed version of a novel

first. The film becomes the original, the novel a copy.

For so many contemporary children and adults, the real

Lord of the Rings will be the films by Peter Jackson, not the

novel by J.R.R.Tolkien which came out 1954. For so many

Finns, Hamlet, Macbeth or Othello are, in fact, written by

Paavo Cajander, not Shakespeare.

Linear thinking is also evident in the way translation

scholars have determined which texts can be regarded as

legitimate research objects. One of the prerequisites of

research has been the existence of a source text, and

most of the twentieth century, research has focused on

the relationship between the source text and its

translations. Legitimate objects of research have been

those translations, which have a recognizable source

text, and researchers have been primarily interested in

the textual features and operations or strategies that

distinguish a translation from the foreign text. If there

is no source text available, or if the source text is in

constant progress, changing shape like an amoeba,

linearity is disrupted, and research becomes impossible.

The source-text requirement as well as the aim to locate

differences has thus excluded a number of texts from

research. They have excluded pseudo-translations, that

is, texts, which have been presented as translations

although the corresponding source texts have never

existed. They have also excluded texts whose source texts

have not existed as independent texts but only served as

bases for the translations. Finally, they have excluded

texts for which the linearity between the source and

target texts has been difficult to establish for some

reason.

First a brief look at pseudo-translations, texts which

have been presented as translations but which have never

had a source text at all. Pseudo-translations have

flourished at certain times in literary histories, for a

variety of reasons. They may have provided a convenient

way of introducing novelties into a culture without

arousing too much antagonism. They may have also been

motivated by desire to impart to the text some of the

superiority attributed to the alleged source culture. A

third motivation may have been an author’s fear of

censorship. (Toury 1995: 41-42)

Superiority of the alleged sources has probably triggered

off the best-known pseudo-translations in the world. One

of the most notorious pseudo-translations in the history

of English literature in the 18th century is probably

James Macpherson’s Ossianic poems, which were presented

as translations of the old Gaelic folk tales. Macpherson

began with apparently harmless imitations and then found

himself compelled by circumstances to go on. First he

promised to publish the originals of the poems, but later

declined, which did not diminish his popularity. On the

contrary, his readers were obviously not interested in

academic debates. Instead, Macpherson offered the reading

public what they wanted: romantic love and patriotic

feeling and a respect for the standard epic ideal of the

time. He gave his readers stories with the true Gaelic

spirit. (Sampson 1965: 536). Overall, the 18th century

English Romanticism was good breeding ground for pseudo-

translations. Macpherson’s contemporary, Thomas

Chatterton, although far less famed than Macpherson, has

been recorded in Histories of English literature as “the

most famous of all literary deceivers”. Chatterton was

only eighteen when he produced his medieval imitations,

the Rowley poems, but was, unlike, Macpherson, revealed and

met with a gloomy end in London. Later literary histories

credit Chatterton with a real talent who could actually

have written his own poetry without needing to pretend to

have translated them, whereas Macpherson has been seen as

a good imitator. (Sampson 1965: 537)

The Book of Mormon is of a text where opinions differ

whether or not it is a genuine translation. Whatever the

truth, the source text is no longer available. For some,

The Book of Mormon is a genuine translation. Its origin

is assumed to be in the writings of ancient prophets on

gold plates, quoted and abridged by the prophet-historian

Mormon. After Mormon had completed his writings, he is

believed to have delivered the account to his son Moroni,

who added a few words of his own and hid the plates. On

September 21, 1823, Moroni, then a glorified resurrected

being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and

instructed him relative to the ancient record and its

destined translation into English. In due course the

plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated

them. He was told not to show the plates to any person.

When Smith had completed his task, he delivered the

plates back to Moroni. The text was first published in

1830. (The Book of Mormon: Introduction)

In Russian literature at the beginning of the 19th century

there was a need for English novels of a particular kind.

In response to this internal demand, a great number of

books were produced in Russia itself, which were

presented as translations. Many were novels were “by Ann

Radcliffe”, but in fact written by Russian writers (Toury

1995: 42-43). In modern times, the global village as well

as the tightening of copyright laws has made the

introduction of pseudo-translations more difficult.

For pseudo-translations there is no source text, there

has never been a transfer operation, and there can be no

translational relationship. Another group of

translations, where a source text postulate would not

apply, are translations for which the source text has

never existed in the traditional sense. An example could

be found in the University of Vaasa. Arja Hovila’s

translation Kielten taitolaji – kielikylpy käytännössä from 2000 is a

translation from Swedish but does not have an original in

the traditional sense. It is based on a Swedidh study

Språkbad – forskning och praktik published almost

simultaneously. The translator Arja Hovila and the author

Christer Lauren wrote the two texts almost simultaneously

with two different target audiences in mind.

The search for a difference in textual features and

operations or strategies between the source and target

texts is complicated also in cases, where the source text

has, over time, diversified into many source texts. For

example, there exists five “registered” translations into

Finnish of Macbeth, of which some exist in various

versions. The first one of these, Ruunulinna from 1834 had

a Swedish source text, which had a German source text,

which had an English source text. The English originals

are, however, almost as many as the translations, each

reflecting the theatrical and editorial conventions of

their time. The scholar may be looking at the edited

version of the First Folio from 1623, of the Quarto

edition from 1673, of William Davenant’s stage version

from 1674. Of the Finnish translation, something can be

inferred from the context, something from details of the

translations of the possible source text. (Aaltonen 1999;

Aaltonen forthcominga)

And finally, amoeba-like source texts can be found in the

translation of contemporary drama. Laura Ruohonen’s Olga

has been translated into Scottish, and has a cluster of

source texts: Angela Landon wrote a “literary”

translation on the basis of the first original written

for a performance in the Finnish National Theatre in

1995-1996. The original has changed shape, and does not

exist in its original form any longer. Linda McLean wrote

her Scottish translation on the basis of Landon’s

translation, whose source texts does not exist any

longer, but she also consulted the English translation of

the play by Anselmi Hollo. She also discussed it with

Ruohonen. The play got a public reading, and after that

McLean produced the final Scottish version. (Aaltonen

forthcomingb) Where does one look for the difference in

cases like these where linearity is trembling in front of

chaos?

Amendments brought about by the nonlinear source-target

relationship have included, for example, a reduction in

the significance of the source text in translation

research. According to Gideon Toury, for example, (1995:

52), concrete texts in languages other than that of the

target text are not part of the necessary equipment for

launching research. We only need the assumption that one

has existed. Instead of a difference, researchers can

look for information about the status of translations in

a particular culture, about cultural hierarchies and also

the most conspicuous characteristics of translations.

Linearity in the mental Process of Translation

A third area of Translation Studies, where linear

thinking has needed adjustment, is in efforts to

reconstruct the mental process of translation, to

understand what goes on in the translator’s head. What do

translators do when they translate? Speculations have

led, for example, to models, which see languages as

similar to sets of mathematical signs. By means of

addition and subtraction they can be reduced to the same

value. (Chesterman 1997: 30) In particular in the sixties

and seventies in America, translation scholars promoted

models, which displayed linearity. The translator first

decodes the message of the source language and then

encodes it into the target language. Linguistics in these

models provided the tools for understanding what actually

goes on in translation, and research focused on the rules

or analyses that were assumed to apply at various stages

of the decoding and encoding processes.

The prototypical manifestation of the above flow chart

model is seen in machine translation. Peter Toma, the

leader of a team who developed SYSTRAN, in operation

since 1969 and one of the most successful of early

machine translation programmes, assumed that the basic

process of human translation process could be applied in

machine translation as well (Toma 1989: 163-164)

This speculative reconstruct of the translation process

needed adjustment, however, and scholars made concessions

and reservations. The path from the source to the target

could not be simplified to a straight line. Eugene A.

Nida (1989: 82) admitted that “rather than going from one

set of surface structures to another, the competent

translator actually goes through a seemingly roundabout

process of analysis, transfer and restructuring. A

translator is like a hiker who finds that a stream he

must cross is so deep and the current so swift that s/he

cannot risk crossing over directly from one point to

another. Therefore he goes downstream to a ford, at which

point the transfer from one side to another can be made

with the least possible danger to himself and his

equipment. He can then go back upstream to the point

which best suits him. Toma (1989: 163-164) also admitted

that linearity produced stilted translations.

More recently, empirical studies, for example think-aloud

protocols and computerized protocol studies, have helped

to reconstruct the translation process in the

translator’s head. A non-professional translator may

proceed in a linear fashion, but a professional process

is characterized by numerous back- and forward shifts and

concentration on problematic ideas. (Pöntinen and Romanov

as described by Jääskeläinen forthcoming)

The above are only a few examples of how the Western idea

of evolution has needed revision in translation studies.

Linearity has had to accept holistic adjustment. A

British mathematician Ian Stewart has written: “As the

world was a clockwork for the eighteenth century, it was

a linear world for the nineteenth and most of the

twentieth, but a decisive change has come about now in

seeing that nature is ‘relentlessly nonlinear’. Loops and

chaos are the rule, not an exception. (Griffiths 1999:

133)

Speed

Today, a so-called social revolution is happening to

time. We have moved into a twenty–four hour society,

where we work, shop, sleep study, do reasearch and write

without the traditional rhythm of day and night. The

twenty-four hour society demands twenty-four hour access.

(Griffiths 1999: 3, 163) Time is money, and that must not

be wasted. To be on time. To be in time. Time is, time

was, time’s past. Diaries are printed with gridded time.

Computers themselves split time and divide it into pico-

seconds and nano-seconds, far beyond any human sense of

time, or human need. Juha Mieto, Lasse Viren, Mika

Häkkinen, and Kimi Räikkönen have taught us that even the

split second can be split. Speed inspires. But the danger

of speed is in its black opposite, in the instant of

expiring – speeding up to a deadline, an expiry date.

In the universities, we are required to train

professionals who walk fast, talk fast, eat fast, write

fast, and translate fast. “if you don’t enjoy the rush,

you can’t do the job”. Students are taught to live by

deadlines: hand in your essay by twelve o’clock, get your

degree faster, beat the time-limit and you’ll be

rewarded. Run! Your success is not measured by the depth

of your understanding but by the speed of your progress.

Also translators live in the tyranny of real time, where

they have increasingly short response-periods for

translation assignments. There is less and less time,

partly because there is more and more translation. It is

estimated that around 250 million pages of technical and

commercial text are translated each year and the amount

increases all the time. Time pressure has always existed

but modems and Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) tools

such as translation memories and glossary managers have

greatly increased temporal expectations in a world of

short-batch production and time-to-market constraints.

The localisation ideal of “sim-ship”, where all language

versions are released at the same time and, if possible,

at the same time as the original language version, means

that there is less and less time to do the translation.

(Cronin 2000: 112)

Increasingly translation is being done by machine. In the

contemporary tyranny of real-time, human translation is

an impediment: it slows down the circulation of goods,

services and people. The increased speed of translation

lessens the resistance of duration. (Cronin 2000: 114).

Future

I started this talk with an account of the history of

translation. But what will its future be like. Where will

the road lead us? Will translation and translators live

“happily ever after”? Not necessarily.

One vision opens up a future where there is translation

but no translators. The world will be a monoglot or at

least an oligoglot place. According to some future

visionaries, between five and ten percent of the world’s

six thousand or so languages will become extinct within

the next century. Others claim that ninety per cent of

today’s languages will be doomed within a century.

Between twenty and fifty percent of existing languages

are no longer being learned by children. Some

2, 090, 000, 000 people (well over a third of the world’s

population) are routinely exposed to English and, some

scholars believe, in a few centuries’ time the world may

be a more or less monoglot place. Other language experts

believe that the position of English could be taken by

Chinese, Hindi, Spanish or Arabic, but they agree that

the present wealth of languages will be lost. The world

will become an “oligoglot” place.1 One of the problems

with a future like that is the same threat that we

encounter with gene manipulation. There is security in

having variation. If there is only one language and that

becomes warped and damaged, then the human mind itself

will be demeaned. If that language is over-simplified for

expedience, thought itself will become less subtle.

(Griffiths 1999: 220-221)

The translator as intermediary is not needed if everybody

speaks the same language. The presence of a global

language removes the translator but leaves translation,

and translation problems themselves do not disappear. In 1 Will the presence of a global language eliminate the demand for world translation services, or will the economics of automatic translation so undercutthe cost of global language that the latter will become obsolete. David Crystal sees machine translation as the only serious long-term threat to the global dominance of English.

the case of English, outside of the 337 million people

who speak it as their first language, other speakers of

the language will be translating at some level from

another language when they use English. (Cronin 2000:

114)

In the new “bitsphere”, the worldwide electronically

mediated environment, in which networks are everywhere

and where most of the objects that function within it

have intelligence and telecommunication capabilities,

translators may become replaced by software surrogates or

semi-autonomous software agents that perform various

tasks for the computer. They can filter e-mail, scan news

services, and consulting even while a client was away

from his/her computer. They might at some stage act as

translators, finding material in the foreign language and

translating it into the target language of the user,

functioning in effect as a heteronymous translation aid

for the cyber-traveller. (Cronin 2000: 155)

Translation will not disappear, only the role of

translators may need revision. The role of translators is

likely to change in machine translation. Increasingly MT

users are not concerned with the quality issues that

exercise the minds of professionally trained translators.

(Cronin 2000: 114)

The techno-social space of computer networks may emerge

as the new locus of translation communities. Already

these groups have begun to cluster around newsgroups,

bulletin boards, formal and informal e-mail lists and the

occasional on-line conference, and these contacts can

only increase and intensify over time. The Net has

obvious instrumental advantages for translators in terms

of accessing information, advertising services,

overcoming geographical peripherality and being itself a

potential source of localisation employment. However, its

more enduring importance may turn out to be as a site for

new virtual communities of translators who will be the

cyberspace equivalents of what once constituted the

translation centres. (Cronin 2000: 156)

In all the above predictions, future does not promise to

become a linear past. Ideas about translation will not

evolve on a linear cline either.

Maybe the time has come to bring forth another Greek god

and raise him above Chronos. Kairos was the god of

timing, of opportunity, of chance and mischance, of

different aspects of time, the auspicious and the non-

auspicious. If you sleep because the clock tells you it’s

way past your bed-time, that is chronological time,

whereas if you sleep because you are tired, that is

kairological time. (Griffiths: 21-22) If you can take

time to do your work properly and don’t need to accept

forever shortening deadlines, you follow kairological

time. Quality beats quantity. Maybe it’s time to change

gods and look at the big picture

Time’s up!

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