Translating the Pacific: Georg Forster's 'A Voyage round the World' / 'Reise um die Welt' ...

Translating the Pacific: Georg Forster’s ‘A Voyage round the World’ / ‘Reise um die Welt’ (1777-1780)

Carl Niekerk University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

[email protected]

The following paper presents a case study on the English andGerman versions of Georg Forster’s description of his and his father’s participation in Captain James Cook ‘second’ circumnavigation of the world (1772-1775), published in bothlanguages between 1777 and 1780. I am interested in the problem of translation because it gives insight into the problem how the eighteenth century perceived cultural and biological differences. Georg Forster’s A Voyage round the World (1777) and Reise um die Welt (1778 / 1780)i document numerous intercultural encounters. Both volumes not only describe these encounters with the other, but also seek to understand and theorize the phenomenon of cultural and biological difference. What complicates matters further is that Georg Forster (1754-1794) and his father, Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798), themselves could be consideredoutsiders, figures of alterity, as well in Cook’s second expedition to the Pacific at the request of the British Admiralty. This adds another dimension to their work: it is not only the alterity of the non-European natives they encounter that is at stake in A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt, but also their own alterity as two native speakers of German (albeit of English decent) in a predominantly English-language environment. To what extent do the two versions of the travel report on Cooks second circumnavigation of the world reflect this status of outsider, and to what extent do they theorize it? And how does the fact that Forster himself translated the English version of his travel report into German play into this?

An awareness of cultural difference is often associatedwith the generation of the Romantics who, following Johann

Translating the Pacific 2

Gottfried Herder, were interested not only in the “multiplicity,” but also in the “incommensurability, of the values of different cultures and societies, and in addition,in the incompatibility of equally valid ideals.”ii While this may be true, it is important to realize that the Romantics in general (and Herder in particular) built forth on a prolific Enlightenment, pre-Romantic discourse on biological and cultural alterity that was already in place. One key name is that of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) whose main work Histoire naturelle is an important point of reference in A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt.iii The impact of the introduction to this work among eighteenth-century intellectuals has been compared to that of Descartes’s Discours de la méthode.iv While natural history before Buffon had been dominated by static, spatial models (associated with Carl von Linné), Buffon introduced atemporal way of looking at nature into natural history that was innovative and would prove to be highly influential.v The assumption that nature was in flux made it possible to understand biological and cultural differences as the products of climate and geographical factors present in the environment in which different cultures developed.vi Buffon’s natural history, including its important introduction, was republished in a popular German translation between 1771 and 1774 that set into motion a lively debate on biological and cultural differences among German intellectuals.vii The publication of the first volumes of this edition in 1771 was preceded by the publication of a German edition of Cornelius de Pauw’s Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Amerikaner (1768/69), better known in a variety of French editions, which contributed greatly to the popularization of Buffon’s thinking in Germany.viii Forster mentions de Pauw in his texts as well.ix

Following the impetus of Buffon (and after him de Pauw,Camper, Blumenbach, and Herder) alterity in the Enlightenment’s mind was tied to territory: a culture’s specifics were the result of the circumstances in which its members lived. This however presented a problem for transcultural encounters of the kind that Forster describes


in his texts. While the Enlightenment was in possession of a theory of otherness, it did not have a theory of cultural interaction. While the Enlightenment can explain why cultures are different, it does not have the conceptual tools to understand what happens when cultures interact witheach other. In an exemplary way this is illustrated by a little known essay by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: “Von den Kriegs- und Fast-Schulen der Schinesen” (“On the War- and Hunger-Academies of the Chinese”), originally published in 1796.x This parody of a report on a diplomatic mission to China is narrated in the first person by an Englishman, Mr. Sharp, a butler who was supposedly part of the mission. The“Kriegs- und Fast-Schulen” mentioned in the title of Lichtenberg’s essay are an invention of Lichtenberg. Supposedly, the Chinese prepared their soldiers for war, notby teaching them to fight in war, but by training them in what one could call passive resistance (“passive war” / “Passiv-Krieg” 444) by sending them to so-called War- and Hunger-Academies (443). The butler seeks to gain information about these academies from a Mandarin, not very flatteringly described as Mr. Pudding, through the help of an intermediary, the translator Wang-o-Tang. The point of the story is that communication between the Chinese mandarinwho expects respect for his culture and the English butler who is appalled by what goes on in these academies can only function thanks to the translator’s very intentional mistranslations. Among other things, Lichtenberg’s text makes clear that there is no direct access to a foreign culture, that any access to another culture is always mediated, and that this act of mediation can easily be constructed as an act of aggression.

While the Enlightenment started to develop tools to rationalize the differences between peoples and their cultures, it did not have the conceptual means to understandhow cultures interacted with each other. Because it identified alterity with territoriality — members of different cultures are different because of the different climatological circumstances in other parts of the world — its hermeneutic model got into trouble once these different


cultures started to interact with each other. Maybe no event in the late eighteenth century illustrated this absence more clearly than Cook’s death in 1779 on the islandof Hawaii as the result of what could be read as a miscommunication — or inability to translate one’s message clearly — between Cook and Hawaiian natives.xi Precisely the absence of a conceptual model of intercultural interaction makes translation an interesting issue. Scholarship to date has done very little with the many acts i In the following, all references to Forster’s text are to the following edition: Georg Forsters Werke. Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, ed.by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Institut für Deutsche Sprache un Literatur (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1958ff.) [also known as Akademie Ausgabe]; the roman numeral refers to the volume number and is followed by the page number.ii See Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton / Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000) 176.iii Buffon is omnipresent, explicitly and implicitly, in A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt. Forster discusses the merits of Buffon’s climatological theory in detail towards the end of his texts (I 577 / III 327); see also I 37, 64, 137, 161, 188, 261, 467, 538, 651; II 59, 92, 93, 192, 226, 263, 358; III 179, 276 424. After returning from the Pacific, Forster visited Buffon in Paris (see Ludwig Uhlig, Georg Forster. Lebensabenteuer eines gelehrten Weltbürgers [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004] 100). The intellectual affinity Forster felt for Buffon is also clear from the fact that Forster authored the German translation of volume 6 of Buffon’s Naturgeschichte der vierfüssigen Thiere (1780). Tanja van Hoorn analyzes the impact of Buffon’s theory of climate on A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt in Dem Leibe abgelesen. Georg Forster im Kontext der physichen Anthropologiedes 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004) 29-56, 79-83.iv See Phillip R. Sloan, “Natural History, 1670-1802” 304, in: R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London / New York: Routledge, 1996) 295-313. See also Ernst Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998) 102-107, for an assessment of Buffon’s importance for Enlightenment scientific discourses on nature.v For a reconstruction of this in the eighteenth-century debate between static / spatial models of natural history vs. temporal models (that eventually would lead to evolutionary modes of thinking), see Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (München / Wien: Hanser, 1976).vi Buffon summarizes his theory of human diversity at the end of the third volume in the context of his argument that humanity consists of


of translation documented in A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt. I am interested in the question, how these acts of translation are expressive of a theory of alterity, how the indigenous other is seen as different and yet also similar, and how this difference according to Forster’s texts becomesproblematic in the act of translating. The possibility of translation points to a theoretical — one could maybe even say:epistemological — deficit in the Enlightenment’s understanding of other cultures. Translation, on the other hand, is forced to deal with this absence in practice through the need to invent strategies to circumvent the lack of understanding between cultures.

only one species. See [Georges-Louis Leclerc de] Buffon / [Louis Jean-Marie] Daubenton, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, vol. 3 (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1749) 530: “il n’y a eu originairement qu’une seule espèce d’hommes, qui s’étant multipliée et répandue sur toute la surfacede la terre, a subi différens changemens par l’influence du climat, par la différence de la nourriture, par celle de la manière de vivre, par les maladies épidémiques, et aussi par le mélange varié à l’infini dés individus plus ou moins ressemblans”.vii Buffon, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte. Eine freije mit einigen Zusätzen vermehrte Übersetzung nach der neuesten französ: Außgabe von 1769. 7 vols. (Berlin: Joachim Pauli Buchhändler, 1771-1774).viii See Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham, London: Duke UP, 1997) 13. For a discussion of de Pauw’s importance for Forster, see Tanja van Hoorn (41-44). See: Herr von P[auw], Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Amerikaner, oder wichtige Beyträge zur Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts (Berlin: G.J. Decker / G.L. Winter, 1769) 2 vols.; M. de P[auw], Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains ou Mémoires intéressants pour servir l’Histoire de l’Espèce humaine (London: […], 1771) 2vols. (first published in French 1768/69).ix See I 37, 222, 253, 296, 568, 651; II 59, 308, 347, 405; III 317, 424.x See Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, vol. 3, ed. WolfgangPromies (Munich: Hanser, 1972) 440-450. See also my discussion of this text in Zwischen Naturgeschichte und Anthropologie. Lichtenberg im Kontext der Spätaufklärung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005) 243-247.xi In the essay “Fragmente über Captain Cooks lezte Reise und sein Ende”(1781), based on the very first reports of Cook’s death, Forster blames a failure of communication for his death (V 88, 89).


1. Translation as Transculturation

How then do Forster’s texts depict the practice of translating in encounters with the non-Western other, for instance the indigenous populations of Tahiti and Easter Island? One observation that can be made is that Forster clearly recognizes that translation is a problem. Speaking about the inhabitants in the vicinity of O-Aitepeha harbor on Tahiti for instance, he comes with the following observation:

Our acquaintance with their language, which we were at great painsto improve, was as yet very imperfect, and deprived us of the pleasure which we might have received from a conversation with these good people. A few separate words, and an interlude of dumbmimickry, was all that we had to supply the place of a coherent speech. However, even this was sufficient to amuse the natives, and our docility and endeavours to please seemed to be at least asagreeable to them, as their social temper and willingness to give instruction appeared to us. (I 176)

Ohnerachtet wir uns seit unserm Hierseyn schon viel Mühe gegeben hatten die Sprache zu erlernen, so waren wir doch noch nicht weit darinn gekommen und mußten daher Verzicht auf das Vergnügen thun, welches uns die Unterhaltung mit diesen glücklichen Leuten ohne Zweifel gewähret haben würde. Einzelne Wörter und stumme Pantomime war alles, wodurch wir uns ausdrücken konnten. Aber selbst das war hinreichend, die guten Leute zu vergnügen, und unsre Gelehrigkeit und Bestreben ihnen zu gefallen, war ihnen wenigstens eben so angenehm als ihre Gefälligkeit uns zu dienen und zu unterrichten. (II 246, 247)

This fragment from Forster’s texts illustrates in an exemplary a process that Mary Louise Pratt has termed “transculturation”: the transmission of cultural material (information) between a subordinate or marginal group on theone hand and representatives of a dominant group seeing themselves as representing the metropolis on the other.xii It is important to emphasize that this process is a two-way

xii See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London/ New York: Routledge, 1992). 6.


phenomenon (even though the impact of native cultures on themetropolis may frequently be downplayed by the West). Transculturation is very much a phenomenon of the “contact zone” (Pratt 6); it is part of the necessary interactions that take place in spaces where cultures encounter each other. In the fragment above, Forster emphasizes that the process of transculturation he describes is invested with positive emotions: not only do both sides put in their besteffort to make themselves understood in the others’ language; the result the Europeans expect from such interactions is “pleasure” (“Unterhaltung”), and the Europeans’ aim is to “amuse” (“vergnügen”) and “please” (“gefallen”) the natives. Forster’s texts suggest that thisdesire coated in language that is slightly sexualized, is mirrored in efforts of the native others: the longing for understanding is mutual. There is, supposedly, no will to conquer or harm the native other,xiii only a want for mutual understanding. Forster believes in what one postcolonial scholar has called “the myth of reciprocity.”xiv

And yet Forster’s texts show that it is far from easy to establish such a relationship of mutual respect and understanding. It is precisely the impossibility of translation that stands in the way of realizing the utopian ideal of mutual understanding that Forster seeks. In the passage quoted above Forster mentions two means to circumvent the untranslatability of communicative acts: hisfellow Europeans use “[a] few separate words, and an interlude of dumb mimickry” (“[e]inzelne Wörter und stumme Pantomime”) to express themselves. Such non-verbal strategies of communication however are frequently unsuccessful; after using various musical instruments (fife,bagpipe, drum / Queerpfeife, Dudelsack, Trommeln)xv to xiii Pratt describes this attitude as one of “anti-conquest” which she defines as consisting of “strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony” (7). Very correctly in my view she points out that the rhetoric of “anti-conquest” is part of a practice that seeks to do the exact opposite. xiv See Ania Loomba, Colonialism / Postcolonialism. The New Critical Idiom (NewYork / London: Routledge, 1998) 158.


establish some form of commonality with the natives of Dusky-Bay, New Zealand, Cook and his men attempt to use signlanguage: “[our officers and seamen] attempted to converse with them by assigns, which were for the most part unintelligible, or misunderstood” (I 100) / “alle Versuche durch Zeichen mit ihnen zu reden, waren vergebens, denn keiner von beyden Theilen konnte sie dem andern verständlichgenug machen” (II 142). The German version emphasizes the mutual interest in establishing communication, something that remains implicit in the English version. The importance of sign language is also emphasized on Tierra delFuego; there too, however, the “gestures, which the most wretched nation in the South Sea had easily understood” / “Zeichensprache, die doch sonst überall gegolten hatte” (I 617 / III 382) are of no use.

That in addition to sign language the English rely on a“few single words” (“[e]inzelne Wörter”) to communicate withthe inhabitants of O-Aitepeha harbor points to another aspect of the Europeans’ interactions with the natives; it rarely approaches native languages holistically — as a complex system with its own defined grammatical structure — but instead focuses on learning to translate individual nouns, in particular the names of common objects:

Many of them [the inhabitants of O-Aitepeha harbor] seeing us desirous of learning their language, by asking the names of various familiar objects, or repeating such as we found in the vocabularies of former voyagers, took great pains to teach us, andwere much delighted when we could catch the just pronunciation of a word. (I 157)

Da sie merkten, daß wir Lust hätten ihre Sprache zu lernen, weil wir uns nach den Benennungen der gewöhnlichsten Gegenstände erkundigten, oder sie aus den Worterbüchern voriger Reisenden hersagten, so gaben sie sich viel Mühe uns zu unterrichten und

xv Music is also elsewhere used to establish commonality between cultures, for instance in the passage immediately preceding the encounter with the with the inhabitants of O-Aitepeha harbor described above where one of the natives plays a bamboo flute, an act that leads Forster to a digression about the fact that all cultures seem to enjoy music, even though harmonic systems are distinct in different nations (I176 / II 246).


freuten sich, wenn wir die rechte Aussprache eines Wortes treffen konnten. (II 220)

Language learning in this fragment is equated to learning totranslate the names of things. For Europeans to learn a native language, they need to develop a lexicon, or to expand the lexicon of those who visited the site earlier. Learning a language understood in this way is similar to collecting objects. This fragment too professes a desire for reciprocity: both parties are interested in understanding each other. However, upon closer examination it is not hard to find indications of an asymmetry between both partners of the dialogue as well: it is the natives’ job not only to teach the Europeans their language, but alsoto make sure that they get it right. Implicitly this passage assumes that the Europeans are able to get it right,while a bit later Forster criticizes the natives of O-Aitepeha harbor for their inability to get it right: they like to pronounce European names, but can only do so very imperfectly: “Forster was changed into Matara; Hodges into Oreo; Grindall into Terino; Sparrman in Pamanee, and George in Teoree” (I 175) / “Forster ward in Matara verändert; Hodges in Oreo; Grindall in Terino; Sparmann in Pamani, und George in Teori” (II 245).

Sometimes Europeans are intuitively able to grasp the meaning of words because they are used in specific situations. This is for instance the case with the exclamation “Tayo!” on Tahiti which Forster and his fellow explorers easily recognize as an expression of friendship, even without a dictionary (I 155, 156 / II 218), even thoughForster in this case, as he indicates in a footnote, could also rely on Bougainville’s travel report describing a very similar scene.xvi Sometimes analogy plays a role in understanding certain words. When on the Island of Mallicolo Cook and his men are greeted with the word xvi See Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage autour du monde, ed. Michel Bideaux and Sonia Faessel (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2001 [originally published in 1771]) 203. Bougainville translates the term as “ami” [friend]. The English edition to which Forster refers was published in 1772.


“Tomarr” or “Tomarro,” Forster assumes that its meaning is identical to that of “Tayo” on Tahiti, even though the languages spoken on both of these islands are very different(I 455 / III 162). In other instances Forster seeks to explain a word’s semantic contours by reconstructing what else it can mean within the same language: a certain type of wood is called “tòä” / “Toa,” a word that also can mean ‘war,’ on Tahiti, because it is used to make weapons to be used in war (I 354 / III 20). When a man indicates his nameis “Honu,” Forster assumes the name is related to the Tahitian word for turtle or sea-tortoise and that he took this name from the animal as is customary among Native Americans according to Forster (I 355 / III 21). At times Cook and his men rely on explanations given by natives: theword “Te-apoonee” / “Te-apunie” is explained as “Tata-no-t’Eatoon” / “Tata-no-t’ Eatua”, which in turn means in Tahitian “men belonging to the divinity, and to the Marai, or burying-place” / “Männer, die der Gottheit und dem Maraï oder Begräbniß- und Versammlungsplatze angehörten” (I 165, 166 / II 232). Similarly on Huahine thought are called “paroù no te oboo” / “parau no te obu”, an expression that can be translated as “words in the belly” / “Worte im Bauche, oder im Inwendigen”) (I 426 /III 121).

At times Forster seeks to construct a taxonomy of namesand concepts. This is the case for instance when the explorers discover that in Tahiti the population consists ofthree classes: “aree, manahoùna, and towtow” / “Erihs, Manahauna’s, und Tautaus”(I 216 / II 299). We later learn that for O-Maï it is important that people know he is not a “towtòw” / “Tautau” or “the denominatin of the lowest class”/ “gemeyner Mensch,” but rather a “hòa, or attendant upon the king” / “Hoa, d.i. ein königlicher Cammerherr oder Begleiter des Königs” (I 225 / II 315). This may appear as a thoughtless projection of a European class-based hierarchy; Forster however immediately proceeds to relativize the similarities between Tahiti and Europe, sincebecause of the pleasant climate and the fact that the necessities of life are within reach of all, class differences are much less pronounced than in Europe. There


are many other examples of attempts to organize language (and knowledge) through the use of taxonomies. On Huahine for instance one of the native informants, a man named Tutawaï who is described as a commander and teacher on his island, seeks to explain to the visiting Europeans the hierarchies among gods on Huahine and neighboring islands:

[…] at Taheitee and Eimeo, they say the Supreme Being is O-Rooahattoo; at Huahine they maintain that it is Tanè; at Raietea, O-Roò; at O-Tahà, Orra; at Bolabola, Taoòtoo; at Mowrua, O-Too; and at Tabbooa-mannoo (Sir Charles Saunder’s Island) Taròä. Thirteen divinities preside over the sea, and govern it; viz. 1. Ooroohàddoo. 2. Tamaooee. 3. Ta-apèe. 4. O-Tooareeònoo. 5. Tanèea. 6. Tahou-meònna. 7. Otà-mauwe. 8. O-Whaï. 9. O-Whaàtta. 10. Tahòoa. 11. Te-ootya. 12. O-Mahooroo. 13. O-Whàddoo. But notwithstanding all these governors, a different divinity, OO-marrèo, is said to have created the sea. The same case exists with regard to the sun, which was created by O-Maùwee,a powerful god, who causes earthquakes. (I 426)

Auf Tahiti und Eimeo sagen sie, der höchste Gott sey O-Ruahattu; auf Huaheine behaupten sie, es sey Tane; zu Raietea es sey O-Ru; auf O-Taha es sey Orra; zu Borabora er heiße Tautu; zu Maurua heißt er O-Tu; and auf Tabua-mannu (oder Sir Charles Saunders Island) wird er Taroagenennet. Die See wird ihrer Meynung nach von dreyzehn Göttern beherrscht. 1. Uruhaddu, 2. Tama-ui, 3. Ta-api, 4. O-Tuarionu, 5. Taniea, 6. Tahau-meonna, 7. Otah-mauwe, 8. O-Whai, 9. O-Whatta, 10. Tahua, 11. Ti-uteia, 12. O-Mahuru, 13. O-Whaddu.Aller dieser See-Gottheiten ohnerachtet, soll doch noch ein andrer, namens U-marreo, die See erschaffen haben. Ebenso ists mit der Sonne; diese soll von O-Mauwe, einem mächtigen Gott, der die Erdbeben verursacht, erschaffen seyn […]. (III 120, 121)

This fragment too emphasizes the importance of the native informer in assembling such vocabulary lists or taxonomies. What is interesting about this specific example is the spatial dimension; one could say that the reader is offered a taxonomy that is organized according to spatial relations:depending on the island one is on, the name of the supreme being is different. Simultaneously such a spatial differentiation is a possible indication for a temporal relation. If the names of gods are similar this may be an indication that the languages and cultures associated with


those names are related. A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt is full of speculations about such developmental / temporal relations that may be indicative of common roots. The languages of Tahiti and New Zealand are so similar that one could speak of dialects (I 95 / II 136). The fact that their languages are so similar for Forster is proof that thepeoples of Tahiti, The Society Islands, and the Friendly Islands (now known as Tonga) are related (I 276 / II 379). Lexical similarities between the languages spoken on Easter Island and Tahiti indicate that the language spoken on Easter Island is a dialect of Tahitian (I 320 / II 435).

The impression that emerges from these observations is that for the two Forsters and their fellow Europeans communicating with the representatives of the cultures they encountered had less of a priority than the collecting of bits and pieces of their languages as part of their scientific mission. Their goal is first and foremost to assemble a dictionary or taxonomy of the cultures they encounter — and not necessarily to communicate with the natives who are the living representatives of those cultures. One could say that the Forsters collect language samples in a way not unlike the manner in which they collectand describe specimens of unknown plants or animals. Johannand Georg Forster see the native other primarily as an object to be studied, less as a contemporary with whom couldcommunicate freelyxvii (unless, on could add, communicating with the native other could lead to more knowledge about that other, her or his culture and habitat).

xvii See in this context Johannes Fabian’s criticism of Western ethnographic practice as creating a temporal gob between itself and the culture it is studying (the other as representing a more primitive stagein comparison to the West’s advanced cultural development). It is in Fabian’s view this temporal distancing that keeps the Western ethnographer from seeing the native other as a contemporary and communicating with that other as a contemporary (see Time and the Other: HowAnthropology makes its Object [New York: Columbia UP, 1983], for instance 30-32).


2. Natives as Intermediaries and Translators

If Europeans in spite of a professed interest in mutual understanding are at best only partially successful at communicating with the native other or if actual communication is not really their priority, as the examples discussed above show, who is able to mediate between cultures? What is needed, in the words of Todorov, is someone to function as “intermediary,” or, in the words of Greenblatt, as a “go-between”xviii — someone in possession of both the linguistic skills and the cultural knowledge to communicate meaningfully between metropolitan Europeans and their native others. Initially, in Europe’s conquest of thenon-European world, the need for interpreters was satisfied by capturing and kidnapping local natives in the hope that they would learn the conquerors’ language and be willing to serve as interpreters (Greenblatt 106, 107). Later, ‘natives’ were coaxed into such services by supposedly ‘gentler’ means. Historically the most prominent example ofsuch a mediator / go-between is Malintzin, also called Doña Marina, who functioned as a translator and interpreter between Montezuma and the sixteenth-century conqueror HernánCortés (and also was Cortés’s lover) when the latter conquered Mexico (Todorov 100-102; Greenblatt 141ff.).

Cook and his men do not capture or kidnap natives to serve as intermediaries and translators; such actions would not fit the image of intercultural reciprocity that these Europeans carefully sought to cultivate. They did however seek to convince natives to join them and to work for the expedition as interpreters and native informants. The most famous of these men is O-Maï, a native of Huahine (Huaheine), one of the Society Islands, who initially joins Cook on the Resolution but soon after that is transferred tothe Adventure (see I 228 / II 315), the companion ship to the Resolution, and eventually is brought to England by its captain Tobias Furneaux. Since Forster and O-Maï spent

xviii Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York:HarperPerennial, 1992) 101; Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago / Oxford: Chicago UP, 1991) 119ff.


little time together — most of the time they were on different ships and eventually the Resolution and Adventure lost contact — we know little about his functions as translator or intermediary. O-Maï is however an important native informant for Cook and Forster once they are all backin England, for instance concerning the issue of human sacrifices (I 417 / III 106, 107; see also III 123 [Forster quotes Cook; not in the English edition]). In England, O-Maï turns into a minor celebrity (I 15, 16 / II 15, 16). One of the purposes of Cook’s third voyage is, Forster informs us, to return O-Maï to his fatherland (II 27 [footnote]; not in English edition). The logic behind this decision is indeed that according to the Enlightenment’s territorial model of alterity (emphasizing the link between geography / climate and one’s cultural identity), O-Maï belongs on the Society Islands and not in England where he is clearly out of place.

A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt contains several reports on natives being used by Cook as intermediaries and translators. Forster is clearly fascinated by these men. On his first rip to the Pacific Cook employed a man from Tahiti named Tupaya (in John Hawkesworth’s report on Cook’s first voyage his name is spelled “Tupia” — an ‘error’ that Forster corrects in his textsxix). When Cook visits New Zealand again on his second voyage he is repeatedly asked about Tupaya who in the meanwhile has died (I 130 / II 182, 183; I 140 / II 196). Interestingly Tupaya functioned as interpreter and intermediary on New Zealand, far from his homeland Tahiti. This can be in part explained by his knowledge of the language of the natives of New Zealand (thesuggestion is that he is more fluent than the Europeans, because it resembles his native language. There are other factors however that make his ideal for his position; he is better able to bring civilization to the New-Zealanders thanthe Europeans, because in addition to the knowledge of theirlanguage, in a passage left out of the English version,

xix See John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by the Order of his Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere […], vol. 1 (Dublin: James Williams, 1775) 464, 466, 473, and 474; see also vol. 2, 32, 33.


because his “[genius and concepts are more analogous to theirs than that of us Europeans][translation mine, CN” / “[er] mehr Analogie mit ihrem Genie und Begriffen besaß als wir Europäer” (II 196). The distance between natives and Europeans is too large to bridge, but Tupaya can function asone of the “intermediate links, which connect their narrow views to our extended to our extended sphere of knowledge” /“Uns hindert in diesem Geschäft der allzu große Abstand, dersich zwischen unsern weit ausgedehnten Kenntnissen und den gar zu eingeschränkten Begriffen dieses Volkes befindet, undwir wissen gleichsam nicht, wo wir die Glieder zu der Kette hernehmen sollen, die ihre Einsichten mit den unsrigen vereinigen könnte” (I 140 / II 196, 197). Tupaya helped Cook on his visit to New Zealand during his first expeditionto bridge the hermeneutic gap between native New-Zealanders and Europeans because he is closer to their culture and ableto communicate with both parties.

During Cook’s second expedition Tupaya’s function is taken over by a man named Mahine (Maheine) who is originallyfrom Bora Bora (I 245 / II 336), after an earlier effort with a boy named Porea does not work out [see also 602, 603]. Like Tupaya he functions as an interpreter and mediator in New Zealand; he learns the language of the natives faster than any one else on board (this time the analogy with his native language is explicitly mentioned) (I291 / II 397, 398). While sailing from New Zealand to Easter Island, Forster and his fellow Europeans use the timeto go through and correct “the whole vocabulary” [meant is adictionary or vocabulary list] / “das ganze Wörterbuch” thatthey had put together on the Society Islands (I 305 / II 417) — a revision that allows them on their return to these islands to make more precise inquiries and to come to more accurate knowledge about them.

On the second visit to Huahine, one of the Society Islands, Mahine serves as Cook’s interpreter and main contact to Oree (Orih), the island’s leader (I 411 / III 98). Earlier we learned that Mahine had spent nights drinking with Oree (I 408 / III 93). After an incident involving an attempt of native steal a number of shotguns,


Oree requests the Europeans’ assistance in punishing the wrongdoers. Cook and his men mount an expedition; Cook explicitly requests that Johann Forster join them because ofhis language skills (this is an exceptional situation — did he not trust Mahine who appears to have functioned as the main interpreter?) (I 411 / III 99). Through Mahine they learn however that the real purpose of the expedition is to isolate the Europeans from their ship (and rob them of theirpossessions?)(I 412 / III 99, 100). Everything ends withoutbloodshed. This episode sheds an interesting light on the precarious position of intermediaries / interpreters like Mahine. In this specific case Mahine functioned like a kindof spy, and it is not at all clear, as Forster’s report indicates, that the Europeans were in the right. In fact itgradually becomes clear that the hostilities started with unnecessarily aggressive behavior from the side of the Europeans (I 411/ III 98, 99).

Mahine himself into an object of ethnological interest after it is discovered he is a member of a caste of people named Arreoy (Errioys), an elite class of warriors and travelers enjoying general respect among the native populations and many other privileges (I 414, 415 / III 102-104). After it has become clear that Arreoy murder their own offspring, Mahine becomes the target of the Europeans’ pedagogical scrutiny; he assures them that the practice is rare, and promises to leave the order as soon as he will have a child (I 416, 417 / III 105-107). (Forster uses the opportunity to point out in a footnote that abortions are not uncommon in London, and that abortionists even advertisetheir services in newspapers [I 417 / III 107].) Mahine decides to stay on Raietea and not to join the crew on theirtrip home to England — a decision Forster deems wise (“fortunate for his heart and morals” / “für das Herz und die Sitten unsres unverdorbenen Freundes gewiß am zuträglichsten”) in view of O-Maï’s experiences in England (I 422 / III 113).

Women do not seem to function as intermediaries of interpreters. In the chapter on Cook’s second visit to Huahine we learn of a (nameless) native Tahiti girl who


joined the expedition in order to be able to return to Raietea, from where she had fled with a lover a few years before. Her exact position on board is unclear — does it include sexual favors? — but it does not seem to involve any mediating or translating. On Huahine natives attempt torob her of her European clothes and then she is made fun of in a dance depicting her fate (I 409 / III 95 [the part about the humiliating dance is missing in the English version]). Occasionally it apparently happened that Europeans functioned as intermediaries and translators. Thetext twice mentions a certain Corporal Gibson, a European ofwhom it is said that he understands more of native languagesthan anyone else on board (I 95 / II 136). It is maybe not insignificant that the only other information about this manis that on Cook’s first expedition he was so taken with Tahiti that he attempted to stay behind on the island (I 191, 192 / II 267). Both the hesitance to employ women as translators and intermediaries and the concern associated with Gibson’s attempt to elope may be taken to be indicativeof an anxiety associated with the act of crossing cultures. For Cortés, Malintzin / Doña Marina was not just a translator and intermediary, but also a sexual partner (Todorov 100, 101). As Hawkesworth’s report of the episode of Gibson eloping shows, Cook went to great lengths to get the sailor back on board.xx The status of the translator-intermediary is without a doubt precarious in the eyes of the Europeans in that it breaks with the clear hierarchies established and maintained between Europeans and natives. This may explain why preferably native men are used in this position. Native women might get pregnant, and European menmight go native.

3. The Politics of Translation

Forster himself produced English and German versions of the report of his travels with Captain Cook on his second xx See Hawkesworth, vol. 2, 30-32.


expedition (initially a French edition was planned as well, but support for that edition fell through [see IV 147, 148]). Furthermore, Cook himself published a book on basis of this expedition as well.xxi To what extent do these textsanticipate each other (explicitly or implicitly)? Do they construct diverging versions of the Pacific with different audiences in mind? To what extent do Forster’s texts reflect on his own status as a German outsider in a predominantly English environment (even though the Forster family had English roots)? And do his texts make the case that there is some merit to his status as a German; that hisperspective on the events he reports is in some way shaped by the fact that he is Forster and his father were trained within a German intellectual tradition?

To start with that last question first, Russell A. Berman on basis of a comparison of Cook’s published diaries and Forster’s A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt has indeed argued that this is the case. Cook’s interest in exploring the world is according to Berman first and foremost a “precise and delimited cartographic undertaking” and is linked directly to the military concerns of “maritime” powers like eighteenth-century England.xxii Cook

xxi The history of the different editions of A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt and the controversies associated with them are carefully reconstructed in volume IV of the critical edition of Forster’s (IV 121-193). Some confusion has existed regarding the authorship of the texts,in part caused by its German title: Johann Reinhold Forster’s Reise um die Welt während den Jahren bis 1772 bis 1775; only further down the title page could one read “Beschrieben und herausgegeben von dessen Sohn und Reisgefährten George Forster.” Forster sr.’s name was most likely highlighted because he hoped for an official position in Germany (IV 167). Scholarship since the critical edition of Forster’s works has confirmed, in particular on basis of the correspondence between Georg and his father, that points to Georg as the only author (see Gerhard Steiner, “Georg Forsters >Reise um die Welt<” 1020-1023, in: Georg Forster, Reise um die Welt [Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983] 1015-1039). See also Ludwig Uhlig’s discussion of the debate on the authorship of A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt in Georg Forster. Lebensabenteuer eines gelehrten Weltbürgers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004) 84, 85.xxii See Russell A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln / London: Nebraska UP, 1998) 47.


and Forster represent for Berman fundamentally different versions of what the Enlightenment stands for: whereas Cooksees “the self-evident irrationality of local culture,” for Forster “there is the presumed rationality of human behaviorcoupled with an undercurrent of egalitarianism” (38). WhereCook is interested in Enlightenment in the interest of “the control and domination of nature,” Forster in contrast is motivated by a version of Enlightenment that has “an interest in alternative regions of human experience” (48). At the roots of Forster’s project is a “decidedly anticolonialist politics” (56).

This last point can be nuanced easily. Forster does indeed at one point in his text, when narrating the events during the expedition’s first visit to Tahiti, take a clear anti-colonial stance: he wishes that interactions between inhabitants of the Pacific and Europeans may stop “before the corruption of manners which unhappily characterizes civilized regions, may reach that innocent race of men” / “ehe die verderbten Sitten der civilisitern Völker diese unschuldigen Leute anstecken können” (I 182 / II 254) — a clear statement against colonialism, it seems. Interestingly, in the German version of his text Forster uses the metaphor of ‘contagion’ (“anstecken”) to describe the impact of Europe on non-European cultures. This is in line with a concept of alterity based on Buffon’s climate-theory that believes in the territorial integrity of cultures and interprets any break of that integrity as undesirable interference. Elsewhere in A Voyage round the World/ Reise um die Welt, however, Forster takes a different stance. If the Europeans were to lose their American colonies, he sees it as a logical step that they would look for alternatives in the Pacific: “if it were ever possible for Europeans to have humanity enough to acknowledge the indigenous tribes of the South Sea as their brethren, we might have settlements which would not be defiled with the blood of innocent nations” / “mögten sie die einheimischen Bewohner der Südsee als ihre Brüder ansehen, und ihren Zeitgenossen zeigen, daß man Colonien anlegen könne, ohne sie mit dem Blut unschuldiger Nationen beflecken zu dürfen!”


(I 301 / II 411).xxiii Forster’s hypothetical goal here is a better, more humane form of colonialism — one that sees thenative other as ‘brother’ and thus not as someone of lower rank. Significantly, Forster does not distinguish between his German and English audiences here; he does not see the relation of Germans to European colonialism as different from that of the English. If anything his statement concerns the English more than the Germans: in the English text he uses the more personal “we,” explicitly including himself among the citizens of maritime powers that have colonies, while the German text uses the more anonymous “man,” referring in this context to any European power with colonial ambitions. In contrast to other German authors, Forster does not “create a world with a specific place for the German colonizer in it” that is typical for many German colonial fantasies (see Zantop 7).

Does the text claim that Germans have a privileged knowledge that allows them to understand (and translate) non-European cultures better than other European nations? The differences in style between Cook’s and Forster’s publications that play an important role in Berman’s argument can easily be attributed to the different genres the two chose for publishing their travel report: Cook’s journals are indeed a lot more matter-of-fact (Berman 53) andfragmented than Forster’s attempt to create a chronologically organized, continuous narrative that allows not only for far more coherence, but also for integrating quotations, reflections, deliberations, essayistic excursions etc. It is precisely the type of fragmentation

xxiii In line with such a pro-colonial stance, Forster later in life spoke out in favor of England’s plan to send convicts to Australia to give them the chance to rehabilitate themselves, and he is also in favorof Britain settling the north island of New Zealand; see John Gascoigne,“The German Enlightenment and the Pacific” 161-163, in: Larry Wolff andMarco Cipolloni (eds.), The Anthropology of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007) 141-171. Harry Liebersohn characterizes Forster’s stance as “in favor of a paternalistic European regime of settlement andeconomic exchange that would rid the Pacific islanders of their ‘barbarism’” (The Traverlers’ World: Europe to the Pacific [Cambridge MA / London: Harvard UP, 2006] 53)


in Cook’s journals against which Buffon warns in his ‘Discours sur le Style’ (1753), to argue instead for a continuous narrative, as if the text were nature itself in its everlasting development.xxiv There is a passage in the ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede’ of A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt in which Forster criticizes earlier travel reports for the fact that they only want to collect facts, while he intends to connect them (I 13, 14 / II 12, 13), that may be inspired by Buffon’s essay and certainly agrees with it in terms of its general agenda. In many respects, Forster’s texts are a realization of Buffon’s programmatic deliberations on style.xxv

While Forster in general deemphasizes his status as a German outsider on the predominantly English expedition financed by the British Admiralty, in his texts he does

xxiv See Buffon, “Discours prononcé à l’Académie Françoise” 5, 6 (see also page 8), in: Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, supplément, vol. 4 (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1777) 1- 13. Buffon’s essay was highly influential on eighteenth-century scientific writing. The stylistic innovations of Forster’s texts are, in contrast to what Berman suggests (44), thus by no means tied to specifically German ways of thinking or writing.xxv The style of A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt, in other words, does not code the text as specifically ‘German.’ The fact that Forster in his ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede’ repeatedly refers to his and his father’s report as ‘philosophical’ enterprises, in comparison to Cook’s more factual report, does, in contrast to Berman’s suggestion (44; see also 49 and 53), not place it into a German tradition either. Contemporaries would have read it as a reference to de Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques / Philosophische Untersuchungen, with its Buffon-inspired climatological theories, to which Forster refers repeatedly (see footnote ***). In his introduction, de Pauw is highly critical of the in his view unprecedented European atrocities in the Americas, and he also criticizes philosophers and moralists legitimating such actions in their writings (Recherches, vol. 1, vi, vii / Untersuchungen, vol. 1, [3, 4]) to envision a “history of natural man” (“Histoire de l’ Homme Naturel” / “Geschichte des natürlichen Menschen”) instead (ibd. xi / [6]). Michael Neumann points out that travel reports in the eighteenth century often were used as empirical evidence by philosophers to back uptheir speculative hypotheses (see “Philosophische Nachtrichten aus der Südsee. Georg Forsters Reise um die Welt” 526, in: Hans-Jürgen Schings (ed.), Der ganze Mensch. Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart / Weimar 1994) 517-544.


reflect occasionally, albeit rarely explicitly, on his own Germanness. One of those rare instances can be found in a footnote of the German edition on the spelling of the name Tupaya or Tupia (according to Hawkesworth’s spelling in his report on Cook’s first expedition):

Dieser Mann ist den Lesern von Hawkesworths Geschichte der engl. See-Reisen, unter dem Namen Tupia bekannt. Man kan aber versichert seyn, den Namen desselben, gleich vielen andern Wörtern aus den Südsee-Sprachen, hier richtiger als im vorgehenden Werk ortographirtzu finden; denn der Verfasser des gegenwärtigen ist ein Deutscher,die gemeiniglich nicht nur mehr Disposition haben fremde Sprachen zu lernen, sondern auch in der Aussprache und Rechtsschreibung derselben ungleich genauer zu seyn pflegen als die Engländer, Franzosen etc. (II 182, 193 footnote)

[MY TRANSLATION: Readers of Hawkesworth’s Voyages will know this manunder the name Tupia. One can however be assured that his name here, like many other words from the South-Sea languages, is spelled more accurately than in the preceding work, because the author of the current text is a German, who in general not only have more of a talent to learn foreign languages, but also in pronunciation and orthography of these tend to be far more precisethan the English and French etc.]

This was clearly not meant for English readers: in the English edition the footnote is missing, although Forster spells the man’s name as “Tupaya” and therefore differently from Hawkesworth (see I 130). Elsewhere Forster makes a similar observation when he states that Tahitians “mutilate”(“verstümmeln”) foreign names worse than the French and English (I 182 / II 254). What is Forster thinking of here?Is he an unreflected cultural chauvinist, intuitively assuming that his own language is the more precise one? Or does Forster have the German Umlaut-system in mind that allows for a more precise phonological description of non-German language systems, because it offers more options whentranscribing the vowels of the other language? If the latter is the case, Forster’s own transcriptions do not backhim up (see for instance the taxonomic overview of Gods on the Windward Islands cited above). The idea that the Germanlanguage is particularly suited to understand and mediate


between other languages can also be found in Goethe.xxvi In any case, it is maybe worth emphasizing that Forster’s observation on the German language is meant to be an empirical observation, even if it is a misguided one, and not a statement claiming the superiority of German philosophical or anthropological knowledge or abilities.

Both A Voyage round the World and Reise um die Welt contain a ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede,’ the latter being a more or less accurate translation of the first (I 9-17 / II 7-17). For the German edition however, Forster added an ‘Einleitung’ (‘Introduction’) which has multiple purposes: he discusses the history of the different expeditions exploring the southern hemisphere; he also reports in detail on the preparations for Cook’s second expedition including the inclusion of his father as a last minute substitute for the scientist Joseph Banks who had accompanied Cook on his firstexpedition (II 28); he touches on the scientific goals that are at stake, and the ‘Einleitung’ also contains the important footnote reporting that Cook plans to return O-Maïto his homeland (II 27). Interestingly, Forster saved the polemical parts — the botched attempt to come to a report assembled collaboratively by Cook and Forster sr.; the rejection of Forster sr.’s writing sample, and the subsequent denial to let Forster sr. write his own report (I9-11 / II 8, 9)xxvii — for the ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede’ that can be found in both the English and German editions, and not for the ‘Einleitung’ that is only part of the German edition. What is remarkable about this is that Forster doesnot seem to tailor his message with the different national

xxvi See Goethe’s letter to Thomas Carlyle [on the concept of ‘world literature’], dated July 20, 1827, 270, in: Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe, Section 4, Vol. 42 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1907) 267-272: “Eine wahrhaft allgemeine Duldung wird am sichersten erreicht, wenn man das Besondere der einzelnen Menschen und Völkerschaften auf sich beruhen läßt, bey derÜberzeugung jedoch festhält, daß das wahrhaft Verdienstliche sich dadurch auszeichnet, daß es der ganzen Menschheit angehört. Zu einer solchen Vermittlung und wechselseitigen Anerkennung tragen die Deutschenseit langer Zeit schon bey. Wer die deutsche Sprache versteht und studirt befindet sich auf dem Markte wo alle Nationen ihre Waren anbieten, er spielt den Dolmetscher indem er sich selbst bereichert.”


audiences of his books in mind. It does illustrate the point he makes later in the ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede’ that he intends to write his report with “with a retrospect to our general improvement and welfare” / “mit beständiger Rücksicht aufs allgemeine Beste” in mind and without “attachment” or “aversion to particular nations” / “unabhängig von National-Vorurtheilen” (I 14 / II 14).

In his ‘Preface’ / ‘Vorrede,’ Forster criticizes Cook for needing an “interpreter” / “Dollmetscher” (I 13 / II 12)who has not participated in the expedition himself in order to be able to communicate with his readers. The person he refers to here is John Hawkesworth (1715?–1773), the editor of the report on Cook’s first expedition, and Forster speculates that Cook will not be able to produce for his version of the report on his second circumnavigation withoutsuch a translator either. One can read such a comment as part of an argument that emphasizes empirical accuracy and the importance of having witnessed the encounters described in A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt personally in order to be able to report on them. But the statement is also part of a more subtle argument against translation that can be found throughout these texts. Forster is acutely aware of the act of naming as a form of territorial appropriation.Take for instance the naming of the islands they encounter: The island named Isle de St. Pierre by the Frenchman Duclos-Guyot is renamed by Cook and his men “Süd-Georgien” (II 23 [not in English edition]). The island named “Osnabruck Island” / “Osnabruck-Eyland” by Wallis is renamed “Pic de la Boudeuse” or “le Boudoir” by Bougainville (I 153 / II 215). The Islas Marquesas de Mendoça received their name in honor of the viceroy of Peru; Cook names an undiscovered island inthe same area “Hood’s Island” (“Hoods-Eyland”) in honor of the man who discovered it (I 347 / III 12). Such acts of making a claim on a territory by naming it are well xxvii Due to these polemical passages, Forster’s German identity also became a topic in many reviews of the German version of Forster’s text; see Alison E. Martin, “Rerouting the self: Georg Forster’s Reise um die Welt,” in: Translating Selves: Experience and Identity between Languages and Literatures, ed. by Paschalis Nikolaou, Maria-Venetia Kyritsi (London / New York: Continuum, 2008) 155-168; esp. 166, 167.

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documented throughout the history of Western imperialism.xxviii

In Forster’s texts however, we find also a counter movement: the refusal to give a territory a new name that can be understood as a refusal to translate its original native name into one of the Western languages. When Forsterwrites of Bougainville being fortunate enough “to catch the name of the island “ of Tahiti correctly, “without the additional O” (I 157) which is an article, in his German version he uses the term “den wahren Namen der Insel” (II 221; translated: “the true name of the island”). The ‘true’ name is in other words the name given to the island by its native population. The same principle is at work later, when Forster remarks that the island Ulieta, one of the Society Islands discovered by Cook in 1769, is actually called O-Raietea (“eigentlich O-Raietea heißt”) (II 316).xxix While it is tempting to speculate that such a preference fornative names is out of respect for native cultures, or to acknowledge natives’ right to name their own territories, and while such deliberations may indeed have played a role in Forster’s thinking, he eventually gives another explanation which in the English version is a lot shorter than in the German version:

[…] the indigenous name of a country is always the permanent one. (I 489)

[…] wir [hatten] es uns zur Regel gemacht, von allen fremden Ländern die wir besuchen würden, allemal die eigenthümlichen Namenwelche sie in der Landessprache führen, auszukundschaften, denn die allein sind selbstständig, und nicht so häufiger Veränderung unterworfen als die willkührlichen Benennungen, welcher jeder Seefahrer seinen eignen und andern Entdeckungen beyzulegen das Recht hat. (III 208)

Interestingly, the German version of Forster’s text explicitly mentions the right of sailors to name new territories as they see fit. The reason not to make use of xxviii See Todorov, The Conquest of America 26, 27.xxix See also I 228; the English version does not use the term actually /eigentlich, but essentially states the same as the German edition.


this right is a pragmatic one: the names the indigenous population gives to the territory it inhabits is relatively stable, while the names that passing European explorers giveto an island or region are highly unstable. While one probably should not over-interpret such a deliberation, it does manifest a fundamental doubt not only about the possibility of translation, but also about its merit.

This resistance to translation manifests itself in another way in Forster’s texts. Scattered across the text are quotations in Latin, French, and English from Horace (I 21 / II 40), Falconer (I 44 / II 68), Juvenal (I 51 / II 76), Boileau (I 62 / II 90), Virgil and Shakespeare (I 67 / II 97) and many others that remain both in the English and German editions of the text untranslated. The point that Forster makes here by including these quotes without translation is that it is very well possible to live in a multi-lingual community without an immediate need for translation, that Europeans infact have done so for a very long time. His model is that of the multi-lingual European Gelehrtenrepublik. Interesting too in this context is a lengthy footnote quoting Mandevillein old English meant to illustrate an inclination towards anoverabundant material lifestyle among the Oriental upper class. The German edition quotes a short section of the original text in old English and then provides a translationof the entire section (II 250), while the English edition quotes the entire passage in old English (I 179). The decision to include part of the original text in the German edition shows that Forster believes there is some merit in dealing with the original text, not merely with a translation.

4. Conclusion

In the second half of the eighteenth century the ability to see other cultures not as irrational and random, but as rational responses to differences in climate and geography


is a major part of the reception of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle throughout Europe, and by no means limited to Germany. The climatological model is attractive for Forster because it isemancipatory in that it seeks to rationalize biological and cultural differences. It is a response to the realization that non-European parts of the world are not populated by freaks and monsters, but by humans and animals who are fundamentally quite similar to those that could be found in Europe. Natural historians and anthropologists like Buffon,and Blumenbach, and Herder are strong proponents of a monogenetic view of mankind; they believe that all humans have one common root and that biological differences were first and foremost the products of differences in climate and geography and did not derive from fundamental differences between categories of humans or the interbreeding of humans and animals. While being progressive and emancipatory for its time, Buffon’s theory also created new normative systems. It established temporalhierarchies between advanced and primitive societies. It also opened a discursive space for newer discourses that sought to explain human diversity, such as the discourse on ‘race.’ One could call it highly symbolic that towards the end of A Voyage round the World / Reise um die Welt Forster introduces the concept of ‘race’ as a concept supplemental to theories of climate to explain human diversity.xxx

While the Enlightenment was in possession of a theory of biological and cultural alterity, it did not know how to theorize what happened when cultures came in contact with each other; it had no framework that allowed it to describe what happened when cultures became mobile.xxxi Forster’s A Voyage round the World and Reise um die Welt however by necessity focus on such intercultural encounters, and their depiction of ‘translation’ is one point of access to such intereactions. A Voyage round the World and Reise um die Welt describe translation as a phenomenon of the border zone. Interestingly, ‘translation’ is not seen as the task of the explorer — or of his scientific staff — , but delegated mostly to native translators and intermediaries. This is one indication that the role of the translator is seen as


purely instrumental. If Europeans happened to function as translators, this was a source of anxiety: it meant crossing the border zone and leaving clearly demarcated boundaries behind. Those Europeans who did decide to cross the border zone ran the risk of ‘going native’ as the example of Corporal Gibson discussed above shows. In contrast to Gibson, Forster’s own perspective on the non-European other, on native societies and their cultures is that of a distanced, objectifying gaze. This is maybe clearest in the domain of sexuality. Forster is an astute observer of the sexual customs of the societies he visits and also of the interactions between his fellow Europeans and the native women they encounter. At no point in his texts, however, is his own sexuality at stake — not, I would

xxx Comparing the inhabitants of New Caledonia to those of Tanna, Forster remarks: “Perhaps instead of placing the causes which effect disparity of stature among various nations in the difference of food, this instance ought to teach us, to have some retrospect likewise to theoriginal races from which those tribes are descended, that fell under our examination” (I 576) / “Vielleicht muß man aber, um die verschiedne Statur der Nationen zu erklären, nicht sowohl auf die Verschiedenheit ihrer Nahrungsmittel, als vielmehr auf die Verschiedenheit der Stämme und Racen sehen, von welchen sie herkommen” (III 326). That differencesin body length and strength cannot by explained by food is implicitly a rejection of Buffon’s climatological model which mentiones “nourriture” among the factors influencing biological difference (see footnote***). It is very likely that Forster in his conceptualization of ‘race’ is influenced by Kant’s 1775 essay “Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen” (for a discussion of this essay and its position vis-à-vis Buffon, see John H. Zammito, “Policing Polygeneticism in Germany, 1775 (Kames,) Kant, and Blumenbach” 41, 42, in: The German Invention of Race, ed.by Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006] 35-54). Any attempt interested in investigating a German contribution to the eighteenth-century discourse on biological and cultural diversity — along the lines of Russell Berman’s project — will need to take issue with this essay. Interestingly, the English edition adds some language meant to relativize the radicalism of Forster’s proposal that is missing in the German edition: “These hints are submitted to the learned, whose province it is to confirm or to refute them; but on which side soever the truth may fall, I shall rest equally contented, as I have adopted no particular system” (I 577). In the mid 1780s a fierce debate erupted between Forster and Kant precisely about the merits of the ‘Race’-concept.


argue because he is an uptight European with a protestant background (under what was without a doubt the close supervision by his father), but rather because such sexual experiments are simply not part of his scientific mission, or worse: would stand in the way of that mission.xxxii

Once back in Europe, Forster saw himself forced into the role of translator and intermediary. Translation was part of the process of transculturation between non-Europeanparts of the world and metropolitan Europe. In a sense Forster’s task was a double one: he had to find a way of translating knowledge of / from the non-European world into discourse understood by Europeans. And in order to truly harvest the rewards of the expedition in which both Forstersparticipated, he had to translate his English-language account into other European languagesxxxiii — one needs to keep in mind here that in eighteenth-century Europe English was by no meant the scientific lingua franca it is today. Unfortunately for Forster, plans for a French-language version of his text fell through. Rather than being seen assomeone who had established a solid scientific reputation — on the grounds of a publicly secured scientific authority ora supposedly superior epistemological model — Forster was xxxi This becomes very clear, for instance, when early anthropologists seek to theorize the role of Jews and Gypsies in European culture, representatives of cultures that are perceived to be mobile and not sedentary; see my paper “Romanticism and Other Cultures” 153, in: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism, ed. Nicholas Saul (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) 147-162.xxxii Practice may have been different of course. One also needs to takeinto account that reporting on sexual matters in autobiographical writings was not customary until the publication of the first and secondvolumes of Rousseau’s Confessions (1782 / 1789); see Helmut Pfotenhauer, Literarische Anthropologie. Selbstbiographien und ihre Geschichte — am Leitfaden des Leibes (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987) 47.xxxiii In England, because of the competition with Cook’s own account, A Voyage round the World had only been moderately successful (IV 175). The importance of a translation into French and German had been acknowledgedearly on. According to the contract drawn up on April 13, 1776, betweenJohann Reinhold Forster, Cook, Stephens, and the Earl of Sandwich, Forster Sr. was to make French and German translations of the text he and Cook together would assemble (see Georg Forster’s letter to Earl of Sandwich [IV 79] and the text of the original contract [IV 90]).


forced into a role similar to that of O-Maï, Tupaya, and Mahine: as an intermediary, as someone whose knowledge was only of instrumental value. Some of the controversies surrounding the publication of an official scientific and philosophical report on Cook’s second expedition may have something to do with both Forsters in their own perception being reduced to this intermediary function that came with asense of feeling disempowered and disenfranchised as if the knowledge they were communicating was not really their possession, but instead belonged to Cook and the English nation that sent him on his mission.

It must be said that Forster does a good job at translating and mediating his knowledge about the Pacific. As objectifying and in spite of all good intentions nevertheless Eurocentric as his perspective on the non-Western other may be, he is not without empathy for the people he encounters. To some extent this also means accepting the limits of translation — the idea that communication without translation is possible. In his report on the inhabitants of the island Tanna (today part ofthe Republic of Vanuatu), Forster describes a moment when the natives gather peacefully around the Europeans in the harbor and one of the men, who seems to have a leadership position, adopts the name of Forster’s father, while simultaneously assigning him his own name (Oomb-yégan / Umbjegan); Forster comments: “This custom of making friendship, by a reciprocal exchange of names, is common in all the southern islands which we had hitherto visited, and in reality has something in it very engaging and affectionate” (I 498) / “Dieser Gebrauch, durch gegenseitigeVertauschung der Namen, Freundschaft mit einem andern zu errichten, ist auf allen Inseln des Süd-Meeres, so viel wir deren bisher besucht hatten, eingeführt, und hat würklich etwas verbindliches und zärtliches an sich” (III 222). For a moment language does not seem to matter, hierarchies do not seem to exist, and a fully equalitarian and symmetrical relationship between Europeans and their others appears within grasp. Of course all of that is an illusion, but it


is an illusion in which Forster very much wanted to believe — desperately.

Translating the Pacific: Georg Forster's 'A Voyage round the World' / 'Reise um die Welt' ...

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Transcript of Translating the Pacific: Georg Forster's 'A Voyage round the World' / 'Reise um die Welt' ...