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AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
FORUMON TRANSLATION
1.
DOUGLAS HOWLAND
ABSTRACT
Ratherthana simple transferof wordsor texts from one language to another,on the model
of the bilingual dictionary,translationhas become understood as a translingualact of
transcodingculturalmaterial-a complex act of communication.Much recent work on
translationin history grows out of interest in the effects of Europeancolonialism, especially within Asian studies, where interest has been driven by the contrastbetween the
experiences of Chinaand Japan,which were never formallycolonized, and the alternative
examples of peoples without strong,centralizedstates-those of the Indiansubcontinent
and the Tagalogin the Philippines-who were colonized by Europeanpowers. This essay
reviews several books published in recent years, one group of which share the general
interpretationthatcolonial powers forced their subjectsto "translate"theirlocal language,
sociality, or culture into the terms of the dominantcolonial power: because the colonial
power controls representationand forces its subjects to use the colonial language, it is in
a position to constructthe forms of indigenousand subjectidentity.The otherbooks under
review here are less concernedwith power in colonial situationsthan with the fact of different languages, cultures, or practices and the work of "translating"between the twoparticularlythe efforts of indigenous agents to introduceEuropeanideas and institutions
to their respective peoples.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past two decades, the study of translation in history has been transformed.
Where it was once a metaphor for new strategies of intellectual history, it is now
an object of sophisticated epistemological inquiry. Under the tutelage of linguistic and literary theory, moreover, we now understand translation in a manner
quite differently from two decades ago. Translation is no longer a simple transfer of words or texts from one language to another, on the model of the bilingual
dictionary, or the bridging of language differences between people. Rather than
a straightforward operation performed on words, translation has become a
translingual act of transcoding cultural material--a complex act of communication. In the process, translation has come to engage the fact of deep and problematic relationships among forms of writing, idiomatic uses of language, variants of "register" that alert one to markers of class and gender, and structures of
1. The writing of this essay was generously supportedby the School of Historical Studies at the
Institute for Advanced Study. For their comments on earlier drafts, I thank Luise White, Stefan
Tanaka,James Hevia, and Joshua Fogel.
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Tagalogsto Christianity-to Rafael, both translationand conversion are substitutions of one thing for another.But as Niranjanahas argued,these colonial relations are always asymmetrical-it is the Spaniardswho command authorityand
undertakethe conversionof the Tagalogs.Hence Rafael'smainthesis is thattranslation and conversion were both modes of action that mediated the Spaniards'
abilitiesto colonize Tagalogsociety in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies.13
Rafael improves upon the textual determinismof Cheyfitz and Niranjana,for
his purpose is ultimately not to critique interculturalrelationsin the past and to
hope for some betterpracticesthat producemore authenticidentities. Rather,he
analyzes interculturalrelationsas historicalevents for what they can tell us about
the construction of authority, hierarchy, and communication. In Contracting
Colonialism, translationis not so much the ability to speak in a language other
than one's own than the capacity to reshapeone's thoughtsand actions in accordance with accepted forms. Although translationmight thus signal Tagalog submission to the conventions of Spanish social order,it is not so much a process of
Tagalogs simply internalizing colonial-Christian conventions-as Niranjana
arguedregardingIndiansinternalizingJones's representations.Rather,Rafael is
interestedin how Tagalogs evaded the totalizing grip of Spanish-Christianconventions by markingdifferences between Tagalog and Castilian Spanish.14
Rafael offers an insightful analysis of the effects of such language translation
in colonial society. Based on his discussion of an early grammarcreated for
Tagalog by Francisco Blancas de San Jose in 1610, Arte y reglas de la lengua
tagala, Rafael speculatesthat translationwork encouragedan abstractnotion of
language and allowed the Spaniardsto separatethe natives from their language.
Spaniardsunderstoodthat language exists independentlyof a communityof particularhearersand speakers,so that any such communitycan learn differentlanguages. Indeed, the effort to colonize becomes especially an effort to teach the
colonized a new language. At the same time, Rafael asserts that translation
always leads to the emergence of hierarchy.Spanish missionaries imagined a
hierarchyof languages, which descended from God, such that Latin was closest
to the "Wordof God," followed by Castilian Spanish, with Tagalog distant in
space andpurity.'5Because translationis embeddedin social relations,translation
was intimately involved in the hierarchiesasserted by the Spaniards.Christian
conversionand translationboth involved "thesublationof all signs and speech to
the sacred Sign of God, Christ."16Communion,like the conversation based in
translation,establishesthe hierarchyof those who administerfrom those who are
dependent.And the confessional conversationin which the Spanishpriest "counseled" the Tagalog native dependedon the hierarchicalmode of interrogation.17
But as one mightexpect, Tagalogtranslationcan work againstthe productionof
hierarchy.In 1610 a contemporaryof Blancas de San Jose, Tomas Pinpin, a
13. Ibid., ix-xi, 34f.
14. Ibid., 210f.
15. Ibid., 26-39, 211.
16. Ibid., 91f.
17. Ibid., 92-94, 97, 103-105.
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ing it, Liu targetsthe concept itself to demonstrateboth what it meant (its range
of meanings) and what it enabled Chinese agents to think and do.26
An equal rigor and capacityfor nuance is evident in Schaffer'sDemocracy in
Translation.Schaffersurveys a range of descriptiveand operationaldefinitionsof
democracyin previouscomparativework on democracy;these are familiarmeasurementsof the practiceof democracy,based on predeterminedcriterialike numbers of candidatesand parties,degree of suffrage,and voter turnout.He then outlines his own alternativetactic of conceptualanalysisfor determiningthe meaning
of democracyin Senegal, which directshim to the usage of concepts,the relation
of such concepts in a semanticfield of relatedterms,and changes in the meaning
and usage of these concepts in recent decades.To Schaffer,this work is above all
The centhe problemof namingthe standardsimplicitin usages of "democracy."27
tral terms in his analysis are provided by the pair of languages dominant in
Senegal-the Frenchworddemocratieandthe Wolofloanworddemokaraasi-and
much of the book is a carefulcomparisonof connotationssuggestedby Schaffer's
informantsand mediareports.Wheredemocratiehad been relatedto metaphorsof
youthfulnessand effective social engineeringand,in the 1970s, came to connote a
solutionto the oppositionbetween dictatorshipand inclusive government-namely, the virtue of ruling and oppositionpartiesalternatingtheir turnsat ruling the
country-demokaraasi was insteadrelatedto practicesat the mosque:the competitionamongmuezzinsfor listeners,leadershipvia the selectionof leadersin prayer,
and a respectfor laws.28Schafferconcludes that"democracy"in Senegal is especially a way to talk about consensus, solidarity,and evenhandedor equal treatment-its opposite is the dishonest and deceitful behavior of "politics."29More
importantly,however, where other scholarsreportedlyconclude that Senegal is a
quasi-or semi-democracy,he offersan evaluationthat,unlikethe textualsubstitutes
for politics we find in Cheyfitzand Niranjana,may very well provide suggestions
for improvingdemocracyin Senegal: civic and French-languageeducation,and
more directly,the secretballot and opportunitiesfor communitynetworking.30
By
deliberatelyfocusing on the standardsimplicitin usages of "democracy,"Schaffer
drawsour attentionto a principlefundamentalto his and Liu's work:namely,that
we understandconcepts best throughacts of comparison-not the comparisonof
originalsand translations,but the comparisonof sets of concepts as they are used.
IV. THE UNTRANSLATABLEAND INCOMMENSURATE
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of translationproducesequivalencesbetween languages in the mannerof a bilingual dictionary.As Liu persuasivelyarguesin both TranslingualPractice andher
introductionto Tokens of Exchange, we should examine the motives behind
attemptsto establish equivalences, and take care to understandthe complementarity and difference surroundingputative originals and their translations.The
object of our analyses should be the process of making meaning in acts of translation and the comparisonsthat they inspire.31The question is, however, what to
do with a comparisonthat reveals a fundamentalor unbridgeablegap between
two apparentopposites. As Rafael concluded with poetic force and insight, the
fundamentalgap between SpanishandTagalogunderstandingsof the spiritworld
was only resolved in death-a favorite analogy in culturalcriticism for pointing
to the radicalothernessthat evades our rationalunderstanding.
For it is not enough to stop at the point of acknowledging differences.
Otherwise, as Roger Hart so clearly argues in his contributionto Tokens of
Exchange, comparison simply contributesto the unrigorousrelativism of confirming differences between or among cultures or languages. Worse, and too
often, the claim that a word or practice is fundamentally untranslatableor
incommensuraterisks diverting attention from the social and political history
deservingof analysis.As Hartdemonstratesin his critiqueof researchon the category of "existence" in sixteenth-centurytranslations from the Chinese, the
framework of incommensurabilitynecessarily omits importanthistorical contexts: to deny that Chinese had a concept of existence, that translatorstherefore
could not translate"being" into Chinese, and that Chinese thereforecould not
understandeither Christianityor Westernphilosophy, is to create a culturalbarrier that begs the habit of relativismin the face of actual Chinese understanding
of Westernphilosophy.32
It is precisely in relationto the work of comparisonand the relatedquestionof
the incommensuratethat Naoki Sakai's Translationand Subjectivityso forceful31. That said, is is perplexingthat Liu includes seven appendicesthat list neologisms in the manner of bilingualdictionaries.While these lists are interestingand perhapsuseful, they are exactly contraryto the theoreticalspiritmotivatingLiu's introductionand firstchapters.In spite of her disclaimer
that she would ignore the principle of "semanticequation"operable in most studies of neologisms,
her alternative principle of "ideographic coincidence"-referring simply to the use of existing
Chinese-charactercompounds in the translationprocess, independentof their meaning-relies on an
arbitrarinessas problematicas that of mere shifts of meaning, for both semantic equationand ideographiccoincidence privilege the criterionof origins, whetheroriginarymeaning or originaryusage.
Does it matter, for example, if neologisms have their origins in classical sources? The problem
remains:can Liu or any scholar verify that the user of a neologism did in fact read the classical text
in which a neologism first figured as a "pure"word? See TranslingualPractice, 260-262, and 265378 for the appendices.
32. Roger Hart, "Translatingthe Untranslatable:From Copula to IncommensurableWorlds,"in
Tokensof Exchange: The Problem of Translationin Global Circulations,ed. Lydia H. Liu (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1999), 57-59. An example of precisely the problem that Hartoutlines is the
recent collection, The Translatabilityof Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, ed. Sanford
Budick andWolfgangIser (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1996); several contributorsannounce
the impossibility of translationand the infiniteregress at the heartof the process (with pithy remarks
on the orderof "the original is alreadya mistranslationof a lost original")and then propose "cultural translation"as "performance,"which seems only to raise the same questions already posed by
translationtheoristsas to how texts "work"in differentculturalenvironments.
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If, then, the meaning of ideas in culture must be negotiated even among those
who employ the so-called "same"language, we must, in the end, engage in the
comparativework of tracingthe mutationsthatideas undergoas they travelfrom
40. I have analyzed Chinese-Japanese"brushtalking"interactionsin just this way; see Bordersof
Chinese Civilization: Geography and History at Empire's End (Durham:Duke University Press,
1996), 43-57.
41. Sakai, Translationand Subjectivity,45f., 56-59.
42. Ibid., 84-86, 93, 96-104, 108-113.
43. ReinhartKoselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge,Mass.:
MIT Press, 1985), 159-197.
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one setting to anotherif we are to understandthem. They are, after all, cultural
material available to any users for any numberof purposes. The key scholarly
intervention,as the best of the works here collectively show, is to understand
how ideas-and the words that contain them-have been used.
I would return,then, to the apprehensionsraisedby Toews in 1987. His charge
that the new intellectualhistory engaged in new forms of reductionismis both
borne out and yet counteredby these examples from the study of translationin
history.Liu, Rafael, Sakai, and Schafferhave met the challenge of a more sophisticated examination of the historical activity of constructing and expressing
meaning.They show clearly thatthe problemis to forego the old habitof semantic transparencyand to pursue the constructionof meaning in interculturalcontexts--to compareideas in their multiple and historicalmoorings.44
If this is done- as the work of Schafferhas demonstratedherein-the history
of concepts promisesconsequencesfor the present.If history helps us to perceive
how available concepts push us to think along certain lines, this history may
enable us "to conceive of how to act on alternativeand less constrainingdefinitions of our situation."45For the translationof concepts into other languages
extends conceptual and political structureselsewhere. Ratherthan treat translation metaphorically,in the deconstructionistspiritof a "play of substitutions,"it
must be treatedas a specific and materialevent in history.
Universityof Wisconsin,
Milwaukee
44. See Douglas Howland, Translatingthe West:Language and Political Reason in NineteenthCenturyJapan (Honolulu:University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), 18-30.
45. Melvin Richter,"Appreciatinga ContemporaryClassic:The GeschichtlicheGrundbegriffeand
Future Scholarship,"in The Meaning of Historical Termsand Concepts: New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, D.C.: German Historical
Institute, 1996), 10.