(bright music) - So Stella, I'm hoping you can help me understand better something that I think we're always thinking about and always dealing with, namely the problem of translation.

Okay, and I know that you are yourself a translator of Chinese poetry into English.

That's one reason I'm hoping for some insights from you.

But also because we're currently partners now in freshman seminar at the college, and reading these wonderful books, starting with Homer, currently on Plato.

And it seems to me, and we can talk about this shortly, that the problem is constantly coming up, not only in the different translations that we have in the classroom, and the students are often bringing up, now wait a minute, my translation says this.

And then someone else walks up, "Mine says this."

And whenever that comes up, sometimes I'm filled with dismay and thinking maybe it would be better if we just told them what the best translation is and get it so we don't have to spend time on that moment that keeps recurring.

What do you think?

- For a moment I really thought you were gonna say it would be best if we could simply tell them to go study ancient Greek for four years (Louis laughs) for four years.

- You got me on that.

We do tell, well, not for four years.

(Stella chuckles) Yeah.

- We do study ancient Greek, right?

But wouldn't it be wonderful if we all come in here already know how to read ancient Greek and then just read the original and then get rid of the translations altogether?

- Uh-hmm.

Something that I wanna say about that but please continue.

Why would that-- - But then it seems like the same question would arise all over all again.

- That's it.

- Right?

Because when you are confronted with a passage, a sentence, a word in the original, there is always the question of which is the best definition to use, how do we best put words together?

What is the meaning of anything that is being written down, presented in front of us?

So it seems like in that sense, the issue presented by the multiplicity of translations is by no means unique.

It is actually a very specific version of a general problem that has to do with interpretation, communication, and just understanding in general.

- Okay, so if I understand you correctly, I think this is where I was gonna go even that having multiple translations in the classroom is a kind of facsimile of one's own experience if one had studied Greek for a number of years, you'd have to be doing what the multiple translations are doing.

Saying, is it this word or is it this word?

Is it this order of words?

Is it this sound?

And all that would be running through your head.

So in a way we're inviting that into the classroom by having multiple translators.

- That seems right, that seems right.

But then maybe I am sympathetic a little bit to the idea that there is a best translation, or several best translations that allow us to access the text in a better way.

- Uh-hmm.

- But then I ask myself this question, right, what are the factors relevant here?

What makes one translation better than another, or the rest?

- So that's indeed one question, what does make a translation better or best?

But also, I mean, what does one want out of reading a book in translation?

I had a very well-known professor in grad school, as a sociology professor who counseled his students that because the time is so short in our mortal lives, that there's such a thing as a good enough translation for our purposes.

Don't spend your time on learning German for example, get a good enough translation.

And that in a way kind of shocked me.

But I do appreciate the sense that we have finite time And a lot of things that we want to do in freshman seminar there's a lot to talk about.

And the translation questions are only one of those things.

So how does one balance this?

So we got two things here, what's the best translation?

Maybe the better question is, what is the best translation for our purposes?

- That is an interesting question.

We want some kind of access to the text, and I think minimally we want that access to not be clouded.

There's a way in which perhaps translation can intrude, can put something over the original text that makes it less accessible.

But then sort of, right, we've encountered translations in our class where sort of parts of the original text are simply cut outs to conform to the meter where it seems like very specific interpretation of the overall text was reached in the first place.

And that somehow informed the choices of the particular words in a way that wore down differently, may have invited distinct interpretations to coexist.

So all of these different issues are there.

- So that sounds like a particular kind of worrisome problem where a translator has a kind of agenda that he or she might not even be aware of.

You know, they say this say about-- - That seems right.

- About Jowett's translations of Plato that they tend to Christianize-- - Christianize.

- Plato.

- Yes.

- Or more recently, this has come up in our seminar, Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey sounds... Well, it does some daring things.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- But that seemed to be informed by her particular modern feminist ear.

- I think that's entirely right.

And as a translator myself, I feel torn and maybe I'll tell you a little bit about why I am torn on this regard.

I am torn because I am sympathetic to all translators who are willing to take a stance.

- Uh-hmm.

- Who are willing to somehow come clean about the fact that while we translate, we also interpret.

So this is true not just of the daring translations that wear their identity as interpretations on the sleeve.

This is very much true for the quote unquote literal translations that seem to be word by word.

But what allows them to, what permits them, what informs their decision to do translation as such, it must also be the existence of certain beliefs, certain convictions as to what kind of activity translation is.

There must be an underlying interpretation as to what the text is trying to say that they think, oh, to put one word in front of another must be important.

To keep every single Greek word that there is and convert them into English is important.

- That's very interesting 'cause it suggests that the translator, no matter how objective or literal minded he or she might be that there are much deeper commitments that are already there as to what a book is, what a text is, what is its truth, in other words-- - That seems right.

- It's truth that you're trying to get at.

- Yes.

- And those are very big questions that... - Yeah.

Yes.

- You should talk about.

- Absolutely, and I think right when a translator is daring, at least I know she or he has those questions in mind.

But then what am I doing when I'm reading a translation?

Not necessarily, no, it's a translation.

Is it actually allowing me a deeper access into the original?

Or is it putting on a kind of disguise?

- Or is it a new creation?

- Yes.

- That should be approached on its own, as its own work.

- Yeah.

- So we can talk about Lattimore's translation of Homer, or we can talk about Lattimore's Iliad and just deal with the latter.

- That seems right, that seems right.

Yeah.

- But something bothers me about that.

I'm not sure I should be bothered, but personally speaking, I want Homer.

(Stella chuckles) - What is the duty of a translator?

What is his art maybe?

- Well, when you translate Chinese poetry into English, you must have faced these questions.

- Absolutely.

- So what is your duty as a translator and how have you dealt with the problem?

I mean, are there things in the Chinese poems you simply cannot get in English?

How much of that is there?

I mean, you must think it's worthwhile because you do it.

- It's absolutely worthwhile.

One of the biggest challenges is that I often realize in the process of translating that I have absolutely no idea what a Chinese word means.

And absolutely no idea what a structure or sentence means.

Right, it is by...

It's in the process of translation where I would suddenly ask myself, "Actually, Stella, I'm not entirely sure if this word that I thought I understood it's a noun or an adjective, or verb."

Right, it intuitively makes sense and maybe that is... An error of mine to assume a level of familiarity that's in fact... Disguises lack of knowledge or disguises a kind of ignorance and then translation turns out to be the perfect channel, the perfect avenue for me to really dig deeper into those ignorances - Into your own language.

- Absolutely.

- That sounds like one's own language has to be translated by oneself as one encounters it.

That is it, do you think?

- Uh-hmm.

- You know, for me, reading English is, or reading Shakespeare requires translation.

For you Chinese requires translation even before you get it into English.

- Seems right.

Shakespeare's English is certainly not how we speak now, so do you think the translation you encounter there...

Right, how much of it has to do with the specific English and how much of it has to do with-- - Well, I'll give you a very simple example.

- Absolutely.

- That happens to be what I'm working on currently.

Speech, everyone knows, even if they've never read it, at least know the opening words.

- Yes.

- 'To be or not to be, that is the question.'

So I noticed after living with this great utterance, sort of all my reading life.

- Yes.

- There is no question mark in the text, 'To be or not to be, comma or colon, that is the question now.'

And it struck me, why is that?

What does that mean?

I mean, he's saying that is the question, but there's no question mark.

It makes me start thinking about, well, what is a question anyway for Hamlet?

And why is that the question?

You know, it sounds like more like a statement or a conclusion that he's already reached after a long process of questioning.

But it's introduced to us in the moment as a living question about to be worked through, but there's no question mark.

So there are all sorts of, as you were saying, all sorts of these little things that you thought you knew, like what a question is and what the punctuation of a sentence should be.

And then you encounter it as if for the first time and start asking yourself.

- Yes.

- What is a question?

- Yes.

- Does that make sense?

- Absolutely.

It's fascinating because I wonder what the experience is if I were to go to a performance of Hamlet.

Now, if I hear the actor performing that soliloquy on stage, would this question of what the punctuation is, strike me?

But maybe that has to do with questions about whether the performance itself is a translation of these scripts.

- Uh-hmm, do you think translation and performance, as long as we're talking about this, it's great interest to me, I don't know if it's of equal interest to you are, are synonymous or inseparable?

That is to translate something requires one's performance of it, which is to say one's becoming it.

- It seems right that as we were talking about what happens when we try to read a text even in our mother tongue, it seems that there is a real process happening in time where I come to confront ignorances or lack of understanding in myself and then sort of experience a kind of conversion or transformation where a certain knowledge is gained.

For me, maybe I come to understand a word that I thought I always knew turned out to not mean the same thing I thought it did.

And for you it was to realize that what you thought was a question mark was always in fact a period.

Right, so I wonder what's the best way to characterize that experience?

- Well, you just used two words that I'd like to highlight.

Transformation and conversion.

- Yeah.

- That's very interesting - Experienced to say that I experienced something, whereas transformation and conversion both, despite their nuances, something is being done to me, I'm undergoing whatever it is.

- Whatever it is that is that is... Well, we could use our word translation that is translating you or me into it.

- Oh.

- Is that?

- The idea, the text?

I take on its shape?

- Yes, exactly.

- Oh, I'm the matter to be informed.

- That's right, you're the Hooley.

- Oh gosh.

(Stella chuckles) - To be informed by the text.

- Oh.

- Or you know, in my case, by the scripted language that gives rise to a speaking embodied Hamlet.

I mean there it's in a way easier to see because we're dealing with a text that is a play that's meant to be performed.

You know, where an actor makes those lines come alive.

- Yes.

- And he has to become it.

- Yes.

- And I'm just trying to push this further, I don't know how far we can go with it, but to make it include what you do when you translate Chinese, or even what our students do when they're reading Homer and reading him in translation.

They've still got to somehow become it.

- There is an incredible amount of, I'm not sure how to describe it, gap distance to be overcome - Between?

- Between me... And it.

But now I'm hesitant to say what it is.

I am more confident to describe... Let me put it this way, once I become informed by a work I am reading or trying to translate it and I is now a unity.

- Okay.

- And I feel much more comfortable pointing to it and say, that is a complete me that contains a kernel of knowledge or a kernel of perception, understanding.

- The translation.

- The translation.

But surely the very reason I have to be, that I must be translated is because there was a kind of... Foreignness or alienness of the form of the its, prior to the transformation.

So that's why I'm hesitant to name, to say what it is.

I mean, ostensibly it is a text, it is an object, but it seems more than that now.

- Maybe, I mean, it's a nice word.

I'm happy with that.

But a platonic word for the 'it' might be the other, as opposed to the 'me,' which we might call the same.

But I'm not sure, I'm not sure about that.

Because maybe the very possibility of translation suggests that it's not really 'other,' it's the same, it's kind of unincorporated 'me' out there.

So that translation is an enlarging of my being.

- Yeah.

- So I guess what we've stumbled into is a question about who I am, potentially who you are.

- That seems right, then what is happening right now as you speak to me and I speak to you.

(Stella chuckles) - Indeed.

And where are these words coming from anyway?

- That's right, that's right.

- Which maybe is a different kind of question but it's part of a, I think the same mystery of human speech and the fact that there are many of them, thousands of them.

- Yes.

- Requiring translation.

And what does that say about the speakers?

- Why are we seeking to perhaps speak to each other?

These are thought experiments, if I understand you perfectly and you understand me perfectly already, then we wouldn't talk to each other, would we?

There wouldn't be a need to speak to each other to seek communication and understanding anymore - And risk the possibility of misunderstanding or not bridging the gap between those.

- That's right.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's right.

As I externalize my language, obviously my speech stands in a certain relationship to the meaning, the thing I want to express, right?

If we already have perfect understanding with each other then speech is merely an imperfect tool.

And however good that tool is, it remains imperfect.

- Uh-hmm.

- We should do away with it altogether.

- Well, let me just, I wanna pursue the question of perfection in a moment, but it occurs to me to ask if I knew Chinese.

- Yes.

- Would you be able to say what you just said to me in Chinese better than you said it in English?

That is, do you feel a gap as a native Chinese speaker?

English what, is your second language?

- Second language, that's right.

- Do you feel a gap between what you have in you to say and your English tongue?

- At times perhaps.

At times perhaps, I often feel if we were to talk about a text then I actually feel more comfortable talking in English about it.

Mainly I suspect because since I was 17 I've spent the majority of my time, which means I've spent the majority of my higher education and post higher education in America.

So, in that sense I've learned English together with talking about certain things in English as well.

- Uh-hmm.

- But when it comes to talking about myself, when it comes to talking about my experience and the kind of person I am, I think more often than not, I am still perhaps thinking in Chinese.

- Interesting.

- I have to retrieve that mother tongue in order to articulate myself.

And perhaps I don't do that when I'm just by myself, 'cause why would I need to?

But whenever I have to reach in there and then try to explain who I am and what I'm thinking, and of course maybe those are the same things to you.

For instance, Chinese seems to be what I reach for in thoughts.

- Uh-hmm.

- But then what happens when I have to marry the two of them, which is right now there is this constant conflict as it seems.

- Uh-hmm.

- I'm talking about a text as me, I'm talking about me as a text, and then there's this clash between the two languages.

- Okay, so then maybe one way not deal with the clash itself, but to sort of sidestep it.

- Yes.

- Altogether and communicate on a level of perfection, as you were now you were calling it a moment ago, which avoids the gap between self and other.

- Yeah.

- Which avoids translational problems altogether is to speak a, say a universal language, that comes out of shared human reason, no difference between yours and mine.

Reason as such, namely mathematics.

Do you think that offers a kind of, maybe not 100%, but 90% of what we might envision as a goal of perfect communication in which when we nod ascent to one another, there's no distraction and no discontinuities, no gaps, we have a kind of oneness of mind.

Is math the only thing, mathematics, perhaps, geometry, you know, a la Euclid, is that perhaps the only time when we can have that experience?

I've often wondered about this and sort of tested it with students in class to the limits that we have.

And I know you're teaching Euclid now, right?

- That's right.

- Yeah, yeah.

Has this come up?

- Yeah, to what extent can we demonstrate, perhaps?

So we would read Euclid's propositions at home and then come to class and then demonstrate the propositions to each other.

(calm music)