© 2018 Nambu Yoichiro Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (NITEP), Osaka City University. All rights reserved.
The processes of revision and translation, according to Mossop (2010:112-113), can address the problem of conflicting interests, goals and needs by taking different approaches. Translation, he suggests, should seek to achieve a balance between loyalty to the source text author and to the target text readers, whereas revision should serve the interests of the future readers of the text. As a result, revising activities will steer away from a linguistic or a text-based approach in order to prioritise the needs of the reader. The question, however, is whether revisers in literary translation processes do follow the suggested approach and prioritise the needs of the target readers. An empirical analysis of the metatextual discourse among the agents involved in three different literary translation processes seeks to answer this question. During the course of this analysis, a second question presents itself, namely whether self-revision and other-revision (Mossop 2010:167, 174) should be discerned as two distinct types of revision or whether this distinction could be refined. The results of the subsequent analysis give rise to the presumption that such a binary projection of the act of revision can be contested. It is instead suggested that revision can be plotted on a continuum, with self-revision by the translator as the one end and revision by others as the other end. The analysis of three Afrikaans novels translated into English by the same award-winning translator suggests that self-revision by the translator may find itself moving away from true self-revision (a process that is not influenced by feedback from agents other than the translator) initially to a second phase of self-revision that is shaped by revision by others (e.g. the author, reviser and editor).
This paper presents a study of the process of the professional revisions performed on three works of fiction translated from Afrikaans into English in a fairly large book production company in South Africa that employs freelance translators, revisers1 and editors.2
The study aims to shed some light on the focus of the loyalty3 of the literary reviser - does his or her loyalty during the revision of the draft lie with the source text author, with the source text, with the target text or with the target text reader? Such an investigation would address the question of how revisers seek to solve the problem of what Mossop (2010:112) calls a conflict of interests, goals and needs (thus implying different loyalties). Do the revisers perhaps favour the future readers of the text, while the translator focuses on accuracy, correct and idiomatic language and the client's (publisher's or author's) instructions, as suggested by Mossop (2010:112-113), as one way of dealing with the problem of conflicting interests?
An empirical analysis of the documentation exchanged among the agents involved in three different literary translation projects seeks to answer this question. Specifically, the revisions of three Afrikaans novels that had been translated into English by the same award-winning translator were analysed in the light of Buzelin's (2007, 2011 in Scocchera 2016) view that translation and revision are mainly human activities which are best investigated by eliciting data directly from its agents and in real-life contexts.
An important aspect of the text-production process addressed by Mossop (2010:21, 112) is the fact that the needs of the different parties involved in the process might be in conflict. In a real-life situation, an author might insist that foreign terms and references be retained in a translated text, while the translator and the reviser might be of the opinion that these might alienate the target readers. For Mossop, the solution lies in a balancing of interests of the respective parties making an input into the translation process. These parties, for instance, may be the author of the source text or the publisher and the revisers of the particular translation.
Mossop (2010:17) makes it clear that revision relies on two functions, namely that of the so-called gatekeeper and the language therapist. The gatekeeper function aims at correcting the text and bringing it into line with pre-existing rules (e.g. the rules of the language or the house style of the publisher). The language therapist effects those changes that can be deemed not absolutely necessary; rather, they are the changes that assist the reader in his or her journey through the text. Words that seem too foreign might be substituted with more indigenous terms, and complex sentences might be simplified. These changes are not dictated by any specific manual, as might happen during gatekeeping, but the editor or reviser will anticipate the needs of the readers and adjust the text in order to be more accessible for them.
The problem of conflicting interests, according to Mossop (2010:112-113), can be solved4 by the translator and reviser adopting different stances. The translator will try to find a balance between the author and the reader or between a retrospective and prospective orientation (thereby addressing what Mossop (2010:112) calls the "central problem of translation"). While the translator should try to find a balance between these two opposing demands, Mossop suggests that the reviser should adopt a different approach. Instead of simply acting as a second translator, he or she shifts to another position in the social network that is being constructed, namely one where he or she leans towards the needs of the readers and tries to see the text from their point of view. Mossop (2010:113) states, "[T]he reviser tries to meet the needs of readers always, and the needs of others if possible" (although who these "others" are is never clarified). By shifting his or her loyalty to the readers, Mossop contends, a balance between the interests of author and reader can be achieved. Eventually, Mossop's assumed model in which the translator is traditionally more focused on gatekeeper tasks, while the reviser takes on the role of language therapist, seems to propose a certain binarity regarding the tasks of translation and revision.
This study was prompted by the question of whether such a finely coordinated balance is indeed achieved during the translation and revision of actual texts. Do actual translation and revision processes follow a route that is shaped by a consciously decided sequence of loyalties, as proposed by Mossop (2010)? Or is it possible that such a sequence is not recognised in actual processes, as might be suggested by Mossop's (2014) omission of his previous proposition?
The current study therefore set out to investigate the loyalties of the different agents in three different translation production processes that were undertaken and completed by a South African publishing house. In all the cases, a work of fiction was translated and revised through the participation of various agents. In this study, these agents are categorised according to the terms used by the publishing house, namely 'author', 'translator', 'reviser', 'editor', 'compiler' and 'proofreader'. However, all activities of these agents dealing with the draft translation in order to produce a better quality target text are referred to as 'revision'.
The nature of the texts under investigation has, however, given rise to questions about the influence of genre on the balancing act described by Mossop. In an informative text such as a brochure on a health issue for a mass readership, it makes perfect sense that the interests of the client and reader are balanced. But what about the case of literary texts, in which the author sometimes deliberately strives to perplex his or her readers? Will the needs of the readers then be interpreted as having the perplexing sections explained to them? Or are their needs specifically to be challenged by the text, meaning that explicitation by for example the reviser might actually not take place in favour of their needs?
Following the approach adopted by Munday (2012) in his case studies of three literary translation and/or revision processes, this study utilised archival material in order to study three different sets of agents involved in the translation process. (According to Munday (2012:104), archival documents have been underutilised in translation studies, even though they hold the possibility of providing detailed retrospective insight into the decision-making processes involved in translation and revision.) Specifically, the e-mail correspondence among the agents involved in the translation and revision of three Afrikaans works of fiction5 was studied in order to answer the question regarding the loyalty of the different agents. The only constant factor across these processes is the translator, who was responsible for all three translations.
The first text studied is the award-winning Afrikaans novel Niggie by Ingrid Winterbach (2002), translated into English by Elsa Silke as To hell with Cronjé (2007, 2010). Set against the backdrop of the South African War, the novel deals with the traumatic and sometimes bizarre experiences of two scientists towards the end of the war. The source text was awarded the prestigious Hertzog Prize for literature in 2004 and occupies a prominent position as a serious literary text in the Afrikaans literary polysystem. Equally, Winterbach can be seen as occupying a significant position in the highly canonised strata of the Afrikaans system, with both her and the source text being rich in symbolic capital (Spies 2013:191-192).
The second text is the award-winning Afrikaans youth novel Vaselinetjie (2004) by Anoeschka von Meck, translated by Elsa Silke as My name is Vaselinetjie (2009). It tells the coming-of-age story of an abandoned white baby girl who was raised by a coloured couple and, in a heartbreaking turn of events, was taken away by child welfare services and sent to a state orphanage at the age of 11. Vaselinetjie was awarded the prestigious MER Prize for youth literature as well as the Jan Rabie/Rapport Prize in 2005. The source text is canonised as a youth novel that has been prescribed at high school level but is also seen as a 'crossover' book that both teenagers and adults can relate to (Spies 2013:193-194).
Lastly, the article examines the revision processes of the volume of short stories published in English as In bushveld and desert: A game ranger's life (Bakkes 2008). For this volume, a number of stories from a novel and three volumes of short stories by Christiaan Bakkes (2004, 2006, 2007), who is well known as a seasoned traveller and game ranger in Africa, were selected by the publisher and translated by Elsa Silke. Bakkes, not having won any literary prizes, does not enjoy the same status in the Afrikaans literary system as, for example, Winterbach. The target readers of In bushveld and desert are people who enjoy well-written stories about Africa and nature, and especially tourists in Southern Africa. (Spies 2013:195-196).
The following sets of comments or notes (in the form of e-mail correspondence) by the various agents all working as revisers6 on the drafts were obtained for the three texts that were translated:
It is not clear whether the different agents involved in the three translations were provided with a brief that set out their roles and responsibilities.
Each individual comment/note was tagged (e.g. M1), coded according to six categories representing the six possible loyalties of the agents that emerged from the comments. Totals for the six categories were calculated - for the individual texts and for all three texts collectively.
The theoretical basis for these six categories can be traced back to Thaon and Horguelin's (1980) revision guide (in Shih 2006:297-298), which distinguishes five categories on which a reviser can base his or her checking of the translation, while the adoption of such a category as a norm during revision would also give an indication of priority or loyalty. The following five categories make up Thaon and Horguelin's guide:
1. Accuracy, which indicates semantic accuracy and includes detecting mistranslation, incoherence, omissions, use of imprecise language and failure to render the nuances contained in the source text. (The use of this category as a norm during revision would therefore imply loyalty to the source text.)
2. Correct usage, which includes syntax, grammar, barbarisms as well as typographical errors, for example spelling and punctuation. (The use of this category as a norm during revision would therefore imply loyalty to the target language.)
3. Transparency, which means that the translation must read like an original, being idiomatic, clear, concise, cohesive and free from repetitions. (The use of this category as a norm during revision would therefore imply loyalty to the target language or the target text.)
4. Tone, which means that the same levels of diction must be maintained, such as formality or even humour. (The use of this category as a norm during revision would therefore imply loyalty to the source text.)
5. Audience appropriateness, which indicates consideration of cultural content with regard to the target audience. (The use of this category as a norm during revision would therefore imply loyalty to the target audience or the reader.)
These categories mentioned by Thaon and Horguelin (in Shih 2006) are also reflected in the 12 revision parameters listed by Mossop (2010:125), which are grouped together in four categories:
3. Language issues, which would on a first level imply that the target language is prioritised but on a second level also the target readers - with reference to tailoring, meaning that the language should be "suited to the users of the translation and the use they will make of it".
4. Presentation issues, which would imply that both the target language and target text are prioritised.
Drawing on these two revision checklists, the categories target language, source text, target text and target text reader were established as possible priorities during revision. The category of author was added based on Hatim and Mason's (1990:16) distinction between author-centred, text-centred and reader-centred translation. Like Mossop, Hatim and Mason (1990:17) see translation as involving a conflict of interests, but instead of Mossop's suggestion to shift loyalties during the subsequent phases of translation and revision, they take the role of genre into account when explaining how this conflict might be handled in practice. Author-centred translation is often found in the case of literary translations when translators base their translation choices on the symbolic capital of the source text author. In the case of legal contracts, however, the source text author is of no importance but the source text itself needs to be replicated as closely as possible. In this case, a text-centred approach would apply. In the case of persuasive texts such as advertisements, neither source text author nor source text as such is important. During this translation process, the target text needs to communicate with the reader and therefore the translator would use a reader-centred approach (Hatim and Mason 1990:16-17).
Personal preference as a sixth category was added after an initial coding phase when it became apparent that certain choices were not made on the basis of loyalty to any of these factors but were based solely on personal preference (e.g. when an agent says, "I feel that this should be ...").
The coding was undertaken twice. After the first round, the categories were adjusted to include the sixth category that had emerged during the coding process. The second round of coding was undertaken by a different researcher, and the results were checked in a last round by the authors.
The results are presented in Table 4 in a quantified form as the number of comments expressing different priorities. These results were used in an inferential analysis to reveal possible significant and nonsignificant differences among the six factors (see Figure 1).
Inferential statistics show that the agents are loyal to the target text language, with only the mean for loyalty to the language being significantly different from the means for the other five factors (Figure 1, Table 5 and Table 6).
Overall, 46% of the comments revealed loyalty to the language. This preference is also reflected in the rather high scores for target language in Text 1 (57.4%) as well as in Text 3 (63%). The overall average of 46% is a consequence of the lower percentage for Text 2 (20.8%), where loyalty to the source text is dominant among the agents. As set out in the methodology section, loyalty to the target language would imply that an agent is concerned with matters such as correct usage of syntax, grammar, spelling and punctuation. Meanwhile, the translated product should read like an original text, meaning that the idiomaticity of the target language is an important norm. As the inferential statistics show, loyalty to the target language is the only factor that differs significantly from the other five factors, meaning that for the three processes studied, language issues received the most attention from the agents.
Loyalty to the source text itself appears in the second place with an overall percentage of 17.3%, which does not differ significantly from the other factors, excluding target language (refer to Figure 1). The percentages for Text 1 (13.6%) and Text 3 (11%) are lower than this average, while the score for Text 2 is higher (26.5%). Loyalty to the target text features in the third place, with an overall score of 12.2%, which is not significantly different from the other factors, excluding target language. For this factor, the highest score was again obtained for Text 2 (18%), while Text 1 came second (14.2%) and Text 3 third (6%). From this, it seems as if the scores for Text 2 for these two factors fall out of range, being higher than average, suggesting that loyalty to the source and target texts may have played a larger role than in the case of the other two texts.
Overall, the scores for loyalty to the author (8.4%), reader (8.1%) and personal preference (8%) are all low and inferential statistics again do not show significant differences. Only the results for Text 2 might be seen as slightly out of the range, with 12.4% for loyalty to the author and 16.3% for loyalty to the readers.
Among the agents involved in the production process of Niggie/To hell with Cronjé, the editor (70%), the translator during her revision of the author's revised version (48.5%) and the author (33.3%) all give preference to language matters. The translator, in her initial translation notes, gives preference to the source text (45.4%), but language matters are not neglected, with 36.4% of her comments dealing with them. The reviser, however, seems to be specifically loyal to the target text (40%), while language matters in this case receive less attention (26.7%).
The editor's notes (J5) that were produced towards the end of the production process clearly indicate a strong focus on correct usage as well as idiom. Typical comments by the editor include the following:
J5.4 Off-saddle: I know this is a perfectly correct translation, and there is such a thing as off saddling, but I don't think it's generally used in English. I think it's more common to talk about dismounting. [Idiom]
J5.5 Like and As: I have always understood that like is used when comparing nouns (one thing is like another), and that when it is verbs, the doing of things, that are being compared, one uses as. So, on p. 8, and again on p. 21 Like every other evening should be As on every other evening. p. 30 sleep as never before, also pp. 100, 128,190, and 194. But like is creeping in more and more frequently, and seems to be becoming common usage. I notice it all the time, and it jars, but I am probably just a nit-picking old fuddy-duddy. [Language usage]
J5.17 Large of stature: stature means height. So, either tall of stature, or of large build. Pleasure(s) of the senses: there is surely more than one type of sensual pleasure? (Nit-picking again.) [Language usage and grammar]
The editor also made notes that reflect loyalty to the stylistic feel of the target text, for example when she comments on the use of the English versus the Afrikaans word although she finds the English word perfectly acceptable:
J5.7 Minister/predikant: For what it's worth, I quite like predikant, which sort of adds to the flavour, but there is nothing wrong with minister. [Target text]
However, she also reveals her knowledge of the source text and its intertextual echoes when she suggests a change that would retain the rhythm and sound of the intertext that is invoked:
J5.15 Carry me back to the old Transvaal: Bring is the literal translation, and it scans better, and fits in with the tune for anyone who knows the song. [Source and target texts]
The translator's comments made during her revision of the author's revised version (J4), before the draft was sent to the editor, also show that language matters are emphasised during this phase. Idiom receives special attention, together with grammar, as the following typical comments in this section show: