Towards a Translation Array: Digitally Exploring Clouds

Crowds of Translations

Tom Cheesman

Swansea University College of Arts and Humanities Department of Languages, Translation and Media

Research Seminar 2011-12 – March 6, 2012

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‘Version Variation Visualisation’www.delightedbeauty.org

Phase 1 (Feb-July 2011) Supported by Swansea U, College of Arts and Humanities, Research Innovation Fund

Co-Investigators David M. Berry, Robert S. Laramee, Andrew J. Rothwell Research Assistants Alison Ehrmann, Zhao GengDesign consultant Stephan Thiel

Phase 2 (Feb-Sept 2012): “Translation Arrays” Supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council, Digital Transformations Theme,

Research Development Fund Co-Investigators Robert S. Laramee, Jonathan Hope (Strathclyde)Research Assistant Kevin Flanagan Design consultant Stephan Thiel

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Re-translations

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Caroline Bergvall: ‘VIA (48 Dante Variations)’ (2000 / 2004 / 2005)

Variants:

http://www.carolinebergvall.com/projects-sound.php

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Bergvall/Rockdrill-8/Bergvall-Caroline_06_Via_Via_Rockdrill-8_2005.mp3

http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Bergvall/Bergvall-Caroline-Via-2004.mp3

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“In discarding chronological sequencing in favour of alphabetization, Bergvall carefully avoids any false sense of teleology toward some final, perfected English version of Dante’s tercet, instead using paratactic form to emphasize the historical and contextual relativity of translation … [E]ach translation is an actualization of a particular point on a virtual line of continuous variation that passes through all possible instantiations of Dante’s lines. Indeed, from this perspective, Dante’s “original” can no longer be privileged as the basal statement which then undergoes various subtle nuances in meaning as it is diversely translated within different historical contexts. Rather, it occupies a certain point on that virtual line of semantic values, a line that includes all of its various English translations as well.”

Jared Wells, ‘Caroline Bergvall’s Deleuzian Stuttering’ (blog, 14 Dec 2010)

http://sprattsmedium.blogspot.com/2010/12/caroline-bergvalls-deleuzian-stuttering.html

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“The translations themselves thus find themselves 'out of joint‘. However correct and legitimate they may be and whatever right one may acknowledge them to have, they are all disadjusted, since unjust in the gap [l’écart] that affects them: within them, for sure, as their meaning remains necessarily equivocal, then in their relation to one another and thus in their multiplicity, finally or first of all in their irreducible inadequacy to the other language and to the stroke of genius of the event that makes the law, to all the virtualities of the original. The excellence of the translation cannot help. Worse, and this is the whole drama, it can only aggravate or seal the inaccessibility of the other language. A few French examples from among the most remarkable, irreproachable, and interesting: […].”

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. adapted from Kamuf, 1994: 19

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Retranslating

Translating again Chain translating Back translating

SL ST(e1) → TL1:TT1

→ TT2 → TT2(e2) ↙ ↗ ↘

ST(e2) → ↓ TT3 ↗ ↓ ↘ ↗ ↓

→ TT4 → TL2:TT ST(e3) … … …

SLST → TT

(↘) ↙ SLTT

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“[…] 'active' [rather than 'passive'] retranslations” [not only reveal] “historical changes in the target culture” [they also] “yield insights into the nature and workings of translation itself, into its own special range of disturbances.”

Anthony Pym, Method in Translation History, 1998: 82-84

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Jan Willem Mathijssen, ‘The Breach and the Observance. Theatre Retranslation as a Strategy of Artistic Differentiation, with Special Reference to Retranslations of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1777-2001)’ (PhD, Utrecht, 2007, p.26) www.dehamlet.nl/the-breach-and-the-observance.htm __________________________________________________________________________________________

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Data visualisation for literary studies

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Feridun Zaimoglu and Günther Senkel, Nathan Messias (2006):Nathan’s sermon in a Wordle (from wordle.net – cf. IBM’s ManyEyes)

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Phrase Net: < ’s > in the Sonnets

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Graphs from Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005)Timelines showing production of differing literary genres etc

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Literary data visualisations

Franco Moretti (1998), Atlas of the European Novel(2005), Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History

Ben Fry (2009), ‘On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces’ at http://benfry.com/traces/

Stephan Thiel (2010), ‘Understanding Shakespeare: Towards a Visual Form for

Dramatic Texts and Language’at www.understanding-shakespeare.com

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Translation variation visualisation

Jan Rybicki (2003), ‘Original Characters’at http://www.cyf-kr.edu.pl/~strybick/original_characters.htm

(2006) ‘Burrowing into Translation: Character Idiolects in Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy and its Two English Translations’, Literary and Linguistic Computing 21 (1): 91-103

Rybicki applies stylistics analysis (computer stylometry, based on distributions of ‘stop words’) to differentiate between ‘idiolects’ in the speech of Polish and foreign characters in three love triangles in the three novels by Sienkiewicz; and then Rybicki applies the same method to two translations of the trilogy.

He finds that “patterns of difference and similarity are almost mysteriously preserved in the translations”, yet the translations flatten national differences, and introduce new ones: gender differences which are absent in the source.

Othello

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Crux: “delighted”

Puns: “virtue”, “delighted”, “far more”, “fair”, “black”

Joke ↔ Serious Insult ↔ Praise

Addressees? Overhearers?

Duke: status, character

Ideologies of state power, of gender, of race – on & off stage

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German versions currently in print

Wenn man die Tugend muß als schön erkennen, Dürft Ihr nicht häßlich Euren Eidam nennen. Baudissin 1832

Wenn zur Tugend die Freude an der Schönheit gehört, dann ist Euer Schwiegersohn eher schön [hell] als schwarz. Klose 1971

Wenn es der Tapferkeit nicht an froher Schönheit mangelt, ist Euer Schwiegersohn eher weiß als schwarz. Bolte/Hamblock 1976

wenn der Tugend nicht die lichte Schönheit fehlt, dann ist Euer Schwiegersohn viel eher hell als schwarz. Engler 1977

Wenn Ihr der Tugend nicht Schönheit absprechen wollt, Ist Euer Schwiegersohn nicht dunkel, sondern Gold! Fried 1970

Gäbs helle Haut für Edelmut als Preis, Dann wär Ihr Schwiegersohn statt schwarz reinweiß. Günther 1995

Solange männliche Tugend mehr zählt als Schönheitsfehler, kann man sagen, Ihr Schwiegersohn ist eher edel als schwarz. Zaimoglu/Senkel 2003

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Baudissin (1830s): If one must recognise virtue as beautiful / you may not call your son-

in-law ugly.

Klose (1970s): If joy in beauty belongs to virtue, then your son-in-law is beautiful [bright/light (hell)] rather than black.

Bolte/Hamblock (1970s): If courage does not lack happy beauty, your son-in-law is white rather than black.

Engler (1970s): If virtue does not lack bright-lit (licht) beauty, then your son-in-law is much more bright/light (hell) than black.

Fried (1970s): If you do not wish to deny beauty to virtue / your son-in-law is not dark but gold!

Günther (1990s): If bright/light (hell) skin were a prize for noble-mindedness / then your son-in-law would be pure white instead of black.

Zaimoglu/Senkel (2000s): So long as male virtue counts more than blemishes [lit.: beauty-failings/-lacks], one can say your son-in-law is more noble than black.

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Modern Englishes

If valour is the measure of true beauty, your son-in-law is fairer than he’s black. Shakespeare Made Easy. Othello, Alan Durband, 1989

If goodness is beautiful, your son-in-law is beautiful, not black.No Fear Shakespeare. Othello, John Crowther, 2003

If virtue is missing delightful beauty, / Your son-in-law is far more just than black. Othello. Side by Side, James Scott, 2005

A gloss

[…] your son-in-law’s virtues are so fine that they completely overwhelm any qualms you may have at his Negro race. Othello, ed. C.W.R.D. Moseley , 1974

A rewriting “If virtue’s qualities are always rare / Your son-in-law is far more black than fair.”Bit clumsy. What if I change “fair “ to “white“? Um ... what about: “If virtue lack no beauties that delight / Your son-in-law is far more black than white.”Better: “white“ has fewer positive connotations than “fair“. Needs more work, though. Certainly needs more work. [...] John Eppel, 'Orthello', in Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe, ed. Irene Staunton, Harare: Weaver Press, 2005

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(2011), ‘Thirty Times More Fair Than Black: Shakespeare Retranslation as

Political Restatement’, Angermion: Yearbook fur Anglo-German Literary Criticism, 4: 1-51.

(2012) (forthcoming), ’"Far More Fair Than Black”: Mutations of a Difficult Couplet’. In Smith, B. and Rowe, K. (eds), Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopaedia, vol.2: The World’s Shakespeare. Cambridge UP.

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Crowd-sourcing

www.delightedbeauty.org

• Translations in all languages + metadata + back-translations in English + users’ comments/debates

• See esp.: Polish, Persian, German

• VVV project outputs

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22 French versions supplied by Matthias Zach, 2010

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Eddy and Viv

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Statistical analysis of translation variation: ‘Eddy’ and ‘Viv’

‘Eddy’ is a measure of the lexical distinctiveness of a translation text (or segment of it) relative to all comparable texts (or segments) in the same target language.

Eddy is defined as ΣD/tf(w1,d … wN,d)

where: each translation text/segment is a document, d, containing N words (i.e. from word 1 to word N, or: w1,d … wN,d); the corpus of all comparable ds contains D documents; and term frequency, tf, is the number of times a word occurs in the corpus.

The algorithm

1. The documents are aggregated into a corpus.2. Term frequencies are calculated for every word in the corpus.

3. For every word, tf is divided into D. (A common word acquires a low numerical value; a unique word has the highest value.)

4. D/tf totals for all words in each separate document (i.e. “w1,d … wN,d”), are added together (Σ = sum of). Each total is the Eddy result for that document.

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Eddy results (rounded): 80–335, measuring distinctiveness Text-types: S = Study edition, R = Reading edition, T = Theatre script

80 Engler 1977 S: If virtue not lack bright-lit beauty, then your son-in-law is much more bright than black. 80 Wieland 1766 S: If virtue is the most-bright-shining beauty, then your daughter’s husband is more white than black. 80 Gundolf 1909 R: If virtue not lack charm and beauty / your son-in-law is less black than bright-lit. 80 Bodenstedt 1867 R: If virtue does not lack charm and beauty, / your son-in-law is beautiful and lovable. […] […] 240 Engel 1939 T: If one speaks of virtue as of a light, / your son-in-law seems not so dark to me. 245 Baudissin 1832 R: If one must recognise virtue as beautiful, / you may not call your son-in-law ugly. 245 Zeynek 1945 T: If manly courage is not without charm and radiance/glory / then he is, even if black, highly estimable. 255 Zaimoglu /Senkel 2003 T: So long as male virtue counts more than blemishes, one can say your son-in-law is more noble than black. 270 Gildemeister R 1871: Your son-in-law – if virtue makes [people] lovely – / resembles more the bright day than black night. 280 Günther 1995 R: If bright/light skin were a prize for noble-mindedness, / then your son-in-law would be pure white instead of black. 290 Laube 1979 T: If virtue is beautiful, you now have as your reward / a black but beautiful son-in-law. 290 Rothe R 1956: If people’s inward appearance alone [were all that] counted, / we would be darker than Othello. 305 Schröder R 1962: Where so much courage resides with so much zeal, / your son-in-law appears less black than blond. 335 Motschach 1992 T: If outward appearance were always the prize for [or: price of] inner values / many a white man would appear black, many a black man white. (NB These Eddy results are for 35 German translations, not for the back-translations !)

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Sets of Eddy results for different sample segments show limited similarity

Ranges and distributions are significantly different

Sample A: the Duke’s “delighted beauty” couplet: Eddy range 80-335, mean 182

Sample B: the first sentence in Othello’s great speech to the senate: Eddy range 16-310, mean 144

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‘Viv’ (Variant Intensity in Variation) measures the degree to which a source text (or segment) is associated with variation among its translations

Provisional Viv formula:

The Viv of a (segment of a) source text = the mean ( ) of the associated Eddy results (i.e. the sum of results, divided by the number of results), divided by SN – i.e. the number of words in the source text (segment).

This is a provisional, simple formula. Further experiments will discover how Viv can be weighted to reflect the ranges and distributions of Eddy results.

Note that Viv is a value associated with the source segment and all the words in that segment.

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Viv plotting

For the Duke’s ‘delighted beauty’ couplet (in 35 differing German translations), Viv = 13

For the first sentence in Othello’s great speech to the senate (in 32 differing German translations), Viv = 5.3

By plotting Viv across all segments of an entire source text, we can create a new way of reading it – as refracted through multiple translators’ work.

Readers don’t even need to understand the translating language(s) – (but they might feel encouraged to try to learn)

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Translation Array design

On the following slides: Mock-ups by Tom Cheesman and Stephan Thielin:TC and the VVV Team, ‘Translation Sorting: Eddy and Viv in

Translation Arrays’ (draft paper, 2011, attached to www.delightedbeauty.org, and under consideration for the conference volume Un/Translatables)

and included in the application to AHRC

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SHAKESPEARE FOUND IN TRANSLATION

http://globetoglobe.shakespearesglobe.com/home-shuffler

http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/education/events/lectures-seminars/translation-lectures

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New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare(inaug. Horace Howard Furness, 1860s): Othello, 1886

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