Mathematics of Translation: Encounters with Literature’s Excess Interpretive Potential

ABSTRACT

This article considers literary translators’ use of mathematical imagery to reject notions of discrete language systems in favour of a proliferative view of language variety. Drawing on research by Michael Cronin, Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour and Clive Scott, the discussion centres on how the active process of translation discloses language’s endless meaning-making potential; and, in turn, how this shapes the translator’s autobiographical encounter with the complexity and ambiguity of how they relate to the world around them. To examine how this plays out in practice, particular focus is given to how this encounter is presented in life writing by: (a) self-translators, such as Ilan Stavans, Julien/an Green, and Ariel Dorfman; and (b) translators of other authors’ work, including Jennifer Croft and Kate Briggs. With reference to these case studies, the translator’s task of reformulating an irreducibly plural source text as a finite target text is seen through the lens of mathematicians’ efforts to represent the fractal heterogeneity of the natural world through neat models and formulas. In considering how translators present the value of their practice, the following discussion explores why translation is frequently championed by those who wish to adopt a thorough yet open-minded approach to literary study.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• self-translation
• lifewriting
• multilingualism

According to Clare Cavanaugh, poetry resembles literary translation in representing, ‘a perfect embodiment or enactment of the individual’s ceaselessly renewed, joyous struggle to come to terms with a world that always lies slightly beyond his or her reach’ (2013, 242). This article proposes that, not only does the ‘joyous struggle’ of poetry shed light on writer-translators’ view of their task, so does that of mathematical enquiry—as, in striving to explain the universe’s rough complexity through neat models and formulas, the mathematician resembles the translator who attempts to capture the source text’s infinite meaning-making potential in the target text. The following discussion examines the recurrence of mathematical imagery in life writing by writer-translators—a cluster of metaphors which, I contend, speaks to how the active process of (self-)translation shapes the practitioner’s perception of the world around them. Whilst attentive to the variety of emotions triggered by translation or writing in a second language, I propose that the tension such texts set up between quantifiable and unquantifiable images highlights the capacity of these practices, first, to heighten the authors’ appreciation of language’s limitless complexity; and, second, to build their confidence in putting forward their work, all whilst cognisant of this linguistic plurality and, by extension, other potential approaches to their task.

The first part of this study will explore the particular mathematics proposed by several translators and translation scholars—the principles of which, I contend, bear a closer resemblance to the messy multiplicity of fractal geometry than to the neat logic of arithmetic, algebra or Euclidean theorems. Then, to examine how these principles are applied to the individual’s practice, the remaining discussion will consider how a range of writer-translators have played with (un)countable imagery to articulate translation’s impact on their personal experience and artistic production. Specifically, I will focus on their accounts of personally rejecting notions of discrete language systems (ideas which have long been discounted in translation circles) as a formative moment on their journey towards embracing a proliferative view of language variety. In doing so, I not only mark a distinction between writer-translators’ autobiographical depiction of their practice and the latest debates in translation scholarship more broadly, but I also distinguish between the formers’ perspectives and those held (consciously or unconsciously) by the publishers and consumers of their work. It is important to acknowledge how translators’ unquantifiable conceptualisations of language run counter to the quantified regulations placed on the industry by outside actors (i.e. labelling texts according to fixed language categories, paying translators per-page or per-word rates).

At the same time, even if I recognise that such quantified expectations are more consistently placed on translators who work with other authors’ texts than on self-translators and/or multilingual writers (particularly those with widespread name recognition), I do not draw a sharp line between any of these practices. As Ellen Jones demonstrates in Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas (2022), translation and multilingual writing are not activities which can be easily separated or considered in isolation. Rather, they are all exercises which overflow categorical conceptions of language—affording unique opportunities for their practitioners to engage creatively with the limits and potential of literary expression. It is with this understanding that I will explore how translational mathematics is expressed by authors who shift along this spectrum of creative practice, whilst at the same time considering the unique restraints faced by those who translate the work of other authors.

Translation’s alternative mathematics

First, it bears acknowledging that, in focusing on mathematical imagery, I am adding onto an already substantial pile of studies centred around a translation metaphor. Indeed, conceiving a fresh image to encapsulate the translation process has almost become a rite of passage in the field. Apart from proving that translators are masters of expressing ideas in other words, this pervasive habit demonstrates two things: first, when we reflect on translation, we cannot help but see its relevance to the wider world—how translation bleeds into our personal experiences and vice versa; and, second, when it comes to questions of language, definitive statements rarely reflect the messy realities encountered in practice. In an essay about his experience of writing in both French and English, translator and novelist Julien Green (spelled Julian Green in his English-language publications) argues that conclusions about language ‘which are reached by sheer willpower are seldom satisfactory and of much less interest than the questions which they purpose to solve. Uncertainty seems to be somehow nearer truth, in many cases, than categorical answers’ ([1985] 2004, 246). Green is certainly not alone amongst multilingual writers in avoiding generalised conclusions about language: for instance, in his seminal study on translation, After Babel, George Steiner contends that ‘general propositions about language can never be entirely validated. Their truth is a kind of momentary action, an assumption of equilibrium’; such that ‘[e]ach statement, if it is of any serious interest at all, will be another way of asking’ ([1975] 1998, 129). Metaphors—in their manner of approximating their referents without fully circumscribing their meaning—have become a popular tool for just this: for interrogating without seeking to define the nature of translation and how it affects one’s sense of being in the world. Tracking the recurrence of mathematical metaphors in translators’ life writing can therefore help to identify common trends in how these authors conceptualise their practice’s influence on their manner of relating to literature and their surroundings.

Whilst much of a metaphor’s value derives from its slightly-off relationship to the referent, it still bears clarifying what sort of functions enter into the mathematics presented in diverse writings on translation. When comparing texts written by translators, one common denominator which emerges is a rejection of any notion of absolute equivalence between the source and target texts. As Anthony Pym observes in Translation and Text Transfer, the notion of ‘equivalence has become unfashionable’ amongst translators and translation scholars, ‘[a]s it becomes more and more obvious that equivalence is not a natural relation between systems’ ([2010] 2018, 48–49). However, he also notes that ‘writers on translation are becoming increasingly inclined to act as if there were no such thing as equivalence at all’—a swing of the pendulum which, in Pym’s view, amounts to ‘throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath-water’ (49). This is because, he argues, translators still create a sort of equivalence for the audience, in the sense that the translation is meant to stand in for the source text in a given context. Therefore, even if the translators are themselves aware that there is never an exact correspondence between source and target texts, the expectations (both commercial and ethical) resting on their work requires them to critically evaluate what sort of equivalence is produced through the dynamic processes of their task.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to emphasise that this study focuses on the translators’ view of their practice and how it has changed their own perception of language, literature and the world(s) they represent. If, then, notions of absolute equivalence have long been discounted in translation circles, it is interesting that many writer-translators still dedicate space in their life writing to countering such views. Considering that a significant portion of those who read these works are translators themselves (or are at least familiar with the practice), it is all the more curious that such authors feel the need to dig a marginally deeper grave for already unfashionable analogies. This insistence, I venture, is not usually born of a desire to debunk conceptualisations which may be held by some readers, but rather of a desire to recount their own formative experiences of rejecting such preconceptions. This toppling of translational equivalence is often presented as a significant moment on the author’s path to personal and artistic maturity—an experience which may very well resonate with readers who have reached similar conclusions.

With this in mind, it is also worth underlining that the proliferative view of language put forward by many writer-translators defies simplistic notions of equivalence in translation—not those of loss which may be encountered in the process. Many multilingual authors sense that translation has subtracted elements of their work or personal experiences. Eva Hoffman’s account of switching her primary language after the Second World War is entitled Lost in Translation (1989), and Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ article ‘Translation as an Arithmetic of Loss’ (2019) describes the complexities of writing in a language which her parents cannot read. In these works, the sense of gaps between source and target languages are an integral part of the author’s experience. Likewise, the life writing I reference in this study does not, on the whole, downplay such feelings that one’s language has been erased or appropriated; rather, these works challenge the idea that the layers of interpretive potential cached behind the language of the source text can be wholly grasped and transferred to the target text.

Indeed, whether the process feels like a loss or gain, writing on translation consistently emphasises that it overturns any notion of separable linguistic units to which one can apply simple formulas of substitution. As Lily Robert-Foley demonstrates in Money, Math, & Measure: Miscalculations in the Third Texte of Translation (2016), translated texts render meaningless any mathematical functions which require countable forms of input. In her discussion of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable/L’innommable, Robert-Foley questions the basic units on which a translational mathematics can or should be built. She asks, ‘[s]hould we count the words, or the pages, as translators themselves do, when they are tallying up their fee? Or could we count the meanings […]’ (9). To this list of impossible calculations, she adds the conundrum of counting languages themselves, noting:

The word “language” in English is among those that can be either countable or uncountable. Language may be taken in general as the totality of language, or the deep structure of language, or it may be taken as they, the languages of the world […] In translation then, the difference between countable and uncountable shatters apart like a broken vase. (10)

If the foundational units (words, meanings, languages) which would enter translational operations are not discrete (or even definable in some cases), then arithmetic or algebraic metaphors for translation will inevitably break down if taken too far.

This need for an alternative mathematics is confirmed by translators’ insistence that the solutions they reach are the products of a complex series of compromises and judgement calls. As Lydia Davis notes when discussing her translation of Madame Bovary, the translator must carry out operations on multiple levels—from choices of words and syntax to those of style and overall structure. As she explains:

The translated text should roughly add up to the original; it does not need to attempt equivalency at each point. The translation is like a problem in math—using different numbers, the answer must be the same, different numbers must add up to the same answer. If you can’t reproduce a pun here, maybe you can create one over here. If your description in this passage is less lyrical than the original, maybe in another passage it can be more so. (Davis 2021, 507)

As Davis herself admits, ‘solving for X’ is even more complex than this multilevel function suggests: as she notes, ‘translation is like a kind of mathematics: a solution can be arrived at, but there is no rule for how to arrive at solutions’ (508). To put this in algebraic terms, many approaches are valid and, because of this, there is no ‘order of operations’ to guide the translator to the right answer—contrary to the assumptions underlying many structuralist approaches to translation (Jakobson, Nida, Vinay, Darbelnet, Newmark, Catford).

As another layer of complexity, the equal sign between the source and target texts is unstable—and if the translator cannot assume two equivalent sides from the outset, then all the rules of algebra fly out the window. If language cannot be broken down into separable values like digits, then a sign of approximation (≈) is more appropriate than an equal sign (=) when carrying out translational mathematics. This change frees the translator to put forward an answer whilst aware that this ‘solution’ cannot fully account for all the source text’s possible meanings or the idiosyncrasies of language use. As an example of this in practice, Davis explains how she approaches the formal nature of French texts—a singular feature which, she argues, has no exact equivalent in English:

There is something about the formality of the French that I find compelling—or perhaps what I find compelling is that even if French is more formal because of having more limited resources (as Joyce would assert), or by tradition, or because of the strictures of the Académie française, its formality is part of its distinctive character, and I would be very hesitant to change that—even if an equivalent formality in English is not really equivalent, but actually more formal because we are, in our literary traditions, cumulatively less formal. (Davis 2021, 509)

When such cumulative effects of common usage and stylistic norms enter the picture, ‘balancing the equation’ becomes immensely complicated. The mental effort required to ensure an overall equivalence in the translated version is exhausting and, I posit, ultimately misplaced. By inserting the approximation sign (≈), the translator has the breadth to make a judgement call as to which solution amongst many possible ones is, in their opinion, most fitting.

Then, having ventured a solution, the translator must grapple with the fact that this answer is only ever conditional. If many solutions are possible, the translator can always ‘run the numbers’ again—re-evaluating the choices they have made at every step of the process. As Davis notes,

a translation, one worth taking trouble over, is always a work in progress: It can always be improved. The translator can always learn more that will make it better, or can always think of a better way to write a sentence. (2021, 523)

Whilst this may seem daunting to those who like definitive solutions, for many translators there is great satisfaction in working through the unsolvable problems before them. Translator Margaret Jull Costa explains that tricky translational mathematics require ‘the kind of nerdy fiddling that all translators spend hours over—and actually enjoy’ (2022, 281). Echoing this proud claim to ‘nerdiness’, Eliot Weinberger claims that translators are ‘the geeks of literature’ (2013, 25). Like mathematicians who become engrossed in tweaking a model representing a complex phenomenon, many translators delight in the seemingly endless trial and error involved in conveying content and form across languages. These ‘geeks’ embrace rather than cower away from the unending layers of complexity unfurled by the translation process.

If translators’ ‘nerdiness’ is fed by language’s idiosyncrasies, then it is not surprising that many have sought alternatives to outdated metaphors of fidelity or transfer operations to describe their practice. In casting these cliché images aside, they reject notions (all the more common in the age of machine translation) that solving for X is possible and, what is more, that it does not require a nerd to arrive at the correct answer (even if there is no absolute equivalence, algorithms can find a sensible solution for us, right?). As a counterpoint to such perspectives, one of the richest clusters of translation metaphors put forward in recent literature refers to the excess of meaning-making potential which overflows any fixed view of language differences. Translators and comparatists have employed terms like residue, remnant or remainder to touch upon this reality of that which cannot be contained by any one language, discourse or categorical delineation of meaning. Expressing this irreducible plurality in mathematical terms, the fractal metaphor has also gained popularity in recent years, notably in the work of translation scholar Michael Cronin. As first defined by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (1983), a fractal is a mathematical set that displays infinitely iterated patterns which are roughly self-similar at every scale of analysis. Each frame is a microcosm of the entire set, such that there is both similarity and differentiation in the pattern no matter how far one zooms in or zooms out. This means that fractals are impossible to measure, bound or describe in terms of Euclidean geometry. Such fractal patterns can be seen, for instance, in tree branches, snowflakes, sound waves, river networks and even the humble broccoli.

In his studies Across the Lines (2000) and Translation and Identity (2006), Cronin refers to such patterns of complexity in the natural world to conceptualise the complexity of multilingual and multicultural elements present within smaller scales of enquiry, such as a single passage or text. By grappling with the infinite heterogeneity to be unearthed within these smaller frames of study, his research challenges the rigid binaries of categorical thinking as viewed from the perspective of larger scales, such as that of an entire language or literary tradition. Thus, foregrounding differentiation within specificity becomes the focus of analysis, rather than drawing clear-cut differences between broader categories. In applying this approach to studies of language and culture, Cronin sidesteps simplistic either/or choices between categorical labels, offering sufficient space for plurality at multiple levels of discourse. In other words, zooming in becomes an entangling within and an expanding out. Thus, in lieu of Euclidean (i.e. common structuralist) understandings of translation which assume languages exist as definable systems, the fractal metaphor proposes that the practice’s complexity is akin to the natural world’s patterns of approximative iteration.

When reading a translator’s life writing, it is a safe bet that the author will recount formative experiences of confronting this ineffable remainder through their use of language, thus showcasing the practice’s unique training ground for handling ambiguity and alterity in others’ work—and, indeed, in their own self-expression, as they seek to make sense of their embeddedness as mutable subjects within plural linguistic environments. Just as any mathematics student comes to see that there are rarely black-and-white explanations of the world’s entropy and endless heterogeneity, the translator learns to reckon with the messy, indeterminable residue of meaning which surrounds any discourse. Of course, this encounter with the world’s immeasurable complexity is something everyone experiences to a certain degree as they mature in life. However, as evidenced in the life writing of multilingual authors, translation often catalyses the process—throwing its practitioners into the deep end of linguistic plurality from which they emerge with a greater awareness of that which escapes full articulation in any language.

This correlation is also borne out by cognitive research on multilingualism. In Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First” Immigration, Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour cites several studies of multilinguals’ cognitive functioning—concluding that bilingual authors display a heightened sensitivity to linguistic relativity and a greater ‘tolerance for ambiguity’ (1989, 102). Referencing research by Michel Paradis and Kim Kirsner, Beaujour also notes that multilinguals sense that their thoughts or emotions need to cross ‘a physical distance’ to find expression in any language (33). Moreover, she finds that those who translate are especially conscious of a substratum of meaning-making potential below the threshold of articulation. Even though they pull meaning from the invisible depths to the surface of the page as they translate, they must also wrestle with the fact that certain currents of potential meaning are never expressed. Bilingual authors therefore develop, according to Beaujour, a sense of a deeper ‘third tongue’ (1989, 55). For this reason, they ‘cannot coincide fully with either of their other languages […] Both languages and cultures are wholly theirs, but they do not belong wholly to either’ (55). Julien/an Green articulates this sense of dédoublement in his life and work when he writes: ‘[s]ans être étranger nulle part, partout je suis double’ ([1972] 2007, 323). Though he can employ the resources of both French and English with ease, he is also aware that neither language can fully convey his thoughts and experiences. Ingrid Rojas Contreras also points to this ambiguous third space inhabited by bilinguals:

There’s a quiet space between languages. There’s a lag between interpretation, a no-place where, as the mind conjures meaning in one tongue and finds the equivalent in a second tongue, a portal opens. There is no language here, only guttural emotion. Everything feels unnamed, and, therefore, a bit eternal. Meaning cannot be lost here, because it is all there is. I love language, but this is my favorite experience of meaning: where language is doubled, and also erased. (2019)

Similar to Green, Rojas Contreras experiences a simultaneous sense of dédoublement and incompleteness in the liminal space of multilingual expression. Defying the arithmetic, algebraic or Euclidean logic applicable to bounded units or systems, the linguistic resources available to multilinguals both overflow and escape their creative operations.

Echoing Beaujour and Rojas Contreras, literary scholar Clive Scott foregrounds translation’s capacity to call attention to the substratum of potential meanings below the threshold of expression. In his study Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology (2012b), he challenges the expectations of equivalence placed on literary translators—encouraging approaches which embrace the idiosyncratic, personal input which surfaces in the target text. The creative strategies he proposes derive from his conviction that standardised languages exist on a continuum, rather than as sharply differentiated systems. The plurality of possible meanings revealed by the translation process illustrates that, in his words, ‘the relationship between languages is not one of similarities and differences, which compel a jump between languages, but rather one of continuities and comparabilities, the relationship of the morph, of the glissando’ (62–63). In other words, the translator reconfigures the source text in their own context, drawing from the work’s substratum of meaning-making potential to produce a text which lies at a different point along the spectrum of language variety. Scott therefore contends that translation primes the practitioner to appreciate ‘the invisible [which] is the multilingual aura by which any text is surrounded and on to which it opens’ (56). The ‘discovery of the invisible of the ST [source text]’ which occurs during the translation process therefore ‘fosters a familiarity with the multiplicity and proliferation of language itself’, thus ‘sharpen[ing] linguistic hearing’ (Scott 2012a, 14). With their ‘ear’ for the unsaid, Scott argues, translators are more likely to view their work as a situated engagement with the plurality of language.

Another way of expressing this idea is to say that the presence of what remains unsaid haunts the translator’s task. In their sensitivity to the resonance of meaning surrounding any discourse, the translator is, according to Michael Emmerich, like ‘a ghost who haunts languages, cultures, and nations, existing in two worlds at once but belonging fully to neither’ (2013, 50). Committing words to paper whilst attuned to the shadows of other possible solutions, the translator is ‘neither entirely visible nor entirely invisible to those who stand in one world or the other, even in the finished form of her product, because she is in their world but not of it’ (50). Floating above and below the threshold of expression, the spectral translator ‘sees languages not as discrete, autonomous, unproblematically present unities, but as—what else?—ghostly signs or echoes of each other’ (50). As they perceive the excess interpretive potential which echoes in the margins of any text, translators are ghosts with good ears; and, to return to Scott’s terms, it is their acute ‘linguistic hearing’ which makes sense of a common trend amongst the multilingual authors and translators featured in Beaujour’s study. Over the course of their careers, their attention often shifted from the differences between their languages to the creative potential of their points of overlap—or, seen from a different perspective, the gaps which surround the source and target languages. As they gained experience in translating or switching languages, these authors came to appreciate that they create contextualised forms of equivalence for their readers, rather than discovering a pre-existing structure underlying discrete language systems. In other words, they recognised that languages do not operate separately, but rather in relation to a broader continuum of linguistic differentiation—evolving as more potential meanings push above the threshold of expression in a given text. Thus, many who had shut out one of their languages to reinvent themselves; or, alternatively, to keep memories or cultural traditions intact, came to embrace their multilingual resources as they matured in their craft. This trend extends far beyond the works featured in Beaujour’s study to an eclectic range of texts by writer-translators which, in many other respects, recount very different lives and experiences of multilingualism. Having discovered the creative fruit yielded by the cross-pollination of their languages, many authors recount how they have grown to appreciate in a new way the artistic value of translation and multilingual writing.

Thus, having set out basic principles of translation’s alternative mathematics, the following discussion will examine how their discovery and application is expressed in the life writing of: (a) self-translators; and (b) translators of others’ work. As a point of departure, I will consider Ilan Stavans’ observation that what one does with language either reinforces or transforms how one views it. For the self-translators, choosing which linguistic resources to employ when composing a self-narrative has a formative impact on how they relate language(s) to their personal experience. Then—assuming they are privileged to set the terms of their projects—how they choose to present texts written in different languages (i.e. separately, sequentially or in a bilingual format) can reinforce how they understand this relationship. In the texts of focus, such choices feed into the writer-translators’ appreciation of the fractal plurality of language and the value this brings to their lives and work. To be sure, those who translate other authors’ texts often lack the liberty to choose the text’s format or how much creative autonomy they can take in a project. That said, as Kate Briggs argues, the very process of rendering an author’s work in another language is transformative—giving one confidence to put forward a ‘solution’ without expecting to fully grasp and transfer the source text’s possible meanings to the target text. The remaining sections will consider life writing by these loosely defined groups of multilingual writers in turn.

Lesson 1: the sensibility of self-translation

Images of linguistic multiplicity—used as an intentional counterpoint to those of substitution—abound in the life writing of authors who self-translate. Emphasising what overflows notions of countable languages, a range of writer-translators describe significant experiences of learning to inhabit the spaces of fractal complexity in the intersections and interstices of their linguistic resources. First, I will discuss Stavans’ description of such lessons in terms of developing a ‘translingual sensibility’—a term he coins to emphasise how actively engaging with multilingual expression can impact one’s view of language difference. Then, I will examine how the cultivation of this ‘sensibility’ is described in the content and/or enacted in the form of life writing by two self-translators: whilst Ariel Dorfman recounts how he came to appreciate his multilingualism after long periods of trying to keep his (countable) languages separate, Julien/an Green capitalised on his bilingual background from an early age. Even if the latter often described French and English as discrete language systems or langues in his work, the bilingual format of his self-translations gestures toward the elements of his experience which cannot find full expression in either. Thus, Green and Dorfman discover and celebrate their ‘translingual sensibility’ through the process of self-translation—yet their journeys are marked by distinct views and uses of multilingual expression.

The title of Ilan Stavans’ autobiography On Borrowed Words (2001) suggests that the text explores the sense of give-and-take which marks the multilingual’s experience of language difference. Since instances of ‘borrowing’ assume a future repayment, one could assume that Stavans hopes to find an equilibrium in his use and appreciation of his languages (categorically understood) over time. That said, what he recounts is not a mission to find a sort of linguistic balance in his life or work, but rather a journey towards embracing the creative possibilities of multilingualism. In fact, Stavans initially planned for each of the autobiography’s chapters to be written in the language—Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew or English—which he most closely associated with the period of his life being narrated. After discussions with his publisher, however, he gave up this idea—agreeing to write the work in English, whilst insisting that given chapters retain the ‘accent’ of another language. For instance, he decided to use ‘a Yiddish cadence’ when describing in English his experiences at the ‘Yidishe Schule in Mexike’ where he studied as a child (2018, 6). Even if this approach was a compromise, the multilingual resources below the text’s threshold of expression still retain a spectral presence—pointing to his proliferative (multiplicative), rather than exchangeable (substitutive), perspective of language variety.

This embrace of multilingualism in Stavans’ formal strategies extends to the content of his autobiography: for instance, when he attends the official ceremony of receiving his US citizenship, he reflects on his path to appreciating the hybrid elements of his life and writing. Referencing Robert Frost’s famous claim that poetry is what gets lost in translation, Stavans insists on the value of what is discovered in the process:

Transplanting oneself in the soil of another tongue, finding some degree of comfort in a foreign language, I told myself, leads at first to a sense of deterioration rather than improvement, of loss rather than gain. One gets the impression of ceasing to be—in Spanish, the feeling of no estar del todo. The immigrant feels trapped in the space in between words and in the intricacies of the journey […] But sooner or later, loss is transformed into gain: the immigrant is born again—rejuvenated, enriched by the voyage. Robert Frost might have been right when he said that poetry is what gets lost in translation, but in my own view, the successful immigrant feels the fusion of tongues as an addition rather than a subtraction. His life is what gives poetry its meaning—the voyage in search of rebirth. (2001, 184)

Thus, Stavans finds in the process of switching languages a creative vitality which encounters the complex poetry of life. At the same time, he acknowledges that ‘obviously not everyone at the ceremony shared’ this feeling, and that many multilingual individuals’ sense of loss is never ‘transformed into gain’. As suggested by the accented English which Stavans intended for his text, what remains unsaid often haunts multilinguals as they speak in an acquired language. In Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ words, ‘[s]ometimes the cost of migration is not just what gets lost in translation, but all the things we wish to leave unsaid, the stories we wish never to find us again, lost in the valley that lies beyond language’ (2019). It bears reiterating that translation’s negative spaces and the sense of emptiness they engender are woven into the complex pattern of language use in the multilingual’s life and practice.

Whilst careful not to overlook instances of subtraction or appropriation central to other authors’ experiences, Stavans elaborates on how translation has enriched his own perspective of linguistic variety. Notably, he digs into the complicated relationship between language and perception over the course of an email conversation with Steven Kellman, published with the title ‘The Translingual Sensibility’ in Stavans’ essay collection On Self-Translation (2018). Referencing Kellman’s The Translingual Imagination (2000), this interchange centres around the question of whether multilingual writers have defining traits which set them apart from monolingual authors—a debate which inevitably leads to a discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Though a range of nuanced views coexist under this umbrella of linguistic determinism, the general argument is that one’s perception of the world is defined by the language(s) one speaks (Whorf 2012). In his study The Restless Ilan Stavans, Kellman posits that Stavans ‘adopt[s] an extreme form of linguistic determinism’, citing several clear-cut passages from his work (2019, 83). For instance, in the essay ‘On Self-Translation’, Stavans declares, ‘I firmly believe that how one perceives the world in any given moment depends on the language in which that moment is experienced’—a view mirrored in his plan to cast each chapter of On Borrowed Words through a different linguistic lens (2018, 3). Whilst he subscribes to linguistic determinism in theory, Stavans’ responses show a nuanced concession to Kellman’s point that ‘most linguists conclude that particular languages do not determine particular thoughts but incline us towards them’ (2019, 83). Betraying hints of this view, Stavans argues that, when it comes to appreciating the plurality of human discourse, it matters less how many (calculable) languages an individual speaks than the approach they take in wielding the (incalculable) linguistic resources at their disposal. That is, whilst Stavans leans quite strongly towards the view that one’s linguistic repertoire shapes perception, he also believes that how one uses these tools is a more determinative factor affecting whether one recognises and capitalises on language’s expressive possibilities.

This argument forms the crux of Stavans’ notion of a ‘translingual sensibility’—a term which tags onto Kellman’s work on translingualism his understanding of a particular ‘sensibility’ which is grounded in a ‘profound conviction that words are more than instruments to portray the universe. That they are universes in themselves. That words are interchangeable yet irreplaceable’ (204–205). Put differently, those with this disposition sense that translation (as an interchange) is possible, but that the source and target text do not relate to each other across a stable equal sign (as a substitution). In response, Kellman posits that ‘perhaps a genuinely translingual sensibility is one that does not just covet another language but that is permeated by an awareness of the relativity of languages’ (Stavans 2018, 206). In other words, those with a ‘translingual sensibility’ are those who recognise the incalculable meaning-making potential of literary discourse—taking a fractal, rather than a Euclidean view of language variety. Stavans then specifies that multilingualism and this sensibility are not automatically linked:

Being multilingual is simply a way to see the world, one allowing for a multifaceted perspective. In and of itself, that might give a person an advantage when it comes to communication. But talent isn’t about advantage; it’s about what each of us does with the deck of cards we have been handed. (202)

In Stavans’ view, having a broad range of linguistic resources is akin to possessing a wider lens for viewing the complexity of language; however, it does not wholly determine how individuals interact with what they see. It is how they decide to use language which either stirs or dampens their desire to explore and experiment with its immeasurable diversity. This recalls Beaujour’s observation that—whilst multilinguals are generally found to be more attuned to linguistic relativity—those who translate are especially sensitive to the aura of potential meanings surrounding any discourse. If, as Stavans argues, a translingual sensibility is built through what one does with language, then translation can be understood as both a sign and catalyst of this impulse to engage with language variety through one’s work.

Reinforcing this view in the essay ‘On Self-Translation’ from his collection of the same name (2018), Stavans attributes a newfound appreciation of his multilingualism to the processes of self-translating and reading how other translators have rendered his work in different languages. Such experiences have taught Stavans, in his words, ‘that I have many selves, and that I negotiate these selves every time I choose to express myself in Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, or English’ (10). Putting a personal spin on Derrida’s famous claim, ‘je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienne’ (1996, 13), Stavans concludes: ‘I exist in an echo chamber of self-translated voices, all of them my own’ (10). Thus, by examining his self-narrative through the lens of multiple, overlapping languages, Stavans comes to appreciate that translation transforms an individual’s perception of themselves in relation to their surroundings—allowing them to grapple with the mutability of their self-expression against an irreducibly plural background of linguistic differentiation.

Similar to Stavans’ On Borrowed Words, Ariel Dorfman’s self-translated autobiography Heading South, Looking North (1998)—or, in Spanish, Rumbo al Sur, Deseando el Norte ([1998] 2003)—witnesses the author’s journey towards recognising the tremendous strength his hybrid linguistic experience brings to his intellectual and personal life. Like Stavans, Dorfman has associated specific chapters of his life with a given language—particularly as he took the dramatic step of completely abandoning either Spanish or English at specific points in his childhood and young adulthood. When he was a young boy growing up in New York whilst his family was in exile from Argentina, Dorfman rejected his first name by birth, Vladimiro, and re-baptised himself ‘Edward’, an all-American boy who refused to speak in Spanish with his immediate family. This rejection of English came to an end when his family moved to Chile, whereupon the young adolescent felt that his reacquainted Spanish and English personas ‘inhabited two strictly different, segregated zones in [his] mind’; according to Dorfman, it was ‘as if there were two Edwards, one for each language, each incommunicado like a split personality, each trying to ignore the other, afraid of contamination’ (1998, 115).

This black-and-white distinction between two (countable) language-personas continued to shape Dorfman’s perception of language into his early adulthood when he decided to stop using English as a means of protesting the damaging effects of US political interference in Latin America. Dorfman explains the context surrounding his see-sawing between languages as follows: ‘this was the sixties of extreme nationalism, the all-or-nothing, the either-or sixties. It was not a time for shades of difference, for complexity, for soul-searching about the enigma of heterogeneous identity’ (1998, 220). Reflecting on this abandonment of English later in life, Dorfman explains that he was ‘not willing to be a young man in between, not knowing his own name, adrift in a world torn by the two Americas inside and outside him’; as, in his eyes, ‘the very act of comparing them would force [him] to accept that [he] was indeed irremediably dual, that there was a tainted middle ground that they both shared and from whence each language would examine and touch the other’ (221).

Dorfman would eventually join the company of the translators discussed thus far in coming to embrace the ‘contamination’ of hybrid language use and the productivity of the ‘tainted’ space overflowing the bounds of the languages he had once tried to quarantine. No longer did he see his languages as discrete systems; rather, he came to see his linguistic repertoire as a fractal-like web of entangled resources—forever expanding as he drew on both Spanish and English in his writing and daily interactions. He would come to appreciate his multilingualism all the more as he saw how his encounters with language mirrored the hybrid experience of Latin American communities as a whole. As Dorfman explains this parallel,

like me, Latin America was an enigma, a vibrant, sprawling, messy reality which did not itself know what it was or where it was going, entangled in the process of discovering where it had been, a continent that was more a project than an object … . (1998, 161)

Thus, he comes to recognise that his complex relationship to language has deeply enriched his artistic production and political mission—not least because, as he explains, it has allowed him ‘to exchange memories’ with exiles or expatriates in the countries he has lived (269). Once Dorfman realises the potential of forging these connections, he decides, in his words, to ‘set out on the road to this hybrid mongrel of language’ who avails himself of the full range of his multilingual repertoire (269).

True to this pledge, his long and prolific career has yielded a diverse range of fiction and non-fiction written in Spanish, English and a hybrid mixture of the two—a portion of which he has translated himself or in collaboration with others. Whilst the English and Spanish counterparts of his self-translated autobiography were published separately, Dorfman clearly intended for each to carry echoes of the other. For instance, in both versions, he incorporates words and phrases in the other language. In the English version, you can find passages such as: ‘ …  Martí had thought of Cuba as part of nuestra América, our America, as opposed to their America’ (1998, 152); ‘[s]he was worried (and always was and still is) that I was not ubicado—that I was unable to place myself … (229)’. Similar phrasing can be found in the Spanish version: ‘[e]stamos en América, damn it’ (400); ‘[y] los United States, seguían allá, dentro del inglés, detrás del inglés, listo a encantarme, charm me’ ([1998] 2003, 89). Though these interjections are always italicised and almost always glossed, they both express and reinforce Dorfman’s eventual embrace of multilingual expression. In choosing such hybrid forms to recount his experiences, he begins to reap the creative excess produced by multiplying the fractal strands of his multilingual resources—rather than continuing to oscillate between countable linguistic categories he believed could be substituted at will.

Unlike Dorfman or Stavans, Julien/an Green would have had a hard time segmenting his early life into periods associated with one language. Though most of his life was lived in France (with brief stints in the US during his university years and the Second World War), Green’s life was always marked by multilingualism—a fact which he embraced from an early age. Whilst he grew up in Paris, his US-born parents spoke English at home, and he retained an emotional connection to his full bilingual repertoire throughout his life. Though Green wrote the vast majority of his fiction in French, he composed essays, works of short fiction and an autobiography entitled Memories of Happy Days (1942) in English. Proof of his multilingual dexterity, he also translated stories by Lord Dunsany into French early in his career and poetry by Charles Péguy into English during the Second World War. Additionally, he self-translated Memories of Happy Days (published as Souvenirs des jours heureux) and a sizable portion of his essays (from English to French and from French to English) over the course of his long career. Whilst the English and French autobiographies were published separately (and several decades apart), the self-translated counterparts of his essays were published in bilingual collections towards the end of Green’s life. As such, the versions of his autobiography, like Dorfman’s, can be read separately, whereas the essay counterparts beg to be considered together—as one bilingual work. Just as Green describes his experience of being an ‘étranger’ nowhere yet doubled everywhere, the form of his essays point to the fractal proliferation of meaning which overflows the neat contours of bounded languages.

In the collections Le langage et son double ([1985] 2004) and L’homme et son ombre (1991), Green’s self-translated essays are printed on facing pages—a layout which foregrounds the excess interpretative potential of the text(s), perhaps paradoxically, through the gaps between the source and target versions. In Beaujour and Scott’s terms, the unequal blocks of empty space between Green’s counterparts visibly manifest the substratum of possible meanings below the threshold of articulated language. Curiously, many types of variance are not weighted towards either language version—though, on the whole, Green tends to include more evocative images in his French counterparts. To give one example, in the French version of an essay on Paris, he describes ‘un petit groupe de personnes attendant l’omnibus sous les marronniers du boulevard, ou bien deux ou trois réverbères qui se dressent dans un ciel pur et glacial de février’ (Green 1991, 183). In the English version, however, he does not assume that the audience is familiar with the specific image of chestnut trees or the particular chill and tint of the Parisian sky in February; therefore, he paints a simpler picture of ‘just a few people waiting for a bus in the shade of a tree, or three or four lamp-post [sic] standing starkly against a bare sky’ (182). In this case (as in many others across the collections), the gaps cannot be entirely explained by the expansion which usually occurs when translating from English into French. Rather, the numerous additions, excisions and alterations across the versions testify to the distinct freedoms and limits of expression afforded by Green’s linguistic resources—as well as the expected responses of his English- and French-speaking readers.

Indeed, whether Green elaborates more on a given topic in the English or French version could depend on numerous factors: the thoughts or memory might surface more readily in one language; the subject might be of greater perceived interest to either his Francophone or Anglophone readers; or, quite simply, the counterparts could be intended for different uses. In many cases, one version was written years before the other—or one was intended to be given as a lecture or published, whereas the other was not destined for a public audience at the time of its composition. Regardless of the reasons behind the versions’ inconsistencies, it is clear that the source and target texts complement but can never substitute each other. As such, a running tally of potential meanings between counterparts cannot be balanced at any scale of analysis. Giving form to what Scott identifies as the ‘multilingual aura’ surrounding any discourse, the gaps between counterparts form the background against which the fractal forms of Green’s bilingual oeuvre make sense. His life writing therefore evidences that a full picture of what happens in the translation process must include the negative space against which the complex patterns of the source and target texts surge forth.

For this reason, the bilingual format of Green’s self-translated essays reflects and, I contend, strengthens his awareness of the creative value of his bilingual resources—an appreciation which, in turn, is nuanced by his recognition that neither French nor English can fully convey his thoughts and experiences. As the product of a similar yet distinct perspective on multilingualism, the haunting of other languages behind the English text of On Borrowed Words speaks to Stavans’ eventual embrace of the self-translated voices which echo in the margins of his self-narrative. Whilst Dorfman’s path of language use has had more dramatic twists and turns than that of either Stavans or Green, his switchback journey of exclusively using English or Spanish has also opened onto an expansive horizon of linguistic plurality. Whilst Dorfman did not publish his life writing in a bilingual format (like Green) or intend to give equal weight to several languages in the same volume (like Stavans), he too has drawn upon the wealth of his multilingual repertoire to produce an oeuvre which celebrates the ‘hybrid mongrel of language’ to which his life writing testifies and aspires. In each case, the act of self-translating has cultivated a ‘translingual sensibility’ which appreciates that one’s linguistic tools are both insufficient when it comes to fully articulating one’s experience, and proliferative in the sense that the individual’s use of such resources can always create fresh layers of meaning. In the next section, I will consider how, just as a translingual sensibility can be cultivated through self-translation, the active process of translating other authors’ work can school the practitioner in how to relate to others with this perspective of language’s limits and potential.

Lesson 2: the tact of translating others

Whilst similar lessons can be learned from translating other authors’ work as from translating one’s own, the distinct constraints involved with the former yield insights which are harder to grasp when one has more creative autonomy. As discussed, even if translators reject notions of absolute equivalence, external actors who exert pressure on the process (the author, publishers, readers) often expect the translation to serve as some sort of equivalent to the source text. Given that these expectations tend to be more relaxed in the case of self-translators, it is not surprising that—whereas the primary insights Green, Dorfman and Stavans glean from their practice concern the proliferative vitality of their own linguistic resources—the translators discussed in this section take these lessons a step further. Sensitive to the expectations surrounding their role, they learn through experience how to put forward their work with confidence in their choices, whilst accepting that theirs is not the only valid approach. Moreover, their life writing attests that, once they learn to strike this balance in their practice, it begins to shape their interpersonal interactions more broadly.

In her extended essay This Little Art (2017), Kate Briggs eloquently expresses the value of such lessons. A UK-born translator of French literature, Briggs has received critical acclaim for her translations of Roland Barthes’ later lecture series at the Collège de France. Written in the context of Brexit, her personal reflections on translation highlight the practice’s importance in facilitating the discussion and dissemination of ideas amongst different language communities. However, the work’s most compelling contribution, I venture, is its articulation of translation’s merits to those who practise it. Attuned to the unique formative potential of translating others’ work, she celebrates how the process trains its practitioners to make insightful contributions to their literary community, all whilst acknowledging that they can never fully comprehend their environment or peers. As Briggs argues, this happens because, when someone wrestles with the travails of translation, they grapple with the diversity in the details of a given discourse—and, importantly, they learn to interact with language at a slower pace, distinct from that of other forms of literary engagement. Just as a text can be engaged with at multiple structural levels—from word choice, to syntax, to the overall style—it can be appreciated at different temporal levels. As translators pour over the interpretive possibilities at each of these scales, they gain a greater appreciation for language’s complexity. For this reason, the translator often uncovers new layers of interpretation which cannot be predicted from the outset. As Briggs explains:

There is the sentence that [the translator] is focused on, and the way the action of translating it, of touching it in this way, makes it start to unfold, to open out into a series of discrete or connected questions and challenges, in ways I don’t believe it’s possible for anyone to altogether foresee. (2017, 70)

As in Cronin’s fractal framework for unfolding heterogeneity within smaller scales of analysis, zooming in becomes an insightful means of expanding one’s view of language’s incalculable meaning-making potential.

Furthermore, according to Briggs, such lessons are enhanced by a healthy dose of incomprehension—by, in her words, ‘offering us the chance of understanding as well as the necessary and instructive experience of failing to understand’ a text (2017, 58). When translators recognise that they can never fully grasp the discourse before them, it helps them to see the reward of learning incrementally—in sustained dialogue with infinitely mutable interlocutors. As Briggs notes, this willingness to learn recalls Barthes’ notion of ‘délicatesse’ or ‘tact’—which she broadly interprets as ‘the small-scale, everyday practice of values such as goodwill and attentiveness’, which resist ‘the already decided, the apparent self-evidence, the all-purpose explanation—and attend instead to those small, fleeting and fragile moments in life’ (324). Thus, Briggs views the embedded act of translation, ‘the each time uniquely relational, lived-out practice of it’, as a way of ‘protesting’ black-and-white approaches to literature (365).

Similarly, in an article about translation’s impact on migrants’ experiences, Loredana Polezzi celebrates how translation primes its practitioners to distrust clear-cut categorizations. Echoing Briggs, she notes that translators are ‘genuinely prepared to ask serious and sincere questions about what is and what is not “foreign”’; and, as such, they ‘can provide vital spaces within any group or society for the elaboration of difference and the work devoted to its understanding’ (Polezzi 2012, 354). By refusing to label an individual, language or text as ‘foreign’, she argues, translators can provide a powerful counterpoint to those who believe alterity can be confined and cordoned off from whatever is considered native. In their devotion to understanding rather than ‘bracketing off difference’, they can testify to ‘the porous nature of cultural, linguistic and national borders and the productivity of encounters’ (353–354). Put differently, Polezzi argues that translators can act as witnesses to the continuum of language variety along which all human communication shifts. As ghostly figures who float above and below the threshold of expression—attuned to the echoes of other languages which surround any text—they can speak to the heterogeneity of all discourse and contest harmfully simplistic notions of discrete languages.

Indeed, it bears underlining that Polezzi makes this argument with the awareness that translation can be used to exclude and entrench ideas of clear-cut differences between communities (the construction of standardised languages, literary canons and linguistic assimilation policies provide countless examples). However, as she stresses, translation can also cultivate a welcoming attitude towards the fractal-like differentiation within and across linguistic borders. Given the value of approaching questions of migration from a ‘tactful’ perspective, Polezzi argues that, ‘[]instead of deploying translation as a form of containment and control, […] it makes much more sense to use it, in all its forms, as a guide to the heterogeneity of human communication’ (2012, 352). She therefore identifies in translation a model for interacting with others whilst cognisant that no discourse can be fully bounded or understood. Indeed, as she notes, translation heightens one’s sensitivity to language’s immeasurable plurality, but it is important for this awareness not to prevent the translator from carrying out their work. After all, translators do not counter notions of countable linguistic categories merely through recognising language’s diversity; rather, they put forward this alternative view through actively navigating and contributing to the communities with which they engage.

Echoing Polezzi, in her memoir Homesick (2019), literary translator Jennifer Croft describes a formative moment in her adolescence when she realises that translation’s training in tact could extend to her manner of relating to others. As translation equips her with an ear for language’s complexity, Croft comes to appreciate in a new way the messy dynamics of interpersonal interactions. After a childhood and adolescence marked by hardships and tragedy, she finds in translation a model and means of forming connections with others—liberating her from a crushing self-expectation to come up with a definitive solution to familial and relational difficulties. Under the semi-autobiographical alias of ‘Amy’, Croft describes her revelatory experience of translating a Russian poem into English during her university years as follows:

Each time a Russian word meets an English word it generates a spark. And translation offers Amy a new kind of math, an alternative to the math of sacrifice that has ruled her life on her own until today. She can’t cancel out another person’s suffering or death with hers. What she can do is connect. It will take Amy many years to truly learn this. But this poem does provide a start. (223–224)

Translation’s ‘new kind of math’ emboldens Amy to entangle herself in the messiness of other lives without the impossible expectation to wholly contain, resolve or make sense of the struggles and pain she encounters along the way. Thus, according to Croft, the mathematics of translation encourages those who practise it to lean into the imperfect fractal rhythms of the world around them—enriching their understanding of their surroundings and allowing them to contribute their views and interpretations without the pressure of completely understanding or defining what they experience.

Like Croft and Polezzi, Briggs emphasises that a desire to join the conversation is an integral part of translators’ tactful engagement with literature. Even if they appreciate that the text’s potential meanings are boundless, at the end of the day, they must commit their interpretation to paper. In this regard, Briggs identifies a parallel between translators and Barthes’ childhood image of stoppeuses: women paid to stop the runs in knitted stockings, usually with their own saliva. Confronting the ceaseless ‘run’ of interpretations the work sets in motion, the translator stops at one: ‘the translator wets her finger, she presses it down on the run of alternatives, the run of endless translation possibilities, each one with its own particular shades of meaning’ (Briggs 2017, 192). If the translator appreciates their perspective’s limits, this is a daring moment. Just as it is daunting, yet imperative, that mathematicians take responsibility for their conclusions about complex phenomena, translators must plant their flag in the ground. That said, both can also take comfort in the fact that there is no final answer when it comes to representing infinitely plural realities through finite models or texts. If the goal of both translators and mathematicians is to make a contribution to their intellectual community which is both thorough and sensitive to their limitations, then what matters is their capacity to thoughtfully approach their task without any claim of mastery—and, then, to put forward their interpretation with both courage and humility.

It is with this tactful balance of recognising one’s limits and the value of one’s work that translation becomes, in Clare Cavanaugh’s words, an oddly ‘joyful frustration’ (2013, 244). As she suggests, both translators and poets can arrive at a sense of liberation in approximation: in her words:

[o]f course translating poetry is impossible: all the best things are. But the impulse that drives one to try is not so far removed, I think, from the force that sends the lyric poet out time after time to master the world in a few lines of verse. (244)

Just as the poet cannot definitively capture the reality to which their work refers, the translator cannot fully grasp and transfer the source text’s possible meanings through the translation process. As corroborated by the diverse life writing discussed, translation is not about substitution; rather, it is about proliferation. It is an exercise which engages with and adds to a work’s pool of interpretive potential, rather than merely mirroring the source text across a stable equal sign. It is in this sense that the translator is like a poet attempting to capture in a few words a complex phenomenon—or a mathematician building models which approximate both the repetitive rhythms and unforeseeable chaos of their surroundings. Like the natural world’s fractal patterns, translations provide evidence that there is always something more to discover and explore. There is always a ‘remainder’ that lies just beyond one’s capacity to fully understand or express it through neat formulas or discourse.

Given the personal and societal value of recognising this excess, it is not surprising that Briggs champions translation as a fruitful exercise for those who wish to foment tactful dispositions towards language and literature. Through experience, she argues, they will see that such approaches do not sprout from a learned perspective; rather, they emerge through a learning process—developed through the translator’s active engagement with texts. In Briggs’ words:

It seems to me that translators undertake to write translations not as a means to demonstrate their expertise but precisely because they know, without yet knowing exactly how or in what particular ways, doing so will be productive of new knowledge. […] Passing over this in the name of promoting the status of translation and translators risks passing over what I consider to be the most powerful argument for its interest. While at the same time making exclusive what might otherwise be its more open and shared adventure. (2017, 211)

The translator therefore learns more about the complexity of literary expression through the translation process than through the findings or product at which they (contingently) arrive. By offering endless challenges and points of connection to those who approach it with both thoroughness and open-mindedness, translation affords a sturdy scaffold for learning in dialogue with other perspectives; and, if translators are willing to risk the climb without any certainty of where they will ultimately arrive, they will receive a powerful boost to their intellectual and creative growth through translation’s daring, yet carefully considered, leaps of faith.

Indeed, such unquantifiable benefits must be held in view for one’s investment in translation to make sense. Shifting to an industry-wide perspective of translational mathematics, the practice’s topsy-turvy economics deals another blow to quantitative perspectives—beyond those levelled time and again against notions of equivalence within the project itself. As Briggs notes, the decision to pursue literary translation appears ‘insane’ if you calculate the time required by the process as a function of the amount of pay and/or recognition received (2017, 236). In her words, ‘the work involved in the translation seems to be so clearly in excess of—so out of proportion and unbalanced in relation to—its small material terms’ (236). That is, in translation the input does not tally with the output—unless, of course, there is a long-term ‘promise of cultural capital’ (239). As Briggs acknowledges, however, even such aspirations (i.e. someday acquiring an academic position or a publishing deal for a book on translation) are based on what is ‘only ever a distant promise’ (243). What is more, she argues, even if this promise were someday fulfilled, the translator’s rewards ‘would appear to have no authentic or especially stable value anyway’—given that the translator’s success remains linked to (or, more often, in the shadow of) that of the translated author (243). Thus, Briggs concludes that, in quantifiable terms, ‘writing translations doesn’t make a great deal of sense; it’s altogether illogical according to the logics that we are all supposed to be contained and explained by (the ongoing and ever more efficient accumulation of status, money and things)’ (243).

Therefore, for translation to be worth the undertaking, one must value the rewards produced by the illogical logic of its mathematics. That said, since the process is characterised by incalculable difficulties, it is hard to predict its personal and commercial benefits relative to the time it requires. Even so, translation’s unique pleasures make up for any such imbalances in the eyes of many who are privileged to take up the practice despite its lack of clear-cut solutions or financial gains. In fact, for them, the rewards are derived in large part from these very challenges: as Briggs explains,

the constraints on how far I can go, the limits on my making-up (because of course this is also what translation involves: making something, making this thing up again), the limits on doing what I want, are what interest me. (2017, 253)

It is this process of navigating complexity within the restraints of the task which, in her words, ‘instruct me, leading me (forcing me?) outside of what I might already be capable of writing, thinking, knowing and imagining’ (253). From this perspective, even if the efforts rarely tally with the payoff in quantifiable terms, the unquantifiable value of developing tact and learning in dialogue with others makes the process a worthwhile investment for many translators.

For this reason, Briggs contends, all who wish to promote tactful practices should encourage those who dare to go on translation’s ‘shared adventure’; and, as with all learning opportunities, they should, in her words, ‘embrace (rather than worry over) the constitutive amateurishness’ of all those who have signed up for the journey (2017, 219). In aligning with Briggs on this point, I do not suggest that professional benchmarks set for translators’ linguistic and sector-specific knowledge are irrelevant. Quite the contrary: as Pym stresses, expectations of equivalence on the part of authors, publishers and readers place an ethical and commercial burden on translators to meet the objectives set for their projects. That said, in training this study’s lens on what translators say about their own experiences, it has been my intention to foreground the personal value which can be gained from the process. After all, the most striking point of convergence across the diverse life writing of multilingual authors is their insistence that, in translation, we are all life-long learners about the complexity of our world; and, indeed, the world within ourselves. Just as these authors have capitalised on translation’s effective training ground for developing tact, those who take up the practice can also confidently contribute to their communities with a broader perspective of the entangled, fractal plurality in which they live and express themselves.

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Notes on contributors

Erin Nickalls

Erin Nickalls is studying for a DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, with a focus on translation and multimodality in twentieth-century literature. She holds a BA in French and Spanish literature from the University of Virginia and worked in the non-profit and translation sectors for several years before returning to the academic world to complete her MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation at Oxford in 2020. Erin co-convenes the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Discussion Group and teaches translation and twentieth-century literature.