Miss Translation

Watercolors and Stick Ink by Pablo Neruda


Miss Translation


1.
For some time I have been interested
in the art of translation regarding the
development of a poetic critique
that denies the supremacy of its own
construction and in that denial
both challenges and reaffirms
the supremacy of the specific work
of art itself.
Is it really possible to demonstrate
by example
when it comes to translation?
Is there any other way?
Remember that a translation is always
a product of something else.
Only by actual immersion in
the translative creative process
can one come to any kind of adequate
understanding regarding what is being
talked about here. The truth may be
that only the new can be created
because of the problems inherent in the
creative act as it pertains
to human consciousness.

2.
In the Jungian scum pond
of creative expression
anything is possible and
everything is a question of translation.
The water is both murky and deep.
It is filled with fascinating viruses
of which three shall be identified.
For the sake of this explication
we can label them as
History, Identity and Meaning.

3.
These viruses are transmitted by way
of an active archetypal process that
moves from the original artist through
the work being translated and finally to
the perceiver.
This triadic contamination is also
perceived as a hierarchy in the
viruses and carriers themselves.

4.
The sickness manifests itself
as a search for both
value and significance
under the guise of a faithful translation.
Immunity is neither possible nor
desirable. The cure is intuitively
understood by most of us as being
worse than the disease because
the only effective vaccine would be
a lethal dose of nontranslation
which though desired by some,
can be viewed as both a denial and
anti-choice that transcends the anarchy
of the problem under consideration.
Can the only responsible conclusion
to the quandary of translation be that is
impossible to achieve?

5.
The point is not to seek a cure
for the problem but to learn how
to benefit from the *high*
the pathogens engender as a consequence
or side effect of the disease.
In a sense both language and art
may be viewed as a product of
aberrations, the unintended consequence
of consciousness.
All art is a form of translation
or process by which the intermediary
manifests itself.
The intermediary of course
is represented by the triadic process
mentioned earlier.

6.
What makes this issue fundamentally
difficult is that the disease
of creative consciousness is aware
and continually re-contaminating
both itself and what it
comes into contact with.
This quirky and unintended consequence
is here defined as individuality.
Can individuality be negated
or subordinated during
the act of translation?

7.
So far no philosophy or theory
has been able to develop
an adequate filter.
There have been many attempts.
These attempts are usually suffixed by
political, artistic or literary *isms*.
New Criticism, Marxism, Nationalism,
Communism, National Socialism, Realism
and Surrealism are just a few of the
many examples, each further compounding
the disease in their own unique way.
Their primary characteristic is
a symbolic castration or *surrender of will*
leading to a denial of the very
transformational process
and contradictions that make
the problem so important in the first place.

8.
Art may be viewed not as a vehicle
regarding the search for beauty and truth
but the bio-chemical manifestation
or discharge of a pathogenic condition
which is both obsessive and insane
at the same time, propagating itself
faster than we can reason through it,
making all translation fundamentally
impossible.

9.
Is translation possible or isn't it?
Here's the rub
for how can one commit to either
there is or there isn't
when there can't even be a definitive
yes or know. A sentence is jailed time.
Time evolves, it never is.
If such is the case
there is no reason to pursue
the argument further. All we have to do
is return to the beginning again.
Thus, an in-exhaustive loop
of self-reflection is established
that serves as the bedrock
for further art criticism caught in the
process of this translation
becoming an art form in itself.

Scott Malby

Posted over on Critiphoria