Humor and Translation: Foreignization and Domestication
By Mark Herman
This column considers foreignization and domestication discussed in two articles in a recent issue of Translation Review (TR).1 As has been previously mentioned in this column, foreignization and domestication have been discussed for centuries, though the two terms themselves were coined relatively recently. The usual definition of foreignization is that it brings the reader to the original text by leaving strange concepts and even, occasionally, some foreign words in the translation. Domestication, on the other hand, brings the original to the reader by rewriting the text so that the translation looks as if it were a product not only of the target language but also possibly of the target culture. Almost all actual translations employ some combination of the two. At their most extreme, foreignization means not translating at all, and domestication means changing the source so extensively that falsification results.
The first article in TR, by Abdelkarim Daragmeh, Sana’ Jarar, and Ekrema Shehab2, discusses Wolves of the Crescent Moon (2007), an English translation by the British translator Anthony Calderbank of the Arabic novel Fikhakh al-Ra’iha (2003) by the Saudi novelist Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (1964- ).3 Although the article is titled “Between Foreignization and Domestication: Translating Camel Names in a Saudi Literary Context,” it is not concerned with the names of camels but with Arabic’s many descriptive terms for camels. Strangely, the TR article fails to mention that, according to the Amazon website, although the novel is by a Saudi author and set in Saudi Arabia, the novel is banned in that country, possibly due to its three principal characters all living on the margins of society. Also, according to the Wikipedia website, an alternate English title for the novel is The Lure of Scent, and Calderbank’s translation was nominated for the 2010 Jan Michalski Prize.
Why the focus on camels? Because camels, the “ships of the desert,” are embedded in Bedouin culture. Understanding the relationship of camels to people “is central to understanding the Bedouin identity” and “the Arabic language, particularly within the Saudi context, possesses a rich vocabulary for camels, distinguishing them by age, gender, color, function, and even emotional state.” (21)
The authors of the TR article investigated Calderbank’s translation strategy, claimed by Calderbank to be foreignizing (21). This strategy frequently consisted of using multiple English words to translate a single Arabic word. For example, “al-khuluj” means “a mother camel crying inconsolably over the loss of her calf.” Calderbank’s translation of part of the sentence including this word does get in all the meanings: “a mother camel crying inconsolably as she gazes into the horizon in search of her young one” (p. 60 in Calderbank).
The TR authors state that Calderbank’s translation is only partly foreignizing because, while it does convey “[the connection of] human maternal grief ([a human] mother’s despair over her husband and son) to a specific culturally recognized expression of suffering in the animal” (28), it does not and cannot convey the compression, immediacy, and relevance to Bedouin culture possible in a single word.
The translation strategy “potentially reduc[es] the foreignizing effect and the specific cultural meaning of having a single word for this phenomenon, [while] it prioritizes conveying the profound meaning and emotional impact.” (28)
In general, the TR authors believe that Calderbank’s strategy “proved effective in conveying [the] basic meanings and narrative functions” of the original, and sometimes “successfully support[ed] thematic parallels” between the storyline and the camel imagery (28). However, they also suggest a complete foreignization to convey how much meaning and cultural significance can be packed into a single Arabic word by using transliteration rather than translation: for example, rendering “al-khuluj” as al-khuluj. They believe that doing so would be “a fully realized foreignizing strategy,” which would preserve “the deep, nuanced relationship between Bedouin culture and the camel, a relationship linguistically encoded in the rich Arabic nomenclature.” (29)
The authors do not explain how readers knowing no Arabic are to glean any meaning at all from such transliterations, much less “the deep, nuanced relationship between Bedouin culture and the camel.” They do not suggest any aids such as a glossary with fully explicated meanings and cultural implications at the beginning of the novel.
If extreme foreignization means not translating at all, extreme domestication can mean complete falsification. If nothing that can be written in the target culture resembles what has been written in the source culture, then complete transformation into the target culture can mean complete falsification. Most domestication is not this extreme, and even radical differences between the original and the translation can sometimes be acceptable. For example, some 800 years ago, the troubadours began the tradition of romantic love songs that has persisted to this day. Nonetheless, it would be difficult for a modern reader to recognize this fact from any literal or quasi-literal translation of a troubadour song. Therefore, in her book of translations of the extant works of the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn (1135?-1194?)4, which includes both literal and verse translations, Ronnie Apter translated one song to make the relationship obvious. The first line of the original (in Occitan) is “Estat ai com om esperdutz,” which literally means “I have been like a crazy man,” which is not so different from the first line of Apter’s “Goodbye Blues”: “She drove me crazy.” But then the translation moves almost a millennium and a world away from Bernart with lines like “a better baby to come with me on my way” (130-135).
Often, however, there is no justification for such radical changes other than to falsify the original. And such falsification is especially egregious if the whole point of a work is to challenge its own culture and, perhaps in translation, also to challenge the target culture.
Such is the case regarding the second article in TR that I will consider in this column. It is a review by Gregary J. Racz of a book by Leah Leone Anderson about translations into Spanish by the famous Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).5 Anderson considers Borges’ translations of three English-speaking authors: James Joyce (1882-1941), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and William Faulkner (1897-1962). Here I will consider only Virginia Woolf’s feminist work A Room of One’s Own (1929)6, translated into Spanish as Un cuarto propio7 by the anti-feminist Borges in 1936.
Among the falsifications Racz lists for Borges’ translation are (52):
- The implicit audience for the book is changed from fictional female college students to Latin American readers in general.
- The anger interfering with Charlotte Brontë’s writing is changed to vida (life).
- “Brilliant,” describing female students, is omitted.
- A female writer’s gift becomes her vocación (vocation).
- Another female writer’s genius becomes her inclinación (inclination).
- The emotional burden of an arranged marriage is shifted from the woman to the man.
Unfortunately, because of his fame, Borges’ translation is likely to stand as the Spanish translation for quite some time, despite the existence of at least one other more recent translation.8 Surprisingly, Borges’ translation does not appear to have given A Room of One’s Own a bad name in the Spanish-speaking world. According to Anderson:
“as ‘incalculable’ as the…damage to Woolf’s Hispanophone legacy to be from Borges’s translation…her reception and importance in fact continue to grow…. [The translation has somewhat inexplicably been] extremely influential throughout the Spanish-speaking world as a feminist text” (pp. 72-73 in Anderson’s book)
Perhaps a truly seminal work can transcend a bad translation.
Notes
1. Translation Review, Vol. 123, No. 1. (2025).
3. Al-Mohaimeed, Yousef. Fikhakh al-Ra’iha (Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2003); translated into English as Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Anthony Calderbank (Penguin Books, 2007).
6. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own (Hogarth Press, 1929).
Submit items for future columns via e-mail to mnh18@caa.columbia.edu. Discussions of the translation of humor and examples thereof are preferred, but humorous anecdotes about translators, translations, and mistranslations are also welcome. Include copyright information and permission if relevant.
