post-colonial_translation

Composing the other 77
and vice versa. A very trivial example that belongs in the domain of the
conceptual grid is Kellogg’s recent failed attempt to market Corn Flakes
for the benefit of the emerging middle class in India. In spite of a big
advertising campaign, the product only took off when it was no longer
marketed as ‘Corn Flakes’ but as ‘Basmati Flakes’. In terms of the textual
grid, the most obvious example of totally unsuccessful translation is
that of the Arabic qasidas into any Western language, as I have shown
in my Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame
(Lefevere 1992).
If we want to seriously entertain the hypothesis raised above, we
shall have to accept two consequences. One is that both the writer of
the original and the translator are faced with the two grids just
mentioned, and that both have to come to terms with those grids. Here,
much more than on the linguistic level, lies an argument in favour of
the creativity of translators: like writers of originals, they too have to
find ways of manipulating the grids in such a way that communication
becomes not only possible, but interesting and attractive. The second
consequence, and this is the one that will concern us for the rest of this
chapter, is that the grids, in their interplay, may well determine how
reality is constructed for the reader, not just of the translation, but also
of the original. This is of extreme importance in the analysis of early
texts written by Western cultures about non-Western cultures. My
contention is that Western cultures constructed (and construct) non-
Western cultures in terms of the two grids whose ‘existence’ I have
postulated earlier. In short, Western cultures ‘translated’ (and ‘translate’)
non-Western cultures into Western categories to be able to come to an
understanding of them and, therefore, to come to terms with them.
This brings us, of course, straight to the most important problem in all
translating and in all attempts at cross-cultural understanding: can
culture A ever really understand culture B on that culture’s (i.e. B’s)
own terms Or do the grids always define the ways in which cultures
will be able to understand each other Are the grids, to put it in terms
that may well be too strong, the prerequisite for all understanding or
not
My answer is that they need not be, but that a great deal of work has
to be done if they are not to be. The most pressing task ahead, as I see it,
is the gradual elimination, in translating between cultures, of the
category of analogy, as pernicious as it is, initially, necessary. When we
no longer translate Chinese T’ang poetry ‘as if’ it were Imagist blank
verse, which it manifestly is not, we shall be able to begin to understand
T’ang poetry on its own terms. This means, however, that we shall have