post-colonial_translation

78 André Lefevere
to tell the readers of our translations what T’ang poetry is really like,
by means of introductions, the detailed analysis of selected texts, and
such. We shall, therefore, have to learn to skip the leap we often call ‘of
the imagination’ but which could be much more aptly called ‘of
imperialism’. The question is whether Western cultures are ready for
this. Nor should the blame be laid on Western cultures only: Chinese
translating of Western texts in the nineteenth century only stopped using
analogy as the central and self-evident category when the power
structure of the Empire, and with it the exclusive use of classical Chinese
among literati, came crashing down.
It is obvious from the above that a huge investment in re-education/
re-socialization is needed if we are ever to arrive at the goal of
understanding other cultures ‘on their own terms’, and that this
investment is not going to be made all that willingly by the present
socialization process. It is equally obvious that this investment will
exceed by far the compass of the number of pages allotted to this chapter.
Rather than lose myself in vague exhortations and pious platitudes I
shall therefore try to demonstrate ‘my’ grids in action, not in terms of
translating on the linguistic level, but in terms of translating on the level
of both the conceptual and the textual grids. I shall try to show, in sum,
how three different Dutch texts dealing with what the Dutch called
‘India’ (‘their’ India, as opposed to the one that ‘belonged’ to the British),
and which is now called Indonesia, construct, or rather ‘compose’, that
‘India’ for the Dutch reader.
The three texts are, in chronological order, first, Batavia, by Jan de
Marre, published in Amsterdam in 1740. The text type in this case is
the epic, and the conceptual grid is decidedly and self-evidently not
only pro-Dutch, but also very much in favour of the Dutch East Indies
Company, the ‘Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie’, or ‘VOC’, as it
was and is known in Dutch, and which is, often affectionately, called
‘Maatschappij’ (almost something like ‘the firm’) in the text, not least
because that way it rhymes effortlessly with ‘koopvaardij’, or
‘commerce’, being the activity that provided the writer with the leisure
to compose his epic in the first place. The second text is Agon, Sultan
van [of] Bantam, by Onno Zwier van Haren, published in Leeuwarden
(Frisia) in 1769. Here the text type is neo-classical drama, complete
with five acts and the closest Dutch can come to alexandrines. The
conceptual grid is more or less the reverse of de Marre’s: the whole plot
is told from the point of view of the ‘natives’, not the Dutch, who are
identified with what de Marre would lovingly call the ‘Maatschappij’.
The third text is Lotgevallen en vroegere zeereizen van Jacob Haafner