Monday, September 24, 2007
Session 1 / Frank Vigneron
Frank Vigneron
(Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
韋一空
(香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Translation in World Art History: a Utopian Project.
In a book edited by James Elkins on the publication of David Summers’ Real Spaces. World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism, Elkins mentions the pressing problem of non-Western languages and their utilization in studies of non-Western cultures. What seems to me regrettable is the one-way street such studies always seem to take: the starting point is a study of art historical objects in the context of the language of that same culture, but the resulting study always end up being written in one and the same language, namely English. Obviously, there are incalculable advantages in having a lingua franca, but it would be extremely naïve to believe that any given language can convey any concept with absolute efficiency and reliability: no translation is entirely transparent. As long as world art history is exclusively written in English, it submits to a kind of imperialist historicism. Ideally, a true world history would be written in as many languages as there are actors in the art history/art production domain. What would be truly interesting is to see how such a book would be translated in other languages. How many languages is another, maybe simply financial, problem; if Tintin has been translated into Catalan and the Luxemburg tongue, is there going to be a publisher adventurous enough to invest money and time in such publications? And yet, is it really a ‘world art history’ if it remains formulated in only one language?One captivating project would the translation into different languages of key concepts, like the ones created by David Summers. Elkins already mentioned the absence of a clear equivalent for many Chinese concepts, which would already make clear the fact that some concepts can be understood through explanation and illustration but not translated with a single word. But the problem goes deeper, if we remain in the Chinese realm, we will see that other concepts coming from Western languages have been successfully transposed into modern Chinese, but that, because they refer to ideas that are originally profoundly different, they do not create strict correspondence of concepts in the receiver’s mind. Such a concept is that of ‘metaphor’ for instance, which presents extremely concepts problems of translation. It is obvious that one English signifier cannot ‘materialize’ the same signified when translated into another language.James Elkins made a list of various terms from other languages (warri-ngirniti, tableau, Weg, ambulatio, etc.) and the question was whether they could be used in English art history to describe situations and concepts that did not exist, or did not exist in exactly the same way, in Western art. On the other side of the translation problem, Elkins also mentioned the fact that the English term modernism could not be transposed untouched into German, but the issue of translation offers problems that are far more complex precisely because they are about very small differences. Differences so slight in fact that they usually pass unnoticed and would seem unimportant if they were not about conveying very rich notions.These differences might be felt as rather too subtle for most readers (the ‘inattentive readers’ most people have become in a world where books are more common than cockroaches), and it is true that we are seldom called upon to think about these connections when reading anything. But they should be revived to get access to a richer understanding of any text, and translation might even be the ideal tool to do so, both for the readers and for the translator. I would definitely disagree with David Summers who believes that languages are ‘ultimately untranslatable’, but it is true that translation can only be made of constant interpretations and frequent approximations. By approximation I mean something like Chen Xiaomei’s notion of ‘misreading’, i.e. ‘an act of dialogue between text and interpretation, between past and present, and perhaps most importantly in the study of cross-cultural literary relations, between individual readers and their various social and historical formations.’ But, if translation is like a funnel, transforming, shaping and misinterpreting things always in the same direction – into English – it is bound to be limiting. Ideally, and if art history is truly a way to disseminate a rich but practical understanding of all types of art to all types of individuals into all types of culture, translation should be like a food processor with the lid open, multiplying concepts and their approximations in every possible direction: deterritorialization on an epic scale. I am obviously not thinking about academics here, the ‘targeted audience’ for such an endeavor would be, first and foremost, the artists themselves, the producers of art in all its forms.To take the question of translation at a very practical level with a specific example, it would be very interesting to put theoretical texts on painting, a very rich corpus of texts in several cultural domains, through the process of translation. One would have, in the first place, to submit to the demands of international research by putting these texts in English. As a second step, it would be fruitful, for instance, to try to put these texts written in English, French or German into the modern Chinese language. Starting from there, there would be no limits to the translations: from Italian to Yoruba, from Chinese to Bengali, from German to Ourdou, etc. (and why not, from English to French). In fact, translation would not only be useful for people from other cultural backgrounds, it would also be a way to force any speaker to think about the concepts they are using in a way that would resurrect meaning. Concepts tend to become like tools in a phenomenological sense; the more we use them, the more we tend to put their meaning in a mental background that can become so comfortable it erodes the original meaning of the concept (the image that comes to mind is Merleau-Ponty’s walking stick for the blind: after a while, it becomes an extension of the arm and is no longer a stick). As in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”, where our perception of the painting of van Gogh shoes makes us aware of the “thingness” of a real thing, translating a concept may be seen as a creative process, it forces us to think about the concept’s meaning or meanings and about all its/their ramifications in specific contexts.Translation could therefore become a major tool of art history in a practical context, by that I mean not only the writing of art history and the analysis of the concepts of art making and art reception against various cultural backgrounds, but also the manipulation of concepts by artists throughout the newly created peripheries created by globalization – the fabled idea of ‘glocalisation’. It would not be a matter of transferring Western analytical tools in the understanding of the artistic traditions of the rest of the World, but also a matter of understanding one’s own art tradition through the prism of other languages and, therefore, other ways of thinking. James Elkins mentioned the fact that there are no art historians specializing in Chinese art being hired in Western universities ‘for their ability to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. They are hired for their expertise, and partly for familiarity with Western methods, such as iconography, semiotics, social art history, and so forth.’ I might add that there seems to be less and less specialists of Chinese painting in China who can afford to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. That new generation of Chinese art historians in Mainland China and Taiwan are truly caught between hammer and anvil. They have to satisfy their old mentors and a vast majority of Chinese amateurs, painters and art lovers, who expect them to use such concepts as zhuo 拙, qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動, or pingdan 平淡 (concepts which have been in use for so many centuries and are so well adapted to the discourse on Chinese painting there is absolutely no point getting rid of them); but they also have to satisfy the criteria of a more internationalized readership who expect them to have read Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Luc Nancy. In this world thirsty for more ‘centers’, or more ‘peripheries’ depending on which side of the divide you situate yourself, the desire for a world art history makes sense insofar as it can find its place without falling into the usual pitfall of academic and linguistic imperialism. It can be a precious pedagogical tool for a certain type of already-initiated art historians, especially those dealing with comparison, but to fulfill a possible role of initiator in what came to be known as a globalized world, it would be preferable to use another form than the book. Hypertext would be an interesting option, if it was not even worse than the book as a solution for opening up that project to other, very different, cultures like the oral cultures of South America or Africa: a book can always be transported anywhere, while a website with hypertext does necessitate at the very least a computer, and at best a connection to the Internet. Similarly, that hypertextual tool would have to be adapted to many kinds of language, and therefore, many kinds of episteme, as I still like to believe that, in spite of globalization, human beings are not thinking alike everywhere. The endeavor of a ‘universal translation project’ is obviously idealistic, must be collegial and would necessarily be never-ending and, therefore, not practical: no one would be able to access it in its entirety. It is like Borge’s library of Babel: out of reach but everywhere. But it does not mean it is not desirable, such a project would be like the gigantic map of another of Borge’s short stories, a situation that Jean Baudrillard exploited in a famous text. A “hypertextual multilingual world art history” would be a map of art so accurate it would also cover its entire domain, but hopefully this time, not smother and destroy the ground it covers. It would obviously be more like art than science, if we believe that such distinctions can be made on the ground of objectivity. An exhaustive history of all art(s) translated in every possible language, a grand oeuvre that would be like peace on earth, desirable and unreachable, always meeting with a multitude of delays like a work by Marcel Duchamp.
(Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
韋一空
(香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Translation in World Art History: a Utopian Project.
In a book edited by James Elkins on the publication of David Summers’ Real Spaces. World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism, Elkins mentions the pressing problem of non-Western languages and their utilization in studies of non-Western cultures. What seems to me regrettable is the one-way street such studies always seem to take: the starting point is a study of art historical objects in the context of the language of that same culture, but the resulting study always end up being written in one and the same language, namely English. Obviously, there are incalculable advantages in having a lingua franca, but it would be extremely naïve to believe that any given language can convey any concept with absolute efficiency and reliability: no translation is entirely transparent. As long as world art history is exclusively written in English, it submits to a kind of imperialist historicism. Ideally, a true world history would be written in as many languages as there are actors in the art history/art production domain. What would be truly interesting is to see how such a book would be translated in other languages. How many languages is another, maybe simply financial, problem; if Tintin has been translated into Catalan and the Luxemburg tongue, is there going to be a publisher adventurous enough to invest money and time in such publications? And yet, is it really a ‘world art history’ if it remains formulated in only one language?One captivating project would the translation into different languages of key concepts, like the ones created by David Summers. Elkins already mentioned the absence of a clear equivalent for many Chinese concepts, which would already make clear the fact that some concepts can be understood through explanation and illustration but not translated with a single word. But the problem goes deeper, if we remain in the Chinese realm, we will see that other concepts coming from Western languages have been successfully transposed into modern Chinese, but that, because they refer to ideas that are originally profoundly different, they do not create strict correspondence of concepts in the receiver’s mind. Such a concept is that of ‘metaphor’ for instance, which presents extremely concepts problems of translation. It is obvious that one English signifier cannot ‘materialize’ the same signified when translated into another language.James Elkins made a list of various terms from other languages (warri-ngirniti, tableau, Weg, ambulatio, etc.) and the question was whether they could be used in English art history to describe situations and concepts that did not exist, or did not exist in exactly the same way, in Western art. On the other side of the translation problem, Elkins also mentioned the fact that the English term modernism could not be transposed untouched into German, but the issue of translation offers problems that are far more complex precisely because they are about very small differences. Differences so slight in fact that they usually pass unnoticed and would seem unimportant if they were not about conveying very rich notions.These differences might be felt as rather too subtle for most readers (the ‘inattentive readers’ most people have become in a world where books are more common than cockroaches), and it is true that we are seldom called upon to think about these connections when reading anything. But they should be revived to get access to a richer understanding of any text, and translation might even be the ideal tool to do so, both for the readers and for the translator. I would definitely disagree with David Summers who believes that languages are ‘ultimately untranslatable’, but it is true that translation can only be made of constant interpretations and frequent approximations. By approximation I mean something like Chen Xiaomei’s notion of ‘misreading’, i.e. ‘an act of dialogue between text and interpretation, between past and present, and perhaps most importantly in the study of cross-cultural literary relations, between individual readers and their various social and historical formations.’ But, if translation is like a funnel, transforming, shaping and misinterpreting things always in the same direction – into English – it is bound to be limiting. Ideally, and if art history is truly a way to disseminate a rich but practical understanding of all types of art to all types of individuals into all types of culture, translation should be like a food processor with the lid open, multiplying concepts and their approximations in every possible direction: deterritorialization on an epic scale. I am obviously not thinking about academics here, the ‘targeted audience’ for such an endeavor would be, first and foremost, the artists themselves, the producers of art in all its forms.To take the question of translation at a very practical level with a specific example, it would be very interesting to put theoretical texts on painting, a very rich corpus of texts in several cultural domains, through the process of translation. One would have, in the first place, to submit to the demands of international research by putting these texts in English. As a second step, it would be fruitful, for instance, to try to put these texts written in English, French or German into the modern Chinese language. Starting from there, there would be no limits to the translations: from Italian to Yoruba, from Chinese to Bengali, from German to Ourdou, etc. (and why not, from English to French). In fact, translation would not only be useful for people from other cultural backgrounds, it would also be a way to force any speaker to think about the concepts they are using in a way that would resurrect meaning. Concepts tend to become like tools in a phenomenological sense; the more we use them, the more we tend to put their meaning in a mental background that can become so comfortable it erodes the original meaning of the concept (the image that comes to mind is Merleau-Ponty’s walking stick for the blind: after a while, it becomes an extension of the arm and is no longer a stick). As in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”, where our perception of the painting of van Gogh shoes makes us aware of the “thingness” of a real thing, translating a concept may be seen as a creative process, it forces us to think about the concept’s meaning or meanings and about all its/their ramifications in specific contexts.Translation could therefore become a major tool of art history in a practical context, by that I mean not only the writing of art history and the analysis of the concepts of art making and art reception against various cultural backgrounds, but also the manipulation of concepts by artists throughout the newly created peripheries created by globalization – the fabled idea of ‘glocalisation’. It would not be a matter of transferring Western analytical tools in the understanding of the artistic traditions of the rest of the World, but also a matter of understanding one’s own art tradition through the prism of other languages and, therefore, other ways of thinking. James Elkins mentioned the fact that there are no art historians specializing in Chinese art being hired in Western universities ‘for their ability to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. They are hired for their expertise, and partly for familiarity with Western methods, such as iconography, semiotics, social art history, and so forth.’ I might add that there seems to be less and less specialists of Chinese painting in China who can afford to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. That new generation of Chinese art historians in Mainland China and Taiwan are truly caught between hammer and anvil. They have to satisfy their old mentors and a vast majority of Chinese amateurs, painters and art lovers, who expect them to use such concepts as zhuo 拙, qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動, or pingdan 平淡 (concepts which have been in use for so many centuries and are so well adapted to the discourse on Chinese painting there is absolutely no point getting rid of them); but they also have to satisfy the criteria of a more internationalized readership who expect them to have read Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Luc Nancy. In this world thirsty for more ‘centers’, or more ‘peripheries’ depending on which side of the divide you situate yourself, the desire for a world art history makes sense insofar as it can find its place without falling into the usual pitfall of academic and linguistic imperialism. It can be a precious pedagogical tool for a certain type of already-initiated art historians, especially those dealing with comparison, but to fulfill a possible role of initiator in what came to be known as a globalized world, it would be preferable to use another form than the book. Hypertext would be an interesting option, if it was not even worse than the book as a solution for opening up that project to other, very different, cultures like the oral cultures of South America or Africa: a book can always be transported anywhere, while a website with hypertext does necessitate at the very least a computer, and at best a connection to the Internet. Similarly, that hypertextual tool would have to be adapted to many kinds of language, and therefore, many kinds of episteme, as I still like to believe that, in spite of globalization, human beings are not thinking alike everywhere. The endeavor of a ‘universal translation project’ is obviously idealistic, must be collegial and would necessarily be never-ending and, therefore, not practical: no one would be able to access it in its entirety. It is like Borge’s library of Babel: out of reach but everywhere. But it does not mean it is not desirable, such a project would be like the gigantic map of another of Borge’s short stories, a situation that Jean Baudrillard exploited in a famous text. A “hypertextual multilingual world art history” would be a map of art so accurate it would also cover its entire domain, but hopefully this time, not smother and destroy the ground it covers. It would obviously be more like art than science, if we believe that such distinctions can be made on the ground of objectivity. An exhaustive history of all art(s) translated in every possible language, a grand oeuvre that would be like peace on earth, desirable and unreachable, always meeting with a multitude of delays like a work by Marcel Duchamp.
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