What Makes a Translation Feel “Foreign”?

One of Bellos’s main arguments is that “Foreignness in a translation is necessarily an addition to the original.” I think this makes sense. There is no need to deliberately make a translation sound foreign, but I also wouldn’t want it to become completely domesticated. For me, there has to be some middle ground, even if finding that balance is difficult.

Bellos argues that the “foreign-soundingness” of a translation “can only reproduce and reinforce what the receiving culture already imagines the foreign to be.” His example of Kafka makes this especially clear: “In German, Kafka doesn’t sound ‘German’ at all—he sounds like Kafka.” He also suggests that making Kafka sound German in English may communicate the translator’s own experience of reading the original. I find this convincing. An author has an individual voice, and it seems limiting to understand that voice mainly as an expression of their language or nationality.

At the same time, I wonder whether this argument leaves enough room for language itself to be part of an author’s style. Languages have particular qualities and expressive possibilities that don’t always carry over easily into another language. A bilingual writer, for example, might need to write something very differently depending on which language they are using. Their voice is still their own, but the language helps shape how that voice comes across. So I’m not sure we can fully separate “sounding like Kafka” from the fact that Kafka writes in German.

I’m also not entirely convinced by Bellos’s claim that preserving “authentic foreignness” only works when the original is already somewhat familiar to the reader. I would want to look at specific examples. A lot seems to depend on what the translator is preserving and how they do it. Keeping an unfamiliar expression, preserving a particular rhythm, and making dialogue sound like a stereotypical foreign accent could have very different effects.

Overall, I find Bellos pretty convincing, but his argument leaves me with another question: what happens when readers have already become attached to a particular translation style? I’m thinking of Russian literature in Chinese. It has a long translation history, and, in my experience, some Chinese translations have a recognizable style that readers associate with Russian writing. People can become used to that voice and even enjoy it. If a new translation no longer sounded recognizably “Russian,” some readers might wonder where that distinctive voice had gone.

Bellos might say that this is exactly how a receiving culture constructs its idea of foreignness. Still, I wonder what happens once that constructed voice becomes a meaningful part of readers’ literary experience. Even if it was added through translation, does that mean there is nothing worth preserving in it?

Kerry