[Vwoolf] "The 'Increasing' Black Population in Virginia Woolf's Fiction"

Sun Apr 29 09:34:53 EDT 2018

Thanks Stuart. I look forward to reading your article but enjoyed what you pointed out. The problem is how ambiguous these statements are in English, as you note. I recently read Kate Briggs’ This Little Art where she struggles with issues of translation, especially her own translations of Barthes last lectures, and difficulties translating Thomas Mann into  English, among other things. Briggs would argue that a translated work, is to some extent, a new creation because of the impossibility of achieving a one-to-one correspondence or mere transcription between languages. It’s great when we can get more than one translation of a work. 

The use of the word “black” as a personal descriptor in English is interesting. I think of Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park described as “black,” when (apparently) he is not racially black, simply dark-haired and eyed. Of course, this all points up how arbitrary race is. 

> On Apr 29, 2018, at 6:26 AM, Adolphe Haberer via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Stuart,
> You surprisingly forgot to mention the first "black woman" in Jacob's Room, even though she turns out to be a rock: "A large black woman was sitting on the sand. He ran towards her." (Ch. I)
> Also, there exists another translation of the book into French, done by Agnès Desarthe, Paris: Stock, 2008.
> Thank you for your contribution to the list.
> Best
> Ado
> 
> ==
> Adolphe Haberer
> Professeur émérite à l'Université Lumière Lyon 2
> 1 route de Saint-Antoine 69380 Chazay d'Azergues
> Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr <mailto:Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr>
> ado at haberer.fr <mailto:ado at haberer.fr>
> 33 (0) 4 78 43 65 24
> 33 (0) 6 63 57 95 91
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> 
> 
> 
> 2018-04-28 14:01 GMT+02:00 Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>:
> This is the title of an article of mine in VWM81* & VWB37.  It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what translators have made of the problem, and, if I am right, more black people are appearing in translations. My knowledge of foreign languages is limited, and the examples I’m choosing from “Jacob’s Room” are another problem, since generally it was not one of the first of Woolf’s books to be translated.  The only complete translation to appear in her lifetime was Swedish (selections appeared in French in journals).  And of course, I don’t have all the translations.
> *https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/vwm81spring2012.pdf <https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/vwm81spring2012.pdf>
>  
> Ch. VI: Out she swept, the black woman with the dancing feather in her hat.
>  
> Ch. XII: Italy is all fierceness, bareness, exposure, and black priests shuffling along the roads.
>  
> FRENCH
>  
> Jean Talva, 1942: “la femme en noir”; “prêtres” [no adjective!].
>  
> Magali Merle, 1993: “la femme en noir”; “noire prêtraille” [an obscure word to me, which I am guessing means clergy].
>  
> Adolphe Haberer, 2012: “la femme noire”; “prêtres noirs”.
>  
> PORTUGUESE
>  
> Maria Teresa Guerreiro, 1989 (Brazil):  “a mulher negra”; “padres de preto”.
>  
> Lucília Rodrigues, 1992 (Portugal): “a mulher negra”; “padres negros”.
>  
> ITALIAN
>  
> Anna Banti, 1950: “la donna in nero”; “neri preti”.
>  
> Mirella Billi, 1994: “la donna vestita di nero”; “preti neri”.
>  
> GERMAN
>  
> Gustav K. Kemperdick, 1981: “die schwarze Frau”; “schwarze Priester”.
>  
> Heidi Zerning, 1998: “die schwarze Frau”; “schwarze Priester”.
>  
> SWEDISH
>  
> Siri Thorngren-Olin, 1927: “den mörka kvinnan”; “svarta präster”.
>  
> Siri Thorngren-Olin (revised by unknown), 2007: “den mörka kvinnan”; “svarta präster”.
>  
>  
> I think the tendency is there, although these examples are not conclusive.  However, translators should not make a book simpler for their readers than it is for the (English) native speaker.  If the word seems more ambiguous (or even more misleading) now than it did in 1922, to what extent should the translator use a contemporary word or interpretation?  Yet, I don’t want to read Dante in English, where the English seems incomprehensible:
>  
> Now had the sun to that horizon reached,
> That covers, with the most exalted point
> Of its meridian circle, Salem’s walls,
> And night, that opposite to him her orb
> Rounds, from the stream of Ganges issued forth,
> Holding the scales,  that from her hands are dropped
> When she reigns highest ...
>  
> Stuart
> 
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