Eco and the Rat

Health Warning - Read with at least one large glass of red wine and penty of chocolate!

Ok, so I've just finished reading Eco's Mouse or Rat - his latest kid of scholarly book on postmodern theory and literary stuff. Of course, being Umberto it is also a good deal about exploring his linguistic laboratory otherwise known as the novels he writes. I love these novels - they are so enjoyable and yet it is also like doing the Times Crossword blindfolded trying to work out which games Eco is playing...and then of course you end up playing a game that Eco never expected you to be playing anyway!

So, Mouse or Rat is actually about the role of negotiation in translation...it is fascinating that it is out at the same time as Lost in Translation is in the cinemas. The title comes from the fact that colloquial Italian uses the same word (topo) for both mouse and rat. Now, when you are translating general references to rodents this is pretty insignificant - does it matter whether Hamlet points to a mouse or a rat when he sees something twitching the curtains and kills Polonius? However, sometimes it does matter - if an author calls someone a rat in English, it is definitely not the same as calling him a mouse! I mean, Jason in Big Brother is a rat, Shell is a mouse - in Italian they would both be 'topo'!!!

So, the translators role is to negotiate how much they stick to the literal translation and how much they deviate. So, Eco gives loads of examples, especially from his latest novel Baudolino, of where his translators have had to diverge from the original Italian. It really is fascinating - although you need to know some french, german, spanish, portugese, italian and catalan, to get the most out of what he is saying and I only have reading standard in a few of these! Frustrating or what! But Eco shows that actually translators have to think both of the original language code and also the recipient language code (e.g. Italian and German). The language codes are actually complex sociological and epistemological systems which sometimes are irreconcilable. I have done some work on Wierzbicka in my PhD and other stuff on how different concepts of friendship are found in different languages and a straightforward translation from one to another would not be right. Also there are issues about what people can and cannot say in different languages. At one point in Baudolino, the hero enters a church in Constantinople as it is being sacked by Crusaders. He pours forth a stream of blasphemous comments in his outrage at their blasphemy - in Italian these are absolutely amazing - belly of Mary and so on...but the translators in English and German just couldn't do it - in German all that he ends up saying is "Himmelsacra".

He also talks about absolute language, and the impossiblity of a universal language, of language codes and so on. He also talks about irony and double coding and this links with postmodern theory and this pushed me back to Linda Hutcheon's Poetics of Postmodernism which I am bnow reading (along with Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov which I picked up for 2.99 from Smiths and is fantastic...oh yes and I am also reading Naom Chomsky's book, and the Curious Incident of the Dog thing...and probably some others that I have let slip in a pile somewhere...)

Double coding is a great concept - that authors code what they are writing for different audiences. This is precisely what I think is happening in Euripidean drama and in John's prologue (as well as lots of other places). Irony is all about surface meaning vs. hidden meaning or specialist meaning. It is the author nodding and winking to the people who really see what he is on about while entertaining the rest of the masses who are oblivious. You don't need to understand Euripides social commentary to enjoy (?) his plays. But if you do understand his criticism of male dominated war mongering Athens, then you begin to understand why he ended up having to leave Athens so early in his career or face prosecution and possible death. So with John as well - does his Gospel entertain the masses while at the same time giving even more levels of meaning to different specialist audiences (see my thesis when it gets published). If so, what is he doing here - what is double coding about - is it just authors being clever. I don't think so. I think it is actually about the development of community. Wayne Booth in Rhetoric of Irony talks about the community design of irony - it is the author inviting the specialist reader onto the lofty perch with him - come up here and see it from my point of view. If John is doing that, then he is inviting people to join him on the lofty perch - inviting his readers into community.

So, the postmodern emphasis on intertextuality, irony and so on is actually part of the postmodern love affair with both play and community. Intertextuality gives people permission to play with the text. Instead of a text becoming a rigid form of teaching or instruction, it becomes a place of play - as Derrida would put it, the place of jouissance...the place where people can dream and frolic without reproach. As Eco says elsewhere, even this play needs to be limited - texts actually do mean to communicate something. But it is a place where permission is given to think more widely than in modernism.

Crikey, this post is getting too long.

I love Eco and I love what he has to say. He always makes me want to go further, to play more. I am writing an essay for some South African journal on 1 Peter a the moment which I will try and get permission to put on this blog as well because it explores how some of this might be applied to a biblical text - which of course has to be translated. How do we negotiate between a 2000 year old Greek text and whatever language and culture we are bringing that text into? What is literal meaning? What does it really mean to believe in the Bible as the Word of God. I can read it in Greek. I know ancient Greek society and Palestinian society quite well after so many years in the academy and biblical studies. But how about translating that into a 21st setting in the UK. Can the Bible mean anything if it translated literally. How about Rob Lacey's Street Bible or Peterson's Message...what do these do to the text? Negotiate the translation?

Gotta go and share my testimony at Bible Group...what a post...gotta read that again some time...

If you have got this far...take an aspirin and sit in a dark place for a time...it might help!

Pete

Comments

[maggi]

thanks! invaluable. Now I gotta read it myself...