Book Review – The Philosophy of Translation

The Philosophy of Translation
by Damion Searls
Yale University Press

I learned about this book from a post on Bluesky, which included the a quote about translation as reading that sparked something in my brain. I had to read more, because I personally view translation as exactly that: I read the text in Japanese, understand it to the best of my ability, and then write my understanding in English. Here, I thought, was someone who not only understood translation the way I do, but who had a career’s worth of experience and the academic training to articulate it in ways I did not. It filled me with hope that I was perhaps not utterly unfounded in my approach to this work.

When I did get my hands on the book, I was not disappointed.

Searls divides this book roughly in half. Indeed, you could say the first half is “philosophy,” and the second is “translation.” He begins with a historical review of theories and approaches to translation, from the Latin roots of the word itself to German Romanticist views of language. He does get quite deep into the weeds, with elevated language and heavy ideas, but he clearly explains not only the meaning and importance of the language an ideas, but why he’s engaging with them.

It’s a refreshing style of academic book that not only maintains rigor, but opens the gate to those without steeping in the particular obfuscated style that plagues academic writing. It is challenging while remaining accessible, in other words.

But most important of all, it is thoroughly rooted in actual translation. Searls brings all the theoretical discussion back to what real, working translators do, not only in the literary realm but in the practical, business-focused work that most people use to pay the bills. The balance is delicate but solid, which is what is most impressive about the book.

All that being said, what takes this book from being a well-written academic treatise on translation and something that I would recommend to anyone even tangentially involved with translation as a practice (academics, budding translators, authors whose books are being translated, game developers looking into localization, the list goes on) is how it reframes the act itself in new words and ideas that just make beautiful, crystalline sense.

Rather than focusing on the common ideas of “fidelity/faithfulness,” freedom, or even accuracy, he talks about translation as an act of reading.

When I’m translating, I’m just reading-trying to pick up on as much as I can of the original utterance, its meaning and sound and allusions and tone and point of view and emotional impact. As I register what I feel is most important and indispensable, I try to write that indispensable thing in English; then, in revising, I reactivate the reading part of my mind and try to anticipate as much as I can of what an English-language reader with no access to the original will pick up on.

(page 224)

This is really the crux of the book, though the discussion of translating “utterance” rather than “words” also rings true. On page 107, for example, he says “To think of what we translate as ‘utterances’ sweeps away a huge amount of lexical analysis, because we don’t translate words of a language, we translate uses of language.” Thus, issues of “accuracy” are less important than issues of “communication.” When we translate, are we bringing the message/impact/effect/resonance that was actually vital in the original to the new audience?

Which, again, brings us back to reading. Because it is only by reading that the translator knows what is vital in the text, what Searls sometimes calls the “force” of it, to be able to bring it to the new audience. As such, rather than faithfulness to any monumental, immutable “original,” translation is always a question of how the translator read, and how they managed to share their reading with their new audience.

[…] [W]hat’s important to preserve depends on what the translator finds in the original-how the translator reads. Everyone thinks … that they’re “following the original,” but they’re working from different originals: each is trying to produce a text that matches, or does the same as (has the same force as), not the source text but his or her reading of the source text. Even the least literal translations, the most wildly divergent “imitations” or “reimaginings,” try to stay true to whatever ineffable aspect of the original’s vibe the writer of the new version feels they are taking up. That is why there is no objectively best translation, one that is “closest” to “the” original, as talk about faithfulness falsely implies.

(p. 195)

One of the things that has always struck me about translation is how every act of reading is different, no matter the language. Every person brings their own filters to reading (and listening and talking and writing). I am no different. So, whenever a translator experiences a text then takes that experience into a new language for new readers, inevitably, that new text will be colored by their filters. Our job, then, is to expand those filters, to be able to grasp as much of the text as we can, to bring all of that with us when we translate. But also, we need to accept that we will never encompass everything that the original was or potentially could be. All we can do is be the clearest filters we can. Searls, of course, puts it much better:

[W]hat I think a translation should be: Attentive to how the translating language works, overriding any demand for “equivalence” with how the original language works. Keeping in mind and keeping to heart the interests of readers, the author, and the author’s ideas. (This, by the way, is how we use the word “interests” in English.) Feeling some responsibility to enable, or at the very least try to enable, the original author and their new readers to interact with one another at their respective best. An act of care, and ultimately love.

(page 194)

And really, I’m not sure I can add anything else.

There is much more to this book. His formulation of translation in terms of arcs/arrows is fascinating, as well, and I think the practical examples are all excellent sources of education and rumination.

I honestly can’t recommend it enough to anyone even remotely interested in the theory, work, and indeed love of translation.