Dead Cats.
Where…do…they…go?
Language is a peculiar tool. On one hand, it has helped generations of people pass down knowledge and perceptions of the world over time. On the other, as history has seen multiple avenues of cultural divergence, lingual barriers have limited societies to their familiar tongues. Counter-intuitively, the more lingually advanced society has become, the more divided the world has become. Like the continents of Pangea, society has drifted further apart with time. Since the days of Mesopotamia, humans have recorded their emotions through literature. By taking their experiences and transferring them into a tangible medium, they immortalised their perspective on the world. Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk tells of Sumerian priestess Enheduanna. She describes a “dark time of social unrest and political battles”, the climate in which Hymn to Inanna was born. It was a cry for help under God’s abandonment, written in a language that died circa 2000 BCE.
It is by the mercy of translation that we even know its name.
Translation, much like language, is a double-edged chisel. It can work to chip away the barrier that separates foreign tongues from the richness a new experience can offer. But in making texts more accessible, translations run the risk of creating a cheap imitation of the original, filled with approximations, rough edges, and jarring contradictions. It can leave a text unrecognisable from its parent, or to build upon its source material to carry across its beauty and purpose.
Historically, Britain has reigned as a superpower. They (and their rebellious colonies in America) are the reason 15% of the world speaks English. In the modern day, it is then crucial for writers to make their texts available to this large audience if they want to deliver the messages of their literature beyond their borders. They do not have to, of course. They can suffice with speakers of their language if they wish. But the historical divergence of cultures has made it near impossible to be conservative with one’s work. It would be a disservice to the society that depends on unique world views to have some resistance against complete ignorance. Rebellion thrives on power and knowledge, and world literature is the richest source of it.
World literature, as a subject, helps us to break free from ignorance. It reminds us that not everyone is a teenage Asian that catches the train to school in a black blazer every day. It confronts us with tales of community in Ethiopia, or the horrors of war in Singapore, or how boomers are coping with the modern descent into utter chaos. It takes a hatchet to our predisposed ideas of existence and shatters the bubbles that once confined us. Refusing translation renders those hatchets moot. Translation, at its core, is a lifesaver. It is morally imperative that literature is made as accessible as possible, without being monopolised. Martin Puchner details the struggle of world literature against the powers of colonialism and nationalism. He tells of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx’s struggle in keeping the Communist Manifesto and world literature from being an ironic staple of capitalism in the world market.
Even with the moral obligation to translate, it is still important to account for what is sacrificed. Authorial intent is most crucial when the value of the text relies on the audience understanding the mechanisms behind it. If an author slips a pun into their writing, or uses a culturally dependent metaphor, or employs figurative techniques unique to their language, then any alterations would completely undo the threads they’d have woven.
Zen Hae’s The Crow is a magnificent example of this. To begin, the text’s original title is “Kkkkhhaaaaaakkk”, an interesting onomatopoeic, yet unusual hook for a reader. By comparison, “The Crow” is simpler and doesn’t have nearly as much allure. Maybe “Ca-cawwwwwww!” would have been a more accurate translation but wouldn’t have read as clearly as the one in the text I read. More interestingly, however, is Hae’s incorporation of intertextuality. He uses a Malay text called Bustanu Thair (“Bird Park”) to introduce the supernatural behaviour of Garifin. As an English reader, I was excited to discover an extra layer to this piece of world literature to appreciate it better. But upon Googling it, I found…nothing. No trace of the text but in other sites with The Crow. This was weeks ago, and to this day, I still can’t help but think that I’ve lost out on another layer of an astounding work of fiction, just because I can’t read the original. Mayhap it was a completely fictional work of itself. But what if there is more that I can’t see? What if it’s a joke that only works in Indonesian that Marjie Suanda couldn’t craft into English? Or if it does exist, and there was an error in translation? As a monoglot, I feel betrayed by my blindness. For as long as I can’t bridge this gap myself, this text will haunt me — not that I particularly mind, because it’s a great read.
Yet, no matter how much people fight for Johann Goethe’s cause, it is inevitable that elements of Western culture may seep into others. This intermeshing goes both ways — as cultures grow, so does their potential to impact other cultures. Joshua Matulessy, an Indonesian rapper known onstage as JFlow, is a prime specimen of the western world trickling into the “remotest zones” (Marx, 1848). In his song Aku Gereja Kau Gereja (“I’m the Church, You’re the Church), he raps using a flow best compared to Nathan Feuerstein (NF — they’re similar in their subject matter too). Here is an excerpt from a verse from it, with its rhyme scheme annotated.
The song itself is Christian, hence the last four lines in English. This may be because throwing English lyrics into an Indonesian song has a similar novelty to adding Indonesian lines to an English. But what’s most interesting about these lyrics is their subject matter. The spread of religion from the Middle East to Southeast Asia is a testament (no pun intended) to the power of colonialism in spreading ideologies and ways of life. While this influence can help popularise other cultures (e.g., k-pop with Psy and BTS), or even create incredibly advanced societies by melding the two (e.g., Japan.), it also has the potential to erase and rob us of the unique viewpoints of disadvantaged societies (e.g., the Native Americans, or Indigenous Australians). World literature seems to then be involved in a paradox, where it fights against what fuels it. But given the incredible benefits of its spread, it is better not to think of it as contamination, but the dispelling of universal normalcy. It promotes the importance of international diversity and is key in preventing a Eurocentric hegemony. Translation is the main weapon in this fight, and its power goes unparalleled.
Good translations offer a just compromise between the wonder of the original and its potential with a toolbox from another culture. They act as bridges over cultural chasms, aiming to reconcile societal divergences that have formed over millennia. The way language is used is as unique as the cultures that speak them. As a result, intersections between languages are as rare as the intersections between cultures. “Kucing”, “neko”, and “chat” have nothing to do with “penyucian”, “rengoku”, and “purgatoire”. But that’s not to say intersections don’t exist outright.
To answer my question: where do dead cats go?
In Australia, Britain, or the US? Purrgatory.
Pero en España, ¿a dónde van los gatos muertos? El purgatorio.
E in Italia? Il Purgattorio.
References — yes I actually researched stuff.
Hae, Z 2015, The Crow / Kkkkhhaaaaaakkk, trans. M Suanda, Words Without Borders, viewed 14 August 2020, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-crow1
Marx, K & Engels, F 1856, The Communist Manifesto
Matulessy, J 2015, Aku Gereja Kau Gereja, accessed 10 September 2020, https://genius.com/Barry-likumahuwa-aku-gereja-kau-gereja-lyrics
Puchner, M 2017, Readers of the World Unite, in S Haselby (ed.), Aeon, Aeon, viewed 21 July 2020, https://aeon.co/essays/world-literature-is-both-a-market-reality-and-a-global-ideal
Tokarczuk, O & Croft, J 2019, [Musings] How Translators Are Saving the World, Korean Literature Now, viewed 18 August 2020, https://koreanliteraturenow.com/essay/musings/olga-tokarczuk-musings-how-translators-are-saving-world
