Untranslatability This volume is the first of its kind to explore the notion of untranslatability from a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, and its implications within the broader context of translation studies. Featuring contributions from both leading authorities and emerging scholars in the field, the book looks to go beyond traditional comparisons of target texts and their sources to more rigorously investigate the myriad ways in which the term untranslatability is both conceptualized and applied. The first half of the volume focuses on untranslatability as a theoretical or philosophical construct, both to ground and extend the term’s conceptual remit, while the second half is composed of case studies in which the term is applied and contextualized in a diverse set of literary text types and genres, including poetry, philosophical works, song lyrics, memoir and scripture. A final chapter examines untranslatability in the real world and the challenges it brings in practical contexts. Extending the conversation in this burgeoning contemporary debate, this volume is key reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, comparative literature, gender studies and philosophy of language. Duncan Large is Professor of European Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, and Academic Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His philosophy translations are published by OUP and Continuum; he is also joint General Editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Motoko Akashi completed her MA in Applied Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia in 2013 and is currently completing a PhD in Translation Studies there. Her research focuses on the phenomenon of celebrity translators, and asks how their existence problematises our understanding of translator visibility. Wanda Józwikowska completed her PhD in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2016, with a dissertation on “Polish- Jewish Fiction Before the Second World War: A Testing Ground for Polysystem Theory.” She currently works at the Institute of Specialised and Intercultural Communication, University of Warsaw. Emily Rose finished her PhD in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2018. Her thesis explores the translation of trans identity from English, French and Spanish. Her work has been included in Queer in Translation (Routledge 2017) and a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (November 2016). Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies Untranslatability Goes Global Edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan Queering Translation, Translating the Queer Theory, Practice, Activism Edited by Brian James Baer and Klaus Kaindl Translating Foreign Otherness Cross-cultural Anxiety in Modern China Yifeng Sun Translating Picturebooks Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience Riitta Oittinen, Anne Ketola and Melissa Garavini Translation and Emotion A Psychological Perspective Séverine Hubscher-Davidson Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation Edited by Irene Ranzato and Serenella Zanotti Jin Ping Mei English Translations Texts, Paratexts, and Contexts Lintao Qi Untranslatability Interdisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Duncan Large, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska and Emily Rose For a full list of titles in this series, visit www.routledge.com/Routledge- Advances-in-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RTS Untranslatability Interdisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Duncan Large, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska and Emily Rose First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors Duncan Large, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska and Emily Rose to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-08257-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11244-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents ContentsContents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 DUNCAN LARGE, MOTOKO AKASHI, WANDA JÓZWIKOWSKA AND EMILY ROSE PART I Theory and Philosophy 11 1 Humboldt, Translation and the Dictionary of Untranslatables 13 BARBARA CASSIN 2 Untranslatability, Entanglement and Understanding 27 THEO HERMANS 3 On the (Im)possibility of Untranslatability 41 KIRSTEN MALMKJÆR 4 The Untranslatable in Philosophy 50 DUNCAN LARGE 5 Against the “Un-” in Untranslatability: On the Obsession with Problems, Negativity and Uncertainty 64 KLAUS MUNDT 6 The Affront of Untranslatability: Ten Scenarios 80 DAVID GRAMLING vi Contents PART II Poetry and Prose 97 7 Translation and Mysticism: Demanding the Impossible? 99 PHILIP WILSON 8 Remembered Hills: Tonal Memory in English Translations of Chinese Regulated Verse 114 SIMON EVERETT 9 “An English That Is Sometimes Strangely Interesting”: Ciaran Carson Mining Linguistic Resources Using Translation 128 HELEN GIBSON 10 Resistance to Translation as Cultural Untranslatability: Inter-War Polish-Jewish Fiction in English 142 WANDA JÓZWIKOWSKA 11 Surmounting the “Insurmountable” Challenges of Translating a Transgender Memoir 161 EMILY ROSE 12 Is “Fajront” in Sarajevo the Same as “Closing Time” Elsewhere? On the Translatability of the Yugoslav Age of Rock and Roll into English 179 ANDREA STOJILKOV PART III Envoi: Beyond Literature 197 13 Untranslatability in Practice: Challenges to Translation and Interpreting 199 JOANNA DRUGAN Notes on Contributors 215 Index 219 Acknowledgements AcknowledgementsAcknowledgements Chapter 1: Barbara Cassin’s essay was originally published in French as Barbara Cassin, “Humboldt, la traduction et le Dictionnaire des intra- duisibles: Un savoir-faire avec les différences,” in L’Hellénisme de Wil- helm von Humboldt et ses prolongements européens, edited by Michel Espagne and Sandrine Maufroy (Paris: Éditions Demopolis/École fran- çaise d’Athènes, 2016), pp. 119–37. It was translated by David Nowell Smith and first published in English in Forum for Modern Language Stud- ies, Volume 53, Issue 1 (January 2017), 71–82 (special issue: “Thinking Language: Wilhelm von Humboldt Now,” edited by Marko Pajevic´ and David Nowell Smith). It is reproduced here by permission of Oxford University Press and the Editorial Board of Forum for Modern Language Studies. Chapter 7 includes lines from Decreation by Anne Carson. Published by Jonathan Cape. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. © 2006. Chapter 9: The Inferno of Dante Alighieri was first published in Great Britain by Granta Books. Translation copyright © 2002 by Ciaran Car- son. Lines from Ciaran Carson’s The Alexandrine Plan, In the Light Of and The Twelfth of Never are used by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press (www.gallerypress.com). This book grew out of the Sixth Postgraduate Translation Symposium at the University of East Anglia in November 2015, so we wish to thank those who attended and participated in that event, as well as Nozomi Abe and Jean Boase-Beier, who helped with the organisation. We are very grateful to our editors at Routledge, Elysse Preposi and Allie Simmons, for all their advice and support, and to our project manager at Apex CoVantage, Jennifer Bonnar, for guiding the book to publication. Introduction Duncan Large et al.Introduction Duncan Large, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska and Emily Rose Untranslatability has never had a higher profile than at present. Indeed, it is positively fashionable: Did you know there is an Arabic word for the kind of conversation you have in the evening as the sun sets? Or that there is a Spanish word for the flowing conversation around the dinner table after eve- ryone has finished eating? UNTRANSLATION is an installation that explores and celebrates the many languages spoken in Brixton. In lexicons worldwide, words exist that are untranslatable to the English language. Not any old words either. Magic words that seemingly have the power and abil- ity to express and define complex emotions and situations which we all feel but have not developed the vocabulary to express in English. (Furness and Hollis 2017) So runs the description of a large, flag-based installation by Sam Furness and Toni Hollis hung in Brixton Village and Market Row for a week in September 2017 during the London Design Festival.1 It is symptomatic of a culture fascinated by such “magic words,” shibboleths that are claimed to express something unique about another, ineffably different culture (Wierzbicka 1997). It is but the latest demonstration of how our popular culture savours instances where English (and not just English) meets its limits. Over the last decade, popular books celebrating lexical multicul- turalism have sold very well,2 both in English and (ironically) in trans- lations,3 and in just the last few years books devoted to explaining the supposedly “untranslatable” Danish words hygge and lykke, the Swedish lagom4 and fika, or the Japanese ikigai have proved trend-surfing bestsell- ers, both on the English-language publishing market (Flood 2016; Hig- gins 2016; Green 2017) and beyond. This (layman’s) view of untranslatability as something cool and fash- ionable, to be marvelled at and celebrated, suggests at least a couple of