Translational equivalence without full correspondence.

What is it and how one should work with it? This very indicator is never given as a 3-rd text which status would be matching the Plato’s Parmenid character – third between a human thought and human ways whose actual and real part is anticipated. On condition that the 3-rd text containing the very idea is missing - the semantic identity has no other option but the critique extraction performed by several specialists or polyglots or, at least bilinguals. The critique extraction would be equivalent to the private translation copy. For this reason, our smart reader will re-make the translator’s variant bestowing upon himself the translation challenge, and meeting the same equivalence paradox without full correspondence as well.

Now I will engage in digression by talking about the repeated translation by the reader. I want to focus on the general aspect of constant translation of classic literature works, such as the Bible, works of Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes and Moliere. It should be mentioned that during the repeated translation there is the greatest desire to translate. This desire is sustained by one not being quite satisfied with the current translations. I will no longer engage in digression.

We have been observing the translator since the very first trace of fear that was pulling him down and his work as well. Through all the attempts of struggling with the text, we leave the translator in the state of complete dissatisfaction; - state which still haunts him after the work is done. Antuan Berman whose works I have carefully read for such an occasion successfully concludes the two ways of difficulties – the text difficulties and those related to the language recipient translation. As it goes: «When it comes to the physical aspect of a translator, he is ambivalent. He wants to make both sides be full of foreign aspects, and the foreign language be lost within the mother tongue».

Our comparison with the work of memories mentioned by Freud has finally found a matching equivalent in the work of translator who is fighting on both fronts of double resistance.

So, here we have reached this dramatic moment where the work of sad finds its equivalent in the translation, and is bitterly rewarded. I would call this briefly – rejection of the ideal translation. Only this abandonment would make the just formulated impossibility available to exist and serve the two masters as well – author and reader. The very sadness would permit to solve the two tasks being called the controversial ones – lead author towards reader and vice versa. To put it in one word – the courage of bestowing a duty of the well-known loyalty-and-treason problem upon oneself. But what ideal translation are we talking about referring to the rejection and this whole sadness work? Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy being gave it a noble version for German Romantics of Literature Absolute.

This absolute is reigning over the whole bunch of inaccuracies that have different names – «renewal» by the means of target language according to Goethe, «potentialization» from the source language referring to Novalis, coincidence of Bildung double process, both source and target language talking about Humboldt.

This dream wasn’t a fake one, though. On one hand it was appealing the ambitions to show the real side of the composition being written in a foreign language and the one that should be translated. On the other – the desire of leading out the mother tongue from the provincial ones; the language that is alone among the others being treated as a foreign one. But this oath of perfect translation has taken another form. Among those I will name two: first the cosmopolitan Aufklärung direction (Ger. For enlightenment), a wish of creating a library that would become the very Book, a broad translation network of all the books in all languages that would be some sort of the world library erasing all translational moments. Due to this dream of total rationality, liberation from cultural contradictions and social restrictions – the dream of global translation would be aiming at filling the interlingual communicational room, as well as replacing the world’s language. Another way of perfect translation is focused on waiting for the messiah. In a lingual aspect this way was brought to life by Walter Benjamin in his famous work – The task of translator. The purpose of this whole work would be the pure language; as Benjamin himself would say - every translation has it within itself as an echo of the messiah. In all of these forms the desire to have a perfect translation is equal to the wish of translation victory, victory with no defeat. This very victory is the very thing one should be longing for, till the very acceptance of border differences between native and foreign. The restored generality would be trying to erase the memory of the foreign, love for pure language in hate form of mother tongue provinciality. This self-destroying generality would be turning all foreigners into language outcasts who rejected to search for light in the recipient language. Just some nomadic travelers wandering around.

This very desire of better translation is the key component that makes the translation process joyfull. The amusement of translation lies in the rise having relation to the loss of language absolute. He agrees on the difference between adequacy and equivalence. That’s the whole beauty of it. By confessing and making peace with the absence of translation between languages, both native and foreign, translator finds his prize determining the final status of dialogical act of translation as the rational horizon to translate. Regardless the agonistics that makes the translator’s task dramatic, he is still able of finding his luck in what I call a hospitable language.

His principle is similarity with no correspondence. An unstable circumstance takes into consideration only a repeated translation that I’ve just mentioned. This is some kind of a dubbing-in exercise type brought to life by the means of minimal bilingual ability of a translator – a repeated translation done once again. I’ve been studying two models being relatively psycho-analytically connected with the work of memories and sorrow. The purpose is to prove that just like in a verbal act a translation can vary, filling the difference between equivalence and total similarity. So, the language hospitability is enjoyment that comes from using a language that is compensated by enjoyment to accept foreign words in the recipient language.