The time factor

The time factor usually becomes relevant if the language of a text is intimately associated with a particular period. It naturally has an effect on translation decisions. In translating old texts the selection of words, antiquated morphological or syntactical forms, the choice of particular figures of speech, etc., should accord as closely as pos-sible to the usages of the source text. All the more so as language is a living, ever changing organism, molded by specific circumstances which should be reflected in the translation – especially in form-and appeal-focused texts. The translation of an 18th-century text should essentially be distinguishable from the translation of a 20th-century text, even if the translator is of the 20th-20th-century. This cannot be done by relying exclusively on the particular elements character-istic of the source text, because in contemporary usage these could seem to lead sometimes to quite different optimal equivalents. W.

Widmer (1959, p. 60) quite rightly criticizes a translation of Balzac’s novel La Cousine Bette for ignoring the time factor by saying that

“besides, it is so saucy, pert and racy that it could be turn-of-the-century Berlin instead of Paris in the 1830s.”

The time factor is also important in another sense for translation criticism. Thus the translation of a 19th-century text made about the same time cannot be judged by the same standards as a more recent translation of the same text, because the language of the origi-nal may not have changed, but the target language has been developing in the meanwhile. These factors may be particularly sig-nificant for form-focused and appeal-focused texts. ⁹⁷ The familiar

97 A good example of this is in R. Kloepfer (1967, p. 94 f). A comedy by

phenomenon of aging translations is operative here. This is the rea-son why the old classics of world literature need to be translated anew from time to time.⁹⁸ Julius Wirl (1958, p. 74) points out an-other effect of the time factor: “Advances in historical, philological and text critical research can (basically) alter traditionally accepted understandings of a literary or poetical work as well as affect the overall import and specific details of a text.” An excellent example is provided by the many translations of Dante, especially the most successful versions, which not only reflect the language of the origi-nal but represent the respective stages of their target languages when they were translated, and not least demonstrate various concepts of the function of a translation.⁹⁹

Plautus achieves comic effects by making use of suggestions from everyday life, such as fashion trends. Kloepfer produced an imaginative and effectively equivalent translation of a characteristic portion of this comedy showing “at the same time how short-lived a timely translation of a comedy need be if like the original it is aimed to satisfy a brief and specific moment” (p. 96). This translation which was designed ideally for 1965 with the catchwords of the period, would have to be altered considerably today.

98 See E. Tabernig de Pucciarelli (1964, p. 139): “De esto depende que mientras las obras originales pertenecen a todos los tiempos y son definitivas, las traducciones son provisorias. En su mayoría son productos históricos y como tales envejecen y necesitan ser renovadas de acuerdo a nuevas exigencias de la sensibilitad, a nuevos intereses intelectuales o estéticos, a una nueva com-prensión del original.” (“This is the reason that while the original works are ageless and definitive, their translations are provisional. Most of them are his-torical products, and as such they grow old and need to be renewed to meet the needs of new sensibilities, new intellectual or esthetic interests, and new understandings of the original”).

99 See O. Blixen (1954, p. 43): “Pero con la traducción sucede otra cosa: ella envejece siempre, pues al plasmarse en la lengua de un determinado momento histórico vase cargando paulatinamente en algunos siglos – no necesariamente muchos – con el peso de toda la tradición idiomática y literaria de esa lengua”

(“But with translation something else happens: it inevitably ages, since it is formed at a particular historical moment in the language, little by little through the years – sometimes more rapidly – it settles under the weight of the whole literary and idiomatic tradition of the language”). Yet we cannot share Blixen’s view that original works do not age but only fail to match the taste of a new era. Blixen’s misunderstanding here is probably due to his preoccupation with examples in Latin. Now Latin is a dead language and not continuing to

de-In this connection one more viewpoint should be noticed, al-though as a category for translation criticism it should be mentioned later. A translation may have a special purpose which may justify the time factor being legitimately ignored. The adaptation of Mid-dle High German texts in contemporary German may be justified if their purpose is to make them intelligible to the modern reader. Simi-larly Old French texts may be translated into contemporary German as an aid to their understanding by the modern reader.

From what has been said it may be inferred that the time factor is a very complex determinant, and that its consideration demands very sophisticated sensitivities, both linguistically and stylistically, depending on the type of text and also the special interests of the translator and the translation critic.

One example will show how the most appropriate word and the standards for its critical evaluation can vary within a brief time span.

In a critique (Mager, 1968) of the novel La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela (1945) the writer listed under the rubric

“Changes from the original” the following passages: “No obstante, y si la Providencia dispone que ...” (“Nevertheless, if Providence should permit;” Pascual Duarte, p. 22) and the translation “Wenn es aber das Schicksal will, daß ...” (“But if fate should decree;”

Mager [1968], p. 15 ff.). His complaint with the translation of la Providencia by Schicksal was: “With due respect to ‘free’ transla-tion, it does not give the translator the right to take a religious concept, which came naturally to the Spaniard (whether consciously or unconsciously) from his deep background in the faith, and con-vert it to an “Enlightenment” idiom. Although it would make the

velop. Living languages are developing languages, and consequently all lin-guistic products age and are dated, whether they are originals or translations.

Translations may age more rapidly, especially if the target language is chang-ing more rapidly and noticeably than the original language. This brchang-ings in the factor of phases, which equally with the time factor can affect translations.

The Spanish of the 16th century was already fully developed. German transla-tions from the Spanish are hardly readable today because German has developed far more extensively since the 16th century than has Spanish.

translation read like an original in German, the reader should be aware that he was dealing with Spaniards.” (p. 49-50). The criti-cism is essentially right. Instead of Schicksal the word Himmel (“heaven”) would have been better, but not die Vorsehung (“Provi-dence”), as the author suggested in conversation. In 1949, the year the translation appeared, the word Vorsehung had such a fatal ring to it through Hitler’s demagogical abuse of the term that a German translator would have avoided it if at all possible. It would inevita-bly have evoked for the German reader in 1949 associations that had nothing to do with the original and would have amounted to mistranslation. The translation critic evidently never thought of this time factor as relevant for the text in the target language.¹⁰⁰

The above examples make it quite clear that the translation critic should always consider very carefully what alternatives the trans-lator could have weighed beyond the obvious ones. This could also well contribute to turning a negative criticism into an ob-jective judgment.