Translation as a Poetic Experience/Experiment: The Short Fiction of Quince Duncan

Academe has always been tradition-bound its emphasis on classics of western literature, whether they were works of Greco-Roman writers or those of print-culture Europeans and their New World successors; therefore, academy developed an almost impenetrable canon. Rainer Schulte indirectly addresses issue of confronting venerable models when he refers to fact that translations are generally viewed askance, and, some instances, are treated with open hostility by guardians of modern language, literature, and humanities programs. Not only is translation dismissed as a serious scholarly activity, it is also seen as potentially harmful to full appreciation of a text.1 However, Schulte asserts that in order for cultures to find cross-fertilization and meaningful exchange of ideas, customs, and artistic creations, art and craft of translation is indispensable.2 Shigeo Minowa supports idea of translation as an essential process fomenting international scholarly communication, and he adds that the nature of translation reflects intellectual vitality of a country and its cultural relationships with its neighbours.3 Andre Lefevere concurs with above two scholars and reminds us that translation of literature as a discipline has a respectable history, which dates back to eighteenth century. Moreover, it even dominated study of literature until 1920's.4 This essay will proceed on basis that translation of literature, especially that produced by writers of African-American diaspora, is not only a vital but also a refreshing aspect of vast field of criticism. Furthermore, through selected excerpts from The Best Short Stories of Quince Duncan, I hope to strike a much-needed balance between theory and practice.5 Many scholars of translation studies, among whom is Marilyn Gaddis Rose, view translation as process. According to Rose, translations may be classified terms of binary oppositions such as versus or literary versus non-literary, which are oldest types. That scholar comments: literal versus free denotes translation strategy, how translation should be carried out, whereas versus non-literary denotes what is being translated, how text is classified to begin with.6 Schulte, who also views translation as process, outlines four principal steps translating a work: act of reading, act of interpreting, act of evaluation, and act of decison making, that order.7 Lefevere sees translation as a products or an artifact produced within broader context of target literature.8 Thus, his bipolar continuum postulates reader-oriented translations on one hand, and text-oriented translations on other9 Schulte's outline has provided a valuable tool for future revisions of The Best Short Stories, which was translated without recourse to theory. Lefevere's perspective that translation is a product, which is linked to hypothesis, is also vital when considering Duncan's role within larger context of African-American and other non-canonical literatures Western tradition. Lefevere comments: The term polysystem denotes that a literature is never at any moment its history, monolithic whole which textbooks tend to present it as, but rather, each phase of its evolution, a collocation of different, often antagonistic, trends, dominated by set of works a given era accepts as canonized. This canonized literature comes under attack from other trends, which try to displace it and achieve canonized status themselves. Analogously, one literature can occupy a canonized position vis-a-vis another.10 The hypothesis, then, provides context for four-stage, translation-as-process model used to assess my adaptation of Duncan's short stories, four examples of which come from collection Una cancion en la madrugada, or Dawn Song. …