Chels
One of my favourite parts of writing, fiction or non-fiction, is diving headfirst into research. I perhaps research too much, but I enjoy it so much – the actual writing sometimes comes second to the research. Last week I was looking for some 18th century horror short stories and poetry (surprisingly harder to come by than novels, it turns out) and ended up reading far more than I needed to about Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I knew very little about Coleridge before – he always seemed to skirt the edges of the poetry I studied, but never quite became a subject of interest.
Coleridge was a big believer in revision as part of his poetry process, and often rewrote and revised his works after their publication. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in fact, existed in eighteen versions during his lifetime. The first revision was of the most interest to me. The poem was first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, and was revised only two years later to modernise the spelling and some language choices. Language is not static, and we can see it clearly through the way that words and phrases come in and out of fashion in our own lifetime (I doubt that words like whimsy were used with such frequency two years ago) but we tend to think of the past as a bit of a monolith – how much could language have changed in two years in the 18th century?
When I studied poetry in translation, we talked a lot about what gets lost when we translate a work. Not only must we consider meaning, but with poetry, we must also consider rhythm, rhyme, sounds, and syllables. The clearest example is the haiku – poems which conform to a three line structure of five syllables, then seven, then five again. Haiku originated in Japan, though, so many of the most famous poems are originally Japanese. In translating these works, we have to choose between strictly adhering to the structure of the poem, or choosing the words that best represent the original meaning and intention of the work. Many English war poems use sounds deliberately – employing plosives to reflect the violence of war. In translation, though, words with the same meaning don’t sound the same; one has to choose whether to reflect the author’s words, or reflect the use of sound.
The same arguments are reflected in prose. Whenever a classic novel is given a new translation, we pore over the words trying to decide which translation is more enjoyable, which is more faithful to the original text, or which better captures the intended atmosphere. It’s impossible for a translation to be perfect, but I think that translated works are essential – we cannot speak every language (though some of us can speak more than others), but great works of literature should still be accessible to us. I’ll never know for sure if the version of Crime and Punishment I read is the best version, or if Dostoevsky would have agreed with the choices made in the translation, but I can read very little Russian, and certainly not enough to fully understand the novel.
The concept of modernising the language of classics has always existed (I would not have survived secondary school without no fear Shakespeare), but there seems to be an emerging trend of not only modernising, but simplifying classics. There’s a new ‘translation’ of Wuthering Heights which updates the language into ‘modern English’ (don’t worry, the pedantic discourse about it already being modern English has come and gone), and while I understand the desire to make classic literature even more accessible to those who might struggle with Victorian era language, the preview that’s been released has already been quite controversial. Rather than modernising the language, it seems to have been simplified – with phrases that are perfectly comprehensible but slightly wordy being shortened unnecessarily. This edition shifts the meaning of much of the prose, and for some reason, has removed the instances of Lockwood referring to Heathcliff as sir during their conversation. I understand that people tend not to do that these days, but the ‘translator’ claimed that the novel would remain in its’ original form, without changes to the story or meaning. In removing the honorific, the relationship between Lockwood and Heathcliff changes.
I try not to be hypocritical, because I tend to defend modernising some literature. People can get very cross when they find out that works of children’s literature (typically by Dahl or Blyton) are revised to remove ‘outdated language’, but I tend to think that while it’s important to retain the author’s intention, children do not have the same nuanced understanding as adults – we can acknowledge that some language used in classic literature is outdated, and wouldn’t use it today, but children lack the same knowledge of history. And if the alternative is that classic children’s literature has to be pulled from the shelves, I’d much prefer to see small changes.
When it comes to Coleridge revising his poetry, we can be pretty certain that the changes are accurate to his intent (given that he wrote each revision). When it comes to translating the works of other writers, we can’t ever be certain of what the right choices are. In fact, many writers may have struggled themselves – how do you select the most appropriate translation in a language you aren’t fluent in? While translations can’t ever be perfect, I think they’re a vital part of the literary ecosystem. To an extent, I feel similarly about modernising texts. I think it can be really helpful, especially for students, to be able to read an approximation of the original text in a more familiar language, but I also don’t think it should replace original texts. Reading a passage of Shakespeare’s plays in its original form and in a more accessible version side by side can help to properly understand the story, but can also help with developing an eye for Elizabethan English. Once you understand that wherefore art thou Romeo asks why Romeo is who he is, one can identify that when Macduff asks wherefore did you so he is not asking where Macbeth killed, but why, and then his response makes a lot more sense.
