Abstract
In the present translation of Jean-Charles Houzeau’s letters that deal with his escape from Texas in 1861–1862, we have taken into account three factors: the nature of the source text, the purpose of the author, and the type of audience that he aimed at. Houzeau, about his own translations of excerpts of American newspapers wrote “I translate literally and without adding one single comment”. Our translation operates along the lines that Houzeau himself had set out—that is, it reproduces with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text—thus also stays clear from deletion, distortion and generalization. As such, this translation is to be seen as a technical translation resulting in a close factual, formal and semantic correspondence that preserves the original style of the writer, and that maintains virtually all phrases and sentences. This approach induces some degree of otherness or foreignness that takes the reader to the foreign author rather than vice versa. This chapter describes the original printed source text and its literary quality, as well as the 19th-century source culture. We explain our approach to, and our procedure of translation, as well as the problem of sensitive text, and the difficulties of translating the title of this work. We consider this translation to be a solid ground for scholarly research, and a reliable basis that oversteps the need for consultation of the French source text. The resulting body of text in Part III is to be seen as historical “data” in the strict sense used in the natural sciences: all interpretation and explanation of this body of “data” are included in the explanatory notes and in the footnotes.
Don Quixote: “...it appears to me, that translating from one language into another, unless it be from one of those two queenly tongues, Greek and Latin, is like gazing at a Flemish tapestry with the wrong side out: even though the figures are visible, they are full of threads that obscure the view and are not bright and smooth as when seen from the other side.”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (“...me parece que el traducir de una lengua en otra, como no sea de las reinas de las lenguas, griega y latina, es como quien mira los tapices flamencos por el revés; que aunque se veen las figuras, son llenas de hilos que las escurecen, y no se veen con la lisura y tez de la haz; ...”.)
translated by Samuel Putnam [1]
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Notes
- 1.
Baron Eugène Van Bemmel (1824–1880), the first Editor of the Revue trimestrielle, a quarterly that he founded in 1854.
- 2.
“Mon cher P.” sent from Matamoros (Mexico) on April 27, resp. May 13, 1862.
- 3.
A file with very interesting documents and letters from Houzeau had been carefully inventoried, but could not be found in the Brussels Palais des Académies after the departure of the German troops in 1918 [3, p. 314], and is thus missing since World War II.
- 4.
- 5.
“Voilà quinze ans que je ne vois rien ou presque rien de ce que j’écris” [6, letter 36, January 20, 1871].
- 6.
“...je connais la difficulté d’imprimer sans l’auteur” [6, letter 57].
- 7.
Houzeau demanded to respect his paragraphing: “Je tiens assez à ce qu’on suive mes alinéas” [6, letter 45, August 7, 1871].
- 8.
Vinay & Darbelnet [9, p. 88] emphasize that “...the positioning of a word within an utterance has an effect on its meaning,...”.
- 9.
Houzeau wrote in a difficult hand in tiny script, on thin, highly perishable paper using pen and ink, and often added last-minute remarks in the margins. His typeface sometimes gives rise to confusion, for example lower-case z is rendered as \(\mathfrak {z}\) (reminiscent of the Fraktur class of fonts of the Latin alphabet). He also informed his father about the detrimental effects of heat and humidity on the visual contrast of the ink that was used [2, letter 45, August 15, 1859].
- 10.
Note that his letters to his parents are of a more elegant style, for example the reporting of his “discovery” of a beautiful comet [2, letter 34, October 17, 1858].
- 11.
“Toute œuvre littéraire se ressent du milieu dans lequel elle a été élaboré [sic], et l’homme qui écrit en présence des grands spectacles de la nature ne saurait assujetir son style aux délicates périphrases, aux formes recherchées de l’écrivain vieilli dans l’atmosphère parfumée des salons. ...” [12, p. 185].
- 12.
“Mon language conserve-t-il sa pureté? S’aperçoit-on que le français n’est plus ma langue vulgaire? Les anglicismes dominent-ils trop? ...”.
- 13.
“Je commence à perdre l’habitude même de la construction française: je pense en anglais; je rêve en anglais”.
- 14.
“Excusez mon mauvais français; je passe mes journées à rendre l’espagnol en anglais et l’anglais en espagnol, ce qui produit en moi une sorte de confusion des langues.”.
- 15.
John Brown (1800–1859) was an American abolitionist who was sentenced to death by hanging.
- 16.
The Southern Netherlands was the part of the Low Countries that were occupied by Spain and later by Austria. When France annexed the region in 1794, French became the exclusive language of state. By Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, the Congress of Vienna had constructed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that embraced Holland, present-day Belgium and Luxemburg. King William I then chose Dutch as the language of state throughout the entire kingdom. Since 1830, Belgium has evolved from a centralised francophone state to a multilingual federation featuring three languages of state: Dutch, French and German [14, 15].
- 17.
And thus also La Terreur Blanche.
- 18.
“Je traduis littéralement et sans ajouter aucun commentaire”.
- 19.
“Aucun compromis, aucun amendement à la Constitution, aucun replâtrage que vous puissiez tenter ne satisfera le Sud, à moins que vons ne reconnaissiez les esclaves comme propriété, et que vous ne protégiez cette espèce de propriété comme toutes les autres”.
- 20.
In their methodology for translation, Vinay & Darbelnet [9] affirm that “...the literal—free opposition is wrongly posed and that the real choice is between precise and imprecise translation”.
- 21.
“...et plus on se familiarise avec la littérature d’une langue étrangère plus on se convainc que la traduction des points de fait (du terre à terre) est la seule à laquelle se prêtent nos langues” [6, letter 124].
- 22.
The first pass was created in 2012 by Amy Abercrombie King, the second pass was subsequently carried out by Christiaan Sterken, the third pass was worked out by both editors/translators in an iterative approach. This procedure was not followed for the translations from Spanish, German and Dutch, which were carried out by Christiaan Sterken.
- 23.
subjonctif plus-que-parfait.
- 24.
One such example is the statement in footnote 13 in Sect. 3.3 about langue vulgaire: the adjective “vulgaire” carries now a pejorative connotation, and the expression langue vernaculaire is now used instead [22]. Houzeau also used the term in the deprecatory sense in English, see the quotation on the head page of Chap. 4. We recall that Houzeau’s letters are peppered with Latin words and phrases, so the “vulgaire” in his expression likely refers to “Vulgar Latin”, the spoken form of non-Classical Latin from which originated the Romance group of languages [23].
- 25.
The reproduction of grammatical units consists in: (a) translating nouns by nouns, verbs by verbs, etc.; (b) keeping all phrases and sentences intact (i.e.not splitting up and readjusting the units); and (c) preserving all formal indicators, e.g. marks of punctuation, paragraph breaks, and the entire set of paragraph divisions.Thus, we did not reorganize nor create chapters or sections nor insert commentary or change wording. The reader should be aware that Victorians used punctuation differently than we do now. Houzeau’s punctuation shows a very frequent use of semicolon, a characteristic that we conserved, even at the price of reduced coherence.
- 26.
Also called das Fremde by Wilhelm von Humboldt [30, p. 19]: “Solange ...das Fremde gefühlt wird, hat die Übersetzung ihre höchsten Zwecke erreicht ...”—“As long as one senses [on reading a translation] what is other about the original, the translation has fulfilled its ultimate aim”.
- 27.
In 1922 the Style Manual of the Government Printing Office prescribed to capitalize this word “...only when used as synonym for entire race, ...lower case when used as a common noun or adjective ...”. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization in the United States formed in 1909 as a biracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans, argued that the N in Negro should always be capitalized [34, p. 114]: on March 7, 1930, the editors of the New York Times announced that the newspaper would henceforth do so. In the same year, W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis, in a short note entitled “That capital N” [35] contributed to the discussion on the sudden decision to capitalize the word. Much earlier, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had argued in Supreme Court, that “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used” [36].
- 28.
This approach was also followed in a translation that was published online [37].
- 29.
The content of this book is even better represented by the subtitle than by the final title [41].
- 30.
“‘Le Journal Noir’ est un titre qu’on a mis à Bruxelles” [6, letter 74, July 23, 1874].
- 31.
“...mes amis Lacroix et Van Meenen, qui m’ont écris pour reproduire en volume les correspondances de la Revue Trimestrielle. Je n’ai pas consenti, parce que je songe à refondre une partie de ces lettres dans un Manuel de l’Émigrant.” [2, letter 62, May 12, 1861].
- 32.
“L’organisation de quelques bandes de Trestaillons a fermé la bouche aux abolitionistes, et inauguré le règne d’une terreur blanche. Des citoyens honorables, même des ministres de l’Evangile, ont été pendus aux arbres de la forêt vierge” [17, p. 259].
- 33.
Denault’s original version tried to maintain Houzeau’s participation in the post-Enlightenment rhetoric of the early 19th century, but the editor took this out for something more bland [41].
- 34.
“...quiero sugerir que ninguna de esas cosas se puede hacer, que son de suyo imposibles, que se quedan en mera pretensión, vano proyecto y ademán inválido”.
- 35.
“Así acontece en esta modesta ocupación que es traducir. En el orden intelectual no cabe faena más humilde. Sin embargo, resulta ser exorbitante”.
- 36.
“...meterá al escritor traducido en la prisión del lenguaje normal, es decir, que le traicionará”.
- 37.
“Imagino, pues, una forma de traducción que sea fea, como lo es siempre la ciencia, que no pretenda garbo literario, que no sea fácil de leer, pero sí que sea muy clara, aunque esta claridad reclame gran copia de notas al pie de la página. Es preciso que el lector sepa de antemano que al leer una traducción no va a leer un libro literariamente bello, sino que va a usar un aparato bastante enojoso ...”.
- 38.
“Pero esto es muy difícil de hacer en la lengua francesa. ...de todas las lenguas europeas, la que menos facilita la faena de traducir es la francesa ...”.
- 39.
“...Racine est donc intraduisible. Que si l’on veut conserver l’allure du discours, il faut se contenter d’expressions approchées ...” [22, p. 323].
- 40.
“Avant de partir, j’ai terminé la lecture d’Homère. La traduction de Lebrun me paraît trop habillée à la française. Où j’ai pu comparer avec le texte ...je trouve qu’elle ne suit pas d’assez près le modèle. Ainsi dans un endroit il est question de la planète Vénus, telle qu’elle se montre au berger à l’heure de traite du soir, etc. Lebrun laisse de côté cette ‘heure de traire’ et cette image de vie rurale, et dit tout court: telle paraît l’étoile du matin” [22, p. 395].
- 41.
The “Mexican language”, as Houzeau names it in Chap. 10.
- 42.
The Deception [46].
- 43.
“...une œuvre collective, sous une direction personnelle.” [47, p. 263].
- 44.
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Sterken, C., King, A.A. (2020). The Nature and Literary Quality of Houzeau’s Work, and of Its Translations. In: Jean-Charles Houzeau's Escape from Texas. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46538-4_3
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