The Translator's Paradox: On Becoming a Vessel for What Cannot Be Carried
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The translator sits before the manuscript that shifts beneath her gaze. Each character she renders into English births a shadow-character in the margin, a ghost-word that whispers the true meaning she cannot capture. The author, dead these three centuries, has written in a language that exists only in the act of being lost. She reaches for "home" and finds instead a word that means "the smell of rain on your childhood courtyard, knowing your mother is cooking lentils inside, but you are leaving tomorrow and will never taste them exactly this way again." As she constructs this word mind to mind, there is a feeling like bliss, a loss of self. But alongside it is a terror. This is the English she does not know. If she cannot feel, how can she translate? The author tells her, "On the other side of translation is not the loss of meaning, that in the hands of others translation begins and ends. Instead, the other side of translation is meaning. If I had followed the traditional model, I would have found no meaning to convey, as if the spirit of the word itself had been lost. You need not worry. You have found meanings to give expression to. That is what translation is. Only, the words will not be the same, and even if they are, that will only be a coincidence." But the translator asks, doubting, wondering, "Is it just a coincidence?"
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