The Translator’s Invisibility

Schleiermacher’s concept of foreignizing translation seems odd to Lefevere only because the latter prefers to submit to the contemporary regime of fluency—in Nida’s words, “complete naturalness of expression.” The canonicity of fluent translation during the post-World War II period coincides with the emergence of the term “translationese” to designate unidiomatic language in a translated text (OED). Lefevere approves of Nida’s “dynamic equivalence,” a concept that now, with the increasing recognition of Schleiermacher’s contemporary importance, must be viewed as an egregious euphemism for the domesticating translation method and the cultural political agendas it conceals. Because this method is so entrenched in English-language translation, Lefevere is unable to see that the detection of unidiomatic language, especially in literary texts, is culturally specific: what is unidiomatic in one cultural formation can be aesthetically effective in another. Any dismissive treatment of Schleiermacher maintains the forms of domestication in English-language translation today, hindering reflection on how different methods of translating can resist the questionable values that dominate Anglo-American culture. Schleiermacher can indeed offer a way out.

II

With Schleiermacher’s lecture untranslated, however, this way was open to few English-language translators during the nineteenth century. A translator could of course formulate a theory of foreignizing translation, whether or not inspired by the German tradition, but the theory would be a response to a peculiarly English situation, motivated by different cultural and political interests. Such was the case with Francis Newman (1805–1897), the accomplished brother of the Cardinal. In the 1850s, Newman challenged the main line of English-language translation, arguing that “Cowper’s attempt to translate Homer had proved as great a failure as Pope’s” and suggesting that “a sensible change is taking place, from our recent acquaintance with the {119} extent to which the Germans have carried poetical translation” (Newman 1851:371).[8] This “acquaintance” with the German tradition apparently made Newman the first in a small group of Victorian translators who developed foreignizing strategies and opposed the English regime of fluent domestication.

A classical scholar who taught for many years, first at Manchester New College, then University College, London, Newman was a prolific writer on a variety of topics, some scholarly, others religious, many of urgent social concern. He produced commentaries on classical texts (Aeschylus, Euripides) and dictionaries and vocabularies for oriental languages and dialects (Arabic, Libyan). He wrote a spiritual autobiography and many religious treatises that reflected his own wavering belief in Christianity and the heterodox nature of that belief (e.g. Hebrew Theism: The Common Basic of Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism). And he issued a steady stream of lectures, essays, and pamphlets that demonstrated his intense involvement in a wide range of political issues. Newman argued for decentralized government, land nationalization, women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery. He criticized English colonialism, recommending government reforms that would allow the colonized to enter the political process. His Essays on Diet advocated vegetarianism, and on several occasions he supported state enforcement of sobriety, partly as a means of curbing prostitution.