The concept of fidelity is limiting in several ways. First, it means that nearly all responses to foreign works take the form of translations and, when they do not, are still generally presented as translations. The goal is authenticity, getting it right. As if translation was about recasting, or even transcribing, rather than intepreting and making decision after choice. Second, fidelity is seen as applying primarily to content, often to words. When a critic rips apart a translation, it is often for its mistakes in understanding words or phrases. Even translators tend to focus on how much of the content is preserved and how it is presented. Third, fidelity holds back the young or occasional translator. As William Weaver told me, “It’s like learning to swim: it’s easier to swim when you know you can touch bottom. The thing of getting away from a literal approach to the original text and having the nerve to swim out a little further on your own, is realizing that sometimes it’s more important to reproduce the fluency and the impact of the original than it is to reproduce this or that word correctly.” Fourth, fidelity places the translator in the position of a traditional woman with duties to the male original, and to nothing else. Underlying this view is fidelity’s flipside, betrayal. When a translator does a good job, she gets a pat on the back for doing her duty; when she does a bad job, she is attacked for being unfaithful, betraying her husband or father. This leads to a fear of being unfaithful, of incurring the wrath of those who will call her interpretations a betrayal of the authentic master’s art. And nothing is worse for any artistic enterprise than fear.
In short, the concept of fidelity makes translation a question of authenticity, content, and duty — getting it right — rather than a question of judgment, knowledge, and competence — doing it well. And the negative focus is on betrayal and mistakes rather than on poor judgment and incompetence.
It’s generally not very useful to focus on extreme examples, but in the case of Czech novelist Milan Kundera’s views on fidelity, I think the extreme is closer to the norm than most of us would like to admit.
Not only are his views and actions extreme, but he has also done more to bring translation issues to the serious American
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