2 - Making Translation Visible

Summary

THIS CHAPTER WILL turn the spotlight onto the people who produce the translations; specifically, I will look at their visibility in the translated texts as named contributors, and will ask how they define their role in the production of the text. In each case, I will ask to whom or what the translator expresses allegiance, what the stated purpose of the translation is, and to what extent the translator's words can be read as a commentary on the translation situation.

There are as yet few detailed or comprehensive sociological or biographical accounts of even a sample of the many thousands of individuals who have made Holocaust testimonies available in translation. This work is, however, beginning, and the shifting focus in translation studies onto the biographies, professional lives, and networks of translators, as well as the development of sociological methods to make visible and analyze the circumstances under which translations are made, will allow us to begin to fill this significant gap in our knowledge. Recent work in translation studies on the person of the translator as social agent provides opportunities to shine the spotlight on the innumerable individuals who have made knowledge about the Holocaust available across linguistic, cultural, and generational boundaries, including not only the writers and translators, but also editors, publishers, booksellers, and librarians.

My focus in this chapter is on the presence of translators, and the visibility of translation as an issue to be discussed in a range of published testimonies. Thus, I am concerned with the ways in which translation and translators are presented to the reader of a testimony, and how they form part of a textual package that provides a commentary on the Holocaust and the meaning of testimony from the perspective of translation. I will also look at translators’ comments as a translation program, in other words as a statement about how they went about their work and why, reading them not simply as a description of working methods, but for what they reveal about translators’ feelings about and attitudes toward the Holocaust.

Who are the translators? This is not an easy question to answer. We can say with confidence that many thousands of people have been engaged in translation activity arising from the experiences of Holocaust victims, most of whom have remained invisible beyond their immediate circles.