The Queer Beauty of Unfaithful Translations

The author explores some common issues in translation and how they might affect translation of queer texts. Moving away from purely theoretical discussions, the author also provides some easily understood and playfully named tools for queer translators.

Translations are like women. When they are pretty, chances are they won’t be very faithful.[i]

I'm reading Giota Tempridou’s newest book, a novella. While my intent is to translate it, I often find myself at a loss. There is no way that a “faithful” translation will make any sense to an English reader. Lawrence Venuti’s critiques of fluency as a means of perpetuating the hegemony of the English language notwithstanding,[ii] I was attracted to Giota’s writing because of its beauty and how it’s eminently readable in Greek. The internal rhythm and rhyme, the wordplay, the allusions and references to folk aphorisms and Greek children’s songs, even the ways in which her language violates rules of grammar and syntax, all combine to take a text that is ultimately about gendered violence—specifically about the violence of the father—and make it light; light not as in trivial or unsubstantial, but light as in this is a story that many of us carry as a heavy burden, and Giota offers it to us as music, as poetry, as a weight that we can endure by naming it, by sharing it, by rewriting it in our own terms. 

Sitting in Giota’s living room several months ago, we talked about the rise of Christian nationalism in the US and how it will affect the de facto Christian nationalism of Greece, the state of queer literature and translation of queer texts in Greece, and our mutual adoration of cats. At some point, she tells me that this, her fifth book, is the most personal and most queer she’s written so far. When I ask her what she wanted of the original and what she would want of its translation, she says that she wants to make sure that the way she uses language offends as much as what her language says. Offends those who think that language, like bodies, must be constrained by arbitrary rules and imprisoned by laws. I smile.

What if fluency can be an instrument of subversion, not an exercise in hegemony, if language is a comrade to liberation, not a companion to empire?

It’s true that when a translation focuses on being fluent and beautiful in the target language it might often obscure the “foreignness” of the original text and thus reinforce cultural imperialism. This faux universality presents the values of empire as fundamentally human values. But what if fluency can be an instrument of subversion, not an exercise in hegemony, if language is a comrade to liberation, not a companion to empire? Can linguistic and literary fluency be promiscuous instead of obedient? What if I chose to be faithful not to the words of her text but to its truth, to how this is not just her story, to the musicality and lightness of her book? What if by writing a beautiful translation I honor the subversive and violent beauty of her language? The ones who demand fidelity in translation also demand that our bodies remain faithful to their binary constructs. The ones who demand beauty in translation also expect us to conform our bodies to their beauty standards. They demand fidelity and conformity to a system and standards of erasure. 

Giota’s book, at first glance, might appear to be about el violador, or even about surviving the actions of el patriarca. But the more I delve into her book, her language, and her story, the more I feel that this book is about the story of us. Frantz Fanon wrote that “decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,” a phrase that inspires the title, Violent Phenomena, of Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang’s anthology on translation. Giota’s book, like a lot of queer literature, is about the violent phenomena of our existence and our resistance, but also about the beauty and the intimacy we find there. “Translation can be an intimate act,” says Madhu Kaza in her introduction to Kitchen Table Translation, and maybe intimacy is a better criterion than fidelity. Maybe queer translation can be about the violence and intimacy of telling our stories, about the beauty of our responses to the brutality of standards and normativities, and about forming new cultures even while resisting the violent hegemony of dominant and normative languages and literatures.

Queer Translation Toolkit

I’m primarily concerned with translation as a sort of speech act: translation 
that rouses, inspires, witnesses, mobilizes, incites to rebellion, and so forth.[iii]

I’m fundamentally driven by the question of how queer translators, especially less experienced or formally trained ones such as myself, can engage with queer texts and queer our translation practices. Each translator will have to answer that question for themselves. However, I'm offering the following tools as something that may guide us while we are working on queer translation. These tools are intentionally broad and may be better described as conceptual approaches that translators can adapt to their specific needs, which often go beyond the pure needs of the text.

I have intentionally named the suggested tools in my toolkit as such to preserve and honor the irreverent, playful, and sexual nature of queerness. 

• Linguistic drag: When I think of drag, these are some of the words that come to mind (in no particular order): transgressive, performative, artistic, communal, underground, family, entertaining, subversive, impersonation, flamboyant, illegal, stylized, exaggerated, militant, celebratory, humor, camp. Drag can be a performance for social and political satire, or the first timid steps toward exploring gender identity. When I talk of linguistic drag, I call for a liberated, transgressive, and even exaggerated use of language. Linguistic drag is about rejecting the idea that there is only one right way to do language and challenging the hegemonic character of so-called standard English, and that of the monolingual modern nation-state, with its tendency to domesticate a text. Linguistic drag can also express itself through linguistic flourishes or performative language; the breaking of rules or norms as a means of exposing said rules or norms; use of plain but coded language, plain so that everyone can understand it but also coded so that some subtext or meaning will only be understood by the target audience; and many more, as the text and situation warrants and desires.

When I talk of linguistic drag, I call for a liberated, transgressive, and even exaggerated use of language.

• Ethical non-monolingualism: What if we bring foreign words into English, not just English words into other languages? What if we don’t explain or italicize the foreign words, especially when they aren’t Latin, German, or French, which are commonly inserted in English texts, often as a sign of sophistication? If English words like queer and gay have now spread to a multitude of other languages, what non-English words could a translated text introduce to an English-reading audience? If the hegemony of English has created conditions like what Dennis Altman calls the “global gay,” could a translation take advantage of the fact that many nonnative speakers around the world read English to introduce non-English words to a potentially global audience? All this doesn’t preclude the use of stealth gloss, or the use of calques or other tools for the transference of words from one language to another. But the idea here is to refuse the artificial binary of source and target language, each confined to their own texts. Ethical non-monolingualism also requires honesty and transparency in the use of other languages (no cheating) and recognizing and addressing any feelings of discomfort that such use might bring about.

• Homoeroticize, don’t homogenize: There is considerable documentation (by Venuti et al.) of how subtle homoerotic references in texts have been glossed over or deliberately ignored by translators. Queer and counterhegemonic translators seek to identify and preserve homoerotic and other subtle queer elements of the original text but should also resist any tendency to homogenize culturally distinct queer experiences, language, and literature. 

• Promiscuous fluency: If we are concerned that fluency may domesticate a text and promote the hegemony of the English language, then what if we divorce fluency (i.e., a translation that is fluid and as readable as the original is to its readers) from fidelity and standardization? Why shouldn’t a translation be just as beautiful to read as the source text? If that means going against normative notions of fidelity, then so be it. 

What if we divorce fluency from fidelity and standardization?

• Gender-bending grammar: To paraphrase Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood in Re-Belle et Infidèle, grammar rules around gender are neither the result of chance nor an expression of a natural order of things. Rather, they express, and reinforce, a specific socioeconomic, political, legal, and symbolic order. A queer and counterhegemonic translation should consider violating, breaking, or otherwise disobeying the standard grammatical rules regarding gender, including the use of the masculine as the default and the use of grammatical neuter when it isn’t considered grammatically correct (especially if the source text uses one where one doesn’t exist in the source language), or by using neopronouns. Since grammar rules have ways of enforcing normativities and hegemonies that go well beyond gender, such rule-bending need not be restricted to aspects of gender but can be utilized in any way that helps maintain and reinforce the queer and counterhegemonic character of the text. While grammatical rule-bending is quite common in poetry, we must remember that genre is, after all, the French word for gender, and gender-bending is also genre-bending.

• Salacious syntax: Syntax is about the systematic arrangement of words in such a way that they conform to a standardized (i.e., normative) usage. While such standardized usage is often justified by calls to better comprehension, it can confine linguistic expression. Queer texts often play with or outright break standardized rules. Whether it’s by an adaptation of syntax of the source language or by finding equivalent ways to break rules in the target language, queer translators can look beyond the confines of “this is how things get done here.” (I owe the term salacious to Georgia Birmingham.)

• Oral or deviant punctuation: Punctuation began as a system of helping readers read a text aloud, by indicating the location and length of pauses.[iv] Punctuation systems have come and gone over time and remained diverse, responding to the needs of a text or culture. Traditionally, there have been two schools of punctuation, elocutionary and syntactic. The syntactic school became dominant with the advent of typography. Once punctuation marks were literally set in a fixed form, they became standardized. The elocutionary school, focused more on spoken-word and performance, allowed for greater variation in punctuation, since the performance of a script is idiosyncratic—an actor brings in their own voice to that of the playwright. If we see the source text as a script and the translation as a performance of it, then punctuation becomes an interplay of voices. Deviant punctuation may better serve that interplay, even for texts that are not designed for performance.

If we see the source text as a script and the translation as a performance of it, then punctuation becomes an interplay of voices.

• Sullied spelling: sully (v.) “to soil, stain, tarnish, defile.” Spelling, like punctuation, used to be more idiosyncratic than standardized. While there is something to be said about being clear with our words, playing with spelling can be a way to carry over wordplay, to show irreverence, defiance, and even contempt to established and oppressive norms, and to honor the reality that marginalized people and languages have always been more creative with spelling.

• Kinky wordplay: Kink originally meant a twist on a rope, which may explain its current meaning. Wordplay is common in literature and often quite challenging to translate. A queer translation could bring wordplay to a different part of the text than the original if the target language offers a better opportunity elsewhere, but it can also create a new form of wordplay not commonly seen, or accepted, in the target language. The same way that quick-release and safety knots are part of good rope play, the translator can also take care to ensure that the text doesn’t become so entangled as to lose the reader. More broadly, the same way that any sexual roleplaying needs to have consent and care of all parties, a queer translation must also be consensual and make sure that all parties—the author, the original text, the translator, the translation, and the reader—are being taken care of.

• Nonbinary thick translation: The concept of thick translation, which basically invites the use of extensive metatext with a translation, was introduced by Kwame Appiah, but in his paper, he describes its usage as primarily benefiting academic scholarship.[v] There is a binary form of thinking that the translation of popular texts will have almost no metatext and be very fluent, while texts that are for more academic audiences are often heavy with metatext and less concerned with fluency. Queer translation can dispense with such binary distinctions. There is no reason (other than the insistence of editors and publishers) why the translation of a queer text cannot be popular, promiscuously fluent, and populated with significant metatext positioned in such a way that the reader can opt to read along, study, or ignore it. 

• Paramours, metamours, and transtextuality: Sometimes the queerness of the source text is illicit and sometimes it’s out in the open, but queer translators have an opportunity and a responsibility to use paratext, metatext, and all transtextual elements available to them to provide the appropriate context and background to the reader and to maintain the counterhegemonic character of the original. It's important to note that as Carolyn Shread points out in “Decolonizing Paratexts: Re-Presenting Haitian Literature in English Translations,”[vi] “paratexts often play a colonizing role in relation to the texts they present,” and as such they have to be approached carefully. She suggests that “a more critical role for the paratext of a translation is to draw attention to the translated nature of the text, the resistance and opacity of its linguistic and cultural differences, and the process of negotiation, exchange, and travel on which the translation depends.” It's instructive also to view transtextual elements as a form of aftercare, for the text as well as the reader. 

These are some tools I’ve developed to guide me as I navigate the often beautiful and sometimes treacherous waters of queer translation. The use of all these tools on the same text may be as advisable as the use of all the fonts in one’s computer on the same document. The text (source and target), context, and the goals of the author and the translator will help determine choices. If there is a common thread between all these tools, however, it’s the embrace of deviancy, as in to deviate from normative and standardized uses of language. Queer communities have always relied on slang and linguistic innovations. Translating queer texts without deviating from standard English may very well be doing a disservice to the original text as well as to the reader of the translation.

Returning to Giota’s book, these tools remind me that maybe the best way to tell her story, to translate any queer story, is to be beautifully unfaithful to her words but true to her spirit and to acknowledge that her writing is a reclamation and an affirmation of queer standards of fluency, beauty, and existence. Maybe what should get lost in this translation, in all queer translations, is any remnant of propriety, of normativity, of writing straight.

Littleton, Colorado / Athens, Greece