The version of RUR we are reading in class is the one that made the play known and has been standard for many decades. However, that translation by Paul Selver and collaborators has been superceded, some would argue, by a more recent one by Claudia Novack-Jones (1989). As Robert Philmus notes, Paul
Selver has frequently been attacked since the late 1980s for his treachery as a
translator of R.U.R. But Philmus argues that "neither of the two different editions of R.U.R.
bearing Selver's name, even when combined, represents his original work," and that the translation was "translation by committee." (see "Matters of Translation: Karel Capek and Paul Selver," Science Fiction Studies 28.1 (March 2001): 7-32).For a taste of the charges against Selver, please have a look at comments by Merritt Abrash in his "R.U.R. Restored and Reconsidered," Extrapolation 32.2 (Summer 1991): 184-192):
Considering that Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossums Universal Robots)
is generally regarded as a science fiction classic, and that it popularized
one of the most distinctive science fiction words,' it is treated rather
slightingly by science fiction historians. They cannot very well omit the
play, but, in major survey by Nicholls, Gunn, Barron, Aldiss, and Suvin,
it receives only passing mention or a few descriptive sentences. Similarly,
all teachers of science fiction presumably mention R.U.R., but rare
indeed are those who assign it to be read. It has become a kind of
historical artifact, treated with unfailing respect but not as a work of
contemporary viability.
Lack of availability does not seem to be a factor, since the play has
been in at least one anthology during every decade (although this is a
considerable dropoff from the 1930s, when, according to Scholes and
Rabkin, R.U.R. was a "standard high school text" 129]). More to the
point is the possibility that for several decades readers have dismissed
it as merely an early example of the now hackneyed theme that "robots
take over and wipe out humanity" (a description by Aldiss [184]),
undeserving of serious attention. The exact mix of literary, sociological,
and technological reasons behind R.U.R.'s marginalization is a matter
of conjecture; but the long decline—even among students of science
fiction—from the worldwide excitement which greeted it in the 1920s is
a striking fact.
In 1990, however, there is a unique opportunity for reappraisal: the
first new English translation of the play in nearly seventy years, by
Claudia Novack-Jones, has been published in Toward the Radical Center,
a collection of Capek works almost all in fresh translations. This new
version of R. U.R. includes many pages missing from the standard English
one by Paul Selver (1923) and is superior to it in concept, coherence,
and literary quality. The R.U.R. familiar to generations of English language
readers stands revealed as severely distorted by extensive bowdlerization,
scores of textual omissions, and the blunting of statements
which fall outside the usual cliches about robots making life easier for
humanity, or, alternatively, dehumanizing it.' The remainder of this article
will, in the course of presenting the significant ways in which the
translations differ, consider whether the play's increasingly nominal status
in the science fiction canon its ascribable to the inadequacies of Selver's
version or has more deep-seated causes. (The Selver translation, as printed
in Lewis (3-58), is identified below by "PS," and the Novack-Jones by
"NJ." Page numbers for PS refer to the Arthur O. Lewis, Jr. anthology.
Of Men and Machines [New York: Dutton, 1963].)
The bowdlerization of Capek's original text is astonishing; not only
is anything dealing with sexuality omitted (even the words "infertile"
and "sterile"), but strong oaths and violent images are toned down, and
words and phrases with possible unpleasant connotations are replaced.
A sampling:
NJ PS
worm beetle
abortions monstrosities
organism mechanism
Jesus Christ good gracious
Jesusmaryandjoseph my goodness
charbroiled charred to cinders [referring to burned robots]
bloody chunks of meat shapeless clods
I'd kill to know I'd give a good deal to know
While none of this seriously alters what Capek intended to .say (although
"sterile flowers," omitted in several places in PS, is an important
metaphor bearing on Helena's inability to have children—itself a theme
skirted in PS, it contributes mightily to a flatness in the dialogue, an
absence of vivid and memorable language for which Capek was taken
to task by no less a literary critic than Kenneth Burke (49-50).
Even more of an eye-opener is the elimination of a powerful episode
of stage violence. Damon, a robot omitted in PS, but "The Ruler of
the Robots" in NJ, insists on undergoing unskilled surgical experimentation
performed by Alquist—the last human—in the desperate hope
that a way to make new robots can be found. From offstage, we hear
Alquist reluctantly proceeding with the dissection while Damon screams,
six times, "Cut!" or "Aaaa!" Alquist then runs on stage, flings off his
bloody lab coat, and looks in horror at his hands:
ALQUIST: Bloody claws, if only you had fallen from my wrists! Pss, away!
Out of my sight, hands! You have killed—
(Damon staggers in from the right, swathed in a blood-stained sheet.)
ALQUIST (shrinking back): What are you doing here? What do you want?
DAMON: I am al-alive! It—it—it is better to live! (102-03)
Alquist orders other robots to take Damon away, then turns to washing
his hands with a futile vigor equaled only by Lady Macbeth (expressing
sentiments similar to hers, too). The entire jolting scene is rendered in
PS as follows:
RADIUS [Damon is omitted in PS]: Ready. Begin—
ALQUIST: Yes, begin or end. God, give me strength. (Goes into dissecting
room. He comes out terrified.) No, no, 1 will not. I cannot. (He collapses
on couch.) O Lord, let not mankind perish from the Earth. (He falls asleep.)
(55)
The absence of exclamation marks is not the least of the peculiarities
in this translation.
The material cut from NJ, ranging from the two-page Damon scene
down to single words, totals no less than seventeen of seventy-four
pages—almost twenty-five percent. Over half of NJ's Act III is excised
from PS, which may account for the latter being divided into Acts I,
II, III, Epilogue, whereas in NJ the division runs Prologue, Acts I, II,
III. The most astonishing single change is the complete omission from
PS of the entire thirty-two line speech by Alquist (to be described below)
which ends the play.
The scenes described by Abrash certainly seem more dramatic than what is presented in the Selver version. However, these scenes also seem that could come across as melodramatic. Terms such as “abortion” may have been too radical for a 1923 American audience, especially considering the (for the time) oddness of the setup and apocalyptic intensity of the ending. The play is largely satirical, with lines like “for half a billion [dollars] anything can be bought” and Domin’s plan to create robots of different “nationalities” by building them in separate factories, making them different colors and having them speak different languages, so they that they will fight each other and thus not rise against their masters. Perhaps Selver viewed the piece as more satirical than dramatic and felt the use of elevated language would have been distracting. This is always an issue with translations. Robert Hass has pointed out that all languages have idiosyncrasies that are difficult to translate. Russian, for example, has many more words that rhyme than English, making it very hard to translate Russian lyric poetry. Japanese has a lack of conjugation, making making verbs and nouns more universal than their English counterparts. I am certain that Czech has similar qualities that can’t be directly translated. In this way, an English translation of RUR is as much a work of Selver or Novack-Jones as it is of Capek. I suppose we must decided which of those two is a better playwright.
ReplyDeleteI've often wondered how extensively literary works get changed in translation. Is there supposed to be as strict an adherence to the original as possible, or is the translator allowed to reimagine the piece as he sees fit? At last May's Steinbeck Conference, I met a Japanese scholar who had written a translation of The Catcher in the Rye. When I asked him how closely he hewed to Salinger, he said that he had to create a "new world" for his translation. Because of language barriers and the inability to compare his version to Salinger's, I wasn't able to ascertain exactly what he meant. But the words "new world" lead me to believe that his translation consisted of significant variations. Maybe this is just the plight of the translator: whether to tell the story true or maintain the essence while tailoring it for a particular audience, namely that of the translator's homeland.
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate Eli's point that some languages present challenges that may preclude a direct translation, and I can understand the need to make changes at the word level. But whole scenes of R.U.R.--whole characters even--were excised at the translator's discretion. When does the work stop being Capek's and instead become some attempt by the translator to claim the story as his own? I thought much of the play's dialogue was too expository and wooden, but does that mean I get to craft my own version of R.U.R., try to make the dialogue more natural, and call it a translation? Perhaps the nature of satire doesn't lend itself as well to literal translations. If that's the case, adaptation might be a more accurate term to use if such creative liberties are to be taken with someone's else work.
I've read multiple translations of Camus' The Stranger, and it's true that different translations and interpretations of a text's original language do cause us to lose out on some of the subtleties / nuances of the text because, like Michael said, these texts are not directly translatable. I'm still reading Selver's R.U.R., but I do agree with Eli that it's possible that dramatic language like "abortions" and "Jesusmaryandjoseph" could have been distracting or too radical for a 1920s audience.
ReplyDeleteBut, I do think there is something to be said about TRANSLATION in general... Lawrence Venuti does a good deal of work in the theory of translation as a global-cultural phenomenon of human agency (he also makes lots of connections to Ernest Bloch's ideals of a "concrete utopia")
In any case, if we look again to Camus’ The Stranger and its multiple versions, or the varied versions we see of R.U.R., it seems to me that the very notion of “versions” makes textual substrates amorphous, fluid; if translation provides a balance between the foreign and the domestic (or other varied modes of interpretation and thought), then multiple versions of a text could not by definition exist—only one translation could be “correct,” balanced. But it seems that, in most cases, for us in a post-Deconstruction period and with theorists like Derrida claiming that "nothing exists outside the text," there is no "correct" translation. Ultimately then, translation is transformative; shifting that amorphous textual substrate to the translator’s perceptions and purposes, and that translator’s ability to balance his conceptions with those of his audience in the piece. Translation can be redefined, then, as adaptation.
I think it's important to place RUR within some historical context. Literary works produced around the turn of the century always seem to be informed by fear of cultural decline. Moreover, this fear always seem to be driven by an overarching fear of some foreign Other. In the case of RUR, the Other takes shape in these death-dealing robots.However, the translation by Novack-Jones reveals a story far more complex than the one Selver provided. NJ's translation is decidedly visceral. The robots are not the mechanized automatons from PS's translation. Instead they are presented more as biological entities: abortions, organisms and bloody chunks of meat as opposed to monstrosities, mechanism and cinders. Furthermore, the omitted surgery scene with Damon suggests very obviously that these creatures were born of human hands. Robotkind's continued existence depends on humans. Conversely, human culpability seems downplayed in PS's work.
ReplyDeleteWith all that being said, NJ's translation of RUR presents the reader with a sort of internalized Other---an Other that is a direct result of humankind's own failings. That message probably would have hit far too close to home for most 20th century readers.
One final point: PS's translation seems to be an abortion in it's own right, taking Capek's story and turning it into a hamfisted allegory about progress. NJ's translation is far more nuanced and complex. And if NJ's translation were to become the most widely read version, then perhaps critics would reconsider RUR's legacy and elevate the play's position within the canon of science fiction and Modernist literature.
DeleteI feel slightly cheated, now, after reading about the ruthless way Selver has butchered the original version. But it does, however, explain some of the blandness I encountered in the text. The ending could have been so much better instead of Selver’s lukewarm, even melodramatic, version. While it is true that accurate (what is “accurate”, after all?) translations are not aesthetically possible, I don’t understand Selver’s motivation to sanitize the play so significantly. Any translated work is an individual literary work in its own right. But, in Selver’s case, since we are presented with an alternative (and arguably better) version of the same play, I wonder about Selver’s aesthetic agenda behind the extensive bowdlerism.
ReplyDeleteEven before learing about these differences in translations, I could sense that something was being held back in the Selver translation. Quite simply, It didn't seem scary enough. I agree with Philip that it has something to with the biology of the robots themselves. The alteration of the word "organism" to "mechanism" is especially powerful. It is interesting that Capek coined the word "robot", because it has now come to signify something mechanical, something nonhuman when, in fact, Rossum's robots are very very close to human beings. This element should be emphasized. The portrayal of the failed robot experiments as "bloody clumps of meat" instead of "shapeless clods" evokes a much stronger sense of revulsion and fear. Perhaps this was understated for a squeamish 1920s audience, but I feel that something is absolutely lost in translation.
ReplyDelete