STYLISTIC ALTERATIONS IN THE GERMAN TRANSLATIONS OF HEMINGWAY'S EARLY ...

299 Pages·2009·1.05 MB·English

SHIFTING FORM, TRANSFORMING CONTENT:
STYLISTIC ALTERATIONS IN THE GERMAN
TRANSLATIONS OF HEMINGWAY’S EARLY FICTION

By

Copyright 2009
Christopher Dick

Ph.D., University of Kansas 2009

Submitted to the Department of English and the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

______________________________
James Hartman, Chair

______________________________
James Carothers

______________________________
Philip Barnard

______________________________
Janet Sharistanian

______________________________
Frank Baron

Date defended: 20 November 2009
The Dissertation Committee for Christopher Dick certifies
that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

SHIFTING FORM, TRANSFORMING CONTENT:
STYLISTIC ALTERATIONS IN THE GERMAN
TRANSLATIONS OF HEMINGWAY’S EARLY FICTION

Committee:

______________________________
James Hartman, Chair

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

Date approved: 20 November 2009
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Abstract

The general purpose of this study is to investigate the German translations of
the early fiction of Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, the work of translators is too
frequently minimized or ignored, and this dissertation seeks to highlight the inevitable
shifts that occur as a text is moved from source language to target language. The end
result of such a study is not a random list of translational anomalies but rather a better
holistic understanding of the translated text. As Heidegger reminds us, “Every
translation is . . . interpretation” (107), and in this study I look to explore how
Annemarie Horschitz interprets (and ultimately diminishes) Hemingway’s important
stylistic techniques.
These alterations in translation, as my study shows, are not “merely” stylistic
adjustments. Hemingway’s stylistic choices—metaphors in The Sun Also Rises that
represent post-war reality, repetition in the stories of Men Without Women that
reinforces an ironic vision, understatement in A Farewell to Arms that is a reaction
against traditional war rhetoric, and fragmentation in In Our Time that reflects a
varied and order-defying worldview—are linguistic manifestations of Hemingway’s
principal concerns. By modifying the surface-level linguistic features, Horschitz
subsequently alters the conceptual framework of Hemingway’s fiction.
To accomplish this analysis, I ground my study in translation theory and
stylistics. My investigation of the translated texts is supported by various translation
theories, including Schleiermacher’s distinction between foreignizing and
domesticating approaches to translation and Nida’s analysis of equivalence. In
utilizing stylistics, I lean heavily on Halliday’s analysis of functional grammar and
Lakoff’s work with conceptual metaphor.
I also aim to contextualize my study of Hemingway in translation by giving
attention to Hemingway’s early literary career, his position as an interwar writer, and
his relationship to Germany. The hope is that such a study might result in a deeper
awareness of the translation process, a clearer understanding of the German
translations of Hemingway’s texts, and a deeper appreciation of Hemingway’s
stylistic choices.

Christopher Dick
English Department
University of Kansas
November 2009
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Acknowledgements

Initial thanks go to colleagues, administrators, and students at Tabor College
for flexibility, patience, and support as I have undertaken this long and worthwhile
journey. Special thanks to my colleagues in the English Department—Deborah
Penner and Sara Hill—who have had to compensate for my occasional absences.
Thanks also to family and friends. Thanks Mom and Dad for instilling in me a
love of learning and a tenacious interest in language, literature, and history. I also am
deeply appreciative to extended family members for words of encouragement along
the way. Additional thanks go to a supportive group of friends who faithfully
humored me by listening to my belabored explanations of my research.
My deep appreciation is also extended to my mentors at the University of
Kansas. As I embarked on this project, many warned me that I would not be able to
find professors who would work with me on such a unique topic. I feel very fortunate
to have been able to match my research interests with a group of professors with
unique talents and areas of specialization. Professor Sharistanian, your course on
World War I literature provided the context for much of this dissertation. Professor
Carothers, thank you for reintroducing me to Hemingway and giving me a great
appreciate for his work. Professor Barnard, your interest in translation and translation
studies helped me develop a theoretical framework for the paper. And Professor
Baron, thank you for working with me on specific German translation issues and
taking repeated interest in my work. And deep gratitude goes to my advisor, Professor
Hartman, for not only your classes on grammar and metaphor that inspired this
dissertation but also your tireless help in guiding me through the latter half of my
doctoral studies. Thanks to all of you for your help as I have worked on this
dissertation. Your suggestions and encouragement have been much appreciated.
Finally, profound thanks to my wife, Christine Crouse-Dick. Thank you for
your patience, love, and support throughout my graduate school endeavor. Thank you
also for your interest in my research and the numerous hours spent reading, editing,
and commenting on my work. You have read more about Hemingway, stylistics, and
translation than you ever cared to! Thank you.
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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter One
Translation Analysis and Stylistics:
Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter Two
“A Representative Poet of Our Time”:
Hemingway in German(y): 1922-1933 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Chapter Three
Shifting the Iceberg: Conceptual Metaphoric Loss
in the Translation of The Sun Also Rises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Chapter Four
Men Without Women and the Translation of Ironic Repetition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Chapter Five
Transforming Frederic Henry’s Narrative:
In einem andern Land and Translational Embellishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172

Chapter Six
Shoring Up the Fragments:
The Cohesive Translation of In Our Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

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Introduction

Jede Übersetzung ist aber schon Auslegung. (107)
—Martin Heidegger
In 1946 a letter written by Ernest Hemingway found its way from the peaceful
Finca Vigía to publisher Ernst Rowohlt in war-ravaged Germany. It had been
fourteen years since a Hemingway text had been published in Germany and thirteen
years since Hemingway’s name had infamously appeared on Wolfgang Herrman’s list
of un-German literature—a move that led to book burnings and bans. Hemingway,
following the end of hostilities in Europe, was anxious to restart the publication of his
works in German. After breaking the ice by engaging in some good-natured ribbing
regarding the outcome of the war, Hemingway mentions the woman responsible for
the German translations of his works to date: “Please write to Anne Marie (sic)
Horschitz for me and tell her I look forward to having her translate my works again.
She was the finest translator I ever had in any language” (SL 615).
What Hemingway was basing this glowing assessment on is unfortunately
never specified. Hemingway’s grasp of German was limited compared to his
knowledge of Italian, Spanish, or French, and so he was certainly unable to read and
comment on the quality of the German translations of his work with any authority.
Perhaps his remarks should be taken merely as the ever-strapped-for-cash writer’s
attempt to ingratiate himself to Rowohlt in hopes of tapping into another source of
funding, since in the same letter Hemingway mentions the financial advantages to
renewed publication in Germany. Whatever the reason for the praise, Hemingway’s
opinion, combined with the author’s popularity in German-speaking countries, seems
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to have provided for several decades the definitive proof of the overall quality of
Horschitz’s German translations. This positive assessment persisted despite
intermittent critical voices that cast doubts on the quality of her translations. Eighty
years since the translations appeared, however, the basic question remains: Are
Horschitz’s translations of Hemingway’s texts—the only authorized translations of
Hemingway into German—“good”?
Unfortunately, this simplistic and misleading question is frequently the first
and only one raised concerning not only Horschitz’s translations of Hemingway but
also most literary translations. The frequent pronouncements of translations as “good”
or “bad” not only oversimplifies the act of translation but also tends to close the door
on future research. If the translation is deemed “good,” readers simply trust the
translated text as true and faithful to the original. If the translation develops a
negative reputation, it is dismissed by critics as inaccurate with the expressed hope
that a future translator will eventually get it right. While questions about the quality
of translations are valid, such evaluations of translations often appear without a
careful study of the texts in question.
More often, though, readers, and even critics and scholars, completely ignore
the fact that what they are reading in the translated text are not the author’s words and
assume that the translator is a personality-less conduit through which the source text
passes unmodified. This misguided assumption has led to a phenomenon that
Lawrence Venuti refers to as the translator’s invisibility:
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A translated text . . . is judged acceptable . . . when it reads fluently,
when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it
seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign
writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign
text—the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact
a translation, but the “original.” (TI 1)
As Andre Lefevere reminds us, however, “Translators . . . are image makers,
exerting the power of subversion under the guise of objectivity” (6-7). While some
theorists might resist labeling translation as subversive, most would agree that
translation is far from an unbiased activity. In fact, the very act of translation
represents a particular reading of the text. Responding to those who see translation as
an objective enterprise, Susan Bassnett argues that “it is absurd to see translation as
anything other than a creative literary activity, for translators are all the time engaging
with texts first as readers and then as rewriters, as recreators of that text in another
language” (“Writing” 174).
In my dissertation I aim to highlight Horschitz’s role as a recreator of
Hemingway, to clarify her interpretation (whether intentional or unintentional) of
Hemingway’s texts, and to demonstrate the undervalued significance of the
translation process. The end result of such a study is not a simple pronouncement of
the translation as good or bad; it is, rather, an increased understanding of forces at
work in language, in the text as a whole, and in source and target cultures.
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In recent years, thanks to growth of translation studies, the critical focus has
begun to shift away from unsubstantiated evaluations of translations (such as
Hemingway’s own comments about Horschitz’s work) to careful examinations of
shifts that inevitably occur in translation. My dissertation provides such an
examination of translation shifting by analyzing the German translations of
Hemingway’s early fiction. I argue that an understanding of this shifting is important
for three primary reasons: 1) it reveals the linguistic and cultural complexity of the
translation process; 2) it highlights the importance of stylistics for literary analysis;
and 3) it allows for a reassessment of interpretations of Hemingway’s early fiction—
the original English versions and the German-language iterations.
For Hemingway’s prose, these translational modifications are significant.
While not discussing the art of translation specifically, Hemingway himself in Death
in the Afternoon indicates the importance of such transformations. In a passage
frequently quoted in stylistic analyses of Hemingway, the author outlines his now-
famous iceberg theory:
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he
may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing
truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though
the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is
due to only one-eighth of it being above water. (192)
Providing his own metaphoric take on T.S. Eliot’s objective correlative, Hemingway
indicates that if the right words are chosen, the reader will be able to construct
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accurately the hidden material underneath, what Carlos Baker refers to as the
“substructure of symbolic meaning” that is evident in Hemingway’s early novels
(Writer xiv). This precise style of writing may even be more evident in Hemingway’s
short fiction. In an analysis of In Our Time, Linda Wagner refers to Hemingway’s
“tight writing,” which demands that readers “value every word, every scene, every
character . . .” (126). So what happens when Hemingway’s carefully chosen words
are translated into another language? How does the inevitable distortion of
Hemingway’s “tight writing” alter the “substructure of symbolic meaning” that is so
crucial for a reading of the texts?
These questions provide the foundation upon which my dissertation is built.
After outlining key issues in translation and stylistics in Chapter 1, I devote a chapter
to a general discussion of Hemingway’s early connections to Germany and the
translation of Hemingway’s texts into German. I then turn to translation issues that
emerge in German translations of Hemingway’s early major works: The Sun Also
Rises (1926; translated 1928), Men Without Women (1927; translated 1929), A
Farewell to Arms (1929; translated 1930), and In Our Time (1925; translated 1932).
My claim is that the German translations of Hemingway’s early fiction
represent a surprising and important loss in complexity, texture, depth, and content. In
his insightful study of translation, John Sallis observes that there is a high probability
that translations will “have the effect of flattening the text, of closing off possibilities,
of resolving multiplicities that remain intact as such in the original” (76). I seek to
uncover how this flattening occurs in Horschitz’s translations and what the
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