Wesleyan University

The Predicament of Ideas in Culture: Translation and Historiography

Author(s): Douglas Howland
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 45-60
Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University
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History and Theory42 (February2003), 45-60

? Wesleyan University 2003 ISSN: 0018-2656

AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
FORUMON TRANSLATION
1.

THE PREDICAMENT OF IDEAS IN CULTURE:

TRANSLATION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY1

DOUGLAS HOWLAND

ABSTRACT
Ratherthana simple transferof wordsor texts from one language to another,on the model
of the bilingual dictionary,translationhas become understood as a translingualact of
transcodingculturalmaterial-a complex act of communication.Much recent work on
translationin history grows out of interest in the effects of Europeancolonialism, especially within Asian studies, where interest has been driven by the contrastbetween the
experiences of Chinaand Japan,which were never formallycolonized, and the alternative
examples of peoples without strong,centralizedstates-those of the Indiansubcontinent
and the Tagalogin the Philippines-who were colonized by Europeanpowers. This essay
reviews several books published in recent years, one group of which share the general
interpretationthatcolonial powers forced their subjectsto "translate"theirlocal language,
sociality, or culture into the terms of the dominantcolonial power: because the colonial
power controls representationand forces its subjects to use the colonial language, it is in
a position to constructthe forms of indigenousand subjectidentity.The otherbooks under
review here are less concernedwith power in colonial situationsthan with the fact of different languages, cultures, or practices and the work of "translating"between the twoparticularlythe efforts of indigenous agents to introduceEuropeanideas and institutions
to their respective peoples.
I. INTRODUCTION

In the past two decades, the study of translation in history has been transformed.
Where it was once a metaphor for new strategies of intellectual history, it is now
an object of sophisticated epistemological inquiry. Under the tutelage of linguistic and literary theory, moreover, we now understand translation in a manner
quite differently from two decades ago. Translation is no longer a simple transfer of words or texts from one language to another, on the model of the bilingual
dictionary, or the bridging of language differences between people. Rather than
a straightforward operation performed on words, translation has become a
translingual act of transcoding cultural material--a complex act of communication. In the process, translation has come to engage the fact of deep and problematic relationships among forms of writing, idiomatic uses of language, variants of "register" that alert one to markers of class and gender, and structures of
1. The writing of this essay was generously supportedby the School of Historical Studies at the
Institute for Advanced Study. For their comments on earlier drafts, I thank Luise White, Stefan
Tanaka,James Hevia, and Joshua Fogel.

46

DOUGLAS HOWLAND

thoughtthat begin to give culturestheir distinctive outlooks. Hence the outcome

of these relationshipsis not necessarily a common idiom, but a series of negotiations involving untranslatability,incommensurability,and the risk of unbridgeable gaps between peoples and cultures.
It should come as no surprisethat much recent work on translationin history
grows out of interestin the effects of Europeancolonialism. With the expansion
of mercantilismin the sixteenthcentury,the literateculturesof seafaringwestern
Europe-Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands,England, and France-initiated contacts with a host of peoples aroundthe globe, which could only grow in cultural
and linguistic complexity. WhetherEuropeansdestroyed the literaryrecords of
overseas civilizations such as the Maya, or colonized so many overseas peoples
outright,or at the least established trade relations, their long-term interactions
made a necessity of mediating language differences: the formal study of languages and processes of translationwas one set of consequences.Anotherimportant outcome of this culturalcontactwas to furtherthe developmentof European
anthropology,which of course has had significantbearingon the developmentof
translationstudies.
As it happens,the greaterpartof the work on translationas historicalprocess
in the past decade has been accomplished within Asian studies. Interestin the
problem of translationhas been driven especially by the experiences of China
and Japan, which strongly contrast with so many other regions of the world.
China and Japanwere never formally colonized, and Chinese intelligence about
Europeanactivity in Africa and south Asia-acquired by the Japanese in due
course-alerted officials in China and Japanto the need for learning about "the
West"in orderto avoid the fate of those who had failed to retaintheir autonomy
from Westernforce. Because China and Japanwere centralizedstates with long
literary,educational,and historicaltraditions,and because the Westernerswhom
they first encounteredwere Jesuit missionaries hoping to persuade them of the
truthof Christianity,initial contactsbetween China and the West, and Japanand
the West, immediately engaged the problem of mediating language differences
throughformal translationprocedures.But at the same time, Asian studies has
also examined the alternativeexamples of peoples without strong, centralized
states, who were consequently colonized by Europeanpowers-in particular,
those of the Indian subcontinent,with their multiple literarytraditionsequal to
those of China and Japan,and the Tagalogin the Philippines,who lacked both a
centralized state and literary tradition.This is not to imply that the peoples of
Asia deserve more attentionthan do peoples elsewhere, or that peoples with oral
traditionsare inherentlyless interestingthan those with literarytraditions,but to
acknowledgethatAsian studies scholarshave given more attentionto translation
in history than scholarsof other regions of the world.
In fact, given the coincident rise of the postcolonial world and modernization
theory in the 1950s-which sought to provide for the newly emerging states a
model of development based on the Japanese experience-it is surprisingthat
more researchhas not been done on translationprocesses with the rise of moder-

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

47

nity in postcolonial societies. As the case of Japandemonstrates,the importation

and/or adaptationof Western institutions requires some understandingof the
sociopolitical, scientific, and economic principles that inform industrialcapitalism. The Japaneserealized in the 1860s that study of the culturaland educational foundationsof the West was critical for developing the institutionscentralto
Western strength and prosperity-and which promised to safeguard Japan's
autonomy.Researchon the translationof ideas and institutionsshould seem even
more compelling with the turn of attentionto globalization in the past decade,
particularlyin light of efforts to encourage the development of civil society in
postcolonial and formerly"communist"nations as the sociopolitical foundations
of a "free economy." One motive of this essay, in other words, is to encourage
scholarsto consider the formativerole of interculturaltranslationin the processes of globalization as they have intensified in the past five centuries. But my
intention here is not to review in detail the wealth of writing on inter-cultural
contacts, processes of colonization, and language and culture shifts. My main
concernis the ways in which historianshave examined translationspecifically as
a historicalprocess.
This essay examines recent books that share the topic of translationas a historical problem. Some of these books addresspractices of colonialism and the
dominationof an indigenousgroup by a colonial power-as I noted above, colonial powers often succeeded in the absence of a strong centralized state. These
include:Eric Cheyfitz, ThePoetics of Imperialism:Translationand Colonization
from The Tempest to Tarzan (1991); Tejaswini Niranjana,Siting Translation:
History, Post-Structuralism,and the Colonial Context (1992); and Vicente L.
Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in
Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (1988). An interpretiveperspective
largely sharedamong these authorsis that the colonial powers forced their subjects to "translate"their local language, sociality, or cultureinto the terms of the
dominantcolonial power. Two key concepts in this approachare representation
and identity;because the colonial power controls representationand forces its
subjectsto use the colonial language, it is in a position to constructthe forms of
indigenous and subject identity. Informingthis metaphoricalequation between
textual representationsand the historical experiences of colonial subjects is a
principleof mimesis-that texts mirrorhistoricalevents.
But other books under review share a different approach,and are less concerned with the transgressionsof power in colonial situationsthan with the fact
of different languages, cultures, or practices and the work of "translating"
between the two, whetheron the partof agents in the historicalpast or scholars
motivatedto treatthe translationof culturaldifferences.These include: LydiaH.
Liu, TranslingualPractice: Literature,National Culture,and TranslatedModernity-China, 1900-1937 (1995); Naoki Sakai, Translationand Subjectivity:On
"Japan"and CulturalNationalism (1997); FredericC. Schaffer,Democracy in
Translation:UnderstandingPolitics in an UnfamiliarCulture(1998); and a collection of essays, Tokensof Exchange: The Problem of Translationin Global

48

DOUGLAS HOWLAND

Circulations,edited by Lydia H. Liu (1999). A common interesthere is the work

of Chinese and Japanese to introduce Europeanideas to their respective peoples-with the exception of Schaffer's work, which treats the translationand
understandingof political forms in postcolonial Senegal.
In brief, all of these works afford an examinationof two fundamentallydifferent approachesto the study of translationas historical process: one, as a project forced upon a local populationby a colonial power;the other,as an acknowledgmentof differencesbetween languages or groupsthat invites some mediation
between or explanationof differences.
II. COLONIALISMAND TRANSLATION:HISTORICALAND TEXTUAL EVENTS

The books that approachtranslationfrom a concern with colonialism share a

recurringmimetic assumptionborrowed from literary theory-that texts sufficiently representthe world. While it is reasonablefor historiansto engage literary theory-scholars of both history and literatureshare the close reading of
texts as a key method-the risk in proceedingfrom an interestin mimesis is John
Toews's fear that experience might be reducedto meaning.2
Let us look at three works: Eric Cheyfitz's The Poetics of Imperialism,
Tejaswini Niranjana'sSiting Translation,and Vicente L. Rafael's Contracting
Colonialism.In Cheyfitz, to begin with, the Spanishconquest of Mexico is commensurablewith Shakespeare'splay The Tempest.Because Cheyfitzassumes that
everything human is discursive, Columbus is as real and as relevant as Prospero-or, more to Cheyfitz's point, Shakespeare'sCaliban is the Carib cannibal
destroyedby Columbus,and both are equivalentmetaphorsand signs of the violence of Europeanimperialism.3His assertionof the equivalenceof historicaland
creative metaphorspermitsCheyfitz to treattranslationas essentially the use of
figurativelanguage, or the proposal of metaphorsto interpretwhat is different
from ourselves.4In a colonial situation,he argues,the language of the weaker is
always reduced to that of the more powerful, and accordingly,the translation
between our culture and other cultures has typically taken place within "our
2. In his well-known review of intellectualhistory "afterthe linguistic turn,"JohnToews applauded the new history for moving analysis furtherbeyond the traditionalhistory of ideas. He noted the
introductionof meaning and experience as new categories in historical analysis.
However,Toews alertedreadersto a potentialproblemthatthreatenedto underminethe coherence
of the new intellectual history: the way it was using the categories of meaning and experience.
Although these new categories were not meant to "replicatethe old polarities of thought and reality,
conciousness and being, but would encourage an integratedconcept of historicalreality as meaningful experience,"Toews nonethelessconcluded that the new intellectualhistory engaged in a new kind
of reductionism,"thereductionof experience to the meaningsthat shape it," accompaniedby the intellectual hubristhat wordmakersbecome makersof reality.(JohnToews, "IntellectualHistory afterthe
Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," American
Historical Review 97 [1987], 880, 906.)
3. Eric Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism:Translationand Colonizationfrom The Tempestto
Tarzan(New York:Oxford University Press, 1991), 41-58, and chapter3.
4. See ibid., 35-38 for Cheyfitz'sexplanationof translationas metaphor,and chapter3 on "property" for an illustrationof his tranformationof historicalactualityinto history as open-endedpossibility.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

49

English culture"-from Englishcolonists systematicallydistortingthe Algonquin

understandingof their ruler Powhatan-not a "king"but a weroance-to U. S.
foreign policy in the 1980s, where PresidentReagan systematically distorteda
variety of relations by reducing them to the figurativeterms of an "East-West
conflict."5The problem Cheyfitz poses, then, is how to restore a "dialogic relation of translation"and to allow the illiterate,inarticulate,or subordinatedto free
themselves from the confines of imperiallanguageand to articulatetheir identity
within their own cultureor language. He turnsfrom history to futurepossibility.
TejaswiniNiranjanaengages in a similarargumentand strategy.Althoughmuch
of her book is admittedlya literarydiscussion of allegory as a model for history,
she engages history,like Cheyfitz,in the context of colonialism and with a disposition to treattranslationas a colonial device that subordinatesnatives to colonial
powers. Her examinationof William Jones in late eighteenth-centuryIndia, for
example,explainshow Jones interpretivelytranslatedthe laws of Manuas a means
of providingthe Indians with a coherent set of their own laws. Where another
scholar might dismiss Jones's arrogantgrandiosityand critique his work as an
expression of imperial British attitudes, Niranjanainstead argues that Jones's
remarksaboutthe paganIndiansas impure,disgusting,and so on, are constitutive
representationsof Indians.Jones's absurdand offensive remarksare key components of a systematic constructionof the colonial Indian subject, a construction
basedon "symbolicdomination"(a phraseborrowedfrom PierreBourdieu),a violent process that "effectivelyreproduce[s]the social orderthrougha combination
of recognitionand misrecognition."6Colonized Indianspresumably(mis)recognize themselves in Jones's representationsof Indians,and thus recolonize themselves in daily life, which providesan internalbasis of colonizationmore powerful than outwardpolitical control and serves to maintainthe asymmetricpower
relationscharacteristicof colonialism.Apparently,hapless Indiansforthwithsuccumbedto these "authoritativeversions of the Easternself." In any event, insofar
as translationpracticeshave informedJones's and his peers' translationsof Indian
texts, translationbecomes "a significanttechnologyof colonial domination."7
Niranjanatheorizesthat translation,as a "strategyof containment,"brings into
being and reinforceshegemonic versions of the colonized, who thus acquirethe
status of representationsor "objects without history."For her, "historicity"is
"thatpartof the past that is still operablein the present,"and it is with no sense
of irony that Niranjanasplices past and presenttogether,for her notion of "representation"deliberately elides historical time in a manner that few historians
would imitate.8That she understandshistory as the past in the present is to
diverge from a historicistunderstandingof historiography;as R. G. Collingwood
pointedout in the 1930s andE. H. Carrin the 1960s, historyis the askingof questions that assist us in interpretingthe past, questions that solicit the facts we
5. Ibid., xv-xvi, 9, 59f.
6. TejaswiniNiranjana,Siting Translation:History, Post-Structuralism,and the Colonial Context
(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1992), 18-32.
7. Ibid., 21, 33, 43.
8. Ibid., 3, 37, 90.

50

DOUGLAS HOWLAND

choose to interpret.While I would agree with Niranjanaon certainshortcomings

of much written history-the focus on origins and the embedding of events in
predeterminedor progressive histories-I am not optimistic about Niranjana's
who will "translate(that is, disturbor displace)
hope for a "translator/historian"
history ratherthan to interpretit (hermeneutically)or 'read' it (in a textualizing
move)."9Her own example of a "post-colonial"or "deconstructive"translation
claims to avoid eitherreproducingessentialistanti-colonialnarrativeslike nationalism or privileging Western or post-colonial intellectuals'hegemonies. Rather
than reproducethe conditions of neocolonialism, she would engage in a "political interventionin the political rewritingof the text"-to "re-writehistory,"if you
will.10But Niranjana'sengaging and learnedanalysis of previous translationsof
a twelfth-centurySouth India"sacred"poem, a vacana, followed by her own critical retranslation,is precisely what one would expect from an intelligent reader
and scholar:a new translationthat improves upon the others by criticizing their
overlays of Vedic or Christianmetaphysics." But can we call this a "political
intervention"?To leave both a proper name (Guhesvara) and a key concept
(linga) "in the original"within her translationis, perhaps,to engage in the dialogic translationthat she advocates-to introduceheterogeneityinto the English
language, and to privilege the brokenpieces from which the translationis made.
But thatis whatmany conscientioustranslatorshave struggledat for centuries.To
return to the anti-colonial project that informs her first two chapters-and
Niranjana(as well as Cheyfitz)would shun such an integrativemove, which raises suspicions of domination-I am at a loss as to imagine how her informative
retranslationof this short poem will provide the authenticself-images necessary
to undo the misrecognitionthatrecolonizes the Indianmasses daily.
If Cheyfitz and Niranjanaproceed as though culturalworlds are sufficiently
representablein texts, that historicalevents are textualevents, and that texts can
determinethe meaning of historicalexperience, Vicente L. Rafael's work is an
importantpoint of comparison.Althoughhe too at times traces this mimetic and
anti-historicaltrajectoryencouragedby literarytheory-when, for example, he
analyzes a nineteenth-centuryPhilippinenovel for what it tells us aboutTagalog
life two centuriesearlier-that is rarein his work.12For Rafael is committedto
the historyof relationsbetween Castilian-speakingSpaniardsand Tagalog-speaking peoples in the Spanish colony of the Philippines.In particular,he analyzes
Spanishattemptsto convert Tagalogsociety to Christianity.Like Cheyfitz,however, he abstracts"translation"from acts of translationand uses the concept
metaphorically;in the course of the book, Rafael assertsmetaphoricalidentifications of translationwith conversion, confession, the reciprocity of gift-giving,
submission,and death.In the same way that Spaniardsand Tagalogsattemptedto
translatebetween their languages, so too the Spaniardsattempted to convert
9. Niranjana,Siting Translation,38f.
10. Ibid., 167-172.
11. Ibid., 174-186.
12. Vicente L. Rafael, ContractingColonialism:Translationand ChristianConversionin Tagalog
Society underEarly Spanish Rule (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1988), 1-7.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

51

Tagalogsto Christianity-to Rafael, both translationand conversion are substitutions of one thing for another.But as Niranjanahas argued,these colonial relations are always asymmetrical-it is the Spaniardswho command authorityand
undertakethe conversionof the Tagalogs.Hence Rafael'smainthesis is thattranslation and conversion were both modes of action that mediated the Spaniards'
abilitiesto colonize Tagalogsociety in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies.13
Rafael improves upon the textual determinismof Cheyfitz and Niranjana,for
his purpose is ultimately not to critique interculturalrelationsin the past and to
hope for some betterpracticesthat producemore authenticidentities. Rather,he
analyzes interculturalrelationsas historicalevents for what they can tell us about
the construction of authority, hierarchy, and communication. In Contracting
Colonialism, translationis not so much the ability to speak in a language other
than one's own than the capacity to reshapeone's thoughtsand actions in accordance with accepted forms. Although translationmight thus signal Tagalog submission to the conventions of Spanish social order,it is not so much a process of
Tagalogs simply internalizing colonial-Christian conventions-as Niranjana
arguedregardingIndiansinternalizingJones's representations.Rather,Rafael is
interestedin how Tagalogs evaded the totalizing grip of Spanish-Christianconventions by markingdifferences between Tagalog and Castilian Spanish.14
Rafael offers an insightful analysis of the effects of such language translation
in colonial society. Based on his discussion of an early grammarcreated for
Tagalog by Francisco Blancas de San Jose in 1610, Arte y reglas de la lengua
tagala, Rafael speculatesthat translationwork encouragedan abstractnotion of
language and allowed the Spaniardsto separatethe natives from their language.
Spaniardsunderstoodthat language exists independentlyof a communityof particularhearersand speakers,so that any such communitycan learn differentlanguages. Indeed, the effort to colonize becomes especially an effort to teach the
colonized a new language. At the same time, Rafael asserts that translation
always leads to the emergence of hierarchy.Spanish missionaries imagined a
hierarchyof languages, which descended from God, such that Latin was closest
to the "Wordof God," followed by Castilian Spanish, with Tagalog distant in
space andpurity.'5Because translationis embeddedin social relations,translation
was intimately involved in the hierarchiesasserted by the Spaniards.Christian
conversionand translationboth involved "thesublationof all signs and speech to
the sacred Sign of God, Christ."16Communion,like the conversation based in
translation,establishesthe hierarchyof those who administerfrom those who are
dependent.And the confessional conversationin which the Spanishpriest "counseled" the Tagalog native dependedon the hierarchicalmode of interrogation.17
But as one mightexpect, Tagalogtranslationcan work againstthe productionof
hierarchy.In 1610 a contemporaryof Blancas de San Jose, Tomas Pinpin, a
13. Ibid., ix-xi, 34f.
14. Ibid., 210f.
15. Ibid., 26-39, 211.
16. Ibid., 91f.
17. Ibid., 92-94, 97, 103-105.

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DOUGLAS HOWLAND

Tagalog who worked as a printer,publisheda book to assist Tagalog speakersin

learningCastilian,LibrongParaaralannang manga Tagalognang uicang Castila.
Pinpinstressedtranslationless as a linguistictransactionthanas useful knowledge
for engaging the Spaniards,less a transactionbetween inferiorconcretizationsof
God's universallanguagethan as a "serialdisplacementof one's firstlanguageby
a second" and a leap back to the first, in orderto alert and habituatethe native
Tagalogs to the interruptiveeffects of Castilian Spanish. Rafael argues that, in
effect, Pinpin underminedthe hierarchicalrelationbetween Spanishand Tagalog
thatthe Spaniardshad assumedin theirclaims to political and linguistic authority.
Such a point is reiteratedin Rafael's discussionof confession, a ritualizedinteraction that reproduceda hierarchicalrelationbetween Spanish priest and Tagalog
convert,but often found the latterwith nothingto say.18
Rafael's most original and powerful discussion in ContractingColonialism is
the problemof "untranslatability."
To Rafael, untranslatabilityis an indicationof
the purityof key terms like Dios, Virgen,and so on, which were left in Latin or
Castilian forms ratherthan replaced with local and allegedly impure variants.
Wherethe Spaniardsassumedan inadequacyon the partof Tagalogto speak such
terms of Christianity, Tagalog conceptions (what early missionaries called
"superstitions")actively interferedwith key Spanish understandings-like the
spirit world of the soul-by bringing an "outside" within the domain of
Christianity. Rafael's account of indigenous conceptions like nono, which
denotes grandparents(whetherliving or dead), as well as spiritsemanatingfrom
objects in nature(trees, rocks, rivers), is an especially instructiveexample of the
incommensurabilityof Castilian and Tagalog when they met in efforts at
Christianconversion.19Since a term like "spirit"was left in the Castilianoriginal
(Espiritu Santo), rather than being translatedinto Tagalog, the untranslatable
alertedTagalognatives to the demandsof their Spanish authorities,and facilitated deferringto those authorities,but at the same time preservedan outside space
where the Tagalog could elude the meaning and intent of Castiliansigns. Rafael
would have us believe thatkey Tagalogtermslike nono renderedthe transcultural relations at the heart of colonization and Christianconversion inoperable.In
part,he is more convincing than, say, Niranjana,because he does not claim that
this interiorand cultural"outside"is a space of meaningfulpolitical opposition.
Rather,and somberly,it harmonizeswith a Tagalog conceptionof reunitingwith
the spiritsof the dead, so that the Tagalog reconceptualization(or "translation")
of Christianityserved to reinventdeath, and ultimately,to reconcile Tagalogs to
the demandsof colonial authority,which includedthe Christiannotion of death.20
III. TRANSLATIONIN THE EXPLANATIONOF DIFFERENCES

If these works engaged with translationin a colonial context occasionally invite

a reductionof historical experience to textual representation-and I am by no
18. Ibid., 55-65, 83, 86, 90f.
19. Ibid., 29, 110-115.
20. Ibid., 121, 208.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

53

means offhandedly dismissing the value of literary criticism-the works that

specifically pursue translationin orderto explain historical encountersand cultural differences have much more to offer the study of translationin history.21
The contraststems from two differences in scholarly motives. In the first place,
Lydia H. Liu (in Translingual Practice), Naoki Sakai (in Translation and
Subjectivity),and FredericC. Schaffer(in Democracy in Translation),all undertake rigorousexplanationsof the meaning of concepts as they were used in history; the three value specificity and process in the mannerencouraged by the
example of QuentinSkinner.22Thus they do not engage in the metaphoricalshifts
that we see in Cheyfitz, Niranjana,and Rafael. Rather,Liu, Sakai, and Schaffer
painstakinglyspecify their objects of analysis-Sakai the metaphysics of subjectivity informingJapan'snationalidentity;Liu the concept of "translingual"in
China's engagement with modernity;and Schaffer the multiple understandings
of "democracy"informingpolitical practicein Senegal. Because all threeauthors
recognize the fact that concepts are contestable, their books propose a rigorous
and historical analysis of the meaning of words and actions in translation.
Moreover, these three scholars-as well as the contributorsto Tokens of
Exchange-are unwilling to rest content with, in Liu's words, "the irony that, in
the very act of criticizing Westerndomination, one often ends up reifying the
power of the dominatorto a degree that the agency of non-Westerncultures is
All three reject a simple opposition
reducedto a single possibility: resistance."23
of dominationand resistance in a colonial setting; ratherthan view colonialism
as a situation that creates victims whose identificationwith their masters pro21. I do not mean to imply that historiesof colonialism are necessarily flawed;for insightfulstudies of language in colonial societies, see Johannes Fabian, Language and Colonial Power: The
Appropriationof Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 (Cambridge,Eng.: Cambridge
University Press, 1986); Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge
University Press, 1988); and Derek Peterson, "Colonizing Language? Missionaries and Gikuyu
Dictionaries, 1904 and 1914," History in Africa 24 (1997), 257-272.
22. As Skinnerhad originally proposedin his critique of the abstractionof the traditionalhistory
of ideas, historianswould do betterto constructcontexts for ideas not from their alleged meaningsbut
from the usage of words in actual texts. Skinnerproposed that we not think of ideas as responses to
immediate circumstancesand rest content to place texts within their social and political contexts;
rather,we should try to recover the complex and entirely contingentintentionof the authorof a given
text, which, he hoped, would yield a productivedialogue between philosophical discussion and historical evidence. Skinner,"Meaningand Understandingin the Historyof Ideas,"History and Theory
8 (1969), 39f. Although Skinner has been criticized for emphasizing intention, his approachis far
from being a psychological or idealist attemptto get at interiormotives of thinkers.Rather,he has
describedthis intentionalityprecisely in termsof action:he wants to be able to describewhat "authors
were doing in writing"texts, in orderto "see not merely what argumentsthey were presenting,but
also what questions they were addressingand trying to answer,and how far they were acceptingand
endorsing, or questioning and repudiating,or perhaps even polemically ignoring, the prevailing
assumptions and conventions of political debate." Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern
Political Thought: Volume One: The Renaissance (Cambridge,Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press,
1978), xiii. See Lotte Mulligan, JudithRichards,and John Graham,"Intentionsand Conventions:A
Critiqueof Quentin Skinner's Method for the Study of the History of Ideas," Political Studies 27
(1979), 84-98; and James H. Tully's defense of Skinner,"ReviewArticle:The Pen is a Mighty Sword:
QuentinSkinner'sAnalysis of Politics," BritishJournal of Political Science 13 (1983), 489-509.
23. LydiaH. Liu, TranslingualPractice: Literature,National Culture,and TranslatedModernityChina, 1900-1937 (Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, 1995), xv-xvi.

54

DOUGLAS HOWLAND

duces a debilitatingpassivity, Liu, Sakai, and Schafferare much more interested

in the motives of historical agents and the meaning of their actions-those who
translategrapple creatively with their environmentsin attemptingto construct
some possibly better idiom.
Liu examines the historical context of Chinese engagements with Westernlinguistic, literary,and culturalforms; in particular,she questions Chinese motives
in engaging national character,individualism, first-personnarratives,national
essence, and national literature,as well as the temporal contingency of such
engagements.Indeed, the most valuable aspect of Liu's work for the intellectual
or culturalhistorianis her persistence in explaining what I would call the "conditions of possibility" for creating new discussions based on neologisms and
novel practices.Liu explains, for example, the role of nationalcharacterand its
dominant category, national identity, in the context of Western imperialism,
which informedChinese attemptsto define the moder nation-state.The concept
of nationalcharacterfacilitateda numberof proposalsthat linked race, state, and
religion, but generally the force of nationalcharacterwas to criticize Chinese as
unfit for modernity.Liu demonstratesthat althoughthe fact of translationestablished some relation between "nationalcharacter"and the Chinese translation
word guominxing, the precise meaning of the latter would be determined by
Chinese users.24

Liu's analysis of "individualism"is particularlyinstructivefor its paradoxical

range of meanings. She asks: how does the rhetoric of individualism engage
notions of Chinese modernity and a universal humanism?In Chinese popular
press debatesover individualismfrom the 1900s to the 1920s, individualismwas
presentedas an antidoteto both conservativetraditionand Westernmaterialism,
as well as the solution for either a revival of Confucianismor the foundationof
a new socialism. To participantsin the modernistand anti-traditionalmovements
that began duringEurope's First WorldWar,the egocentric individualprovided
the possibility for a breakwith traditionand old literaryhabits and, in due course,
individualism encouraged the opening of new argumentsboth for and against
national or social collectivism. The tension between a moder self and national
identity persistedthroughoutthe introductionof Chinese concepts for "individual"; Liu argues that this embedding of "individual"in notions of nation, state,
and society already distinguished the idea in Chinese from Westernnotions of
individualism.Liu insightfully concludes that regardlessof liberatingthe individual from the family or subjecting the individual to the state, individualism
"contributedto the process of inventing geren [the individual] for the goals of
liberationand nationalrevolution."25Whereother scholarshave only noted individualism as a Westernideal and assertedthat Chinese had trouble understand24. Ibid., 48f., 60. Or,as she adds in her discussion of psychological realism, one can begin to analyze the mind "when terms like xinli [psyche] and yuwang [desire] become translatableand when
translingualmodes of narrationbegin to reconfigurewhat is real and what is unrealabout the human
mind."Ibid., 132.
25. Ibid., 78-95.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

55

ing it, Liu targetsthe concept itself to demonstrateboth what it meant (its range
of meanings) and what it enabled Chinese agents to think and do.26
An equal rigor and capacityfor nuance is evident in Schaffer'sDemocracy in
Translation.Schaffersurveys a range of descriptiveand operationaldefinitionsof
democracyin previouscomparativework on democracy;these are familiarmeasurementsof the practiceof democracy,based on predeterminedcriterialike numbers of candidatesand parties,degree of suffrage,and voter turnout.He then outlines his own alternativetactic of conceptualanalysisfor determiningthe meaning
of democracyin Senegal, which directshim to the usage of concepts,the relation
of such concepts in a semanticfield of relatedterms,and changes in the meaning
and usage of these concepts in recent decades.To Schaffer,this work is above all
The centhe problemof namingthe standardsimplicitin usages of "democracy."27
tral terms in his analysis are provided by the pair of languages dominant in
Senegal-the Frenchworddemocratieandthe Wolofloanworddemokaraasi-and
much of the book is a carefulcomparisonof connotationssuggestedby Schaffer's
informantsand mediareports.Wheredemocratiehad been relatedto metaphorsof
youthfulnessand effective social engineeringand,in the 1970s, came to connote a
solutionto the oppositionbetween dictatorshipand inclusive government-namely, the virtue of ruling and oppositionpartiesalternatingtheir turnsat ruling the
country-demokaraasi was insteadrelatedto practicesat the mosque:the competitionamongmuezzinsfor listeners,leadershipvia the selectionof leadersin prayer,
and a respectfor laws.28Schafferconcludes that"democracy"in Senegal is especially a way to talk about consensus, solidarity,and evenhandedor equal treatment-its opposite is the dishonest and deceitful behavior of "politics."29More
importantly,however, where other scholarsreportedlyconclude that Senegal is a
quasi-or semi-democracy,he offersan evaluationthat,unlikethe textualsubstitutes
for politics we find in Cheyfitzand Niranjana,may very well provide suggestions
for improvingdemocracyin Senegal: civic and French-languageeducation,and
more directly,the secretballot and opportunitiesfor communitynetworking.30
By
deliberatelyfocusing on the standardsimplicitin usages of "democracy,"Schaffer
drawsour attentionto a principlefundamentalto his and Liu's work:namely,that
we understandconcepts best throughacts of comparison-not the comparisonof
originalsand translations,but the comparisonof sets of concepts as they are used.
IV. THE UNTRANSLATABLEAND INCOMMENSURATE

The question,ultimately,in all of these works is the purposeand consequence of

acts of comparison.All of the authorsreject the idea that the comparativework
26. See, for examples, Hao Chang, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Intellectual Transition in China,
1890-1907 (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1971); and Benjamin Schwartz,In Search
of Wealthand Power: YenFu and the West(Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1964).
27. Frederic C. Schaffer, Democracy in Translation: UnderstandingPolitics in an Unfamiliar
Culture(Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1998), 1-10.
28. Ibid., 25-31, 38-44.
29. Ibid., 57-77.
30. Ibid.. 116-138.

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DOUGLAS HOWLAND

of translationproducesequivalencesbetween languages in the mannerof a bilingual dictionary.As Liu persuasivelyarguesin both TranslingualPractice andher
introductionto Tokens of Exchange, we should examine the motives behind
attemptsto establish equivalences, and take care to understandthe complementarity and difference surroundingputative originals and their translations.The
object of our analyses should be the process of making meaning in acts of translation and the comparisonsthat they inspire.31The question is, however, what to
do with a comparisonthat reveals a fundamentalor unbridgeablegap between
two apparentopposites. As Rafael concluded with poetic force and insight, the
fundamentalgap between SpanishandTagalogunderstandingsof the spiritworld
was only resolved in death-a favorite analogy in culturalcriticism for pointing
to the radicalothernessthat evades our rationalunderstanding.
For it is not enough to stop at the point of acknowledging differences.
Otherwise, as Roger Hart so clearly argues in his contributionto Tokens of
Exchange, comparison simply contributesto the unrigorousrelativism of confirming differences between or among cultures or languages. Worse, and too
often, the claim that a word or practice is fundamentally untranslatableor
incommensuraterisks diverting attention from the social and political history
deservingof analysis.As Hartdemonstratesin his critiqueof researchon the category of "existence" in sixteenth-centurytranslations from the Chinese, the
framework of incommensurabilitynecessarily omits importanthistorical contexts: to deny that Chinese had a concept of existence, that translatorstherefore
could not translate"being" into Chinese, and that Chinese thereforecould not
understandeither Christianityor Westernphilosophy, is to create a culturalbarrier that begs the habit of relativismin the face of actual Chinese understanding
of Westernphilosophy.32
It is precisely in relationto the work of comparisonand the relatedquestionof
the incommensuratethat Naoki Sakai's Translationand Subjectivityso forceful31. That said, is is perplexingthat Liu includes seven appendicesthat list neologisms in the manner of bilingualdictionaries.While these lists are interestingand perhapsuseful, they are exactly contraryto the theoreticalspiritmotivatingLiu's introductionand firstchapters.In spite of her disclaimer
that she would ignore the principle of "semanticequation"operable in most studies of neologisms,
her alternative principle of "ideographic coincidence"-referring simply to the use of existing
Chinese-charactercompounds in the translationprocess, independentof their meaning-relies on an
arbitrarinessas problematicas that of mere shifts of meaning, for both semantic equationand ideographiccoincidence privilege the criterionof origins, whetheroriginarymeaning or originaryusage.
Does it matter, for example, if neologisms have their origins in classical sources? The problem
remains:can Liu or any scholar verify that the user of a neologism did in fact read the classical text
in which a neologism first figured as a "pure"word? See TranslingualPractice, 260-262, and 265378 for the appendices.
32. Roger Hart, "Translatingthe Untranslatable:From Copula to IncommensurableWorlds,"in
Tokensof Exchange: The Problem of Translationin Global Circulations,ed. Lydia H. Liu (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1999), 57-59. An example of precisely the problem that Hartoutlines is the
recent collection, The Translatabilityof Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, ed. Sanford
Budick andWolfgangIser (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1996); several contributorsannounce
the impossibility of translationand the infiniteregress at the heartof the process (with pithy remarks
on the orderof "the original is alreadya mistranslationof a lost original")and then propose "cultural translation"as "performance,"which seems only to raise the same questions already posed by
translationtheoristsas to how texts "work"in differentculturalenvironments.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

57

ly challenges the assumptions surroundingthe current study of translation.

Sakai's analysis is based on a judicious critique of the conventional understanding of translation.In the conventional view, most linguists and scholars assume
the existence of nationallanguages fully available to all constituentnationals;a
Japanesenational,for example, is competent in the Japaneselanguage,just as a
Chinese national is competent in Chinese. Such a view encourages the idea of
"homolingualaddress"between "two unities of the translatingand the translated
languages as if they were autonomousand closed entities."33That is, the conventional view is "homolingual"in that it imagines one language being translated into another language on the part of nationals perfectly at home in their
respective languages.As an alternative,Sakai drawsour attentionto the problem
of "heterolingualaddress,"the potential confusion of hybridity and multiplicity
that exists from the point of view of multilingual and independent speakers,
whose regional and stylistic variations (and often mutual incomprehensions)
make it impossible for us to identify with any honesty or exactitude a national
language of Japan,China, the U. S., or any such nationalplace.34The "English
language"poetry of Ezra Pound, for example, not only includes language other
than English-Latin and Greek readily come to mind-but exhibits as well an
eruditeregisterutterlyopaque to the illiterateEnglish speaker.Sakai insists that
in the absence of actual homolingualcollectives-the "us"or "we" that I might
referto in speakingaboutmy putativelanguage group- communicationdepends
upon speakers engaging in potentially endless acts of translationor interpretation. The translatoris thus that person who occupies the ambiguouspositionality between the addresserand addressee, an interpreterwho recognizes that the
initial incommensurabilitybetween addresserand addresseeis in fact a gap and
thus builds a bridge of sociality for the two.35
Ultimately,Sakai understandstranslationas a mode of address that precedes
communication.He conceives of translationas "a practiceproducingdifference
out of incommensurabilityratherthan equivalence out of difference";in that
regard,he approachestranslationin a powerfully "practical"sense, to ask "what
actually happens in an effort of translation?"36The consequence of this
approach-and likely the most difficultaspect of Sakai'stheoryfor scholarscommittedto the conventionalunderstanding-is thatSakaigives his greatestattention
to the enunciativepositionalityof the observer:the speech situationin which the
translatorworks. In otherwords, he foregroundsthe translator'ssubjectivity,as a
problemof identifyingand negotiatingthe two determinationsof subjectivity:the
epistemic subject(the grammatical"I"of speech, or transcendentalego); and the
practicalsubject(the humanbeing as an active, if unrepresentable,agent).37
33. Naoki Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity: On "Japan" and Cultural Nationalism
(Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 2.
34. Ibid., 2f., 51.
35. Ibid., 11, 14.
36. See MeaghanMorris,"Foreword,"in ibid., xiii.
37. Ibid., 118-122; for an alternative analysis of the speech situation, see Roman Jakobson,
"Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT
Press, 1960), 350-377.

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DOUGLAS HOWLAND

But as Sakai rightly points out, it is hardeven to talk abouttranslationwithout

resortingto the conventionalunderstandingof the practice.Hence a great deal of
Sakai's argumentengages the model of "homolingualaddress,"only to analyze
and critiqueit. Given thatSakai understandstranslationas a mode of addressthat
precedescommunication,he focuses on the schema (or logic) of cofigurationthat
precedes the act of addressthat is translation.This schema or logic is none other
than our own world of nation-stateswith culturesand languagesthat presumean
integrativeself-identity.Hence the majorityof Sakai's work concerns the condition of subjectivity provided by the schema of cofiguration, that interiority
assumedto link the speaker'sbody and subjectivityto the nationallanguage and
cultureof the given nation-state.38
This schema of cofiguration,within which we all live today, is in fact the logical structurewhereby a duality is engendered,the (imagined)self and the other,
as an effect of the self-representationof nationalcommunities.These are historically related to the rise of the nation-state,with its creation of a national language and literatureideologized throughnationaleducationand standardsof literacy. Hence Sakai also describes the schema of cofigurationas a "regime of
translation"that is groundedin idealized pairs of one and anotherlanguage/culture/self. Both schema and regime have given rise to the conventionalnotion of
translationas a bridge to exchange equal values between the two wholes.39
Hence Sakai takes especial pains to point out two importantconsequences of
the schema of cofiguration. First, because the concept of a foreign language
serves as a regulative idea-it serves to delimit one's own language as an independententity throughtechnologies like the bilingual dictionary-the "transcendental reduction"of languages and language styles to a national language (and
38. At this point, I would take issue with Sakai's analysis of language,which is derived most from
a phenomenological treatmentof the linguistic pragmatics of scholars like John Searle and J. L.
Austin. Such a position might describelanguage as a set of speech acts originatingin the body; hence
Sakai emphasizes the personalizationof speech, which is the occasion for his analysis of subjectivity
(xvi, 27-29). That is, he foregroundsthe immediateposition of translator,andjustifies his position by
assertingthat"the descriptionof culturaldifference is always correlativewith an act of inscribingand
institutingspecific social relationsthat necessarily involve" the observer/translator(120).
Such a view of language,however,has two corollaryaxioms thatdo not sit well with this reviewer.
In the firstplace, Sakai treatstexts as speech acts, in a mannerperhapsanalogousto QuentinSkinner,
but he stressesthattranslationbecomes a passage among speech acts composedof componentsof multilingualtexts (27-29). Second, Sakai rebukesthe depersonalizationof discourse-an approachthathe
attributesto Foucault-which has given rise to a belief in the objectivityof languageanddiscourse(18).
But this reductionof texts to speech acts, the significanceof which is most salient in the positionality
would seem to fly in the face of the historicalproductionand receptionof
of the translator/interpreter,
texts. I thinkwe must acknowledgethe historicityof writtenlanguagesandgrantthatthe productionof
texts and discourseshas tendedto be framedin terms of single languages,in Europeat least since the
developmentof translationpracticesin the 1300s. As many scholarsotherthanFoucaulthave pointed
out, the growth of writtenforms of vernacularlanguagesin the 1200s began to encouragetranslation
habits between languages like Italian and the more common writtenlanguage of the Church,Latin.
While this historicalbackgroundis arguablymerelythe beginningof the current"regimeof translation"
with its nation-states,the priorityof texts is implicit and cannot simply be ignored.
39. Ibid., 15, 20f., 49, 51. BenedictAndersonprovides a differentanalysis of language in the creation of nations in Imagined Communities:Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(London:Verso, 1983), 66-79.

TRANSLATIONAND HISTORIOGRAPHY

59

persons to national subjects) normalizes the regime of translation.The solution

Sakai proposes is to cease thinking of ourselves as identifiably Japanese or
Chinese, or to cease thinkingof our language as Japaneseor Chinese.40Second,
the work of the translator(to construct a bridge of difference in order to link
incommensurateworlds) must be contrastedwith the false continuity or "suturing" of the gap provided by the schema of cofiguration.41Sakai's central chapters thus exemplify a translationpractice within history,as he explicates the difference between phenomenological understandingsof subjectivity (especially
thatof Heidegger) and Japaneseattemptsto translate"subjectivity"into a meaningful Japaneseidiom (especially that of WatsujiTetsur6)-which providedkey
conceptual foundations for the constructionof a national culture and emperor
system in which Japanesespeakersbecame enmeshed. Of particularinteresthere
are Sakai's accounts of Watsuji's analysis of sociality, his sacralizationof the
state, and the constructionof "Japaneseculture."42His work, in other words, is a
profoundexample of the kind of historical engagement that Roger Hart insists
should follow an assertionof incommensurability.
Sakai's analysis is particularlycompelling on the point to which so many of
these studies of translationreturn:what to do about our predicamentin a world
that demands translation.Sakai's indomitable refusal to succumb to received
structuresof power and hierarchyunderlineshis conviction that, ultimately,we
as individualstake responsibilityfor the identities with which we associate ourselves. He would likely be unwilling to wait with Cheyfitz and Niranjanafor the
subordinatedto break free of colonial language and to reconstruct new and
authenticidentities for themselves. They have long had the wherewithalto represent themselves. Sakai leaves us, then, in an ambiguous position. While one
can laud Sakai's critical integrity and the depth of his analysis, the political
demands of reality necessitate, for example, our carryingnational passportsin
traveling out of the country.The solitary stance of the philosopher, as he correctly positions his subjectivity,risks a certainindifferenceto the world's obnoxious powers. Nonetheless, like ReinhartKoselleck's work on "asymmetriccounterconcepts,"Sakai points us back to the political world of active engagement,
where people say and do things that matterto themselves and others.43
V. CONCLUSIONS

If, then, the meaning of ideas in culture must be negotiated even among those
who employ the so-called "same"language, we must, in the end, engage in the
comparativework of tracingthe mutationsthatideas undergoas they travelfrom
40. I have analyzed Chinese-Japanese"brushtalking"interactionsin just this way; see Bordersof
Chinese Civilization: Geography and History at Empire's End (Durham:Duke University Press,
1996), 43-57.
41. Sakai, Translationand Subjectivity,45f., 56-59.
42. Ibid., 84-86, 93, 96-104, 108-113.
43. ReinhartKoselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge,Mass.:
MIT Press, 1985), 159-197.

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one setting to anotherif we are to understandthem. They are, after all, cultural
material available to any users for any numberof purposes. The key scholarly
intervention,as the best of the works here collectively show, is to understand
how ideas-and the words that contain them-have been used.
I would return,then, to the apprehensionsraisedby Toews in 1987. His charge
that the new intellectualhistory engaged in new forms of reductionismis both
borne out and yet counteredby these examples from the study of translationin
history.Liu, Rafael, Sakai, and Schafferhave met the challenge of a more sophisticated examination of the historical activity of constructing and expressing
meaning.They show clearly thatthe problemis to forego the old habitof semantic transparencyand to pursue the constructionof meaning in interculturalcontexts--to compareideas in their multiple and historicalmoorings.44
If this is done- as the work of Schafferhas demonstratedherein-the history
of concepts promisesconsequencesfor the present.If history helps us to perceive
how available concepts push us to think along certain lines, this history may
enable us "to conceive of how to act on alternativeand less constrainingdefinitions of our situation."45For the translationof concepts into other languages
extends conceptual and political structureselsewhere. Ratherthan treat translation metaphorically,in the deconstructionistspiritof a "play of substitutions,"it
must be treatedas a specific and materialevent in history.
Universityof Wisconsin,
Milwaukee

44. See Douglas Howland, Translatingthe West:Language and Political Reason in NineteenthCenturyJapan (Honolulu:University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), 18-30.
45. Melvin Richter,"Appreciatinga ContemporaryClassic:The GeschichtlicheGrundbegriffeand
Future Scholarship,"in The Meaning of Historical Termsand Concepts: New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, D.C.: German Historical
Institute, 1996), 10.