October 2024

The politics and dynamics of translation

Please reference as: Maria Tamboukou. 2024. 'The politics and dynamics of translation'://sites.google.com/view/numbersandnarratives/newsletter/october-2024

In October, I was absorbed in reading and writing about historical and contemporary issues of translation in relation to women mathematicians’ scientific, philosophical and literary work. Throughout this project, I have considered these women both as translators of important scientific works of their time, as well as scientists, philosophers and literary authors, whose own work has, in turn, been translated across different eras. In this context I agree with Hilary Brown’s (2022) important argument that translation in the early and late modern periods in Europe was not necessarily taken as a feminized secondary activity, a substitute of ‘real creation’, as well as an outlet of women’s suppressed desire to write and become published authors. Women translated foundational works by prominent male mathematicians, and, notably, their own work was translated by male contemporaries in both scientific and literary circles. However, a historical discontinuity emerges: despite the celebrated and widely translated contributions of women mathematicians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much of this legacy was marginalized in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, we now see encouraging signs of a dynamic revival as we approach the second quarter of the new millennium.

What is striking to our own days is the fact that a large part of women mathematicians’ auto/biographical writings and particularly their letters remain within the linguistic barriers of their geographical context and consequently the secondary literature that has been revolving around them has not travelled well. I remain struck by the fact that Émilie Du Châtelet’s and Sofia Kovalevskaya’s extensive correspondences, Sophie Germain’s philosophical work, Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s biographies, Sofia Kovalevskaya’s diaries and literary writings, and Wang Zhenyi’s surviving texts have yet to be translated into English. Furthermore, the scholarship surrounding these women remains largely confined by national and linguistic boundaries, with few transnational comparative studies available.

When I first undertook the project of writing a feminist genealogy of automathographies, I had not anticipated the scarcity of comparative studies focusing on these women—particularly those who share similar ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, like Emilie Du Châtelet and Sophie Germain, or Mary Somerville and Ada Lovelace. Comparative analyses on a bilateral level are even rarer, with the notable exception of Robyn Arianhood’s work (2012), which provides an excellent study contrasting Émilie Du Châtelet’s translation and critique of Newton with Mary Somerville’s work on Laplace.

The ‘cultural turn in translation studies’ (Brown 2022) plays a pivotal role in transcending linguistic boundaries. Equally critical to current trends, however, is addressing the politics of translation. Drawing connections between the concepts of ‘bordering’ in politics and the ‘translational turn’ in linguistics, Naoki Sakai argues that, like borders, translation involves more than delineating linguistic boundaries, and it engages instead with complex social and political dimensions (2009, 71).

Languages are neither coherent, nor continuous argues Sakai. Accepting that difference is intrinsic to language, translation emerges as a form of ‘political labour’ that proposes—and actively constructs—the unity of language. He further argues that without assuming that language is a unified or singular entity, it would be difficult to discuss translation either as a movement from one distinct language to another — inter-lingual translation—or as occurring within a language, where variations are perceived as internal distinctions— intra-lingual translations. (ibid., 72)

Sakai offers the concept of ‘many in one’ as an alternative to the assumption of linguistic unity, suggesting that the notion of a singular national or ethnic language is always inherently linked with the idea of other languages coexisting in similar frameworks of unity. This element of ‘many in one’ thus implies that the unity of a language only emerges within a context of plurality, where different languages coexist and interact, challenging the notion that any language can exist as a purely isolated, monolithic entity. (ibid., 75) In this framework, translation is understood not merely as a conduit between languages but, more critically, as ‘an ambiguous act of constructing continuity from discontinuity’ (ibid., 71).

Transferring these critical insights to the realm of scientific and philosophical languages, we can see that the translations projects undertaken by women mathematicians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were deeply involved in the ‘politics of translation’. This is evident whether in cross-linguistic work—such as translating Newton in France or Laplace in Britain—or in cases of intra-lingual translation, like Ada Lovelace’s unique case of rewriting of Babbage’s works for English audiences. Moreover, women mathematicians’ works were adapted withing various cultural contexts, as evidenced by the title changes in Émilie Du Châtelet’s translations into German and Italian, or Sofia Kovalevskaya’s autobiography into English. Their writings were also translated amid ongoing scientific wars and debates, as was the case with Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s translation into English, which included the transposition of the differential notation she used into the Newtonian fluxion.

Across all cases I have examined, Sakai’s element of ‘many in one’ emerges, highlighting the complex dynamics of translation. This is true whether these translations involved scientific texts or literary and autobiographical writings, as in Sofia Kovalevskaya’s varied translations both across languages and within the Russian language itself.As the assumption of linguistic unity recedes, languages increasingly permeate and cross boundaries and transnational feminist studies continue to expand, there are strong reasons to anticipate that the gendered landscapes of science will similarly broaden and deepen. Within this context, my work seeks to address an important gap in scholarship on gender, translation, and the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. This work contributes to a richer understanding of how gender and translation are entangled in shaping scientific discourse across different languages and cultures.

References

Arianrhod, Robyn. 2012. Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, Hilary. 2022. Women and Early Modern Cultures of Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sakai, Naoki. 2009. ‘How do we count a language? Translation and discontinuity’. Translation Studies 2 (1), 71-88.

Google Sites

Report abuse