《Non-literary_in_the_Light_of_Literary_Translation》.doc

Non-literary in the Light of Literary Translation Peter Newmark, University of Surrey ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to contrast non-literary with literary translation. An example from the opening pages of Kafka's Amerika is used to illustrate how literary texts may be translated differently from non-literary ones. They differ essentially through intention (literary texts belong to the world of imagination whereas non-literary ones belong to the world of facts) and through the fact literary texts are about persons while non-literary ones are about objects. Nevertheless, both texts are concerned with the fundamental truths of translation: factual, aesthetic, allegorical truth, logical and linguistic truth. No profession is as divided as that of translation. One area is concerned with knowledge, facts and ideas, information, and reality; the other with human individuals, nature and the occupied planet in the imagination; the first with facts, the second with values; the first with clarity of information, the second with style as a reflection of character. Translation, like human society, which it reflects, appears to have passed through a historical process of secularisation. And whilst the earliest translated texts were religious and legal, and 150 years ago were mostly literary, that is, were mainly written at the time by philosophers, scientists, men of letters and a few divines, now, according to Eugene Nida, literature occupies not more than 5% of the total of works that are translated; and my guess is that the translation of poetry and, supremely, song texts, occupies 0.5% of the total, a figure whose quantity represents the reverse of both its value and its importance. And yet in spite of the considerable gap in subject matter, method and often variety of language between non-literary and literary translation - but some novels like Jane Austen's or War and Peace are written as though they were factual - books are still written about translation that do