Multiple translation and the translator’s visibility

1 Introduction

In a 1988 anthology on the materiality of communication Aleida Assmann distinguished two basic modes of reception from a semiotic point of view: the “quick” and the “long look,” which she also calls “reading” and “staring” (cf. 1988:240ff.).^[1] This distinction is based on the common definition of the sign as the conjunction of a signifier and a signified: the quick look or reading passes directly through the materiality of the sign carrier and the nature of the signifiers, aiming for the signified core. The long gaze or stare, on the other hand, dwells on the texture of the signifiers and the materiality of the sign; it “clings to the object and returns to it with undiminished wonder” (my transl.). According to Assmann, this latter mode of reception typifies a specific, sometimes even pathological, approach to signs. However, staring also enables the conscious viewing of artistic artifacts, or is itself the mode of artistic viewing: “In any case, it creates disorder in the existing system of relations of conventions and associations, it establishes new, immediate meaning, it distorts, multiplies, explodes existing meaning” (ibid.:239). Assuredly, a structuralist would find Assmann’s account of staring to be extremely question-begging. It is also true that a full interpretation of this metaphorical language would need to consider all the connotations of the notion of “staring” (as insistent, repetitive, inter alia voyeuristic viewing) and to reveal the consequences for the phenomenon under consideration in each case – for example, for translation.

What I am concerned with here is that this metaphorical idea, originated in the field of optics, can also be linked to the observations expressed by Lawrence Venuti in his “classic” The Translator’s Invisibility (1995/2018:29 et passim). According to Venuti, translation in the English-speaking world in recent centuries can often be assessed as a misguided practice. The validity of Venuti’s generalization is not my concern, since what is more directly pertinent in terms of the argument of the present essay is the appeal to visual and optical motifs. For, that practice, as he says, is typical of society’s fleeting gaze that it prefers to see through translation, to overlook its mediating character. This notion shapes the mistaken ideal of a translation that is as transparent as possible (cf. ibid.:16); by posing as the original, it thus erases the person and the activity that made its existence possible in the first place (cf. ibid.:xvii). Rather, it would be desirable if recipients who appreciate translation along with all its features, encounter it “with undiminished wonder” (Assmann 1988:242). This, however, requires a new awareness, a clear perception of translators and their actions. With Assmann, one can speak of the conscious turning of the gaze and its lingering on an intermediary instance that has always been there – indispensable, and yet willingly relegated to the background.

From a translatological perspective – and more precisely, building on Venuti’s reflections on the transparency of translation (see section 2) – the present essay proposes a way to achieve the desired making-visible of translation and of the translator (two distinguishable goals): specifically, through multiple translation. Though not systematically considered in Venuti’s book,^[2] the phenomenon of retranslating an original into a target language is the path that, in my view, allows us to bypass those essentializations associated with the distinction between the usually dichotomously treated methods of domesticating and foreignizing. To illustrate this, I present the project of a multiple translation of the Iliad by the Italian scholar and poet Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730–1808), who describes and applies two methods of translation, some thirty years before Schleiermacher’s famous lecture “Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens” (1813). Cesarotti differs from his German contemporary in that he does not advocate one method but pleads for their equal rights and necessary simultaneity (see section 3). In my view, such a plea should be seen as one of the genuinely translation-related achievements of the European Enlightenment. The essay concludes with a few remarks on building awareness of multiple translations, and on elaborating a general discourse of translation plurality (section 4).

2 Venuti and the translator’s invisibility

In his 1995 book The Translator’s Invisibility (1995/2018), Lawrence Venuti balances a specific critique of literary translation in the US, and a more expansively general characterisation of the translator’s situation which is defined by invisibility, marginality, and unfavorable legal and economic conditions (ibid.:x).^[3] The translator’s invisibility results from the behavior of all actants involved in the translation and reception process: namely, the translators themselves (ibid.:1, 7), critics (reviewers) (ibid.:2, 8), readers (ibid.:1), and other actants such as publishers, clients, and customers (ibid.:1, 7–11). These parties commonly demand that a good translation should be fluent (ibid.:iix, vx, 1, 2); conform to the current standard variation of the target language (ibid.:iix, xiv, xv); follow the (literary) canon in the target culture (ibid.:xiv); and have a linear syntax and an univocal meaning (ibid.:iix; see also the catalog of features, ibid.:4–5). Such a translation contributes to the “illusionistic effect of transparency” (ibid.:iix), meaning that it creates the illusion of being an original text written in the target language.

Thus, the original text is “insidiously” domesticated (Venuti 1995/2018:12), and its otherness flattened, with all elements erased that could have promoted the growth of society. Venuti’s thesis is that domestication has dominated translational policies and discourses for centuries (ibid.:16). Only a translation policy that favors foreignizing can restore the linguistic and cultural difference of the original. It must be based on “materials that are not currently dominant, namely the marginal and the nonstandard, the residual and the emergent” (ibid.:20) – in short: language use that resists everything that is common and dominant. Venuti’s monograph not only presents “a cultural critique, a diagnosis that opposes the situation it represents” (ibid.:13), but also aims to change the observed circumstances. It pursues, as he himself points out, “a professed political agenda” (ibid.:32), which, as we will see, aims to shatter global hegemonies and racism, and to promote cultural equality (ibid.:16).

In the most recent edition of his book cited here (2018), Venuti lists three “key concepts and arguments” with which he retrospectively summarizes his theoretical remarks from The Translator’s Invisibility. These should be mentioned and considered at this point; first, because they provide a concise summary of Venuti’s conception of translation; and second, because they will inform my remarks on the concept of translation plurality.

(1) Every translation, even an explicitly foreignizing one, is an interpretation that inevitably “domesticates the source text” (Venuti 1995/2018:xii): domesticating deprives the foreign of its visibility; however, foreignizing cannot really reproduce foreignness either, but at most only convey an image of it (ibid.:xix, 15, 19–20). The foreignness of a text cannot be reproduced, but ‘signaled’ solely through those means that are available to the receiving individual or collective in its reception situation. The use of a translation in a specific targeted situation always entails a sometimes violent (ibid.:14–16, 21) de- and recontextualization that radically changes the view of the foreign text. This, incidentally, applies to every text, as Venuti writes: “Every text is only ever available through some sort of mediation that is most productively seen as a succession of interpretations in various forms and practices, media and institutions—even before it becomes a source text that receives a translator’s interpretation” (cf. ibid.:xiii). Accordingly, domestication’s dominant role even in foreignizing^[4] is not only a problem of translation, but of understanding in general. Processing incoming information – which, according to George Steiner (1975/1992:48), can always be conceptualized as ‘translation’ – would thus always be a form of domestication, i. e., a form of integration into one’s own and current life reality.

(2) Domesticating and foreignizing do not primarily describe two different ways of text production, but rather entail ethical effects—in other words, the way a receiving culture responds to translated texts (Venuti 1995/2018:xiii, 19). While this may be a necessary (retrospective) clarification by Venuti, in his monograph these two ethical stances are always also attached to the translated texts that serve as their symptoms. Thus, they can also be read in the concrete formulations, and in the translation strategies and procedures that lead to them. Domesticating aims to promote dominant ideologies and the most obvious ways of collective interpretation, while foreignizing favors marginal and challenging positions (ibid.:xiv).

This distinction, which has earned Venuti some notoriety, is reminiscent of similar pairs of opposites that define literary and translational studies. Parallels can be drawn not only with Schleiermacher, whom Venuti explicitly cites (ibid.:15), but also with Christiane Nord (instrumental vs. documentary translation; Nord 1993:24ff.) and Juliane House (overt vs. covert translation; House 1997:66–78). Because of its socio-political character, the distinction is similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory in his essay “Discourse in the Novel” (1941), in which he refers to the multiplicity of voices in the novel. According to Bakhtin, all linguistic expressions and works are located in a field of tension between opposing forces. Venuti’s idea of domesticating seems to correspond to Bakhtin’s centripetal forces, which attempt to overcome an inefficient and (politically) undesirable linguistic diversity (‘heteroglossia’) by establishing and consolidating a uniform, homogeneous and homogenizing language (‘unitary language’); despite their communication-promoting intentions, these involve an affirmation of norms and the standardization of language and culture:

A unitary language is not something given [dan] but is always in essence posited [zadan]—and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia. But at the same time it makes its real presence felt as a force for overcoming this heteroglossia, imposing specific limits to it, guaranteeing a certain maximum of mutual understanding and crystalizing into a real, although still relative, unity—the unity of the reigning conversational (everyday) and literary language, ‘correct language.’ (Bakhtin 1941/1981:270)

As Bakhtin posits, a sometimes unmarked unitary language (to which a translation that is as fluent as possible must conform) is the project of interest groups (“posited”). These groups understand real heteroglossia as a disturbing factor, which, in communication-theoretical terms, produces noise and distracts from ‘actual’ linguistic mechanisms and content. The unitary language wants to convey a sense that is as unadulterated, unambiguous, and binding for all as possible; in Assmann’s words, this would probably be best served by the reception mode of the ‘quick glance.’ These forces of unification are counteracted by the centrifugal forces of heteroglossia, which describe a real diversity:

At any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word [...], but also [...] into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups, ‘professional’ and ‘generic’ languages, languages of generations and so forth. From this point of view, literary language itself is only one of these heteroglot languages—and in its turn is also stratified into languages (generic, period-bound and others). (Bakhtin 1941/1981:271–72)

These centrifugal tendencies of speech diversity, aimed at promoting marginal uses of language, are constantly at work and lead to “decentralization^[5] and disunification”:

Alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward. (Bakhtin 1941/1981:272)

What I want to suggest, therefore, is that it is with these forces, which mainly bring about a questioning and destabilization of norms and their supremacy, that we can associate Venuti’s concept of foreignizing with regard to translation. Significantly, Venuti (1995/2018:xv, 1, 4, 19–20) emphasizes that a fluent translation is usually one that avoids everything that deviates from the standard language. By contrast, the goal of foreignizing is “[to disrupt] the cultural codes that prevail in the translating language” (ibid.:15), “[to deviate] from native norms” (ibid.:16), and “to stage an alien reading experience” (ibid.:16). This is already apparent in the choice of the source text to be translated, which may be considered marginal in the respective time or be outside the current canon (ibid.:16). Foreignizing (Venuti) and decentralization (Bakhtin), then, are forces that seek to generate new perspectives alongside the dominant viewpoint, and thus promote the existence of a pluralistic society. As Venuti points out, however, this effect can certainly not be achieved through meticulously literal translations; by using an illegible translationese, they rather generate a rejecting attitude in the recipient (Venuti 1995/2018:xv, 19).

In favoring foreignizing over domesticating, Venuti (1995/2018:x) points to “the importance of registering linguistic and cultural difference and the history of suppressing those differences.” Translational acts aimed at preserving and emphasizing foreignness thus not only enable the visibility of translating and the translator in the here and now but become a socio-political program: they necessitate coming to terms with past failures and committing to the future. In this way, foreignizing aims to build and maintain a consciousness that deals precisely with the foreignness of the text and the activity of the language mediator, in order to add a new perspective to what is common in one’s own culture. With reference to Assmann, one can speak of an attitude that takes a long (and thus also, if we may continue using optical metaphors, far-sighted) view of translation as a cultural practice that should be made visible, and which ‘stares’ precisely at the specifics of this activity.

(3) This awareness is one that can arise among all actants involved in the production, dissemination, and reception of translations. Venuti finds it particularly noteworthy that it is the readers who bear responsibility for the translator’s invisibility (Venuti 1995/2018:1). Therefore, readers must necessarily “learn how to interpret translations as translations, as texts in their own right, in order to perceive the ethical effects of translated texts” (ibid.:xvi) – through coercion if necessary (cf. ibid.:15). To forcibly demand a “symptomatic reading” (ibid.:21) that is supposed to look for the ways in which violence was done to the source text during translation, bears a certain brisance. Thus, for all the legitimacy and honorability of Venuti’s concern, we must ask from whom and by what means the aforementioned awareness can be demanded. After all, a conscious reading of the text as a translation (a ‘staring’) is an “effort” that should not be underestimated, as Venuti himself admits (ibid.:xvii). For such a mode of reception involves the comparison of source and target text, and the elaboration of information concerning the use of a given translation in the situation (by now also historical), in order ultimately to reconstruct the translator’s interpretive approach in his formulations. Only in this way can the ethical effects of domesticating and foreignizing be understood at all. The translation researcher is strongly advised to be aware of this; the average reader, whose “interest in the translation may be limited to readerly pleasure” (ibid.:xvii), may find it more difficult to assess the importance and significance of the translator’s work. The question of the degree to which one can educate the recipient to be aware of the translation phenomenon is related to the question of the nature of the relationship between domesticating and foreignizing. In Venuti’s book I am focusing on, these two translation strategies – although they represent only the endpoints of a continuum (ibid.:xiii, 19) – seem to be categorically mutually exclusive. Either actants opt for a policy of fluent and transparent translation, or they choose a politically engaged and resistant translation. This divergence is a direct result of the topos of an ideal single translation:

A translator can certainly combine a range of interpretants from these poles [i. e., domesticating and foreignizing] or gradations in between, but a highly diversified combination does not make a translation more meaningful, just, or pluralistic. It may in fact undermine the ethical impact of the translation. (Venuti 1995/2018:xiv)

However, it is not a matter of combining conflicting elements in one translation, but of creating two (or more) different but equal literary translations. In instances where several translations of a source text are possible, the situation presents itself otherwise. Then the question arises whether a society that is sensitive to cultural differences and unequal distribution of power makes domesticating, fluent, and transparent translations entirely taboo, or whether they can be allowed (in addition to foreignizing translations). Translation plurality accepts a coexistence of these varied kinds of translations. Finally, similar to the linguistic and cultural political forces described by Bakhtin, domesticating and foreignizing only make sense as a dialectical pair.^[6] If domesticating translation is excluded as a possibility, however, democratic tendencies – even if in one’s estimation they aim in the wrong direction – are passed over, as is often the case with political activism. Readers who prefer a domesticating translation can easily be dismissed as immature actants, even if they represent the majority of recipients; whereas the unilateral demand for the foreignizing strategy would be the real coercion. The “effort” (Venuti 1995/2018:34) and “self-criticism” (ibid.:20) associated with foreignizing, as Venuti correctly points out, represent an added value for the receiving individual or collective. However, foreignizing bears fruit primarily when readers (among other actants) choose it of their own accord. And yet, in a diverse society, there are no arguments against the coexistence of translations with a domesticating and those with a foreignizing effect.

The risen issues have implications for the phenomenon of multiple and retranslation, which will be the focus of the following section; yet this topic is not systematically considered by Venuti in The Translator’s Invisibility. Venuti convincingly argues that the choice of source text can help promote a foreignizing strategy (1995/2018:xv), such as when texts are selected that give voice to marginalized groups. Not discussed, however, is the case in which the choice falls on a source text that has already been translated. Surely retranslation gives a society or a generation the means to apply a foreignizing strategy retrospectively? It is also true, as Venuti points out, that translation results from an interpretation by the translator, which in turn can be interpreted differently by recipients (ibid.:xvif.). However, the potential for a plurality of interpretations that arises through multiple and retranslations, and which diversifies meaning (making), is not explicitly addressed.

Venuti nevertheless comes close to the added value of considering multiple translations when he suggests a “contextual reading” (ibid.:xviii): that is, he recommends juxtaposing translations (of different works) in order to uncover general tendencies of translation in a particular translational culture, and their ethical effects. In describing the advantages of a diachronic perspective on translation practices, Venuti alludes not to retranslations, but more generally to “translation projects that precede and coincide with the project under consideration, involving the same or different source languages” (ibid.:xvii); and even in the context of a synchronic-contemporary practice, Venuti seeks to join the “experience of a particular translation with other translations from the same or different source languages as well as with original compositions written in the translating language” (ibid.:xviif.). In any case, readers can benefit from the decision not to read the translation that interests them in isolation (ibid.:xvii), but together with other representatives of the same language. Ultimately, this “contextual reading” can “make the translator’s interpretation visible” (ibid.:xviii). However, the fact that preceding translations can also constitute such a context is not mentioned. The author is sensitive to the historical situatedness of a translation; he states that “categories like ‘fluency,’ ‘resistency,’ ‘domesticating,’ and ‘foreignizing,’ can be defined only by referring to the formation of cultural discourses in which the translation is produced, and in which certain translation theories and practices are valued over others” (1995/2018:32). It is precisely through a genealogical method (such as that of Foucault or Nietzsche) – which he would like to see pursued (ibid.) – or a descriptive history of translation that attention should be devoted to the issue of multiple translations of one and the same text.

3 Cesarotti and the translator’s visibility

Perhaps one of the most important goals of a descriptive history of translation is to seek the unifying thread in the individual translations of a work or works, which are recorded elsewhere as singular historical events. However, the history of retranslation in particular, as well as of the distinction between two (or more) methods of translation, has frequently been accompanied by prescriptive discourses, i. e., those that proclaim the ethical superiority of a translation or a method and want to see it prescribed in terms of cultural policy; top down, as it were. This is the case with Schleiermacher, and ultimately also with Venuti (1995/2018:15), who explicitly refers to the former. The debates about the arguably over-polarised either/or options one can extract (with all due precautions) from these authors will doubtless continue. What I want to suggest is that an underlying premise of such either/or options is that once the decision is taken to opt either for domestication or foreignization, for instance, then the ensuing translation is singular, namely that just one translation is produced. My claim is that preferences, one way or the other way, is only possible on the basis of the topos of a unique or final translation, and that, in an implicit way determines the discourse accompanying translation and aims at a supposedly noble goal: the assumption is that ‘society’ is to be presented with ‘only’ one translation, which is allegedly most useful to it.^[7] This apodictic imperative can annoy more liberal readers of translations.

The necessity of different translations of one and the same original was recognized by the Italian scholar and poet Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730–1808) at the end of the eighteenth century. His translation theory, exemplified in his multiple translations of Homer’s Iliad, opposes the topos of a unique or definitive translation with a program of translation plurality that offers an escape from centuries-old dichotomies. For Cesarotti unceremoniously and naturally turns the ‘either/or’ that usually pervades translational and translatological discourse into an ‘and.’ Between 1786 and 1794, he simultaneously produced both a free poetic translation, and a literal and richly annotated translation of the original, which he published together (Cesarotti 1786:199). Later he would revise the poetic translation in essential points and publish it in 1795 under the title La Morte di Ettore, which has prompted the claim that Cesarotti produced three Iliads (Mari 1990).^[8]

Cesarotti outlines and legitimizes his concern in the preface to the double translation of the Iliad (“Ragionamento preliminare storico-critico”; Cesarotti 1786:1–226), and more precisely in its third part, with the subtitle “Oggetti e piano della presente opera” (ibid.:197–226).^[9] According to Cesarotti, the two translations, which were produced at the same time, pursue two different goals: the poetic one serves the enjoyment of Homer, the literal one his knowledge (ibid.:197). These two objectives strive in different directions, and are “essentially incompatible” (ibid.:198), because “fidelity excludes grace, freedom excludes accuracy” (ibid.). The target recipients are also different: the poetic translation is aimed primarily at an educated audience without knowledge of ancient Greek, who nevertheless wishes to gain an idea of the artistry of its author. They usually also read other classics and original (contemporary) Italian poetry. The literal and annotated version, on the other hand, is aimed at readers with and without knowledge of the source language, who would like to acquire profound knowledge of the ancient world, as well as the style, wording, and precise structure of the Iliad. Scholars from different disciplines (ibid.:214f.) find in Cesarotti’s publication a handbook – a ‘state of the art’, that makes large parts of this knowledge available and benefits their philological work in their respective fields.

According to Cesarotti, anyone who tries to do justice to both goals and both readers with a single translation is doomed to failure. Therefore, it seems appropriate to choose one translation method from the outset and to apply it throughout (ibid.:198). Each method has its own strengths, which also arise from its ability to compensate for the shortcomings of the other. For instance, the annotated translation exposes the “officious lies and pious shenanigans” (ibid.:209–10) of any poetic translation, while the latter makes up for the lack of “elegance and grace” (ibid.: 213) of the first. The necessity of two (and further) translations is thus established. This idea culminates in Cesarotti’s idea that each translation deviates more or less from the original and thereby retains its own identity (ibid.:198).

In the following, both translations are briefly outlined. The poetic translation is ‘free,’ following Cesarotti’s use of a common term in translation discourses (pp. 221–22). He gave himself license to do so, among other things, by following some of his translator role models, whom he quotes at length in his preface. These are Jacques Delilles’ Discours préliminaire to his translation of Virgil’s Georgica (quoted here in the 1771 edition: 51–55), and Guillaume Dubois de Rochefort’s Discours sur Homère that precedes his own translation of the Iliad (quoted here in the 1772 edition: 46–51). The fact that Cesarotti also produced another, literal and richly annotated translation at the same time proves that, in this version, he accepted (and wanted his readers to accept) that freedom comes at the expense of accuracy (ibid.:222). This freedom, however, is not “a rule-less, capricious freedom” (ibid.:223), but one that depends on the (supposed) tastes of the new readership – hence, it is essentially domesticating. Cesarotti uses this freedom to minimize the weaknesses that emerge, when viewed from his perspective and those of his contemporaries:

Moreover, this poetry has various properties that are nowadays commonly regarded as defects––those to which the Greeks weren’t apparently greatly sensitive in any case. Whatever the reasons for such a difference may be, whether we or they are to blame for it, whether it is due to bias or to the times [...], one thing at any rate is certain: if I want Homer to find the same audience among Italian readers as among the Greeks, I must not only present that audience with the totality of the true beauties of Homeric poetry in the most appropriate manner possible, but I must, furthermore, spare them the impression of those all-too-foreign and disagreeable peculiarities that may have seemed innocent to the ancients, but that seem boring or repellent to us. (Cesarotti 1786:200)

As Cesarotti also emphasizes in other passages, he sought in his poetic translation to preserve the “true beauties of Homer’s epic” (ibid.:207) – and, moreover, “all the qualities that still distinguish the author” in the present day (ibid.). At times he leaves it to the reader to figure out what “bold liberties” (ibid.) he has taken, and hints that in the commentaries (of both the poetic and literal translations) he will find numerous considerations that will enable him to form an own judgment (cf. ibid.).

Mari has collected the most conspicuous changes to the original, which are repeatedly commented on by Cesarotti in the footnotes: following the poetic conventions of the time, the poetic translation aimed to give the plot of the Iliad a unified and more stringent moral coloring (which is later equally visible in La Morte di Ettore) (Mari 1990:356–60). The aim was to ennoble the characters (ibid.:360–61) and give them – such as through epithets, monologues, ellipses, interjections, and rhetorical questions – a profiled psychological-sentimental inner life (ibid.:363–64, 369–71); also, to add descriptions of nature and natural metaphors (ibid.:365–67), and reminiscences of ancient and more recent poets (Turnus, Virgil, Ovid, Tasso) (ibid.:374–77). This is a form of domesticating translation, although in the preface and footnotes the changes are made transparent (not in Venuti’s sense). Furthermore, Cesarotti chose a source text that was central to the literary canon of the time, and whose translation into the modern European languages fueled the discussions in the second phase of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes. Relevant to this point are the Homer translations that also included prefaces, by Madame Dacier (1699) and Alexander Pope (1715–1720), to name only two examples. The transfer strategies also quite openly reject preserving or depicting the strangeness of the original. The reference to the decorum and the moral makes it obvious that Cesarotti’s action serves the ‘interpretants’ – to use a term from Venuti’s book – of his time. And yet, it must also be mentioned that Cesarotti’s poetic translation did not aim for the greatest possible fluency – if only because the late-eighteenth-century author considered the poetry and translation work of his time a means of enriching, and thus expanding, the receiving language (ibid.:222).

Cesarotti placed his poetic translation alongside a literal translation that included extensive explanatory essays (“dissertazioni”) and a lengthy commentary apparatus, given that every translation with poetic pretensions tends to conceal the weaknesses of the original (Cesarotti 1786:208), and makes it more beautiful than it is (ibid.:209). But readers should not hope that such a translation will give them “a complete and accurate knowledge” (ibid.:208) of the author, his work, and his time. Cesarotti describes what this means as follows:

To know an author, is not simply to look at him from the best possible angle, but to look at him in all his aspects, from the weak as well as from the strong side. It means to look at the specific differences, the peculiarities, the weaknesses that nature or time bestow upon him—in short, the whole bundle of individual circumstances that constitute his identity. (ibid.:208)

Judging purely based on the concern formulated here, this second version might correspond to Venuti’s description of a foreignizing translation strategy, which is precisely aimed at the “specific differences”. It was only this annotated translation – sensitive to the “peculiarities” and the “identity” of the original, which Cesarotti considered indispensable (ibid.:211) – that could make the cultural transfer of Homer’s Iliad complete.

Venuti is correct in stating that even a foreignizing translation can only give its own picture of the original and the context of its creation, and is thus to a certain extent always domesticating. With the exuberant commentary apparatus and the paratexts that Cesarotti adds to his translations, he nevertheless comes very close to the ideal of a detailed and intersubjectively comprehensible description of the source text and the ancient life-world (cf. Mari 1990:329). In the extensive footnotes, an informed discussion develops upon the foundation of an extremely broad study of sources (glosses and scholia, reviews and translations in other European languages, etc.). In relatively modest terms, Cesarotti does not claim sole authorship for what can certainly be called a scholarly discussion: “Presented here, then, you will find an edition of Homer with the annotations of several” (ibid.:220). Ultimately, as is clear from the beginning of the preface excerpt quoted here, Cesarotti sought to persuade the reader that this combined translation enabled them to make his own judgment, and would protect them from the evaluations of others who might want to usurp them prematurely (cf. ibid.:197).

The rich commentary apparatus, however, serves not only to describe the ancient original and its life-world references, but also to criticize the source text from the point of view of Cesarotti’s generation. As Mari (1990) has convincingly shown, the author provides in innumerable places a powerful critique of Homer, and with him of the partisans of the anciens in the context of the Querelle that defined the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With this critique, he at the same time legitimizes those interventions that were made in the poetic translation(s). Denounced on the level of content are violations of the verosimiltudo (likelihood) and the decorum (respectability) (Mari 1990:333–35); the theological ideas, i. e. the existence of capricious and irrational deities (ibid.:335–37); the characters’ lack of virtue (ibid.:335, 337–39) and their sometimes unintentionally comic character (ibid.:340); and in some instances, the narration’s lack of relevance (ibid.:339). On the formal level, Cesarotti felt it appropriate to point out the trivial and limp expressions (ibid.:341–42), some unsuccessful comparisons, metaphors and epithets (342–43), and the banality, formulaicity, and tediousness of some Homeric explanations (ibid.:344).

Here Cesarotti shows himself to be a defender of the modernes, by boldly expressing views that are directly reflected in the translational solutions of his two poetic versions. It is precisely this distancing in the footnotes, while maintaining the Homeric ‘weaknesses’ in the running text, that sheds light on the alterity of the original – which, despite Cesarotti’s biased assessment, nevertheless emerges. The reader of the commentary apparatus is left with the possibility of relativizing, questioning, and rejecting Cesarotti’s judgment – at least theoretically. Moreover, as both the preface and the commentaries show, Cesarotti is also able to appreciate the merits of some French, English, and Italian preceding translations, regardless of whether their authors align more with the anciens or the modernes, in order to adopt particularly successful solutions in his own poetic translation (Mari 1990:371–73).

With his double but contemporary translation of the Iliad, Cesarotti pursued several goals. On the one hand, he wanted to provide a complete reproduction of a central work of Western cultural history, in a version that served enjoyment and another that provided comprehensive information. The poetic version enriched the target language, in this case Italian, because of the resistance of the foreign text (Cesarotti 1786:222). The annotated literal version is convincing above all because it provides a variety of statements around the Iliad (ibid.:222–23). By means of these two versions, Cesarotti makes the Causa Homerica comprehensible to non-Grecians and enables them to participate in it even without knowledge of the source language (ibid.:223). Given the importance of the semantic fields related to the terms ‘istruzione,’ ‘formazione,’ and ‘educazione’ in Cesarotti’s preface, he understands education as a continuing work that includes repeated reading and the consultation of different accompanying texts, commentaries and previous translations (in other languages). Cesarotti also does not want to exclude the possibility that reading his translations might motivate the reader to study ancient Greek in depth, and thus to receive the original that way (ibid.:217). There is evidence that Cesarotti pursued such a multi-step cultural-political program – not least because the two translations were published together and linked to each other; for example, by the footnote apparatus, which motivates cross-reading of the two versions.

This circumstance, and the fact that Cesarotti aimed at the parallel promotion of multiple translations through paratextual testimonies (prefaces, letter correspondence) as well as the publication practice, make his actions comprehensible, despite his clear partisanship for the modernes in the context of the Querelle. Mari therefore ascribes to the author an exemplary “trasparenza dell’operazione” (Mari 1990:354) – a transparency not in Venuti’s (and Assmann’s) sense, but in a positively reinterpreted meaning, which makes the motives, the process of creation, and the usefulness of Cesarotti’s translations comprehensible to everyone. Such a transparency points out the opacity of each singular translation, and intends to dissolve it through the power of intertextuality. “[F]orming the taste” is, according to Cesarotti (1786:222), only possible through “the exquisite observation of comparisons.”

Cesarotti’s translation project finally makes visible a distinction that is only rudimentarily sketched out in Venuti’s work: namely, that between the (in)visibility of translation (as phenomenon) and the (in)visibility of the translator (as actant). In Venuti’s case, it can be argued that both invisibilities apply, which is probably due to the metonymic connection between the author and his work. However, if one observes the translational legacy of Cesarotti, it becomes clear that it is not just the juxtaposition of different translations that makes an impression on readers of all kinds (after all, numerous other translations of the Iliad, possibly in other languages such as French and English, were known among the educated). The postulate that Homer always appears different and new in every translation leads to the visibility of translation as a cultural practice, because the relativity of two texts claiming themselves to be a ‘translation of one original’ itself creates diverse views of the translation phenomenon.

However, it was Cesarotti himself who provided two (or three) such different translations of the same original. This was precisely Cesarotti’s “crucial intervention”, as Venuti (1995/2018:1) would say. Thus, it is not only the translation that achieves visibility, but also the translator as a person. Cesarotti, too, was aware of the exceptionality of his approach (Cesarotti 1786:199); yet his choice fell explicitly on multiple translations. By providing his reader with a few Italian versions at the same time, which give him double and tedious work (ibid.:199, 212), he partly adopts that “effort” that Venuti (1995/2018:xvii) demands from the reader of translations. In this respect, Cesarotti appears as a mediator who is both self-confident and altruistic, with no sign of the “self-annihilation” that Venuti (ibid.:7) often observes in insecure translator personalities. Providing the reader multiple versions of a source text is – one could sum up Cesarotti’s achievement – true empowerment.

4 Translation plurality

With the comments on his multiple translations of Homer’s Iliad, Cesarotti outlines nothing less than a genuine and forward-looking cultural-political program when it comes to translations: Even in a society that is imagined to be homogeneous (a “target culture”), there is a need for multiple translations. This is true regardless of whether or not one subscribes to Chesterman’s (2000) retranslation hypothesis, which states that domesticating translations of a work pave the way for more faithful or alienating translations of the same text. By emphasizing the importance and benefits of different translations, Cesarotti anticipates the program of the skopos theory, which two centuries later will focus on the target group specificity of every translation. What emerges from Cesarotti’s approach, is the following: translation plurality entails the contemporaneity of various und thus mutually compensating translations (or other derivatives) of a source text that are not seen as necessarily in a competitive relationship, but rather coexist peacefully.

Translation plurality allows for translations of very different kinds and objectives, i. e., those that conform completely to the norms of the receiving culture, as well as those that do not. If, according to Venuti, domestication reflects the current state of affairs, but foreignizing itself represents domestication up to a certain point, then the only escape from this vicious circle is through the coexistence of several translations, which can be assigned to one tendency or the other, and to the spectrum that opens up between them. Promoting translation plurality need not and cannot mean eradicating transparent and fluent translations altogether, for conservative centripetal forces, as Bakhtin (1941/1981:270) points out, will always exist, as will their counterparts. Moreover, the retranslation hypothesis needs to be examined, regarding whether domesticating translations are even the necessary, or at least a favorable condition, for the acceptance of (later) foreignizing translations.

Translation plurality resists the invisibility of translation and of its author. It does so not only by revealing its translational character through foreignizing translations and by giving the translation and the translator a special importance. Rather, it brings into focus the relativity and conditionality of any target-language version of an original. One could plausibly object here that this only concerns the translatologist or an informed amateur who knows the original in addition to one or more translations. That may be the case. But if translation is already associated with a sensitizing function, why not one that highlights not only the foreignness of the text (Venuti), but precisely this translational relativity? A culture of appreciation of translation and the various translators needs to be established, for example through the targeted advertising of translation as such and the promotion of comparative reviews or editor’s introductions, etc. The latter would make the reader receptive to the merits of one and the other translation of a work. Readers notice a foreignizing effect especially when they also know a translation of the same or another work that has a clear domesticating objective, and vice versa. Thus, knowledge of multiple translations, a translational literacy so to say, shatters the illusionistic effect that one of the target-language versions is the original. This weakens the supremacy of a leading translation (and thus leading ideology), but without wanting to destroy the legitimate existence of domesticating translations, which are obviously desired by the majority due to their ease of reception. The very decision to undertake multiple or retranslations must already be considered part of a foreignizing translation strategy. The fact that a text can and will be translated again – and therefore necessarily in a different way – implies, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the initial translation, if it aimed to ‘domesticate’ the source text, either did not fully achieve its goal, or that the target audience and cultural context have changed to such an extent that a new translation is warranted.

According to Venuti (1995/2018:14) translation is “an interpretation that is always limited by its address to specific audiences and by the cultural or institutional situations where the translated text is intended to circulate and function.” Advocates of translation plurality do not see these conditions as shortcomings, but rather as potential benefits. They knowingly promote alternatives that are based on different interpretations and pursue diverse objectives, and make this diversity as visible as possible. Accordingly, the hegemony of a leading interpretation and a leading translation is, if not dismissed, at least relativized. Translation plurality builds on the assumption that different translations illuminate various elements of the original in different ways. By consulting alternative translations, we gain knowledge that benefits the interpretation of the original. Moreover, one translation may lead to a better understanding of the original (cf. Agnetta 2021b).

Translation plurality should be promoted and supplemented by offerings that enable the analysis and historical situating of translations like the aforementioned comparative reviews, editor’s introductions and advertising strategies. This includes also foreign-language teaching, which enables direct consultation of the original text. The decision on which and how many translations are consumed rests solely with the reader. Anything else would be translation-related activism and mere prescription. Translation plurality is based on the availability of existing translations, with as few barriers as possible (in terms of rights, costs, but also sensorial barriers). Translation plurality results from a discourse that promotes diversity and democracy, and in its generosity opposes a logic of translational efficiency (which favors only one translation for any given purpose, or even only one translation at all).

One could even go so far as to claim that translation plurality is a concrete expression of what translation is capable of in the first place. What the translation, what the translator achieves, becomes evident not only in comparison to the original, but also in comparison to alternative versions in the target language. Even when discussing a singular translation, especially if it is found to be poor, translation scholars and reviewers provide abundant target-language paraphrases and descriptions of those text passages that seem to them particularly worthy of discussion, or otherwise refer to a tertium non datur. Such an imaginary ideal translation is, semiotically speaking, to be assigned to the realm of the paradigmatic. The multiple translation, on the other hand, is to be located as a historical reality on the syntagmatic level.

The activity of transferring potentialities into a concrete (co-)presence is famously described by Roman Jakobson as “poetic function”; he contextualizes it with reference to language as follows: “The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence” (Jakobson 1960:358; his highlight). The reader who juxtaposes and compares several translations now also performs such a – to use a redundant expression – poetic activity: he leaves the realm of communicative efficiency, in which an extra-linguistic goal (such as the perpetuation of a system of values and power) is achieved with as few, preferably imperceptible, means as possible. The focus now is on the plurality of existing possibilities, and on the relativity of their significance. The activities of decentralizing (Bakhtin, Meschonnic), staring (Assmann), and foreignizing (Venuti) are products of a consistent mindset that also affects translation as a cultural practice.

5 Conclusion

Venuti’s socio-critical conception of the translator’s invisibility, which he expounds in his book of the same name, and his cultural-politically engaged and sometimes activist proposals for its reversal, were supplemented in this contribution by a historical and systematic perspective. On the one hand, it was shown how an individual translator, Melchiorre Cesarotti, generated visibility for himself and his agency through his strategic decision to furnish various translations of the same original (The Iliad). Secondly, building on this, the extent to which translation plurality can counteract the invisibility denounced by Venuti was explored: A policy of open translation plurality can be a or the strategy to guarantee the peaceful coexistence and free circulation of different text versions, to which any recipient can then give the attention they deem appropriate. This includes those cases in which an interested reader who has been educated in this respect no longer looks through a translation as if it was transparent, but rather appreciates it as such, i. e. as a text with its own identity, and turns “to it with undiminished wonder” (my transl.).

These initial hypotheses require further attention. It should have become clear, however, that retranslation and multiple translation are essential subjects in enriching the field of research that could be called a descriptive history of translation. It should also be noted here that the present study – like Venuti’s book – assumes the unequivocal benefit of the visibility of the translator (as an actant) and of translation (as a cultural practice). Although this can be upheld in principle and without reservation, it is also important to point out the conditionality of this view. Translators, as those directly affected, know how to handle this expectation of invisibility, which Venuti describes as a deplorable state of affairs, and they have always drawn creative potential from it. The empowerment of the translator, once established, can turn to a postulate of unconditional visibility and thus prevent a possibly intentional play of the translator with his own invisibility.