Translation in Context Selected Papers From The ES... - (THE DOMESTICATED FOREIGN)

THE DOMESTICATED FOREIGN
Outi Paloposki & Riitta Oittinen

Helsinki University & Tampere University, Finland
Zusammenfassung
Im Fokus dieses Artikels stehen generelle ÜbersetzungsStrategien und ihr zeitlicher
Wandel. Das Hauptanliegen ist zu zeigen, wie die Einbürgerung in unterschiedlichen
Übersetzungen in verschiedenen Zeiten gewirkt hat. Die Konzeptionen der
Einbürgerung und Verfremdung werden hier auch generell diskutiert. Paloposki befaßt
sich mit der Einbürgerung von William Shakespeare's Macbeth in Finnland Anfang
des 19. Jahrhunderts. Oittinen konzentriert sich auf die Einbürgerung mit Blick auf
Kinder, insbesondere bei den drei finnischen Übersetzungen des Werkes Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland von Lewis Carroll.
Résumé
Nous nous attacherons ici aux stratégies globales en traduction, à leur évolution. Nous
montrerons en particulier jusqu'où diverses traductions de différentes époques ont été
"naturalisées", pour discuter plus globalement de l'opposition entre naturalisation et
exoticisation. Paloposki traite de la naturalisation du Macbeth de Shakespeare, en
Copyright © 2000. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Finlande, au début du 19ème siècle tandis que Oittinen analyse la naturalisation des
livres pour enfants, surtout dans les trois traductions finnoises de Alice de L. Carroll.
Resumen
En este trabajo, nos centraremos en las estrategias globales de la traducción y su
evolución a través del tiempo. Nuestro principal objetivo sera demostrar que la
"naturalización" se ha utilizado en distintas traducciones en diferentes épocas, pero
también abordaremos los conceptos de "naturalización" y "extranjerización" en
general. Paloposki aborda la naturalización del Macbeth de Shakespeare a la Finlandia
de principios del siglo XIX. Oittinen se centra en la naturalización para niños,
especialmente en las tres traducciones al finlandés de Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland de Lewis Carroll.
Translation in Context : Selected papers from the EST Congress, Granada 1998, edited by Andrew Chesterman, et al., John Benjamins
Publishing Company, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualicante-ebooks/detail.action?docID=710268.
Created from ualicante-ebooks on 2023-02-13 16:55:19.
374 Paloposki & Oittinen
1. Introduction
Time can play havoc with our ideas of translation. At some point in history, the
most highly regarded translations were those that conformed to the ideal of
'belles infidèles', whereas at some other stage, accuracy was the hallmark of
good translations. In addition to time, place plays an important role in what is
considered a good translation. These two variables form an (albeit simplified)
skeleton for studying two strategies translators have often put to use in their
translations: foreignization and domestication.
Foreignization generally refers to a method (or strategy) of translation
whereby some significant trace of the original "foreign" text is retained.
Domestication, on the other hand, assimilates a text to target cultural and
linguistic values (Robinson 1997b: 116-117; see also Chesterman 1997:28).
The most recent - and probably also most fervent - critic of domestication,
Lawrence Venuti (see eg. 1995:18-22) has attacked domestication as a site of
ethnocentric racism and violence, "...an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign
text to target-language cultural values..." (ibid.:20). His preferred method of
translation for literary texts is foreignization; or "...resistancy, not merely
because it avoids fluency, but because it challenges the target-language culture
even as it enacts its own ethnocentric violence on the foreign text" (ibid. :24).
For Venuti, there are a number of reasons why foreignizing is desirable
(and domestication is to be rejected). For him, domesticated translations
"conform to dominant cultural values" (ibid. :291), whereas foreignization
"challenges the dominant aesthetics" (ibid. :309) (like when he himself
translates the Italian poet Milo di Angelis). Secondly, foreignized translations
"signal the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text" (ibid. :311).
And thirdly, foreignization "seeks to restrain the ethnocentric violence of
translation" (ibid. :20). From this, it can be inferred that foreignness as such is
something desirable, and that domestic values, linguistic codes, and aesthetics
are undesirable (as they should be challenged, not conformed to). Looking at
these claims, it is interesting to note that Venuti actually denies that he would
be interested in the foreign as such (ibid. :41-42), making a point of using
"foreignness" only as a strategic tool. As Anthony Pym (1996:166-167) notes,
Venuti's own language use certainly defies easy understanding, and unearthing
aims and causes in his text is rather like the work of a detective.
Venuti's approach has been criticized before (see, e.g., Pym 1996;
Lane-Mercier 1997). In this article, we would like to call attention to a number
of empirical examples of domestication in practice and to point out that they do
not conform to the simple mechanistics of "bad" (domesticated) versus "good"
(foreignized) translations. While Venuti's examples offer interesting insights
into the background of several translators, foreignizers as well as
domesticators, and his analysis can be seen as a refreshing challenge to (some)
Anglo-American literary translation practices, his generalisations are likely to
The domesticated foreign 375
be less convincing when checked against different kinds of data. It is not only a
question of how texts are translated (whether they are domesticated or
foreignized), but why these strategies have been used. Anthony Pym (1992:
222; 1998: 5-6) addresses roughly the same problem when he contends that the
"what?" and the "how?" questions (what he calls "translation archaeology" and
"translation criticism") are not enough if a study is to be properly historical.
The "how?" questions logically precede the "why?" questions, but it is the
latter that help us understand the phenomena in question.
Lawrence Venuti has recently elaborated on many of his previous ideas
(see, eg., Venuti 1998); among other things, the use of the term
"foreignization" has given way to a new term, "minoritizing translation"
(ibid. : 12), the aim of which is "... never to erect a new standard or to establish a
new canon, but rather to promote cultural innovation as well as the
understanding of cultural difference by proliferating the variables within
English..." (ibid. :11). However, we wish to challenge a view of foreignization
which advocates this method as the only morally acceptable alternative for a
translator conscious of her/his choices and their consequences in a world of
power politics, racism and ethnocentrism. We wish to show that translation is
(yes, quite rightly) a battlefield of many opposing strategies and views, and that
two seemingly opposing strategies can be aiming at similar effects, while one
and the same strategy can be used for diametrically opposed purposes.
2. Shakespeare translation as domestication (O.P.)
Domestication is an elusive term: it can entail a wide variety of different

things, and marking the boundaries between what is domestication and what is
foreignization is nearly impossible. To establish some common ground for a
discussion of domestication, I have tried to identify specific phenomena that

could be studied as instances of domestication. We must bear in mind that if
we call something a domesticated text, there must be at least one alternative
way of rewriting it (following a supposedly "foreignizing" strategy). First,
however, I will provide some background for the location and period I will be
dealing with.
2.1 Finland in the early 19th century
Nearly two hundred years ago, as the result of prolonged wars between Sweden
and Russia, Finland became an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. The
earliest roots of Finnish as a literary language go back to the times of the
Reformation and Bible translation, but it was not until the Russian era that the
first translations of fiction appeared in Finnish, in a situation where cultural
patriotism was slowly changing into national awakening. In the early days of
the Russian era, not much changed, though, on the political scene - the
legislation and administrative system remained largely Swedish, according to
the promises made to Finns by their new ruler, Czar Alexander the First. The
Finns could not know for sure, either, whether this was to be their permanent
state, or whether Finland would change hands again and return to Sweden. But
the changed status of the Finnish province, together with a gradual tightening
of the grip of the ruler, gave rise to a more acute awareness about Finland's
identity. The search for identity focused on the Finnish language, the
development, standardization and literary eloquence of which rapidly became
important and even controversial issues. Texts written in Finnish - both
translated and original - started to appear outside the traditional categories of
legal and religious texts (religious texts had hitherto counted for 82% of all
published texts). In 1831, the founding of the Finnish Literature Society
institutionalized the aim of making the Finnish language (which even many
Swedish-speaking Finns had started to call their "mother tongue") one of the
pillars of the future nation. Closely related to this elevated status of the
language was the collection and writing down of songs and poems from the
oral tradition, which started as early as the 17th century.
In addition to this major endeavour of compiling a Finnish epic, all
other kinds of written texts became valuable for the aims of the nationalistic
campaign. Translated fiction was to serve the Finnish cause in creating reading
materials for the public, educating and "improving" people, and for polishing
the language so that original writing could then emerge. Although language is
not the only (and often not even the most important) component of nationalism
(see Hobsbawm 1991:20-22), it was at times a very important element in the
nationalist struggle. Finland is not an isolated example: similar cases of
enhancing the status of national languages have been reported in other parts of
Europe at certain stages of a nationalist awakening, and the Czech and the
Slovak language policies of the time seem rather parallel to that of Finland
(Hansson 1984; Hobsbawm 1991; Schulze: 1993:58-59; Steinberg 1987:203-
204).
2.2 Translated fiction in Finland
The first four books of translated fiction in Finland appeared, quite

independently, in 1834. Among them was Shakespeare's Macbeth, translated
as Ruunulinna. Interestingly, these translations pre-dated the first edition of
Kalevala, the great Finnish epic, which only appeared the following year. I will
here look at Ruunulinna and its Finnish contextualisation.
Shakespeare's plays are fruitful ground for the study of domestication,
as his works have been adapted and domesticated in different ways in different
parts of the world, time and again. True, there are those who claim to look for
the "original" or "essential" Shakespeare, but the fact remains that within the
Shakespeare tradition, there have been highly contextualised versions (for

Shakespeare translation, see, e.g., the volume edited by Delabastita and D'Hulst
in 1993; Heylen 1993; Fridén 1986). Different European traditions adopted
Shakespeare now in neo-classical, now in Romantic versions.
Macbeth was first translated into Finnish by a retired army major, a
veteran of the Swedish-Russian wars (the outcome of which had been the
annexation of Finland to Russia). His keen literary interests included a passion
for the Finnish language and an urge to promote it. Although we can only
speculate on the reasons that led Major Lagervall to translate Macbeth, it does
not seem an altogether arbitrary choice. Among Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth
is the one that was soonest and has been most often translated. If we assume,
like Wolfgang Ranke (1993:168), that there are three levels of significance in
Macbeth - the moral level (individual guilt and penance), the political level
(tyranny and the restoration of order by government) and the metaphysical
level (the natural order threatened by forces hostile to nature) - we can easily
understand the appeal of Macbeth throughout the times to different audiences.
Each generation or group can foreground the elements that seem to apply most
easily to their circumstances; thus, Schiller in his translation stressed the power
of the state and downgraded the metaphysical element, with witches that were
turned into responsible, thinking creatures (Donner 1950:9; Ranke 1993:171,
176), whereas a Swedish translator of Macbeth, Eric Geijer, retained the
supernatural forces in his 1813 version.
In Finland, texts to be translated tended to be chosen from the literary
canon of the day. Shakespeare certainly was well-known in Finland, both
through translations of his works into Swedish and German and through the
performances of travelling theatre companies that put on his plays in Swedish.
His works were discussed in newspapers and in personal correspondence, and
his influence was recorded in memoirs and diaries. Secondly, Macbeth's
themes - war, betrayal, loyalty - in addition to being considered universal,

were clearly very tangible in the Finland of the early 19th century. They were
the personal experiences of a seasoned war veteran who had now become a
Shakespeare translator. Moreover, the Scottish countryside depicted in
Macbeth found an easy counterpart in Karelia, the Eastern part of Finland,
which Lagervall decided to use as a setting for his Macbeth - or Ruunulinna
(Ruunulinna meaning "crown castle" or "royal castle"). For Ruunulinna
definitely was a domesticated text, if ever there was any.
Macbeth's arrival in Finland was greeted by interest and approval by
the literate circles. However, Lagervall's use of the Finnish language and the
runic metre were not altogether approved of, and he was offered the chance to
correct his translation along the lines suggested to him by a "language board"
of the Finnish Literature Society - a chance he refused, publishing the book at
his own expense, instead of having it published by the Society. The Society's
minutes and members' correspondence show that there were no hard feelings
afterwards, and even newspaper criticism was largely favorable (even the
British press hailed "Bunulinus" (sic). As for wider audiences, Ruunulinna
obviously did not attract any great readership, and when the first plans for a
Finnish theatre were hatched and Lagervall suggested Ruunulinna as an
obvious choice of a play, he was not taken up on his offer.
2.3 What can be domesticated?
Domestication, in Venuti's terms, refers both to fluency, which, for Venuti,

counts as one of the most striking features of domestication, and to the
inscription of domestic values throughout the rewriting/translation of a text (cf.
Venuti 1995:5-6; 49). This latter takes the form of "adding" or clarifying
things, as in the translations of for example Denham and D'Ablancourt. These
two dimensions of domestication work together: fluency and familiarity
"respected bourgeois moral values" (ibid.:130) - in Matthew Arnold's
conception of translation, in this case. Mapping a textual strategy, like
domestication, onto underlying values (like "bourgeois moral values") is not an
easy task, though. I have therefore tried to identify, as instances of
domestication, lower-level linguistic and stylistic changes in translated texts.
The changes made in Macbeth/Ruunulinna are an example of these.
The most evident change, the one that can be seen instantly, is the
changing of names in Ruunulinna. Both the protagonist and all the other
characters bear Finnish names, and so do all the places. Now, translating names
is a very common practice, both in children's literature and in new translating
cultures, and it is often attributed to a desire to make the names easier to
understand and pronounce (for children; for audiences unaccustomed to foreign
names). Phonological familiarity, easy identification, and comprehension are
thus often thought to be the reasons behind this kind of domestication.
In Ruunulinna, though, facilitating recognition and recall of names may

not be the primary reason for their translation. Finnish names in Ruunulinna
imply more than phonological ease: they stand for a historical claim. It was
important for Lagervall that Finland should have a heroic past, an epic history.
In his epilogue to Ruunulinna, he states the reason for the change of names.
The problem, says Lagervall, that Walter Scott had evoked when asking
whether Macbeth really happened in Scotland can now be settled: Macbeth did
not take place in Scotland, it took place in Karelia, in Finland. Scotland thus
becomes Eastern Karelia, a wild and vast area in Eastern Finland, bordering
Russia. Some of the protagonists are named after legendary Finnish heroes in
the Swedish-Russian wars; the three sisters are Finnish mythological creatures;
and the geographical locations of the different places mentioned in Ruunulinna
are explained in an appendix to the book. Lagervall knew the old Finnish
legends well, he was acquainted with the oral tradition and familiar with
Finland's history. Ruunulinna offers the readers a new way of looking at

Finnish history and mythology.
The play was further localized by the use of Finnish runic verse, the
Kalevala metre, making use of repetition and other poetic devices typical of
Finnish oral tradition. Finnish words are rather long on average and there is a
consistent, marked initial stress. This is why Finnish poetry has made use of
rather original devices - poetic forms such as alexandrines would be highly
improbable in Finnish. The Finnish Kalevala meter is alliterative, unrhymed,
non-strophic; a kind of trochaic tetrameter consistent with the prosodic pattern
of Finnish. Poems are usually formed of pairs of parallel lines where the
second line restates but does not repeat the lexical content of the first (see
Bosley 1997:13; DuBois 1995:15-18).
The Finnish atmosphere created by the use of this verse was further
reinforced by the picture on the title page: a Finnish runic singer sitting by a
lake, accompanying himself with the traditional Finnish instrument, the
kante le.
For an idea of the use of the Finnish meter, consider the following
extract, from Act I, Scene I in Macbeth/Ruunulinna (note that repetition and
the eminent role given to witches in the Finnish version renders this scene in
Finnish longer than Shakespeare's text):
MACBETH I.i. 12-13: All [the three weird sisters]

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
RUUNULINNA I.i.73-78: Muut [the witches]

Liehtokaam, kiehtokaam
Painakaamme paletta,
Vatustakaam valetta,
Nostakaamme painumaan,
Painakaamme nousemaan,
Liehtokaam, kiehtokaam
The overall strategy for translating Macbeth into Finnish in 1834 thus
consisted of changes on two levels: 1) changing the setting (changing and
explaining, if necessary, all names, both people and places) and all references
to historical events, persons etc. to ones from Finnish history or mythology; 2)
replacing the original form with Finnish runic verse.
Domestication is not necessarily dependent on one reason or factor
only. There may be several reasons behind the need or desire to domesticate a
text. I have here looked at one possible explanation for domesticating: the
historical role given to translations in the creation of not only an indigenous
literary tradition but also a history, a heroic past that would justify patriotic
feeling. There may have been other reasons behind domestication, less easy to
detect. Translating poetry has often been considered an act of new literary
creation. Perhaps Lagervall was (unconsciously) applying Percy Bysshe
Shelley's famous idea about transplanting the seed of a poem ("The plant must
spring again from its seed or it will bear no flower"; in A Defense of Poetry
from 1821). Ruunulinna is Macbeth born again in a different world, sprung up
from seed. Underlying Lagervall's creative work, there may have been a
conception of art as universal heritage and of other people's work as a seed that
can be transplanted.
While Lagervall uses Macbeth as material for his own literary creation,
he also offers his work for the good of the Finnish language and for the
creation of a literary language, a theatrical tradition and a canon of history. A
tall order, but such was the time that grand visions and high hopes could give
rise to projects like Ruunulinna.
This domesticated Macbeth can thus be seen as an attempt not only at
the improvement of the Finnish language or the enriching of Finnish literature,
but at the creation of a history worthy of admiration on a national scale.
Ruunulinna is far from the imperialist violence attributed to domestication: on
the contrary, it can be seen as one small attempt by one individual to enhance
the status of a minority language with hardly any literary tradition in fiction.
3. Domesticating for children (R.O.)
Within children's literature, domesticating and foreignizing are delicate issues

(see Oittinen forthcoming). Several scholars take a clear stand against
domesticating (adaptations being a case in point here), as they feel it denatures
and pedagogizes children's literature. Another reason for their negative views
about adaptations altogether is the way translation is seen: if translation is

understood as producing "sameness", there definitely is a clear distinction
between translations and adaptations. On the other hand, if all translating is
considered to be rewriting, it is much more difficult to tell one from the other.
In her Poetics of Children's Literature (1986), Zohar Shavit deals with
adaptations in children's literature. She takes into account such issues as time,
place, culture, and even different child images. Even though she does not deal
with translation explicitly, her studies form a sounding board for looking at
translation from the point of adaptation. In this sense, Göte Klingberg's scope
is narrower: in his work on translating and adapting children's books, mainly in
Children's Fiction in the Hands of the Translators (1986), he concentrates on
words and text fragments in isolation, with the goal of formulating strict
translation rules, among them the principle of never domesticating.
Shavit studies versions and adaptations from the standpoint of the status
of children's literature. Regardless of the reasons she finds for adapting
literature for children - appropriateness and comprehension, plus taboos that

need censoring - she contends that adapting (domesticating) is a sign of
disrespect for children. Plots and characters are usually less ambiguous in
children's literature than in stories for adults: characters are either totally good
or totally bad (Shavit 1986:119ff).
Shavit also compares the child images in the different versions of Little
Red Riding Hood by Jean Perrault and the Grimm brothers. The first version by
Perrault appeared in 1697 and it has an unhappy ending, with the wolf eating
up Little Red Riding Hood. In the Grimm version, Riding Hood and her
grandmother manage to get out of the wolf's stomach, and the wolf dies. For
Shavit, the different endings reflect a profound difference in the child concepts
of the Grimm brothers and Perrault. In the times of the Grimm brothers, family,
the child's innocence and the pedagogy of fairy tales were considered very
important. Thus the Grimm version, given the form of a fairy tale, is a moral
tale, where evil is punished. Even the family relations are much closer in their
version: the grandmother loves her grandchild and has sewn a hood for her,
which does not happen in Perrault's tale (Shavit 1986:13, 22). For Shavit, the
different versions of Little Red Riding Hood clearly show that the changes
made to the children's versions are neither minor nor insignificant.
Like Shavit, Klingberg distinguishes between translation and
adaptation. But whereas Shavit's contention arises from an explicit agenda to
heighten the status of children's literature, Klingberg's view is based on an
understanding of translation as producing "sameness". To Klingberg it seems
natural that the function of the translation is always the same as that of its
original. He suggests that as the author of the source text (for children) has
already taken into consideration her/his readers, the only task of the translator
is to keep to the same degree of adaptation as in the original, that is, she/he
should keep to functional equivalence: "The translation should not be easier or
more difficult to read, be more or less interesting, and so on. We could thus try
to find methods to measure the degree of adaptation in the source text and in
the translation and to compare them" (Klingberg 1986:65; see also Nida
1964:159, 167; Nida and Taber 1969:24).
On this basis, any alteration at the translation stage is negative: it is
"manipulating" the word of the original, as Klingberg argues. The attitude is
echoed in Carmen Bravo-Villasante's views: she finds anti-localizing
(foreignizing) the only way to treat foreign material: "The criterion by which
the originals should be adapted to the practices of the country in question so
that they can be understood better, results in distortion of the text" (Bravo-
Villasante in Klingberg et al. 1978:48). Her opinions are a sign of adult worry
about children not learning "enough", not becoming educated "enough" - from
an adult point of view. They show that we adults have little faith in our
children's ability to find knowledge and information by themselves. We
undervalue the role of imagination in learning. Another important issue here is
that apart from the names of flowers and capital cities, children learn many
other important things from books, too: children need to be emotionally
involved so that they learn to understand other people's feelings in different
situations. Stepping into someone else's shoes is easier in a book than in real
life.
Seeing adaptation as negative (like Shavit, Klingberg and Bravo-
Villasante all do) is in line with Venuti's ideas on domestication. Yet
adaptations are products of their contexts, and it would be more interesting to
study the justifications made in favour of either adapting (domesticating) or
foreignizing the text. Thus the point is not whether adapting or domesticating is
a negative or positive phenomenon as such. Rather, what is at issue is the
purpose of the whole translation project, the translation situation, and the
translator's child image.
Klingberg - and to some extent Shavit, too - deals with texts and
languages as closed systems with permanent meanings, paying less attention to
the reader's participation and creative understanding. For Mikhail Bakhtin,
texts can be understood in quite a different way: they are unities, the parts of
which are understandable on the basis of the whole (as well as the whole
reading situation) and the relationship between the whole and its parts.
Klingberg and Bravo-Villasante's fears about children "not learning enough"
are akin to "the authoritarian word" described by Bakhtin: given from above, it
would not be understood in an active way (Bakhtin 1990:342). Thus
foreignizing can be, oddly enough, very authoritarian, and against Venuti's
ideas. As Douglas Robinson (1997a: 79-131) points out, foreignizing is akin to
authoritarian rhetoric in schools and politics, designed to stupefy and passivize.
In the following, I will take a closer look at three full translations of
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The original story of Alice
was first published in 1865, and has since been interpreted from innumerable
perspectives. As Martin Gardner (1970:8) has pointed out, the Alice books
"lend themselves readily to any type of symbolic interpretation - political,
metaphysical, or Freudian". Yet most scholars seem to agree on one thing: the
story is a parody, intentionally throwing mud on all our "sacred cows" like
school, religion, old age, babyhood, and family life. In Finland, there are three
full "Alice" translations: in 1906 appeared the first translation by Anni Swan;
in 1972, a translation by Kirsi Kunnas and Eeva-Liisa Manner; and in 1995 the
latest translation by Alice Martin (see Oittinen 1997.)
All three translations were created in different situations and served
different purposes, which is easy to understand: Finland has changed a lot in
ninety years. All three translators have domesticated or foreignized their texts
in different ways. Generally, all three have domesticated the British culture and
brought it closer to Finnish culture, language, and society. What differs in these
translations are their different target groups, the future readers of the text. The
first two translations are clearly targeted (domesticated) for child audiences,
while the third, most recent translation is far more adult.
3.1 "Alice" in 1906
When the first Finnish "Alice" appeared in 1906, Finland was part of the
Russian empire. Strong nationalistic pressures in Russia had led to a series of
severe measures against the autonomy of Finland, and more were to come
before independence would be gained 11 years later. In the early 20th century
the number of books originally written in the Finnish language was not yet
very great. There was a need to develop Finland's literary language, and
influences from other languages and other cultures were sought. New themes
and new genres were needed; we could say Finland needed to be "foreignized".
The translator of the first "Alice", Anni Swan, was a children's author
and translator, who took a great interest in the position of the Finnish language.
Swan used foreign literature to nourish the Finnish language and culture.
Swan's Alice is like little girls used to be in early 20 th -century Finland: she is a
polite little country girl with a Finnish name, Liisa. The 1906 translation
clearly mirrors the child image of early 20th-century Finland. Little girls were
supposed to be nice and gentle. She even curtseys in a situation where, in the
1995 version, Alice only solemnly bows. Of the two Alices written for children
(1906 and 1972), this one was written from an adult perspective.
But what is domesticated here really? As I see it, it is the child image:
the story of Alice comes from Great Britain but the child image of the story is
very Finnish. Swan's "Alice" is domesticated for Finnish readers: the story
seems to take place in Finnish surroundings and the main character seems
Finnish, too. On the other hand, there is also an element of foreignization: by
introducing the story of Alice to Finnish readers, Swan also introduces a new
genre, nonsense, to Finland. In this way Swan's translation is, at the same time,
both domesticated and foreignized. I find this "both and" very interesting: the
"two issues" are actually part of the same whole, that of the change taking
place every time a text is translated.
3.2 "Alice" in 1972
When Kirsi Kunnas and Eeva-Liisa Manner's translation appeared, Finland had
gone through a period of industrialization and urbanization, which had changed
the country thoroughly in a decade. This was, of course, reflected in literature,
both in originals and in translations: the themes gradually became more
urbanized and the change showed in lexical choices and in the metaphors used.
The 1970s were also years of radicalism and political movements. People were
more matter-of-fact, more serious; fantasy was not considered good for
children. The 1960s and 1970s were clearly marked by educational ideals.
Thus the new Finnish version of the anarchic story of Alice, parodizing
rules and regulations, was certainly something else than a reflection of the
times: it was an attack against the seriousness of the time. As Kirsi Kunnas
says, she resisted many of the phenomena of the time, especially the prevailing
child image. In the 1970s children were supposed to act like small adults - a
way of looking at children and childhood Kunnas did not agree with.
Kunnas and Manner's Alice - still with her Finnish name, Liisa - is a
very capable, impertinent, even impudent girl: she seldom thinks twice, she
hardly ever ponders on things or thinks things over. She speaks abruptly and
responds very quickly. The translation is full of carnivalistic laughter. This
Alice laughs shamelessly at the adult phenomena of the Finnish 1970s. This is
a translation domesticated for child readers with their viewpoint in mind.
3.3 "Alice" in 1995
In 1995, the year when Finland became a member of the European Union, the
latest Finnish "Alice" appeared. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Anglo-Saxon
orientation has been very strong in Finland. Today, watching television, we
know (or we think we know) a lot about countries like the United States and
Great Britain. This certainly adds to our toleration of foreign names, places,
and milieux, even if this knowledge about the foreign may be shallow.
This shows in translations. Translators need not add extra explanations
or domesticate the stories to a great extent. For instance, names need not
necessarily be translated. Unlike the 1906 and 1972 versions, the 1995
translation lets Alice keep her British name. There are also bits and pieces
omitted from the first two translations but included in the newest version: the
references to another culture (such as to Shakespeare) are no longer considered
too strange for Finnish child readers.
In the three Finnish "Alice" translations, the reasons behind the

different solutions and ways of domesticating seem to lie in the translators'
different strategies and different audiences, and different child images. The
first two translations were domesticated to make them more accessible, but the
most recent translation is clearly directed to older readers. Through her
accuracy, Martin, the translator of the 1995 version, has also been able to give
a more thorough picture of the story and even the author's background. But
does this really mean that the translation is foreignized, or that the original has
been foreignized through translation? Is it not always the case that when texts
are translated they always - to a certain extent - become domesticated as well?
3.4 Instances of domestication and foreignization in Finnish "Alices"
Alice Martin has especially underlined the otherness, the foreignness of the
book. While the first two translators have, from a certain point of view,
localized (domesticated) their translations and deleted anything strange for

Finnish child readers, Martin has used a different strategy: she has anti-
localized the story.
One illustrative example of this difference is the scene where Big Alice
has just cried a pool of tears and Small Alice (having changed her size again)
tumbles into the pool that she herself has cried:
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she
was up to her chin in salt-water. Her first idea was that she had somehow
fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can go back by railway," she said to
herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to
the general conclusion that wherever you go to on the English coast, you
find a number of bathing-machines in the sea, some children digging in
the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging-houses, and behind
them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that the sea was in the
pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. (Carroll
1981:12)
Here we find the description of British seaside life in the 19th century with
quaint things likes bathing machines and wooden spades, from another time
and another culture. The first two translators have omitted the section in bold
altogether, while the third translator has kept all the details and diligently
depicted the sea, the children, the sand, the lodging-houses, and the railway
station.
If we look at "Alice" translations into other languages, we find similar
solutions. In many Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazilian)
versions the section has been deleted, especially in the versions meant for small
children. This consistency shows that translators have not been sloppy but that
their strategies and audiences differed from those of the original author's.
Throughout her translation, Martin preserves the otherness of the

language, culture, time, place, and gender, while the earlier translators rewrote
the story for Finnish child readers. The 1995 version is much closer to British
culture and history, and also the two sexes are more distinctly present.
Throughout her translation, Martin has wanted to include everything, the whole
story of Alice. It is, paradoxically, this preciseness that makes Martin's text
very funny and very postmodern. Even if the story as such is clearly situated in
19th-century England, it becomes a postmodern combination of old and new,
strange and familiar, even female and male, when it is rewritten in another
language and in another time.
Gender is the issue in my second example. Martin's translation includes
several details that refer to Carroll's love for little girls and hatred of little
boys. The lullaby sung by the Duchess to a baby boy is a good example of the
differences in dealing with gender. The lullaby based on David Bates's original
poem is one of the many poem parodies of the book. Bates's original goes like
this:
Speak gently to the little child!

Its love be sure to gain;
Teach it in accents soft and mild;
It may not long remain.
Carroll's parody goes as follows, changing the baby into a baby boy, who later
turns into a pig:
Speak roughly to your little boy,

And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
(Carroll 1981:44)
The Finnish translators have each been able to give expression to the nasty
tones of Carroll's parody. Yet both of the earlier translators have left out the
baby's sex and speak only of a child, while Alice Martin's translation speaks of
a baby boy. Martin Gardner, the author of The Annotated Alice, points out that
"it was surely not without malice that Carroll turned a male baby into a pig, for
he had a low opinion of little boys" (Gardner 1970: 84). Only the third
translation reveals this detail not only of the story itself but also of Carroll's
life. "De-sexing"can be seen as an instance of domestication, too. "Otherness"
involves not just language and culture, but issues like gender and being a child
(a child is an other to an adult).
4. Conclusion
Going back to Venuti, and on the basis of the data presented here, it seems
evident that foreignizing and domesticating are contextual phenomena and
need to be studied as such. Even if we agree that translating is always an issue
of power and politics, we feel that translation is more than that. The word
"foreignizing" in itself might be misleading, at least in the context of
translating: every time we translate we necessarily domesticate, one way or the
other. The text becomes part of the target-language culture and literature. The
direction of this cultural transfer also matters: translating into English is
different from translating from English.
Maybe foreignizing is an illusion which does not really exist. Perhaps
we should only speak of different levels and dimensions of domestication.
Anyway, when we speak of domesticating and foreignizing, we cannot avoid
the problem of situation. As Mikhail Bakhtin points out, in every reading act,
we meet with otherness, with other points of view (1990:279-280). This is
meeting with the foreign, which becomes domesticated through translating. If
we see translating from a dialogic point of view, as communication between
human beings, as an attempt to understand, we cannot accept Venuti's views,
as he - intentionally or unintentionally - forgets the future readers of texts. If
we do not translate for our readers, then why translate at all?
Translators normally address different audiences differently (like child
and adult readers): as translators we domesticate for our audiences, taking into
consideration their assumed views and ways of understanding. The future
readers of our translations are our superaddressees: we have a certain image of
them. Of course, these readers never exist in the flesh. Yet they are necessary,
since in this way the translator shapes his/her text into a credible whole. The
translator's child image is one kind of superaddressee.
Throughout this article, we have been referring to different purposes of
texts, different settings, different audiences, and different times. These are all
dimensions of domestication: what is domesticated, how and why. Names can
be domesticated, the setting localized; genres, historical events, cultural or
religious rites or beliefs can be domesticated. Domestication is not an
automatic product of a certain time or place, either: it can be highly
idiosyncratic. We domesticate for Finns, for children, for minority cultures, for
majority cultures, for political ideals, for religious beliefs. Whether it is cultural
imperialism or emergent nationalism, carried out for propriety reasons or for
educational purposes, depends on the situation. Alice (in Wonderland) has
become Liisa in Finland for quite different reasons than Macbeth became
Ruunulinna. Persian poets may have been "shaped" by Edward Fitzgerald
because of his feeling of cultural (imperialist) superiority (see Bassnett
1991:3); classical texts that have been retranslated into Quebecois may have
been treated that way because of a need for self-assertion on the part of a
minority culture (see Brisset 1990). Feminists may get away with "hijacking"
or "womanhandling" texts because these are seen as liberating practices (see
Godard 1990:91, 94; Simon 1996:14-16, 35), whereas their male counterparts
might not so easily find ways of justifying their domestication. Texts may also
be domesticated because of political pressures, censorship, or differing moral
values.
We are not defending any of these practices here, as we feel it is not a
question of justifying one strategy or the other; but they all have their
underlying logic. The point is, domestication does not necessarily conform to
dominant cultural values: it can also bring about the cultural difference
(advocated by Venuti) of a minor language, as in the Finnish Macbeth. Thus,
domestication cannot be explained away with notions such as "wholesale
domestication of foreign values". There is no inherent, tried and tested ethics of
foreignizing translation that would make it the only morally justifiable

alternative.
Lawrence Venuti looks at domestication from an Anglo-American
perspective, and his analysis of this "ethnocentric violence" is certainly worth
paying attention to. His generalizations, however, need to be tested on other
situations. What we would like to argue on the basis of our examples is that
first, both domestication and foreignization may spring from a desire to fight
against oppression (or from a desire to oppress, for that matter); and, second,
that foreignness is not the only quality in a text. There are other levels that can
be studied; there may be things that cannot be measured on a bipolar same-
different axis. With regard to foreignness and its place, there might be other
means of bringing over foreign qualities than that of non-fluent translation.
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THE DOMESTICATED FOREIGN

Outi Paloposki & Riitta Oittinen

2. Shakespeare translation as domestication (O.P.)

Domestication is an elusive term: it can entail a wide variety of different

discussion of domestication, I have tried to identify specific phenomena that

2.1 Finland in the early 19th century

2.2 Translated fiction in Finland

The first four books of translated fiction in Finland appeared, quite

Shakespeare tradition, there have been highly contextualised versions (for

themes - war, betrayal, loyalty - in addition to being considered universal,

2.3 What can be domesticated?

Domestication, in Venuti's terms, refers both to fluency, which, for Venuti,

In Ruunulinna, though, facilitating recognition and recall of names may

Finland's history. Ruunulinna offers the readers a new way of looking at

MACBETH I.i. 12-13: All [the three weird sisters]

RUUNULINNA I.i.73-78: Muut [the witches]

3. Domesticating for children (R.O.)

Within children's literature, domesticating and foreignizing are delicate issues

about adaptations altogether is the way translation is seen: if translation is

literature for children - appropriateness and comprehension, plus taboos that

3.1 "Alice" in 1906

3.2 "Alice" in 1972

3.3 "Alice" in 1995

In the three Finnish "Alice" translations, the reasons behind the

3.4 Instances of domestication and foreignization in Finnish "Alices"

localized (domesticated) their translations and deleted anything strange for

Throughout her translation, Martin preserves the otherness of the

Speak gently to the little child!

Speak roughly to your little boy,

foreignizing translation that would make it the only morally justifiable

BASSNETT, S. 1991. Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge.

BERMAN, A. 1984. L'épreuve de l'étranger. Paris: Gallimard. (Translation into English by S.

BRISSET, A. 1990. Pour une sociocritique de la traduction : Théâtre et altérité au Québec

CARROLL, L. 1995. Alicen seikkailut ihmemaassa (orig. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

CHESTERMAN, A. 1997. Memes of Translation. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John

DELABASTITA, D. & D'HULST, L. (eds.). 1993. European Shakespeares. Translating

DONNER, H.W. 1950. Svenska översättningar av Shakespeares Macbeth. Åbo: Akta

GODARD, B. 1990. Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation. BASSNETT, S. &

HOBSBAWM, E. 1991. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge

KLINGBERG, G. 1986. Children's Fiction in the Hands of the Translators Studia

LANE-MERCIER, G. 1997: "Translating the Untranslatable: The Translator's Aesthetic,

NIDA, E. A. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

OITTINEN, R. 1997. Liisa, Liisa ja Alice. Tampere: Tampere University Press.

OITTINEN R. 2000. Translating for Children. New York: Garland.

PYM, A. 1992. "Shortcomings in the Historiography of Translation". Babel 38(4), 221-235.

PYM, A. 1996. "Venuti's Visibility". (Review Article.) Target 8(1), 165-177.

PYM, A.1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

RANKE, W. 1993. "Shakespeare Translations for Eighteenth-Century Stage Productions in

ROBINSON, D. 1997a. What Is Translation? Centrifugal Theories, Critical Interventions.

ROBINSON, D. 1997b. Translation and Empire. Postcolonial Theories Explained.

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