Translating taboo: blasphemy in an Afrikaans translation of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the translator of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into Afrikaans in the dual contexts of the ideological milieu that dominated the Afrikaans literary scene and of the literary theory that prevailed at the time. The bulk of the translation fell in the period 1960 to 1980, the heyday of Afrikaner nationalism. The prevalent translation theory in the 1970s and 1980s was Descriptive Translation Studies, with Gideon Toury as its leading exponent. This theory emphasised the need for compliance with the cultural norms of the receiving community, which, in this case, would have included observing a blasphemy taboo. The problem examined here arises from the fact that compliance with this taboo was in conflict with the cultural context of the source text. The translator’s alternation between compliance with and resistance to the taboo is indicative of a translator’s central role in the translation, which became the focus of attention in the 1990s with the rise of the “cultural turn”, espoused by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere. For these theorists the emphasis fell on the translation process, as opposed to the translation product, the central concern of the Descriptive Translation Studies of the 1970s and 1980s. Rather than viewing norms as determinative, binary options, it is their diachronic variability that merits priority, all the more so in contemporary South Africa.

In hierdie studie stel die skrywer hom dit ten doel om sy rol as vertaler van Chaucer se Canterbury Tales in Afrikaans te ondersoek in die tweevoudige kontekste van die ideologiese milieu wat die Afrikaanse letterkundige toneel oorheers het en die vertaalteorie wat in swang was. Die merendeel van die verhale is tussen 1960 en 1980, dus tydens die bloeityd van Afrikaner nasionalisme, vertaal. Die vertaalteorie wat in die 1970s en 1980s op die voorgrond was, was Deskriptiewe Vertaalkunde, met Gideon Toury as leidende eksponent. Hierdie teorie het die noodsaaklikheid daarvan beklemtoon dat die kultuurnorme van ’n ontvangende gemeenskap nagekom moet word, en dit sou in dié geval ’n taboe met betrekking tot godslastering ingesluit het. Die probleem wat hier ondersoek word, ontstaan as gevolg van die feit dat nakoming van dié taboe strydig is met die kultuurkonteks van die bronteks. Die vertaler se wisseling tussen nakoming van die norm en weerstand daarteen dui op ’n vertaler se sentrale rol in die vertaalproses, waarop die “kulturele wending”, voorgestaan deur Susan Bassnett en Andre Lefevere, in 1990 die aandag gevestig het, in teenstelling met die vertaalproduk, waarop die Deskriptiewe Vertaalkunde van die 1970s en 1980s die klem laat val het. Eerder as om norme as determinatiewe, binêre keuses te beskou, is dit bevorderlik dat hul diachroniese veranderlikheid, veral in kontemporêre Suid-Afrika, voorrang geniet.