Translation and Sensibility: Die Judenbuche by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and its translations

Abstract

This study was guided by a question about the behaviour of translators and editors towards texts, the contents of which they possibly disagree with. More specifically, the study analysed how the translations of a particular text – Die Judenbuche (1842), by Annette von Droste- Hülshoff, a canonical text of German literature – face the Jewish motifs contained in it, motifs sometimes considered as anti-Semitic stereotypes. The corpus of the study, composed of twenty-five translations into twelve languages and from thirteen countries, draws from the cultural area usually denominated as the West, and coincides temporally with the twentieth century. Based on theories of reception studies (by Wolfgang Iser and from Reader-Response- Theory) and on the theory of rewriting (by André Lefevere), the study sought to demonstrate that translations, one of the forms of reception and rewriting of literature, avoid discussing sensitive topics, and are thus more ‘static’ than literary criticism, another form of reception and rewriting, chosen as a point of comparison. For the analysis of the translations, certain passages and aspects of Die Judenbuche were defined and analysed in comparison with the original. The paratexts of the translations were also analysed. The analysis of the translated texts sought to identify shifts indicatives of attitudes; the analysis of the paratexts sought to identify references to, and discussions on, the Jewish motifs. The interpretation of the results considered different contexts (national and historical contexts, publishing houses, author identity, genre conventions, etc.). Jewish history in the West was presumed as a common context and as one of the sources of attitudes of the translators. The results of the analysis confirmed the hypothesis, demonstrating that translations avoid explicit debates about sensitive topics in literary texts. However, the translations also demonstrated, more implicitly, that the Jewish motifs in Die Judenbuche did preoccupy both translators and editors. The translated texts contained diverse shifts. In the paratexts, only a few explicit and evaluative references to the Jewish motifs were identified, but in more recent years, in which the topic of literary anti-Semitism has received more and more attention in literary studies, an increase in references was observed. Translations from academic contexts showed more references to Jewish motifs in their paratexts than translations for the general public. Against the context of Jewish history in the twentieth century, variations have been observed in the corpus as a whole; in the translated texts, shifts increased during the years from 1933 to 1945, while in the years after 1945, tendencies towards an attenuation of Die Judenbuche's ambiguities dominated. Within some national contexts, an increase of sensibility towards the content of Die Judenbuche was observed. Thus, even though translations apparently are not considered a platform for debates on problems of anti-Semitism in literature, the results suggest that translators and editors did show, in the course of time, some increase in sensitivity with regard to the topic.