Not words – memes!
                                                                                        2007-01

I am a translator of words and sentences; of other people’s letters and other people’s work; of ideas and concepts; of individual skills and group decisions. I earn my living by delivering words, by taking one word in Swedish and finding its supposed equivalent in English, draping it in the needed grammatical clothing and delivering the result to a, hopefully pleased, client. At least that’s what I seem to be doing. But in reality I’m doing something else, often rather automatically, but much more complex than just substituting one word in one language for another in another language. I am in fact translating memes.   

The Oxford Dictionary defines a meme as ”a self-replicating element of culture, passed along by imitation”. While such imitation may be physical, it is more frequently linguistic, i.e. written specifically or spoken, not infrequently even implied rather than direct. Though most often seen as the transformation of words from one language to another, translation should more correctly be seen as the transference and transformation of cultural concepts (memes) from one cultural setting to another. This is especially true in literature, but is a permeating factor in translating advertising, signs of various forms and culturally related texts such as reviews, catalogues and biographies. Done correctly the original concept is imitated in the new setting and the implied message delivered – done incorrectly or clumsily, it is destroyed.

The problem is especially obtuse in our multi-cultural societies where the original text can pass through a number of diversely cultural hands before reaching the translator, possibly being polluted or twisted on the way and thus diverted. The translator must become keenly aware of the original meme, ignoring intervening interferences, and work to imitate in translation what was implied or alluded in the original so that the message is similar or the same. At the same time, the solution or transference if you will, must be eloquent as opposed to contrived.

There is nothing new in the thought that inside each word hides other meanings, kernels for broader vistas and greater misunderstandings. What we see and hear with our physical senses may be one thing; our mind may generate something quite different from the words used to describe the event. Thus we must as we choose our linguistic tools, avoid what Umberto Eco describes when he says: “In the shift from continuum to continuum the interpretation is mediated by somebody who acts as a gatekeeper reducing [the] freedom of the addressee.” *

I am a gatekeeper. I am a mediator. I am a transformer, a translator. It is I and others who move the texts from continuum to continuum and ours is the care that must be taken. But it is also we, who if we succeed in this tranformation of memes, have taken the text a step beyond and have moved the thoughts and intentions of the author to another level. Then we can each of us surely say with pride: I am a translator of words and sentences, … of memes.

Sven H.E. Borei C’64

* Eco, Umberto. Mouse or Rat? Translation as negotiation. W&N, London 2003. p. 163.

SB is a translator from Swedish to English working in Sweden, his native country. He operates the Transförlag bureau together with his life partner. Active in the Swedish Association for Professional Translators, he has served as its chairman and is now chair of its publications committee. He is also co-ordinator of the U of Pa Alumni Club for Scandinavia.