Andre Lefevere and the Concept of Rewriting

Andre Lefevere’s systemic approach to translation introduces the concept of rewriting as a form of reproducing a text, be it in the same language or not, in a written or oral form. He addresses his paper to ‘those in the middle’, who are responsible for shaping the reception of literature by the non-professional readers (1992:1). In this process several social actors like translators, reviewers, patrons or publishing houses are involved in the re-creation – rewriting - of a source-text into a target-text which thus becomes a refraction of the original.

What does ‘rewriting’ exactly mean for Lefevere? It appears to be that ‘final product’ which, during the process of translation is passed through the filter of the poetics and the ideology of the time in a certain sociocultural space. As he argues, ‘rewriters create images of a writer, a work, a period, a genre, sometimes even a whole literature’ (1992:5), that is, by manipulating textual or cultural aspects of a literary work they project it differently, refracted, into the target culture. Rewriting does not necessarily happen only between two languages, it can take place within the same literary system, and he gives many examples, one of them being the case of Heinrich Heine, whose work, ‘Loreley’, was published as anonymous in an German anthology from the first half of the 20th century, because he ‘betrayed’ his country by showing his affiliation towards France.

It is true that the status of 'Loreley' changed, or, to put it in Lefevere’s words, was refracted, and had therefore different angles of reception throughout time, but in the end, once Heine’s genius was understood and acknowledged, it received the deserved consideration, which I suppose it will remain unchanged from now on. What I want to point out is that, even if in a certain period of time certain social agents ‘play’ with the texts and use them as power or manipulation tools, or just as mediums to reflect the poetics of the time, eventually history will expose them and restore them to their real – or what it is believed to be their real, original – meaning. After all, all the examples given by Lefevere in his papers, from Catullus’s poems to Heine’s 'Loreley' are set to prove these types of exposures.

One could argue that it is impossible to determine what the original meaning of a work is, and that history is not a type of ultimate authority which holds the incontestable truth. Nevertheless, since we are bond to judge thing only retrospectively and we can only make presuppositions about the future, we generally tend to agree or accept whatever is proved to be real or original the way we understand it in our own time. So if, let’s say, the Bible was ‘rewritten’ in a certain way, so that it would fit with the dogma of the first Christians, today’s society maybe wouldn’t be able or willing to accept this fact, but perhaps 500 years from now people will have the tools and the mentality necessary to reveal the ‘refractions’ and how they influenced the Christian world throughout time.

I would have to admit that to a certain extent the idea of having such a holistic concept of time and history is abstract and unrealistic; we can still, however, regard the concept of translation as ‘rewriting’ to various literary or social contexts in relation with smaller time slots. I believe the translations of 'Dracula' within the Turkish literary system (Tahir Gürçağlar, 2009) are a good example of rewriting in Lefevere’s view: the first translation, 1928, had the author concealed and it reflected (or better said, refracted into) the intention ‘to evoke nationalist feelings in the readership’ ; the last one, from 1998, ‘restored’ the text to its original writer, Bram Stoker, and had the nationalist parts removed. We can assess these decisions both from the ideological and the public reception perspective. So we may agree that the patrons and the professional readers sometimes seek to impose or insinuate their own ideas on the society, but ultimately the society is the one which decides, even a posteriori, to reject what is considered to be deviated from an original text and to erase or correct the refractions.


References:

Andre Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, Routledge , 1992

Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, Scouting the Borders of Translation: Pseudotranslation, Concealed Translations and Authorship in Twentieth Century Turkey, 2009