Message(s) in a bottle: translating memory, the memory of translation

Using metaphors as a heuristic tool, as well as real-life examples, in this paper we investigate the role of translation in ensuring the memory of texts. We argue that translation is not a process that derives a target text from an original, but rather, it generates the text – both the target version and the original – since it gives it new life both in the source and the target polysystems (to use Even-Zohar’s terminology). This is particularly evident when serendipitous mistranslations initiate repertoires of their own, or when translated texts gain more currency than the source text, or express the translator’s/new author’s own style. Employing another metaphor, translation can be seen as a bottle carrying messages across to polysystems that are distant not only in space but also in time, as is the case with so-called archaeotranslations that revive entire canons, or with translations that restore historical events to the collective memory of the sociocultural polysystem they originally took place in. In this metaphor, the message/text becomes as important as, and largely depends upon, the circumstances of translation, such as the sociopolitical situation and norms of translation in force at the time when it was translated.