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(After the work, Mother begins speaking of her translation of 'The Synthesis of Yoga'.) A few days ago I had an experience related to this. For some time I had been unable to work because I was unwell and my eyes were very tired. And two or three days ago, when I resumed the translation, I suddenly realized that I was seeing it quite differently! Something had happened during those days (how to put it?) ... the position of the translation work in relation to the text was different. My last sentence was all I had with me, because I file my papers as I go along, so I went back to it along with the corresponding English sentence. 'Oh, look!' I said, 'That's how it goes!' And I made all the corrections quite spontaneously. The position really seemed different. It's not yet perfect, it's still being worked on, but when I read it over, I saw that I had truly gone beyond the stage where one tries to find a correspondence with what one reads, an appropriate expression sufficiently close to the original text (that's the state I was in before). Now it's not like that anymore! The translation seems to come spontaneously: that is English, this is French - sometimes very different, sometimes very close. It was rather interesting, for you know that Sri Aurobindo was strongly drawn to the structure of the French language (he used to say that it created a far better, far clearer and far more forceful English than the Saxon structure), and often, while writing in English, he quite spontaneously used the French syntax. When it's like that, the translation adapts naturally - you get the impression that it was almost written in French. But when the structure is Saxon, what used to happen is that a French equivalent would come to me; but now it's almost as if something were directing: 'That is English, this is French.' It was there, it was clear; but it's not yet permanent. Something is beginning. I hope it's going to become established before too long and that there will be no more translating difficulties. Meanwhile, I am interested in seeing how it functions in your mind.... I think that after some time - perhaps not too long from now - we will be able to do this work together in an interesting way....page 55-56 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 30th Jan. 1961 |
Sri Aurobindo told me he had been French in a previous life and that French flowed back to him like a spontaneous memory - he understood all the subtleties of French. page 249 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 4th July - 1961 |