I am a theoretical physicist and currently Director of 
July 27, 2005
Simplifying difficult texts - 2
To illustrate the problems of simplifying original texts, we can look at examples from Shakespeare and the Bible. I came across a site that seeks to make Shakespeare's plays easier to understand by re-writing them:
Here is the original text from HAMLET Act III, Scene i, lines 57-91
To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?
….
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Here is the simplified text:
The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all?
….
Fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural boldness becomes weak with too much thinking. Actions that should be carried out at once get misdirected, and stop being actions at all.
Do the two passages have the same meaning? They convey different senses to me.
Or take the famous passage from Ecclesiastes 9:11 of the Bible. Here is the familiar King James Version:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
And here is the simplified modern language of the New Living Translation:
I have observed something else in this world of ours. The fastest runner doesn't always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn't always win the battle. The wise are often poor, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don't always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being at the right place at the right time.
Again, does the simplified passage capture the meaning of the original?
I am not criticizing the quality of the simplifications, although there may be better ones around. If you asked me what Shakespeare's passages mean, I probably would have come out with a more confused meaning than what was given above. But the point is that it is in the process of struggling to understand the author's original meaning that we make individual sense of the passage. I think that the best we can hope for is a shared consensus of the meaning, and we can never hope to exactly enter into the author's mind.
This problem is always present when the US Supreme Court tries to rule on the constitutionality of present day issues using a document written over two hundred years ago. People who call themselves "strict constructionists" say that the constitution should be interpreted according to the text and the intent of the frames. But how can you glean intent? The text of the document, by itself, is not sufficient, because words can never capture exact meanings. Literary theorist and legal scholar Stanley Fish has an interesting article that is worth reading. In it he says:
It follows that any conclusion you reach about the intention behind a text can always be challenged by someone else who marshals different evidence for an alternative intention. Thus interpretations of the Constitution, no matter how well established or long settled, are inherently susceptible to correction and can always (but not inevitably) be upset by new arguments persuasively made in the right venues by skilled advocates.
This does not mean, however, that interpreting the Constitution is a free-form activity in which anything goes. The activism that cannot be eliminated from interpretation is not an activism without constraint. It is constrained by the knowledge of what its object is - the specifying of authorial intention. An activism that abandons that constraint and just works the text over until it yields a meaning chosen in advance is not a form of interpretation at all, but a form of rewriting.
This is why I am so much a fan of collaborative learning and discussions to tease out meaning. I think you get more out of having a group of people reading the original, (difficult) text, and then arguing about what it means, than by reading a simplified text alone, however 'clear' the latter might be.
Here is a Zen koan:
Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his pupils that whoever answered a question most ably would be appointed. Placing a water vase on the ground, he asked: "Who can say what this is without calling its name?" The chief monk said: "No one can call it a wooden shoe." Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his foot and went out. Hyakujo smiled and said: "The chief monk loses." And Isan became the master of the new monastery.
What is the message this koan is trying to convey? The words are simple but the ideas are deep and captured succinctly. I think that it illustrates the point I am making here and I can try and tell you what it means to me, using a lot more words than in the original. But what does it mean to you?
Comments
Looking at the two Hamlet texts, I think that one of the things I find so jarring and inappropriate about the simplification is that the tone of the words doesn't match. "Nobler to put up with all the nasty things"? I think the writer would have been better off abandoning the original word and replacing "noble" with "better". It still doesn't convey the same sense as the original (to me at least), but the informal tone used in the updated version would at least be consistent.
It is truly interesting to see the subtle but very real differences that the second version introduces. Strangely enough, I find that reading these "translations" bothers me more than reading poor translations of text from German to English or vice versa. I wonder if this is because I have more internal associations with words in my native language or simply because I'm more familiar with the original.
What a deliciously meaty topic. Off the top of my head, three things come to mind.
1)Plato and his discussion of forms. When referring to something like a "table" we understand the meaning of an elevated horizontal surface upon which one can set other objects. The essence or form of "tableness" lies in its functionality, a functionality universally understood by all familiar with tables. Thus when communicating of the table in the corner, whether it be wood or steel, we each understand the concept. Somewhere in our minds we have archived the archetypal form of a table.
The koan exemplifies this beautifully because when the vase was tipped over and the water spilled out it was no longer fulfilling its function and thus the observer can know the function immediately by watching the water spill forth (assuming it was full to begin with).
2)Wittgenstein's Duck Rabbit. http://www.cwru.edu/webdev/hactest/duckrabbit/ Wittgenstein regards perception as an interpretive act. One's own experience will affect how one interprets the illustration. In Philosophical Investigations he spends a lot of effort examing communication and use of language, esp. the idea that words have no meaning in and of themselves, but are understood in terms of function and classification. Naturally he explores these issues in myriad ways, but I'd have to give it a reread before babbling more.
3)22 Tage: Oder, Die Hälfe des Lebens (Twenty-two days: Or, Half a lifetime) by Franz Fühmann. This is a brilliant semi-autobiographical novel that tells two stories at once; a tale of 22 days spent in Budapest; and a tale of his life to date. The lead character is a translator and poet in Budapest for a conference. While the book conveys both the lifestory and the trip story, he also uses his role as translator to examine the meanings of individual words and sentences. As meine deutsch ist nicht so gut, I read it in english and these examinations of word play still worked out quite well. Nicole may very much enjoy the original German version. Either are available sporadically on Amazon. Though this is fiction, it is interesting how he approaches these same issues.
I imagine these issues of meaning relative to use or interpretation have plagued us since we first started drawing on cave walls.
Mano your last two blog entries have brought up one of my main criticisms I have with our current system we call educaton.
Your use of a koan to illustrate your point is very interesting, setting aside its "meaning" for a moment. For what is a koan, but a seemingly non-sensical, abstract puzzle zen monks invented to assist others in obtaining deep profound insight i.e. truth/knowledge/learning. A question without an answer - a riddle without a resolution. Yet, the true purpose of it is not to find "the answer", the purpose is to learn the art of contemplation, the ability to go deeper and deeper into its true meaning - for just as you think you've answered it, if you look deeper you discover more layers of meaning, more questioning. It is in this process of exploration, the art of critical thinking, problem-solving that is the learning not the answer at its end. The practice teaches one to abandon/question all notions, beliefs, static truths and sharpens one's ability to think openly, critically, originally.
Yet most of us relegate this strange practice to aesthetic monks on a mountaintop. Yet it is the fundamental path of true learning regarding everything. This notion that ideas of thought can be simplified and reduced to "answers" to be memorized and mimicked is at the heart of the fundamental failure of our educational system. The whole "grading" system, barometer of knowledge and intellect, is built on this premise.
How are we preparing our next generation to resolve the unique complex problems that will surely arise over the next horizon. One only has to look at our current generation, our fearless leaders with their intellects of higher learning, products of yesterday's system, to realize the depth of its failings.
As for the meaning of the koan - I don't know - yet I sense it has something to do with only when we see something differently, with new eyes - abandoning all notions and truths of what it is - are we able to see its true nature. I'll get back to you in 2015.
Be very careful when discussing Biblical passages - the King James Version (along with almost every other translation in existance) is fraught with translation errors. (Trust me: I've caught them myself.) While there is literature that I have read in translation (such as Crime and Punishment, and many Biblical passages), a translation always causes a loss in meaning, because no translation can ever capture the meaning fully in the spirit in which it was intended. If you're interested in further thoughts about this, please feel free to e-mail me...
Mary's comments are very true, that in our obsessive search for "the answer" we lose sight of the value of the process of the search for meaning.
For example, Cool's interpretation of the koan in terms of functionality was very novel and interesting to me because I had viewed the meaning of the story as saying that the monk Isan, by his wordless response, had shown that he recognized that no words can capture the meaning asked for by Hyakujo.
So whose interpretation is right, Cool's or mine? That kind of search for a right answer within a dualistic model is, as Mary might agree, not the point of the exercise.
KSL appears to have a German copy of 22 Tage oder die Hälfte des Lebens, and I think I'll head over there today or tomorrow to pick it up. If I find any interesting linguistic notes, I'll be sure to share them in my blog, most likely with my poor, humble translations alongside the original. Unfortunately, it's typically easier to criticize translations than create a better one yourself.
Regarding the koan, I agree that there is no right answer, but looking back on it, I realize that my answer related directly to my experience of the moment. As I was pondering meaning, Plato, Wittgenstein, etc. an answer came to mind that supported those concepts. I wonder what I would have answered if in those moments I'd been pondering gravity, light refraction, or gummy bears...
Nicole, I hope you enjoy the book.
Mano-
How about this to add to the discussion of "simplifying" texts?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4721073.stm
In this case, the artist hopes to lead young people towards reading the original. I suppose there is merit in that, but...
Wm
The Chaucer thing is interesting. I have only glanced at Chaucer but the English is so old that it is almost like another language and so this really like a translation.
Actually, I am not so concerned with simplification as a means of providing an entry point into difficult literature. I am just concerned with simplification being used to capture meaning.