Continuing the conversation among the words: Breyten Breytenbach’s translation strategy in <i>Oorblyfsel/ Voice Over</i>

Abstract

Breyten Breytenbach's bilingual collection of poems, Oorblyfsel/ Voice Over (2009), consisting of twelve poems published with the Afrikaans version on the left page and the corresponding English version on the right, shows some notable differences between the two versions of each poem. This article examines the unusual translation strategy of "re-tracing" (Odendaal 2011) that Breytenbach used to produce this collection of poems. Three concepts from literary theory, the 'contact zone' (Pratt 1987(Pratt , 1992, the 'in-between' (Bhabha 1993) and the 'remainder' (Lecercle 1990), are discussed as tools which can be used to understand this strategy. In light of these three concepts, the two versions of the twelfth poem, simply named 12, are analysed in order to illustrate and understand the effect of Breytenbach's strategy on the interpretation process that this collection of poems invites the bilingual reader to take part in.Keywords: translation, Breyten Breytenbach, re-tracing, stereoscopic reading, contact zone, in-between, remainder Introduction and contextOorblyfsel/ Voice Over (Breytenbach 2009), a bilingual collection of twelve poems published with the Afrikaans version on the left page and the English version on the right, was written as a eulogy to Breyten Breytenbach's deceased friend, the famous Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. In the Note at the back of the publication -also appearing bilingually like the poems -Breytenbach (2009:61, 63) says that he began writing the poems shortly after Darwish's death as a "continuing dialogue" with the poet and his work.Translation is an important component of this dialogue. Breytenbach (2009:61, 63) makes it clear that he does not know Arabic and that he has only had access to Darwish's poetry through the content of English and French "approximations" and the rhythm and sound of Darwish's Arabic during readings. He therefore calls the collection a "'collage' [of] transformed 'variations' of [Darwish's] work." In the same way that he does not use the word "translations" to refer to his reworkings of Darwish's work, he does not use the word "translation" to refer to the relationship between his own Afrikaans and English "versions" or "efforts". This hesitance does not mean, however, that translation does not stand central to both of these relationships. In fact, Breytenbach (2009:61, 63) describes translation as a journey of proceeding from one language to the other,