JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
©
2009
Lost
in Translation Pedagogy
I was walking out of Quimby’s, the great Chicago zine shop, at closing time last month when I noticed a handsome free newspaper stacked on the floor. “Reading Stanley Crawford’s ‘Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine,’” said the headline in a Moon-landing point size. “1972 was a difficult year for the novel,” proposed the article’s lead.
That was enough for me to instinctively grab a copy, a decision that seemed affirmed instantly by the creamy feel of the paper. Back home the next day, tossing the paper out of my suitcase along with the robot dinosaur and the Alan Moore comic, I saw that it is “CONTEXT,” a publication of a literary press at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and that the tribulations of the novel in 1972 don’t interest me very much.
Inside, however, I found something more to my professional and personal tastes: “Premises of a New Translation Pedagogy: Changing the Paradigm of Cultural Studies” by Elizabeth Lowe, the director of UIUC’s new Center for Translation Studies.
Translation studies is a hot trend in interdisciplinary humanities, at least at the grad school level. In part it is a retro roots movement harkening to the traditional comparative literature studies of a half-century ago, where mastery of multiples languages and lits was the essence of understanding. In part it is a phenomenon of academic faddishness, the latest metaphor for viewing culture studies, that amorphous assemblage of various identity-politics analyses that in many places dethroned comp studies. (As with all such academic metaphors, translation has the possibility to be fruitful if elaborated, dangerous if reified.)
Lowe’s essay provides a decent overview of themes and techniques in translation studies, as well as prolonged PR bloviation. Only her chosen field, she says, is poised to rescue us from our “traditional disdain of foreign-language study and cultural arrogance,” our “warped and enervating insularity,” “our deeply rooted provincialism.”
Delving into the subtheme of reception theory, Lowe says that US natives can be so ignorant that they inaccurately understand even what little outside cultural material makes its way to them, especially if it comes from a culture “judged to be inferior or inconsequential.” She specifically notes this US attitude as a “basic problem” in her chosen field of Latin American literature.
Lowe then provides us with her key example of “such chauvinism”:
“As Richard Nixon once expressed it, in a comment directed at a then very callow Donald Rumsfeld, ‘Latin America doesn’t matter…people don’t give one damn about Latin America.’”
I found this hard to believe. Richard Nixon was a lot of things, but myopic isolationist was not one of them, as anyone with even a passing understanding of modern US and world history knows. I also found it unusually ambiguous for an example. What people don’t give a damn? What is hiding behind that mysterious trail of ellipses? The only thing really clear in the quote is its citation of two classic villains of the Left—the Watergate president and the Iraq War defense secretary.
To cite the name of the publication itself, what is the context for this quote? Lowe at least provides a source, an endnote pointing us to Michael Reid’s article “The battle for Latin America’s soul” in a 2006 issue of “The Economist.”1
The quote is the opening line of that article. Reid gives a touch of context: it is from a 1971 conversation, he says, in which Nixon was giving Rumsfeld “career advice.”
With the quote’s year in hand, we can already see that Lowe made a direct factual error. Her “very callow” Rumsfeld in 1971 was actually a 39-year-old former three-term US congressman. His current job was as a kind of free-roaming presidential assistant.
Apparently, Lowe simply assumed Rumsfeld was young and inexperienced based on Reid’s scanty “career advice” contextualization. But that context itself—and her decision to not mention it—makes her use of the quote still more puzzling. There is no sign that Nixon personally believed that Latin America doesn’t matter; the very fact that he was talking about it, and his use of the term “people,” suggests otherwise. It seems hardly different from a comp studies adviser telling a student, “History of science studies don’t matter” because translation studies are now fashionable. Granted, such commentary from the president of the United States seems a perhaps authoritative measure of general American attitudes; but then again, the implication that he does not necessarily agree indicates far less insularity on the part of the top US citizen of them all.
And no matter what it means, how culturally relevant is a single, 38-year-old remark?
Eschewing theory for fact, I still wanted full context. Lowe had plucked the quote from Reid; but where did Reid pluck it from? I tried his 2008 book-length version of his “Economist” article, “Forgotten Continent.”2
Again, Reid prominently features the quote, this time on page 1. But the quote has now subtly morphed, with “people” becoming capitalized and a “now” tacked on:
“Latin America doesn’t matter…People don’t give one damn about Latin America now.”
“Now” is even more ambiguous. Perhaps they did before? Perhaps they will again?
Reid gave no explanation for changing his quote. But at least there is a citation, to a 2006 Guardian article by the famed Chilean-American author and literature professor Ariel Dorfman called “Out of fear.”3 Hardly seems like a primary source, but it’s an authoritative-sounding title.
“Out of fear” turned out to be a movie review. The quote did not come from the movies at hand. It was sociopolitical decoration, presented without any sourcing as an exciting lead sentence. (The quote version is the same as that in Reid’s book; apparently he miscopied it in his “Economist” article and corrected himself for the book.) The only additional information was a more specific date for the quote: April 1971.
Like Lowe, Dorfman merely desired an out-of-context flogging of Nixon and Rumsfeld. He called the quote a “dismissive judgment” about “a continent [sic] that Nixon believed did not matter.”
More like a dismissive judgment about a quote that no one could source, I thought. Google showed me that the irresistibly brusque line is taking on a small life of its own. In 2006, the Peruvian news/blog site “Journal Peru” reprinted Dorfman’s intro—without citation—and opined, “And that ignorance probably hasn’t changed much in the last 3 decades.”4 Reviewers of Reid’s book—inevitably quoting the quote—had a more generous interpretation of it as Nixonian realpolitik, but expressed no curiosity about its source.
So where did it come from? From what tree was this cherry first picked?
The popularizer seems to be a 2004 episode of PBS’s news series “Frontline” called “Rumsfeld’s War” and a companion web site that provides a partial transcript of the Nixon-Rumsfeld conversation.5
The ultimate source is one of Nixon’s infamous secret tape recordings. The proximate source is researcher James Mann, who transcribed the quote in a 2003 article for “The Atlantic” and again in his 2004 book “Rise of the Vulcans.”6 A spokesperson for WGBH-TV in Boston, which produces “Frontline,” told me that producers heard of the recording from Mann’s book, then got their own copy and commissioned their own transcript.7
One thing is immediately clear from the “Frontline”/Mann versions: Dorfman got the quote’s date wrong. The conversation actually happened on March 8, 1971.
Here’s the problem: The “Frontline” and Mann versions of the quote do not agree with each other, particularly as they attempt to fill in those mysterious ellipses.
“Frontline”:
“Latin America doesn’t matter. Consciously. people [sic] don’t give one damn about Latin America now.”
Mann:
“Latin America doesn’t matter. Long as we’ve been in it, people don’t give one damn about Latin America, Don.”
Significantly different, these versions agree in one way: They soften the tone of Nixon’s judgment from Dorfman’s “…” version. And both “Frontline” and Mann provide several more excerpts of the conversation that make it clear it was a talk between two men who were actively enthusiastic about various foreign lands.
But which version of the quote is correct? And what is its full context? Obviously, I needed to hear the Nixon tape for myself.
Conversation number 463-6, as it is known in National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) cataloguing parlance, took place in the Oval Office and lasted nearly an hour. I hired a company to pull the recording from the Nixon Library in the NARA complex at College Park, Maryland. The company also duplicated and edited together the conversation, which occupied parts of two cassette tapes. I then received it as a digital WAV file.
To my ear, no previously published version of the quote in question is correct. The part that “Frontline” and Mann hear so differently as “consciously” and “long as we’ve been in it” sound like neither to me. I heard it as possibly, “the democracy thing.” Also, the phrase sounds like an appendage to the first sentence, not the beginning of the second.
Here is my own transcription, with a bit more context:
“…the only thing that matters in the world are Japan, China, Russia and Europe. And Latin America doesn’t matter, [unclear—“the democracy thing”?]. People don’t give one damn about Latin America, Don. They don’t give one damn about [unclear—“anything”?].”
The bulk of the conversation is Rumsfeld seeking some type of foreign service for multiple motivations: frustration with a lack of portfolio in his current job; the desire to build his political résumé; and his genuine interest in such places as Japan. Rumsfeld at first has an eye on postwar Vietnam, but Nixon pushes his own interest in Russia while generally avoiding commitments. The theme is relentlessly pragmatic, focused on where Rumsfeld could make a difference and a mark. By the conversation’s end, they have agreed that Rumsfeld’s best prospect is serving as US trade representative in some interesting land, or becoming ambassador to Japan.
It sounds as if Rumsfeld first raises the possibility of Latin America himself. But first, Nixon wants to set aside the idea of service in Vietnam, which is already “being studied to death.” This is where his advice becomes darkly cynical and the terminology of not giving a damn first appears.
When the war ends, Nixon warns Rumsfeld, you will be amazed at “how quickly [Vietnam] will recede from the public memory.” Well, “except for the poor devils who’ve been killed and aren’t forgetting that place, Vietnam will survive reasonably well…But we won’t give a damn.”
Obviously, Nixon and America had no lack of interest in Vietnam at the time. He is not voicing a personal insularity, but a stark (and historically accurate) prediction of political reality. And these comments lead directly into the quote about Latin America. The tone could be interpreted as disparaging of the public ease at ignoring.
All of Africa is up next: “I don’t think there’s much to be gained,” Nixon says. And then he shoots down the Middle East as well, another area where it would be ludicrous to suggest the US doesn’t care.
Nixon cynically comments that politicians working in that area can appear to be currying Jewish votes. “And anyway, there’s nothing you can do about the Mideast. Europe, yes. But Russia’s the place. Let’s think about Russia.” Or even Hungary, Poland—something behind the Iron Curtain.
Latin America returns twice to the conversation. Nixon speaks in realistic terms about the ability to make a difference in one’s limited lifespan, noting he had perhaps 25 years left. He envisions a rise to global prominence of Latin America, but likely not in his lifetime.
“Latin America’s 50 years away. Africa’s probably 500 years away,” he tells Rumsfeld.
That being said, after praising Rumsfeld’s interest in an ambassadorship to Japan, he suggests a good second choice: Brazil. He notes it is “booming.”
“But Brazil…is going to have 200 million people by the end of the century,” Nixon says.
Note that, according to the CIA’s “World Factbook,” Nixon was within 4 million of hitting that prediction exactly. Note also that he knew that projection off the top of his head in the middle of a random chat.
It’s still Nixon; his comments about the Brazilian embassy include some bizarre joke about someone attempting to “steal our hooch.” It is hardly a discussion about the merits of world literatures. But it is also not a bunch of dismissive ignorance from cardboard villains. There may be information to be gleaned about American attitudes in the conversation, but it will not come from using a bungled fragment.
Returning to Lowe, we see that she used an incorrect version of an improperly sourced quote while stripping it of what little context she knew it to have and adding some inaccurate context of her own.
Dorfman, another scholar, was just as sloppy. Educated guess: a major motivation is a particular type of liberal politics that is favored—nay, required—in mainstream academe and is therefore allowed to dress casually as something less than scholarship.
I’m no expert in translation studies, but I know that context is omnipotence, like it says at the top of the page. And I’ve got a pedagogy of my own: It’s called Make Sure You Know What the Hell You’re Talking About.
“The practice of teaching and performing translation work has reinforced our view that the translation profession works to overcome cultural prejudice, ignorance, and provincialism, and replaces these with the kind of knowledge and understanding that enable people to see each other, and perhaps themselves, in a new light,” Lowe wrote. “It is the most generous of professions, in that the translator must work not to promote her own work as much as to bring a source text to a new audience.”
Yet in this very essay she presents a source text corrupted and misinterpreted to promote her own field, benighted with her own cultural prejudice, ignorance and provincialism.
Her
chauvinistic warning about chauvinism left Nixon lost in translation.
1 May 18, 2006, at www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=E1_GJQPVNR.
2 “Forgotten
Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul” by Michael Reid via Google
Books.
3 March 18, 2006 at www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/mar/18/outoffear.
4 “Peruvian World Records” by Wolfy Becker, March 23, 2006, at http://journalperu.com/?p=56.
5 At www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/paths/audio.html.
6 “Close-Up: Young
Rumsfeld,” “The Atlantic,” November 2003 at www.theatlantic.com/doc/200311/mann, and “Rise of the Vulcans: The History of
Bush’s War Cabinet.”
7 Diane Buxton, personal e-mail, Feb. 25, 2009.
Significant sources not cited in the text or footnotes include: “A Quiet Revolution: Latin America’s Unheralded Progress” by Francis Fukuyama, “Foreign Affairs,” November/December 2007 at www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101fareviewessay86613/francis-fukuyama/a-quiet-revolution.html (review of Reid’s book); “Progress, and hope, seen in Colombia” by US Rep. Gregory Meeks, undated, Hispanic American Center for Economic Research site at www.hacer.org/current/Colo063.php (a use of the “Frontline” version of the quote); “Reasons to be cheerful in America’s backyard” by Rory Carroll, The Guardian (Manchester/London, England), Jan. 5, 2008 at www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/05/politics1 (review of Reid’s book). The edition of “CONTEXT” in question is issue No. 22. Nixon White House tape access, duplication and editing provided by The Cutting Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland (www.cuttingarchives.com). Thanks to Mr. Mann for assistance. Posted March 9, 2009.