Joseba Sarrionandia is not only a writer, he is also a prolific translator. Or to be more precise, a re-creator, since what he produces are not faithful translations. This is how it has been put by Aiora Jaka, who has done her thesis on the basis of the works which this author has translated into Basque: "He says that the translator takes the original work and creates on the basis of it. He equates the translator with the original writer." Jaka has taken the lid off the other side of the author, when focussing on his translations into Basque in which she has identified about 50 original languages. The thesis is entitled Itzulpenari buruzko gogoeta eta itzulpen-praktika Joseba Sarrionandiaren lanetan (Reflection on translation and its practice in the work of Joseba Sarrionandia). Jaka is the first person to obtain both an undergraduate degree and a PhD in Translation at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
This UPV/EHU language expert has analysed the four books by Sarrionandia in which he has translated a single author (The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Antologia by Manuel Bandeira; and O Marinheiro by Fernando Pessoa), the four anthologies which he has created using several sources (Izkiriaturik aurkitu ditudan ene poemak; Hezurrezko xirulak; Galegoz heldutako poemak; and Hamahiru ate. Umore beltzaren antologia) and other separate texts that he has published in different journals after translating them into Basque. In all these cases the final language is Basque; but as far as the original languages are concerned, Jaka has counted about 50, which clearly points to the use of pivot languages as intermediaries.
Translation or original
Jaka found it difficult to draw the line between translations and original works, since not even Sarrionandia himself separates them from each other: "Even in these so-called creative works there is a lot of translation." An example of this is his book Narrazioak: "In the story Itzalarekin solasa (Conversing with the shadow), the shadow recites in Basque one of Eliot's poems. It is a translation. He intersperses many translations in addition to making references to authors."
Likewise, he tends to do the exact opposite by means of apocrypha: "They are poems of his that he presents as if they were translations. He ascribes authorship to a fictitious writer." For example, in Jaka's view, the poet Mohammed Al-Kali, who appears in the book Izkiriaturik aurkitu ditudan ene poemak, does not exist, and the poems ascribed to him are, in fact, Sarrionandia's: "You think Mohammed Al-Kali could be real, but when you research this you discover that he isn't, and that he has created an imaginary character. It gives this character great credibility".
When translations are interspersed within the original works and original works within the translations, Sarrionandia maintains that all of it is creation, and that there is no reason to separate some texts from others. "He says: 'What is the difference between the poems I have translated and the ones I have created?' What is more, when we create, we take inspiration from everything we have read before," says Jaka.
This is why Sarrionandia is regarded as a postmodern translator in her thesis. The characteristics that Jaka ascribes to postmodern translation coincide with those of the author's works. This goes beyond modernism, according to the researcher: "In modern translation theories what was original and what was translated remained clear: the original author knew very well what he or she meant, and what one has to do is decipher the text and translate it into another language. Postmodern theories, on the other hand, assert that the original has no fixed meaning and that it changes on each reading. In modernism there was a hierarchy: the original is supreme and the translation is a copy. In postmodernism, the original author and the translator are equated with each other. That is how Sarrionandia sees it."
Pioneer in postmodernism
Jaka also believes that Sarrionandia is the first postmodern translator in the Basque language. That is the conclusion she reaches when analysing the history of translation in Basque, starting with the New Testament by Leizarraga. The prologues have helped her in this study, since she has noticed that, following the guidelines of modernism, the translator into Basque practically used to "beg forgiveness" for touching the original text. Furthermore, an effort was made to justify the translation with arguments like the fact that it was a classical text which had to be available in Basque, or that an attempt had been made to be faithful but some liberties had been taken because Basque did not have a tradition as a written language.
According to the researcher, Jon Mirande and Gabriel Aresti are the first to offer "an innovative perspective." These authors influence Sarrionandia, but he is the one who truly implements the postmodern point of view: "He translates texts by Eskimos, Tuaregs, etc. It makes no difference to him whether they are classical or not. What is more, he is the first to proclaim that he is not faithful when translating and recreating without any shame, and when he does so, it is simply because he wants to."
About the author of the thesis
Aiora Jaka-Irizar (Donostia-San Sebastian, 1982) is a graduate in Translation and Interpreting Studies. She wrote up her thesis under the supervision of Gidor Bilbao-Telletxea, Vice Rector of Basque and Multilingualism of the UPV/EHU and lecturer at the Arts Faculty. She defended her thesis at the Faculty's Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies. She did her research in the Basque Country but also spent two periods of nine months at Concordia University (Montreal) and at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Jaka works as a researcher at the UPV/EHU.