Ideology, On the Construction Of Different Anne Franks

Anne Frank

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Translation: Ideology, On the construction of different Anne Franks by Andre Lefevere

Andre Lefevere was a translation theorist. He obtained his Ph.D. in "Prolegomena to a grammar of literary translation: An investigation into the process of literary translation based on an analysis of various translations of Catullus' 64th poem" (1972).

His most important contribution is in comparative literary studies and translation studies in particular. He theorized translation as a form of rewriting produced and read with a set of ideological and political constraints within the target language, and cultural system.

Andre Lefevere (Source - Google)
Translation: Ideology, On the construction of different Anne Franks

About Translation Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Frame :

"Translation Rewriting and the Manipulation Of Literary Fame" talks about Translation Studies as a separate discipline. In the Preface of the book, the author states that the book reflects the breadth of work in Translation Studies and is concerned with its own genealogy. The book is comparative in nature and ranges through many literary traditions both Western and non-Western. Through the concepts of rewriting and manipulation, the book aims to tackle the problem of ideology, change, and power in literature and society and so assert the central function of translation as a shaping force. The book consists of a total 12 chapters.

Chapter - 5

Translation : Ideology,

On the construction of different Anne Franks By Andre Lefevere

The essay "Translation: Ideology, on the Construction of Different Anne Franks" was published in the book: "Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame" in the year 1922 by Andre Lefevere.

Andre begins his essay by stating that there are all kinds of statements in Anne Frank's diary that tell us that she wanted to be a writer and that she wanted her diary to be published after World War Two.

The author states that if we do a comparison between the original 1947 Dutch edition of the diary and the material collected in the 1986 edition gives us insight into the process of "construction" of an image of the writer, both by herself and by others.

He states that the comparison between the Dutch original and the German shows the image of the writer who belongs to one culture in - and especially for - another.

When it became clear to Anne that the diary could, and should be published, she began to write it. The original entries were made in notebooks; the rewritten version was produced on loose-leaf paper.

Anne Frank was unable to finish the rewritings, both the notebooks and the loose-leaf version were rediscovered by Miep, one of the Dutch employees of the Frank firm who helped the Franks and others to hide out in the Achterhuis.

Miep discovered the material after the German Sicherheitsdienst had arrested the Franks and their friends, and taken them away.

Anne Frank's own rewriting of the entries in the original diary amounts to a kind of "auto-editing". In editing herself, she seems to have two objectives in mind, one: personal and the other: literary.

However, there are other editors too, for instance, the Dutch edition published by Contact, the publisher in 1947. The first transcription of Anne's diary was in German made by Otto Frank (Anne's father) for his friends and relatives in Switzerland. In 1986, a critical edition appeared in Dutch, based on the findings of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation into challenges to the diary's authenticity. In 1950, Barbara Mooyaart - Doubleday in England translated the diary in English, including the deleted passages at Otto Frank's request.

On a personal level, Anne Frank disclaims earlier statements, especially about her mother, and about more intimate subjects. The author states that the entry for January 2, 1944, signals a turning away from the personal and towards the literary:

"This diary is of great value to me, because it has become a book of memoir in many places, but on a good many pages I could certainly put past and done with."

In the essay "Translation: Ideology, on the Construction of Different Anne Franks", Andre provides an example of literary editing by providing the description of one of Anne's encounters with Peter, the boy whose parents share Frank's hiding place and who becomes Anne's, first real love. The original entry reads: "As I sat almost in front of his feet". The rewritten entry reads: " I went and sat on a cushion on the floor, put my arms around my bent knees, and looked at him attentively."

The edited 'pose' is much more in keeping with what Anne must have seen in the movie magazines she so avidly read. It is a very close approximation of the pose her culture expects the young heroine to assume. It is a Universe-of-Discourse element consciously inserted into the text.

The author provides another example of literary editing in the entry for May 13, 1944, the original entry mentions a tree 'stuck full of leaves' whereas the edited amounts to literary editing, according to Andre, is represented by changing the names of all those who have, since January 2, 1944, become "characters" in a 'story." Consequently, Anne Frank appears as "Anne Robin" in the loose-leaf version.

Moreover, the changes made in the original material, according to Andre, may belong to three categories:

1. Some changes are of a personal nature,

2. Some are ideological and

3. Some belong to the sphere of patronage.

On the 'personal level', details of importance to anyone and 'unflattering' references to friends, acquaintances, or indeed members of the family are omitted. The description of all Anne's classmates has disappeared from the 1947 edition, along with the references to her mother and Mrs. Van Daan,- whose real name in the first draft of the diary was Van Pels. It may be because of the desire to protect people's reputations.

Lines that may have been important for the 'auto-construction' of the character -Anne Robin have been omitted so as not to give the impression that the writer Anne Frank did not entirely correspond to the ideologically sanctioned image of what a fourteen-year-old girl should be - at the time she was rewriting the diary.

Further, in the essay, Andre informs us about the other things omitted in the 1947 Dutch edition, for instance:

1. Some of the letters that Anne wrote (imagining) to various friends, which were never sent, were omitted. These letters represent a marked deviation from the original intention of the diary as Anne Frank herself conceived it. The diary took the place of the 'really good girlfriend' and this is also the reason, that nearly all the entries in the diary were written in the form of letters and addressed to 'kitty', the name Anne Frank had given her diary/imaginary friend.

2. Fantasies about life after the war, and especially, a trip to Switzerland with her father have also been omitted from the Dutch 1947 edition.

3. The topic of sex acts as a link between the "personal" and the "ideological" edits. The first Dutch publisher, Meulenhoff, refused to publish it because of the very personal nature of the diary and the 'sexual musings' it contains. 'Sexual Musings' refers to Anne Frank's awakening sexuality.

4. In the same way, Bep/ Elli's story about an unwed mother and the dirty words like 'brothel' and 'cocotte' that she picked up from reading were omitted.

5. Another edit involving both the personal and the ideological concerns of the Goldsmith affair. Goldsmith was a lodger in the Frank's house in Amsterdam. In the passages that have been omitted from the 1947 edition, Frank hints heavily at the probability that Goldsmith sold or otherwise disposed of the Frank possessions to his own advantage.

The most obvious ideological omissions are those of the passages Anne Frank wrote on the problem of the emancipation of women.

Finally, it is obvious that Otto Frank bowed to constraints in the sphere of patronage and it is also obvious that he had no other choice. The typescript of Anne Frank's diary had to conform to the specifications laid down by Contact, the publishing house.

Anne Frank is subjected to further transformations in the German translation of her diary, which was based on Otto Frank's second typescript, and was made on by Anneliese Schutz, a friend of the Frank family. Since Otto Frank was trying to publish the composite material labeled with his daughter's name, and hence it was translated.

Otto Frank's evaluation of Anneliese Schutz's translation is, unfortunately, accurate. He states that she was too old to do it, many expressions are school-marmish and not in the tone of youth. She also misunderstood many Dutch expressions. She opted for the homonym that does not fit the context.

Her translation illustrates the fact that publishers rarely care overmuch about the quality of the translation of any manuscript that either might not sell or sells very well. The fact that the Schutz translation was and is reprinted time and again also points to another institutional constraint: the pernicious (destructive) influence of copyright laws which, in this case, even embarrasses the publisher.

The most famous of Schutz's "mistranslations" is that of the Dutch - "there is no greater enmity in the world than between Germans and Jews", which is translated as:- "there is no greater enmity in the world than between these Germans and the Jews". This "mistranslation' is only one among many that have been made for reasons best described as 'ideological' - a mixture of a more old-fashioned ideology based on a certain view of the world, and the more contemporary ideology of profit pure and simple. In Anneliese Schutz's own words :

" a book you want to sell well in Germany should not contain any insults directed at Germans".

Hence, Schutz translates accordingly and tones down all instances of descriptions of Germans in Anne Frank's diary that could be constructed as "insulting". As a result, the plight of the Jews in the Netherlands is, correspondingly, made to appear less harsh than it actually was.

Anne Frank's description of Westerbook, the German concentration camp in the Netherlands from where Jews were shipped "East', as the current euphemism (an indirect word/expression) would have it, is weakened similarly.

There is another set of changes in the German text, also caused by ideological motivations, but of a less obvious, more insidious nature. Schutz consciously or unconsciously turns Anne Frank into the cultural stereotype of the 'proper' young adolescent girl of a time that had not yet invented the teenager, "properly educated" as befits her social status to make her more acceptable to a fifties audience.

Anne Frank has to behave "properly" for a child her age. She has to conform to what is considered proper cultural behavior for the upper-middle-class fourteen-year-old, even if that kind of 'proper behavior" has been made less than a little ridiculous by the war and the living conditions in the hideout.

There are other things a young girl, German or not, of Anne Frank's age and social status is not supposed to know or do. When Anne Frank describes the flowers she gets for her birthday as "the children of Flora", thereby displaying her knowledge of mythology, which is one of her hobbies, Schutz does not mention this precocious name-dropping; in German, Anne Frank gets - "flower greetings".

Moreover, no effect is made to reproduce in German any of the stylistic effects Anne Frank tries to achieve in Dutch, as she does, for instance, employing the repetition of the word 'cold', when describing the cold weather.

Fourteen-year-old girls are also not allowed to sit in judgment on their mothers or elder sisters. Anne Frank writes in Dutch that she would never be satisfied with "such a limited life" as her mother and Margot, her elder sister, seem willing to settle for.

Additionally, Schutz models Anne Frank as the one who is not supposed to keep diaries. Anne Frank writes in Dutch that there are certain things she does not intend, "to communicate to anyone else but my diary, and once in a while to Margot". In German, Anne Frank writes that she has things she is determined to - "never communicate to anyone, at the most once in a while to Margot". The diary, the object of the exercise, the text read all over the world, simply vanishes from the translation, sacrificed to the "image" of Anne Frank the German translator wishes to project.

In the concluding passages, Andre states that the notion- "proper" girls also write in "proper style", is promoted and creativity is actively discouraged in the German translation.

The girl Anne Frank writing her diary has become the author Anne Frank because she and others were constrained by ideological, poetological, and patronage considerations.

Once Anne Frank made the decision to rewrite for publication what Anne Frank had written, the person Anne Frank split up into a person and an author, and the author began to rewrite in a more literary manner what the person had written.

Others responded to the constraints of ideology and patronage in her place or role. That is why part of her experience, very definitely a formative part, is missing from the 1947 Dutch text, and why she has been made to conform in German, to a cultural stereotype and made to omit the description of the very cruel treatment which destroyed her as a person.