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Abstract: Based on critical theory such as Giorgio Agamben's homo sacer and Heidegger's thoughts on dwelling and lethe, this article follows the biopolitical movement of destruction in Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis) to reveal some of the challenges this contextualization poses to its English translation. Stanley Corngold's translation serves as an example for the intricacies that pertain specifically to Kafka's language of abjection, words such as the famous Ungeziefer of the first sentence. These difficulties for the translator result from the fact that Gregor's transformation into Ungeziefer and his family's uncaring treatment of him as such foreshadow the genocidal practices of the 1930s and 40s. By highlighting a selection of passages in which Kafka's writing becomes a harbinger of these crimes against humanity the article demonstrates the subtle discrepancies between the original and Corngold's translation, what gets lost, where at times the translator amplifies the biopolitical message of the original, but also what completely defies translation.
Keywords: untranslatable, homo sacer, abjection, genocide, Ungeziefer, humanity, animality
Kafka's timeless story Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis) from 1915 poses great challenges to translators. This holds true already for the first and infamous sentence where Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into an "ungeheueres Ungeziefer." How can these words best be translated? While there is general consensus to translate ungeheuer into monstrous in English, the biggest problem lies with the word Ungeziefer. Stanley Corngold (Norton edition) offers us "monstrous vermin," while Michael Hofmann (Penguin) settles for "monstrous cockroach." In the French Livre de Poche version Brigitte Vergne-Cain and Gérard Rudent reduce the Ungeziefer to "un monstrueux insecte." Likewise Corinna Gepner's 2004 translation of La Métamorphose uses this option, as does Bernard Lortholary for Flammarion, 1988; for folio Alexandre Vialatte translates it as "une véritable vermine," thus trying to capture the double sequence of 'un-,' Catherine Billman for actes sud translates "une monstrueuse vermine," and Claude David uses "énorme cancrelat" for Gallimard, a word that suggests disease and is the French equivalent of the intensely scatological German 'Kakerlake' (cockroach). The challenge seems to rest specifically in the abjection Kafka inscribes in the double sequence of the prefix 'un-'. The German text teems with this vocabulary of abjection: Untier, Unrat, Unzahl der Bewegungen, which conjoin as a semantic field to express...