tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-352813222024-03-13T16:07:04.050-04:00Boston TranslationNews & commentary about literary translation.Pusteblume Journalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17203104032888002669noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-16714683800383322482014-02-20T21:44:00.000-05:002014-02-20T21:44:05.832-05:00The Dark Road by Ma JianThis sophomore novel by Chinese writer Ma Jian is a look at how the Chinese still hold onto their proud lineage and male dominated society and how their one child policy can conflict with their conservative thinking. Giving the reader a grim look at how this policy is enforced.
The novel centers around a family headed by a man named Kongzi who believes he is a descendent of the philosopher Confucius. Kongzi already has his heir, a girl named Nannan, but a girl isn’t an adequate heir for Kongzi. So he needs his already pregnant wife to produce a son for him and his line. Unfortunately, Kongzi impregnating his wife for a second time has broken Chinese law so he and his family are forced to live on the lam until his second child is born.
It’s important to translate a story like this because it gives westerners a look at what pressures future parents can have when dealing with issues like the gender of a child and proper decedents. A way of thinking that seems archaic to most people living in the West. This story should also help give the reader a better perspective of themselves as westerners since having multiple children is so common because of our comfortable populations. All from someone who can give a first hand view
Jonathan Maniscalcohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01591911054919945171noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-32478793033043217962014-02-17T17:02:00.003-05:002014-02-18T02:11:57.942-05:00"What's your problème?": The problem with translating ideasAt times, there is a word we run into when translating that poses a difficulty not only because its meaning is more complex in one or other of the languages, but because the cultural understanding of its meaning is also different. My encounters with these words happen mostly in French, and I am thinking specifically of the French word "problème" which gets translated into English as several different words, depending on context: "problem" "question" "difficulty" "issue" "trouble" "debate," among, probably, others. This word is not simply a false cognate, it is so much more. And it is a cognate that is not entirely false. The complexities in translating this word do not arise simply because English has more ways to say what the French say with one word, it is that the French don't have "problems" the way Americans do. Take, for example, this paragraph from <i>Madame Bovary</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Puis ils [les hommes] avaient quitté la dépouille des bêtes, endossé le drap, creusé des sillons, planté la vigne. Était-ce un bien, et n'y avait-il pas dans cette découverte plus d'inconvénients que davantages? M. Derozerays se posait ce problème.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[Then they [men] had left the corpses of animals, put on a sheet, dug some furrows, planted a vine. Was this really a good thing? Weren't there, in this discovery, more inconveniences than advantages? M. Derozerays [presented this problem to himself] <i>or</i> [asked himself this question].]</blockquote>
Problems, in the modern French mind, are more philosophical musings than tactile difficulties. Flaubert puts the word "problème" (which occurs only twice in the book) into the mouth of a minor character, a common agricultural worker. In a novel where the magnificent is muddled ironically with the banal, the characters who believe themselves to be divinely inspired are beset with "difficultés,"and the plebeian characters are the ones with the "problèmes." This works within the terms Flaubert's irony because "difficultés" are the common obstacles of life, the hang-ups we deal with every day: running out of eggs, a child who won't stop crying, your spouse running into your paramour at the market. "Problèmes" are the sort of hang-ups one would rather have, if one is a romantic character: oscillations of the soul, a questioning of one's reality, struggles to define words like "love" and "virtue." Emma Bovary likes to believe she is the one with "problèmes," but her author never gives her the luxury of this word, no matter how long he has her languish in front of her mirror in pensive poses.<br />
<br />
In English, a problem is a more quotidian thing. We tell the doctor, "There is a problem with my stomach," are assigned "problems" to do in math class, ask our fellow chest-thumping neanderthal at the bar if he's "gotta problem, man?" We slog through life's problems so that we can, maybe one day, staring at ourselves in the mirror, begin to have questions, concerns, and irresolutions. We would never call these problems. Problems are the several bottles of nail polish that roll to the floor as we slide our elbow across the vanity in an attempt to bring ourselves closer to our selves. In French, on the other hand, "Ce qui m'est un problème" is not necessarily "what I have a problem with (what I object to)" but "what is confusing to me, what I don't understand." The "problematique du cours" (course description) is so named because it is a space to address French "problèmes," in the sense of questions, concerns, or meditations. They are thoughts which produce or provoke interest.<br />
<br />
Still, the French don't limit their use of this word to these more positive thought-acts. A French "problème" can be a bad thing, as in this Kristeva quotation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Puisque vous restez irremediablement différent et inacceptable, vous êtes objet de fascination : on vous remarque, on parle de vous, on vous haït ou on vous admire, ou les deux a la fois. Mais vous n'êtes pas une presence banale et negligeable, un M. ou une Mme Tout-le-monde. Vous êtes un problème, un désir: positif ou negatif, jamais neutre (Kristeva, "Toccata et Fugue pour l'Étranger").</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[Since you remain irresolutely different and unacceptable, you are an object of fascination: you are noticed, spoken of, hated and admired, or both at once. But you are not a banal or negligible presence, a Mr. or Mrs. Everyone. You are a problem, a desire: positive or negative, never neutral].</blockquote>
<br />
The foreigner, or more generally speaking the stranger, presents a set of extremes: hated or admired, a problem or a desire, negative or positive. Disregarding an analysis of the essay itself (which is nonetheless very interesting and possibly deserving of its own blog post) and focusing on the language: the "problème" spoken of here is definitely negative, something to hate. Yet still, the author couches all of these descriptions under the umbrella of "fascination." As a "problème," the stranger may be hated, but is still an object of interest. A problem, for the French, is not something to counter, reject, get rid of, repair, or fix. It is something to think about, meditate on, delve into, examine, and incorporate into the construction of coherence.<br />
<br />
<br />
These complications are not unique to this word. Several other words in French have given me similar difficulties: "étranger" = stranger, foreigner; "experience" = experiment, experience; "ennui" = annoyance, trouble, depression, apathy. Many of these seem to come from differing attitudes in French and in American culture which manifest themselves linguistically. I am certain other languages produce their own set of difficulties with their own set of words. What interests me about these words in French is that they seem to generally be related to a greater acceptance in French culture of negativity or suffering as something banal, an attitude which finds itself in conflict with the American desire to avoid trouble at all costs. Our avoidance of "problèmes," I believe, is our problem.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-41576312553477793572014-01-29T15:43:00.001-05:002014-01-29T16:14:55.878-05:00Labé's "Je vis, je meure…" in translation<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Sonnet VIII</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Je vis, je meure, je me brule et me noye :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>J'ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>La vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>J'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Tout à un coup je ris et je larmoye,</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Et en plaisir maint grief tourment j'endure :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Mon bien s'en va, et à jamais il dure :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Tout en un coup je seiche et je verdoye.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine :</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Et quand je pense avoir plus de douleur,</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Sans y penser je me treuve hors de peine.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Puis quand je croy ma joye estre certaine,</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Il me remet en mon premier malheur.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>Louise Labé</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sonnet VIII</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I live, I die; am burnt and submerged;</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am scorched by biting cold;</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
Life both coddles and abuses me.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My great suffering is entangled with great joy:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It happens all at once – I laugh, shedding tears.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Full of gladness, I am haunted still by grief.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My livelihood is fled, but ever endures.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All at once I wither and I flourish.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thus Love is my fickle guide:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And when I see only more sorrow ahead,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Suddenly I am brought out of misery.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then when it seems my joy has been decided,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And<i> </i>I am on the brink of bliss, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Love forsakes me to my former wretchedness.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text';">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Labé; tr. </span>Sara<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> Balsom</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Hoefler Text;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Of course a great difficulty of translation is deciding whether to remain stringently faithful to the original diction, or render natural-sounding language in the translation. In translating this sonnet, </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> opted rather for the latter, although </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> find myself doubting this decision. While </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> like the sound of my English translation, </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> am afraid of having missed the point of translating this particular sonnet. Labé's diction is somewhat simplistic for the period, yet the intellectual concept of the poem is complex and striking. She describes life as a series of contradictions or juxtapositions which ultimately resolves into misery. The simplicity of the language makes this idea seem almost commonplace, the speaker almost apathetic, as if this is something one should or could learn in a school primer. The </span>French<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> have a history of taking a less melodramatic attitude towards suffering than the English do, and this sonnet seems to express this especially in the last line, which literally translates to something like "puts me back into my first/primary unhappiness." </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> don't believe that "former wretchedness" conveys this adequately, although </span>I<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> chose it for its half-rhyme with "bliss," which gives a truer rendering of Labé's rhyme scheme, and its metrical value, the three syllables of "wretchedness" being less jarring than the four in "unhappiness."</span></span><br />
<div style="font-family: 'Hoefler Text'; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-11187975344003871612014-01-26T13:58:00.003-05:002014-01-26T20:32:11.566-05:00Hofstader's "Ma Mignonne"<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>À une Damoyselle malade</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Clément Marot</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Ma mignonne,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Je vous donne</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Le bon jour ;</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Le séjour</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>C'est prison.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Guérison</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Recouvrez,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Puis ouvrez</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Votre porte</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Et qu'on sorte</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Vitement,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Car Clément</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Le vous mande.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Va, friande</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>De ta bouche,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Qui se couche</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>En danger</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Pour manger</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Confitures ;</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Si tu dures</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Trop malade,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Couleur fade</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Tu prendras,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Et perdras</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>L'embonpoint.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Dieu te doint</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Santé bonne,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Ma mignonne.</i></div>
<br />
In <i>The Life in Rhymes of Clément Marot</i>, Douglas Hofstader takes us on a merry ride through the process of translating Clément Marot's poem "A une Damoyselle malade," a poem to which Hofstader affectionately gives the nickname "Ma Mignonne," taking an appellation from the first line of the poem. Along the way he asks the reader to discover the problems of translating poetry, especially when the reader's interest and enjoyment of that poetry relies heavily on its structure ("Note also that a teeny bending of the norms of pronunciation was deemed allowable [in my translation]...Did you catch any of these minuscule anomalies while reading "My Sweet Maid" aloud?).<br />
<br />
Before he begins his task of translating, Hofstader provides the non-reader of French with a list of characteristics describing the original French poem, which the reader should keep in mind while perusing his multiple translations:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
1. The poem is 28 lines long. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
2. Each line consists of three syllables. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
3. Each line's main stress falls on its final syllable. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
4. The poem is a string of rhyming couplets: AA, BB, CC... </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
5. Midway, the tone changes from formal ("vous") to informal ("tu"). </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
6. The poem's opening line is echoed precisely at the very bottom. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
7. The poet puts his own name directly into his poem. </div>
<br />
The biography of Marot which serves as an introduction to the translations is, charmingly, written in rhymed prose:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In the four-and-a-half centuries now passed since his death, Marot's carved a niche – although small, quite secure – in the vast pantheon of French literature. <i>Le tome beau de Marot</i> – the great book of our bard – has respect far and wide; though he's dead, he's not died. <i>Mort n'y mord</i>, Marot's motto: "Death, dull are thy fangs." The fellow (it can't be denied) had <i>toupet</i> – he had marrow and pluck, plus some luck of the dice. Thus he garnered nice blurbs from the likes of Boileau ('<i>Il trouva pour rimer des cheins tout nouveaux'</i> – He opened up pathways of rhyme no one knew)" </blockquote>
Hofstader's transparent critique of his own translations entertains and intrigues. He gives the reader all the tools to make their own translation(s) of Marot, while humbly presenting his own examples. He acknowledges that these translations – like all translations of poetry – each fail in unique ways and succeed in other ways to convey aspects of the original to an Anglophone ear. His admissions are also written in a prose style that is nothing if not adorably endearing:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...despite the fact that I was striving for nothing but the purest, most austere, least form-concerned type of literality, issues of form raised their little heads all over the place, like crowds of little mushroomlets merrily sprouting up in the most carefully tended of lawns." </blockquote>
Interestingly enough, in pointing out his own difficulties in translating these poems, Hofstader actually (it seems inadvertently) uncovers some tiny flaws in Marot's tight verse:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Another interesting matter is the handling of lines 20-21 (<i>Si tu dures / Trop malade</i>)... In a truly mindless translation, 'too' would have to modify 'sick' and the word 'long' would not enter the picture at all...Marot wanted to encourage his little friend Jeanne not to stay sick for <i>too long</i> a time. The idea of 'staying too sick,' after all, doesn't even make sense, for to be sick at all is by definition to be <i>too</i> sick."</blockquote>
The lines in question are not only a problem for the English-speaking translator, they are confusing in the original French. The enjambement that Marot makes in these lines is an anomaly in this poem, and one that feels awkward given the tightness of the other lines. However, Marot might have intended this moment to grab the reader's attention, for the lines in question also contain a haunting speculative clause for a girl in poor health: "If you last, ..."<br />
<br />
The pessimistic translator may be discouraged to know that this poem exists in possibly a hundred translations, none of them, of course, actually equaling the original. But I choose to think it a wondrous thing that any one poem so simple and short can, by the process of translation, undergo a sort of self-multiplication, producing a wide range of related poems in several languages – one begins to think of the poem as engenderer of its own small world, a deity, if you will, of its kind.<br />
<br />
Here are several of Hofstader's translations and "translations," beginning with the initial crib. (As an aside -- I encourage anyone to call their significant other "My sweet cute one feminine" and giggle at the resulting facial expression.)<br />
<br />
<b>1. My Sweet/Cute [One] (Feminine)</b><br />
<br />
My sweet/cute [one] (feminine)<br />
I [to] you (respectfully) give/bid/convey<br />
The good day (i.e. a hello, i.e. greetings).<br />
The stay/soujourn/visit (i.e. quarantine)<br />
[It] is prison.<br />
Cure/recovery/healing (i.e. [good] health)<br />
Recover (respectful imperative)<br />
[And] then open (respectful imperative)<br />
Your (respectful) door,<br />
And [that one (i.e. you (respectful)) should] go out<br />
Fast[ly]/quick[ly]/rapid[ly],<br />
For/because Clement<br />
It (i.e. thusly) [to] you (respectful) commands/orders.<br />
Go (familiar imperative), fond-one/enjoyer/partaker<br />
Of your (familiar) mouth,<br />
Who/which herself/ himself/itself beds (i.e. lies down)<br />
In danger;<br />
For/in-order-to eat<br />
Jams/jellies/confectionery.<br />
If you (familiar) last (i.e. stay/remain)<br />
Too sick/ill,<br />
[A] color pale/faded/dull<br />
You (familiar) will take [on],<br />
And [you (familiar)] will waste/lose<br />
The plumpness/stoutness/portliness (i.e. well-fed look).<br />
[May] God [to] you (familiar) give/grant<br />
Health good,<br />
My sweet/cute [one] (feminine).<br />
<br />
<b>2. To a Sick Damsel</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
My sweet,<br />
I bid you<br />
A good day;<br />
The stay<br />
Is prison.<br />
Health<br />
Recover,<br />
Then open<br />
Your door,<br />
And go out<br />
Quickly,<br />
For Clément<br />
Tells you to.<br />
Go, indulger<br />
Of thy mouth,<br />
lying abed<br />
In danger,<br />
Off to eat<br />
Fruit preserves;<br />
If thou stay'st<br />
Too sick<br />
Pale shade<br />
Thou wilt acquire,<br />
And wilt lose<br />
Thy plump form.<br />
God grant thee<br />
Good health,<br />
My sweet.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>3. My Sweet Maid</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My sweet maid,</div>
<div>
You I wish</div>
<div>
A good day;</div>
<div>
Your sickbed</div>
<div>
Is a jail.</div>
<div>
Total health</div>
<div>
Please regain,</div>
<div>
Then unlatch</div>
<div>
Your room's door,</div>
<div>
And go out</div>
<div>
With full speed,</div>
<div>
For Clement</div>
<div>
Does insist.</div>
<div>
Go, gourmand,</div>
<div>
Thou whose mouth</div>
<div>
Lies abed</div>
<div>
Under threat,</div>
<div>
Off to eat</div>
<div>
Fruit preserves;</div>
<div>
If thou stay'st</div>
<div>
Sick too long</div>
<div>
A pale shade</div>
<div>
Wilt acquire,</div>
<div>
And wilt lose</div>
<div>
Thy round shape.</div>
<div>
May God grant</div>
<div>
Thee good health,</div>
<div>
My sweet maid.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>4. My small princess</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My small princess, I send you a warm hello. Your stay in bed has been like a term in prison. Uncle Clement urges you to recuperate, and to get out of there soon. You've always loved sweets, so don't let being bed-ridden stop you from indulging – have some jam! And don't stay sick too long, because you'll get ghostly pale and start looking like skin and bones. God will surely bring you back to good health, my small princess.</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>5. Touchstones</b><br />
("a pattern of words telegraphic... a chain of keys to its message will reveal what mustn't be skipped')<br />
<br />
<u>Vous</u>: Cuteness; hail. Quarentine; cure. Egress; speed. Clément; insistence.<br />
<u>Tu</u>: Epicurism; threat. Appetite; jams. Pallor; gauntness. Prayer; cuteness.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-62538819902256895352014-01-14T19:51:00.000-05:002014-01-14T19:51:00.164-05:00Introducing the Atlantean Poets Project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of possible interest to those interested in South American letters and the esoteric, an announcement from <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/joyelle-mcsweeney">Joyelle McSweeney</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My friend Jared Harvey did some sharp resurrection work for Beverly Pérez Rego's <b><a href="http://www.atlanteanpoets.org/">Atlantean Poets</a></b> project. This project seeks to open an aperture on Venezuelan poetry not through translation into English but through an occult communication among poets.</blockquote>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-75084630201594996882014-01-05T11:40:00.001-05:002014-01-05T11:40:16.957-05:002011 New Yorker letter: Iliad, Islam, globalization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here we are in the winterval doldrums, that time between the cheery holidays and the digging-into of the work of the New Year; a good quiet fireplacey time to set aside the hubbub of new translations and translation news, and get discursive. Chatty, even! In the spirit of such times, here's a pair of interesting letters from <i>The New Yorker</i> which the <i>Pusteblume</i> editors noted a few years ago as being worth mention, but which we failed to get onto the blog at that time:<br />
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___________________________<br />
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The following letters, intersecting issues of cultural appropriation, as well as translation, appeared <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2011/11/28/toc_20111121">this week</a> in <i>The New Yorker:</i> <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2011/11/28/111128mama_mail2">one from a reader responding</a> to two articles (<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/11/07/111107crbo_books_mendelsohn">Daniel Mendelsohn’s review</a> of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">a Stephen Mitchell's translation of the </a><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Iliad</a> </i>and <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2011/11/07/111107craw_artworld_schjeldahl">a review</a> of the Metropolitan Museum’s reopened galleries of Islamic art), and the other from Stephen Mitchell, responding to Mendelsohn's review.<br />
<br />
Here's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2011/11/28/111128mama_mail2">the reader letter</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The contrast between <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/11/07/111107crbo_books_mendelsohn">Daniel Mendelsohn’s review</a> of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">a new translation of the </a><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Iliad</a> </i>and, a few pages later, Peter Schjeldahl’s review of the Metropolitan Museum’s reopened galleries of Islamic art was striking. Mendelsohn reminds us that, whoever Homer was or whatever the genesis of the <i>Iliad</i>, this glimpse at a polytheistic world of near-nihilistic savagery belongs to the Western canon; to him, it raises modern, even existentialist, questions. On the other hand, Schjeldahl, who describes himself as “a latter-day scion of the Renaissance wedding of Greek and Roman with Judeo-Christian traditions,” takes us on a tour of otherness; he argues that the Islamic and Western civilizations “cannot see each other.” But my reading of history is that Muhammad the monotheist is altogether more modern than the wrathful Achilles. It is the extraordinary power of serial appropriation and willful back-projection, both driven by medieval and early-modern politics, that takes the Koran (like the <i>Iliad</i>, an orally propagated text) out of the antiquity of Aristotle and Aristarchus. <b>Amid the grand convergence that is called globalization, we might consider breaking free of hoary genealogies</b>. <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2011/11/28/111128mama_mail2">Chase Robinson, Hartsdale NY</a></i></blockquote>
And here's Mitchell:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mendelsohn, in <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/11/07/111107crbo_books_mendelsohn">his review</a> of my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">translation of the <i>Iliad</i></a>, correctly says that the received text of the <i>Iliad </i>is a kind of wiki-composition. No one disputes that many passages were spliced in after the text was first written down. For some scholars, as Mendelsohn says, it’s the composite text that matters; yet there are other scholars who conclude that the <i>Iliad </i>is primarily the work of one great genius. <b>To me, the additions are like the accumulation of grime, touch-up attempts, and yellowing varnish on a Renaissance masterpiece. With a painting, it is sometimes not possible to strip away the accretions and see the original brilliance. But with the <i>Iliad </i>we often have the manuscript evidence to help us do just that. </b>(Book 10, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_scholarship#cite_note-1">Doloneia</a>, for example, has been recognized as an interpolation since ancient times, and contemporary scholars are in almost unanimous agreement.) All English translations up to now are of the wiki-Iliad. We will always have them to enjoy. But, as I discovered in reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Iliad-Disquisition-Analytical/dp/0199590079?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">M. L. West’s superb edition of the Greek text</a>, when you remove the accretions an even greater poem is revealed—an <i>Iliad </i>that is leaner, more dramatic, more awe-inspiring. <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2011/11/28/111128mama_mail3">Stephen Mitchell, Ojai CA</a></i></blockquote>
(Emphasis added.)</div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-84491905897482883872013-12-02T08:48:00.002-05:002013-12-02T08:48:46.018-05:00from "Reading Across the Gutter"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://petrifiedwoodmuseum.org/moldscasts.htm" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wgA1HGpZElo/UpyPn2SyW3I/AAAAAAAAEeE/gdMMrUOoRw4/s320/CastMold560.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Several weeks ago, I was at a roundtable discussion on editing poetry translations for literary magazines at which the question of presenting translations along with their originals resulted in such a range of responses I’ve been unable to let the question go. Unsurprisingly, it was harder for the editors of print journals to accommodate two texts, even if they wanted to: both space and funds are at stake. On the other hand, Don Share, editor of <i>Poetry </i>magazine, argued that publishing just the translation honors the translator’s work and grants the translation its independence. Erica Mena of Anomalous Press had a different—and to me, fascinating—approach to managing a translation’s independence: not wanting to encourage “reading across the gutter,” the online journal she edits (which you should absolutely visit) publishes the source text in a pop-up window, not en face. “Reading across the gutter,” as I understand it, refers to the sort of reading in which a person compares original and translation word-for-word and line-by-line, checking for “mistakes”—in other words, the sort of reading an en face presentation could unintentionally promote. [continues...]</blockquote>
Read the rest of Aditi Machado's thoughts on publishing <i>en face</i>, <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2013/11/25/reading-across-the-gutter">at <i>Asymptote Journal</i> online</a>.<br />
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-46904619062757155672013-10-13T17:01:00.002-04:002013-10-13T17:01:34.894-04:00Eugen Ruge at Goethe-Institut Boston<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Times-Fading-Light-Translation-Selection/dp/1555976433?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o3-z_RZE9No/UlsJl0uCP5I/AAAAAAAAEM8/mst6XejCaRA/s1600/books.jpg" /></a></div>
Tuesday, October 15, at 7:00 pm<br />
Goethe-Institut Boston<br />
170 Beacon Street, Boston<br />
<br />
Reading in German (English translation on-screen)<br />
Discussion in English<br />
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Moderator: Barton Byg, UMass Amherst<br />
Admission free<br />
<br />
Eugen Ruge is the author of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Times-Fading-Light-Translation-Selection/dp/1555976433?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">In Times of Fading Light</a></i> (Graywolf Press; translated from the German by Anthea Bell), the portrait of a family set against the backdrop of the collapse of East German communism. It traces the stories of both this particular family and the GDR, while exploring the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime. </div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-77261214018913479872013-07-02T06:18:00.002-04:002013-07-02T06:18:54.017-04:00From an interview of Heather Cleary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From an interview of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Planets-Sergio-Chejfec/dp/1934824399?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Heather Cleary</a> by <a href="http://invisiblestories.tumblr.com/">Stephen Sparks</a>, <a href="http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-heather-cleary-interview">published in Issue 30</a> of <i>The Quarterly Conversation</i> (2012):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>SS: Does how a work affect you as a reader play into your work as a translator? In other words, how much distance, if any, exists between reader and translator?</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
HC: I tend to think there’s very little distance between reading and translation. Gaytri Spivak has called translation “the most intimate act of reading.” It’s the closest reading you can do, and there’s almost an affective, if not sensual, quality to the practice of lingering over individual words in a way that the average reader typically does not. Of course, getting too entrenched at the level of the word can skew the perception of the work as a whole, something along the lines of missing the forest for the trees. As Natasha Wimmer, quoting the Mexican writer Gabriel Zaid, has said, reading a book too slowly is like getting a slug’s-eye-view of a mural. So, while translation is a detail-oriented kind of reading, it seems to be in constant negotiation with a broader, more story-oriented kind. </blockquote>
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<i>SS: What Latin or South American writers are English-language readers missing out on? </i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
HC: Well, there’s Antonio di Benedetto, whose <i>Zama </i>(1956) and <i>El silenciero</i> (1964) are incredible. But there are so many great things already out in English translation, which means there’s NO excuse not to read them. On the dystopian end of the Argentine literary spectrum, there’s Roberto Arlt’s classic <i>The Seven Madmen</i> (though I don’t think its sequel, <i>The Flamethrower</i>, has been translated yet). And, seriously: Saer Saer Saer (of what’s out in English, I’d suggest <i>Scars </i>and <i>The Witness</i>). I also really like <i>Bonsai </i>by Alejandro Zambra, a young Chilean writer whose background in poetry comes through in the crisp beauty of his prose (in Carolina De Robertis’ translation, too). And these are from the Portuguese, but Chico Buarque wrote a smart, charming novel called <i>Budapest</i>, and Fernando Verissimo’s <i>Borges and the Eternal Orangutans</i> totally lives up to the outrageousness of its title.</blockquote>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-6913983503127076892013-05-29T14:07:00.000-04:002013-05-29T14:07:19.699-04:00A. K. Ramanujan: "Thoughts on Translation"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The following commentary comes from Chapter 2 ("<a href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3j49n8h7&chunk.id=d0e1254">Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation</a>") of<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Many-Ramayanas-Diversity-Narrative-Tradition/dp/0520075897?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia</a></i>, ed. by Paula Richman. The section immediately preceding the text excerpted below ends as follows: "Some shadow of a relational structure claims the name of <i>Ramayana</i> for all these tellings, but on closer look one is not necessarily all that like another. Like a collection of people with the same proper name, they make a class in name alone." The texts Ramanujan refers to as "tellings" are a set of alternate versions of segments of the <i>Ramayana.</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That may be too extreme a way of putting it. Let me back up and say it differently, in a way that covers more adequately the differences between the texts and their relations to each other, for they <i>are</i> related. One might think of them as a series of translations clustering around one or another in a family of texts: a number of them cluster around Valmiki, another set around the Jaina Vimalasuri, and so on. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Or these translation-relations between texts could be thought of in Peircean terms, at least in three ways. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Where Text I and Text 2 have a geometrical resemblance to each other, as one triangle to another (whatever the angles, sizes, or colors of the lines), we call such a relation <i>iconic</i> .
In the West, we generally expect translations to be "faithful," i.e. iconic. Thus, when Chapman translates Homer, he not only preserves basic textual features such as characters, imagery, and order <i>of incidents</i> , but tries to reproduce a hexameter and retain the same number of lines as in the original Greek—only the language is English and the idiom Elizabethan. When Kampan retells Valmiki's <i>Ramayana</i> in Tamil, he is largely faithful in keeping to the order and sequence of episodes, the structural relations between the characters of father, son, brothers, wives, friends, and enemies. But the iconicity is limited to such structural relations. His work is much longer than Valmiki's, for example, and it is composed in more than twenty different kinds of Tamil meters, while Valmiki's is mostly in the <i>sloka </i>meter. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Very often, although Text 2 stands in an iconic relationship to Text ! in terms of basic elements such as plot, it is filled with local detail, folklore, poetic traditions, imagery, and so forth—as in Kampan's telling or that of the Bengali Krttivasa. In the Bengali <i>Ramayana</i> , Rama's wedding is very much a Bengali wedding, with Bengali customs and Bengali cuisine. We may call such a text <i>indexical</i> : the text is embedded in a locale, a context, refers to it, even signifies it, and would not make much sense without it. Here, one may say, the <i>Ramayana</i> is not merely a set of individual texts, but a genre with a variety of instances. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now and then, as we have seen, Text 2 uses the plot and characters and names of Text 1 minimally and uses them to say entirely new things, often in an effort to subvert the predecessor by producing a countertext. We may call such a translation <i>symbolic</i> . The word <i>translation</i> itself here acquires a somewhat mathematical sense, of mapping a structure of relations onto another plane or another symbolic system. When this happens, the Rama story has become almost a second language of the whole culture area, a shared core of names, characters, incidents, and motifs, with a narrative language in which Text 1 can say one thing and Text 2 something else, even the exact opposite. Valmiki's Hindu and Vimalasuri's Jaina texts in India—or the Thai <i>Ramakirti</i> in Southeast Asia—are such symbolic translations of each other. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One must not forget that to some extent all translations, even the so-called faithful iconic ones, inevitably have all three kinds of elements. When Goldman and his group of scholars produce a modern translation of Valmiki's <i>Ramayana</i> , they are iconic in the transliteration of Sanskrit names, the number and sequence of verses, the order of the episodes, and so forth. But they are also indexical, in that the translation is in English idiom and comes equipped with introductions and explanatory footnotes, which inevitably contain twentieth-century attitudes and misprisions; and symbolic, in that they cannot avoid conveying through this translation modern understandings proper to their reading of the text. But the proportions between the three kinds of relations differ vastly between Kampan and Goldman. And we accordingly read them for different reasons and with different aesthetic expectations. We read the scholarly modern English translation largely to gain a sense of the original Valmiki, and we consider it successful to the extent that it resembles the original. We read Kampan to read Kampan, and we judge him on his own terms—not by his resemblance to Valmiki but, if anything, by the extent that he differs from Valmiki. In the one, we rejoice in the similarity; in the other, we cherish and savor the differences. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One may go further and say that the cultural area in which <i>Ramayanas</i> are endemic has a pool of signifiers (like a gene pool), signifiers that include plots, characters, names, geography, incidents, and relationships. Oral, written, and performance traditions, phrases, proverbs, and even sneers carry allusions to the Rama story. When someone is carrying on, you say, "What's this <i>Ramayana</i> now? Enough." In Tamil, a narrow room is called a <i>kiskindha</i> ; a proverb about a dim-witted person says, "After hearing the<i>Ramayana</i> all night, he asks how Rama is related to Sita"; in a Bengali arithmetic textbook, children are asked to figure the dimensions of what is left of a wall that Hanuman built, after he has broken down part of it in mischief. And to these must be added marriage songs, narrative poems, place legends, temple myths, paintings, sculpture, and the many performing arts. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
These various texts not only relate to prior texts directly, to borrow or refute, but they relate to each other through this common code or common pool. Every author, if one may hazard a metaphor, dips into it and brings out a unique crystallization, a new text with a unique texture and a fresh context. The great texts rework the small ones, for "lions are made of sheep," as Valery said. And sheep are made of lions, too: a folk legend says that Hanuman wrote the original <i>Ramayana</i> on a mountaintop, after the great war, and scattered the manuscript; it was many times larger than what we have now. Valmiki is said to have captured only a fragment of it. In this sense, no text is original, yet no telling is a mere retelling—and the story has no closure, although it may be enclosed in a text. In India and in Southeast Asia, no one ever reads the <i>Ramayana</i> or the <i>Mahabharata</i> for the first time. The stories are there, "always already."</blockquote>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-24986030158661922552013-05-19T17:19:00.002-04:002013-05-19T17:20:28.443-04:00MadHat: Special Issue of German lit in translation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/index2.shtml" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kEtiCfpPuwo/UZlB6sM1F7I/AAAAAAAACNA/GUCkiy45vV0/s320/cover.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Like <a href="http://bostontranslation.blogspot.com/2013/05/litro-germany-issue.html">the new issue of <i>Litro</i></a>, the <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/index2.shtml">new issue of </a><i><a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/index2.shtml">MadHat</a> </i>is dedicated to literature springing from Germany (albeit in translation; the <i>Litro </i>content all seems to have been written originally in English). In the issue:<br />
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<a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_burkart.shtml">Erika Burkart</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/drama2.shtml">Martin Clausen</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_roggla.shtml">Isabel Fargo Cole</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_czernin.shtml">Franz Josef Czernin</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_detje.shtml">Robin Detje</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_duve.shtml">Karen Duve</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_elze.shtml">Carl-Christian Elze</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_farrell.shtml">Michael Farrell</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/nonfiction2_groschner.shtml">Annett Gröschner</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_hahn.shtml">Anna Katharina Hahn</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_halter.shtml">Ernst Halter</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_hohler.shtml">Franz Hohler</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#holland">Henry Holland</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#jones">Lucy Renner Jones</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/gallery_milorad.shtml">Milorad Krstic</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/nonfiction2_kuhn.shtml">Helmut Kuhn</a> ~<a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/gallery2_kunz.shtml">Karl Kunz</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_lange.shtml">Sabine Lange</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_lenz.shtml">Pedro Lenz</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#lewis">Tess Lewis</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_kuhn.shtml">Ruth Martin</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#mclaughlin">Donal McLaughlin</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_modick.shtml">Rachel McNicholl</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_merz.shtml">Klaus Merz</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_modick.shtml">Klaus Modick</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_neeser.shtml">Andreas Neeser</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_nenik.shtml">Francis Nenik</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#piening">Jenny Piening</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_popp.shtml">Steffen Popp</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_rabinowich.shtml">Julya Rabinowich</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_weinrich.shtml">Steven Rendall</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_hohler.shtml">Katie Ritson</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_roggla.shtml">Kathrin Röggla</a> ~<a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_ruhmkorf.shtml">Peter Rühmkorf</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#schmidt">Bradley Schmidt</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/nonfiction2_schmidt.shtml">Jochen Schmidt</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/fiction2_schonthaler.shtml">Philipp Schönthaler</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/drama2_clausen.shtml">Angela Schubot</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#scott">Joel Scott</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_tax.shtml">Sissi Tax</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_theobaldy.shtml">Jürgen Theobaldy</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_lange.shtml">Gráinne Toomey</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/contributors2_14.shtml#vincenz">Marc Vincenz</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_weinrich.shtml">Harald Weinrich</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/poetry2_lange.shtml">Jenny Williams</a> ~ <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue14/drama2_clausen.shtml">Karen Witthuhn</a></div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-53184419923995258492013-05-19T17:05:00.000-04:002013-05-19T17:05:56.520-04:00Litro: The Germany Issue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From the editors' mailing about this entirely enticing issue: "The stories in <a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/litro-125-germany/">this month's </a><i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/litro-125-germany/">Litro</a> </i>paint a picture of a Germany haunted by its past.
In <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/schwellenangst/">Schwellenangst</a> </i>by Jeremy Tiang, the central character is faced with a desolate past on a visit to the Nazi resort of Prora, built as a "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_Through_Joy">Strength Through Joy</a>" project. E. E. Mason's <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/bluhende-landschaften/">Blühende Landschaften</a></i> is also an encounter with history, in the grounds of an abandoned house. Florence Grende's <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/heidelberg-a-beautiful-life-1946-1951">Heidelberg, A Beautiful Life: 1946-1951</a></i> is an extract from her memoir, telling the story of her family's post-war success, built on the black market cigarette trade. In <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/the-fall-of-berlin-oil-on-canvas-2">The Fall Of Berlin (Oil On Canvas)</a></i> by Jim Ruland, we follow a Nazi art collector as he watches the chaos of the invasion of a city, and then in <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/love-by-the-wall/">Love by the Wall</a></i> by Robin Wyatt Dunn, we move backwards to see the foundation of Medieval Berlin. Lastly, in Pippa Anais Gaubert's <i><a href="http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/05/berlin-ghost-story">Berlin Ghost Story</a></i>, we move forward again in time to a woman who is becoming a ghost in more ways than one in a modern city."</div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-51003866946659364832013-05-07T16:53:00.001-04:002013-05-07T16:53:22.600-04:00Yiddish novel to be crowdsourced<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><a href="http://boingboing.net/2013/05/07/crowdfunding-a-cc-licensed-tra.html">Reposted from BoingBoing:</a></i><br />
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"Best-selling author and native Yiddish speaker Michael Wex has launched <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-authorized-translation-of-a-classic-yiddish-novel-into-english">an indiegogo campaign</a> to translate what he is calling the most important work of world literature that you've probably never heard of. The book, written by Joseph Opatoshu in 1921 when he was a young Polish immigrant living in New York City is an historical novel about 19th century Jewish Eastern Europe:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> A vast panorama of Jewish life in Poland during the 1850s, Opatoshu's novel concentrates on backwoods Jews who live among gentile peasants rather than in Jewish communities in cities or shtetlekh. Touching as it does on hasidism, heresy, pre-Christian Polish folk customs, wife-swapping, messianism, and Polish nationalism, this book will change the way you think about Jewish life in Poland. </i></blockquote>
"When he completes the work in about a year the translated novel will be released under a Creative Commons license. Wex hopes that a new translation will bring Opatoshu's 1921 novel to a broader audience. 'It'll change everybody's views of Jewish life in Poland,' Wex writes. 'If this campaign works, it'll also help other translators find a way to fund their own projects and establish a whole library of world literature that hasn't been translated into English before or has never been translated properly. Raising the money in advance means that the translators can work full time; since the finished product doesn't cost anything, they don't have to worry about a book's commercial potential. It's like a grassroots Guggenheim.'"<br />
<br />
<b>NB: the editors of <i>Pusteblume </i>just donated $20 to support the project's goal of $75,000!</b></div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-13274402384541406582013-04-14T12:59:00.001-04:002013-04-14T12:59:21.587-04:00Updike dings Goldblatt's Chinese-to-English<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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From a long profile in <i>Chicago Reader</i>, "<a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/howard-goldblatts-life-in-translation/Content?oid=9260454">Howard Goldblatt's life in translation</a>" by Aimee Levitt:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One of Goldblatt's most discouraging experiences as a translator came when John Updike reviewed two of his translations in <i>The New Yorker</i>: Mo Yan's<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Big-Breasts-Wide-Hips-Classics/dp/1611453437?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Big Breasts and Wide Hips</a></i> and Su Tong's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-as-Emperor-Tong/dp/B009LPSTFI?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">My Life as Emperor</a></i>. While Updike acknowledged Goldblatt's dominance in the field of Chinese-to-English translation, he didn't particularly like the books, complaining that "the English cliches seem just plain tired." As an example, he cited a line from My Life as Emperor where a character "licks his wounds." It wasn't the worst example he could have cited, Goldblatt admits, but when he went back to the original, he discovered that Su actually had used the phrase "licks his wounds" in Chinese.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"He must have read it in Chinese and thought it sounded neat," Goldblatt says. "These are the things we deal with. We know we'll get slammed, but sometimes it's our call. We feel it worse than the writer. The writer's reputation isn't on the line with every book. But a translator's reputation can be destroyed by one book. It can call into question his ability to deal with the text."</blockquote>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-12185184674439848622013-04-08T10:05:00.004-04:002013-04-08T10:05:57.999-04:00Clive James on his new Dante<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871404486?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">My translation of the Divine Comedy</a> is here today because my wife, when we were together in Florence in the mid-1960s, a few years before we were married, taught me that the great secret of Dante’s masterpiece lay in the handling of the verse, which always moved forward even in the most intensely compressed of episodes. She proved this by answering my appeal to have the famous Paolo and Francesca episode in Inferno 5 explained to me from the original text. From various translators including Byron we can see what that passage says. But how did Dante say it? My wife said that the <i>terza rima </i>was only the outward sign of how the thing carried itself along, and that if you dug down into Dante’s expressiveness at the level of phonetic construction you would find an infinitely variable rhythmic pulse adaptable to anything he wanted to convey. </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
-- James, writing for <i><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/features/2013/clive_james_divine_comedy_translation/clive_james_divine_comedy_translation_an_excerpt_from_the_introduction_plus.html">Slate</a></i></div>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-20527232981899638542013-03-27T09:15:00.002-04:002013-03-27T09:15:28.965-04:00New publication: Scottish Poetry in Translation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>Scottish Poetry in Translation</i> (SPIT) is a new postgraduate publication produced with the support of the University of Glasgow's Department of Scottish Literature. The first issue will be published this April and will contain new critical and creative work by some of Scotland's finest established writers, alongside several exciting emerging figures. The journal hopes to be a forum for the presentation of poetry in translation, as well as lively and informed criticism in the fields of translation theory, Scottish culture and contemporary poetics. Contributors to Issue One include Vahni Capildeo, Tom Hubbard, David Kinloch, Aonghas MacNeacail, J. Derrick McClure, Richard Price, Alan Riach, James W. Underhill, Nuala Watt and Rab Wilson.</span></div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-21334477833120978592013-03-14T11:50:00.000-04:002013-03-14T11:50:16.652-04:00Minter on becoming a translator<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By the time I left Japan in January 1987 I had become “naturally conscious” in the Japanese language. You might say I’d forgotten English. I transacted most of my daily life in Japanese, and at night I dreamt in it as well. I’d lived with four wonderful families and had attended the senior year of what I later understood to be a prestigious boys school, Asano Gakuen. Here I was taken under the wing of the humanities staff, a group of slightly dishevelled, chain smoking men who let me hang-out in their office rather than attend classes. We drank tea and talked about anything and everything, and in our spirited conversations about life and culture and history and literature I really began to learn and understand Japanese. I took their classes in calligraphy, music, ikebana and art. And it was in that office, three storeys up looking north over a rather desolate playing field, that I began to translate Japanese poetry.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
-- from a lovely essay by Australian poet <a href="http://peterminter.com/">Peter Minter</a>, in the journal <i><a href="http://southerlyjournal.com.au/2013/03/12/to-the-invisible/">Southerly</a></i>.</div>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-90637129336903422772013-02-13T07:54:00.001-05:002013-02-13T07:54:32.307-05:00Hofstadter on elevators in French and American English<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The last thing in the world that translators of novels wish to do, unless they are playing special kinds of intellectual games, is to carry a work of literature across the seas and re-set it in another land and culture; nonetheless, because vast numbers of words and phrases give off subtle aromas of which one is not always aware, this can happen, at least to some extent, despite their best intentions. The most insidious problem is that every single tiny act of translation, no matter how innocent-seeming, involves some degree of transculturation. This happens even with highly universal, vanilla-flavored words, such as "house", "door", "dog", "walk", "happy", "thanks", and so forth. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To take a concrete example, how does one say "elevator" in French? If one uses the dictionary equivalent <i>ascenseur</i> (and there really is no alternative, so it's a forced move), that word will tend to conjure up in the mind of a native French speaker an image formed over the course of thousands of experiences with French elevators (strictly speaking, to be self-consistent, I should have written, "with French <i>ascenseurs</i>"). To be sure, the images of <i>ascenseurs</i> that jump to a French mind have much in common with the images of elevators that jump to an American mind, but there are also many differences, as anyone who has spent any time in the two countries knows very well. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For instance, American elevators are usually quite large and frustratingly slow. They tend to have very thick walls and very thick, multi-layered doors that, on opening, slide out of view and, often after quite a long wait, slide back shut. They are rather silent (except for beeps at every floor), they have lots of lights, and they "intelligently" or "politely" stop at intermediate floors, if someone has pushed a button there. By contrast, European elevators (especially those of a few years ago) are often small (sometimes just a couple of people can squeeze in), their manual doors swing open outwards (and often there are two sets -- one inner and one outer). They move fast and are often "dumb" or "impolite", blithely ignoring people on intermediate floors, who simply have to wait till all current passengers have disembarked. And then there are those wonderful antique elevators with cages instead of actual walls, where, as you ascend or descend, you can see the spiral staircase winding around you, and woe to anyone who sticks their finger through the iron grillwork of the cage.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The contrast between these kinds of images is enormous. Although both the American elevator and the French <i>ascenseur</i> serve the function of vertically transporting people, animals, suitcases, and other items in some tallish building, the "vibes" that they emanate are radically different. Therefore, if a French translation of an American novel taking place in Richland, Washington replaces the word "elevator" by the word <i>ascenseur</i> all three times it occurs, there will result a tiny, microscopic, almost undetectable effect of transculturation in the minds of French readers.</blockquote>
-- from "Translator, Trader" (pp.15-17), an essay (bound in the same volume as the author's translation from French version of Françoise Sagan's novel <i>La Chamade</i>) which in its hundred-some chatty pages visits, considers, and retreads many of the challenges and pleasures of translation, including that familiar problem, discussed above, of transcultural references. As appears in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/That-Mad-Ache-Translator-Trader/dp/0465010989?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">That Mad Ache: A Novel/Translator, Trader: An Essay</a> </i>by Douglas Hofstadter. (<a href="http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=1992">See a review of the book at Three Percent</a>.)</div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-150529485307161332013-01-28T11:59:00.001-05:002013-01-28T11:59:47.751-05:00Plunkett on Merwin's translations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The world of Merwin’s translations is flat. In his English, the Spanish sounds just like the Eskimo (although the latter features a seal and the former just a dog). You cannot distinguish poems of different languages from the originals—there are none—nor by notes that explain regional symbols and literary traditions—there are hardly any notes at all. What is odd and distinctive about Merwin is that I doubt that he’d take these observations as criticisms.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
-- from Adam Plunkett's review of Merwin's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Translations-W-S-Merwin/dp/1556594097?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Selected Translations</a></i> for <i><a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/content/sound-check%E2%80%94ws-merwin%E2%80%99s-love-foreign-language#">New Republic</a></i></div>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-89869578713462339402013-01-21T17:28:00.002-05:002013-01-21T17:28:24.658-05:00Job posting: Urbana-Champaign<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Center for Translation Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invites applications for 1) a Visiting Lecturer (Ph.D. in hand required) and 2) a Visiting Instructor (MA required) in Translation Studies, for 2013-4, with a target start date of August 16, 2013.<br />
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Full consideration will be given to complete applications received by February 15, 2013. For complete details, visit <a href="http://www.slcl.illinois.edu/">www.slcl.illinois.edu</a>.</div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-81483434101745101562012-12-27T16:41:00.000-05:002012-12-27T16:41:00.374-05:00From "Onegin in English: Against Nabokov"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Nine years prior to the appearance of Nabokov's <i>Onegin</i>, <i>The Partisan Review </i>[in 1955]<i> </i>published an essay by Nabokov, titled “The Art of Translation: <i>Onegin </i>in English,” which amounted to a manifesto concerning the possibilities of Onegin in translation and the translator’s self-imposed standards for his own version of the novel:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To translate an <i>Onegin </i>stanza does not mean to rig up fourteen lines with alternate beats and affix to them seven jingle rhymes starting with pleasure-love-leisure-dove. Granted that rhymes can be found, they should be raised to the level of <i>Onegin</i>’s harmonies but if the masculine ones may be made to take care of themselves, what shall we do about the feminine rhymes? When Pushkin rhymes <i>devy </i>(maidens) with <i>gde vy </i>(where are you?), the effect is evocative and euphonious, but when Byron rhymes “maidens” with “gay dens,” the result is burlesque … . [p.277]</blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The tone of resentment that so frequently accompanies discussion of Nabokov as translator and, more broadly, as authority on Russian literature, certainly has something to do with the reader’s reluctance to be bullied into the role of Nabokov’s imaginary oafish, middling student, to be hectored in this patronizing manner, no matter how illustrious the mentor whose covert wish is to torment. [p.288]<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
By declaring that this is the method he wanted applied to <i>all </i>poetry in translation, Nabokov, it seems to me, attempted to conceal his very special bias with regard to <i>Onegin</i>. What motivated Nabokov to create this translation, instead of producing the kind of graceful stanzas he embedded in <i>The Gift</i> and printed in <i>The New Yorker</i>? One wonders whether he might have been more interested in affirming the impossibility of <i>Onegin </i>in English than in allowing a non-Russian reader the happy illusion of intimacy with Pushkin. [p.291]<br />
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_ _<br />
<br />
The three excerpts above are taken from the excellent article "<i>Onegin </i>in English: Against Nabokov" by Anna Razumnaya, as appears in <i><a href="http://litimag.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/3/277.full">Literary Imagination</a></i> Volume 14 Number 3, pp. 277-291.<br />
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-59555560364638904522012-12-24T14:19:00.001-05:002012-12-24T14:19:44.060-05:00Burt on Milosz in translation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rather than ask what makes Miłosz international, we can ask how to read, how to appreciate, the work in English now. We should credit Miłosz's translators and co-translators, most frequently though not only Robert Hass, whose ear and whose patience have much to do with the fact that Miłosz in English has—as most poets in translation cannot have—a recognizable, consistent, idiomatically plausible style. We say “that sounds like Miłosz” on the basis of cadence and tone, not only of meaning, as we cannot say, to a poem in present-day English, “that sounds like Akhmatova,” or “like Baudelaire.” (We can say “that sounds like Celan,” but there we are talking about a deliberately unidiomatic English derived from a deliberately unidiomatic original; and “that sounds like Brodsky in English” may not be a compliment.) Certain qualities of <i>Miłosz’s </i>verse—and of his poetic prose, as in <i>Road-side Dog</i>, too—seem to create a cadence, as well as a tone, that remains audible across a linguistic boundary.</blockquote>
-- from "Czesław Miłosz: Wisdom and Doubt" by <a href="mailto:burt@fas.harvard.edu">Stephen Burt</a>, in <i><a href="http://litimag.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/3/261.full">Literary Imagination</a></i> Volume 14, Issue 3, pp. 261-276.<br />
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-60640574118412884632012-12-19T08:36:00.003-05:002012-12-19T08:36:51.230-05:00WLT Notable Translations 2012 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The editors of <i>World Literature Today </i>have released their first-ever <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/wlts-75-notable-translations-2012#.UNG16W9JP1P">75 Notable Translations</a> list. So many of these would make an excellent gift in this season of book-giving... as would a subscription to <i>WLT </i>itself!</div>
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The following books are but a third of the full list; to see the rest, <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/wlts-75-notable-translations-2012#.UNG16W9JP1P">visit the <i>WLT </i>website</a>.</div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Zeina Abirached, <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/corruption-war-and-long-lost-diaries-recent-translations-graphic-novels#.UMIdL473DJx"><i>A Game for Swallows</i></a>, trans. Edward Gauvin</li>
<li>Roberto Ampuero, <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/roberto-ampuero"><em>The Neruda Case</em></a>, trans. Carolina De Robertis</li>
<li>Fabio Bartolomei<em>,<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Alfa-Romeo-1300-Other-Miracles/dp/1609450833?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969"> Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles</a></em>, trans. Antony Shugaar</li>
<li>Marcel Beyer, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kaltenburg-Marcel-Beyer/dp/0151013977?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Kaltenburg</a></em>, trans. Alan Bance</li>
<li><a href="http://www.englishpen.org/writers-in-translation-christmas-book-list-2012/"><em>Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets</em></a>, trans. ko ko thett, James Byrne et al.</li>
<li>Chico Buarque, <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/new-books-translation#.UMIaUY73DJw"><em>Spilt Milk</em></a>, trans. Alison Entrekin</li>
<li>Jacques Chessex, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tyrant-Jacques-Chessex/dp/190473894X?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">The Tyrant</a></em>, trans. Martin Sokolinsky</li>
<li>Mouloud Feraoun, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Land-Blood-CARAF-Books-Literature/dp/0813932211?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Land and Blood</a>, </em>trans. Patricia Geesey</li>
<li>Santiago Gamboa, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Necropolis-Santiago-Gamboa/dp/1609450736?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Necropolis</a></em>, trans. Howard Curtis</li>
<li>Viola Di Grado, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/70%25-Acrylic-Wool-Viola-Grado/dp/1609450779?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">70% Acrylic 30% Wool</a></em>, trans. Michael Reynolds</li>
<li>Pia Juul, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Halland-Pia-Juul/dp/0956284078?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">The Murder of Halland</a></em>, trans. Martin Aitken</li>
<li>Liu Xiaobo, <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/liu-xiaobos-june-fourth-elegies"><em>June Fourth Elegies</em></a>, trans. Jeffrey Yang</li>
<li>Nicolas Mahler, <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/translating-global-evil-soul-sucking-megacorporations#.UMIci473DJw"><em>Angelman</em></a>, trans. Kim Thompson</li>
<li>Diego Marani, <a href="http://www.englishpen.org/writers-in-translation-christmas-book-list-2012/"><em>The Last of the Vostyachs</em></a>, trans. Judith Landry</li>
<li>Fuminori Nakamura, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thief-Fuminori-Nakamura/dp/1616952024?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">The Thief</a></em>, trans. Satoko Izumo & Stephen Coates</li>
<li>Harri Nykänen, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nights-Awe-Ariel-Kafka-Mystery/dp/1904738923?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Nights of Awe</a></em>, trans. Kristian London</li>
<li>Kristín Ómarsdóttir, <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/november/children-reindeer-woods-kristin-omarsdottir#.UMi0gI73DJw"><em>Children in Reindeer Woods</em></a>, trans. Lytton Smith</li>
<li>Octavio Paz, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Poems-Octavio-Paz/dp/0811220435?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">The Poems of Octavio Paz</a></em>, trans. Eliot Weinberger et al.</li>
<li>Adania Shibli, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Are-All-Equally-Far-Love/dp/1566568633?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">We Are All Equally Far from Love</a></em>, trans. Paul Starkey</li>
<li>Nichita Stănescu, <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/nichita-stanescus-wheel-with-a-single-spoke-and-other-poems"><em>Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems</em></a>, trans. Sean Cotter</li>
<li>Benjamin Stein, <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/the-canvas"><em>The Canvas</em></a>, trans. Brian Zumhagen</li>
<li>Abdellah Taïa, <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/abdellah-taias-an-arab-melancholia"><i>An Arab Melancholia</i></a>, trans. Frank Stock</li>
<li>Juan Gabriel Vásquez, <a href="http://www.englishpen.org/writers-in-translation-christmas-book-list-2012/"><em>The Sound of Things Falling</em></a>, trans. Anne McLean</li>
<li>Richard Weihe, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Ink-Richard-Weihe/dp/0956284086?ie=UTF8&tag=thewonref-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Sea of Ink</a></em>, trans. Jamie Bulloch</li>
<li>Samar Yazbek, <a href="http://www.englishpen.org/writers-in-translation-christmas-book-list-2012/"><em>A Woman in the Crossfire</em></a>, trans. Max Weiss</li>
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-58953114038777812752012-10-13T21:48:00.001-04:002012-10-13T22:25:27.362-04:00Don Share on Montale, and "squirming through poetry"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In his Oxford lecture on Eugenio Montale's poem, "L'anguilla" ("The Eel"), Paul Muldoon explores this - and Montale's poem - wryly and thoroughly, perhaps definitively. Like everything else he does, it's a tour de force. As you'd expect, Muldoon starts off by quoting Robert Lowell's infamous introduction to <i>Imitations</i> and, having presented his own version, wiggles his way through a number of competing English translations of the poem (there must be at least fifty, but Muldoon takes on a selection of the most formidable of them). My guess is that most American readers read Montale's poems in either Jonathan Galassi's versions or William Arrowsmith's, though Charles Wright's have been a perennial favorite as well. Galassi's are increasingly becoming the go-to versions in this country, revised versions of which have just been reissued in paperback by his company, F.S.G.</blockquote>
-- <a href="http://donshare.blogspot.com/2012/01/if-youre-interested-in-translation-of.html">Over at his Squandermania blog</a>, Don Share reflects on his experience with Montale, on the occasion of the simultaneous reissue of the Galassi and Arrowsmith translations in comprehensive volumes. It is a rich post, highly recommended for persons interested in Montale and in tales of how translations and texts pass from author to translator, from scholar to scholar, from teacher to student.</div>
Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35281322.post-88868646682353143002012-09-17T13:10:00.003-04:002012-09-17T13:10:53.864-04:00Call for Papers and Ph.D. Abstracts <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The editors of <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.iatis.org"><i>New Voices in Translation Studies</i></a> are looking for article submissions and abstracts of recently completed and defended doctoral theses for publication in their May 2013 issue.<br />
<i>New Voices</i> is a refereed electronic journal co-sponsored by IATIS and the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS) at Dublin City University. The aim of the journal is to disseminate high quality, original work by new researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies to a wide, international audience. The editors are:
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<li>Geraldine Brodie - CICS, University College London, UK</li>
<li>Elena Davitti - CTIS, University of Manchester, UK</li>
<li>Sue-Ann Harding - Translation and Interpreting Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar</li>
<li>Dorothea Martens - San Luis Potosí, México</li>
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Submissions of articles and/or abstracts may be sent to the editors by email to <a href="mailto:newvoices@dcu.ie">newvoices@dcu.ie</a>.
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Zachary Boshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07381974131762307270noreply@blogger.com0