Nano Poetry

I'm thrilled that Poetry International is starting the year by ramping up their publications to bi-monthly - I always look forward to their email in my inbox and taking the few minutes to discover new poetry. PI is an interesting project that has the potential to be the most important resource for poets interested in reading around the world, and they keep on making the right moves. Each country on the site (though not every country is represented and there are major holes right now including the USA and Chile) is edited by a local expert in the poetry, ensuring that even the best-read (and I don't think I can count myself among them) will find something new and wonderful on their site.

This first-of-2010 publication focuses on nano-poetics (which I've just learned from Gilad Meiri translated by Lisa Katz is mostly about miniaturisation and duplication) and poetry of the everyday. Having taught poetry of the everyday previously in a PEN Prison Writing workshop, I was excited to add more of this to my repertoire, and Japanese poet Yosuke Tanaka in Jeffery Angles' translation is perhaps the poet I most want to read more of right now. Here is the first four lines of "A River in Summer":

If no one is looking, I cannot get in.

[A dead bird]
[A bird in various colors]

If no one is looking.

The 10 poems on the site are just a tease really, and will demand a further and closer reading on my part, but someone needs to get me his book Sweet Ultramarine Dreams in English! The pull between experimental and lyrical, the tension of images that only just make sense, and only if you're willing to leap fully into the language....the little truths just beneath the surface of the everyday. Just another taste, the last four lines from "The Station to Spring":

In the darkness
The orange juice glows.
It seems to shine from within.
The station to spring is near.

And quite brilliantly the PI people have connected this poetry of the everyday to nano-poetics, which in David Avidan engage with the everyday:

Microfilm

Everything’s miniature, like microfilm.
And at the hour of need – enlarged.
It could have worked for us too.

The world is filled with creatures which are too large
and not always useful and not always necessary.

In nano-poetics, according to Gilad Meiri:

The use of size – poetry’s approach to the small – as an interpretive strategy is a natural extension of an essential feature of poetry itself, for a poem is the smallest, densest unit of aesthetic information there is.

The small is an invitation to intimacy, he says, and through that intimate and minute look at the everyday, through the parodic effect of mechanical duplication and repetition, a concentration of the world in the nano. One last poem from Avidan:

A Few Plans for the Future

Let me be a mummy.
Wake me
once every thousand years with a shot of undiluted adrenalin, and then
I’ll burn Rome again, report on the event
with a pale face and a pounding heart, first I’ll castrate
all the barbarian warriors who conquered the city, possess
all their young women, so there’ll be
things to burn and men to castrate
in another thousand years. I have
patience for long-run missions.

Massachusetts Review calls for Translation

Call for submissions: Massachusetts Review
University of Massachusetts Amherst

In our fifty-first year of publication, the editors of The Massachusetts Review (www.massreview.org) plan to dramatically increase the amount of fiction, poetry and socially-engaged nonfiction which they publish in translation. MR is a general-audience journal of literature, arts and public affairs, with a particularly strong history of civil rights and feminist publication. Today we see a great need for US literary journals to internationalize – to open their ears, and their pages, to voices from outside the United States, and to writers in languages other than English. MR believes we have a real opportunity for synergy with friends and colleagues from local institutions, given the strength of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst programs in translation, of the locally-based translation studies journal Metamorphoses, as well as of the American Studies Diploma Program at Smith College (a one-year graduate program exclusively for international students). But we will of course also need the help of colleagues and translators from across the globe. To that end, we plan to announce in our upcoming issue the Jules Chametzky Prize for Literary Translation, to be awarded annually to the best poem and prose translations published within our pages. To put it as simply as possibly, our goal is to publish great writing from across the globe, from writers we haven’t yet heard of. The Voice of America has been broadcasting non-stop ever since the early days of the Cold War. MR believes that our country instead needs to sit down, take some time, and listen.

Edwin Gentzler, with Ellen Watson, has been named translation co-editor for the journal.

Please forward to interested parties. For questions please contact Jim Hicks, editor, Massachusetts Review, at jhicks@smith.edu.

Literary Translation as Peripheral

So the theme of this year's MLA is translation, and it's going to be an embarrassment of riches for those of us who are both interested in the academy and in translation. The current president picked the theme because she is concerned with the place translation and translation studies have held in the academy (or rather, the places in which they are elided, I might say). And thank goodness someone is.

But it concerns me still that a behemoth like MLA might not be able to help but marginalize the work of literary translation and literary translation studies (from here on out, I'm going to just assume the 'literary). I differentiate between the two because I think it's in part this duality that makes translation a difficult subject to broach in the over-compartmentalized and departmentalized university system. Translation is, among other things, about half creative writing and half critical theory. So Translation Studies tends to get the theory - and that includes of course a range of other multi-disciplinary concerns outside of straight "translation theory" or even practitioner theory, including literary theory, linguistics, philosophy, the broad range of cultural studies and more narrowly cultural sociology, history, economics, etc. And Creative Writing, if they have the resources for it, can include the translation practice and the compositional creative elements. So where does that leave Translation? Split and scattered across the academy.

For example, where to people go to study or teach translation? There are very few departments, most translation studies programs are incorporated into other, larger departments like Comparative Literature, English or the relevant area studies program. Job listings for universities that support or are developing translation programs tend to require training or interest in translation as secondary to a primary "authorized" academic interest, again within one of those departments. In this sense, translation is always a subsidiary peripheral activity. It is secondary to the 'real' qualifications and the 'real' work of the department. Supplementary.

Those programs that exist explicitly for the study of translation tend to be broad programs that address the practical issues of interpretation, language acquisition, technical and business translation and perhaps, but briefly, literary translation. Literary translation is not a practical career, generally speaking, so these more technical programs rightly don't devote the same amount of attention to its practice and study.

And maybe this is the root of some of the difficulty. Literary translators into English very, very rarely make a living as a literary translator. Those that I know either teach (again, in another subject with some potential for crossover), or are freelance non-literary translators. Or like me, came from publishing. So when a field of cultural production, to steal a sociological framework, is not even undervalued but literally unvalued as an economic practice, what incentive is there for it's continued practice or study?

It seems similar, though I'm not familiar enough with the history, to the problem that creative writing faced in the middle of the last century. The solution then was the establishment of the workshop format, relying on the Universities to sponsor and support the creative activities that were being undertaken. And really, this is not such a new model. The patronage model has been in place for centuries, but only recently has it been institutionalized rather than individual patronages.

Of course, even if the workshop system was the solution, and I'm not sure that it is, it doesn't resolve that creative/critical divide that literary translation so simply ignores. Doing both is the obvious move, and some academics do, but eventually, it seems, by sacrificing the primacy of one for the other. And the one that is sacrificed is inevitably the undervalued practice of translation. Academics are happy to have translated texts to study, to teach, and to reference. But there is no system of reward that compensates for the work it takes to produce those texts, much less one to train qualified translators to become the producers of those texts. Those academics that attempt to include these elements when they can are often unable to.

All of this has been said before, more thoroughly I'm sure. I think, though, that until the discourse is developed into a valued and positive gain-driven vocabulary for literary translation, there is going to be no real change in how translation is incorporated as secondary (tercery, or at all) to the established disciplines of academic study and teaching.

Meta-poetics

Not that I really know anything about meta-poetics, but I've been finding similarities in my reading and translating habits of late that lead me to suspect it might be something I'm interested in thinking more about. For example, the titles of some books I've been reading and translating recently are Armando Roa Vial's El apocalipsis de las palabras [The Apocalypse of Words], La dicha de enmudecer [Joyful Falling Silent - which I'm not totally satisfied with yet, because "dicha" sounds so much like "dicho" from the verb "decir" which means "to say" and that's just lost in it's literal rendering as "joyful"] and Efráin Barquero's El poema en el poema [The Poem in the Poem]. Poems from the first book are titled things like "De la palabra en la palabra" [On the Word in the Word] and "De la palabra recordar" [On the Word Remember].

It's not quite as simple as that, anyway. There's an inter-literary bent to Roa Vial that keeps me spinning - half the book is a response to Browning's Sordello, the other half invokes poets like Joseph Borowski and Victor Holan. It's rather staggering, really, to think about all this poetry talking between all these languages.

And maybe that's the relationship between what I'm thinking might fall under the category of meta (but not in a post-modern sort of way, or maybe in a meta-post-modern sort of way). Maybe the difference is that here the meta is not narrative but poetic. Maybe poetry has always contained the possibility of meta in a less self conscious way than narrative. Language in poetry is more expansive in some ways - the words take on their own shadows and slip outside of the regular usage. In my mind this is what is meant when someone praises a prose writer as being "poetic" - the expansion of the possibility of language.

In these poems the language is expansive and slippery, sonorous and silent. It's conscious but not self-conscious. Intentional without too much intent. That is the meta that fascinates me.

There's also a post in here - but not the post of post-modern. The word post itself attracts me...it's temporal duality at once before and after the word it modifies (as a prefix it literally and semantically comes before the word, but as a referent it signs an afterward). Now that I'm thinking of the word, I notice the orange button at the bottom of the screen telling me to "publish post" which is another interesting usage of the word. I'll have to come back to post.

It just seems like language becomes slippery in these works - a slipping that invites you to consider that none of this language means anything without all other possible language and as readers limited by mortality and capacity we are unable to access those possibilities. At the same time, poets, translators, writers of these words are equally isolated from the expansive potential of their words, which puts language into a very threatening role. It can mock you, disparage you, cheat you, betray you just as easily as it can open up for you the spaces between meaning.

But really, I should be researching and not reflecting on my strange and randomly consistent reading habits.

Call for Papers: Sociological Turn in Translation

It struck me a few months ago while I was looking for a book by Pierre Bourdieu that had come up in a discussion related to poetry and translation that I was deeply interested in sociology. Initially, I thought I was interested in literary theory, but when that turned out to be a whole lot of psycho-deconstruction-analysis (yes, I'm generalizing unfairly here) I determined what I was actually interested in was much more specifically constructed. The theories that I get passionate about are the ones that relate to the world directly - what literature and poetry and translation can do to construct identity (identity politics) in a post-colonial, post-national, globalized context. The power of poetry. The political import of art. Etc.

Where this seems to keep recurring in my reading is in cultural sociology, and so apropos of these revelations in my personal life the internet has again delivered a timely notice to me.

----------------------------------------------------------
Conference Announcement and Call for Papers
“The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies”
The Fifth Biennial Conference of the
American Translation & Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA)
April 22-24, 2010
New York University (NYU), New York, NY

The American Translation & Interpreting Studies Association invites you to attend their fifth biennial conference, “ATISA V: The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies.” The conference will be held on the campus of New York University in the heart of New York City on April 22-24, 2010.

ATISA encourages, supports, and furthers the study of translation and interpreting studies by disseminating knowledge and research relevant to all areas of language mediation, speci­fically translation and interpreting, regardless of discipline. Translation and interpreting studies here means the study of all forms of communication between languages, including translation, interpreting, localization, bilingual text revision, cross-cultural communication, and the various
specializations, tools, and technologies involved in such activities.

Presentations focusing on the act of communicating between human languages from a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, including translation studies, interpretation studies, applied linguistics, cognitive science, cultural studies, ethnology, sociology, anthropology, education, and other social sciences are welcomed. Presentations must follow the standards of scholarship of their respective disciplines, and they must show the connection of their work to Translation and
Interpreting Studies.

ATISA V promises to be an exciting conference where new ideas are generated, disciplinary boundaries are crossed, and research on all aspects of translation and interpreting, from cognition and social action to teaching and learning, is shared.

Translation and Interpreting scholars are invited to submit 200-300 word proposals for individual papers in Word as an attachment. (Please include your contact information in the body of your e-mail, not in the file. Name your file with the first three letters of your paper title)
Presentations on all aspects of translation and interpreting studies are welcome. Papers will be divided into sections on translation/interpreting theory, research, pedagogy, and technology.
Presentations will be 20 minutes in length, followed by discussion. There will be sessions Friday morning, Friday afternoon, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon.

The deadline for receipt of proposals is October 15, 2009.

Send Proposals To: Dr. Claudia Angelelli, Chair, ATISA Scientific Committee, at claudia.angelelli@sdsu.edu

Information: For more information about the conference, visit the conference registration page at
http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=e04b01c9-4500-4566-bc12-63bb7d4e2369

Questions: E-mail to: translationconf2010@nyu.edu

Perishable Publishing

It struck me while writing the title for this post that "perishable publishing" would be a great zen-like e-zine name - the ephemeral quality of web publishing speaking for itself....but that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about that oft-touted phrase for academics (or aspiring academics like me) "publish or perish." I'm thinking about this now particularly as it seems as though there will be some future for the project I spent the last two years working on, negotiating rights for, etc. I did this for the love of the work, but also with the idea that I could share my love of the work with a wider audience. Which requires a publisher.

One of the main topics of conversation in my translation discussions has been on the topic of publishing. While I may not be the most published person out there, I have been on both sides of the game, so to speak; working as an editor for Arrowsmith Press, Zoland Poetry and a number of other wonderful independent presses for many years, and also submitting my work with many rejections and a few acceptances. I've now had original and translated work published and let me tell you, it's much much harder to do with translated work.

First, the rights. ALTA and PEN both have wonderful publications, more like how-to guides, on things like "breaking into print," developing a contract, "promoting your translation," etc. The ground rules are laid out and free to download for anyone who might be interested. But there are some things gained by experience that I have been thinking about, which might be useful for those just beginning to think about publishing.

1. It helps to know the editors. Really, this isn't nearly as nepotistic as it sounds. You absolutely don't need to be friends with editors to get published. But it does help to know about the editors of the places you're submitting. It's kind of like dating - you want to find someone who is a good match. It doesn't make sense to submit translations of Chinese fiction to an editor that is primarily interested in Latin American poetry. It likewise doesn't make sense to submit lyrical poetry to a publisher who is primarily interested in political art. A good way to come up with a list of potential places to submit is to make a list of the journals and presses that publish the books you like to read. Look on your bookshelf for publishers - most likely they will share your tastes.

2. It does actually help to know the editors, or someone else who knows them, or someone who works somewhere in publishing. Literary publishing is a small world, literary translation publishing even moreso. If you're fortunate enough to be in an area where there are events centered around literary translation (readings, for example, or visiting writer programs) go to the events. Talk to people there. It's like networking, only these people are actually interested in the same things you are, and are probably doing fantastic work of their own that you will also be interested in. And you may get a lead - someone who is interested specifically in what you're doing, or knows of someone who is. If you're really lucky, you might also get an introduction, but at the very least you'll make friends with similar interests and learn about avenues you might not have already considered.

3. Research is key. Reading widely could be considered a pre-requisite for work as a literary translator. A general love of world literature predicates all work as a translator, and so there are likely a variety of world literatures represented on your bookshelf. The same approach for finding a new book could be used for finding a potential publisher. Go to a bookstore or library and look at the literary journals for those who publish work in translation. Or look at publishers backlists online. ALTA has a list of publishers (and journals) that publish works in translation, but because of the changing landscape of publishing it can't be comprehensive. Small Press Distribution, Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and Poets & Writers all have lists of presses (though you can't search for translation specifically) that are worth browsing through.

4. Submit. Actually do it - it's good practice, and helps develop a thick skin. And you might be accepted, or get a thorough, and much coveted, personal rejection that can help you improve your work. The way I do it is aim high: start with the three or four places I would most love to be published, and then each time I get rejected I submit to three or four more. Some pieces are accepted right away, and some have been accepted after 15 or more submissions. Some haven't been accepted at all. But the practice of writing query and cover letters alone is worthwhile. And a great place to keep track of all of these submissions (because the worst thing to do is submit the same piece to the same journal by accident) is Duotrope.

Well, there are many more concerns in submitting translations for publication than original work. I may return to the subject, but I think for now I must return to Derrida, Des tours de babel, and thinking about the loftier aspects of translation.

Swallowed Whole

So English got it's millionth word today which is, rather strangely, not a word but a phrase: Web 2.0. What's interesting is the methodology, and debate, over what a word is and whether they can be counted at all. From hearsay, it takes use by three different authors in three different literary or scholarly publications to get a word included in the Oxford English Dictionary, which currently has 600,000 entries. This particular count is based on complex mathematical formulas that I can't pretend to understand.

OK, so what does Web 2.0 mean for words, then? We all know and probably have made use of some online linguistic reference, the OED online, Merriam-Webster or even Dictionary.com. These are more or less static representations of the print medium - they don't take advantage of the interactivity of Web 2.0. But WordNik.com does.

WordNik.com synthesizes some other online dictionaries for multiple and layered definitions, but goes far far beyond including (sometimes off-base) usage examples, pictures from Flicker, feeds from Twitter including the sought-for word, sound recordings (and the ability to record and include your own), synonyms, antonyms, and even statistics on how often you can expect to see the word. In other words, it provides a comprehensive if momentary picture of the current usage of the word.

Look up "translation" for example. There are 14 potnential definitions, though none of them are wholly satisfactory for me. This is not wikipedia, it is not user-defined definitions, though there are wiki elements to the page (like the possibility to add your own note following the definitions provided). Scrolling down, from a Twitter feed I learned that Google has launched a translation toolkit today, intended to help humanize machine translation through interaction with wikipedia. I've filed this away for further exploration, and continue looking down where I find a list of synonyms and antonyms and the etymology. Flicker pictures are understandably obscure for this entry, and I'm told that I can expect to see this word twice a month (which would make sense for the average browser, but for me it's closer to twice an hour). I can also see that the word was used heavily in the 1860s and the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, no one has tagged this word.

What's truly wonderful about this is that it fully explores the potential of user interaction. Logged in, I can suggest other synonyms, antonyms, even rhymes - and that's just for starters. It is not going to take the place of print dictionaries for long-term authority, but much like Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia, it may force established ways of thinking about language to shift towards popular usage and multimedia elaboration.

But search on Wordnik.com for "Web 2.0" and it comes up with nothing. So by whose standards is it a word, or is it just not there yet? The creator of the Global Language Project, responsible for the formula, criteria and count of English words, says the project is about English as a language of resiliency, expansion and populism. Words appear and become commonly used all the time, and those words, that flexibility of language, is what makes English such an important global language.

"English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole," he said. "Other languages translate."

It is the ability to assimilate new words and new usages with dizzying speed (only accelerated by Web 2.0 interactivity) that makes English such a powerful tool. And perhaps this is also the use of translating into English - to expand the linguistic and symbolic possibilities of the language and allow it to reach further and more significantly than it has before. To encompass more, without subsuming it. To adapt.

ALTA on YouTube

I only recently became aware of the LiteraryTranslaion Channel on YouTube, which has several videos from the ALTA Conference in 2008 including interviews with translators about their careers and work.

Summer Translation Study

So I'm compiling news and announcements for the bi-annual ALTA newsletter - a delightful project that I'm thrilled to be helping with. It's amazing how much translation information and conversation is out there once you begin looking around.

Anyways, one of the tasks is paring down the information to the most timely and relevant. This means lots of things are getting left out - in part because deadlines have passed, etc. So because I think they're interesting things to know about/keep in mind for future years, I'm going to put them here.

These are some summer translation programs that I've come across:

The Translation Research Summer School (TRSS), a joint initiative of three British universities and the Centre for Translation at the Hong Kong Baptist University, organizes an annual two-week course in one of the partner institutions in the UK and an annual two-week course at Hong Kong Baptist University, offering intensive research training in translation and intercultural studies for prospective researchers in the field. Collaborating in the UK Summer School are the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, the Centre for Intercultural Studies at University College London (UCL), and the Translation Studies Graduate Programme, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

Nida School for Translation Studies (NSTS) in Misano adriatico (Rimini), Italy.
The NSTS is a program of the E.A.Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship at the American Bible Society. Its mission is to support advanced training and research into translation studies (understood as inclusive of the history and practice of Bible translation). Supporting institutions include the Translation Center at UMass-Amherst, Istituto San Pellegrino, the Society of Biblical Literature, The United Bible Societies (UBS), and SIL International. The theme of the 2009 session is “Translation and Culture.”

British Center for Literary Translation Summer School

The one week program brings together writers and translators for literary translation workshops, round tables, seminars and readings. Workshops are offered into English from Chinese, French, Portuguese, German and Spanish and from English into Italian. In each workshop participants work with a writer in residence under the guidance of a workshop leader who is an experienced literary translator. Limited funding is available.

Not Lost

A New York Times piece on a Christopher Hampton's play 'The Philanthropist' ends with a wonderful reminder of how important translation is for literature and the arts:

I think translation is very underappreciated and under-rewarded. I feel quite strongly that translation is performing an incredibly valuable service for us all. As often as not, when you read a translated novel, you have to search to find the name of the translator. Of course the translator is the person who is directly mediating the language to you and giving you access to all these worlds that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to enter.

And of course, the first comment on the story says in a contemptuously backhanded agreement:

poetry is, of course, what is “lost in translation,” and good translators (like every good artist) knows that their work will inevitably fail to convey the full beauty and truth of the original (in the case of the artist, the original being the kernel of an idea for a work that is alway better than whatever gets made). but where would we be without wonderful translators like hampton, who give us worlds that would otherwise remain completely inaccessible? translation is an art — an interpretive art (like acting, directing, dancing, singing, playing an instrument) but an art nonetheless. here’s to translators!

Though the article was posted two weeks ago, I couldn't help but add my disgruntled .02:

Though another commenter quips Frost's famous derision of translating poetry, that it is what is lost in translation, I think this view is often misunderstood. I think he means is that great translation requires a great artist, a poet, to re-form the poetry in the new language. Those who think that translations are always and inescapably inferior and derivative tend to be rather limited in their view of what a translation can achieve. It's no surprise to anyone that there are losses in the translation of literature - sounds, rhymes, meters that simply have no equivalent in the target language. But most people who have not thought overmuch about the practice don't realize there are equal gains - in sound, rhyme, meter, and even, sometimes, in allusion and elsewhere.

This history of this inferior and derivative idea of translation actually comes from translating religious texts - that the original was sacred and divine and that any transference of it was necessarily inferior. We recognize now the crippling absurdity of that idea - especially since it came to bear when the Christian Bible was already in Latin, having been translated already.

Many of the greatest poets in recent history, Pablo Neruda for one, believed that translation could actually improve upon the original. And I think he was right - a great line from his most famous book, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, reads: "El amor es tan corto, el olvido es tan largo." It is much tighter in English: "Love is so short, forgetting is so long." The anaphora is clearer, the symmetry of phrasing emphasized by the loss of the articles, unnecessary in English.

The myopic view that a translation is necessarily inferior to an original work is what prevents translators from being recognized as artists, necessary for the success of global literature. It is what prevents translators from being fairly compensated for their work, and what prevents acknowledgment that without them we would have a very limited and sad reading world indeed.

Translator, Trader?

There is a fantastic new review of an essay on translating literature over at The Complete Review today. Not only am I constantly impressed by the number of foreign-language books reviewed (either in translation or untranslated) over there, but the insight with which he addresses not only the merits of the work but the translation as well. This review deals with a new translation of That Mad Ache by Françoise Sagan, translated by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

What is especially interesting is that the book on has two covers - a front and back. The front is for the text, the back, when turned upside down, is the cover of the long essay on translation by Hofstadter included with the text. I haven't read it, but having read the review I think it's safe to say that I will likely disagree with his discussion of translation in major parts, I would not translate Bonjour tristesse as Howdy, Blues, and don't feel the need to elucidate texts as a translator - that is the job of the critic, teacher or student. In any case, having not read it I was still struck by the magnitude of giving the translator not only so much page space in the book, but his own cover. And, according to The Complete Review, listing him on the front not as a translator but co-author.

Which immediately made me think of Russel Valentino's excellent post at Words Without Borders a week or so ago. He discusses the debate over the National Translation Award's new eligibility requirements that the translator of a literary work be listed on the cover. This, he seems to say, and I agree, needlessly punishes translators who have little to no control over what a publisher may decide. Not only that, it is, he says, a misguided attempt at educating a reading public about the necessity and pervasiveness of translation. I agree with his conclusion that this kind of education should be happening in universities and schools - where it is most effective and appropriate.

The issue from the publisher's side is that translation is scary to the reading public, and being aware that a book is translated will make readers choose not to read the book. As Valentino says, this is merely heresay, with no real data to back up this claim. You can also posit readers like me, who have several 'favorite' translators and regularly search for books translated by them not only because of their skill in the art of translation, but because of their execellent tastes in literature. If Margaret Sayers Peden translates a book, chances are I'm going to like it, because I share her taste in literature. In any case, there is no current way to determine what effect the prominent display of a translator's name on the cover of a book has on its sales.

Which makes it more interesting then that Hofstadter is credited as being a co-author. His approach to translation, on the freer side of the spectrum, certainly allows for the possibility of crediting in this manner. The idea, frankly, turns me off. It would be one thing if he worked with the original author on the translation, which doesn't appear to be the case here. But even then, I would be skeptical of a claim of co-authorship. There is an analogy here in music, perhaps. A contemporary conductor re-interpreting a Mozart symphony does not then claim to have co-composed it. Conducting itself is an art of interpretation, of translating written notes to sound, and is respected as such. Great conductors are acknowledged as masters of an art form that is seperate from the act of composing (though of course one does not preclude the other, just as being a translator does not preclude one from also writing). Even in arranging music for new combinations of instruments one does not claim authorship of the original music. It is an adaption, seperate from but indebted to the genius of the original author.

Looser translation tactics should also be seen in this light. And so while it is imperative that translation become more acceptable to engage academically, as Valentino suggests, and that translators are given credit and respect for the practice of their art, there are limits to how much ownership one can claim of the original text.

I'm delighted that the translator's afterward in this book is so substantial - I think this is something that publishers, should they choose to, could add to the reading and understanding of a text. But I'm wary of the heavy-handed claims being made. A sure way to lose respect for the art of translating is to infringe into the art of authoring without warrent.

The Husk

Reading over at Harriet a post by Martin Earl I came across the following three statements, that, taken together, seemed to me somewhat contradictory.

It also could have been the denaturing process of translation itself, which gives us, at best, the husk of poems. But it was the husk I needed, not the grace notes. I needed a new conceptual platform.

Young North American poets of the early 21st century must come to understand that the English language has become the global language, and this global idiom comes in two basic forms: hegemonic and co-opted; that is, English has become a language which embodies both power and the struggle against power, both the standardization and the defense of the particular.

It is our duty now, since English has become the language of globalization, to continually recycle all of its registers, to shift and shuffle them, to be at once plain spoken and baroque, as need be, to keep the language exercised, lean and honest.

I was glad to see the discussion in the comments turn toward translation, because I was dismayed by the first statement above, especially in light of the conclusion - our responsibility now as speakers of a language of globalization, war and consumerism.

It seems to me that in large part the assumption that nothing of value can move between languages is a result of linguistic monopoly, and an archaic one at that, coming from a previous language of empire and religion, Latin. Replaced by the religion of consumerism and the empire of free market, English supplants Latin but the premise is the same. Translation threatens the supremacy of the language of state, and therefore is classified as at best inferior and at worst traitorous. He mentions in a comment that he's studied the 'art of translation' - and I do believe it is an art, at least when translating literary works - and so it is even stranger to me that he would reduce it to failed derivative reproduction.

While I accept that there are necessary sacrifices made during the translation process, there are also gains. These gains are not only in the sound, syntax, image and structure of the poem (as they can be, at times) but in the expansion of our horizons as readers and writers, and importantly the de-centering of our native language as the only legitimate producer of culture and art.

Translation, I think, is an inherently subversive act that can throw into sharp relief the bloated egotism of our linguistic assumptions. To use his term, it is through translation that we can perhaps un-co-opt poetic expression.

Literature Across Frontiers

They have a spectacular list of links to publishers and organizations that support literature and translation. According to Three Percent:

LAF represents approximately twenty cultural organizations from across Europe that provide translation subsidies to publishers interested in translating their works. In addition, these organizations frequently produce pamphlets and other promotional materials to spread the word about their literature.

Disappointed Potential: The House of Paper

This is one of those books with vast potential that is left untapped, and ultimately disappointed. The premise of the story is spectacular, Borgesian, intriguing and mysterious: a book encased in cement with an inscription to an unknown person from a recently deceased professor is sent to her office and discovered by a colleague. He decides to try to find the sender of the book (no return address) based on the somewhat mysterious inscription, and return the book.

The set up is there,...more This is one of those books with vast potential that is left untapped, and ultimately disappointed. The premise of the story is spectacular, Borgesian, intriguing and mysterious: a book encased in cement with an inscription to an unknown person from a recently deceased professor is sent to her office and discovered by a colleague. He decides to try to find the sender of the book (no return address) based on the somewhat mysterious inscription, and return the book.

The set up is there, and the scope could be grand, labyrinthine, compelling and significant. But the short format makes the story seem hurried rather than unfolding, and dictated rather than narrated. The exquisite insights into the mind and heart of a bibliophile, or even just an avid reader, are plunked in as though the story is being tied up with significant meaning, instead of letting the meaning evolve through the story. It reminded me from the outset of The Shadow of the Wind, a complex mystery centered around the obscure author of a hidden book, but The House of Paper falls significantly short of what it could be.

Perhaps that's what's most frustrating about reading this book - that it could be infinitely more than it is. That the story could be experienced by the reader, rather than relayed by a rather monotonous narrator whose voice (perhaps because of poor translation) sounds no different than the character that tells the bulk of the story. Instead, it is a series of epigraphs linked together by a skeletal and merely sketched plot. Though eminently quotable, it amounts to little more than an excuse for these nuggets of wisdom about the significance of books and libraries in our lives.

The translation itself is in sore need of revision and editing, and reads more like a draft than a final version. The clumsy language obscures whatever rhythm and beauty may have been present in the original.

It is worth reading though, if only for the gift of its potential. And worth expanding upon, should the author and publisher see fit to do so. I would read this happily as a full-length novel rather than merely a novella.

Giving Thanks

Last year I was incredibly fortunate to receive a grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. As part of my responsibilities, I needed to send them a completed version of my project, along with a letter describing how the grant helped me in completing it.

Writing the letter, I realized that, while the grant was incredibly generous and had a significant financial impact on my ability to work on the project, perhaps even more significant was the impact on my confidence as a writer and translator. As a relatively young translator, with no major publications as yet, it's difficult sometimes to believe that my work has any value outside of my immediate circle of friends, family, mentors and colleagues. It's difficult to remember that it is to bring the work to the world outside of my direct interactions that I'm doing the work in the first place.

Receiving the support of an institution to which I have no direct connection was perhaps the greatest assurance I could have gotten that not only is the work I've selected worthwhile, but my own translations are as well. It is not only the completion of this project that this grant has supported, but my ability to take on new projects with assurance, and to continue to pursue my passion with confidence in my ability to succeed.

Language v. Culture

"Reconciling language and culture is both a science and an art." So ends the NPR featurette on "The Art of Translation" which examins several issues that arise in the process of literary translation. And it is both a science, in the sense of languages being a science, and an art in the sense of creative writing. This bridge that literary translation creates between the critical and the creative, the objective and the subjective, is what perhaps initially drew me into its practice. But it is more than a science and an art, it is and has to be a love.

I was told in one of my first translation workshops with renouned poet and translator Martha Collins that there aren't very many young literary transltors. It seemed odd to me at the time that any craft would have much to do with the age of its practicioners. But it occurs to me that perhaps it has something to do with that requirement of love. As a creative writer, the love I hold for my own work is somewhat selfish - it's hard to get real distance from it, to seperate it from my intentions and emotions. As a translator, the love I bear for the work I'm translating is significantly different. It's not that I don't feel intimately attached to the work - I certainly do - possessive sometimes, proprietary over the original. But that to devote yourself, your creative energies, entirely to someone else's work requires a kind of selfless love that comes with perspective and time.

The NPR story correctly identifies several issues of literary translation as meaning, sound, cultural context. But there are some worrying statements: "A good translation needs to be true to the original and able to stand on its own for a new audience." While I tend to be on the faithful side of the translation spectrum in my own work, it's absurd to say there is no room for more experimental translations, ones that intentionally aren't "true to the original," like Lowell's famous imitation-translations of Akhmatova. Neruda believed that translators could improve upon the original. And being true to the original doesn't necessarily make the translation good - not by a long shot. Trots are the primary example, but I've read stilted, 'true' translations of verse into verse. This is where standing "on its own" comes into play, but what does that really mean?

While I'm lothe to attemt to define what makes a translation 'good,' it seems to me to have something vital to do with power. The effect that the piece has on its reader, or rather, the effect that the piece has on its translator, must be conveyed as faithfully as possible. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the syntax, grammar, word choice, sound, rhythm, etc. also have to be. These are the choices a translator makes, what to sacrifice, what to gain. And the cumulative effect is what makes a translation good or not.

This myriad of possible choices, an endless permutation of decisions, is what makes multiple translations not only possible but in many cases necessary. Compare the three Victor Hugo excerpts on the NPR article, and find subtlely different takes on the character. Each one may shed light on a different part of the book. Even moreso with drastically different versions. As Bea Basso says in the interview, each choice influences the next step, so the intentions of the translator are insinuated into each line, each word of the text. It is inevitable, though not undesirable so long as the readers are aware of the fact that they are coming to the work through the lens of another reader. Being aware of the possibility of different interpretations of an original text, different equally valid translations, encourages a deeper critical engagement with the text, inspires readers to move from a passive receptor to an active participant in the work.

And here is the issue with that closing quote. Translation isn't about "reconciling language and culture" as though they are two opposing forces working against one another. Language serves culture, culture serves language - they are overlapping subsets of a greater whole. Translation can't and shouldn't view language and culture as obstacles to overcome, or warring parties to mediate between. They are the very medium of the art form, the materials from which both the original and the translation are shaped.

Spider Curtains

Recently I got involved with a filmmaker who is doing a project on the translation of poetry. I've long been interested in the interplay between poetry and film, since both as an art form rest so heavily on expression of image. Her project is examining the aspects of poetry that are able to be translated, and will consist of several translations of the same poem being read over sequences of images. I'm thrilled to be involved - especially since the poet is Enrique Molina, a brilliant 20th century Argentinian poet.

So I started working on my translation today, and was humbled by the language in this poem. Much of what I've translated has been prose-poetry, or more generally approachable lyrical poetry. This piece, besides the modismos (word usages specific to the author's country) and elevated diction, is mostly lacking in punctuation. It makes it difficult in some cases to determine the grammar of each phrase, and if I happen to find myself moving too quickly I end up with delightful neologisms like "spider curtains." The phrase, properly punctuated (or prosaically punctuated) would be "...spiders, curtains..." But as I've always found when working through someone else's language, these mistranslations that are often as rich as the intended meaning.

Spider curtains: webs in an abandonded house grown so thick that they diffuse the light; finely wroght lace curtains with a web-like pattern; the image is layered with potential. It is only by suspending my own voice, my own sense of logic and structure and image that I can genuinely translate, and it leaves me open to words and pairings I wouldn't have come to on my own. That, perhaps moreso than any other reason, is the joy in translation - the being rendered open by language, and to language.