4/29 Readings - Kelly Haddad

 Bellos' foreignization article presented thoughtful points on different methods to maintain the readers' awareness that the texts they are reading are rooted in entirely separate languages and cultures. One of his first points detailed a strategy that I have been using myself, which is leaving certain words in the source language to maintain tone. This not only preserves the original and complete meaning of the word, but serves to anchor the translation to the original, especially since the content of my source depends heavily on the culture associated with the original language/country. Bellos mentioned that some techniques can seem odd in practice, but I personally have no problem with something sounding eccentric in a translation, and I feel that it can add interest, providing roots for the reader without metaphorically breaking the spell of the story. 

I personally didn't find the Lahiri book all that engaging; for me, book covers are more interesting from a design perspective. I will say, somewhat ironically, that I don't particularly love the cover for this book, and although that would not dissuade me from it if the book had a good reputation in terms of content, it would add to it. In this respect I feel book covers can only add, not so much take away from, their book. Covers also matter even less to me in an academic setting, and I would pay more attention to the cover of a book I was reading for personal reasons. 

The Chip Kidd video may possibly be my favorite TED talk ever. This was an incredibly fun and engaging watch, and like I said I'm personally very interested in design/typography so I loved how he laid out his process for each example. 

4/29 Readings- Claire Kapitan

 

In Jhumpa Lahiri's essay, "The Clothing of Books," I loved how she explored the definitive, fixed nature of book covers, and therefore why she struggles with them. Her books are "no longer wild, coarse, malleable." The text or piece of art is made into an object---something that is published, distributed, and sold. The designers behind these book covers are concerned with how people see the book, "what they think of it, what they want from it." I liked how she expressed how the packaging seemed rigged somehow, even if it is accurate or essential. 

These ideas are in conversation with some of the things Chip Kidd brought up in his TEDTalk on book cover design. Kidd made the point that the book jacket is a distillation, or a haiku of the story in a sense. It is art, but it is also business. It has to grab someone's attention, without being too heavy-handed. It was interesting to work through some of his projects with him, seeing what he was given and how he created the cover. It is delicate work, and often unsatisfactory. 

Lastly, in David Bellos' "Fictions of the Foreign," he explored a kind of paradox in translation: the effort to foreignize something, and the very theory of foreignness in translation, is always constructed within the target language, and therefore is shaped by what that culture deems as 'foreign.' Even attempts to preserve authenticity and bring the reader closer to the source text end up reflecting the translator's perceptions, rather than the original itself. I liked how Bellos explored multiple vantage points when considering foreignization: how it isn't easy to represent the foreignness of foreign languages with complete seriousness or without it feeling awkward or artificial, but also how translated texts that are conscious of foreignization can teach willing and interested readers about the sound, feel, and syntactic properties of the original. Moments of friction or unusual language can also be very compelling and beautiful, from my point of view. 

4/29 Readings

The Hilarious Art of Book Design by Chip Kidd

I watched this video for Professor Elliott's Japanese Translation Workshop last semester and enjoyed it very much. I think what struck me at the time which I wasn't able to fully articulate was that my respect for his craft was not so much because of how much it enhanced the books as physical objects, but that his labours were in spite of the fact that likely no one would ever know the pains he took to design the book covers based on elements or the atmosphere of the novels. In that sense it feels a lot like literary translation: a casual reader who has not delved into a preface (if the translator is permitted to write one at all) will probably never know all the little decisions and challenges the translator had to overcome in their work. After all, to the one who does not or would not read the text in the original side-by-side with the translation, most translations exist as entirely independent texts. There's something both frustrating and poetic about that somehow. Watching the video, I noticed how much more interesting the covers seemed to me after I'd heard Chip Kidd explain the process by which it came to be—maybe my translations would seem more interesting to people too if they let me explain my process!

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

I was surprised to hear how much she hated one of the covers of her books; did she not have any say in the design, or did she feel like she hadn't been in the position to protest? It rings true to me that a cover becomes a part of the book—when I picture books that I've read (particularly in physical form) I can see their covers as well and those designs have become intertwined with my enduring impressions of them. But I do think much like names (of people), it ends up being your experience of getting to know the entity beneath the surface that shapes your impression of their external coverings than the other way around. My copy of "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett was a uniform green with no illustrations, the paper was thin and the text was small, but I loved it anyway and maybe it was because I went in with no influence on my imaginings of the characters, or the grand manor they lived in or the magnificent garden, that I enjoyed it as much as I did. 

The Paradox of the "Foreign-soundingness" by David Bellos

This very much echoes the point or at least the principles that Emma Ramadan put forth in her lecture and I extremely agree. I feel like in the past year I've been tossed around in the sea that is foreignisation-domestication discourse in translation and I have finally landed here where David Bellos is. I think leaving some of the original in translation, with enough guidance for the unacquainted reader, can give it a flavour of the original language which makes a translation worth reading for the value of cultural exploration (if all you want is a detective novel and the French have the best detective novels not on account of them being French, then I suppose it doesn't matter if in translation it reads like an English detective novel if all you want is a good mystery?) Although, of course, it then comes down to individual judgment calls translators have to make when it comes to deciding what is left in the original language and I'm sure there will be no end to that debate either. 

Ellie Wells 4/29

Out of the three works we read for this week, I think that I liked the TED talk the most. It was entertaining and interesting, and I think that his argument was very good. After watching that, I agreed with him that the art of a book cover was extremely important to the book as a whole. However, I do think that he over-exaggerates the effect that a book cover can have on a person. Speaking from personal experience, while book covers do make me pick up or put down a book, based on if I like it or not, I do not think that it often indicates the whole concept of the book just from an image. Maybe this is just my personal opinion, but I don't think I would do that much analyzing of a book cover before opening it. I care more about the content on the inside. I understand that this is his life's work, and so he thinks it is monumentally important, but I just do not get the same effect from book covers. 

However, I also don't one hundred percent agree with the other work about book covers either. I do think that they are important to the extent that you can get a general sense of what it is about, and pictures lure people in no matter what. Though, I do think the author's point is interesting. Thinking about it, I do think that it may make all literature more equal if one were to remove book covers across the board. Then people would have to focus on the story itself and not how fancy or nice their cover looks. And I agree, that you cannot encapsulate a whole work with simply one image. 

I just don't think that the book cover makes or breaks a work for me, and therefore they still should be a part of our reading experience. 

I also think that the work "Fictions of the Foreign" is getting too into the weeds about translation. I think at some point we have to accept that a perfect translation does not exist, and so these theories are all just personal preference. While I agree that some amount of foreignization is good, I also believe that keeping the readability of the work in tact is also important.  

Reading Response 04/29 -- Lachlan Bowden

 The Chip Kidd TED talk was a lot of fun to watch. While a few of the jokes came on a bit fast and thick, I appreciated hearing the insight and experience Kidd has in the book designing industry. The question posed, “What do stories look like?” was really interesting. While his statement, all books need a face, felt like he was trying to sell his services, I appreciated the sentiment. If anything, I am more attracted to books when there is little to no imagery on the cover. I do appreciate that this in itself is a face. And also, the synthesis of the Jurassic Park icon was fascinating. 

David Bellos’s piece of foreign-sounding phrasing and syntax was incredibly helpful and interesting. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this in terms of my own translation project, and attempting to keep the sentence structure faithful to the original, not necessarily to make it sound more “French”, but because the sentence structure is performing a very specific and important function in the tone of the novel. I appreciated the point that “the natural way to represent the foreignness of foreign utterances is to leave them in the original, in whole or in part.”

I loved Jhumpa Lahiri’s text, being a big fan of her prose beforehand, but hearing her perspective on the imperfection and inherent contradictions present in the process of book art, but also, the power and relevance they hold in the world of literature. I particularly found chapter six, titled “My Jackets” fascinating, and how Lahiri writes about the conflicts between imposed identity against intentional expression. I’m looking forward to discussing this in class and hearing everyone’s thoughts.

Leah Smolin - Readings for 4.29.26

This was critical time to work on the final project and I find this horrible timing for an assignment. 

The Paradox of Foreign-Soundingness - Bellos 

Interesting to learn that “barbarians” comes from Greeks calling non-Greek speakers varvaros or “blah-blah-ers.” 

Bellos says "To sound foreign is to mouth gibberish, to be dim, to be dumb..." I remember years ago a friend saying that if a character in a movie is foreign the writers sometimes give them broken English and equate that with the character being a little dumb. Sometimes this is to make them comedic or innocent and naive. Sometimes the love interest in particular is presented this way, which is perhaps a fantasy that entertains a certain paranoia around romance with someone who's too smart and therefore conniving, sees through you, etc., whereas a nice foreigner will only see your good side. Highly suspect. 

The Clothing of Books - Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri says "A bad cover is like an enemy; I find it hateful." How true. Everyone judges a book by its cover—it's the first information we have about it! I find it personally horrible to imagine writing a book and then hating the cover the publisher chose, and in a just world authors would have to approve the cover. 

I agree with Lahiri that a cover is like a translation, especially in that it can't be too literal. I thought about that a lot while working on the Poets-Painters project, where every poet is matched with a student in the grad painting program to make a collaborative art book. My artist and I agreed it can be hokey when a visual interpretation of writing is just an on-the-nose picture. 

The hilarious art of book design - Kidd

Boy I hate TED talks. Remember when they came out and we were all blown away? A big problem with them is the ethos of perfection (when you submit a TED talk you have to show them, down to every small movement, exactly how you will perform the talk). Something creepy about it. Kidd probably did that wiggle a hundred times.

The apple lesson is funny—just like Lahiri saying a cover can't be too literal. Another issue with TED talks is the crowd just hooting and clapping at everything and falling out of their chairs in admiration. I would be offended if a crowd pandered to me this much. You get the sense they've never left their house or heard a joke before.  

Murakami! Love that Kidd describes the materials and process (vellum paper, and for Crichton the photostat machine). Whoever made that original dinosaur diagram that Kidd traced for Jurassic Park didn't get any credit or royalties huh...a shame. 

"Great art can be great business too." Blah. I find it depressing when people are passionate about marketing.

Readings 4/29- Lauren M

    It was a delight this week to revisit Chip Kidd’s TED Talk. I first encountered it in a Type & Design course I took a few years ago. I wasn’t familiar with My Name is Red before this course, and it was exciting to see the creativity that went into the design of that jacket. Watching this immediately after reading Lahiri’s The Clothing of Books was jarring. It made me wonder about the slant towards male authors in his presentation (I think Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich were the only women represented) and who in the industry gets this kind of care in book design. It’s hard not to despair when thinking of book design, as the art is going by the wayside, as many people now believe they can do serious graphic design with an AI assistant and a basic grasp of Canva. Bellos’s essay “The Paradox of ‘Foreign-Soundingness’” focuses on the packaging of literature over which a translator still has some control (unlike book cover design, unless one independently publishes): namely, how the text sounds. I think there is an interesting thread between all these texts—the fluidity of translation (and I think designing a book cover might be a form of translation, or at least a cousin) has to do with how much dialogue is happening between the two languages. For Lahiri, I wondered if perhaps she was happiest with the cover that included a photograph of her because it helped preserve the essential core of her fiction, which is herself, and therefore created a more fluid dialogue between herself and her audience.