Tim Park’s review of The Vegetarian (2007) begins acknowledging that he lacks the linguistic knowledge for judging the translation in terms of language, yet at the same time, he makes his case based on readership experience, which is always an appropriate question for translation (i.e. does this text work in the target language?). What stood out to me was that his review not only called upon discrepancies in the register and style, noticed by his sharp reading skills, but also the background he gives to the reader: why is this translation relevant, what prizes has it won, who is the translator, who is the author, how is the criticism around this book, a whole outlook on the context in which this translation has been received in.
I also appreciated how he equally distributed accountability between author and translator, just as the cash prize it received, because he recognizes that not everything conflicting has to do with the translator, but the author can also write things that cannot be easily displaced into another language: “If these things look to me like translation niggles, other incongruities are more likely the author’s responsibility” (Parks, 2016). After reading his review, I wondered what his reaction was like when the 2024 Nobel Prize winner was announced: would he have taken anything back from his review?
As for Charse Yun’s article about how Deborah Smith’s translation was received in South Korea, I struggled to understand the critics’ perspective since the concept of ‘betrayal’ has been under revision for a couple of years now, but I guess those conversations have stayed in academic circles and not strayed into the general public. The whole debate of poetic liberty in translation will always raise red flags, due to the almost outdated notion of fidelity, and in this review, I can understand some concerns: especially in tone and voice, where the original is presented as spare, quiet, and the translation is full with adverbs, superlatives and other embellishments. Was Smith trying to take The Vegetarian (2007) into English, worried that readers wouldn’t take interest in it? Is this a decision founded in domestication or the translator’s background, being exposed to certain English literature and thought ‘that’s how literature in English is supposed to sound like’?
And then suddenly we have Deborah Smith herself authoring an article about translation, and suddenly I understood that the problem with the register, style, voice, tone, was a matter of linguistic identity: that poeticized quality in her translation is Deborah, introducing her own voice to mingle with the author’s in delivering a raw narrative that fights back against patriarchy through powerful but beautiful images. It would be dismissive to say I enjoyed reading this case, because I found it to be a fitting example of what we all expect a translation to be (reader, critic, translator).
I will not say much about the Petrarch translations’ prefaces, since I do not want to make this longer so:
A) David Slavitt. You can tell how invested a translator is with the text and its author when they begin to tell a story; the story of the author (his references, his background, his thoughts and beliefs) and the story of the text (how it is composed, where it comes from, what is so special about it). And through all of this is the story of the translation itself (what strategies were used, what was left out, what was included, etc.).
B) Mark Musa. Here the register shifts from storyteller to scholar, since the translator has the authority to speak about the text since he knows everything there is to know about it. Manuscript, genre, form, and style: the translator has the confidence to mention crucial aspects of the text, backed by specialists in the source language, and we are compelled to trust him as he describes Petrarch’s verse.
C) David Young. We now have a poet who takes on the role of translator, and in his preface there exists an intimate connection with Petrarch, which he describes as friendship. I particularly liked the deep concern about poetic language that he explains, seeing himself as author and translator, and also its reception, “I wanted something that would feel contemporary to them, written in a living language they would recognize as poetry, and something that would also retain the flavor and distinctiveness of the past.” (Young, 28)
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