Val Galitskiy on Frayn's "A Note on the Translation”

What does a translator do when translating allusions? In his text, Michael Frayn does what any unhappy translator would do: he explains the allusions he had to cut, adjust, or clarify. I hear his voice full of regret: "I trimmed this because the cultural connection would be lost, cut that because it would not register at all with a modern English audience"and so on. And yet, I also see how much pleasure he takes in unpacking these references and sometimes even over-explaining. My favorite part where he says that there are “no footnotes in the theatre" and references must be immediately comprehensible. 

Comparing the translator-editor to a surgeon, Frayn reminds me of a doctor who does not simply say, “I removed your appendix — you no longer need it,” but instead lingers over what has been cut away: “I removed this an amazing living part of you — you did not even know it was there, but now that I have named it, you will miss it forever.”

Reading this, I could not help but think how little a translator’s preface differs from a well-written introduction for native speakers of the same language. Would most contemporary Russian audiences automatically catch all these Chekhov's allusions? I would not. Yet, at moments, I feel the author goes a bit too far: example, he worries that Aivazovsky's name would not be meaningful to a modern English audience. But Aivazovsky remains widely exhibited and is far from being obscure in the English-speaking world.

And here I hear Professor Ricks: an allusion is a bonus; it should work on its own when the reader does not know it. Mr. Ricks was speaking about poetry but I think the point stands for the theatre as well. The line must carry its weight even if the audience misses the layers of meaning.

And this is, in my view, the hardest part of translation: how can a translator un-learn what he or she knows? How does translator look at an allusion with fresh eyes and hear it not as packed with layered meaning, but as a simple phrase that works? Take me and Aivazovsky: have I made an effort to un-learn what I know when I said that Frayn goes too far?