In Brian Nelson’s Translator’s note, I really enjoyed how he explored the art of translation as imitation: “It is a kind of performance art, combining close reading and creative (re) writing. A sequence of words in one language is replaced by a sequence of words in another language…This involves scrupulous attention to verbal detail—myriad decisions concerning tone, texture, rhythm, register, syntax, sound, connotations: all those things that make up style and reflect the marriage between style and meaning.” For Nelson in his translation of Proust’s The Swann Way, this wasn’t about just transferring Proust’s long, ‘coiling’ sentences, but trying to capture how he shifts between a full range of tones and registers. This harder, more subtle and shifting work is what he concerned himself with—revealing that the work of translating requires dozens of choices about every word or sound and its impact—choices that must always be informed.
Lydia Davis had a different approach: when she began translating Proust, she didn’t engage with other translations until she had produced a first working draft, she didn’t read much about Proust and his life, and she didn’t read the entire work, but rather only a few pages ahead of what she was translating. She wanted her work to be uninfluenced, in a sense, to merely reproduce the closest words she could find in English. She described her first version in English as raw and naive, which was later shaped by more reading and research, when she interacted with other translations to compare them to hers. I think this process is very interesting—controlling how and when your translation is affected by outside influence. I also liked how she articulated how translation is often moving in a circle and ending up where you started, only more informed.
I also loved this passage: “And, too, I found that, paradoxically, whenever
you go minutely, microscopically into a single word, you enter
some large place, some area of history or culture you had never
entered before (60).”
Hazzard was very helpful in contextualizing translators of Proust and teasing out their weaknesses, strengths, tendencies, and the precedents they created. I also liked how Hazzard explored motivation for translation: when you want to translate a text, your goal should not be merely to “re-do,” but to “make better.” You have to identify a need—a hole that your translation and interpretation might fill. This, however, could also lead to version fatigue— a need to be different, break new ground, create a need even if there isn’t one. These are things I hadn’t considered before.
Lastly, in 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, I was struck by the idea that there is no existing original, so all the interactions that we see are interpretations of one kind or another. I also liked how in #4, Weinberger writes that individual translations are “relatives, not clones, of the original,” and that the relationship between an original and its translation is “parent-child,” where some can be overly attached and others, constantly rebelling (12). I thought this was a very effective metaphor for the shifting radius of creative freedom that is never clearly defined in translation.
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