Readings 2/4 - Lane

    Sun Kyoung Yoon's article, in tandem with Tim Parks and Charse Yun's reviews, along with Deborah Smith's response, call to mind important discussions about authorship and authority in translation. I was similarly struck by the poeticism of Smith's translation, and seeing the discussion of the straightforward prose and voice of the original and its contrast made me consider the degree to which a liberal translation is hypothetically acceptable. The Cathay example demonstrates the possibility of adaptation/rewriting as existing in place of translation, but most audiences, especially ones accustomed to literal translation like those in South Korea, reject this notion. (I myself am also not in complete agreement with this practice.) In any case, as Smith notes, a translation is inherently a new work, regardless of accuracy, as it exists in a new language and a new context. To take a liberal approach would not change this fact. However, I call Smith's motivations into question---although she states that she loves Kang "to the point of reverence,"  her personal communications clarify her motivations "to produce 'a great work of English literature'" (Yoon). Moreover, her background is in English literature, and her choice of Korean as a second language was made "pragmatically." Could it be possible that Smith wishes to claim some share of authorship and establish herself as a writer by taking advantage the ambiguity of authorship and textual authority that translation yields? Tim Parks' review seems to suggest this, and I am skeptical, but it brings up interesting questions about the ethics of translation---and about the power dynamics and position of the translator. As Yoon and Smith both write, translation has become a feminized profession in some ways, seen in the invisibility and thanklessness of the labor and the low wages, as well as in the expectation that the translator be subservient to the text. The translator is not allowed to hold authorship and therefore authority over the text. Is Smith being feminist by staking an authorial claim on the text, or at least on her translation of the text?

    As for a brief comment on the Petrarch prefaces, one translator, David Young, showcases a very contrary approach to translation---he states that he translates "to develop acquaintance with poets and poetry I might not otherwise be able to know" and that in his translations, he has "tried to stay close to Petrarch's diction, syntax, and tone, not wishing to impose [his] own sensibility or vocabulary." The desire to stake a claim of authority over the text is absent here, as he removes himself from the equation, and his desire to, in a way, befriend the poets and poems, does not portray a subservient and dominant relationship; the translator is not subjugating the author, and the author is not subjugating the translator; they are on equal terms. Still, one could make a case that this is also a type of authorship in translation---both the author and the translator share the identity of author equally in this translation. Friendship, however, seems different than infidelity.