Response to 2/11 - Mary

 The readings this week raised a few new general questions for me. All the articles discussed the translation work of Moncrieff as establishing not just the first translation but really the "bar" for all translations to come after, not just because it was first but because of Moncrieff's success with the style. Hazzard points this out when she writes that most new translations of the Recherche "fall below their best standard out of a wish to differ at all costs" from Moncrieff. Later in the article Hazzard writes about what she calls "translation fatigue" or "version fatigue." I found this somewhat persuasive; Davis' article was interesting on this point. She writes about how we favor shorter, simpler sentences than the writing of the past. She notes this as a kind of impatience. Maybe. Whatever it is, English changes as time goes on, and I appreciated her distinction between a "close" and "free" translation, and that she showed her skill at long prose early on in the article. In Nelson's translator's note, I found it interesting that he relates this with the concern circling among translators about relaying certain styles as a kind of "foreignization," which we've discussed some in class. I also appreciated his note about humor as interesting, and important.

Side note - I found Davis' note about discovering and using the french dictionary from Proust's time as perhaps the most interesting in all three articles, especially after last Friday's lecture---to keep in mind that our contemporary dictionaries only give so much.