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Metatranslation

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Metatranslation presents a selection of 14 key essays by leading theorist, Theo Hermans, covering a span of almost 40 years. The essays trace Hermans’ work and demonstrate how translation studies has evolved from the 1980s into the much more diverse and self-reflexive discipline it is today.

The book is divided into three main sections: the first section explores the status and central concerns of translation studies, including the growing interest in sociological, ideological and ethical approaches to translation; the second section investigates the key concepts of translation norms and of the translator’s presence, or positioning, in translated texts; the historical essays in the final section are concerned with both modern and early modern discourses on translation and with the use of translation as an instrument of war and propaganda.

This synthesis of the work of a highly influential pioneer in translation studies is essential reading for researchers, scholars and advanced students of translation studies, intercultural studies and comparative literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 12  pages, introduction, part 1 | 82  pages, chapter 1 | 20  pages, translation's other [1996], chapter 2 | 13  pages, paradoxes and aporias in translation and translation studies [2002], chapter 3 | 17  pages, translation, irritation and resonance [2007], chapter 4 | 16  pages, what is translation [2013], chapter 5 | 14  pages, untranslatability, entanglement and understanding [2019], part 2 | 86  pages, chapter 6 | 12  pages, translational norms and correct translations [1991], chapter 7 | 20  pages, translation and normativity [1998], chapter 8 | 21  pages, the translator's voice in translated narrative [1996], chapter 9 | 13  pages, the translator as evaluator [2010], chapter 10 | 18  pages, positioning translators, part 3 | 92  pages, chapter 11 | 27  pages, images of translation, chapter 12 | 22  pages, the task of the translator in the european renaissance, chapter 13 | 21  pages, miracles in translation, chapter 14 | 20  pages, schleiermacher [2019].

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Translation

Essays on Translation

The importance of writing an essay on translation.

Writing an essay on translation is important for several reasons. Firstly, it allows the writer to explore and analyze the complex process of translating text from one language to another. This can help to deepen the writer's understanding of the challenges and nuances of translation, as well as the cultural and linguistic differences that must be navigated. Additionally, writing an essay on translation can contribute to the academic study of translation, helping to advance knowledge and understanding in this field.

Furthermore, writing an essay on translation can also be personally beneficial. It can improve the writer's critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as their ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively. It can also help the writer to develop a deeper appreciation for the art and skill of translation, and the important role it plays in facilitating communication and understanding across languages and cultures.

Writing Tips for an Essay on Translation

When writing an essay on translation, it is important to approach the topic with a thoughtful and critical mindset. Here are some tips to help you write an effective essay on translation:

• Choose a specific aspect of translation to focus on, such as the challenges of translating idiomatic expressions or the impact of cultural differences on translation.
• Do thorough research to gather relevant information and examples to support your arguments.
• Consider the perspectives of both the original author and the translator, as well as the cultural and historical context in which the translation is taking place.
• Use clear and precise language to explain your ideas and arguments, and provide concrete examples to illustrate your points.
• Consider the ethical and moral implications of translation, such as the potential for bias or misinterpretation.
• Conclude your essay with a thoughtful reflection on the significance of the topic and the implications for the broader field of translation.

By following these tips, you can write an engaging and insightful essay on translation that contributes to the understanding and appreciation of this important field.

• The role of translation in cross-cultural communication
• The impact of technology on translation
• The challenges of literary translation
• The ethics of translation
• The influence of translation on global business
• The importance of accurate translation in legal documents
• The evolution of translation theory
• The role of translation in diplomacy and international relations
• The impact of machine translation on the profession
• The cultural implications of translation
• The role of translators in preserving endangered languages
• The impact of translation on the spread of ideas and knowledge
• The psychology of translation: how do translators make decisions?
• The role of translation in the spread of religion
• The challenges of translating humor and wordplay
• The role of translation in the media and entertainment industry
• The impact of translation on tourism and travel
• The role of translation in the field of medicine and healthcare
• The challenges of translating poetry
• The influence of translation on education and learning
• The role of translation in the digital age
• The impact of translation on international development
• The role of translation in preserving cultural heritage
• The challenges of translating idioms and cultural references
• The impact of translation on the field of law and justice
• The role of translation in the field of science and technology
• The influence of translation on the field of marketing and advertising
• The importance of translation in the field of international business
• The role of translation in the field of immigration and refugee resettlement
• The challenges of translating dialects and regional languages
• The impact of translation on the field of human rights and social justice
• The role of translation in the field of international aid and development
• The influence of translation on the field of environmental conservation
• The importance of translation in the field of disaster response and relief efforts
• The role of translation in the field of sports and athletics
• The impact of translation on the field of cultural diplomacy
• The challenges of translating historical documents and artifacts
• The influence of translation on the field of travel and tourism
• The importance of translation in the field of international law and diplomacy
• The role of translation in the field of international trade and commerce

Translation is a crucial aspect of global communication, enabling people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to understand and connect with one another. In today's interconnected world, the demand for skilled translators has never been higher, with the need for accurate and culturally sensitive translations spanning a wide range of industries and fields.

One of the key topics in the field of translation is the role of translators in preserving endangered languages. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, many languages are at risk of disappearing as their speakers adopt more dominant languages for everyday communication. Translators play a crucial role in documenting and preserving these endangered languages, ensuring that their unique cultural and linguistic nuances are not lost to future generations.

Another important topic is the impact of technology on translation. With the advent of machine translation tools and artificial intelligence, the translation industry is undergoing a significant transformation. While these technological advancements have the potential to streamline the translation process and improve efficiency, they also raise important questions about the role of human translators and the quality of machine-generated translations.

The challenges of translating humor and wordplay also present an interesting area of study. Humor and wordplay are often deeply rooted in cultural references and linguistic nuances, making them particularly challenging to translate accurately. Understanding how translators navigate these challenges and maintain the comedic and linguistic essence of the original text is a fascinating topic for exploration.

In addition, the influence of translation on the field of marketing and advertising is a topic of growing importance. As businesses seek to expand their reach into global markets, the need for effective and culturally sensitive translations in marketing materials has become increasingly critical. Understanding the impact of translation on consumer perceptions and purchasing decisions is essential for businesses looking to succeed in diverse international markets.

Furthermore, the role of translation in the field of international aid and development is another important area of study. Translators play a vital role in ensuring that critical information and resources are accessible to communities in need, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters, conflicts, and humanitarian crises. Exploring the challenges and opportunities of translation in these contexts can provide valuable insights into improving the effectiveness of international aid efforts.

Overall, the field of translation offers a rich and diverse array of topics for exploration, spanning cultural, linguistic, technological, and ethical dimensions. As the demand for skilled translators continues to grow, understanding the complexities and impact of translation across different fields and industries is essential for fostering effective global communication and collaboration.

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Analysis of The Problems in The Process of Translating from Malay to English

Relations between the translators and linguists, film adaptation as translation in the example of elia kazan’s a streetcar named desire, declaring mysteries: narration, translation, and the figure of the interpreter in don quixote, relevant topics.

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Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation

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“We have just said that we have our own words in English for the same things,” Lydia Davis intones within the carefully calibrated paragraphs of her story “French Lesson I: Le meurtre.” “It is in fact just the opposite—there is only one word for many things, and usually even that word, when it is a noun, is too general.” When readers mistrust translation, they often do so because of this lack of isometry between languages, a disconnect that gives many of the texts within Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation their narrative impetus. Every attempt to translate well is compounded not only by endless asymmetries but also by distractions, by quarrels, by mundane realities. “Nobody understands translation isn’t an act of convenience,” the subtitler narrating Susan Daitch’s “Asylum” fumes. “Every company wants their job toot-sweet.”

Davis’s and Daitch’s contributions are joined by those of Joyce Carol Oates, Michelle Herman, and other authors. Translators themselves share their insights as well: Michael Scammell on Englishing Nabokov; Harry Mathews on the devilry of Oulipian constraints in a new language. Even Primo Levi provides his own perspective on the process. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, who has translated into English such luminaries as Natalia Ginzburg, bookends this collection with her factual introduction and her fictional story. After the recent wave of essayistic books around translation, from Kate Briggs’s This Little Art and Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance all the way to Karen Emmerich’s Literary Translation and the Making of Originals , it comes as a surprise that only five of the eighteen pieces gathered within this volume are essays. The other thirteen texts imaginatively give flesh to the metaphorical “kind of alchemy” Schwartz describes in her introduction, privileging the imagery of mysticism and magic over the less rarefied idea of quotidian labor.

If translation has arisen out of a foundation of difference and incompatibility, then the translator’s work is to reconcile these contraries and create a new reality. In Lucy Ferriss’s “The Difficulty of Translation,” her protagonist can “be with someone who thought in another language, but not with someone who thought in no language at all.” In Michelle Herman’s “Auslander,” a translator finds herself able to reunite a couple at war.

As uneven as the anthology may be, a deep-rooted belief in the possibility of setting the world to rights still sustains these various pieces: these are stories of encounters and relationships occasioned by the need to bring together different spheres of existence. No matter that the gaps revealed in translation may sometimes—as in Lydia Davis’s story—cache outright murders, translation turns out to be less alchemy and more adhesive, taking languages or peoples or individual texts that had been separate and binding them together.

Jeffrey Zuckerman New York

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Table of Contents

In every issue, creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, book reviews.

Reading in Translation

• Contributors
• Elena Ferrante’s “The Lying Life of Adults”

Essays on Translation

• Reading Domenico Starnone
• READING NATALIA GINZBURG
• Translators on Books that Should be Translated
• Write for US

In this section we publish short essays on the art and craft of literary translation, on translation theory, on reading literature in translation, or reports from events on literary translation. Our goal is to introduce new ideas or reflect on old ones, to create a dialogue around issues in literary translation, and to keep you informed about happenings in the world of literary translation.

The Translation Review: Why it Matters and How to do it Right

By Peter-Fray Witzer

How, exactly, can one assess the work a translation does in English, and how does it fit into world literature on the whole? What makes a translation “good,” and who determines what that means? Why is it important to review and appraise translations in our Anglocentric culture? This essay explores the work that reviewers of translations do in the American context, from reviews in mainstream publications to those written for independent specialized outlets. The essay discusses what the work of reviewing a translation entails; what the purpose of the translation review is and what it can achieve in different contexts; and how the practice of reviewing translations can be improved.

A Pervasive Method: On John Taylor’s Approach in Translating Franca Mancinelli’s “All the Eyes that I Have Opened”

By Stefano Bottero

Translated from Italian by John Taylor

Taylor’s translation appears to be a systematic operation—in other words—oriented by his acknowledgment of a philosophically (as well as poetically) coherent nucleus in All the Eyes that I Have Opened , a collection that constitutes one of the most interesting releases of recent contemporary Italian poetry.

The repeated adoption of a translation approach (which admits, in its very constructions, the disarticulation of referential uniqueness), is thus carried out in line with what the Italian poetic voice is itself asserting. To wit: the compromise of one’s own subjectivity as a unified space, as a function of an ontological process that coincides, as the days go by, with what has been lost.

Bringing “The Art of Joy” to English Readers

By Anne Milano Appel

Goliarda Sapienza, born on May 10, 1924, would have been 100 years old last month, but remains ever young, spirited, and determined to win the hearts of her readers. A plaque on the façade of a building at 20 Via Pistone in Catania, where Goliarda lived on the second floor, reads: “Questa casa, la strada, i vicoli, Catania, la terra di Sicilia hanno nutrito il genio narrativo di Goliarda Sapienza” (This house, the street, the passageways, Catania, the land of Sicily nurtured the narrative genius of Goliarda Sapienza.)

I owe L’arte della gioia primarily to Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Though the translation was actually commissioned by Alexis Kirschbaum at Penguin UK, Galassi had been interested in it for some time, thanks to a scout who warmly promoted it to him.

Translation and Its Present Contexts: On Translating Eudora Welty into Hebrew

By Reut Ben-Yaakov

A year ago, I was relatively new to the United States – living in Durham, North Carolina – when I found a copy of  The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty  in my neighborhood’s Little Free Library. I did not know Welty, but I took the book with me. I thought reading it could be a good way to get oriented. After reading some of it, I closed the book, but something in that story, “Where is the Voice Coming From?,” asked me to translate it. I didn’t understand why. It is a somewhat problematic story, I thought. I felt uneasy.

Bibikhin’s Task of the Translator: Introducing “On the Problems of Determining the Essence of Translation “

By Margarita Marinova and Anna Alsufieva

Vladimir Veniaminovich Bibikhin (1938-2004) was a Russian philosopher, translator, and philologist. Although the order of these descriptors can vary, what they all have in common is the careful attention to the “word as an event” (after Bakhtin) in their attempt to uncover the ontological foundations of language. This complex issue was the focus of Bibikhin’s thought in general.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he established himself as a prominent translator of the most complex philosophical, theological, and literary texts, and as a widely respected humanitarian scholar of a rare and extensive erudition. Bibikhin’s article we have chosen to present for the first time in English here, “On the Problem of Determining the Essence of Translation,” was written in 1973, but to understand its significance one must go further back in time, to the 1920s and ‘30s.

On the Problem of Determining the Essence of Translation

By Vladimir Bibikhin . Translated from Russian by Margarita Marinova

To the extent to which translation is a new re-play, a re-shaping of the given material according to the universal language rules, it is, in principle, just as independent as the original. It is simply that same original, only re-cast in a new form, and continuing to live in that new form. The original appears to be original only outwardly, in a temporal sense. In essence, that is, in its relation to the possibilities of human speech, it is not more original than the translation.

The original is lost, imprisoned in its private form. Translatability rescues it from those constraints. It reveals the fundamental, even if only potential opportunity of the original to exist in any form.  Translatability shows that while the original may have been written in Japanese or Abkhazian, it was also first written in the universal human language. But, having liberated the original from its individual form, the translator now must breathe into it a new life in his native speech, recognizing and affirming in the process the universality of his own native tongue.

Against Camouflage: Jozefina Komporaly on Translating from Hungarian Melinda Mátyus’ “MyLifeandMyLife”

By Jozefina Komporaly

Melinda Mátyus’ novel in verse MyLifeandMyLife  is one of the most original pieces of experimental fiction published in Hungarian in recent years. The book’s protagonist is desperately in love with a mysterious male figure, and this emotional dependency not only leads her to give up her agency but also gradually paves the way to her suffocation and ultimate demise. Melinda Mátyus writes in bold and deeply touching ways about contemporary women and her protagonists examine womanhood in a variety of manifestations and configurations.

This is the first translation of Mátyus’ work in a foreign language and it comes in a bilingual edition, with the original Hungarian following Jozefina Komporaly’s English translation. We are grateful to Ugly Duckling Presse for allowing us to publish here Komporaly’s translator’s note in which she discusses Mátyus’ unique sense of grammar and syntax, and her own approach to translating it.

The Afterlives of Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Road to the City”

By Stiliana Milkova Rousseva

Natalia Ginzburg wrote The Road to the City (La strada che va in città) in the fall of 1941, during a time of persecution, hardship, and deprivation. The previous year her husband Leone Ginzburg, a prominent intellectual and anti-fascist activist, had been confined to internal exile in the remote village of Pizzoli in the Abruzzo region. Natalia and their children had left their home in Turin and joined him in October 1940, forging a family and professional life in exile, despite the difficult conditions of their everyday reality.

The Road to the City  came out in 1942, under the pseudonym “Alessandra Tornimparte,” which Ginzburg used to evade Mussolini’s antiracial law restricting Jews from publishing. This novella was her first longer work, and it already contained the salient features of her poetics: stylistic economy and understatement, simplicity of diction, psychology constructed through details and actions, and a topographic imagination with the road and the city as its organizing figures.

Toward a Speculative Poetics of Translation: Janine Beichman’s Translation from Japanese of Ishigaki Rin’s “This Overflowing Light”

By James Garza

Over a career spanning decades, Ishigaki Rin (1920-2004) forged a poetry of keen moral discernment and wry self-discovery. On the one hand, her work was democratic in its language and outlook, premised on the possibility of liberation from the strictures of poverty and repressive social institutions. But it was also grounded in the absurdities of the everyday and the domestic, with a propensity for sharp turns into darkness. While this picture is not wrong, Janine Beichman argues in This Overflowing Light: Selected Poems (Isobar Press, 2022), it needs an update to recover several vital aspects of her poetics. In the volume’s artful and engaging introduction, Beichman calls our attention to several correspondences with contemporary poetics: first, there is the speculative orientation of Ishigaki’s work, capable of uncanny leaps in spatial and temporal perspective. Then there is its under-explored connection to eco-critical thought. And finally there is its playful but intense awareness of the agentive role of fantasy and imagination in constructing ‘real life.’  

Always Against: On Translating the Punk Rock Lyrics of Egor Letov

By Katie Frevert

During the second half of the 1980s, the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ushered in a renaissance period for the Soviet Union’s nascent rock scene. Bands that had gotten their start in underground apartment concerts could court mainstream success at rock clubs in the western Russian centers of Leningrad, Moscow, and Sverdlovsk under the watchful eye of state security. If the music of the degenerate West could not be eradicated, they reasoned, the KGB could curtail its harmful influence by supervising concerts, ensuring that politically dubious or stylistically unorthodox groups remained in the margins.

Yet in the western Siberian cities of Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Tiumen’, where no such officially sanctioned venues existed, young rockers captivated by Western punk bypassed the censors by remaining underground and creating music openly critical of the Soviet system. The most well-known figure in this emerging punk counterculture was Igor Fёdorovich (“Egor”) Letov (1964-2008), who in 1984 founded the band Grazhdanskaia oborona (Civil Defense)

Julia Kornberg’s “Atomizado Berlín”: Creating a New Reader Across Translation

By Nora Méndez

In this essay, I investigate how Julia Kornberg writes a novel that challenges and subverts this ‘lazy’ reader with stylistic, formal, and thematic innovations, and think about how a translation of her text, though difficult or precisely because of that, has the ability to support and communicate across another language her careful mediation of the demands of the global literary market. In what follows I pay specific attention to how Kornberg utilizes the novel’s topic-choice, ambiguity of context, and inclusion of words in English, French, and other languages, to challenge the reader that the global literary market caters to reclaim their agency and individuality as able and active readers.

Stumbling Through the “Foreign”: A Look at Poupeh Missaghi’s Poetics of Translation

By Anna Learn

Poupeh Missaghi wants you , the reader, to stumble. 

In her genre-twisting 2020 novel trans(re)lating house one , the writer and translator declares, “I want you to be disrupted when you arrive here, feel some discomfort, feel out of place” (35). Although trans(re)lating house one is presented to us in English, Missaghi insists that Persian is the true language of its characters and city. The book was ‘translated’ from Persian to English, then, before it was ever written. For this reason, throughout her novel, Missaghi seeks to “acknowledge the Otherness of both the territory and the language to you, make them visible, and celebrate them” (35).

Er asing the Dividing Line: On Christian Bancroft’s “Queering Modernist Translation”

By Conor Bracken

“Translation is having a queer moment,” Christian Bancroft writes in the introduction to his monograph, Queering Modernist Translation (Routledge, 2020). The moment has been a long time coming: both fields, translation and queer studies, were thriving by the turn of the 21 st century, but only over the past ten years have special issues and edited essay collections begun to emerge with some frequency to consider their intersection, and the resulting “expansive ways of imagining the relationships among languages as they relate to the identities, cultures, and societies that produce them” (1). The uninitiated may wonder, what can queer theory offer translation, as a study and practice, aside from ways of uncovering or confronting the gender biases and heteronormativity in and between languages? Much more than that, I can enthusiastically report.

Reading Elena Ferrante in Bulgaria(n)

By Stiliana Milkova

Last year I read Elena Ferrante’s new novel The Lying Life of Adults ( La vita bugiarda degli adulti ) in Bulgarian, in Ivo Yonkov’s translation. It was September 2020, it had just been released by Ferrante’s Bulgarian publisher, Colibri , and I was in Bulgaria myself. I went to Helikon, the largest bookshop in my home town Burgas, and asked for Ferrante’s new novel. The saleswoman quickly showed it to me on the shelf and recommended, since I was interested in Ferrante, that I also buy Nora Roberts’s (or was it Danielle Steel’s?) latest novel. I didn’t argue with her – I just picked up The Lying Life of Adults , paid for it and left. I refrained from telling her that Ferrante’s book was not a romance novel and the bookstore should reconsider its classification. I didn’t tell her that I was a Ferrante expert, that my book Elena Ferrante as World Literature was coming out in a few months, that it was the first scholarly monograph on Ferrante written in English, and by a Bulgarian at that.

Always to Seek: On Reading Russian Literature in Translation

By Brandy Harrison

It all began with youthful audacity. When someone asked me one day, “What are you reading? , ” the answer was War and Peace. There was a pause, a faint flicker of confusion in the face hovering above my own, and then a slower, more tentative second question: “Why . . . are you reading that? ”

I, at seventeen, sitting propped up against my locker in the hallway, didn’t really have an answer. The plain grey hardcover teetering against my knees looked as thick and heavy as a brick (he said), and why would anyone want to read some novel about the . . . Russians . . . during the – what was it, again? The Napoleonic Wars? What was the point?

I shrugged with adolescent nonchalance. “I don’t know. It’s interesting.”

Neither Here and There: The Misery and Splendor of (Reverse) Translation*

by  Ekaterina Petrova

Translation is a gnarly business. Even more so when you’re doing it the wrong way around.

In Bulgarian, which I translate from, translating into a language that’s not your native tongue is colloquially known as  obraten prevod , which literally means “reverse translation.” As an adjective,  obraten  carries the negative connotation of something abnormal or backward, something that goes against the grain, or something that simply isn’t right. 

A Materialist Approach to Translation

By Sophie Drukman-Feldstein

The translator’s sin is that of breaching the mythology which surrounds the individual authorial voice. The literary world erases the translator in order to preserve the liberal ideal of individual genius. And yet this erasure is not a distinctive problem of translation, but rather an expression of the worker’s alienation from the product of their labor. It is in fact the narrative of authorship which is unusual, in that literature is one of the few commodities which, rather than being conceptually distanced from the workers who produce it, is viewed as an extension of that worker’s self. By arguing that translation is art, translation theory abandons the possibility of fighting alienation writ large, and instead pursues for translators the unusual forms of acknowledgement which writers receive.

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Reflections on Translation

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Copyright year: 2011
• Main content: 192
• Keywords: writings on translation ; essays on translation ; translation studies ; culture studies ; translation of poetry ; literary translation ; translation and humour ; translation and politics ; lost in translation
• Published: June 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781847694102

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'Translating Myself and Others' is a reminder of how alive language can be

In the mid-2000s, the American novelist Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rome and began writing only in Italian, a language she had long studied and loved.

In 2016, she released a short book called In altre parole , translated into English as In Other Words , explaining the attractions of writing in a new language. Ann Goldstein, who is most famous for translating Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan Novels, rendered it into English. At the time, Lahiri writes in the introduction to her new essay collection Translating Myself and Others , she was "putting all my energy into writing in Italian, and not translating anyone, never mind myself, into the language I know best."

But on returning to the United States, Lahiri found herself "immediately and instinctively drawn to the world of translation." Translating Myself and Others is a guide to that world. In it, Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the "essential aesthetic and political mission" of translation. She is excellent in all three modes — so excellent, in fact, that I, a translator myself, could barely read this book. I kept putting it aside, compelled by Lahiri's writing to go sit at my desk and translate.

One of Lahiri's great gifts as an essayist is her ability to braid multiple ways of thinking together, often in startling ways. In "In Praise of Echo," one of the collection's best pieces, she mixes literary and cultural analysis with her own experiences as a linguistic border-crosser. "I was born with a translator's disposition," Lahiri writers, "in that my overriding desire was to connect disparate worlds. I have devoted a great deal of energy in my life to absorbing the language and culture of others: the Bengali of my parents, and then... Italian, a language which I have now creatively adopted." Her ability and freedom to do the latter are, she argues, key not only to her artistic life, but our shared capacity for cultural change and growth.

Intellectual and artistic freedom are major preoccupations of Lahiri's. She explores the former in "(Extra) Ordinary Translation," a close reading of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci's prison letters, and the latter in "An Ode to the Mighty Optative," which begins with a technical analysis of the translation dilemmas posed by verbs in ancient poetry and works up to a paean to the "infinite potential" of unconstrained art. Literature, to Lahiri, requires the absence of obligation: It cannot fulfill its "true purpose, which is... to explore the phenomenon and the consequences of change," if writers do not have "the means, strength, capacity, permission, power, and, above all, the freedom to fill the page."

Of course, translators need that same freedom. It can seem to outsiders that translation is "a restrictive act of copying," so beholden to the original text that it scarcely requires thought. This is anything but true. Lahiri writes that "a translator restores the meaning of a text by means of an elaborate, alchemical process that requires imagination, ingenuity, and freedom." Like many other translators — and their critics — she relies heavily on metaphor and simile to describe this alchemy. Indeed, this reliance is so common that you can often tell how somebody feels toward translation simply by looking at their figures of speech. In his excellent, polemical book The Translator's Turn , the scholar and translator Douglas Robinson takes aim at a number of damaging, common metaphors that reduce the translator to a "mere tool, like a knife or a screwdriver. A medium, like a window (for sight), like air (for sound). A vehicle, like a wheelbarrow or a truck. Not a person."

Lahiri, unsurprisingly, never stoops to this sort of comparison. Her descriptions of translating are far odder and more illuminating, especially in her more personal essays. She writes of her "center of gravity" wobbling between English and Italian; of translating as "look[ing] into a mirror and see[ing] someone other than oneself." In "Why Italian?," the collection's first essay, Lahiri first describes learning and writing in Italian as passing through a series of doors; then as submitting to a figurative, voluntary form of blindness; and last as grafting herself, like a branch to a tree, onto the language. But the piece's best description is one she barely lingers on. "Reading, writing, and living in Italian," she writes, "I feel like a reader, a writer, a person who is more attentive, active, and curious." Of course, Lahiri is a reader and writer, but to feel constantly like one is, as this sentence rightly suggests, rare and precious. Both fiction writing and language acquisition demand an alertness, a totality of focus, that the routines and pressures of everyday existence can easily blunt. Now that Lahiri no longer lives primarily in Italian, she writes, translation has "transformed my relationship to writing" by offering her a route to that focus. It "goes under the skin and shocks the system" to life.

Translating Myself and Others is a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they're complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up. "Look," her essays seem to say: Look how much there is for us to wake up to.

Lily Meyer is a writer and translator living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

All the Thrills Without the Terror: On “Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation”

Veronica scott esposito interprets “crossing borders: stories and essays about translation,” edited by lynne sharon schwartz., by veronica esposito september 18, 2018.

Around the World

Crossing Borders by Lynne Sharon Schwartz . Seven Stories Press. 320 pages.

WE KNOW HOW those who practice, publish, and promote literary translation think of ourselves: some incredibly tiny fraction of books published in the United States are literary translations (surely far, far less than the “three percent” statistic we often cite), and they are mostly done by small indies whose resources are dwarfed by what a major commercial publisher would spend on any mid-list American author. In spite of that, we persist, because translation is a life-enriching opportunity to enter a community of peers and realize a true literary vocation. As we never get tired of saying, translation is the closest form of reading, and it gives you all the thrills of creativity without the terror of the blank page. Not only that, but we in the translation scene are at the vanguard of those who are rejuvenating the English language and the American imagination, and our work will serve poets and politicians alike for years and years to come.

That’s a largely generalized but probably not overly cartoonish summary of prevailing sentiments in the translation community — but what does the rest of the American literary field think of translation? What do those authors who do not have any strong interest in, affinity for, or history with translation think about it as a practice, and (dare I say) an art form?

Answers of a sort are provided in Crossing Borders , a collection of essays on literary translation as well as short stories that prominently feature the practice. Let’s deal with the fiction first. Its authors range from celebrated, like Joyce Carol Oates and Lydia Davis, to the lesser known. (Notably, just one of the creative writers here is a foreigner that has been translated into English.) Although a few of these writers have translated, most of the fiction contributors have no real experience with the practice.

What emerges in the fictional contributions to Crossing Borders is a vision of the English-language translator as an individual who engages with a foreignness that is largely defined by places over which the US psyche experiences guilt. That is, by places in which we’ve fought hot wars or have damaged in our cultural battles, mostly in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. A number of these stories revolve around an interpreter who makes communication possible either with inhabitants of some vague Eastern European locations or with traumatized immigrants from these regions to the United States. Other fictional translators broker relationships between the Anglosphere and Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia that have been the field of battle in the United States’s postcolonial wars. In the stories, the translator/interpreter figures are generally of two kinds: they either facilitate communications for governmental interests abroad or they’re American loners, self-employed or finding a home of sorts in the academy.

This is all to say that the composite picture of the field that emerges in Crossing Borders is not one that I think many in literary translation would find accurate. While it is of course true that our nation’s foreign policy, past and present, often impinges on which regions of the world Americans find literarily fascinating, that dynamic is changing. Many other factors now come into play. Chief among them are the subsidies provided by foreign governments in an ever-expanding game of cultural imperialism. International literary festivals and prizes have become so powerful as to have rocketed a nation like South Korea to the center of the translation world in under a decade — with the help of the more quotidian practice of government bureaucrats arranging editor tours and doling out funds. And as the immense success of authors like the Finnish Sofi Oksanen, Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Italian Elena Ferrante demonstrate, the forces of international media, conglomerated publishing, and national bookselling now have very much to say about what foreign people and places occupy the interest of American readers.

Nor are the book’s fictional depictions of literary translators especially flattering. The protagonists come off as sad, occasionally weird individuals without much going on, the kind of people who are incapable of understanding why they’re so socially maladroit. While it’s definitely true that translation tends to be done by those with an eccentric and independent bent to their personalities, the translators I know have a diverse array of interests and large and active social communities. They have lots of friends and professional peers, are often raising families, and would be at home among virtually any group of young professionals. I don’t see them as the awkward, isolated misfits that predominate in Crossing Borders — they’re fun-loving, charismatic, sophisticated, and plain cool. Perhaps the people we see in Crossing Borders are more typical of the translation community as it existed 30 to 40 years ago.

What of the literary textures of these stories, the way they bring to life exotic locales and languages? Tellingly, the only piece of fiction that seemed to make deep and integrated use of the particular history behind its setting was Svetlana Velmar-Janković’s “Sima Street,” which is also the only story in this collection that is translated from a foreign language into English. Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Translation” is also strong; there is a degree of emotional depth to its lead characters, and something real is at stake. But for the most part the stories here felt quite domestic — recognizably American people and arcs transplanted to a foreign location, with a little local color but not much more to set them apart.

One other exception here is Lydia Davis’s contribution, which is characteristically hybrid in its form (one could easily argue for its inclusion as an essay). Posed as a lesson in the French language, it elegantly inculcates in the reader an intense desire to know what happened to “ le fermier ” — we suspect it may have something to do with the text’s final words, “ le meutre ” (also its title). In its coy whimsicality and its subversive deployment of linguistic principles, it becomes — in just over six pages — a text that can easily support many readings and ideas. I don’t know exactly where it takes place, but it could be France (there’s something undeniably French to it), or maybe a Calvinoesque invisible France of Davis’s imagination. Similarly, Norman Lavers’s contribution — focusing on a Southeast Asian translator who is essentially rewriting Hamlet and transforming its genre in order to make it comprehensible to her culture — while perhaps not entirely successful as a story, has the benefit of entwining translation more deeply with its protagonist’s psychology and locale, while also thinking about the practice in more interesting ways.

If the fiction in Crossing Borders strikes this reader as a somewhat inaccurate representation of the discipline, the essays are pleasingly different. All written by veteran translators who are greatly esteemed in their field, they present a broad range of translation’s possibilities. The contribution of the late Chana Bloch explores the immense joys and challenges that come with rendering biblical writing, which is among the most formally difficult — and highly scrutinized — translation work available. Primo Levi’s short piece offers poetic commonplaces about the practice; although they won’t break new ground for those who know the field, they are eloquent and rousing. The essay from late Oulipian Harry Mathews strikes a defiant note by inviting translators to drag the art away from ideas of fidelity toward which a translator like Bloch strives; Mathews instead offers a vision of translation as a creative practice that hews closer to what one might call “equivalences” — something like the “translation” that happens when a book becomes a movie. And Michael Scammell’s chronicle of working with the legendarily irascible Vladimir Nabokov as a young man is a beautifully written, thickly descriptive look at the real life of a translator.

That said, there is something dated about the essays too. One can’t help but wonder what Crossing Borders might have looked like with younger, more international names gracing its table of contents. The most interesting people in translation are often young, and they aren’t all American. In recent years, many people under 40 — some even under 30 — have been directly responsible for translating, publishing, and championing authors who have taken the world’s most prestigious literary prizes. And with many of the world’s great writers now regularly touring, and living in, the United States — to say nothing of the translators who regularly spend years abroad — the world literary community is more tightly knit than ever. Any book that aspires to take stock of what is happening in translation right now should reflect these realities in its pages. A much more broadly based and up-to-date version of this collection could make a wonderful contribution to the field of literary translation. I’d love to see Crossing Borders 2.0 .

Veronica Scott Esposito is the author of four books, including  The Doubles  and  The Surrender . Her writing has appeared in publications including  The New York Times , the  Times Literary Supplement ,  The White Review , and  Music & Literature . She is a contributing editor with  BOMB  magazine, a senior editor at Two Lines Press, and edits  The Quarterly Conversation , a journal of book reviews and essays.

LARB Contributor

Veronica Esposito is a writer and counselor in training. She has worked with literary translation for well over a decade, and she is now earning a Master's degree in counseling while working in peer support and counseling. The author of four books, her publication credits include NPR, The Guardian , The New York Times , and many others .

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Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation Hardcover – January 16, 2018

• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Seven Stories Press
• Publication date January 16, 2018
• Dimensions 5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
• ISBN-10 160980791X
• ISBN-13 978-1609807917
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Crossing Borders

Stories and essays about translation, by lynne sharon schwartz.

In Crossing Borders , Lynne Sharon Schwartz has assembled sixteen stories and essays by prominent fiction writers and translators about the way in which translation operates in our lives. We come to see that translation lends itself to a wide variety of metaphorical uses, among them misunderstandings in love, war, and other major life events. In Joyce Carol Oates's story "The Translator," a traveler to an Eastern European country falls in love with a woman he gets to know through an interpreter, but when he gets a new interpreter, the woman becomes a stranger and his love for her evaporates. In Lydia Davis's playful "French Lesson I: Le Meurtre," what begins as an innocuous lesson in beginner's French soon hints at something more sinister. And in the essay "On Translating and Being Translated," Primo Levi addresses the dangers and difficulties awaiting the translator, concluding that each translation invariably loses something of the original, but it is worth doing anyway. Ultimately the stories and essays in this collection are about no less than communication itself: its limitations, its rewards, and above all its importance in today's rapidly shrinking world.

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“What an astonishing collection, it seemed as if I could drink it—these pieces exude such humanness, refer effortlessly to the tender place that exists in between languages, and somehow leave you with both everything and nothing to say.”

– Ella Frances Sanders, author of Lost in Translation

“Some of the best translation stories of our time.”

– Susan Bernofsky

“A superb translator herself, Lynne Sharon Schwartz has a nuanced grasp of the deeper metaphysics of this transfer of energies, this crossing of psychological thresholds. Her selections are beautiful interrogations from fictional and essayistic vantages, and taken together they rejuvenate the age-old questions surrounding the translator's art.”

– Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age

“By turns humorous, grave, chilling, and caustic, the stories and essays gathered in this volume reveal all the splendors and all the miseries of the translator's task. Some of the most distinguished translators and writers of our times offer reflections that deepen our understanding of the delicate and sometimes dangerous balancing act that translators must perform. Translators are often inconspicuous or unnoticed; here we have a chance to peer into the realities and the fantasies of those who live in two languages, and the result is altogether thrilling and instructive.”

– Peter Connor, director of the Center for Translation Studies, Barnard College

“When readers mistrust translation, they often do so because of this lack of isometry between languages, a disconnect that gives many of the texts within Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation their narrative impetus. Every attempt to translate well is compounded not only by endless asymmetries but also by distractions, by quarrels, by mundane realities. . . . [T]hese are stories of encounters and relationships occasioned by the need to bring together different spheres of existence. No matter that the gaps revealed in translation may sometimes—as in Lydia Davis’s story—cache outright murders, translation turns out to be less alchemy and more adhesive, taking languages or peoples or individual texts that had been separate and binding them together.”

– Jeffrey Zuckerman, World Literature Today , 26 April 2018

Lynne Sharon Schwartz  is the author of eight novels, three short story collections, three essay collections, three books of poetry, and three translations from Italian. Among them are the novels  Rough Strife  (nominated for a National Book Award) and  Leaving Brooklyn  (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction), and the memoirs  Ruined by Reading  and  Not Now, Voyager . She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA in fiction and translation, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts. She teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and has taught in many other places both in the US and abroad. Schwartz lives in New York City.

Other books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz and W. G. Sebald

The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald

by Natalia Ginzburg , translated by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Translating Myself and Others

• Jhumpa Lahiri

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Luminous essays on translation and self-translation by an award-winning writer and literary translator

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Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages. With subtlety and emotional immediacy, Lahiri draws on Ovid’s myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle’s Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino’s popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question “Why Italian?,” and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers. Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiri’s most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator’s art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Where I find myself

Awards and recognition.

• Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
• One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of the Year
• One of VULTURE'S 49 Books We Can't Wait to Read
• One of Literary Hub's Best Reviewed Nonfiction Books of the Year
• One of Literary Hub's Best Reviewed Essay Collections of the Year
• A Literary Hub Best Essay Collection of 2022
• A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

"Wonderful. . . . Through language, we come to know ourselves: Lahiri’s work shows how it is always possible to expand that knowledge."—Erica Wagner, Harper’s Bazaar UK

"[Lahiri’s] observations are as plentiful as they are enlightening."—Juliana Ukiomogbe, Elle

"[In this book] a vision emerges of translation as a site where the physical and the textual, the extraordinary and the ordinary, intersect."—Polly Barton, Times Literary Supplement

"[Lahiri] is excellent . . . . Translating Myself and Others is a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they're complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up."—Lily Meyer, NPR

"[ Translating Myself and Others ] is about the consequences of the apparently simple act of choosing one’s own words. . . . [The] book also contains a hope for the liberating power of language."—Benjamin Moser, New York Times

"[A] series of passionate [and] thoughtful essays."—Frank Wynne, The Spectator

"[ Translating Myself and Others ] movingly describes [Lahiri’s] history with translation from her experiences as an immigrant child . . . to her early literary-translation efforts and her eventual decision to move to Rome and learn Italian."— Vulture

"Poetic."— New York Magazine

"A wry collection."—Adam Rathe, Town & Country

"[Lahiri’s] voice is a strong one in the current campaign to give translators more recognition. Her candidness about the hardships of translation and her enthusiasm for its rewards make you want to hear more from these fascinating figures, who spend so much time in others’ voices but have not lost the use of their own."—Camilla Bell-Davies, Financial Times

"Digestible and approachable. . . . The thought-provoking collection makes for a sharp and luminous exploration of Lahiri’s relationship to language, translation, and literature and made me want to finally tackle my goal of learning a second language."—Jordan Snowden, Apartment Therapy

"[A] memoir of the experience [of learning Italian], recounted with passion and insight."—Gregory Cowles, New York Times

"Lahiri explores her relationship with literature, translation, and the English and Italian languages in this exhilarating collection. . . . Lucid and provocative, this is full of rewarding surprises."— Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A scrupulously honest and consistently thoughtful love letter to ‘the most intense form of reading…there is.'"— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The collection is singular for Lahiri’s ability to integrate the personal and the theoretical, drawing her examples from literature and from life. . . . Lahiri writes so beautifully that this collection will have broad appeal for anyone interested in literary essays."—David Azzolina, Library Journal

"[An] absorbing new collection of essays. . . . Translating Myself and Others is a subtle yet ultimately engrossing work, somewhat academic at times, yet infused with the kind of understated, often startling capacity for observation that has always been Lahiri’s literary superpower."— Bookpage

" Translating Myself and Others is a thought-provoking collection of essays about the art of modern translation."— Foreword Reviews

"Anyone interested in the art of translation will be engrossed by Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri."—Martin Chilton, The Independent

"Lahiri’s ruminations on translation are relatable and luminous. . . . This book embraces simplicity-in-complexity, making it appropriate for both the Lahiri devotee and the uninitiate."—Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Christian Century

"[Lahiri] explores [translation] with her customary rigor and candidness in this new essay collection, featuring several pieces originally written in Italian and translated into English by Lahiri for the first time, an act of metamorphosis as dazzling to her as it is to the reader."— Chicago Review of Books

"Throughout these essays, it’s as if Lahiri, feeling misunderstood, were hoping to build a literary home for herself that is ample enough to accommodate her lives as author, translator, academic, and language learner. A home in which she can write, on her own terms, in whatever language she wants, and think, on her own terms, about whatever subject she wants."—Julia Sanches, Astra

"The essays . . . are master classes in translation theory and in critical writing about translation. . . . Fascinating and insightful writing."—Lauren Elkin, American Scholar

"These essays . . . demonstrate the depths of [Lahiri’s] love for her adopted language. . . . Readers will have a newfound appreciation of the translator's ability to illuminate."—Michael Margas, Shelf Awareness starred review

"In this collection of essays, Lahiri gives insights into her processes, as well as penetrating and perceptive thoughts on the act of translating that will be especially illuminating for readers who enjoy translated works."—Joe Rubbo, Readings

"This cool, detached book bristles with life and love."—John Self, Observer New Review

"There is great joy and intrigue to be found in Lahiri’s ruminations on self-translation. . . . [ Translating Myself and Others ] is a love letter to not only translation, but to literary criticism as a whole.”—Malavika Praseed, Chicago Review of Books "—Malavika Praseed, Chicago Review of Books

"[A] portrait of intelligent, sensitive and deeply humane curiosity . . . inspiring."—James Kidd, South China Morning Post

"[T]his latest set of essays proves [Lahiri’s] skill lies in the craft of experimenting with what language can do, both in Italian and English, and both as a writer and as a translator."—Anandi Mishra, Frieze

" Translating Myself and Others feels at once ambitious and safe, playful and formulaic, variegated and quasi-myopic."—Carolina Iribaren, Hopscotch Translation

"[In Translating Myself and Others ] Lahiri achieves the task of portraying her profound love for linguistics and the ways languages give new life to one another in translation. . . . Lahiri’s writing is impeccably strong."—Amanda Janks, Zyzzyva

"Readers . . . will find themselves immersed in a voyage of discovery not just of what makes Lahiri the writer and the translator tick, but of how these two facets or ‘containers’ inform, extend, challenge and ultimately re-create her, while at the same time providing much food for thought for the reader."—Lilit Žekulin Thwaites, Sydney Morning Herald

"These deeply thoughtful meditations . . . illuminate the art of literary alchemy."— Saga Magazine

"Eloquent. . . . [Lahiri] explores what it means to be a translator, how translating enhances her identity as a writer and vice versa, and how these multiple identities are mutually enriching"—Hayley Armstrong, In Touch

"A lyrical meditation on translation and a manifesto establishing translation as an artistic pursuit as creative and authentic as writing in the original language."—Lopamudra Basu, World Literature Today

"Anyone interested in the challenges of translating literary works from one language to another will find this book fascinating. . . . It’s certainly a richly rewarding [read]."—Terry Freedman, Teach Secondary

"A deep meditation on the art of translation. . . . Lahiri offers a straightforward but profound and lyrical theory of translation."—Lucky Issar, Economic & Political Weekly

"A lucid and engaging reflection not only on what it means to translate a text and to properly acknowledge that work, but also what translation signifies beyond the act of individual words being noted down in another language."—Franklin Nelson, Wasafiri Magazine

"Rich, deep and, above all, beautifully written, Translating Myself and Others exemplifies the power of words, language, art, ‘‘to explore the phenomenon and the consequences of change itself’’."—Cushla McKinney, Otago Daily News

“Jhumpa Lahiri is a marvel, a writer with the courage to renounce virtuosity for the sake of vulnerability, experiment, and growth, and it’s been wonderful to watch her love affair with the Italian language unfold. In these essays, she delves deep into the fertile interstices of and between languages, giving us a book rich with insights and pleasures.”—Susan Bernofsky, author of Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser

“A remarkable account of Jhumpa Lahiri’s journey from English to Italian and back. Her pages on the myth of Echo are the most poignant and eloquent account of the translator’s art that I have ever read.”—Michael F. Moore, translator of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed

“With this collection of elegant essays, Jhumpa Lahiri makes her career as a writer of two languages and, increasingly, as a translator between them seem less an eccentric adventure than a necessary one. No man is an island—and no language, either.”—David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

“In these stunning essays, Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly investigates the fluctuating borders between writer and translator, language and identity, artist and art. Her intellectual and deeply personal inquiries—reminiscent of Hannah Arendt, Virginia Woolf, and Susan Sontag—challenge us to engage with our own mysterious and metamorphic relationship to language and who we are.”—Jenny McPhee, translator of Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon

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Translation Is Hard Work. Lydia Davis Makes It Thrilling.

By Molly Young

• Nov. 30, 2021
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Lydia Davis learned German after being plopped into a classroom in Graz, Austria, at the age of 7. Her immersion began at home with breakfast: If she woke early, she received Schokolade mit Schlag (hot chocolate with whipped cream), and if she slept late she got Schokolade ohne Schlag (no whipped cream). After moving back to the United States not long after, she studied French, Latin and Italian. A lifetime of work as a translator (and novelist and short story writer and essayist) has followed.

Her new book, “Essays Two,” is organized around translation. As Davis points out in a preface, the book is more focused in its material than was her previous collection, “Essays One.” With “Two,” it helps to have a pre-existing interest in translation, or at least a general curiosity about language, whereas to enjoy the earlier collection you needed only a pre-existing interest in “stuff.” But whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising.

In addition to translating Proust and Flaubert, she has tackled “books of all degrees of excellence and nonexcellence, of interest and no interest” — among them a sentimental biography of Marie Curie, art catalogs, travel essays and histories of China. Whatever the source, Davis finds innumerable joys in its conversion. The first essay here enumerates 21 of these pleasures. Translation, she notes, puts a person in intimate communion with an author, removes the anxiety of invention that attends most writing work and presents eternal (but often solvable) riddles. It also offers a form of hard-core armchair travel: To puzzle through “Madame Bovary” is to shoot through a wormhole from America of the 21st century into France of the 19th.

In an essay about translating Proust’s letters, Davis voyages to the apartment where he wrote much of “In Search of Lost Time.” The apartment has not been maintained as Proust left it, with his furniture and artifacts intact, but has instead become the location of a bank. Davis receives a tour of the writer’s former apartment from an employee who occasionally has to run off and deal with banking questions. Client meetings are held in Proust’s bedroom, and the bank’s waiting room is where the writer once warehoused an unruly pile of inherited possessions. “An imaginative financier with a little information might be haunted, sitting next to the lone potted plant, by the lingering ghostly presence of a crowded accumulation of heavy fin de siècle furniture and bric-a-brac, imbued with Proust’s personal associations,” Davis writes.

Although she learned German by immersion, Davis’s preferred method of language acquisition is quite different, and, to an outside observer, demonically challenging: She finds a book published in a language that she does not fully or even partially understand and then tries to figure out what it means.

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General Translation Strategies

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You will have to decide whether you need to keep the text in original, translate, or present the readers with both. The decision about the strategy you use for incorporating the non-English materials in your writing should be based on a number of considerations, including:

The familiarity of the language and culture that you expect from your audience

A research paper in your Spanish literature class might draw more heavily on Spanish language, because most of your readers will know some of it.

The attention that you put on the specific vocabulary that you are bringing into your writing

When an author used a particular term in their language and this term has many equivalents in your language. For example, Martin Heidegger coined the German term Dasein , which is often translated into English as “being there” or “presence.” If you substituted discussing the term Dasein with the word presence , the readers might come to the conclusion that it is a term that has no relation to Dasein. This might lead them to believe that you are using it in the original meaning of presence that has no relation to the Heideggerian definition of Dasein .

The effect you want to have on your audience

You can shape your audience’s reading experience and expectations by considering what effect using an untranslated text will have on the readers, in relationship to the purpose you set for your writing. The reason why parts a text might be left untranslated can vary between writers. For instance, you might require the audience to take a more active part in decoding the text and working on the translation on their own. Another reason might be offering the audience the experience of attempting to read a text in a language they have not learned before, in order to challenge them and provide them with that experience. Other reasons that you set for the audience you are writing for are valid too.

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About translation, by Debora Tasca

17/10/2012 By Publisher Leave a Comment

This essay concentrates firstly on the general characteristics of translation, so that a less expert readership can also understand the meaning . It then reflects on some aspects of translation that might be interesting, since they give us a closer view of the daily life of translators; how they go about their work and the different types of translation they can be faced with. To conclude, there are some personal considerations on what makes a translation good or bad and what makes a translator good or not so good.

Definition and types

In general, translation can be defined as the transposition of a text into a different language from the one used to write the original text. We often talk about the “source text” or “original text/proto-text” and “translation/meta-text”. Translation in itself involves interpreting the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of a new text, equivalent to the original but in another language. It is, in fact, a written transposition of concepts from one language into another.

The translator aims to transfer the text from the source language to the target language so that both the meaning and the writing style remain unchanged. Taking into account the differences between languages, it is often difficult to preserve both. The translator is thus forced to make decisions that vary according to the nature of the text and the aims of the translation. In general, we can distinguish the following typologies in translation:

–    informative translation: the translation of texts of an informative nature, such as journalism and the news; –    literary translation: the translation of literary texts, be they prose, poetry, etc.; –     scientific translation: the translation of health and scientific texts; –    technical translation: the translation of texts of a technical nature, such as those related to engineering, automotives or computing. –     legal translation: the translation of texts in the legal field. This is different from sworn translation; –     Financial translation : the translation of texts about finance; –     Sworn translation : the official translation of documents, certificates, etc. that require legal validity. This type of translation can only be done by accredited translators.

Therefore, it is essential to understand what type of translation we are dealing with. It is clear that a technical manual will leave less room for the translator’s personal interpretation than a literary text. The art of translation includes not just language, but also a wide range of cultural and intellectual aspects that form part of the daily life of the people who speak that language and have it as their mother tongue. From gastronomy to literature, through the education system, religion and history, all this knowledge is as essential for the translator as linguistic knowledge.

Translation has to take into account all these characteristics and cultural norms that govern life in the two cultures involved in the translation process. This detailed knowledge of the cultures and traditions of both countries is necessary in order to produce a good translation, which maintains the principal meaning of the text without forgetting its target audience. In this sense translators are authors; writers who do not start writing from scratch, but from a written text in a language which they have to transpose to another language, adapting it at the same time.

The translator has to transfer not just the lexical and syntactic aspects; in fact, a group of words, even if well-constructed at the syntactic level, is not enough. It is hard to understand and lacks that “something” that all good translators have to confer on the text. It could be said that translation means “saying almost the same thing”. All this is designed to achieve a well-defined objective: “say almost the same thing” so that the reader understands, in the clearest and most effective way possible, what the original text aimed to express. The reader does not know the original version, and does not have to know it, but it is important that they understand the text that they have in front of them. The objective is effective communication.

The translator’s dilemma

“Interpreting” meaning can have very different results, since one meaning can have several interpretations. This makes us reflect on how we can translate something exactly from one language to another, given that one sentence or a few words can be interpreted in different ways. So how should the translator interpret meaning? In many ways, certainly, but which is the correct one?

For example, when the author of the text decides to use rhymes or other literary features, translation becomes complicated. A solution to this problem can be found, or at least attempted, by seeking a balance between two main requirements: on one hand, respecting the linguistic form of the text, and on the other hand, respecting its content. In some cases, however, achieving a satisfactory compromise between these two characteristics is simply impossible; respecting the formal structure of the text generates completely different content in the translation and, on the other hand, respecting the content makes it very difficult to respect the formal structure.

In these cases, it is not incorrect to talk about “untranslatability”. There are words in other languages that do not have an univocal equivalent in our own, and a whole sentence is needed to translate them. Sometimes simple sentences can be used, but sometimes they are too complicated and introduce fairly subjective feelings. Language is, in fact, a reflection of how people in a different culture understand the world around them.

The fact that a translated text has to remain faithful to the meaning of the original text, without compromising the linguistic norms of the target language, is a key principle of translation, more or less shared throughout the world. All the considerations of translators and the translation techniques that they choose are based, or should be based, on this principle. In any case, this is not always possible, or at least as easy as it may seem.  In fact, it is often the author of the original text who complicates the work of the translator.

The author of a non-literary text is driven by the desire (sometimes also the need) to communicate something. The development of their work is always conditioned by linguistic rules, which lead them to try to follow more or less strictly what is normally considered correct. The author of a literary text is also driven by the desire, or in some cases the need, to communicate something. The difference with the author of a non-literary text is that, although they follow linguistic rules, they try to bend these to their will, trying everything to achieve a certain originality of style and sometimes producing a result that is not always totally orthodox.

In summary, the author of a non-literary text aims simply to transmit a message, to communicate something. The literary author, on the other hand, has the same communicative aim, but tries to achieve it in a totally different way. It is easy to imagine the different effects that these choices can have on the final translation.

In the history of translation, there has always been an argument between those who guarantee fidelity to the author and those who guarantee fidelity to the reader. In general, it is the latter that prevails nowadays, since we aim to achieve a text that sounds as natural in the target language as in the source language. Translators often have to deal with a text that is in fact itself a (sometimes not very faithful) translation of another text.

The translator, as far as possible, has to try to overcome the obstacle of the double translation and make their version as similar as possible to the original. A so-called “intermediary language” is sometimes used. If, for example, the translator has to translate a text where the languages in question are from the group called “rare languages”, it will not be easy to find a translator who speaks both languages fluently and, at the same time, has a good knowledge of the subject matter. So the translator has to trust the translation of another, and the intermediary language is almost always English. This is because English is considered the most international and widely-spoken language, especially in business.

What does a good translator need?

Translation is an act of communication, but this does not mean that it is always carried out in an effective way. To achieve this, the reader needs to have the same linguistic and extra-linguistic foundations as the translator. This really depends on the work of the translator. Every translator has their own resources, sources, experience and methods. Every translator is different. In any case, although each has their own style and rhythm and follows their own patterns and processes, every translator always goes from the phase of understanding the text to expressing the text. In other words, they read a text, analyse it, understand it and then translate the different units of meaning into other units of meaning in the target language.

Translating is not a simple task and requires more work than a simple transfer of words from one language to another. It demands a perfect knowledge of the source as well as the target language, excellent general knowledge and good command of the subject matter of the translation. As well as these requirements, there are texts that are so complex to interpret that they at times cause the translator to make (sometimes serious) errors.

The meaning of sentences is often so linked to the cultural context in which they were created that it is practically impossible to do an equivalent translation capable of maintaining the same meaning as the source text.

What should the translator do in these situations? Is it better to translate literally so as not to betray the idea of the author of the text, but with the risk of prejudicing the quality of the translation; or is it preferable to find a closer alternative that means something in the target language, even if the translated version changes the idea of the original text slightly?

Like many translators, I’m sure, I would answer this question by saying that my aim is to communicate the same idea as the original text. To reach this goal, it is important to translate taking into account those who will be the beneficiaries of the translation; that is, native readers of the target language. Of course, it is also essential that the translator has a good command of their specialism or, in other words, the subject matter of the text.

Obviously we cannot be professionals in all fields and also be translators at the same time; for that reason, if possible, we need the support of different professionals when we translate. We should not forget that in the majority of cases, the client is the best possible professional who can give us all the information we need. Although we must also not forget that the person who asks for the translation and the author of the text are not always the same person.

The translator has to try to go beyond the original words; to reconstruct some meaning in the words that the author sometimes only manages to partially convey.

The translator is faced daily with terms or expressions whose translation presents difficulties. Sometimes the difficulty is that we cannot find a correct translation; often we find too many and we do not know which to choose. A source that confirms the accuracy of the translation of the term in question is of great importance. Generally, those who know how to search can find the confirmation they need in previously translated documents or on the Internet.

In other words, the work of a translator involves getting progressively closer to a text that is, in the target language, the most faithful reflection possible of a certain text in the source language. Some words have very clear translations, whereas others require more work and reflection.

Translation method

Personally, when I have to translate a text, I prefer, first of all, to read it in quite a general way to understand the subject matter in question. I can then begin a more detailed analysis of those aspects that could be difficult. In other words: terms, sentences and expressions whose meaning or translation is not obvious and which, for that reason, I decide to highlight.

Once this more analytical stage is complete, I begin to research the term, particularly if it is something unfamiliar or technical. I use different tools that can be found online such as glossaries, articles, similar texts, previous translations: anything that can give me a clearer idea of how to go about the translation Then I start the first draft of the new text.

The tools available in Word are very useful. For example, in my case, I highlight in red the words or phrases whose translation are not completely satisfactory. I also underline or use a new line to separate the possible translations of a noun, adjective or verb so that later I can choose the one that seems to work best. This way, the second time I read the text, I have a way to move forward and improve. I try to translate the whole text so as not to lose the thread of the subject area, trying not to get too bogged down by the details.

Once the first draft is finished, I read the text sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, to make it as good as possible from a stylistic point of view, seeking the best solutions so that the translation is as natural as possible for the reader. During this stage, it is important for me to work with both versions; the original and the translation.

Only in the final phase do I put the original to one side, trying to forget it, to be able to carefully revise the translation, putting myself in the place of a reader who does not know the original and who has to understand the text as it is presented. I think this is the best way of guaranteeing that the text is as natural as possible, just like an original text. So the task of the translator involves transferring concepts from the source language to the target language using the same expressions that a native speaker would use in the same communicative situation.

In any case, when there are references, events, circumstances or simply objects in the source language that do not exist in the target language, fulfilling this principle is impossible. In fact, it is sometimes impossible to translate maintaining a 1:1 relationship between the words in the source text and those in the target text; that is, replacing one word in the source text with one other word in the target text.

In this sense, there are many questions about whether it is better to translate sticking more closely to the source language or to prioritise the target text and thus move further away from the original.

According to the first view, the priority of the translator is to be as faithful as possible to the form of the original text. The translator has to reproduce all the stylistic elements of the original and use the same tone and register. They have to keep all the cultural elements intact and, in some cases, force the target language to adopt the form dictated by the source text. The translator must, above all, try not to betray the language used by the author and, if possible, convey the meaning of the message.

On the other hand, according to the second view, it is necessary to prioritise the accuracy of the message to the detriment of style, if necessary. To convey the message, the translator has to substitute the cultural elements in the original text with cultural elements that are more well-known to readers of the target language, even if they are not totally equivalent.

The most important thing is the meaning of the message that the author aims to transmit. The translator has to convey that message to readers of the target language in a natural way. Fidelity to the language, register and tone used by the author of the original text is secondary. These two views are total opposites, although less radical positions can be found in the middle.

Translation is not an exact science; therefore, every time the translator undertakes a job, they have to firstly identify with the author to understand the message they are aiming to convey, and secondly identify with the potential reader and use language that will allow them to easily understand this message. To carry out their task, the translator has to avoid being too rigid; on the contrary, they have to open their mind, make it more flexible and use their common sense. So in the case of a law or a technical text, the translator has to stay as closely as possible to the meaning of the original text.

Literary translation allows them to slightly move away from the exact meaning in order to preserve the style and metre of the original text. There are thus situations in which explanatory notes are necessary; for example, word games (words that appear in the original language but not in the target language, or proverbs or typical concepts of the source language and culture that do not have equivalents in the target language.

Amongst the tools that the translator can use is computer assisted translation. This tool allows them to create a translation memory. The translated text is thus archived in the memory. The first stage involves segmentation of the original and translated texts. This tool is very useful when it comes to translating technical manuals or legal documents because it significantly reduces the amount of time needed to do the translation and allows the translator to maintain coherence in terminology and style throughout the text.

Translation errors, translation assessment

Although the main aim of the translator is to perfect their translation, they sometimes make mistakes. In my opinion, two kinds of errors can be distinguished; firstly, those that are very well-hidden and do not compromise the text. For example, the use of words that are not very natural but not incorrect in the target language; a semantic structure that is understandable but not natural for a native reader; or errors that are only discovered through a detailed analysis and are not apparent from a quick reading. And, on the other hand, there are more serious errors which compromise the meaning of the text, and grammatical errors.

I think it is difficult to establish objective criteria to assess a translation as good or not so good. There is no such thing as a perfect translation; several translators can do a good translation but they can all be totally different from each other. So we can say that one factor is fidelity; on one hand, to that expressed by the author, and on the other hand, respect for the reader and what they expect from a translated text. Another way could be to look at the types of errors and how serious they are. A text can therefore generate infinite versions and the fact that one is very different from another does not imply that one is good and the other is not. Of course, there are good, average and terrible translations, so there are some criteria that must be respected.

The translation must have all the paragraphs and sentences of the original document; otherwise the translation is incomplete because it does not have all the ideas that the author was trying to transmit in the first place. The translation cannot obviously alter any concept of the original. There cannot be any spelling or grammatical errors.

The translation has to be as fluent as possible, but keeping as closely as possible to the original syntax. This allows for a more enjoyable reading, a better understanding of the text and, at the same time, achieving the final aim: transmitting the original idea.

As for the difference between a good translator and another who is not so good, it is not easy to draw an exact line. A good translator does not always do perfect translations, and a less good translator will never do very good translations.

We can say that to be considered a good translator, one must understand the text to be translated as thoroughly as possible and write a new text that is as detailed as possible, which allows the target reader to understand the message and the meaning with no misunderstandings or doubts.

A good translation will be clear, will not lead to misunderstandings and the fact that it is a translation will not be noticeable; it will be natural.

In conclusion, I think that translation is necessary, or rather, indispensable, to communicate and bring a concept closer to people who belong to different cultural realities. An important element for me is taking into account that every communicative act has a communicative residue; a concept, word or expression that seems to make our translation come to a standstill and to make it impossible to continue. So it is essential to have the ability or skill to see which parts of the message could be misunderstood and which tools could be used to compensate for this residue.

Attention must then be paid to the reader and the context; because every discourse we make, written or oral, is influenced by its cultural context. It is as though there were a border that united two cultures and separated them at the same time, making the differences clear. For me it is here, on this border, where translation takes place.

Written by:

Debora Tasca, translator and interpreter

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Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Bloomsbury, 2014 (softcover 2016). (digital preview )

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