Reading response Feb 27 - Audree

Huda's talk last Friday was very enjoyable. I noted that her presentation style was quite different to the previous speakers. It was more speech-like, and she had more of a general direction/message for her talk. She spoke a lot about poetry as a tradition, and tradition as a practice rather than an institution, which is what seemed to be the general message that was steering her presentation. 

Translating Dialect Literature, Luigi Bonaffini 

I found it interesting how the author describes dialect as "the language of correctness and difference" and contrasts it with the more flat and bland nature of the national language that is often seen in advertisements, and television. Bonaffini relates dialect directly with individual creativity. Indeed dialects have a certain color that the official languages do not. I also found the point he makes about dialect as "forgotten truth" capable of revealing one's true being and preserving history in a way that the national language won't be able to. This process of "usura," of erosion of a language as it gets standardized. There is indeed something powerful about an oppressed class for example using their own dialect and reclaiming it against the standard language that wants to look down on it. 

Dialect and Point of View, Simo K. Määttä

In this article Määttä explains how the French translation of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury completely obliterates the novel's original ideological point, which was to differentiate between the white character's and black characters' accents at different points throughout the novel. Although I have not read the story, the author does a good job at explaining how the translation falls short, although, upon reading the excerpts from the novel that are provided in the article, I have to say that the translation does make an attempt, one that is far greater than attempts to translate dialect in the Tome Sawyer excerpts that we read in class. However, simulating language is not enough, when translating dialect, because it is packed with such ideology, it is important to think about what the author intends the use of the dialect to mean in their story. In this case, it is important that the speech of black characters is ecaggerated and seen as "other" in the second part of the story as opposed to the first part. This means that the translator should not have adopted the same translation strategy all throughout, for it erases an aspect of the story that speaks to the ideology that it conveys. 

Gisele: Huda Fakhreddine + Readings

     Huda Fakhreddine was incredible. My knowledge of Arabic literature is limited to one class I took last Spring titled, "Introduction to Middle Eastern Literature," and I'm sure that a brief one-semester class could hardly even graze the edges of the centuries-old traditions of Arabic poetry. I thought her perspective on Arabic poetry (and in some ways poetry in general) as a collection of moments that time does not surpass, but interacts with, was really interesting. In her passion for poetry and deep connection to the Arabic tradition, she managed to make the concept of 'timelessness' come alive. The concept of timelessness always seemed like something entirely subjective and conceptual, but with Fakreddine's explanation of Arabic poetry, the word makes perfect objective sense. I credit this to her emphasis on tradition as the means by which poetry is and continues to be a dynamic current "in a constant state of becoming." What I liked especially about Huda Fakhreddine was her ability to love and read and interact with poetry as it is, accepting the words they are presented and accepting them as they are, never distinguishing "classical" from "contemporary" or "wrong" from "right," only that the poem is as it is, and it is meant to be that way for its own moment in time. When she talked about translation in particular, this perspective was especially unlike anything I've heard before. While some of the other speakers have discussed the importance of accuracy, faithfulness, or domestication, Fakhreddine easily accepted and encouraged mistakes to be made in translation. The past is a necessary part of the present, and mistakes offer new perspectives. 

For this week's readings, I chose Rachel Lung's "Non-standard language translation" and Jaime Harker's "Contemporary Japanese Fiction and Middlebrow Translation Strategies." In Lung's paper, I appreciated the translation examples she provided because they helped me visualize her assertion regarding "linguistic resources" and "dynamic equivalents." These two points reminded me of Huda Fakhreddine's description of the traditional/cultural "footprint" that the original language should leave in a translated text. However, she did say something regarding AAVE being an indication of being uneducated, and I don't think that is true at all—I would consider AAVE as a "standard" form of speech just like any other dialect. While I think her ideas are interesting, the way she chose to employ them here is reinforcing stereotypes regarding speech and education level/racism.

The second reading, "Contemporary Japanese Fiction and Middlebrow Translation Strategies" made me consider social influences on the success of translation in the U.S., particularly concerning East Asian literature. While Harker focused on Japanese literature in translation, I felt that a lot of the assertions she made regarding Western fetishization and stereotypes could be applied to Korean literature as well. She focused a lot on the difficulty of distinguishing foreignization and domestication due to the west's historical fetishization and commodification of Japan, via "orientalism," and the impossibility of distinguishing a "dominant culture," specifically in the U.S. where there is so much overlap in culture and identity. This was an interesting perspective because, from my knowledge of translation, domestication, and foreignization are often up for debate. In reality, as Harker points out, the act of translation is bound to be affected by prejudice and preference. Therefore, in the attempt to find some balance between domestication and foreignization, there will inevitably be the affirming of some stereotype or other.

Huda post talk notes and readings on translating from/into dialects - Lianbi

 Notes about this week’s readings:

The first article I read was Rachel Lung’s “Non-standard language in translation,” I have some serious issues with this article. Unfortunately although there are many people working on Chinese-English translation studies in Hong Kong, I usually don’t find the articles insightful. Many assumptions are made without justification or even acknowledgement and translation is approached as a technical linguistic exercise, not as a subject of interest for literary studies…

I appreciate that the article is very specific and hands-on. It is true that we cannot achieve formal equivalence when translating dialects in English into Chinese. Some grammatical features are just not there. Even if they were there, it wouldn’t make sense to translate the dialect “formally.” (Yet, isn’t this so frequently the case in Chinese-English translations? It sounds like far too obvious a point to me…)

I find two out of the three examples the article gives of good translations of English dialects in English quite ridiculous. Use near-homonyms?? Render “lizards” as “western doctors”??? Seriously?? That’s how we’re supposed to render the slightly idiosyncratic “them lizards” in the English into Chinese?? I cannot believe it.

I think this ridiculousness is rooted in a deeper problem: the author’s prejudice against ways of speaking and the author’s own belief in prescriptive linguistics. She correctly points out that “standard vs. non-standard English” is not a question of “formal vs. informal,” but what she implies throughout the article is that “standard vs. non-standard” is in fact “correct vs. incorrect” and worse, “educated vs. uneducated.” “The fact that the speaker also has problems with concord is indicative of her social and educational background.” No, the use of AAVE does not imply that the speaker is not capable of language and expressing themselves clearly, nor that they are uneducated. The lizard homonym example and the second example where the translator again “play with homonyms'” are seriously problematic. The neutral topolectic difference in the original is translated into a deficient way of speaking in Chinese. The other example where the strategy is to use a character common for the Canton dialect is okay. 

The second article I read was Jaime Harker’s “Contemporary Japanese Fiction & ‘Middlebrow’ Translation Strategies.”

I really enjoyed the beginning. Harker summarized very well the problems I’ve been having with the foreignization vs. domestication dichotomy. I love the idea of “monolithic certainty” which is one weakness of Venuti’s theory. I find the reformulation of “foreignization as “alienating experimentalism” insightful, and its attractiveness to post-structuralists and modernists sense-making: it is “not only aesthetically but also politically and ethically superior.” I also find it very interesting that Harker describes Venuti as “elitist” (31) just because of his own fluent prose. What does Harker really mean there?? Is it that Venuti likes foreignization symbolically and theoretically but cannot really stand it in practice?

I also like the formulation that “Highbrow disdain for the middlebrow… is also a gendered aversion”: women are the source of “suffocating convention”… And I understand how Kitchen goes against all these stereotypes. Harker really presents a compelling argument for the not so conventional approach of translating a novel into “bubblegum” Japanese, which I feel would be similar to Gen Z English? I wonder to what extent this bubblegum Japanese can be enjoyable for older generations. Is it really a class thing or a time thing? Anna, have you read this translation? What do you feel about the style? I love the writing style of this article and its ideas come through very clearly, but I would love to talk more about whether the actual translation is like what he describes.

Huda Fakhreddine Post-talk notes:

I thoroughly enjoyed Huda’s presentation and find her a very inspiring figure. I am happy to have finally met a female professional translator, also a translator translating from, not into, her first language. I really saw her as a role model and found her ways of thinking, her choice of translation projects, and the way she challenges assumptions in the academic field inspiring and fascinating. I don’t know what else to say! I will probably remember her conception of modernism in Arabic poetry and poetry translation for a long time.

Huda Fakhreddine and extra readings - Wesley

 

Huda Fakhreddine Lecture and Readings - Suis

 I found Huda Fakhreddine very pleasant and eloquent. I particularly liked her point about the importance of bilingual editions. She is an advocate for bilingual editions because the physical presence of the language on the page, whether it is comprehensible to the reader or not, serves as a reminder that the translated text is someone’s reading (or interpretation) of the text, that the original has traveled to us via translation. I find that this is especially true for poetry because I think the process of translating poetry begins first with the reading of the poem in its source language, and then finding your own interpretation of the poem. I loved her readings of the original Mu’allaqāt text and hearing the musicality of the language. Her English rendition of the beautiful alliteration of the phonetic sound “sh”in Arabic, however, didn’t sound as lovely. I feel like in English, alliteration in poetry can be overdone and lose the musicality that it may have in some other languages (or at least I’ve had a professor tell me in a poetry workshop course I took at Berkeley, and I tend to agree.)

For the readings, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova provides a great close reading of Naomi Walford’s English translation of Vilhelm Moberg’s “A Time on Earth,” as well as Juliana Jachnina’s Russian translation of the same book. She prefaces her close reading with the idea that dialects are the author’s “concern” for the “ways of expression” (50). She also mentions that dialect is often used for “characterization of the fictional characters.” Dimitrova notes that “A Time on Earth” uses a “few dialect markers, mainly on the lexical level” (51) and that in Walford’s translation uses “markers of colloquial language” with “no markers of dialect” (58-59). She finds that the Russian translator chose to use “colloquial” speech in place of dialect as well (60). Dimitrova mentions at the end of the article that “the publishing houses and their editors can have a very important influence on the final shape of the target text,” that certain words can be censored (63). The article ends with the note that “translators are likely to feel that there can usually be no connotative equivalence between speech in a source language dialect and speech in a target language dialect” (63). I can really relate to this because I have never felt that the “feeling” I get from reading a Japanese dialect “feels” the same way as any dialect I’ve come across in English. I think one can only attempt to translate into approximations.

In Luigi Bonaffini’s “Translating Dialect Literature,” there are mentions of the “impossibility” of translating dialect. He notes the importance of dialect, quoting Hermann Haller, that there is a “unique expressiveness” to each dialect (285), that some attempts to translate the dialect in Huckleberry Finn to Italian has failed to “capture the eccentricity of vernacular speech, its function as an alternative, a non-normative deviation from the norm” and the importance of the presence of the dialect in this novel (281). Although he admits this is an extreme case, I derive from these two articles that a translator should be aware of the political context of which they are translating (I recall Ken Liu’s lecture here) and that perhaps “the success of any attempt” to translate dialect “ultimately depend[s…] on the linguistic and literary sensibility of the translator” (Bonaffini, 228).

Feb 27 Response to Huda Fakhreddine Talk, Dialect and Sociolect Readings - Rose

        Huda’s talk was inspiring and captivating—definitely my favorite thus far. During the pre-talk, Huda explained to me and Lianbi that she grew up during the Lebanese civil war and was introduced to poetry through her father’s recitations. She offered her distinction between “thought” and “spoken” poetry and outlined the challenges she faced while translating revered poetry like the Mu'allaqat, whose meanings were revealed to her over time. She highlighted the importance of capturing the sound and “silences” of poetry, and I loved her description of poetry as a being that transcends time, a form of writing that “remains urgent despite history.” Time begins again when one writes poetry, and the traditions that poetry represents are in a constant state of becoming. Translation is only one in many attempts at translating, like Huda mentioned, and I feel so grateful that I got to chat with her. No matter how much reading I could have done, I kept wanting to ask more questions and know more. I’ll remember this talk for a long time. 

The first article I read for this week was Ritva Leppihalme’s “The Two Faces of Standardization.” This article intrigued me in that it not only included multiple excerpts from Impola’s translation of Päätalo’s Koillismaa, but also an explanation of key translation terms in this context and a note on the readers’ reception of the English translation. Päätalo was my maternal grandmother’s favorite author, so I had heard of his work before but never read it. I enjoyed the cleverness of the humor in the Finnish passages as well as how the rhythm in the speech of different characters was indicated through punctuation—ellipses for hesitation and reticence, and a lack of punctuation for directness and unfiltered thoughts. There were numerous references and word variations that I did not understand without explanation, although I could immediately see how dialect was used to paint a picture of the farmland and forests, contributing to the sociocultural context, individual characters, and humor in Finnish. I appreciate Impola’s efforts in the English translation to clarify and explain the references for English-language, and particularly Finnish-American, readers, although I think that he could have gone further to convey in the English the overt playfulness that the Finnish conveys. The title Koillismaa (northeastern country) immediately signifies that this novel is rooted in its geographical location: the selkonen (wilderness) in northeastern Finland, where Swedish and minority languages like Sami are spoken. I understand that certain elements like idioms and archaisms in Finnish are difficult to convey in English, but when regionalisms are the norm in the writing, I don’t think that a translation that smoothens out the language is sufficient unless it’s specifically to educate. Because writing in dialect here can also be a way to preserve and record this specific variation of Finnish, I think that displaying that more obviously in translation is crucial. Even small touches would have been entertaining to see in the Englilsh, for example recreating a phonological word play like kaupuntin for kaupunkin (city, town) with a single-letter vowel or consonant change in English. As Leppihalme suggests, dialect calls for the creativity and craft that come with translation, meaning that literary translators must work with much more than just “ linguistic choices” (259). Attempting to maintain dialect not only conveys linguistic identity here but also “a place (the Koillismaa region), a time (the early 1930s) and a community (of loggers and small farmers)” (256). I can imagine that translating Päätalo’s Iijoki series is already an extremely taxing and frustrating process, and it’s impossible to find an equivalent of this dialect in English. Nonetheless, I think that Impola could have taken more liberties and employed more compensation techniques to create a similarly playful and endearing effect that the Finnish so strongly suggests.

The second article I read was Serrao’s “From Language to Dialect: de Calvianis quidam,” translated by Thomas E. Peterson. Like Leppihalme, Serrao describes dialect as tool that indicates time and regional affiliation. Serrao mentions that, when he was young, he “spoke, breathed in dialect” (274), showing that dialect can also be an intimate tie to one's heritage. Serrao even uses his dialect in poetry to connect to his father, noting that dialect is “the language of poetry” (274). To Serrao, dialect opposes the “obligation” of the national language, instead providing a richness to writing that creates a way of further growing one's familial roots. Serrao understands the challenges and seemingly impossible task of conveying dialect in translation, but he also acknowledges that facing this challenge is worth a try to give readers an “initial, and indispensable, orientation” (278). I feel like I keep seeing in-depth examples of how not to translate dialect, so that makes me wonder what a "good" translation of dialect looks like (or if that even exists)? Regardless, like all translations, this process requires being open to taking risks and engaging with the creativity, sensibility, and "literary" in translation.

Huda Fakhreddine review + readings Soren Chang

 Oh gosh Ms Fakhreddine was so incredible ! I wish I had presented on her and skipped discussion to speak with her. I thought she was so eloquent and made me think of poetic traditions in ways I hadn't even thought to think of.  I thought her perspective on the Arabic tradition of poetry through time was so beautiful--art is always a product of the world it's created in, and all art is political, but the best art is monumental in whatever time it's created in, relevant and applicable and understandable within and outside of historical contextualization. What she said about translating specifically Arabic poetry, and how with translations of Arabic often the translation becomes the original and its significance, carving out the original author's place in the culture of the language they're translated into. I asked her a question about translating meter and rhyme and she gave a really interesting answer, where she talked about how translating Arabic meter into English meter would give the poem connotations that weren't there in the original. That really had me thinking about how much I liked David Ferry's translation of Gilgamesh, and what to make of it now with my new information.

While reading our articles it occurred to me, thanks to what Ms Fakhreddine said about the connotations of things that aren't there in the original, that translating foreign dialects into the somewhat equivalent native dialects could be indicative of things like classism, racism, etc. when those themes weren't originally present, like Brodovich said. I liked that Lung's paper stressed the importance of societal context, like class status, ethnicity, and region, to emphasize the importance of being careful when using Brodovich's proposed fixes to dialectical difficulties in translation.

Huda Fakhreddine review + Reading Response 02/26 –Marina

I found Huda Fakhreddine's presentation very informative. It gave me a lot of food for thought, especially when it comes down to translating poetry. I don't really feel passionate about translating poetry, and I find it more challenging than translating prose, even literary fiction. So, I can't imagine having to translate from a language that's so different from English and, adding to that, translating poems from centuries ago! What Fakhreddine is doing is remarkable, and I admire her for that. However, I disagree with her when it comes to thinking of literary texts and poetry as "contemporary." I firmly believe that every text, poetry, etc., has to be read within its context. It's crucial to understand its history and context. Otherwise, a lot will be lost, misplaced, or misinterpreted. 

For this week's readings, I choose "The Two Faces of Standardization" by Rita Lippihalme and "Non-Standard Language in Translation" by Rachel Lung. I was hoping that after reading both articles, I would have a clearer opinion on Standardization and how to translate dialects, accents, and other forms of expression. It wasn't the case, I understand that we as translators have to accept that there's a "price" to be paid if we choose one road or another and that there could be some incredibly creative ways to solve the problem of translating dialects and etcetera, but I can't seem to be at peace with any resolution!! I'm a little frustrated. But I'm excited to hear what my classmates think about this problem and if they have had any experience with translating dialects. 

Feb 26 Brennan Corrigan

 I found Huda Fakhreddine's talk to be one of the most enjoyable we have had so far. She made an important point about how Arabic literature is "at the mercy of translators" unlike the canonized works, or the canonized languages. She was also very good at helping us hear the poetic sound of the Arabic text.

I don't think I agree with her idea about lineation; that it can be used when other methods of poetic organization (rhyme, meter) are not available. To me, lineation just highlights the fact that those things are not present. Here, though, the lineation probably also serves her target audience of Arabic speakers who prefer to read in English rather than "Classical" Arabic. The lineation matches up to the search text, making the two easier to compare.

I asked her a question about the accessibility of the Mu'allaqāt to modern readers; whether the language had changed to such a degree that it would be difficult for a speaker of Modern Standard Arabic to engage with them. She said she had never heard of the idea of a Modern Standard before she came to America. I still wonder what she meant by this, because linguists hold Arabic as one of the best examples of diglossia; a Standard variety and several nonstandard varieties employed contrastively in different social situations. I would like to know more about this from the Arabic faculty here. Still, she answered my question in a way that I understood, saying that a native speaker would need a dictionary to engage with it.

I read Harker, on foreignization in Japanese. He says of Venuti,

"His description of the foreignizing text (experimentation, polyvalencies or plurivocalities, discontinuities, the play of the signifier) betrays his preference for the ‘writerly’ text and his instinctive suspicion of anything too accessible and mainstream."

"...residual elitist tendencies in Venuti’s advocacy of the foreignizing translation. Venuti’s relentlessly fluent prose – fluent, at least, in an academic context – suggests that his embrace of formal experimenta- tion is more symbolic than disruptive, a necessary gesture in a politicized theoretical environment."

We saw how pervasive this in Chad Post's talk, where he discussed how translations don't sell well because translation presses are interested only in the "important" and "High Modernist" works. If I remember correctly, Dr. Elliot commented that Ken Liu might be the first science fiction author the BU Translation Series has ever hosted. I really like "fluent, at least, in an academic context". There are multiple Englishes, and maybe we need to deal with the Greco-Latinate log in our own eye before picking out all the specks in other translators.

I wrote the above before finding THIS:

“So let the masses have their Masscult, let the few who care about good writing, painting, music, architec- ture, philosophy, etc., have their High culture, and don’t fuzz up the distinction with Midcult.”

(in Rubin 1992:xv).

I can't believe anyone actually published that. Well, I can, but that just makes it worse.

I also read Dimitrova. She says an important feature of dialects is "they tend to exist almost exclusively in oral form. Any written forms of them are very restricted in use and often tend to be created anew every time there is occasion for their use". This is becoming less and less true. In my undergrad years, I studied this exact phenomenon in Swiss German. The local dialect is being used on Twitter and other social media sites, both by individuals for casual tweets, and by organizations that want to signal Swiss identity. (So, similar reasons why authors use dialect, according to Dimitrova.) Mahmoud Qudah (2016) has shown that speakers of Jordanian Arabic will use their local dialect when texting or tweeting close associates, then switch to MSA for formal communication or when a wider audience is desired.

At least in the Swiss German example, the dialect is written phonologically. Eventually, I have to imagine someone from one of these communities will base dialog in a novel off of conventions that evolved organically online. At that point, the author's choice will not be between (1) not representing dialect or (2) inventing a way to represent dialect, but (1) representing dialect the community way (2) representing it in an invented way (3) not representing it. In the future, I wonder if English text-speak will be able to receive translation from foreign dialect.

Feb 21 Response- Gisele Sanchez

Having Susan Harris and Chad Post was really exciting since I am really interested in pursuing publication myself. Especially after last week's readings on how little translated literature is published in the US, it was interesting to hear their perspectives on working within a small industry. I did, however, disagree with some of the things they said regarding the translations themselves. They mentioned that the original shouldn't take precedence over the translation, and I can't imagine how that would be contributing to their goal of sharing global literature with the English-speaking world. Why shouldn't the original speak for itself and represent its originating language even in translation? It seemed that their perspectives as publishers were very different from that of translators themselves who more often than not make conscious attempts to avoid domesticating a piece of literature beyond recognition. Additionally, after speaking to Susan Harris about the process of editing for Words Without Borders, she explained that while checking the accuracy of translations is done sometimes—it isn't a necessary step in the WWB editing process. This I found a bit strange because translated literature no doubt requires an entirely different editing process from literature written in English, and neglecting to at least make an attempt to preserve the original text's nuances and cadences, as Ken Liu put it, would be a disservice to the original work. 

In relation to the reading, the speaker's perspectives contradicted Huda J. Fakhreddine's claim that translation should include: 

"The effort to imagine roots for the translated poem in its target language will result in layered, textures translations that make meaningful connections and pave the way for a vibrant conversation between languages and cultures in their wake." 

I found her description of the translation process very beautiful. If Arabic must be accessible to the English-speaking world to be considered as aesthetically and historically important as other medieval literature, then the process of translation should be an exchange. I also liked that she acknowledges that while translations can never be perfect, the mere attempt to create an honest depiction of the original culture and language is enough to make something meaningful. 

Feb 21 Response - Audree

 The talk with Susan Harris and Chad Post was insightful and fun. It was lovely to see how lively they were and how they spoke about publishing with such excitement and care. It is evident that they have been in the business for a long time and are familiar with its ins and outs. Harris spoke about WWB almost as if it was a passion project and Post talked about Dalkey with such familiarity. I suppose that these two "presses" are quite small with quite a small team, so it was nice to see how involved they each were with multiple levels of the process. One thing I found interesting is Chad Post's approach to editing and publishing translations. For Post, the original does not take precedent over the translation— he wants the book to be the best book it can be in English, and tends to dislike what he deems to be unnecessary foreignization. I found this interesting because, while we have only gotten the perspective of translators and critics so far, the editor's/publisher's view is obviously going to be quite different, and sometimes will be in conflict with that of the translator. 

I have always found poetry difficult to relate to or even to appreciate in its entirety because its mechanisms seem quite foreign to me. I really enjoyed A Poem...or Something More Beautiful for it really rang true with what I conceive love to be, and it was really beautiful how the author was able to capture the element of love that ages and grows. Indeed, it is "something more beautiful," and perhaps something more important than poetry. 

Fakhreddine's essay was also of particular interest to me, and they make a very good point about the way we make sense of literature in a historical context. Indeed,"In its “Global Turn,” the field of Medieval Studies is not illuminating previously dark spots in the world, but dark spots in its constructed image of the world." This highlights just how much our conception of literary history is shaped by our already biased perspective. She talks of Area Studies and states that "They are more readily approached as symptoms of cultural or ethnic or gender complexes, and rarely if at all acknowledged as art or literature with aesthetic merits worthy of study." Indeed, when we read these works it is obvious that they have merit of their own, but unfortunately, it is easy to slip into a politics when it comes to reading world literature. This made me wonder whether or not this kind of thing is escapable? 

Huda Fakhreddine Response - Lianbi

 Susan & Chat Post-talk Notes:

I liked it. I thought it was a lively seminar that helped me understand the literary translation publishing scene in America much better. I am impressed by how dedicated they are to their work and the pressure and changes they’re working against. I appreciated a lot of the things WWB is doing to promote international literature and communication, and this group of people and their contributors have a lot to teach me. One note about my personal feeling: I was impressed by their recognition of the disadvantages translators face as non-native English speakers. I never thought that publishers would care about that. It makes me feel like my presence in this field means something and is validating to hear. We were also very happy to meet the ALTA representative there and we will make sure that we join! 

It seems like everyone I’ve talked to after the talk, including myself, likes Susan more than Chad :) I think Chad gives off aggressive energy especially during the pre-talk conversation…

Huda Fakhreddine Pre-talk Response

I cried reading the poems she co-translated from her dad! They are beautiful. I love the thoughtful introduction and she and other translators/editors included at the beginning of each translation. They are very concise and powerful. I notice there’s wordplay in English (e.g. “tomorrow” – “morrow”), I wonder what the original is like and how she transferred word plays into English.

The Mu‘allaqāt for Millennials has such beautiful and creative typography! Very interesting idea subverting the footnotes to next to the poems. I wonder why sometimes there are only notes next to the Arabic version but not the English. I also wonder about all the changes of format that happened from the Arabic to the English, for example a verse looking part translated into a poetry looking part in English, or two columns dissolving into one column in English.

The topic of boundary between prose and poetry seems to be an important one in Arabic translation. Salim Barakat is also described as someone who writes “prose poem” or “free verse,” and we see that the translators decided to keep the poem format in the English instead of prose. I wonder what the line breaks gain and lose in each case. Also I’m curious about the numbering system. Sometimes it’s alphabetical, sometimes numeric. Lastly I think about punctuation and capitalization. The poems seem to boldly diverge from English grammar a lot. 

And what I loved the most of the assigned works for today was Huda’s essay! Very rich with content and ideas yet easy to read. She is a scholar who writes with translator’s eyes and experiences. “A translator can only tap into the creative potentials of a poem in translation when she sees herself as a student of a whole tradition and not as the creator of figures or works of choice.” I love how she reasons the importance of contextualization in translation in academia, the importance of presenting and promoting non-Western literary traditions like the Arabic as worthy of study in its own right as art, not as “symptoms of cultural or ethnic or gender complexes.” She points out that “in order for Arab poets to find a place on the new Global Stage… they have to prove themselves to be active participants in Western literature and thought,” and this sad reality means that we must allow these poets to enter English with their contexts so readers can begin to understand the extent of their poetic innovations. 

I love how she then connects this motivation to the practice of translating specifically Abbasid poetry. Because they are modernist poets par excellence to her, she identifies a clear translation strategy: “allow access to Abbasid poetry as poetry which can connect to urgent and relevant concerns, and which can impose itself upon us as poetry and not merely as an artifact of times past.” I think this implies a degree of domestication but it truly means a deep and thoughtful engagement with the literary traditions and sensibilities of the target language. 

“Literary studies nowadays are clearly global in their states aspirations but persistently Eurocentric in their methods and approaches. We are thus invited to negotiate a complex dialectic of understanding literatures on their own terms without falling into nativism or isolationism.” Well said and beautifully realized in her own translation work!

Susan Harris Chad Post + reading response Soren

 I thought Susan and Chad were so funny and charismatic! It was really interesting to get to see the nitty gritty publication ups and downs when it comes to publishing translated literature. I thought it peculiar when they said they didn't really believe in prioritizing the original--Gisele and I asked them afterwards what their exact publishing process was for Korean translator Anton Hur specifically, and Susan told us that if they had somebody on the editorial team that could read the original language, then they would have them read the original text to compare, but that it wasn't by any means necessary. I didn't really agree with that. 

I read the Rebellion poem, and I thought it was beautiful. I wonder about the structuring of the poem, with the last two lines indented, and what rhyme schemes or repetitions there may have been in the original lost in the translated version. Arabic seems like an incredibly beautiful, tangible language, and I wonder how she approaches translation specifically from an Arabic --> English standpoint. She seems like a mostly "reading experience" prioritizing translator, much like Chad and Susan stressed. I thought it was interesting that she said she mostly tried to focus on historical context and the poet's place in history when translating, as it seems like an important aspect mostly talked about as background information and not the whole picture. Barakat's and Fakhreddine's opposite relationships with the Arabic language, and I wonder if I would still feel that separation or connection from Arabic had I read the poemse first; if Fakhreddine really translated those emotions as tangibly. 

Susan Harris and Chad Post + Huda Fakhreddine readings -- Wesley

 

Feb 21 Reading Response Rose - Susan Harris, Chad Post, Huda Fakhreddine

  Susan’s and Chad’s talk was eye-opening in that I left feeling both hopeful and hopeless. I appreciated their honesty about publishing being a “crapshoot” and was amazed by Susan’s statement that WWB publishes new content daily. I don’t agree with Chad’s philosophy on there being “no need to maintain foreignizations” in translation, but I understand that this is a contested topic in terms of readability and saleability. I went on the WWB website to read literature from a country I haven’t before, stumbling upon works from Mozambique. Mozambique’s official language is Portuguese but numerous indigenous languages are also spoken. I read a few poems by Hélder Faife and translated by Sandra Tamele and Eric M. B. Becker that dealt with childhood. The poetry was beautifully playful and imaginative: “‘Is growing up for real or make-believe?’ / Dot dot dot, I gasped. / A question mark is a fisherman’s hook.” I then read Tamele’s essay on publishing in Mozambique. Tamele explained terms like the “literary xenophile” and noted the country’s new indie publishers managed by young, Black writers. Tamele founded Editora Trinta Zero Nove (Editora 30.09), the first publishing house dedicated to literature in translation in Mozambique. The house currently publishes both Portuguese and translations into the country’s Bantu languages like Macua, Sena, and Changana. I am grateful to have found these pieces and am looking forward to seeing more become available. 

I loved this week's readings and realized how little I know about Arabic poetry and its rich literary traditions, as well as how Eurocentric translation studies is. I was familiar with the Mu'allaqat before this week, but seeing it in translation alongside the Arabic was wonderful. I was amazed by how the script in the hemistichs transformed into tercets or quatrains in English. I am curious about how the qasida form is often translated into English given that terms like “free verse” and “prose poetry” in Arabic come from Western paradigms; even if Arabic poetry is described as “free,” it differs from the English in that it usually still follows some type of form and meter. “Rebellion and Philosophy of Life and Death” and “A Lesson in Insight” were lyrical and dream-like, and I loved the cadence of sounds incorporated in the poems like “dew drenched dune” (verse 8 in RPLD) or “followed by a sharp shrewd / swift skewering meat handler” (verse 25 of ALI). I felt like I was being transported through time as I read different revered names, locations, and animals. I also learned some Arabic words like jinn and akhbār. I liked this narrative poetry, especially in seeing how it differed from Jawdat Fakhreddine’s “simple and refined” poetic language (viii) and Salim Barakat’s “interrogation of poetic language and form” (xii). I thoroughly enjoyed reading Huda Fakhreddine’s and Jayson Iwen’s foreword, specifically where they noted using their initial misunderstandings and misreadings in translation as a way to “reveal dimensions of the text that initially eluded” them (xii). I agree with Huda’s view on poetry as a way of transcending time. She gives weight to the translation as a transformation in her article, describing the translated poem as a method of creating “roots” in the target language (48). This metaphor is beautiful but also quite daunting to me because of the permanence that comes with it, but I will keep it in mind as a way of viewing translation as growth and putting different languages and cultures in meaningful conversations with one another. 

Susan Harris and Chat Post + Readings - Suis

 I really enjoyed Susan Harris and Chad Post’s talk. What really stood out to me as admirable is the very early goal that Words Without Borders held in their role as representatives for international literature and culture as a whole. Chad Post said that “we know so much of the world through a strictly political prism,” that the opinions we form of a certain race or country are informed by the media/news outlets. I hadn’t thought about how true this is, even for me. Susan Harris talked about how early on, when Words Without Borders worked with monthly subscriptions, that each release had a theme. They focused on introducing, through translated literature, a better view on the countries that were being represented through a negative lens in the American media due to war, etc. I find these efforts so admirable. Susan Harris said that “literature is the best way to know about the world,” and I find that so optimistic, and inspiring when thinking about literary translation. I wish this idea was more widespread. I really admire the work the two of them are doing for translators and translated literature.

I enjoyed the readings for this week and the introductions aided my understanding of the texts. I particularly enjoyed reading “A Lesson in Insight.” Huda Fakhreddine’s notes on her translation for this piece was particularly of interest to me. She justifies her translation of a work that has already been translated into English many times by her use of the “the tercet,” arguing that this shorter stanza form is better representative of the poem’s “playful and at times sarcastic” tone (393). I enjoyed her reading of the poem’s sarcastic tone, and her rendition of the word “man” in the first stanza. This makes me want to read the other translations to see how the tone differs in them. (I looked for them but couldn’t find them…) This also makes me think about the requirements for a second translation of a work/works. (That it must be different, and informed by the previous translations, etc.)

I also really loved “Birds of Poetry” by Jawdat Fakhreddine. Its themes of displacement and homesickness read so beautifully. It makes me want to learn Arabic to see how it reads in the original. (Though I will say, the metaphors in this poem lost me a bit.) My favorite lines are: “Homes have abandoned us, / with us still inside them” and “...the word ‘country,’ as the dictionary tells us, / may be, through its people, a home, / and it may be so without them. / It may be simply soil. / The country, our country, has become a wasteland.” This makes me recall what Susan Harris said, that we learn about other countries through their literature, that this poem represents the “voices of [Fakhreddine’s] Pre-Islamic, early Islamic … forefathers” (vii).

Publishers + Readings Response 02/20 - Marina

I was mesmerized by Susan Harris and Chad W. Post! It was such a pleasure to meet with them and talk. I got to ask them so many questions, and they always answered with the best disposition and huge smiles on their faces. Their passion for publishing is contagious. It was so refreshing to get to know more about the behind-the-scenes business side of the translation industry. I was still surprised to learn that even decades later, in the US, few translations are published. I applaud Harris' and Post's efforts to publish more translators, to reward them more justly, and to connect them with readers, although there's still so much more to be done. I wonder how we can reach younger generations and teach them about translations? How can we make them aware of what a translation is? Maybe creating TikToks? Who knows...

On other topics, I found Huda J. Fakhreddine's article very interesting. As a historian, I've also wondered about the arbitrariness of historical periodization, especially in literature, where there appear to be so many "golden ages of literature." Each country has its own, having a golden age in literature appears to be another way of cementing the nationalistic discourse of 18th and 19th-century nations. But I've always wondered who named the golden ages golden and what did they consider to be "literary literature." What happens, like the author writes, to the literature that didn't get seen? To that literature that was destroyed, censored, or forgotten because of its authors? or because of war? or x or w? Can't "nations" have more than one golden age of literature? How can works be compared? I find these questions to be puzzling and I wish we can discuss them in class. 

From Brennan

 I enjoyed listening to Susan Harris and Chad Post discuss their work. Susan Harris said something that seriously moved me: "We hear about the world through a purely political prism." It sums up for me the importance of all kinds of literary transmission; not just translation and international publishing. It is also something of a two-sided coin. The one side: even within states and languages, there is enough diversity that some people will always view others as "purely political", if they only learn about each other through the news media. Their works do not need to be translated, just transmitted. The other side: there are certainly nations that Americans already appreciate as not "purely political". French, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese influences are present in our culture, not just through translation but through art, music, cuisine, and technology.

In his talk and in a previous interview, Chad Post mentioned speculative fiction as a kind of financial driver that he publishes in order to fun other work. I asked him about whether he would publish speculative fiction for its own sake, and I wasn't sure what to make of his answer. I didn't feel he could break down the mental dichotomy between speculative works and "important" works. He understands on an economic level that a press can't survive just publishing Proust & Co., but I couldn't help but feel he would rather do just that.

Another gem from Susan Post was when she said "there is no such thing as reading for pleasure because we're always looking [as editors look]". I hope for her sake that this is an exaggeration, because it would be awful to think that anyone would lose pleasure in such a large part of their life. I hope never to reach that point in my career.

As to the reading, I was unsure what to make of some of the poetry. As prose, it was moving and deeply emotive, but I had a hard time getting my head around the form of the poem as poetry. My education in poetry has been primarily in Shakespeare, Milton, and Vergil, so I feel a bit lost outside of iambic pentameter or dactylic hexameter. I understood the introductions to the poems intellectually, but I had a hard time feeling the poetry as I read. 

James Wood Reading Response - Audree

 James Wood Talk 

    Although Wood is not a translator himself, his attention to detail when speaking about the translations of Madame Bovary was very insightful as to how translation can change not just the meaning of a sentence, but also the feeling that one gets when reading it. As a reviewer, and a fan of Flaubert, Wood noticed things in the different translations that I would not have. I found the discussion surrounding the repeated endings in "ait" to be particularly interesting. While Davis' translation attempted to recreate this repetition using "would" others abandoned it completely. The passage about Monsieur Bovary relishing the thought of having a child as well as the passage about the bailiff's clerk were two others that I really enjoyed dissecting. Wood's enthusiasm about Flaubert and his knowledge about his writing style really added to the analysis and helped me understand how knowledge of an author's intentions can play a role in a translator's decision. The talk also made me want to re-read the book, as I first read it in school when I was a young teenager, and definitely did not a appreciate it nearly as much!

Translation, Globalization and English 

    I found that this reading had many similarities with some of the points that Ken Liu made in his talk. In this text, Allen talks about how the English language has imposed itself as the "sole mode of globalization" and how if a book is written in English, that book is then opening itself up not only to native English speakers but also to an almost equal number of people who speak it as a second language and who are English language learners. It reminded me of how Liu talked about the "language of modernity" being English, and how in order to have access to modernity, and in this case to globalization, one must know some English. Allen makes a good point at highlighting how, in order for something to be considered a piece of world literature, it most of time has had to have been translated into English. This begs the question of wether or not we can still call it world literature. 

Why Do Americans Read so Few Books in Translation? 

    The author points out how countries like Germany and Austria have cultural institutes that are government funded specifically for the purpose of cultural exchange, and suggests that a similar model be adapted to the U.S. She talks of cultural influence as "formal foreign policy" in these countries. 

Interview with Chad Post 

    The suggestions that Post has for making translations more read in the U.S. were interesting ones, but they were very much focused on the publishing industry (which makes sense because it is the industry he is in and can realistically effect) but I think that a lot of change can come from education and forming people's reading habits young. Similarly to what Ken Liu said, there is this regard for what is considered to be "high" literature, and many times, world literature is not considered in that category, especially not contemporary world literature. I think that a lot of this perception is formed during the developing years in middle and high school, and so education is a crucial part of increasing the amount of translations that Americans read. 

James Wood + Reading Response (Gisele Sanchez)

   I enjoyed James Wood's talk a lot considering the beginning was, admittedly, a bit slow. However, by the time we began reading the excerpts of "Madame Bovary" together, he seemed to open up a bit more and that is when his genius really came through. I have a terrible habit of comparing myself to people who have decades of experience—James Wood was no exception. I really admired the way he not only felt the words and the way they interacted with each other but spoke about them easily and with the kind of confidence I only dream of at the current moment. Basically, I thought he was so cool. The analogy about a painting vs. a camera was really helpful for me in visualizing the way that Faubert wrote prose. Additionally, I really liked the way James emphasized the way Faubert used detail in his writing—it was interesting to see how what could be interpreted as excessive detail, such as the man outside of Emma's piano room and the paper dangling from his hand, actually revealed a lot about the characters and plot. 

The reading made me realize, although it may be ironic, that I can't confidently say that I have read much translated literature outside of Korean. Reading these two articles really made me reflect on my reading habits and question myself as to why I do not read outside of what is familiar to me. I, even as someone who is within a community of people who enjoy and study translations, do not have any experience with languages and cultures that I am not familiar with. Why? I think a lot of it has to do with why the average person doesn't pick up a translation—unacknowledged biases and prejudices. Interestingly, my favorite book, The Blind Owl, is written by an Iranian author named Sadegh Hedayat, and I would have never found it had I not taken a class on Middle Eastern literature. Most of all, reading about how so few people are interested in global literature made me want to do something about it, and I have now the seed of a new interest in the world of publishing and reviewing translations planted in my brain. 

James Wood Response and Publishers Harris & Post - Lianbi

 Post-talk notes on James Wood:

I enjoyed it a lot. He is such a thoughtful critic! His talk provided such a great introduction to Madame Bovary to me. Like his reviews, his talk convinced me that Madame Bovary is the masterpiece that it is today and made me want to read more. I would sometimes find it a little bit difficult to relate to the passion in a very Europe based narrative of literary history, but his was different. Perhaps it’s because I love Russian literature (in translation) and he does too. I feel like he really engaged me. 

I appreciate his humbleness a lot. I always love that in a scholar and teacher. During our pre-seminar chat he insists that he doesn’t know enough about translation and showed great curiosity in our insights and experiences. I was moved by that curiosity. In a way, I think it is his humbleness that made him prepare such a thorough presentation on Madame Bovary. I love close reading, I love close reading translations more. He may not know about the exercise of translation but he is a great reader. I wish that we get more of these close readings in the talks! (Whole presentation could be slightly shorter though.)

Pre-talk notes on Chad Post and Susan Harris

https://www.openletterbooks.org/

Chad is not only a critic of literary translation, advocate for international literature in America, but also a publisher himself. (I don’t see editor as his title though, so I think he doesn’t have the time for that type of hands-on work.) I like his data-driven approach to the literary scene, and I appreciate his lists of “ten best” that do not impose ideas of good and bad to people. But isn’t it interesting that he also publishes ten books with Open Letter every year? He both comments on this industry and is an active contributor to what’s available on the market. 

I have talked to Chad when I got into URochester’s MA in Literary Translation Studies. He is a very dominant figure in that program too. Two out of the four courses taught in the fall were basically his classes. In one of the classes he teaches his “ten best” list. I don’t know exactly what his methodologies of literary criticism are. I think he is a smart business person and has a true passion for literature. I personally just didn’t like that the program did not provide its students with language specific mentorship and was not academic in general. (My goal is to stay in academia, not going into publishing, so in retrospect this decision was so so right!)

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/creating-a-bridge-a-conversation-with-susan-harris-editorial-director-of-words-without-borders/

I looked at the Words without Borders website as well as this short interview. I have always been a fan of the WWB. They publish such beautiful stories and make them all accessible. They are timely, urgent, and in conversation with one another. She just seems like a very kind person! I don’t know how to grasp her own editing strategies because publishers don’t say who was the editor… 

Some questions I have for them:

Is there a possibility for American publishers to hire more multilingual editors?

What are some countries or regions that you find definitely underrepresented in American international literature these days? What are the practical reasons? What might be the deeper social/political/economic/ideological reasons? 

How do you decide what to publish and what not to? This question is especially for Chad, because Open Letter Books precisely publishes ten books a year. Do you care about representation? Do you care about the interests of academia and classroom teaching? Is it stylistic inventions? Or is it established writers’/critics’/publishers’/translators’ endorsement? Do you ever feel more interested in a work because of its translator (like Japanese publishing industry)?

James Wood response + reading Soren Chang

  I really enjoyed James Wood's talk ! I think honestly it started off a bit slow, and I was really fighting to stay awake for a bit. The fact that he kept saying he didn't think he was qualified to talk about the subject seemed especially unpromising to me, but I started to really pay attention when he began talking about the piano scene. I thought he was really funny, and it was refreshing to hear perspectives on translation from someone outside translation. I think it's difficult for translators to stay objective when speaking of translation--as much as I enjoyed their talks, I noticed this for both Ken Liu and Ted Goosen. Obviously Wood wasn't entirely objective and had strong opinions on how and how you shouldn't translate, but those perspectives were especially valuable coming from someone who's approaching these texts as a reader. 

For the why Americans read so little in translation article, I really liked that part in the beginning about "sepia-toned battle scenes and stereotypical depictions of our 'enemies.'" Hollywood movies always slapping a weird yellow-orange filter over any scenes associated with the Middle East has become something of a joke online, but aside from funny, this American propaganda perpetuates dangerous racism--a stereotype of the foreign terrorists used to perpetuate American superiority and US American presence in wars and countries we should have no stand in. The article on the Three Percent also touched on this well, I thought, with their subtle stereotyped cover designs per nation. I also thought the nature of the insularity of the translation community, and the need to branch out into a broader readership. I thought the textbook reading talking about how linguistic diversity was seen as a punishment, not a blessing, was really interesting--when I read about how celebrated translation was in Catalonia, I couldn't help but make the comparison between other cultures finding diversity to be a blessing, and Americans finding it to be something to be afraid of. 

Feb 13 James Wood, WWB Response - Rose

  I loved James Wood’s talk! It was so thorough, and I appreciated that we got a packet with concrete examples to look through. He helped me see Madame Bovary in a new light with his comments on the novel's manipulation of time and realism. My musical brain was pleased to hear him relate time signatures to the rhythm of the writing, for example when he mentioned the shifting from 4/4 to 6/8. Some translation decisions made me giggle, like “beef-tea” for bouillon (in the music of style, part 1) or variations of delectait from “delighted” to “delectable” to “enchanted” (in the music of style, part 2). He was super humble, continuing to note that he had “never translated” before, yet he brought up extremely relevant points on balancing the “sound” of a piece with the meaning of its words, and I have to say, I am a big fan of his rendering, “The notion of procreation was a delectation.” It sounds like something Lin-Manuel Miranda would write (in a good way, jaja); perhaps James Wood could also consider venturing into spoken word or writing a musical.

The readings for this week were discouraging but not surprising to me. I was shocked to read that even in the UK, with numerous literary translation programs in higher education and one of the largest publishing markets in the world, 2% of its books are translations. When “ the global language does indeed behave more like an invasive species than a lingua franca” (Allen, p. 21), even scholarship on translation is severely Eurocentric and monolingual as it is often based on the language knowledge of that scholar (usually going into or out of English). I don’t understand why a multilingual country like the US would reject a translated book if it is still written in English. Perhaps there might be remnants of the source language in the translated text, but what about bilingual or translingual pieces written and published in the US, or an American author speaking to migration and exile, where various languages are incorporated into the text?  While international book awards and the incorporation of translated novels in school curricula can help bring translated works into the light, as Allen mentions, translated literature itself jumps over hurdles to get published: “The first-time novelist who writes in English may well have a publisher with a half-million dollar investment to recover…” (30). Even in other multilingual countries like Papua New Guinea, where hundreds of languages are spoken, English remains the language of instruction and primary literary language, but movements are taking place to publish works in Tok Pisin, one of the island’s main languages of communication. 

For the case study, I read about Catalonia. Catalan, the most widely-spoken minority language in Europe, evolves through translation in Spain, and works are often simultaneously translated into Spanish and Catalan and included in the education system. Spain does a great job of preserving the use of its co-official languages and widely accepts translations. For example, in Galicia, textbooks are in Galician, teachers are required to teach at least half of their classes in Galician, and literature in English classrooms often includes translated books from other languages into English. On the Words without Borders website, I decided to explore the multilingual and minority languages of Spain and was amazed to find numerous works (poetry, short stories, interviews with authors and translators) from Catalan, Galician, and Basque, and one article on Aranese. The themes of the works were most often associated with politics, family, longing, and death, and I was amazed that there were different translators for the pieces and sometimes even multiple translators for one piece.

2/13 James Wood Post: Wesley

 

James Wood and Reading Reflections by Suis

 I asked James Wood what he looks for in translated works when he is tasked to write a book review on them. He told me “nothing,” that it is a “con.” He writes to sell the book. He said he has no knowledge of the source language for most of the translated books he writes reviews for. He uses adjectives like “lucid” or “luminous” which he said really means nothing. I found it interesting and rather blunt of him to admit to this “con” and later reflected on what that meant for the translator/translation. Even though his book reviews briefly acknowledge the fact that the work is a translation, the issue of the invisible translator persists. Gabriela Page-Fort in her article mentions that “publishers in the US resist works in translation because it takes time, money, and connections far more complex than publishing local writers, or because American editors are monolingual, unlike editors in other countries.” I think she identifies one of the problems for this issue of invisibility. Those in charge of editing (and writing book reviews) in the US are monolingual which perpetuates the issue.

James Wood’s lecture on comparing sections of Madame Bovary translated by various authors was great. Ironically, he claimed to have “no qualifications” for speaking of translation. It was clear that he favored a faithful translation that “has no more” than the original French. His focus on rhythm was engaging; he noted the repetition of the -ent and -ait endings in French that recreated in the text the “tolling of the bell of monotony” appropriate for the context of the scene in the novel, and how Lydia Davis recreates this with the modal verb “would” in her translation. He spoke of Flaubert’s sardonic, ironic, and satirical details and how he favors the translations that served to retain that voice. Overall, his opinion on a good translation seems to depend on faithfulness with a consideration of rhythm, voice and musicality. (Which is much easier to retain in languages that are more similar to each other.) He also noted that if the French word is also in the English vocabulary, (i.e. sérénité = serenely, engendré = engendered) then they should be kept. I found that interesting because it’s almost never the case that an English word that is adopted into Japanese retains the same meaning. I came across one recently: シチュエーション (situation) which actually meant “circumstances” in the context.

The website for Words Without Borders looks extremely inclusive and features so many international/translated works. I was impressed and inspired. I read an auto-fictional excerpt from Hiromi Itō’s novel translated by Jeffrey Angles and was impressed with the amount of foreignization that is present in the translation. Here’s a portion where the narrator struggles to use a new computer after her old one broke:

“It had a new operating system, which made me feel like I’d left everything I knew behind for a brand-new life. I couldn’t figure it out at all—nothing worked like I thought it should. What was the damn machine for if I couldn’t use it to write? I couldn’t figure out the most basic things, like how to send emails in Japanese. Just imagine! A poet who writes in Japanese, finally back in Japan, but only able to type in English! What was I to do? If all I could do was write “Ito Hiromi desu” (This is Hiromi Ito) and “gera OK desu” (The book galleys are OK) in English letters, the machine wouldn’t do me any good at all. What a disaster.”

The use of parentheses to explain the Japanese is new and interesting to me (as opposed to seamlessly weaving it into the narrative.) There were other words that were spelled out in romaji in the same manner. I wondered if their editor’s aren’t as strict.

Wood + readings response 02/13 - Marina

 I liked Wood's talk last Friday. I got a strong sense of what constitutes a more solid translation. I appreciated his views on word choice, rhythm, and sense in the different translations of Madame Bovary. It all comes down to the choice of what's worth sacrificing and what's worth saving, depending on the translator's intention, objective, and the audience and context of the translation. 

In a radical change of subject, this week, I'll have the honor of presenting publishers and editors Susan Harris from Words Without Borders and Chad W. Post from Three Percent and the Daily Archive Press. I was so surprised and amazed by these two editors and their monumental enterprise of promoting literary translation and educating readers worldwide. I have nothing but profound admiration for their ongoing and arduous work and their incredible projects, which are making room for and applauding international experiences and marginalized voices, authors that have been ignored throughout history. I'm excited to present to the class what I've found about Harris, Post, WWB, the Dalkey Archive Press, and Three Percent. I especially look forward to discussing the relationship between publishers and translation and questioning why do do readers resist translation?

Reflection 13 Feb Brennan

"Most of the people doing translations, the presses are doing books that are complicated and unique and High Modernist things, and that people are saying are important, and so are looking for this rarified sort of book that only has a small readership to begin with."

This quote summed up for me the entire "problem" with English readers' engagement with translation, not only in the way we read, but also in the way we assess what is read. If translators want more English speakers to read their work, they need to pick work that English speakers will read. I wonder if the data takes into account the translation of manga into English; at least in the UK, it seems to be doing quite well: https://twitter.com/thebookseller/status/1525026174606491648?lang=en  Additionally, we need to take into account the presence of the internet and of self-translation. The global status of English means that English readers can be exposed to new ideas from all over the globe without ever reading a translation. Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera are two high-profile examples of this, both producing in-depth news coverage originally in English. On the individual level, English readers on social media will encounter fluent English writers from all over the world, and will have direct access to their opinions.

"Whatever the success of a given educational system in promoting multilingualism, few people will master as many as three or four languages in their lifetimes, much less the 600 or so not currently endangered, or the 3,000 that are predicted to survive the contemporary mass extinction, so any defensiveness about reading literature in a language other than that which it was originally written is highly misguided."

Not sure what the author is trying to say here. First of all, not one person has ever suggested that the key to saving endangered languages is to make one person learn all 3000 of them. Second, creating an immersion environment for an endangered language absolutely requires a certain level of "defensiveness" so that the learners have real incentive to use the endangered language rather than the dominant language. (The joy of reading in the original language is one of the common motivations cited by learners of Latin and Ancient Greek, and those languages have long exceeded their natural lifespans on Earth.) Third, a large number of endangered languages do not have enough proficient speakers to generate a body of written work which can be translated into any language, let alone English. They don't have the opportunity to contribute to la république mondiale des lettres, and reap the benefits it supposedly provides. I don't get the impression that this author has actually engaged with any real language revitalization movement, or these things would be obvious. It disappoints me that this real issue is being used to prop up the argument for Even More English.

James Wood Response + Ted Goossen Reflection - Lianbi

Commentary on Ted Goossen talk:

Ted is really friendly and kind; I was happy to get to know him from the seminar, pre-seminar talk, and from the time we spent traveling from and to the airport. The part I liked most about his presentation was his reading of his own book excerpt and the discussion on stakes of Japanese translation of Western concepts, in particular western love 爱 vs. 恋. I also liked that he gives off the kind professor vibe throughout, and that he asked our opinions about things and was curious about our experiences as translators. I was very glad to meet the Monkey translator and professor there too (please forgive me for forgetting her name)–it was moving to hear how much a magazine was able to help her become a better translator.

However, I would say that I was not satisfied with the way he responded to different translation questions and problems. I felt like he did not answer some of my questions. I think he takes a strong domestication approach to translation and editing translation, but he does not seem to own that stance and provide arguments to justify choices like eliminating all footnotes and keeping sensei but not san. Also the lecture seemed not so well prepared. His lecture was actually structured around a couple points of curiosity Rose and I mentioned in the car. There was no powerpoint or other presentation material, which would have assisted audience understanding. Also, personally I don’t like this rationale behind having us read “Creta Cano” and the reason for publishing it. I think he was basically saying “Because it is Murakami. Murakami means people would read it. Usually we don’t get to publish Murakami because the New York Times gets to publish first, but this time the story was so creepy that we got it.”

Commentary on James Wood readings:

James Wood’s reviews of translations are beautifully written, very engaging to readers, and quite academically rigorous at the same time–both reviews situate the novels in their respective genres and compare them to other famous literary works. These two reviews surely did make me want to read the books. And the visuals are really cool and on point! His reviews are sort of like movie trailers to me. Exciting but also a bit puzzling; I can’t quite follow all the quotes and elevated language and abstract ideas. He also seems to assume quite a bit of literary knowledge from the readers. What do we feel about that?

As per usual we don’t see much attention paid directly to translation. James does point out that these works are translated, provide translators’ full names, and the dates of original and translation publication, but the rest of his writing makes it sound like the original and the translation are one. I don’t blame him for it, after all these are published in the New Yorker and we want people to believe the translation is as good as the original. What I wonder is, however, what his review process was like. He makes it sound like he is an expert on German, Austrian, Turkish literature, does he read the original languages as well? He also makes it clear in these writings that the books are foreign, or even exotic… yet relevant to American readers. Is that an intentional move or is it just what his reading experience naturally entails? Also, he likes to throw in exotic foreign words from the novels. To me, it further confirms the idea that the translation is equal to the original.