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.
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