1/24 Reflections

Lahiri's piece, as well as Croft's, were very educational for me, as I have no background in translation. I would never have guessed that translators' names aren't written on the covers of most books; being American, I admittedly don't read many books from across cultures, a trend Page-Fort points out. The few that I have read are poetry books-- one in particular is a collection by Federico García Lorca, and the translator is written on the cover, and has a foreword to discuss why he made certain decisions. I can't believe how "undercover" translation work (and even a book's status as "translated") is. I whole-heartedly agree that translators should be recognized on the cover of these books, and would even go a step further and argue for translators having a foreword/preface where they can talk about their perspective on the original piece. Since there could be multiple translators for one language of a book, I think it is only fair to let readers hear their point of view before deciding whose translation they'd like to read, rather than choosing blindly (or even unknowingly reading a translation). Out of curiosity, I looked up the authors of the pieces that Lahiri and Croft translated, and Domenico Starnone and Olga Tokarczuk are both still alive. You would think there'd be a relationship between them, even if it was just to ask questions about the intention of a passage or word, but it appears there is none. I am very surprised by this. 

Given that I don't know much about translation work, it seems a bit unfair for me to disagree with Lahiri's statement that "to write... is to choose the words to tell a story, whereas to translate is to evaluate... each word an author chooses," but it seems a little too calculating. Reading, for most, means comprehending a plotline and meeting new characters. But I have been creative writing since I was very young, and line-editing comes second nature to me. I imagine translators reading like writers; they seek out the tiniest detail, the most unnoticeable repetition of a word, so that they form a deeper, more complete connection with the text. It's not just about the big picture, but about every stroke the author took to paint it-- versus evaluating words like singular entities, which is what Lahiri's quote made me think of. Patel and Youssef's repeated questioning of "whose English?" in response to "this is what works in English" supports my point; it is not really about the words an author chooses, but about where they come from, and why they may have chosen those words, and how that impacts the broader meaning of a story. 

-Sarah Yohe