Comments on readings

 Why translators should be named on book covers

I think the answer here can be quite simple: too many names on the cover - especially when let’s say a book had two or more authors and more than one translator - will make it look overloaded and take the attention off of the title. A reader is a consumer, and they want the product to appeal to them. They want the product to be about them, to a fair extent. Drawing focus to more people for every single book that the reader comes across, draws the attention away from the reader and their reading experience. I do not see it as disrespectful to translators. I also do not believe it is a question of “ownership”. The translator owns the words in a translation just as much as the author owns the idea that they picked up from life. 

All the Violence It May Carry on its Back: A Conversation about Diversity and Literary Translation

I find the ideas about the gatekeeped standardization of the English language expressed in this article to be especially valuable: indeed, such gatekeeping limits rather than diversifies literature. I find a lot of books translated to English being written as if they were originally composed in English, just with some foreign italicized words. In Russian, for example, the language of translated works differs; there is “Westernized” prose, and other kinds of acceptable prose. Something is considered to sound “weird” only when it does not fit into the overall context or style of the text. Otherwise, there is quite a lot of room for freedom with how ideas can be expressed, as long as words exist to describe them (Russian has much fewer words compared to English). So, the issue does exist and needs to be addressed, the main question is how. 

 

Ksenia