One quote from Esther Allen's article on Lucrecia Martel's Zama particularly struck me: "Martel's Zama offers a passionately informed and intuitive reading that is at once a reply and a carrying forward, a fusion that brings Di Benedetto's novel into entirely new territory. Taken together, book and film bring new understanding to one another, and come to form a single work of art." It seems to me that Allen's evaluation of the cinematic adaptation also lends itself to talking about the translation of literature. Isn't translating a text also at once a reply and a carrying forward? The translator enters into a dialogue with the original and creates a new text in its likeness, then 'carries forward' the text by giving it a new life in another language, allowing it to reach a new audience.
I also like her assertion that the film and the novel together form one work of art. When I look at multiple translations of the same text, the translations interlock and provide a more dimensional view of the original—like several photographs of a single subject all taken from different perspectives. I suppose that’s one argument for retranslation, an issue we discussed in class last week. Being able to hold up translations next to each other paints a more complete picture for the reader.
I was really encouraged by Gabriella Page-Fort’s lecture on Friday. How wonderful that Amazon Crossing pays royalties to their translators! Overall, getting to hear from someone on the editorial side of things made me feel excited (and less scared) about sending my work to journals or pitching projects to publishers.
-Maggie
No comments:
Post a Comment