Lecture with Esther Allen 

It was a nice juxtaposition to get Page-Forts thoughts from the perspective of the publishing industry to this week’s, Esther Allen and her thoughts on her work with Di Benedetto’s novels. I think Allen’s lecture over all has taught me the power of a holistic understanding. Because she dove so deeply into Di Benedetto’s life, she gleaned an understanding of what lies behind the work. Her exploration of the specific terms he used like “silentiary” aided in her understanding of his diction. The word which the German translators translated as “waiting” and her explanation of her understanding of the word as more an expectation than a waiting was also illuminating. With her mention of the German version of the book, I had a thought come to mind about the nebulous nature of a translated work. I began thinking as Allen was talking about how a work starts as a culmination of a writer’s thoughts, and becomes different things to different cultures. Allen mentioned that the various versions would be unique depending on which language it was translated into and with her explanation of the waiting term I think she illustrated that well. I also wanted to mention her work with the original version as well as a newer, updated one. I wonder how common that is and what we as a class think about the merit of starting a translation project in this way.

 

Reading Reflection 7/7

After reading the article by Jeremy Tiang, I found myself pondering the “containment of strangeness.” This containment reminds me of earlier in the article when Tiang mentions the commodity of culture in the form of conveniently packaged foods. How can we apply this to the act of translating? This is such an important as we unpack how we may be attempting to contain the strange and commodify it for an English-speaking audience. This conversation is, I think, the larger and more sophisticated way to think about foreignization vs. domestication. We’ve been studying the words of earlier translation theorists with various stances on the subject. I am very much a fan of looking at this complicated issue of writing and translation through the lens of Jeremy Tiang. A Fable for Now certainly doesn’t contain its strange and the way in which Tiang translates is bold with a real effort to stay true to the text that’s felt. I think it’s an example we can take after; to be open minded to a text in efforts to understand and portray the ideas without fear of it being too othered.

-Cheyenne