Ronkainen, Jonika -- Comments 3/28

Some of the articles we read this week were difficult for me to piece together because there were quite a few names and references I simply was not familiar with – and I have not read any Murakami outside of what has been assigned in this class – so it was really hard to try and speculate about the significance of the examples that were being given because I didn’t have a lot of context to place them in. I really liked the concept of getting this kind of window by which to read the initial text through getting to really know the voices which have shaped the text, but I without also having the text it was really to try and find a thread or a lens to read the text through instead of falling into the trap of trying to dissect it or identify like this particular change came here, or this attribute belongs to this person -- essentially, I think for me the articles we read this week played into a bad inclination (not necessarily by any fault of the author) to dissect instead of reading the published work as a whole, but unstable nonetheless, piece -- however, this could be just something mistaken on my end being generally unfamiliar with the Murakami, and I could see an opposite project for Karashima of trying to isolate some kind of arbitrary alterations that may obstruct a meaning in the original piece -- still, I think there could be a missed potential for that exploitation to create something even more interesting in the work, and I'm usually of the opinion that whatever ends up being the most interesting is the best thing to look at (again following the logic that the original was itself unstable/available to be changed). For example, I am a big fan of movies that came out during the Hays production code -- that creative limitation informed some of the most compelling pieces of dialogue/character dynamics of all time in film -- but since the primary piece of original-text to republished-text comparison we got was about sexual content, and that was precisely at the heart of the prohibitions of the Hays production code I am perhaps here also a bit biased. Basically my takeaway was that I should read some Murakami before the talk on Friday.

Also, something I'd just like to include here for the sole reason that there is something in almost every article we read about Globalization and the like that I think it answers to perfectly is the famous Ralph Wiley exchange where Saul Bellows asked "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?" and Ralph Wiley comes up with the reply "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" -- it just feels like in this class we're consistently grappling with this problem of what action denies or excludes a group of people from a universal human achievement (like asking "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" or hypothetically on the other hand completely disregarding the universal human achievement of Zulu authors, for example). It seems like this issue of trying to find something multiple and particular versus trying to find something universal maps onto a lot of what we've been talking about with translation choices and discussion of the "global novel" about when to change something to be more "familiar" to an audience or when to keep something "foreign."

Reflections 3/28

 

The five articles we had read for this week are all very enlightening and thought-provoking in both the translation front and the publishing front. 

It is fascinating that Karashima digs so deep into the process that Murakami’s work first got published in the New Yorker. His research into this process is indeed very informative, and I was stunned to learn that Wind Up Bird Chronicles underwent so many edits of sexual content. I wondered why sexual content was toned down in an American magazine? It says in the article that editor William Shawn would shy away from including any content that relates to bodily function other than crying. (A tangential question: Was menstruation also censored back then?) I just find this concept hard to understand, as America is known for openly discussing a variety of topics. 

It was neat to learn that one of the appeals A Wild Sheep Chase has to American readers was its shared middle class sensibility between the Japanese and American culture, and that the book isn’t too Japanese for global audience to understand. This sense of global appreciation of a work surely is beneficial to authors in terms of winning over a bigger, more international audience. However, it seems slightly toxic to me that authors are forced to abandon some unique idiosyncrasies of a certain language and culture to ease the burdon of translation for a smooth publishment in English to win the global audience, an issue Tim Parks discusses in his article.  

“More importantly the language is kept simple. Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader.”

What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives.

It makes sense that publicity in English matters a lot–it is the Lingua Franca, after all. But is such a global sensibility worthwhile to obtain if it sharpens the edges of every other unique culture? 

Jiayi 

time, voice, cyntetokerus, curaniokerus

This past week, I have spent a lot of time thinking about voice in terms of my own translation project, and so I was comforted by Michael Emmerich (Karen Emmerich’s brother!) saying in David Karashima’s article “Inside the Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel” that “for him, getting the first ten percent of a book right seems to take just as long as translating the rest of the book.” Later in the article, Karashima repeats this same notion again: “Both Emmerich and Smith emphasize the time it takes to get the ‘voice’ or ‘tone’ right.” I have found that voice can be challenging in some of the very same ways that dialect can be challenging—voice too can be regionally specific, deeply connected to local, cultural norms that are difficult to replicate or find parallels with in the target language. I was also comforted by Karashima’s emphasis on time in this article; not only does voice creation or development take a lot of time, but thoughtful translation does more generally. (Although I did wonder where Birnbaum and Luke got the funding to spend so many hours per week on translating this one novel…)

 

Birnbaum and Luke’s mistaken rendering of “Synthetoceras” and “Cranioceras” as “cyntetokerus” and “curaniokerus” in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World reminded me of our discussion of Deborah Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian. I think the internet has drastically changed how we think about mistake-making in translation and perhaps this is not purely a good thing. For example, I found this cyntetokerus “mistake” by Birnbaum and Luke charming and actually quite beautiful, especially given their statement afterwards that this translation was done before the age of the internet. Now, in the age of the internet, however, mistakes often suggest that a translator has not done their due diligence and research. Birnbaum and Luke’s mistake highlights to me how mistakes truly can bring invention, play, and even a little bit of silliness into translation; has the internet taken that away? 

-sharon

Reflections 3/28

    David Karashima's piece about Murakami was very accessible for someone who has never read Murakami before. I thought the talk of who asked who to "tone down" the sex scenes was amusing, and goes to show how things literally get lost in translation (ha ha). I was shocked that they suggested changing the reference to Allen Ginsberg into a reference to Shakespeare. These two writers do not share anywhere near the same societal implication, and the fact that Murakami accepted the change in reference surprised me. Though I really appreciated Murakami's attitude, because he seems very down-to-Earth. He accepted the changes to get his writing out there (I mean, it is the New Yorker, after all) but rejects the idea on principle. I think there are ethical issues with changing writing for a publication to appease that publication's audience (expanding one's horizons/introducing them to new things is also important, you know?), but in the end, I know it just comes down to money. 

    In Karashima's Paris Review piece, what I found most interesting was that a scathing review of Murakami's book from Kometani was otherwise kind to the translator, and Kometani is a translator herself. The other reviews looked kindly upon Alfred (the translator), as well. Is it only a sign of a successful translation when everyone likes it? I wonder how Alfred Birnbaum's acclaim translating Murakami may translate into nervousness surrounding future translations, or translating anyone else. He would be interesting to hear speak!

    I think it's funny that Elmer Wood insisted Norwegian Wood wouldn't sell in America because Western readers are "more jaded, more ‘experienced’ at an earlier age", and then it ended up doing fantastic. It makes me wonder how A Wild Sheep Chase would have done in the New Yorker in its original form, rather than the toned down version that the editors assumed its readers would prefer. In the case of Norwegian Wood, there's proof that peoples' assumptions about the public's taste can definitely be wrong.

Sarah

Refections on articles about Haruki Murakami

 I haven't read any books by Haruki Murakami, and I believe that something that appeals so much to so many people and so consistently can only have an amorphous and nonintrusive essence, where the reader can make anything they like out of it and without any resistance from the material; like colorful clay that you enjoy playing with as a child, only now it's an adult mind that gets its play-doh in the form of books. When I read titles like "Kafka on the Shore", "A Wild Sheep Chase", "Norwegian Wood", "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World", "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage", I feel a growing tiredness in my mind because I feel like I am already asked to decide what these senseless titles must mean without any cues or clues and how they connect to the content of the books and how exactly the content merits such titles in the first place? My impression is that catchy titles compensate for generic plots, that something valuable doesn't need a flashy package, and that something ordinary is heralded as extraordinary simply because it can be. 

Murakami's works are praised to be so non-Japanese that they appeal even to Americans. How is this not an insult to both Murakami and American citizens? How come we never delve into the roots of why Americans did not appreciate more traditional Japanese literature in the first place, and what could be done about that - such as presenting Japanese literature in a new light rather than presenting a very different Japanese literature altogether and sighing with relief that "something Japanese" finally gets bought again? If Murakami's prose is so non-Japanese, what's the point of emphasizing his nationality and comparing his reception to that of Yukio Mishima? How come there apparently were no processes of trying to reframe the context of foreign literature and offering readers new angles to look at it, until the works get appreciated exactly for what they are? I think it would have been more interesting to read about how editors experimented with introductions rather than how they decided to translate a radio station name. I don't think such experiments were done, though - what's sought after is a book that will sell right away, and parts of it can get cut out or changed to get it sell, and there will be no attempt to try to make something sell just for how it is -> by revealing the reader the uniqueness of this book, and what they will personally get out of reading it, how their thinking will improve and their perception - expand. Oh, but it's only readers money that get cared about, not the readers themselves. There is a lot of "we worked together before, this one will get a big deal", "Elmer was wrong, this book sold the best of all!" and "They felt that the novel had even greater potential than A Wild Sheep Chase to capture the imagination of American readers", the latter making Murakami sound like some stage performer rather than a writer producing art. 

I never learn what makes Murakami works meaningful apart from their sales. My guess at the amorphousness and passive shapelessness of his art gets confirmed by characterizations like these: "It seemed clear to me from the first that he was bringing something new to Japanese literature. There’s a peculiar lightness in what he’s doing that should not be confused with any lack of seriousness … But I’m talking here of a different kind of lightness, an antic and lyrical and sunny quality". This quote says nothing concrete. And it doesn't need to. It's good that people like Murakami because liking something is good. The fact that there is not even a requirement to analyze the possible underlying reasons behind phenomena to talk about them infuriates me. There is no integration into the bigger picture, no educated guesses made for future implications, no showing of how this intersects and impacts other fields and spheres of life, either. The self-isolation of industries leads to their stagnation, just as their taking of themselves for granted and not taking the time and effort to look at the meaning behind what occurs within them, thereby purposelessly doing something simply because they can, neglecting the complex relationships underlying the shaping of the market. Before, publishing detailed sex scenes was something they couldn't do, so they didn't. Now it's something they can do, so they do. Next, it will be something different. Why, how, why - doesn't matter, let's just see whatever ends up "capturing mass imagination" the most at any given time, with no second thoughts given. 

Maybe I am incorrect about Murakami's works and for something to become popular these days, it does not need to be "colorless". In that case, it only makes sense that his meaningful works are to be discussed in a meaningful way - unless, of course, the only meaningful thing about them is that they sell well. 

-Ksenia

Thoughts on Murakami

I've read a few Murakami novels (including A Wild Sheep Chase), so I really enjoyed reading about how his books found an audience in English. One thing I find a little off-putting though—and this isn't Murakami's fault but rather that of his reviewers/promoters—is the way his writing is lauded as sounding "American," as if that designation is somehow a marker of superior quality. Why should all writers aspire to sound American? To me, criticism like that encourages a really insular taste in literature, where anything perceived as "different" is considered worse. 

The first time I heard about "indirect" translation was from a friend in Spain who's a translator. She told me that this happens a lot with literature translated into Spanish (specifically with English translations from other languages being used as the source text) and I was shocked to hear that this sort of "translation telephone," if you will, is standard practice. I think I assumed it had something to do with a shortage of translators or editors with knowledge of the source language, but knowing that Murakami encouraged this practice when his books were translated into German complicates that hypothesis. This is purely speculation on my part, but I wonder if indirect translation contributes in some way to the "dull global novel" phenomenon. By that I mean: if all the translated literature in the global market from a wealth of languages is always being filtered through English, won't all these authors start to sound the same? Won't their styles, by dint of being "Englished" not only on the linguistic level but on the level of culture and custom, become homogenized? It's also especially concerning when the source text has been heavily edited—I think Professor Elliott mentioned that the English translation of Kafka on the Shore cut about one hundred pages. Then, one English editor's decision about what to keep dictates what readers in many other languages get to read, too. 

Maggie

Murakami, Murakami everywhere...

 In the first place, I must confess I’ve read more about Murakami than I’ve actually read Murakami.  Since my knowledge of his work is secondhand, one step removed (akin, in effect, to indirect translation), my myopia of the moment behooves me to opine cautiously, if at all.  But such caveats in place, the title of DK’s book (a direct allusion to Raymond Caver and an indirect one to Nathan Englander) seems to encapsulate another kind of indirectness, the zone of ambiguity which persists at the center of Murakami’s literary existence for those who read him in translation.  While I can’t recall the exact figures or the title in question, last semester, Alissa cited the extent to which a Murakami novel was abridged prior to publication in English, the m.o. being that the publisher was willing to finance only so many pages and the task for the translator—over and above his usual chores—was to make it fit.  In a similar vein, our Alejandro, who read Murakami in English, tells the story of discussing—trying to discuss—Murakami with a friend in Argentina, only reach the impasse that the two translations had engendered two texts, each barely recognizable in light of the other.

 

DK’s book reads like a mixture of textual scholarship and detective work.  While he at times succeeds in pinpointing in English galleys the specific instances where modifications occurred, his best efforts defer rather than resolve the ambiguity.  Which vested party made the changes and why?  When the translator says one thing, the fiction editor at the New Yorker another, and the editor at Murakami’s publisher a third, it seems as though we’re talking less about Murakami’s work and more about the burgeoning lore which surrounds it.  The biographical information, the factual details, and any attempt at an historical reconstruction seem to take on (perhaps inevitably) the speculative hue of fiction.  Why would Murakami, an accomplished translator and thus able to foresee the pratfalls, insist a translation of his work into German proceed from one into English?  Was there or was there not a promotional event at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in 1989 to celebrate the English release of A Wild Sheep Chase?  As one interviewee remarks to DK, there is a person who would’ve known for sure, but that person is, unfortunately, deceased.

 

Rather than talking about reading Murakami, should we speak of reading Murakamis, a different and even distorted reflection of the original in every translation, as if the text passed through a hall of mirrors?  Or could we instead, to apply the theory of Tim Parks, suppose that there’s a schism in Murakami’s oeuvre the moment he begins writing with the idea of being translated in the background (if not the foreground) of his creative process?  To judge from the casual ease, the near indifference with which Murakami accepts textual changes made for the sake of translation—despite the literary stature that would have positioned him, a la Kundera, to insist—, we can at minimum say that the person of Murakami is amenable to translation and that the author is willing to permit departures from the letter of the source text in order to reach a wider audience.  On the one hand, Murakami’s trajectory illustrates the exponential growth of an author via translation, an international transcendence impossible without translators’ contributions and which we—the next generation of professionals—must applaud.  On the other, we must heed the prescience of a Tim Parks writing some 12 years ago: the earnestness to reach an international space may scuttle the techniques and dilute the content of literary fiction, leading writers to exercise a kind of homogenizing self-censorship and to enshrine voluntarily the 21st-century equivalent of having a cleric peering over your shoulder, insisting you write in Latin.

 

 -Josh

3/21 Reflections

 Cooperson’s Lecture

I really enjoyed last week’s lecture! I think Cooperson did well to shed light on his process of translation and how many people actually touch the work before it comes into our (the readers) hands. I really enjoyed how honest he was in saying that he needed help and how he reached out to people who were able to strengthen his visions for his translated pieces. It was so interesting to hear about how he took genuine inspiration from his surroundings such as using UCLA slang and how he owned his work as a culmination of disparate people and knowledge.

 The quote he ended on really stuck with me and I admired his attitude towards texts that may seem impossible to translate. I triggered me to think about how every translation is such a unique result of an individual’s vision, perception and interpretation. Throughout the works we’ve analysed in class, I’ve realised that each translator has captured various facets of the source text, some more than others but nonetheless it’s interesting to see the transduction between languages occur as a result of their subjective interpretations. I feel like we’re able to have fruitful debate as a result of our diverse perceptions whilst simultaneously building on each other’s understanding. All in all, I appreciated him being candid about his struggles during his process with the Impostures as well as how it left him knackered with translating Arabic. I think we rarely hear about the effects of the translation on the translator and it was refreshing to hear his side.

Diya

 

Reflections 3/21

 Guest Speaker: Michael Cooperson 

Last week, we had Professor Cooperson from UCLA speak to us about his work The Imposters. Translating this book is a ginormous project accompanied by many challenges. The most memorable challenge to me was carrying Al Hariri’s word/sound play from Arabic into English. As a student who is obsessed with rhymes, I have a strong desire to bring the rhymes in Chinese into English and often run into the problem of my translation accidentally sounding like a nursery rhyme. However, Professor Cooperson skillfully adopted not just the sound play in arabic (e.g. using only letters with no dots) but also variations of English to realize idiomatic adaptation, and that, to me, is truly an art that he did. He quoted Diyafat at the end to conclude his lecture. The quote goes: 

“The untranslatable is, therefore, not something impossible to translate, but rather something that can be translated infinitely many ways.”

Indeed, the untranslatable is “untranslatable” in the sense that it is impossible to carry over the meaning and word play from one language to another perfectly simultaneously. However, it also means that you can try out many different approaches and pick and choose the most important factor in translating a certain work and deliver that magic to the audience of another language. Take The Imposter as an example, soundplay is a big part of the splendidness of Al Hariri’s writings, so a translation that acts as nothing but a conduit of the literal meaning of the text wouldn’t do justice to the work. Professor Cooperson treats the word/sound play with high importance and makes a good point in isolating domestication of content and idiomatic adaptation, thus attaining the wonderful English adaptation of Al Hariri’s Maqāmāt. 

Readings on translation collaboration. 

This week’s readings concern a topic that has always intrigued me: how do translator and the original author interact? When I translate a text (mostly tanka), there is no way I can consult the original poet for they have deceased over 10 centuries ago. I get to take all the freedom in interpretation after historical background research—being able to interpret poetry freely is one of the tankas has to me. However, the readings suggest to me that one of the most valuable things that come out of the collaboration between the original author and translator is that the author can explain their word choice. Antonio Tabucci explains on page 24 in the authority in literary translation: collaborating with the author article: 

I intervened in the work of my translator to explain some specific words or regional idiomatic phrases. I know how hard it is to translate this book. This is why the French translation will be the only one that I will authorize. 

Nabokov, similarly, has also been giving Petr suggestions and feedback such as “You have a tiny little error: "solnechnik" is an old word for ‘sunshade’” in his letters to his translator. This reaffirms to me that it really is the intricate word choice (especially between translators and authors who are from different ages where the topic of archaic word choice comes into play), that lies in the core of the author-translator collaboration/communication. 

When it comes to translations of East Asian literary works into English where there is more cultural explanations to do, without the excessive use of footnotes, translators will have to weave explanatory sentences of cultural backgrounds into their paragraphs. This, in my opinion, is too much freedom and responsibility for the translator to take alone. However, as revealed in the interview with Juliet Winter Carpenter where she answers the following to professor Elliot’s question: 

A lot of rewriting went into the final version. I don’t know how carefully you compared the translation and the original, but the description of Karuizawa is a good example of something inserted into the text for the benefit of Western readers. I would certainly hesitate to write anything that extensive all by myself. When a longer passage such as that needs to be inserted, Mizumura writes it herself in either English or Japanese, I translate/rewrite it, and then we go over it together—usually quite a few times before it’s finalized. 

JWC’s answer to this question, I think, is really the description of the best solution to cultural adaptation of literature from a culture further from the target language. 

 

Jiayi 

Ronkainen, Jonika -- Comments 3/21

Cooperson's Talk:

I completely loved Cooperson's talk! It was so well structured/was clearly thought out in the level of precision Cooperson seems to apply to everything he does. Hearing him talk about the book, he was so self-effacing that he almost made the book seem like a feasible project anyone with the right connections could have undertaken -- but revisiting the amount of work and ingenious that had to go in to writing convincingly in 50 different styles, imitating some of the most revered authors in the world, that's so clearly also not the case -- he really made it sound like 2 years could be a sufficient amount of time for most people to learn so much as he did, and his ability to argue as convincingly as he did is a feat in and of itself. To me, hearing about the mechanics of how the book came together really only exaggerated the impressiveness of it. It was also just really striking to hear him talk about the utter sacrifice he had to make in publishing it -- it seems like that's a factor for any published piece of writing, but with the level of time, effort, and thought he had to put into this absolute behemoth of a piece, you just know how much of a pain it had to be to him to call it quits and actually publish -- that also seemed encouraging -- to see, that is, someone successfully continuing on after cutting themself off from a project of that grandeur. It also seemed like a partial-answer he had for when you know it's time to publish something being when you're most completely entrenched in it, and basically fed up with yourself -- essentially, when you know you've exhausted yourself (as he said, he doesn't think he can translate any more arabic, or translate arabic straight on). 

Thoughts on Cooperson's Impostures and Author-Translator Relationships

Michael Cooperson gave such an engaging talk and was so personable, especially when we met with him before the lecture. He told us then that translators "are his favorite people." We talked a bit about translating living authors versus dead authors, which connects quite nicely to the readings for this week. Cooperson mentioned in his talk that "being a translator is about hiding," but when you're working with an author from hundreds of years ago like Al-Hariri, it's difficult to "hide" behind authorial intent or feedback, because that kind of information simply isn't available to you, and author can't interfere or assert control in the translation process. 

While it is ultimately Al-Hariri's text, Cooperson's voice is conspicuous throughout the translation. It seems that when we talk about reading a domesticated versus a foreignized translation, one of the criteria we point to most often is whether or not readers are conscious that they are reading a translation; whether or not the reader is conscious of the translator's interference. Cooperson's translation complicates this dichotomy in that, while the language is hyper-domesticated and localized, the reader's attention is constantly being drawn to the fact that this is a translation and is required to do a lot of work to understand its mechanisms, thanks to the glossaries and explanatory notes. Cooperson made an important distinction at the beginning of his talk: that domestication of language is not the same as domestication of content. I think Cooperson has managed to demonstrate the difference between these two forms of domestication in his Impostures, and I wonder if there's something about ludic or Oulipo-adjacent texts that allows them to demonstrate so clearly that a piece of writing can be "domesticated" while simultaneously requiring the translator to be extra "visible." I hope that makes sense... I'm still parsing it out myself. 

Isabelle Vanderschelden's article on authority in translation was full of wonderful anecdotes, and drove home the point that it is difficult to make any generalized claim about authorial intervention being good or bad for the translator and the target text. I'm working on translating a novel for my capstone project, and I agree with Nadine Stabile that the author can serve as a sort of "extra safety net" for an early-career translator (26). I hope to reach out to the authors of the novel I'm translating soon, so I can ask them some questions. That said, I think it would be daunting and ultimately stifling to receive a thirty-page list of instructions like the one Umberto Eco sent out to his translators for Foucault's Pendulum. 

It seems that the success (or failure) of such translator-author collaborations often comes down to the temperament and ego of the author. The collaboration between Juliet Carpenter and Minae Mizumura seems to have been particularly fruitful. From Carpenter's examples, it seems that Mizumura truly wanted to collaborate, building on Carpenter's work with thoughtful guiding questions and suggestions ("Could we do something more with the description of the moonlight?") (4). On the other hand, some authors like Singer and Kundera seem to view translators as a necessary evil, and clearly would prefer to simply do the translation themselves if they were so able. It would be hard to achieve a fruitful collaboration with an author who already views you and your work with suspicion, and feels from the start that their job is to correct your errors. 

 Maggie

Reflections 3/21

     I loved Michael Cooperson's talk! He seemed so timid and unconfident in his work, but I think he did an amazing job. I loved that he focused more on the process of translation, because I've been quite curious, but understand that it's different for everyone. I love the quote that he ended with, about non-translatable works truly just being able to be translated in an infinite number of ways.

    When Kundera admitted to spending more time reading and supervising his translations than writing, it not only reinforced my opinion that "fidelity" to an original is not only unnecessary but actually a hindrance. In the case of the English translation and domestication of his novel Zert, I understand Kundera's protest. But the fixation on "sniffing out" the "unfaithfulness" of translations that have existed for years seems unproductive. Kundera probably could've written other novels if she hadn't been so concerned with re-translating her own works, and adding her own modifications that other translators clearly couldn't.

    Nabokov and Pertzoff's translation relationship seems much more effective, and perhaps this comes from Nabokov having experience translating work that wasn't his own. Reading their letters was so cool. It's easy to render someone like Nabokov as more of a legend than a person, but reading that he was "interested in a library position" was just so wholesome. It humanized him in my eyes and was fun to read.

    My favorite part from the Juliet Winters Carpenter interview was that she used other novels to finesse her style in the translation of A True Novel. She mentions Wuthering Heights (which the plot is loosely based on), The Tales of Genji, and The Great Gatsby. These callbacks reminded me of Michael Cooperson's talk, and how he used Jane Eyre, Edgar Allan Poe, and The Odyssey (among many others) to finesse the style he was trying to copy in his translations. It's so interesting how much prose goes into translation beyond the original text-- not only to copy a style, but transformative works that influence a language, which years down the road influence a translation into that language... the amount of works that go into a translation is honestly infinite. 

Sarah

3/21 Reflections

Translator-author relationships are always interesting to read about, possibly more so now than ever before, personally, coming off the lecture given by Micheal Cooperson earlier last week. Perhaps the most resonant thing he said during the time we had his company, was in his belief that once the text was published to the world, it ceases to be the author's possession when the author has passed away. Arguably even when the original author is still alive, as Tracy, in her guest lecture, and others, could be said to have created translations that do not reflect the original, and done so even with the blessing of the author themselves, though it is much simpler to be beholden to the constraints of the original text and language. 

And it seems though by and large most authors in an author-translator pair are fairly laissez faire about the translated work, even if in the letters from Nabokov he takes more of guiding role for example, he never outright gives direct instructions aside from a few regarding sentence length and the correction of a mistake. It would be interesting to see if the tendency of authors to be less restrained about the quality and direction of the translations of their works has some sort of cultural side to it, especially considering most if not all of the translator pairs in the readings are into English, a language that has long solidified its position among languages as one that is culturally dominant and widely taught throughout the world, or perhaps it is because authors themselves are more aware of what they cannot do in English themselves. 

Steven C.

Reflections 03/21

Cooperson's talk changed around my perception of his translation of Impostures, his relaxed attitude and a way of not taking himself too seriously felt refreshing to me, while his enthusiasm - inspiring. An important detail that I believe I did not pay enough attention at first was that the English translations of Importures were not widely read, and so there was no risk in taking a creative and unorthodox approach to its translation. In the lens of its purpose being that of interest incitement rather than faithfulness, I find Cooperson's choices now completely justified. Especially after Cooperson admitted he was not overly familiar neither with authors nor dialects that he imitated, I think it should have been mentioned in the introductions that the readers are supposed to have as much fun with the text as the translator did, and that this is not a scholarly work. In Cooperson's explanation of how translations to other languages worked, I got an impression of slight frustration with the limits of the English language. I wonder once again if more flexibility will be introduced into English in the future.

More generally, many authors attach a great deal of importance to rhythmic and sound patterns, which are given precedence over strict linguistic faithfulness. - I wonder why it is the case and why this question was not attempted to get answered in the article, i.e. the question of why some authors prefer linguistic faithfulness, while others prefer a melodic one, and what that means. 

"This is what I meant. Is it what you said in French?" For me it was very useful. - The immediate meaning of this sentence seems to be about the help of the author in translation of their works. There is another layer to it, too, in my opinion - How does the author themselves know what they mean? I believe that is because they have an idea in their mind and show the translator how to help the foreign readers get access to it, too. This idea exists as a multidimensional invisible entity - we cannot touch it, yet we can perceive it, and we can see its two-dimensional shadow through words. It also clearly does not belong to the author alone, hence the ambiguity inherent to "authorship", the extent to which the text should be allowed to get twisted, etc. - all of these debates I see as attempts to reconcile seemingly contradictory impressions of the writer owning and at the same time not owning the text, as well the translator somewhat owning it and at the same time definitely somewhat not owning it, too.. I believe these impressions can get comfortably reconciled within the concept of the author as the discoverer of an idea and the creator of its expression.

 Similarly, the discussions over whether there is one text or many since any text can get "multiplied" through translation will never have an "either-or" answer, either, and I find it a waste of time and effort to discuss it simply for the discussion's sake and lukewarmly pretend like we do have to and are not supposed to arrive at any conclusion regarding what we observe and talk about. It is an issue that many still avert their eyes from - that hundreds and hundreds of papers in academia, both in humanities and science are written without arriving at anything, and I find both that and the eye-aversion equally as harmful practices. In my view, a text can seem singular and multiple at the same time because the idea expressed through it has many dimensions in the abstract time-space, and new sides to it get exposed through variations in its articulation. The original written text becomes therefore akin to the first map, the first drawing of something beyond what can be immediately observed, and that is why it seems "important". Yet translations are no less important, either, in how the translator firstly is to decipher the directions toward what was drawn, and then depict it from a different angle - for both another language and the new phrasings and choices that the language requires, constitute a differing perspective. In other words, varying articulations are like sides outlining a complex figure - the text is not the figure itself but only a demarkation of it. 

With the act of creation and recreation in regards to writing and translation mentioned many times, I think discussing "sameness/nonsameness" is like discussing whether a frog that procreates and "multiplies" is the same frog. Obviously it is not and at the same time it is, the genes remain and the species is the same, too (and now what?). I see ideas acting similarly, only in the abstract space. If the perspective of constancy and simultaneous dimensionality of literature and ideas is taken, then all of the relationships and their subtleties and vacillations between the author, the text, the readers, and the translators make much more sense and lose the veneer of arbitrariness and mental passivity in the form of "sometimes it's this and sometimes it's that and nobody really knows why and that's okay". The purposelessness of many discussions on translation, and often the purposelessness behind translation and literature itself bother me quite a bit - i.e. when the meaning of the outcome is barely touched on or kept in mind - the outcome is just stated and is to be celebrated no matter what it is - let alone seen as a pivotal component of progression toward more meaningful literature, more meaningful translation, and more meaningful discussions of everything. 

Kesnia