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.
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