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http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175- Grossman’s Why Translation 7968.2013v1n31p230 Matters is an autobiographical compilation in the form of four Grossman, Edith. Why Trans- essays. Three of these, including lation Matters. New Haven and the introduction entitled “Why London: Yale University and Translation Matters”, “Authors, Press, 2010, 135 p. Translators and Readers Today”, “Translating Cervantes”, are based on talks that Grossman gave at Yale University in the Edith Grossman is one of the spring of 2008. The last chapter, most successful Spanish-English “Translating Poetry” was written translators of the twenty-first specifically for Why Translation century, and is best known for Matters and was inspired by her translation of Cervantes’ Don Grossman’s recent translations of Quixote in 2003. Grossman is also a variety of Spanish and Hispanic the acclaimed translator of works American poets from across the by crucial Hispanic American ages. The audience intended for authors, such as Gabriel García this book is general, hence the Márquez, , personal tone of her writing. and Mayra Grossman states in the Montero. She has received many preface, “I hope the reading of prizes for her work, including these essays inspires other ways the Ralph Manheim Medal for to think about and talk about Translation by PEN in 2006 translation”. Grossman intends to and an award in literature from stimulate a new consideration for the American Academy of Arts translation, an area of literature and Letters in 2008. Today, that as Grossman describes “is too Grossman is a Guggenheim often ignored, misunderstood, or Fellow and continues to translate misrepresented”. In Grossman’s out of . opinion, translation offers “access to literature originally written in Cadernos de Tradução nº31, p. 223-259, Florianópolis - 2013/1 231

one of the countless languages she enjoyed the work and could do we cannot read”. As the world it from home. This arrangement becomes more intertwined and “seemed very attractive then, interconnected then ever before, and still does”. After Grossman’s “we have a critical need for translation of Fernández’s “The that kind of understanding and Surgery of Psychic Removal” insight”. was published in 1973, she left In “Why Translation Matters”, her profession as a literary critic Grossman presents herself and to become a full time translator. explains the circumstances that After all these years, she still finds led her to become a translator. the work “intriguing, mysterious, Reading Neruda’s Residencia and endlessly challenging”. en la tierra was a revelation At the end of her introduction, for Grossman that altered Grossman personifies literature “radically” her professional and translation as a couple. She direction by bringing to light the describes them as being “joined impact Latin American literature at the hip” and “absolutely could have on a contemporary inseparable”. As long as literature audience through translation. exists, so will translation. As she Soon after, Grossman was asked describes it, “what happens to one to translate a story by the early happens to the other”. Grossman twentieth century Argentine concludes that “despite all the writer, Macedonio Fernández, difficulties the two have faced, by her friend Ronald Christ, who sometimes separately, usually published and edited the center for together, they need and nurture Inter-American Relations journal each other, and their long-term Review . Grossman replied by relationship, often problematic saying that she was a “critic, not but always illuminating, will a translator”, but Christ insisted surely continue for as long as they that she do it. Grossman agreed both shall live”. In Grossman’s more out of “curiosity” than opinion, literature and translation anything else and discovered that are equals, working together to 232 Resenhas/Reviews

allow human society a larger century and offers ignorance, perspective on the world around censorship and oppressive them. regimes as the main answers. In “Authors, Translators, and This is a problem because many Readers Today” she highlights the books, in order to be translated obstacles that translation faces. into varying languages, first need Today, publishers and literature to be translated into English, reviewers do not recognize its their “linguistic bridge”, as importance. Their ignorance, she puts it. If American and according to Grossman, is driven British publishing houses refuse by “cultural dogmatism and to do these translations, the linguistic isolationism”. This literary works have nowhere to inhibits translation, diminishing grow. Grossman concludes that the overall number of works translation is “not a possibility available to readers. Valuing we can safely turn our backs translation in this manner is a on”, since it turns the “menacing new phenomenon. Grossman babble of incomprehensible quotes a more salutary approach tongues and closed frontiers from King James’ version of into the possibility of mutual the Bible produced in 1611: comprehension”. “Translation it is that openeth Grossman begins “Translating the window, to let in the light; Cervantes” with an edgy that breaketh the shell”. She statement: “Translation is a strange goes on to discuss Cervantes’ craft, generally appreciated opinion that reading a translation by writers, undervalued by is like looking at a tapestry from publishers, trivialized by the the back, though the Spanish academic world, and practically author did not once “deny the ignored by reviewers”. Why inherent value of the enterprise”. then does she agree to take on Grossman wonders why the the massive project to translate value of translation changed so Cervantes’ ? In her dramatically in the twenty first words, it is because she finds the Cadernos de Tradução nº31, p. 223-259, Florianópolis - 2013/1 233

work “joyous and remarkable research allowed Grossman and intrinsically valuable”. She to “get into the author’s head disagrees with Robert Frost’s and behind the author’s eyes definition of poetry as what and re-create in English the gets lost in translation and also writer’s linguistic perceptions with the “thundering Italian of the world”. In the end, accusation” that all translators are Grossman created a translation traitors ( traduttore é traditore ). that savored the original text’s Grossman was lost before starting “humor, melancholy, originality, her translation of Don Quixote. and intellectual and esthetic Normally, before beginning a complexity”. It opened the translation, Grossman “digs “great masterwork” to a new through dictionaries and other world and showed Cervantes as kinds of references, talks to an “incomparable novelist”. those kind, patient, and generous In Grossman’s final chapter friends who are from the same “Translating Poetry”, she country as the author, and, as discusses the English versions of a last step, consults with the five poems including: “Mambo” original writer for clarification by Jaime Manrique, “El tren of his or her intention and instantáneo” by Nicanor Parra, meaning”. However, in this “Soneto 145” by Sor Juana Inés de case, Grossman did not have any la Cruz, “Soneto CLXV” by Luis friends in Spain and Cervantes de Góngora, y “Décime” by Fray was dead. Two things came to her Luis de León. For Grossman, immediate rescue. The first was staying true to the rhythm of the Martin de Riquer’s informative poems is essential. She attempts notes in the Spanish edition of “to have the stresses fall on the the book that Grossman used for same syllables in English and in her translation. The second was Spanish”. Grossman finishes this a seventeenth-century Spanish- chapter with Alastair Reid’s “Lo English dictionary. These two Que Se Pierde/What Gets Lost”. things along with other extensive This poem is written in Spanglish 234 Resenhas/Reviews

and, in Grossman’s opinion, capacity to ease and make more exemplifies the “formidable, meaningful our relationships to irresistible act of translation”. those with whom we may not have Edith Grossman is respected a connection before. Translation as one of the English-speaking always helps us to know, to world’s most successful see from a different angle, to contemporary translators. Her attribute new value to what once book Why Translation Matters may have been unfamiliar. As values translation because nations and as individuals, we it allows society to see into have a critical need for that kind other worlds and also because of understanding and insight. The it enables literature to live on alternative is unthinkable” forever. As Grossman says, “translation represents a concrete Elley Symmes literary presence with the crucial St. Lawrence University