AN APPROXIMATE TIME LINE OF TWISTED TRANSLATIONS “The history of translation, like the history of a long series of compromises. This may explain error is for the worse. Here, inspired by Thirl- the novel, and like the history of the world, is why some novelists refuse every translator but well’s new book, The Delighted States, are some the history of mistakes,” Adam Thirlwell writes themselves, and why they become anxious of the most vexing moments in the history of on page seventeen of this issue. Even when when their work must travel through a chain literary translation. things go well, however, any translation requires of languages to reach its public. But not every —Jascha Hoffman

E N S E A N H I H H N N U N H H A C A S H S I C S A A H G A S I S N L I H H I I C I I I I B B L M S U D A A T C C N N S I T S N D U B A T G E R L S E R T L E N R R A D L R A E Z U N I R E E O O U P W I O A A C C C D E F F G P P P R S S Y Y

1490 KEY: A Valencian knight writes Tirant Lo Blanc in Catalan. CHAIN TRANSLATION It is finished by a friend after his death. SELF TRANSLATION

Edgar Allan Poe publishes his poem “The Raven.” MUTUAL TRANSLATION 1850 GROUP TRANSLATION NO CATEGORY

Lewis Carroll writes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Charles Baudelair e translates “The Raven” into Frenc h. The phrasebook English as She Is Spoke is compiled 1880 Stéphane Mallar mé translates by two Portuguese men who do “The Raven” into French. not speak English, with the aid of a 1890 Por tuguese-to-Frenc h phrasebook and a Brazilian nov elist Machado de Assis translates Baudelaire’s French-to-English dictionary. French translation of Poe’s “The Raven” into Portuguese.

1910 Jorge Luis Borges translates a story by Marcel Proust composes the novel A la recherche du Oscar Wilde into Spanish at temps perdu in seven volumes. the age of nine.

1920 C. K. Scott-Moncr ieff translates Vladimir Nabokov publishes a very loose the first six volumes of Proust’s Russian translation of Alice’s Adventures in novel into English, giving them the title Wonderland in Berlin. Remembrance of Things Past, which he drew from a Shakespearean sonnet Borges later translates Poe, because Proust’s original title allegedly appeared in Voltaire’s translation of that Kafka, Hesse, Kipling, Melville, Gide, Fernando sonnet. Proust supposedly hated the Faulkner, Whitman, and Woolf. Pessoa English title. Aleksandr translates Pushkin 1930 “The Raven” writes Eugene directly into Onegin. Henr y Portuguese. Parland,

a Russian- and German-speaking 1940 Iranian writer Sadiq Hida yat tr anslates the works wr iter in Finland, dies of Franz Kafka into modern Persian. He later kills before his first novel in himself in Paris. Swedish is completed.

Amos Tutuola writes his novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm- Polish novelist Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town in a Yoruba-influenced dialect that Nigerian Witold Gombrowicz translates his own novel Ferdydurke

critics call “broken English.” Dylan Thomas calls it “brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching.” into Spanish, which he doesn’t read, with the help of several writers in Buenos Aires who don’t read Polish.

1950 Vladimir Naboko v Nabokov translates his memoir publishes his memoir Conclusive Evidence, which includes one chapter originally written in French. from English into Russian, renaming them Other Shores.

Amos Tutuola’ s novel The Palm-W ine Drinkard is translated into French by Raymond Queneau. 1960 Naboko v publishes his very strict English translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Oneg in, which comes with two volumes of commentary explaining that literal translation is “mathematically impossible” but desirable.

Naboko v translates his memoir from Russian back into English, changing and adding to it, and publishes it as Speak, Memory. It has since been translated into many languages.

1970 Joseph Milan Kundera’s Brodsky begins to Epilog is revised and published in French Epilog is circulated in translate his own poems into as La Valse aux adieux. a Czech samizdat edition. English with the help of poets who do not read Russian. He writes Algerian Boudjedra begins to write his novels in Arabic, but translates them into French. new poems in English. writer Rachid Boudjedra translates his own second novel, L’Insolation, from French into Arabic.

Czeslaw Milosz translates Czeslaw Milosz Joseph Brodsky his own poems into English Paul Auster offers to translate a handful of translates a single poem translates six poems by with the help of poets who do not Samuel Beckett’s French poems into English by Joseph Brodsky from Czeslaw Milosz from Polish read Polish. He writes only one for a new anthology. Beckett refuses on the grounds Russian into Polish. into Russian. poem in English. that he’s his own exclusive translator. 1980 A further revised Czech edition of Epilog, incorporating Harry Mathews Georges Perec translates The author of this chart relied on Adam Thirlwell, some but not all changes translates Georges Perec’s Harry Mathews’s The Delighted States (FSG, 2008), and Pascale Casanova, to the French version, is Recits d’Ellis Island into English. Tlooth into French. The World Republic of Letters (Harvard, 2004), among pub lished in Canada. other sour ces. Thanks to E sther Allen, David Bellos, Kundera declares the French versions of his early Caleb Crain, Irena Gross, Ann Kjellberg, Ben Lytal, Czech novels to be the new originals from which all Chad Post, Jana Prikryl, Martin Riker, and Dan Visel. future editions will be translated.

David Rosenthal translates Tirant Lo Blanc into English. 1990 The Seven translators collaborate on a new version of novels Proust under the title In Search of Lost Time. of Ismail Kadare are translated directly from Albanian into French, Dutch, Kunder a publishes a new Cz ech edition of Epilo g, incor porating some but not all changes to subsequent and German. French editions, as well as some new changes not reflected in any French version. Nearly every other language—Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, 2000 Verhaeghen translates his own nov el Omega Minor into English. Chinese, Polish, Paul Verhaeghen writes Faith Jones Turkish, Greek, the novel Omega tr anslates a Italian, and Minor in Dutch. Tirant Lo Blanc becomes Parland’s unfinished novel, Sönder, is trans- stanza from English—starts the first Catalan book ever lated into French, German, and Russian. a late-medieval from the French. translated into Finnish. Celtic poem into 2008 soundalike Yiddish. An English edition Omega Minor will will be translated of Parland’s novel into French by Christophe Claro.

is expected next year.

DESIGN BY ALVARO VILLANUEVA

b57-bomb of a chart copy2.indd 1 9/10/08 2:04:29 PM