Translation Review Number Sixty-Nine • 2005 The University of Texas at Dallas Translation Review No. 69, 2005 EDITORIAL: CHARTING THE FUTURE OF TRANSLATION PUBLISHING ...............................................1 Rainer Schulte INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE BERLIND...................................................................................................................4 Rebekah Presson Mosby COMMENTARY ON A LINE BY ROBERT FAGELS .........................................................................................13 John DuVal THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRANSLATIONS: FRANZ KAFKA’S VOICE AND ITS ENGLISH ECHO ...... 16 Monika Hubel THE TRANSLATION OF THE CONCEPT OF “THE OTHERNESS” IN MIGRANT LITERATURE ........ 26 Asalet Erten MULTIPLE RECREATIONS OF A GERMAN TEXT .........................................................................................33 Gary Brown APPLYING THEORY TO THE PRACTICE OF LITERARY TRANSLATION: CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN AUTHORS .............................................................................................................................43 Elizabeth Miller NOTES TOWARD A HISTORY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN BRAZIL .............................................48 Paulo Rónai, Tr. Tom Moore GARY SNYDER’S SEVENTEEN T’ANG POEMS: AN ANTI-CLIMAX AFTER HIS “COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS”? ........................................................................................................................................... 54 Ling Chung PASSING THROUGH LANGUAGE(S): TRANSLATING A POEM BY EDITH BRUCK ............................. 63 Philip Balma AN ANALYSIS OF JAMES SALLIS’ TRANSLATION OF RAYMOND QUENEAU’S SAINT GLINGLIN.. 67 Amity McGinnis VOICES AND ECHOES: THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF RUT, LA QUE HUYÓ DE LA BIBLIA ........ 71 Deborah Dougherty NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS................................................................................................................................. 76 1 EDITORIAL: CHARTING THE FUTURE OF TRANSLATION PUBLISHING By Rainer Schulte e as academic and independent translators have Proust, Manzoni, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Albert W a long way to go to convince the general public Camus, Isaac Babel, all the new translations of and the academy of the importance of translation and, nineteenth-century German philosophers, not to speak in particular, literary translation. The common notion of the never-ending chain of new Dante translations. that to translate, one only needs to use a dictionary or Even Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum will get a facelift even one of the machine translation software packages with a new translation by Breon Mitchell. The reasons surfaces in most conversations with people who have for the necessity of new translations of the same work never thought about translation. The academy is not are manifold: to adjust a previous translation to the much better in that respect, since a great number of pulse of the present language; to improve on a modern language departments do not recognize previous translation; to incorporate new scholarly translation work as a legitimate scholarly or discoveries, as was the case with the Bible; to bring intellectual activity. Deans and chairs of language and new interpretive perspectives to the translation in view English departments are often reluctant to consider for of cultural and aesthetic changes. We have no clear promotion faculty members who have produced guidelines for how and when a retranslation of a work extensive book publications in the field of literary is initiated or becomes necessary. translation. Actually, some academic translators even Retranslations will continue to occur in the future hide the fact that they are working in translation. with greater or less success. What is not occurring, However, there are signs that perhaps we are however, in any satisfactory manner is the craft and beginning to pay more attention to matters of seriousness of reviewing translations when they are translation. Recent articles in magazines have raised first published so that major weaknesses and on our consciousness with respect to existing distortions in a translation could be revealed to the translations. We are told that the translation of reader. Remnick shows us the danger of one person Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is one of the translating several volumes of Russian prose, and more distorted renderings of an original French text. Clive James leads us more extensively into the Most of us were brought up with reading detailed solutions of Mauldon’s translation of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev in Madame Bovary in comparison to some other existing Constance Garnett’s translations, who during her translations, only to come up with the conclusion that lifetime produced seventy volumes of Russian prose. the current translation by Mauldon does not improve In a recent article, “The Translation Wars,” in The previous translations. New Yorker (November 7, 2005), David Remnick The question then has to be raised: who is reminds us that we are probably not reading equipped and willing to engage in the art of reviewing translations of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy as Russian translations? To respond to this question should be the writers but rather as Garnett’s translations, which challenge of the academic world. I say academic make each writer sound exactly like the other. world, since most independent translators either are Nabokov called Garnett’s translations “a complete unwilling to write reviews, since they do not want to disaster.” speak negatively about their translator colleagues or Translation thinking must be in the air this consider the act of reviewing an unnecessary activity October and November. The October 2005 issue of or perhaps even a waste of their time. We therefore The Atlantic Monthly features an extensive article by have to rely more extensively on scholars who are not Clive James titled “No Way, Madame Bovary,” a only steeped in the respective language but also in the review of a new translation prepared by Margaret historical, social, and cultural environment of a given Mauldon. The vogue of retranslation seems to be in writer or work. Only then can we expect to receive full swing: Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Marcel balanced and well-informed reviews. Those scholars 1 would also be able to see a given translation in The landscape of translation publishing should comparison to already existing translations of the also be expanded in terms of the anthropological same work or to other works translated by the same underpinnings of literary texts. Generally, translations author. We as readers need to be provided with are being dealt with in terms of their linguistic perspectives that place translations in their present and dimensions. The anthropological foundation of past context and also illuminate for us the specific linguistic expressions would reconnect the interpretive nature of a translation. I would like for a visualization of words with their social, cultural, and reviewer of existing Dante translations to inform me aesthetic dimensions as they have been developed that the John Giardi translation would be more through the traditions of a country. Anthropological appropriate for an undergraduate literature course and investigations would reconnect words to their the Allen Mandelbaum for a graduate seminar, since sensuous origins and furthermore revitalize the they are different in their language and scholarly etymological and philological understanding of human orientation. Furthermore, we need articles and essays expressions. that deal with the assessment of the totally available Translations have been cultivated throughout the translations of a given writer. Here I propose that the centuries, from the Greeks through the Romans to our academic world wake up and institute seminars and modern times. Each age has produced its own workshops into the curriculum that would train perspectives on the art and craft of translation, and the graduate students in the art and craft of writing respective translators have imprinted their interpretive reviews of translations. Interesting and stimulating approaches on the nature of their translations, doctoral dissertations lie ahead! This addition to the approaches that also reflect the cultural and curriculum of graduate studies would not only anthropological orientation of their times. We are revitalize the interaction with the source-language always interested in deepening our understanding of texts but also change how world literature courses past historical events and attitudes. The illumination should be taught in the future. of the aesthetic and intellectual forces that drove the In comparison to other countries, especially interpretive directions of translations at a particular France and Germany, the number of literary time in the past will enlarge our understanding of the translations from all foreign countries into English is Zeitgeist as well as the psychological and emotional frightening. Publishers Weekly ran statistics around orientation of people. 1994 that claimed that about 1800 translations in the In his book The Civilization of Illiteracy, Mihai field of literature and the humanities were published Nadin argues that verbal literacy is no longer in the U.S. Cliff Becker, the late director of the sufficient to meet the needs of the 21st century. That literature program at the National Endowment for the statement should also be discussed seriously in the Arts, suggested that about 300 fiction works in context of translation studies. The