Number Seventy-fourTranslation • 2007 Review The University of Texas at Dallas Translation Review The University of Texas at Dallas Editors Associate Editor Assistant Editor Rainer Schulte Charles Hatfield Christopher Speck Dennis Kratz International Advisory Board Graphic Designer Copy Editor John Biguenet Michelle Long Sandra Smith Ming Dong Gu Samuel Hazo Production Staff Elizabeth Gamble Miller Lindy Jolly Margaret Sayers Peden Keith Heckathorn Marilyn Gaddis Rose Megan McDowell James P. White All correspondence and inquiries should be directed to Translation Review The University of Texas at Dallas Box 830688 - JO51 Richardson, TX 75083-0688 Telephone: (972) 883-2092 Fax: (972) 883-6303 E-mail: [email protected] Translation Review is published twice yearly by The Center for Translation Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas and the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Articles in Translation Review are refereed. The publication of this issue of Translation Review is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscriptions and Back Issues Subscriptions to individuals are included with membership in ALTA. Special institutional and library subscriptions are available. Back issues may be ordered. ISSN 0737-4836 Copyright © 2007 by Translation Review The University of Texas at Dallas is an equal opportunity/affirmative action university. TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial: The Independent Translator in the Academy ..............................................................1 Rainer Schulte An Interview with Joan Lindgren: The Challenge of Translating Argentina ................................4 María del Carmen Sillato Notes on “Notes on Translation”..............................................................................................10 Kent Johnson Feminist Translation as Interpretation .....................................................................................16 David J. Eshelman Hinojosa’s Self-translation of Dear Rafe into North American Culture: Language Use as a Mirror of the Social Construction of Chicano Identity ...............................28 Silvia Molina Plaza Five Translators Translating: Reading Blood Meridian from English into English, Spanish into English, and English into Spanish.........................................................................35 Michael Scott Doyle A Satisfying Condition: An Interview with Norman R. Shapiro .................................................67 J. Kates BOOK REVIEWS Krasznahorkai, László. War and War (Háború és háború) ........................................................75 Translation by George Szirtes Reviewed by Andrea Nemeth-Newhauser Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts ...............................................................78 Translated and edited by Aili Mu, Julie Chiu, and Howard Goldblatt Reviewed by Andrea Lingenfelter Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke. Rashōmon and 17 Other Stories .........................................................80 Translation by Jay Rubin Reviewed by Jeffrey Angles Lowe, Elizabeth and Earl E. Fitz. Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature .........83 Reviewed by Rainer Schulte EDITORIAL: THE INDEPENDENT TRANSLATOR IN THE ACADEMY By Rainer Schulte iterary and humanistic criticism these words that enable the reader to visualize the L days is not enjoying a particularly situations that writers create in their emotional elevated and appreciated existence. Articles landscapes. and scholarly monographs often reach a level In most cases, the works that students of incomprehensibility, since language is used encounter in creative writing courses are to obscure rather than illuminate the subject originally written in English. International matter. Words have lost their connection to literatures, and especially very contemporary their original etymological visualization and world literature, are still foreign to many English therefore frequently function as orchestrated departments and appear to challenge instructors of sound structures rather than meaningful literature. In our globalized world, the horizon of reflections of internal thought progressions. literary studies must be expanded. It is perfectly The interpretive interaction with the text has normal that writers and poets from many countries been replaced with speculations about the text, and languages meet at international literature which contributes to the decline of literary festivals to read from their works. Many years criticism into jargon. At the same time, many ago, I participated in an international poetry of the papers read at scholarly conferences reading in London, where Pablo Neruda read next walk under a veil of darkness. to Giuseppe Ungaretti, Charles Olson, Octavio Some decades ago when English Paz, and many other poets from all over the world. Departments began to decline in attracting The flow of voices enchanted the thousands of students, creative writing programs came to people in the audience. their rescue. Today, almost every English To create such an atmosphere is still very department or program has introduced courses foreign to instructors in modern language and and workshops in creative writing. It would be literature departments. The concept of translation a somewhat frightful idea if every student in a and the teaching of works in translation frighten creative writing course were to aspire to many instructors of literature in the academy. Yet, become a published writer. Our society could it is time to recognize that we have to prepare the not hold that much creativity! What did the next generation of students to move comfortably creative writing courses achieve? A in a globalized world, since more and more reconnection of the reader and student with the cultures converge in individual countries. Obvious intricacies of a literary work rather than differences of social habits among cultures can be approaching the literary text through scholarly easily detected. However, the soul of another articles. The reader who comes to the novel, language, its people, and its tradition can only be the poem, or the dramatic text from the acquired through the refined emotional moments writer’s point of view is immediately involved of literary writing. The literary sensibility does not in a close attention to every word, to the follow a linear description but rather an sentence structures, to the internal associative way of looking at reality, which development of characters and situations. engages the reader in the movement of situations What is explored are the various associations that illuminate the human drama. inherent in a word and how these associations The translator has to come into the picture to change the moment a word is brought into change and redirect many of the preconceptions contact with another word. New energies toward world literature in English departments emerge in the juxtaposition and sequence of and especially in modern language departments. Translation Review 1 What can the translator bring to further the the translator is able to lead the reader closer to an reading and understanding of foreign understanding of the idiosyncrasies of cultural, literatures? Not only do translators transfer historical, and aesthetic phenomena in the foreign literary texts from foreign languages into work. The excitement of the reader resides in the English, but they are also very well equipped reenactment of the foreign traits as compared to to bring the English reader closer to an those in the receptor language. After all, we are understanding of the refinements inherent in always attracted to the mystery of complex and other languages and cultures. More and more ambiguous situations in other cultures, which students have to be encouraged to pursue challenge our curiosity and imagination. Master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in In the past few years, we have seen signs that the field of literary translation, with particular translators have included, either as an introduction emphasis on the actual translation of literary or as an afterword, detailed comments on the works from foreign languages into English. reconstruction of the translation process in order Having translated the work, students will be in to open a dialogue between the foreignness of the a position to open up aspects of the original other culture and the receptor language. In many text that a critic or scholar, who has not done instances, these commentaries, together with an the translation, could not perform with the intrinsic interpretive approach to the work as seen same intensity and insight. Translators are through the eyes of the translator, have greatly familiar with every linguistic, cultural, social, enhanced the accessibility, understanding, and and anthropological detail of the fictional, enjoyment of foreign works for the English poetic, nonfictional or essayistic text under reader. The globalized world forces us to find consideration. Thus, the final version of a entrance into that which is foreign in the minds of translation should be accompanied by several people in other countries to avoid an escalation of essayistic features to facilitate the reader’s the clashes of cultures. entrance into and enjoyment of the foreign text The previous considerations should be a in translation. In addition to the placement of wake-up call for teachers and professors of the translated author into the context of the literature. Rainer Maria Rilke exclaims at the end national and international scene,