SEELANGS" Omissions in translations?

[Valentino, Russell]

In my experience, trimming during English translation editing is common, as during any editing, e.g., "with a feeling of commiseration" becomes "with commiseration," and so on. Partly this happens because of English writing conventions ("forgive me for the long letter; I didn't have time to make it shorter"), partly because authors in some other literary cultures just aren't edited much (and often should have been). That's of course not the same as cutting out authorial asides. Martin Riker has a few things to say about editing translations in this book: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100138250 (which is now available for free download from this site).



Russell





Russell Scott Valentino

Professor and Chair

Cinema and Comparative Literature

http://ccl.clas.uiowa.edu

Editor, The Iowa Review

http://www.iowareview.org/

tel. 319-335-2827

University of Iowa









[... But since I can't imagine why this would be, it

seems more likely that the English version was just trimmed down. I imagine

that the actual choices of what to cut are often laid on the translator's

shoulders, something like, "here it is, make it shorter by about 20%." Has

anyone out there been asked to "trim" a translation in this way?]



--

Anne O. Fisher, Ph.D.

Russian Interpreter and Translator

anne.o.fisher at gmail.com

440-986-0175





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