Arguments about translators and translation

[Olga Meerson]

I am appalled by what Robert Chandler has said about the use of his translation of Grossman in the Opera. Having worked with him for years, I naturally do become "effusive" in my praise! But as researchers and scholars, we all at least exist if we publish something. As I have been a translator also, I have managed to "exist" only in Russian, as such. In English, people take it for granted that everything they CONSUME intellectually is conveniently prepackaged for their consumption! I have first encountered this invisibility in a case that, oddly enough, seemed relatively visible: with the Pevears, at the time of their struggles for the publication of their first (excellent!) translation, of The Brothers Karamazov -- back when they were just beginning their work together in New York, both our parishioners and close friends. They have made it, but to an extent because people started at least disputing the relative merits and drawbacks of DIFFERENT translations, including their!
 s!!
 This is a symptom of a consumerist society -- to notice a trade only as long as something, among its pre-packaged goods, seems to go wrong! A Russian senses the subtle differences between the translations of Shakespeare by Lozinsky or Pasternak, or, some exemplary ones, for the Sonnets, by Marshak. An English speaker assumes that he or she is entitled to consume things written in other languages. As for Vadim, I do not know him personally but would love to examine him for his interest or/and expertise on something he, most likely, does not know but is likely to have "consumed" at least in translation--namely Biblical poetics. As usual, our main Patron Saint -- not merely in translation but in hermeneutics, which means the same thing! -- is St, Jerome. What matters now is that he is indeed our patron, i.e., provides arguments for our apologia. Robert, I know, venerates him, and with a good cause. 
Thank you, Robert, bless you all.
o.m.

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