Arguments about translators and translation

[Valentino, Russell]

Seelangs participants with a passion for literary translation might find the ALTA listserv of interest, where it's all translation all the time (well, as far as time goes on listservs, in fits and starts mostly).

A couple of things about Robert's post strike me, and they rather go in opposite directions. On one hand, it's bad form -- not to mention illegal -- of the Scottish Opera not to credit the translation they used. Very nice to have Random House on one's side.

On the other, some of the most innovative, ground-breaking translations have come into being in an environment where copyright has not been much of a factor, either because it didn't exist or wasn't enforced or was just ignored, or, most commonly, because the works have been in the public domain, which is why we have so many versions of classic works and, almost invariably, only one version of more recent ones.

Protecting intellectual property is good and important, but I find it sad that translatability today is determined first of all by copyright, such that it would be impossible to recreate anything like the intense interchange of texts and languages in certain periods of literary history, with multiple translator-writers trying their hand at the same relatively contemporary works.

I agree with Robert about the intensity of the conversations about translation, but I'm also struck by how often people say the same things. I wonder whether we don't need a little translation sampling, translation hip hop, to shake the topics up.

Russell


-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Chandler
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 1:02 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS] Arguments about translators and translation

Dear all,

I am struck, not for the first time, by the passion that discussion of
translation evokes.  No one argues about whether or not it is possible to
write poetry.  Few people argue that there is only one way to write poetry.
But people are often oddly absolute in the way they talk about translation.

Bezprosvanny appears to believe that all translation is bad unless it is
good - and, if it is good, then it is no longer translation at all.

As for my own feelings, I can only say that translation does not get any
easier with the years.  Seemingly straightforward sentences still often take
an absurd amount of time to recreate in another language.  And in the world
in general, outside SEELANGS and a few other ugolki, translators are still
made to seem like nobodies.

Yesterday, for example, someone suggested I look at the website for Scottish
Opera:
<http://www.scottishopera.org.uk/five15-synopsis-2010>
The third item is about a mini-opera they have commissioned with a libretto
drawn from a chapter in LIFE AND FATE.

Here is what it says on the site:
THE LETTER
Music: Vitaly Khodosh
Words: Bernard MacLaverty
Drawn from Vassili Grossman¹s novel Life and Fate
1940s Russia. A mother writes to her son, knowing she is about to be forced
from her home along with thousands of fellow Russian Jews. As brutality and
madness thrive around her she takes comfort from knowing that her spirit
will live on through her words.
 
I am not mentioned. Bernard MacLaverty says in an article that he does not
know Russian, and the opera house did not contact either the publishers of
Life and Fate, nor the agent for Grossman's estate.

This is not especially important in itself.  Random House have written to
Scottish Opera and, no doubt, it will all be sorted out.  Nevertheless,
there is something dispiriting about having one's work so totally ignored.

Because of this kind of thing, I am all the more grateful for the support
that SEELANGS has so consistently offered to me and other translators.  My
especial thanks to Donna Orwin, Olga Meerson and Penelope Burt and many
others for kind remarks now and in the past.  We translators are all in the
same boat and (despite occasional fierce arguments) this boat still seems to
be invisible to many people!

Vsego samogo dobrogo,

Robert

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