Original or translated? Great literature takes both forms
Barbara Lane February 10, 2020Updated: February 10, 2020, 11:04 am
Carolina de Robertis is the author of "Cantoras." Photo: Denise Harris
I had lunch recently with Uruguayan American writer Carolina de Robertis to talk about her excellent new novel, "Cantoras." I found myself, instead, totally immersed in a conversation about literary translation.
The writer of three previous novels and the collection "Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times," de Robertis, who lives in Oakland, is also an award-winning translator of Latin American and Spanish literature.
De Robertis' excitement about the subject was contagious. Her essay about translating "The Neruda Case" by Roberto Ampuero calls translation exhilarating, describing it as "a ride across the roaring rapids of an author's consciousness, bent close to the waters, listening for the deeper currents of his thoughts. It is the closest we can get to slipping into that room where the author sits in solitude, and peering over her shoulder as she works."
I always feel a little out of my league when literary translation comes up. Those readers who make intelligent observations about translations have often read the work both in its original language as well as the translation. (My Spanish is good but not that good. And French? Forget it.) Or they've seriously studied a work, read a number of different translations, and can somehow figure out which comes closest to the original author's intent.
San Francisco Chronicle book columnist Barbara Lane Photo: Russell Yip / The Chronicle 2019
Take Homer, for example. Two years ago, the literary world applauded the publication of Emily Wilson's new translation of "The Odyssey" calling it a revelation, even "a cultural landmark." Wilson was praised for her direct equation — one line of English for one of Greek, resulting in an admirable sparseness and simplicity. Moreover, according to the Guardian, Wilson's work "exposes centuries of masculinist readings of the poem."
Now, I'm no expert on "The Odyssey," aside from suffering through it in high school. I remember just enough to toss out a reference to being caught between Scylla and Charybdis, or an analogy to Penelope's suitors, when I'm eager to make an impression.
Yet even I could discern a welcome freshness and clarity in Wilson's telling of the classic story. That led me to think about how a translator puts his or her imprint on a work, and the delicate nature of the process.
In "Why Translation Matters," Edith Grossman, the highly acclaimed translator of many of Latin America's most important writers (Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ariel Dorfman), argues that translators create a new work.
The hope is, she says, that readers of the translation "will perceive the text, emotionally and artistically, in a manner that parallels and corresponds to the esthetic experience of its first readers."
Wow, that's a tall order. Especially when the original readers lived in another century.
Olga Tokarczuk, author of the Man Booker International Prize-winning novel "Flight," shares her perspective on the other side of the translation coin: the experience of her work being translated, in her essay "How Translators Are Going to Save the World":
"The presence of the translator opened up all sorts of bold new worlds for me, entering into debates and discussions completely independent, touching on issues I found not entirely comprehensible, unfamiliar, mysterious, even. Suddenly, the text was freed from me, or maybe it was me being released from it. My text acquired a kind of autonomy, like a rebellious adolescent deciding to run away from home to a music festival in Jarocin. … And indeed, the translator literally becomes a guide, taking me by the hand and leading me across the borders of nation, language, and culture."
I'd never considered the missionary aspect of translation. A great translation shakes us out of our cultural myopia. According to de Robertis, a large part of its value "is knowing that you're doing your teensy part to make international literature more accessible across borders and cultures." In the United States, she says, only 3% of the books published are in translation from another language.
Happily, in the Bay Area, the importance of literary translation is well recognized and celebrated. Since 2000, the Center for the Art of Translation has been dedicated to finding new, overlooked and underrepresented voices, brought into English by the best translators. The center's journal, Two Lines: World Writing in Translation, was created to make international literature more accessible to English-speaking audiences, to champion the unsung work of translators, and to create a forum for translators to discuss their craft.
Relative newcomers to the Bay Area scene, Adam and Ashley Levy, formerly in publishing in New York, founded Transit Books in 2015 in the East Bay to spotlight works "that carry readers across borders and communities."
Among their books: Poet Wioletta Greg's "Swallowing Mercury," translated by Eliza Marciniak, in which Greg looks back on her youth in an agricultural community in 1980s Poland. And "The Dinner Guest," by Gabriela Ybarra, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, which connects two life-changing events: the very public death of Ybarra's grandfather, and the more private pain as her mother dies from cancer.
One of my resolutions for 2020 is to read more work in translation. I have my eye on Negar Diavadi's "Disoriental," translated by Tina Kover, and "Flowers of Mold and Other Stories" by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong. I'll report back.
Barbara Lane
Barbara Lane Barbara Lane can't remember a time when she didn't have her nose in a book. Her column appears every Tuesday in Datebook. Email: barbara.lane@sfchronicle.com.