Poles of Translation

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
—Nabokov

The translator’s work is subtler, more civilized than that of the writer: the translator clearly comes after the writer. Translation is a more advanced stage of civilization.
—Borges

“How literal must a literary translation be?” This question, followed by the above quotes, begins Jiayang Fan’s review of Han Kang’s novels. Fan gives two interpretations of the Borges quote, but I believe the above is accurate. Read the review itself here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/han-kang-and-the-complexity-of-translation

The Russian and the Argentinian represent two poles of translation philosophy. So many have cited them as such that they’ve become a kind of translator cliché, along with “translator, traitor” or “what is lost in translation.” At Nabokov’s pole, add nothing not in the original but—maybe—essential syntax to fit the second language’s usage. On Borges’ side, discern the author’s intention, and render that in your own language and culture, replacing idiom and metaphor as needed.

Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, was the first Korean-language book to win the Man Booker and the first prize to be split between author and translator. A translator recognized! The world has never seen such a thing. Because of that, I read the Smith translation, was transported to a markedly different culture, one that felt oppressive and frustrating, the passivity of the two women protagonists almost unbearable. And yet, the self-destructive resistance of one and the dutiful carrying on of the other become oddly heroic.

According to Fan, Koreans criticize the translation for adding descriptors that don’t exist in the original, in effect, making it less Korean and more palatable to English speakers. Yet, it seems Kang and Smith work together, and Smith has since translated other work by Kang. Fan quotes Korean-American critic Charse Yun as complaining that Smith’s translation makes Kang sound as if Raymond Carver had been made to sound like Charles Dickens. But Carver was made to sound the way he did by Gordon Lish. Editing is another kind of translation. And to my American ear, The Vegetarian sounds stark and minimal enough in this translation.

Should you want a sidetrack on Carver/Lish:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/24/rough-crossings

Nabokov apparently believed the translator should not be a writer in his or her own right. Borges believed the opposite. Most literary translators consider themselves writers, an assertion Edith Grossman reaffirms at the beginning of her 2010 book, Why Translation Matters. Grossman asks, rhetorically: aren’t we providing a mere pass-through service to literature?

In the most resounding yet decorous terms I can muster, the answer is no, for the most fundamental description of what translators do is that we write—or perhaps rewrite—in language B a work of literature originally composed in language A, hoping that readers…will perceive the text…in a manner that…corresponds to the esthetic experience of its first readers.

A mighty undertaking. About the Nabokov position, Grossman observes:

I believe Nabokov was a brilliant novelist but a dismal translator: his notion of literal correspondences between languages—a surprisingly pedantic posture for so energetic, accomplished, and adventurous a writer—seems to me like something one might find down a rabbit hole or on the other side of a looking glass.

Grossman makes a case for translators owing fidelity to context, not words or syntax. Her book is prefaced by a Borges quote:

No problem is as consubstantial with literature and its modest mystery as the one posed by translation.

Early in my effort to become a literary translator, I attempted poems by the prominent Mexican poet Elsa Cross, met her in Mexico City to review my drafts. There was much wrong with those early pieces, but Elsa was patient and generous. At one point, she looked at a word I’d chosen from several possible renderings of her Spanish word, and said, “That is a good solution.”

At the time, I hadn’t thought of the work in those terms, but in fact, literary translation presents problem after problem you must solve to retain fidelity to the original while communicating effectively in your own tongue.

Despite Nabokov, there’s no such thing as a literal translation. Has your Spanish author used the verb, shall we say, echar? To throw, to cast, toss, throw out or away, expel, dismiss, fire, shed tears, emit or give off, pour, add, put in, sprout, begin to grow… I’m not halfway down the list of possible definitions. Context is everything, narrows down your choices, but rarely points to one definitive answer. That final selection is the proof of the translator as writer.

Borges famously urged his translators to write what he meant to say, not what he wrote. As Martin Boyd pointed out in a 2013 post on diálogos, Nabokov’s position implies “that ‘utility’ is to be given priority over aesthetic considerations in literary translation.” Boyd advanced Borges as an antidote to Nabokov’s position. The blog is accompanied by two apt photos, one of Vladimir Nabokov scowling at the camera, wearing boxing gloves and one of Jorge Luis Borges, smiling gently in his blindness, leaning on his elegant cane.

http://dialogos.ca/2013/06/two-opposing-views-of-literary-translation-nabakov-vs-borges/