THE NEW TRANSAMERICA: STILL FIGHTING FOR A BETTER WORLD

words without borders recently posted a new dispatch in a series "on reviewing translations," this one by translator, editor and reviewer tess lewis. in addition allying herself with the large minority of people who understand that, "Taking The New York Times Book Review to task for its neglect of translations is a regular (and vital) sport in the literary blogosphere," lewis also indicts careless reviewers of translations for their disservice to the craft of translating (and of reviewing) and proposes a standard for future reviews:

Important translations are so rarely reviewed at the length they deserve, that each missed opportunity for an authoritative piece is a double shame. Every translation is inevitably flawed, yet its weaknesses, like its strengths, can be illuminating as long as the reviewers are held to high enough standards. As a start, I propose one simple, inviolable rule: if you’re going to pass judgment on a translation, whether in one word or several paragraphs, whether laudatory or condemning, whether or not you know the original language, you should provide evidence to support that judgment.

although we read most of the books we've treated at this blog in their original languages, nearly all of our writing on books for other outlets (it exists!) has been on translations. we're not sure whether any of those translations have been of the "important" class mentioned in lewis' admonition -- and wonder what justifies her own judgment there. still, because of our fear of justified reprisal by authorities like lewis, we don't usually pass judgment on the quality of translations from a languages we don't know, but in some instances, one or another characteristics of a translation's language is marked (or grating) enough to warrant discussion. we wonder if this paragraph, excerpted from one of our columns at bookslut, would garner lewis' approval.

The Scale of Maps is heavy on metaphor. Gopegui employs it not just as a technique of language (e.g., "In a hotel room, on an unfamiliar table, I will draw the maps and give the final orders to an exiled band of guerillas in rebellion that is none other than myself") but also as a larger structural device that draws the borders of her central theme, what you might call a quantum mechanico-geographic repositioning of reality and imagination (e.g., "I'm a small man, but I have the feeling that you picture me within an even smaller scale, which makes me appear quite large. Couldn't you shift scales? Couldn't you enlarge your scale until, in your memory, I was the point that designates a town on a tiny map...?" or, "only when a woman is with me can I say that she exists, either as a wave or a particle. Thus all love is adulterous and all adulterous love is Schrödinger's cat, neither dead nor alive as long as we don't possess the woman"). Perhaps that's why Mark Schafer's translation seemed so plodding for the first half of the book. Was the figurative language so generally obtuse in Spanish? Was Schafer's just clumsy prose, or was The Scale of Maps a book that simply demanded to be experienced (and permitted) outside of "natural" language? Or, perhaps it wasn't the translator that found his stride as he worked through the book but the reader. Culling the first several dozen pages for a phrase about a mandarin that struck me as particularly awkward, I find the writing much easier going than on my first time through.

is self-deprecation sufficient evidence to support a judgment? maybe not. but just for good measure: words without borders had also recently posted a link to the list of finalists for the 2011 best translated book award (ay ay ay) at "three percent." we haven't read a single one.