Translating Rosa Montero’s futuristic thriller. Lágrimas en la lluvia (2011). Lilit Thwaites. Honorary Associate, Spanish Program, La Trobe University. Monday 10 September, 4pm in Humanities 3 Rm 402, La Trobe University, Bundoora
Warning:
Umberto Eco: “this [seminar] is not a systematic approach to translation but rather a series of reflections on my particular [translation] experiences [translating Montero’s novel]”, while nevertheless acknowledging at least some of the issues and questions that follow:
Edith Grossman: “What is the point of translating books? Why does translation of literature matter at all, and whom does it benefit?” [Or, to put it the other way round] “what do we forfeit, historically, potentially, and in actuality, as individuals and as a society, if we somehow lose access to translated literature?”, i.e. how do you learn about other cultures if you don’t speak/read their languages?
[These are the easy questions: just imagine the English-speaking world with no Bible, Koran, Confucius, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Freud, Dostoevsky, Proust, Camus, Ibsen, Brecht, Strindberg, Singer, Kazantzakis, Saramago, García Márquez, Lorca, Larsson…]
Susan Sontag: Should the translation “sound right in the language of the reader” (St Jerome) OR be literal, accurate and faithful to the original in order “to transmit a sense and knowledge of ‘otherness’ and difference to the reader” (Schleiermacher and Nabokov) OR “allow the foreign tongue to influence and modify the language into which a work is being translated – reveal the work’s foreignness, make the reader aware that other people and cultures exist” (Walter Benjamin)? [i.e. What are you looking for or expecting to find in a translation?]
EG, SS and a host of other theorists and practitioners: Whom are we really reading – the translator or the author [or the editor/publisher]?
More information at the Event Website
Event Details:
La Trobe University. Humanities 3 Rm 402, La Trobe University, Bundoora |
10 Sep 4pm
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