Ashley Translation edu material MKKDU 2030

translation material

1. Process of Translation

2. STEP 1
•Translator comes upon a
work that he/she is
passionate about.
–Passion often times due to desire to
spread knowledge of another culture.
•Social upheaval
•Political upheaval
–Example: Mexican Revolution in The
Underdogs, Cholera epidemic in Love in
the Time of Cholera, feminism in “The
Tree.”

3. Step 2
•Translator needs consent
of the original author…
sometimes author seeks
out translator
–Consultation between translator and
original author= extremely important.
•WHY? Enter into the life of the author,
become aware of how he views his
own text and how he wants his ideas
portrayed.
–Example: Suzanne Levine as translator
of Tres Tristes Tigres.

4. Step 3
•Translate!
–MYTH: translators are scribes, “scribbling transparent texts in the cellar
of the castle of Literature.”
•Criticism of translation as art
–FACT: translations are a new, but not improved, piece of art. Meaning
over form.
•Artwork analogy
–FACT: translations are a re-creation of the original
•“Authorized geniuses such as Borges…command an authority, unlike most
translators, to re-create, to “subvert” the original- particularly their own. They
offer an ideal model, nonetheless, for what literary translation should be:
creation.”
–“…each successive reading, rewriting, translating of a text enriches and ensures
the original’s survival anew.”

5. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Novels
In Evil Hour One
Hundred
Years of
Solitude
The
Autumn of
the
Patriarch
Chronicle
of a Death
Foretold
Love In the
Time of
Cholera
The Story of a
Shipwrecked
Sailor
The General
in his
Labyrinth
Of Love and
Other
Demons
Memories of
my
Melancholy
Whores
3 main translators of
Marquez’s novels: Edith
Grossman, Gregory
Rabassa, Randolf
Hogan

6. Gregory Rabassa
•Cortazar, author of “The Night Face Up,” advised Garbriel Garcia
Marquez that it would be worth waiting 3 years for Rabassa’s
schedule to open in order for his novel, One Hundred Years of
Solitude, to be translated by him.
•Marquez stated that Rabassa’s translation was superior to his own
original.
•Rabassa’s translation technique is working as he goes instead of
reading the book beforehand.
•Received a national book award for translation for his translated
novel Hopscotch.
•Has translated for many other famous authors besides Marquez
such as Julio Cortazar and Mario Vargas Llosa.

7. Edith Grossman
•In a 2003 speech in Marquez’s honor Grossman stated:
"Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an
act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense,
individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of
tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a
photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that
either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any
narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if
anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone
and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are
peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable."
Translated for many famous authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa and
Miguel de Cervantez

8. Bibliography
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garcia_Marquez
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Rabassa
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Grossman
•Levine, Suzanne. The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. St.
Paul: Graywolf, 1991.