Beyond Words: Translating the World by Susan Ouriou

Abstract

WÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊË Second,Williamsis an obviouslyintelligent andwell-read poet, and his learning findsits proper placeinhispoems,sometimes centrally asinthe poem"Marina," mentioned above.Thatsaid,attimes the musty smelloftheacademy canbe detected and be a little off-putting. Whenone poemencounters cows, thespeakermust(ofcourse)think ofIo;whenanother poemdescribes an encounter betweena man and womanon themetro, thespeaker must(ofcourse)recall Gombrowicz foran idea as simpleas physical assertion. Thereare multiple other examples oftimes whenthisreader wishestheauthor wouldputaside hisprofessor's cap. Third, there are too many stretches, even whole poems, in whichthepoet managesto barely includeconcreteimagery.For example, consider theselinesfrom "AllButAlways": "andifyouwere unable to give / an unqualified response to thesequestions, / but were forcedto admitthatyou / couldn't saywithcertainty whether / theactivities of thethingwere yourdoing/ ortheresult ofsome other agency." Suchlongstrings of abstractions seem less like poetry and moreliketherushedhurtle of abstract cogitation bysomeone consuming toomuchespresso. FredDings University ofSouthCarolina Miscellaneous Beyond Words:Translatingthe World. Susan Ouriou, ed. Banff, Alberta. BanffCentre Press. 2010. 175 pages. Can$21.95. isbn 978-1-894773-38-6 BeyondWords:Translating theWorld is a collection oftwenty-one short, mostlyinformal essays,thoughts on translation bya kaleidoscope of translators who have participated at varioustimesin theBanff literary Translation Centre's Summer ResidenceProgram. It is stimulating to confront in a shortspace how twenty-one translators with different approachesand attitudes facetwenty-one different problems oftranslation in as manydifferent ways.How does translating make us think aboutlanguage? Whatcan translators do, caughtin thegaps between twolanguages? How does each individualtextdetermine its translation? Whatabouttranslating from a major language into anindigenouslanguage ?Whatis involved intranslating from a minor national language into a major one?What ifa translator isalsoa writer? Howdoes one carryacrossstylistic and linguistic norms from onelanguageto another - eveninthecaseofclosely related languages? How canpoetry be translated? Is translation political ?Shoulditbe subjective? Is the translator translating him-or herself ?Whataboutliterary imports? ■Hli^^H^H^^HHIII^^^MH^^HHH^^MI^^HHIJ^H ^^^^^HpHBBWBBBBBBBIBBBBBW^BMBBWBHBWpi^BjMIM^M^^^^^fe^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^ What about translationin a bilingual country? How does translation relatetotheory? That all these questions are raised cogently and in briefformin thisbook reveals to the reader the multilayered complexitythatevery translation involves.Especiallyinterestingforthistranslator is theessay "Literary Translation intotheIndigenous Languages of theAmericas," by Enrique ServínHerrera,investigatingproblemsraisedbytherecent "renaissanceofaboriginallanguages as literarymedia of expression," whichcreatesa "realcultural chasm" when a moderncultureis translated intothe conceptsof an archaicculture ,leading the translator to "performactsofsocialintervention , thus transcendingthe mere functionof whatwe call translation." "We must remember," theauthorwrites,"that languages are not parallel systems ofsignsthat'reflect' theworld,[but] rather independent - oratleastlargelyindependent - systems ofinterpretationoftheworld ." Edith Grossmanwritesthat in translating Cervantes's DonQuixote, "I believethatmyprimary obligation as a literary translator is to re-create for thereaderin Englishthe experience of thereaderin Spanish.. . . When Cervantes wroteDon Quixote, hislanguage was notarchaicor quaint.He wroteina crackling, up-to-date Spanish thatwas an intrinsic partof his time, ... a modernlanguagethat both reflected andhelpedtoshapetheway peopleexperienced theworld." For those who believe translationis simple,FrançoiseRoy offers a not atypical conundrum: "If a verse reads sus hermanos in Spanish ,thetranslator intoFrenchmust know the gender of the hermanos and whetherthereis morethanone of each gender in order to decide "j EditedbySusanOuriou "j bey bySusanOuriou m -w ■ I Translating X^| JL JL theWorld ÛWO ras whetherto use sesfrères, leurs frères, sesfrères etsa sœur, sonfrère etsa sœur, sesfrères et ses sœurs,sonfrère etses sœurs,leursfrères et leursœur,leurs frères et leurssœurs,leurfrère et leur sœurorleur frère etleurssœurs." Burton Pike Graduate Center, CUNY Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook. Claudio Iván Remeseira, ed. & intro. AndrewDelbanco, foreword.NewYork. Columbia University Press.2010. xxiv+ 547 pages. $89.50 ($29.95 paper), isbn 978-0-231-14818-4(14819-1 paper) The publication of Hispanic New York:A Sourcebook by Claudio Ivan Remeseira, founder and director of the Hispanic New York Project in the American Studies Program at Columbia University, marks a significantmilestone in Nueva York studies as an interdisciplinary ,multinationalfieldwithhemispheric and transatlantic scope. The twenty-five textsanthologized infoursections(HistoricalPerspectives ;Race, Ethnicity, and Religion; Language and Literature; Music and Art) represent numerousintersectingsocialscienceand humanities disciplines:demographics, literature, journalism,women's studies, sociology , religion,dialectology,musicology , and art history.Although thisselectionof readingscould not possibly cover, uniformly,every nationalgroup or scholarlyissue of HispanicNew York,thebreadthand depth of the classifiedbibliography helps compensateforany perceived omissionofcoverage.Extensivesubject and name indexes also provide access to thevast rangeoftopicsin thereadings,and thecoverillustration...