Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (eds): In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means

Abstract

I teach a multilingual translation workshop at my university. Students translate from any language into English and in any given semester there are usually at least six languages represented in a class of twelve students. In the past I have made a great effort to gather engaging essays on translation by literary translators for the students and still was neither completely content with the hodgepodge of material I gave them or the electronic format in which I delivered it. In exchanges with colleagues, I learned that more than a few leaders of translation workshops or practice-based translation courses find themselves in a similar situation. It is for this reason and countless others that the translation community enthusiastically welcomes In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky. The book’s two parts, ‘‘The Translator in the World’’ and ‘‘The Translator at Work,’’ provide a unified collection of 18 essays by some of today’s most fascinating translators plus an introduction by the editors. Every single contribution irresistibly invites readers to consider broader issues that explore what it means to be a literary translator in the twenty-first century, or ‘‘the age of translation’’ (xix). Although particular cases regarding Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish are especially interesting to those with knowledge of these languages, in no way do these chapters ignore a larger audience. The specific challenges, solutions, and persistent tensions of certain language pairs never exclude the global conversation that highlights translation as its own language throughout the volume’s pages. Thus, the chapters can be read and taught together effortlessly. In Translation, is a celebration of the absolute necessity of translation since, as Allen and Bernofsky state, ‘‘translation not only brings us the work of those who write in other languages; it simultaneously reveals the limits of our own language