Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A prospect that is intolerably, inconceivably bleak - does translation matter?

Some credentialing:  Over here we find the admirable Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge, which encourages geographically diversified reading.  Books from eight different countries is the rule now, I think.  I am not joining, on the principle that a challenge should be challenging.  In 2010, I hit eight countries on February 19, with Tolstoy’s Childhood.  Iceland, Norway, UK, US, France, Russian, China, and “German” – the notion of “country” is not so useful in 19th century Germany.  Since then, I have visited Austria, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Yiddishland, and Sanskritland.

What I mean is, translation matters a lot to me.  Not as much as it matters to Edith Grossman, who gets to chat with Gabriel García Márquez as part of her normal work day, but a lot.  But any argument about Why Translation Matters has to move past personal taste, and has to contribute something beyond the important but obvious – that translation allows us to, say, read books in languages we don’t know.

The best piece I’ve seen about Edith Grossman’s Why Translation Matters is by Chad Post, proprietor of the admirable Three Percent Blog, which is devoted to current literary translation and nothing but.  Post’s essay is good reading just for his thoughts about the biz side of publishing, where he provides helpful context for Grossman’s complaints but also offers much more realistic ideas about what is really possible.  He dismantles Grossman’s arguments that publishers have a “moral obligation” to publish translation (his term, not Grossman’s, but it’s accurate).

What does translation offer to the reader?

Imagine how bereft we would be if the only fictional worlds we could explore, the only vicarious literary experiences we could have, were those written in languages we read easily.  The deprivation would be indescribable.  Depending on your linguistic accomplishments, this would mean you might never have the opportunity to read Homer or Sophocles or Sappho, Catullus or Virgil, Dante or Petrarch or Leopardi, Cervantes or Lope or Quevedo, Ronsard or Rabelais or Verlaine, Tolstoy or Chekhov, Goethe or Heine: even a cursory list of awe-inspiring writers is practically endless, though I have not even left western Europe or gone past the nineteenth century to compile it.  [A similar list of languages: Polish, Bulgarian, etc.]  The mere idea creates a prospect that is intolerably, inconceivably bleak. (Grossman, 26)

I must admit that much of my resistance to the Why Translation Matters part of Why Translation Matters is that I can’t stand this rhetoric.*  The “we” in the first sentence makes me nervous, while “indescribable,” “inconceivably” and so on seem absurd.  Everyone who stops by Wuthering Expectations for any purpose besides trolling for term paper ideas is well-read, in something, often in many things.  Now, please, tell me if the absence of Pierre de Ronsard,** Lope de Vega, or Heinrich Heine from your life makes it intolerably bleak.  I ask this as someone who has read in some depth into every writer on that list, my recent encounter with Paul Verlaine taking care of the last one (she got me with Bulgarian, though).

Maybe the list meant to be purely metaphorical?  It can’t be, though – imagine someone whose list of the writers he can’t imagine living without went:  Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, H. James, Cather, T. Eliot, E. Bishop, and so on.  Is there some argument against that list?  That's a good list!  Some good readers do just fine without the help of translation.

Is all of the weight on the word “opportunity”?  The argument has to be based on opportunity, not on actual reading.  The social value of translation is different that the individual value.  Are you reading enough books in translation?  Yes, you likely are, even if the number is zero.  If that does not sound sufficiently absurd:  Are you reading enough Sanskrit literature?  Are you reading enough poetry?  Are you listening to enough jazz?  More of any of these virtuous cultural activities means less of whatever virtuous cultural (or non-cultural!) activity you are engaged in now.  Reading more translations is not free - it means less of something else that is valuable.

The social arguments for more, more, more translation, with which I agree, completely, do not actually depend on any particular reader.  The social value of translation is very high; the individual value – well, that varies enormously.  Someone has to read these books, but how many, or who, is another question.  Chad Post, out on the frontlines, suspects that shaming people into enjoying literary translation (or poetry, jazz, Sanskrit plays, etc.) is not a long-run solution, which seems right.

I put a high value on the remarkable Clay Sanskrit Library, and I am shocked and dismayed that no one is reading these books for a blog project.  But does that mean that I did something remarkable when I recently read a couple of Kālidāsa plays?  Should you feel bad if you haven’t read them, or that a great deal of Sanskrit literature has never been translated?  The prospect is tolerable, and conceivable. 

The literary translator expands the possibilities of our culture.  Good ones, like Edith Grossman, are invaluable, or at least greatly underpaid and underappreciated.  Did I recommend her fine The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance yet? And Love in the Time of Cholera, what a book, right? And the second half of Why Translation Matters, I think many people will get a lot out of that.

No more Why Translation Matters, but tomorrow, one more reason that translation matters.

* And I’m leaving aside high-pitched oddities like “the crisis in translation” and declining literary translation as “a hovering and constant threat to civil liberties.”

** Several years ago, I combed through Ronsard translations. They ranged from serviceable to disgraceful. I wish Grossman had clued me into the good one.

14 comments:

  1. I agree with you, although in an odd way, I also find the paragraph you quoted a little bit charming. She seems to be talking mostly about herself, but confusing the deprivation SHE would feel at the loss of translated literature, with the imagined deprivation ANYONE would feel. And it demonstrates how much she loves translated books! Albeit in not the most well-considered way.

    Maybe she's getting around to the deprivation our entire culture would feel if EVERYONE had only read works published in languages we can read easily? I don't need to have read Sanskrit or Bulgarian works to engage in & learn from conversation with someone who has, for example. And maybe the person who's read a lot of Bulgarian hasn't read much Indian lit (which I have), so we can learn from each other & draw connections.

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  2. Grossman seems completely Euro Centric-"Imagine how bereft we would be if the only fictional worlds we could explore, the only vicarious literary experiences we could have, were those written in languages we read easily. The deprivation would be indescribable. Depending on your linguistic accomplishments, this would mean you might never have the opportunity to read Homer or Sophocles or Sappho, Catullus or Virgil, Dante or Petrarch or Leopardi, Cervantes or Lope or Quevedo, Ronsard or Rabelais or Verlaine, Tolstoy or Chekhov, Goethe or Heine: even a cursory list of awe-inspiring writers is practically endless, though I have not even left western Europe or gone past the nineteenth century to compile it. [A similar list of languages: Polish, Bulgarian, etc.] The mere idea creates a prospect that is intolerably, inconceivably bleak. (Grossman, 26)"-

    Over the last year I have read about 70 works of Japanese literature in translation-I hope all the publishers of these works made money from them so they will continue to order more translations (I think about 20 translations from Japanese are published in a typical year-less than 5 percent of the books published in a given year in Japan and most of the translations are of older books-for example the last novel of the Nobel prize winning Kenzaburo was published in Japan in 2000 but was just translated in 2010-I do not feel reading these works has made me a better person or feel it is something others "ought to do" but I have enjoyed the experience greatly and will read, I hope, a lot more-I thank the translators of these works (many of whom are professors so I guess translating these works is not in itself a living wage)-in reading a work in translation no matter how good it is you cannot really appreciate the melding of form and memory or savor the beauty of the language of a well written work-or at least so it seems to me-

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  3. Yes, exactly! That's what I should have written. I identify strongly with both the principle of Grossman's list and many of the same writers. Thus the need to be doubly careful about confusing my preferences with What Is Good and Right.

    The mechanism you describe is just how I understand things. The social optimum may be lots and lots of different things each done by a few people. Then all these magical things happen in the space in between. Artists, including translators, are the facilitators, Virgil leading us to Paradise.

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  4. Hm, the rhetoric doesn't bother me so much. Then again I've only read the passage you've quoted and not the whole book. Can't Grossman's point be taken thusly: (1) access to foreign language literary experiences is a very Very VERY good thing, (2) translators enable access, etc. so (3) ergo..., etc. Further, I think the argument is persuasive even if an individual doesn't personally care about foreign language literature. Sure, Grossman's a little sloppy with the collective "we," but I forgive her instantly on the spot!

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  5. mel - that "etc." I put in conceals a nod to "all the myriad languages of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa." But her true loves are certainly European, Spanish-language especially.

    You're right, few people have succeeded in making a living from literary translation. And few publishers make much momey from literary fiction, translated or otherwise, although they occasionally hit the jackpot.

    Kevin - it's not even the "we", although Grossman abuses that plenty, throughout the book. It's the "inconceivable" and "indescribable" and "intolerable" and so on. I am sympathetic, and can reconstruct her argument much like you did. But imagine you are not sympathetic. Is that kind of rhetoric going to be convincing?

    Push a little farther: I'm a reader who has never heard of Ronsard, Lope de Vega, and so on. I know for a fact that the mere idea is not intolerably bleak. Or, a true to life example: I hear or read about many writers who sound absolutely fascinating and will probably never make it into English. Is the deprivation regrettable, or "indescribable"? I think it's describable!

    Here's what I don't forgive, actually: to get to the heart of Grossman's arguments - with which I entirely agree! - I have to abandon much of what she actually says. Well, she doesn't really mean that, I say. But why, then, write like that? Who is it for? Who does it convince?

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  6. But you can't look around your own corner, as it were. Since you haven't read them, their loss is indescribable.

    If one fine morning I awoke from unpleasant dreams to learn that I could no longer read foreign language literature, having tasted their pleasures, I would suffer profoundly? Grossman's hyperbole strikes me as judicious, because in part she's singing a full-throated paean to translators.

    Cheers,

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  7. I didn't know my life was intolerably bleak for not having read Pierre de Ronsard, Lope de Vega, or Heinrich Heine until just now. Do I rush to the library or do myself in because the bleakness is suddenly so heavy? ;)

    I am sympathetic to her argument though. If I weren't, I probably wouldn't bother reading her book so the "inconceivables" and so on not being a convincing argument wouldn't matter.

    Who might be the intended audience for the book? Do you think Grossman is trying to convince the unconvinced? Or do you think she is trying to get those who already care at least a little stirred up a bit so we will demand more books in translation from publishers?

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  8. I read about the Lost in Translation Challenge on Nonsuch Book last year and was like, wow, I've already just about finished this.

    I like your distinction between the individual vs. social value of translated literature. Grossman's rhetoric is so hyperbolic I almost can't take it seriously. Sure, I am extremely glad to have read Mann, Hesse, Bolaño, Ajvaz, Topol, and Serge, just to name of the few authors who've changed my reading life. I absolutely think that my book collection would be pretty sad without them.

    But that's because I'm a bibliophile and aspiring writer.

    A friend of mine is studying to be an opera singer and she has a collection of literally 400+ CD's of classical music and showtunes. She can go on and on about the evolution of European music from the Baroque to the Romantic periods. Much as I would love to improve my tastes in music (which includes way too much Gothic/symphonic metal) I don't think my life is horribly deprived without Brahms and Beethoven.

    I wonder what Grossman listens to. Or if she's been to any museums or art galleries lately. Or read any history books. There's more to having a solid background in culture than reading great fiction.

    Plus, as Mel U rightly pointed out, Grossman's list is way Euro-centric. Even if that's what she personally likes, it's not herself that she's talking about in that paragraph. It's a general "we" and she shortchanges her own argument by listing only one overrepresented region.

    I too wonder who her audience is here. She's either preaching to the choir or trying way too hard.

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  9. "The mechanism you describe is just how I understand things. The social optimum may be lots and lots of different things each done by a few people."

    This is harder and harder to achieve, with television and the Internet and social media and virtual book tours and what have you. Thinking about something different isn't easy to do, and Grossman's encouragement to do it is well taken, at least in that respect. It's one reason I come here, as well. Sanskrit plays, indeedy.

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  10. Kevin - that's semantically clever, but not Grossman's argument. "Indescribable" stands in for "large," not, for example, "hard to delineate" or "impossible to describe because it's trivially small." And I should say how I know the loss or absence is describable - I just read "The Library of Babel" by Borges, in which he describes just this, the inability to know every conceivable book.

    And regardless, for her argument to mean anything, it has to move past the preferences of you, me, and Grossman. E.L.'s opera singer is right, too. We're all right!

    Stefanie and E.L., Chad Post asks the same question. Was Grossman's original talk, and is this book, a self-congratulation session? Post worries that it is just that, and so do I. If so, what an unfortunately limited exercise. But it's clear that she is actually trying to argue in favor of more literary translation - that there's not enough now, that there should be a reallocation of resources. She wants the book to be more than an enthusiastic encomium to translators. And then we're back to logic, evidence, rhetoric, and so on.

    I should admit, perhaps as an aside, that as an Appreciationist I have temperamental difficulty reading criticism "with hatred in the heart", but I think it should be read skeptically. I'm not going to instantly forgive a critic for anything!

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  11. Jenny - I'm tempted to argue against myself. Mass culture is valuable, too - things we all share, whether it's the moon landing or "Luke, I am your [spoiler]".

    If I can get myself to write today's post, I'll give a precise example of what I think you're talking about, using those Sanskrit plays.

    I agree that Grossman's encouragement of translation is valuable, but I think it actually works best - is most encouraging - when she is demonstrating what she does when she translates, rather than saying what she thinks other people (publishers, readers) ought to do.

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  12. I'm not saying popular culture isn't valuable, and in fact I cheerfully participate in quite a lot of it. I only mean that today's technology can make popular culture overwhelming enough that swimming against its stream is difficult. Thinking about the Scottsboro Boys instead of Martin Luther King Jr. is difficult if you've never heard of the Scottsboro Boys. This doesn't imply that hearing a lot about MLK is a poor way to spend your time, though. Again: one reason why I come here.

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  13. "I am not joining, on the principle that a challenge should be challenging" Way to go. I am finding that joining challenges initially feels like a challenge, but then I end up making it a habit. so I signed up for the Orbis Terrarum becuase I've been reading mostly US and English lit lately and now I've made such a long list I think I'll be more deliberate in the future.

    As for Grossman's comments: I don't feel particularly well-read. I haven't read most of those on her lists, and in fact don't feel I've read ANY author in depth. But I do have to agree that is hasn't made my life bleak. And now that I'm starting to read more in translation, I can only say it makes things a lot more fun. Opportunities, that's the perfect word.

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  14. Jenny - I'm with you, I think. I just mean that we want the mass culture, and we want the fragmentation, the specialization, and each of them, like you say, interferes with the other. Tricky.

    Sorry, Rebecca, I read you blog, so I know the truth. You're well-read! But it's always relative - there's always someone better-read, in something, in many things.

    That point you make about reading challenges is excellent. However artifical they might be (and Orbis Terrarum is not an artificial one), they provide another way to think about what you read. If that way of thinking is productive, it becomes natural, a habit.

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