Monday, November 12, 2007

In "Full Tilt": Howard Goldblatt on How the Navy Saved His Life and Why Translation Matters

Read it here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

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JW said...

Great post!

Mr. Goldblatt writes, "...we need to produce something that can be readily accepted by an American readership. Ha Jin can get away with writing unidiomatic English and many people are charmed by it, but a translator's English is expected to be idiomatic and contemporary without being flashy."

There's a difference between writing unidiomatic English and creating a language that is at both odd and familiar. A translated work of literature is a unique species of langauge artifact that embodies a collision and synthesis between not only different cultures, but of languages. The reader of TL might go to translation seeking "unadulterated narrative content" from afar, but the translator should keep in mind that every translation is an opportunity to bend and modulate the TL in ways it hasn't been before.

For more, please see my post on seeing literary translation as an opportunity to enrich the Target Language. http://impossibletransfer.blogspot.com/2008/01/imperfect-but-better-for-it.html

labbai said...

Is this blog dead? Just found it and it looks interesting...
The word verification on this comment is "lieroutt" that means in finnish at Turku where I live a "person who is not trusted". A worm, Life is a drag, can be said as: "Elämä on lieroutt".
So I enter my CAPTCHA thing...
Were are not all disabled here...

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