Catching Fire: A Translation Diary (Untranslated Series)

I must resist the temptation to narrow it to my own preferred interpretation.

I’m adding two words to the opening phrase of the sentence: “or else you sit and read”. Why? Because without it some people will understand it as being “read” in the present tense (reed) and others as “read” in the past tense (red), and I need to be sure they know it’s the former.

(One possible solution to this one, incidentally, would be to do something with the word headlines in the same paragraph – the Spanish word titulares doesn’t contain the word head like the English does, so that might be an almost-adequate compensation?)

So I need to produce what instinctively feels comfortable, and I need to trust my ear – but not too much.

translation can be a potently activist endeavour – not merely responsive, quiet, deferential. Translation is about making certain voices louder; about pushing at borders till they stretch; about poking at the cheap and easy idea that a national culture is monolithic, an idea that all translators know – all readers know – is hollow.

I normally know better than to agree to translate poetry, but I’m afraid I’ve lapsed, just this once, god help me…)

Readers should feel they’re getting unmediated access to a work of art, even if they know – once you’ve brought the houselights back up – that they aren’t.

to keep it just the same, we need to change all of it.

Translation is the sum of its choices, choices that are more or less persuasive, more or less justifiable, but always subjective.