Catching Fire: A Translation Diary (Untranslated Series)

It’s easier to do it, or at least to do it well, once you’ve understood that in theory it cannot be done.

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.

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

We’re art forgers attempting to reproduce an oil painting using only pencils, but so skilfully you won’t be able to tell the difference.

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

In short, writing someone else’s book, but backwards and in high heels.

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

They read through a film of words to that thing that lies behind them – and they write that thing.

(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?)