Hiltje
@hiltje
Hiltje
Translation is, as Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter, “the art of existing in two languages at once.”
The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation - National Endowment for the Arts
Translation is a practice of empathy, like choosing a twin, where affinity and kinship is a declarative act and not a passive discovery. What would the world be like (I ask naively) if our first impulses were to find that part of us that is most like each person we meet?
The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation - National Endowment for the Arts
I chose Achmet because it is his mother-tongue; and he is an obliging, patient fellow. But he cannot read or write, and that is why I ply my grammar, in the hope of fixing the colloquial: do you not find that a spoken language wafts in and out of your mind, leaving little trace unless you anchor it with print?’
Patrick O'Brian • HMS Surprise
Some of the men we knew declared their love to us in English, the language a deception, a second skin they donned and shed as they wished. We fell in love with these guys, swept up in the slipperiness of their words, their declarations. We were in love. We thought we were in love. We felt sure it was love, this time.
Gothataone Moeng • Call and Response
There’s a curse word in Croatian, “kurčenje”, used to describe someone — usually a guy — who’s full of himself and acts like it.
Kinda like peacocking, but isn’t related to clothes.
I would take me at least one full paragraph to describe it.
Instead, I can use a single word.
I love it when I find words that carry so much weight.
When I translate poetry, I have to make the poet whose work I am translating into a character I hope to embody, a character that may not actually exist in English or to English-only readers.
The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation - National Endowment for the Arts
For me, translation means hearing voices—allowing an author’s voice to sing through my own
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Language, though, is tough and resilient, a tenacity backed up by a long history. Its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, however roughly it is handled. It is the right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language and expand the range of its effectiveness. Without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.