Literature in Translation: Teaching Issues and Reading Practices

Translation Transvalued

translation transvalued 85 85 Translation Transvalued Ronald Christ The existence of subventions for publication proves that our culture values literature in translation; the need for subventions proves that our culture does not value literature in translation. William Vesterman I do not pretend to understand the ultimate causes of the decisive paradox formulated above by Vesterman, but I can draw upon my own experiences as student, teacher, translator, and publisher to illustrate some of the ways it affects the state of the art. Mark Van Doren once deflected a question of mine with a casual remark, and in so doing inflected my life—as he undoubtedly did for many others. An undergraduate in his graduate course Comedy and Tragedy, I caught up with him on the stairs after class: “Professor, for the Nietzsche, which translation should I read?” He stood, appropriately, a tall two treads above me and turned with some little exasperation and a smile: “It doesn’t matter; we’re concerned with ideas, not translations.” I stood stunned, facing the wrong way in a lane of eagerly descending students. It was as though Van Doren had declared to a Christian believer that we shouldbeconcernedwiththespirit,notitsincarnation.YetIalreadyknewhis fondpreferenceforMotteux’sCervantesoverwhatevernewerversionsreigned in 1955, and more than half the readings in that course were translations. That same year in a beginner’s Spanish class with Gregory Rabassa, I overheard that this kind and amusing teacher had been turning to translation work in order to make alimony payments. (Years later I would hear him say: “The only thing that gets lost in translation is the money.”) Decidedly, then, 86 literature in translation the topos of translation was a-building in my mind as a fleshly necessity of at least two sorts—an impression confirmed and extended by Raskolnikov’s hack work in Crime and Punishment, my first knowing encounter with the established topos of the larger mind confined to the implicitly negligible task of translation in order to eat: a seedy task it seemed, in a dead end alley just off . . . Grub Street. Translation,thetoposdeclares,isanecessity:“we”needitinordertoknow what we need to know about certain writers, to mitigate our provincialism, to feed our curiosity as well as our responsibility to their fame, individual and national, in the world;1 “they” need it just to be fed. Not right, surely, but Brecht, as translated by Marc Blitzstein, enjoined:First feed the face, then talk right and wrong2—whether that face be intellectual or merely carnal. Such controlling literary images do not stimulate the emulation of translation ’s rank and wealth.3 If you doubt the vitality of this topos, tell me how many instances are there of a translator in books or movies whose work is admirable, rewarding. I think of Jerome in Greenaway’s The Pillow Book, yet while he promises translation in some six or seven languages (!), he is not shown actively engaged as a translator.4 Economics, I came to see back then, was at the cold heart of the matter, but I had still to discover the major element: the ever-present missing middle; for no more does the farmer ordinarily raise his crops directly for my table than does the translator usually render his labor straight ahead for the public or student maw. No, translation was, is, an art-trade in whose nexus the publisher serves as gatherer and distributor. With few exceptions, the “product” is ultimately the publisher’s. (There are exceptions, farmer’s markets, odd presses.) Translators may earn a living, even earn it well, translating—a few do; readers may store up untold wealth from the translations they read; but it is the publishers who might grow rich. And they sometimes have done so, and sometimes not. I know: I’m one of the latter. Most publishers, of both categories, insistently claim the cost of translationasthedeterminingconsiderationfornotpublishingforeignworks in English; then, as a back-up, we will say: the market’s so small, we’ll never regain our costs, let alone make a profit. So we require grants, subventions. Yearsaftermystairwellillumination, Icametoknowintimatelyaprogram devoted to promoting a limited sector of translation in this country, to blunting both horns of that economic dilemma; and while there are wondrous and scandalous things to be cited from that experience, finally none compares to translation transvalued 87 my discovering how very little money, directly spent, was required in order to ensure the successful translation of a work into English.5 I believe that...