Collecting and Translating the Non-Western Other: The Perils and Possibilities of a World Literature Website

The founders of the website “Words Without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature”—at the url www.wordswithoutborders.org —launched in July 2003 and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and W. W. Norton, are not unaware of the political dimensions of the project they have undertaken. In describing the initiative, they say, “[W]e hope to present international literature not as a static, elite phenomenon, but a portal through which to explore the world. In the richness of cultural information we present, we hope to help foster a ‘globalization’ of cultural engagement and exchange, one that allows many voices in many languages to prosper.”¹ Alane Salierno Mason, the magazine’s founder and one of its three co-editors, was inspired to start this project by, among other things, the appalling statistic in a 1999 nea report that only about 3 percent of books published in the United States were translations, compared with 40 to 50 percent in Western European countries (Salamon E1). The magazine featured for its first three issues the provocatively titled series “literature from the Axis of Evil” (North Korea, Iraq, and Iran). Thus, Words Without Borders (wwb) attempts to rectify the publishing imbalance by making available online English translations of texts from numerous source languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Urdu, and Japanese. Their choice of texts and languages would appear to be, therefore, not apolitical. I would also argue, the editors’ objective of enriching crosscultural engagement may be thwarted not because of the limitations in their vision but by their implicit optimistic view of readers and by the impression of easy access that the internet medium of the website promises. Furthermore, their use of the phrase ‘“globalization’ of cultural engagement and exchange” does not sufficiently communicate the hard work entailed in engaging fully the texts and the cultural information they offer. If Words Without Borders seeks to avoid the pitfall of easy consumption by English-speaking readers of non-Anglo cultures, then the editors may need to intervene in very specific ways to create the kind of readers who will help them realize the full potential of their project.²

The typical reader sees in a translated text the opportunity to encounter a different culture and through this encounter to glean something of significance about that relatively unfamiliar culture. Unless the reader is a scholar of translation and her/himself a translator, s/he is not likely to dwell too long on the issues undergirding the final product: how the translator feels about the quality of the translation, what the translator’s criteria of success are, the painful ethical decisions the translator may have had to make (see especially Brownlie 147–48 in this regard), and the several intercultural chasms the translator has conceded cannot be crossed. The reader likely bases her/his satisfaction with the text on whether or not s/he is “moved”—intellectually, emotionally, ideologically, or politically—by the reading. In other words, reading a translated text provides a brush with another reality; a collectible keepsake and reminder of one’s encounter with the unfamiliar that can be added to the halls of one’s cosmopolitan consciousness (not unlike the purchase that a museum visitor might make at the museum shop as a memento of the visit). Words Without Borders has the rare opportunity to engage this typical reader and introduce her/him to a new way of approaching translated texts—not as a prescriptive directive but as an intriguing invitation to participate in an alternate method for shaping knowledge.³ The online quality of the magazine places in its editors’ hands a unique technology to construct the desirable thoughtful reader of translations—one who seeks not the quick pleasure of easily collected glimpses but who appreciates the complexity of the unknowable even as s/he prepares to engage it.

Literature from the “Axis of Evil”: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations (2006) is the book version of a selection of writings from the Words Without Borders (wwb) website. As...