In the New Statesman Ollie Brock asks: 'where do you draw the line between original and translation ?' in Translators shouldn't be slaves to the holy "original".
There is of course no easy, one-size-fits-all answer (though my (very unpopular) preference is for slavish adherence, regardless). But what I do find particularly troubling is wholesale re-creation, as he also describes it here:
So in part what Brock is addressing isn't simple translation, but a wholesale re-making of text(s) in English. Editorial interference -- major cuts and changes, usually unacknowledged -- in translated works is something I keep stumbling across (including in such recent 'major' works as HHhH and Freud's Sister) and I have to say, I really don't like it. (And if and when publishers do it, I think the least they could and should do is include a note with the text explaining exactly how they've messed with it.)
Yeah, overall I think more slavish adherence to the original, all the way around, is the way to go .....
There is of course no easy, one-size-fits-all answer (though my (very unpopular) preference is for slavish adherence, regardless). But what I do find particularly troubling is wholesale re-creation, as he also describes it here:
I recently completed a co-translation of a collection of stories with four other translators. It is a new work, combining five stories from an original collection of six, a novella split into its four parts and one previously uncollected piece as a sort of coda. Despite a translation copyright line that reads like the result of a multiple merger of legal firms, and a mammoth editing process, we've managed to produce a single, coherent text.Presumably this is Eduardo Halfon's The Polish Boxer. I have an advance copy of that book -- clocking in at 188 pages in the Bellevue Literary Press edition (see their publicity page), though the 'original', El boxeador polaco runs to barely more than a hundred. Bellevue provided what I thought were excellent supporting materials with the ARC -- including a Q & A with Halfon, and 'A Note about the Translation' by co-translator Daniel Hahn. But Hahn's 'note' suggests a simple co-translation, of a single, unified text -- "We divided the chapters of the books among us to produce first drafts", etc. -- and makes no mention of the novella-pieces and uncollected coda being intergrated into the original text, or the exclusion of one of the chapters from the original. Since it's not a finished copy, I don't know how upfront the publishers will be with readers about what's being done here, but I find it hard to see this as a translation of El boxeador polaco. (I recall publishers did something similar with Yamada Amy years ago ... yeah, that worked out well.)
So in part what Brock is addressing isn't simple translation, but a wholesale re-making of text(s) in English. Editorial interference -- major cuts and changes, usually unacknowledged -- in translated works is something I keep stumbling across (including in such recent 'major' works as HHhH and Freud's Sister) and I have to say, I really don't like it. (And if and when publishers do it, I think the least they could and should do is include a note with the text explaining exactly how they've messed with it.)
Yeah, overall I think more slavish adherence to the original, all the way around, is the way to go .....