This is a Classic is an exploration of what it means to translate an established or future literary classic and how it is done by some of today's most celebrated translators.
When readers pick up literary classics from languages other than English, they often forget that they are not reading the actual words the author set down. Galasso argues that every classic depends on translation-and every new generation requires its own translation of The Metamorphosis or Anna Karenina because every translation is a new interpretation.
This is a Classic brings together translators who have created English versions of canonical works from a variety of languages, including Spanish, French, Yiddish, Turkish, Catalan, Greek, Serbian, German, Italian, Icelandic, Russian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Ancient Greek. They offer insights into their processes, challenges, and craft, providing readers with an appreciation of how a classic is shaped by translation, and how translation is essential for a classic's survival and the creation of original literary works.
Recenzijas
Translation has always been about learning to understand others while finding out something vital about ourselves. Unlike other books in the field, This Is a Classic does not fall into the trap of neglecting one part of that equation to favor the other, and that is because it never loses sight of the fact that a literary classic whatever else it is or does teaches us to look at ourselves anew in consideration of others. * Juan Carlos Calvillo, Professor, Center for Literature and Linguistics, El Colegio de México, Mexico City * This important collection aims to raise awareness of translation in mainstream academia but is equally valuable for the lay reader because, as Galasso points out in her introduction, 'the classics are tools for developing writers.' With brilliant contributions from a constellation of our generation's literary rock stars, Galasso is on point in her curation of these essays which, as she points out, could just as accurately have been titled 'Translators on the Making of World Literature' because without translation 'literature would not have the ability to move around the globe.'" * Samantha Schnee, Founding Editor of Words Without Borders *
Papildus informācija
Translators reflect on what it means to translate literary classics and canonical texts from a variety of languages into English.
Introduction
Literary Classics through Translation
Regina Galasso (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
Prologue: The Translator's Agency and the Literary Classic Abroad: Emily
Dickinson's Voyage to Braziliput
Adalberto Muller (University Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
1. Chinese Classics: The Commentarial Tradition
Sabina Knight (Smith College, USA) with Kidder Smith (Bowdoin College, USA)
2. Happy Hour Homer: On Translating and Performing the Iliad Live in a Bar
Lynn Kozak (McGill University, Canada)
3. Today in the Temple of Language: Translating Dante
Mary Jo Bang (Washington University St. Louis, USA)
4. True Confessions of a Literary Translator
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (Independent Scholar, India)
5. What is a Classic? The Case of Esperanto
Humphrey Tonkin (University of Hartford, USA)
6. The Russian Canon in Retranslation
Marian Schwartz (Independent Scholar, USA)
7. Translating Yiddish Classics: Redefining Tradition in Modern Yiddish
Literature through the Prism of Kadya Molodowsky
Chantal Ringuet (Independent Scholar, Canada)
8. Victor Catalą's A Film (3000 Meters): Translating a Catalan Classic
Peter Bush (Independent Scholar, UK)
9. Translation as Storytelling
Susan Bernofsky (Columbia University, USA)
10. In Terror and Pandemic: Translating Garcķa Lorca's Poet in New York
Mark Statman (The New School, USA)
11. Stopping at the Surface: Translating Clarice Lispector's The Besieged
City and A Breath of Life
Johnny Lorenz (Montclair State University, USA)
12. Tanizaki's The Key in Translation: Will You Still Need Me? Will You Still
Read Me, When I'm Sixty-Four?
Anna Zielinska-Elliott (Boston University, USA)
13. An Essay on Nichita Stanescu: The Classic and the Personal in
Translation
Sean Cotter (University of Texas, USA)
14. From Arabic to English, What is a Classic?
Michelle Hartman (McGill University, Canada)
15. Translating a Classic into the Future: Tómas JónssonBestseller
Lytton Smith (SUNY Geneseo, USA)
16. Love, Anger, Madness Making a Classic: Amplifying Marie Vieux Chauvet's
Haitian Trilogy
Caroyln Shread (Mount Holyoke College, USA)
17. What besides Words?: Translating Bilge Karasu's A Long Day's Evening
Aron Aji (University of Iowa, USA)
18. Nonsense in a Given Direction: Translating the Timelessness of Marguerite
Duras
Emma Ramadan (Independent Scholar, USA)
19. "Sentence" as Lifeline: Translating David Albahari's Novels
Ellen Elias-Bursac (Independent Scholar, USA)
Epilogue
Matching Socks in the Dark; or How to Translate from Languages You Don't
Know
Ilan Stavans (Amherst College, USA)
A Translation Experiment
Kleptomaniac Classic: Ramona
Esther Allen (CUNY, USA) and Sean Cotter (University of Texas, USA)
Index
Regina Galasso is Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies and Director of the Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She is the author of Translating New York (2018) and editor, with Evelyn Scaramella, of Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (2019).
