Zut Alors, Literary Translation!

One of the clearest examples of Lydia Davis’ painstaking approach to translating Proust was when she looked up the etymology of alors, the French word for ‘then’. To be concerned with a word as plain and simple as ‘then’ was quite astonishing for a book as lengthy as Swann's Way. Such assiduousness was all the more astonishing given that she has been at this (i.e. translating from French to English) for over 30 years.

In quite a contrast, for another class, I read translations of Mexican poems by Samuel Beckett, who at the time of his translation did not know Spanish and thought the poems were mostly “crap” (class lecture) but decided to take up the work for money.* Many in my class thought his translations were well done. (I couldn’t really judge as I don’t know Spanish or Mexican poetry). Knowing a bit about Beckett (albeit only from having read (and seen) Waiting for Godot) and his stature, I don’t doubt that he can turn even nursery rhymes into something resonant and edgy. But reading about these two literary figures’ vastly different experiences with and attitudes toward their source language and text, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there really could be no outward difference in how well they were able to “get inside the author’s skin” (Brian Nelson xv).

In her copiously generous piece about her translation of Proust, Lydia Davis states,

“whenever you go minutely, microscopically into a single word, you enter some large place, some area of history or culture you had never entered before.”

The language itself, she seems to say, bears the fingerprints of that culture and their history. What I especially love about this statement is the notion that the deeper you learn about that word, the closer you get to it, the more intimate you are with it, the more you begin to see the world that holds it, gave birth to it, continues to interact with it and shape it, and the whole backstory of how it got to where it is. Essentially, you get to experience the fullness of that world's humanity.

In a humanistic endeavor such as literary translation, could recognizing the fullness of another's humanity ever be irrelevant? Yet isn't this what we are saying when we only consider the style? And only the aesthetics? Sure, we want it to read well - "accessible" Tim Parks emphasized. But (not to be too pat about it...but) is beauty only skin deep?

 *I do not disparage the need to work for money. But from what I've read and heard in the class lecture, his attitude was suggestive of doing something that felt beneath him.  

- Lois