Is Translation a Violent Act?

Imagine being praised by your white colleagues for your “raw talent” as a “natural translator,” only to realize that they are subtly reinforcing stereotypes about heritage speakers. This situation highlights some uncomfortable realities faced by translators of color in the predominantly white world of Anglophone literary translation. According to Venuti, the translator’s invisibility results from an ethnocentric approach to translation into English that privileges fluency and assumes an erasure of the source culture through a submissive ethics of domestication in translation. Alternatively, resistance to imperialistic and conservative modes of English translation could be achieved through an ethics of foreignization in pursuit of cultural diversity embedded in the translated text. Echoing Venuti, the collaborative collage of Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef explores how translators of colour are marginalised in the Anglophone literary translation world and how this is reflected in “the tendency to view ‘otherness’ as a challenge or a threat” that can erase diversity by hiding behind “a fluency imperative” that assumes only one version of acceptable English. This conversation sheds light on the deeply ingrained assumptions and biases that determine who is allowed to translate, what gets translated, and how those translations are received. It intertwines powerful and often disheartening experiences of translators of color, challenging the romanticized view of translation as a straightforward bridge between cultures. 

~Ibrahim 

A personal (and perhaps not so controversial?) take on the who question

I found the pairing of Godayol’s article with the rest of the readings to be a little curious as the former is not really dealing with who should translate but more with the age-old question of what is translation, whether it be a bridging of the original, or another form of writing (as there is no original) or a whole new hybrid/third text. Yes the article defines it in terms of gender and gender metaphors but it doesn’t tie it to the who, even though the premise is quite ripe with gender implications of the translator profession – i.e. dominated by women, traditionally invisible, low-pay, etc. (or did I miss some subtle/obvious connection to the who?). But I suppose defining the what can inform the who, and perhaps that’s the reason for the pairing...

As for who gets to translate what, I tend to think the translator's positionality and proximity to the text do matter for all three definitions/metaphors of translation. I wholly agree with Bruna Dantas Lobato’s statement that translation is an embodied experience, so I think whatever you are comprised of (and lack) will show up in your translation in all sorts of interesting ways - But the point being that they’ll show up. 

I do think your positionality is determined by both your vertical and horizontal identities. So things like nationality, gender, race, and class can be proxies to indicate a particular shared experience or world view that allows for a deeper connection to certain texts that are close to that experience. But at the same time, I also believe lived experiences and even a profound self-awareness of your distance from the subject matter of the text can paradoxically also enable that connection to and appreciation of the text (albeit I tend to think more rarely), which I believe is required to translate well. Because language is porous, it might seem futile to think in these terms of the positionality of the translator/writer to the text/subject matter but at the same time, it can’t be denied that language is also used to transmit very specific perspectives and experiences that I believe draws on certain, allied sensibilities.

On a related but separate note, one of the things that Amanda Gorman’s translator controversy gets at is the structural problem of “the scarcity of Black translators” (NYT), which, in my view, does require a deliberate response. Without it, the lack of diversity will only continue, sadly, to all of our detriment.

- Lois

Identity in Translation

 You were clever to save this set of readings/ this particular discussion for last! This is a tricky conversation.

I remember, in a poetry workshop from last semester, we discussed the idea of who can write what— we talked about Sylvia Plath’s Daddy and Lady Lazarus which both assume the position of a Jewish woman and/ or holocaust victim—  and while this is different than a discussion about translation, it’s related. I am particularly reminded of the refrain of this past conversation: you can’t tell people what they can and cannot write, but you can hold them accountable. To some degree, I think this extends to the conversation about “who can translate what.” Realistically, anyone can translate anything, but there might be social consequences (whether we agree with them or not).

I don’t feel good about someone assuming an identity that is not their own in order to translate a piece, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily what’s happening when someone assumes the voice of the source author. At the end of the day, if there is someone who demographically aligns with the original author and is able and willing to translate the piece effectively, then they should be the one to do it— but if the thing standing in the way of a writing’s accessibility in a new language because the translator does not share identity markers with the author, therefore stopping the piece from being translated and potentially accessed by an entire language speaking community, that feels limiting and exclusionary, and counter to the notion of accessibility or understanding of the author’s experience.

Samantha

"Suitable" Translators: Who Can Translate What, Through the Lens of Amanda Gorman

 The recent uproar over who should translate Amanda Gorman’s poetry throws a spotlight on a centuries-old debate in translation studies: what does it mean to be “faithful”? When Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, a white nonbinary Dutch writer, stepped down from translating Gorman’s work, it wasn’t just a decision—it was a flashpoint. Suddenly, the literary translation community was confronting questions about race, voice, and authenticity. 

Reading both The Guardian's coverage and Sindya Bhanoo’s deep dive into the reactions within the translation community, I was struck by the way this discussion paralleled the ideas in Pilar Godayol’s theoretical article on gender and metaphor in translation. Godayol outlines how, for centuries, translation has been framed using metaphors of gender and power: the “faithful” female translator versus the authoritative male author. Even the idea of fidelity itself is entangled with expectations of femininity and submission. What does it mean to be a “suitable” translator? Is it fidelity to the text, or fidelity to the voice and lived experience behind it?

Achy Obejas, in Bhanoo’s article, makes a compelling case that identity does matter—especially when translating culturally specific work. She points to examples where racial nuance is lost in translation, changing the meaning entirely. And yet, others like Ilan Stavans argue that the very act of translation is about bridging difference, not reinforcing boundaries, which I'm not totally convinced by. What I find most helpful here is Godayol’s concept of the “third space”—drawing from Derrida and Anzaldúa—where translation is neither purely reproduction nor purely creation. It’s a borderland, a liminal space of negotiation. Translators live in between. 

This past week, Bruna Dantas Lobato talked about her translations and the idea of breaking rules in translation, and I can't help but wonder if this is one of those rules that can be broken or not. One of the things I picked up a lot in her talk was that her rule-bending was done carefully, deliberately, and with great attention to the what and the why. Maybe that's a key point here that could shed light on the situations discussed in the readings. Are decisions about who is translating what work made with care and attention to reasoning, or are they made by individuals with no specific goal or idea at heart, and are these goals in the best interest of the text and its message. 

Maybe the lesson is this: rather than rigidly gatekeeping who can translate based on identity alone, we have to recognize the complexity of translation as both an ethical and imaginative practice. While we must address the real inequalities that make it harder for translators and authors from marginalized backgrounds to even enter the field, we can also open up to a translation ecosystem that does not automatically reject a certain translator because they "aren't equipped" for a certain work.

~ Kamryn Schult

Blog Post 6

This is the first time I’ve read Borges, and I really enjoyed it. The story was funny, but it seemed to be only one punchline criticizing the importance modern criticism puts on the author and the context of writing. There are few obvious-to-me translating problems in this story besides the tone and register, which I think may be able to be accomplished with a literal translation.

The articles about authorial intervention and Nabokov’s letters were honestly pretty dry to me. This was the first time this semester I’ve thought of contact between the author and translator as anything other than inherently helpful, though, which was interesting. Especially in the Friday lectures, it seems like an author’s corrections are welcome and lucky rather than something to be cautious of.

Emerson Archer

Blog Post 7

I was impressed by the structure of the argument in Cavanagh’s essay and how she used the poems both to present translation problems and the text of the poem as an argument in and of themselves. That is, she used Bishop’s villanelle both to bring up the poetic concept of the art of losing as well as discuss the translation problems of form and rhyme. I haven’t read any of Cavanagh’s poetry before, but I enjoyed her translations in the paper, especially ‘Birthday.’ It was a perfect poem to talk about problems of fidelity with because of the impossibility or fruitlessness of translating that poem literally, but it also seemed like an outside case. Of course, maybe all poems are outside cases.

Emerson Archer

Blog Post 8

 It seems like a natural corollary to the argument that a translator’s identity should be as closely aligned to the author’s as possible that it is impossible to match any two identities. A Dutch translator by definition could not truly understand Amanda Gorman’s experience of race in America, so I don’t think it’s so important to try. More literally and less epistemologically, it seems hard enough to raise interest in translations and find translators before adding the complication of identity, like R.O. Kwon said about finding a Polish translator in the Bhanoo article. This isn’t to say I don’t think identity has an affect on the translation produced (the errors in the Morrison translation mentioned in the same Bhanoo article definitely affected the text), but I think the cultural knowledge necessary can be learned and proof-read. Thinking of the Patel and Youssef article, I also think the solution for these sorts of questions about the identity of the translator lies not in restriction but in inclusion—in widening the gates for translators and focusing less on traditional rules that have such a narrow conception of a translator’s relationship with language.

Emerson Archer

Blog Post 8 by Drew

Discussions of identity in translation are very tricky!

I think there’s some merit to the idea that, in service of the work, whoever can translate it best should be the translator. That said, identities and life experience will probably contribute to who ends up being the best equipped translator. More often than not, I imagine the two selection mindsets would reach the same conclusion.

Also, I’m interested in how we’re addressing these questions as they pertain to translation, and if that manner of discussion diverges from how we talk about writing in general. Do the same “rules” apply? If we’re thinking about translation as a generative, embodied practice, perhaps they should. But if we’re thinking about translation as a linguistic, technical craft, then maybe they shouldn’t?

Amanda Gorman is an interesting case, partially because her work seems (in my opinion) more successful when we view it as spoken word performance rather than on-the-page poems (and yes, the potential ironies within that statement given poetry’s origins in oral tradition do occur to me, haha). So that may invite even more complications than literary translation already bears. It was surprising to me that the international backlash surrounding Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s selection as translator arose despite the fact that it was Gorman who had selected them.

Neat that Iowa is doing a Literary Translation BA program!

The “One day my mum claimed she wasn’t fluent in any of the four languages she speaks and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since” quote was powerful to me, too. It’s abundantly clear from the perspectives shared that we (as a society) need to be intentional about removing the barriers which prevent translators with marginalized identities from receiving the work opportunities, prizes, fellowships, and acclaim they deserve.

Homi Bhabha’s notion of a third space (“a space between identities, nations and cultures where cultural exchange takes place, an ideal site in which to manoeuvre cultural criticism”) was thought-provoking, and I wonder if his perspective would shift at all in today’s cultural/sociopolitical landscape.

Application of literary logic to meta-literary discourse in Godayol

Thinking about the Godayol piece, it occurred to me that a strange sort of irony exists between the piece’s implicit endorsement of the “new non-sexual and non-restrictive images for future theoretical dialogues within the discipline” and its recapitulation (for purposes of critique and historical contextualization) of the entrenched "sexual" metaphors. Godayol writes, “It is our duty and our responsibility to carry out archaeological tasks to provide ourselves with textual and metaphorical mothers from the past and the present, from here and from there, and thus overcome the long absence of feminine models in the socially visible and operative translation discourses.” I think that this directive introduces many complex questions, among them, who is the us of the our? To whom is this duty and responsibility owed? Why are both/either historical and contemporary models required? Why are both/either textual and metaphorical models required? 

Personally, I feel unconvinced of the importance of metaphorical models for translation in general, including for some of the reasons that this article points out—the value judgements and hierarchies inherent in the metaphorical analog are then inherited into the discourse itself, whether or not they are independently relevant to that discourse. Metaphor is a literary device, but in this case the conversation (like many other theoretical conversations about translation) is not so much literary as meta-literary; there is a way in which literary logic, like this use of figurative language, should be excluded from meta-literary conversations, because to use it in this way would be to take it out of its applicable domain. In this way I think the article is right to be critical of historical metaphors for translation, but wrongheaded to endorse the pursuit of new metaphors, when it is not clear that metaphors like this are required in order to talk about translation in the first place. 

The Medusa/Athena idea, for instance, is evocative and interesting, but brings in a whole new landscape of unforeseen consequences. Moreover, I have a hard time understanding how it is a metaphor for translation at all—what is being thought of as source text, what as target text, who is the translator, what exactly is what within the metaphor? It is less that I disagree with the metaphor, and more that I don’t understand the way in which it seeks to attach itself to the topic of translation. My best understanding of it is as an attempt to introduce the translator as a living personality, active in a hierarchical (and also living) world, but the use of the metaphor to communicate this feels imprecise and convoluted.   

-Elijah

Who Should Translate? Controversies on Identity of Translator

 “Isn’t it – to say the least – a missed opportunity to [have hired] Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for this job? They are white, nonbinary, have no experience in this field, but according to Meulenhoff are still the ‘dream translator’?”

I am stuck on this statement by Janice Deul. The statement, and other statements opposing Rijneveld, hinges on their race rather than gender. However, I wonder what implicit biases against Rijneveld's identity as a nonbinary translator lit a match in their critics' criticism of their "whiteness." Generally, white men don't face this kind of criticism, and I wonder how much more acceptable it would be for Rijneveld to translate Gorman if they were a man. A white man is far from a woman of color, but he is respected and admired. What implicit biases are playing a role here?

Gorman herself chose Rijneveld as her translator, into dutch. Are people denying her ability to choose the best translator? What biases are people judging her decision on?

I think these are questions we should ask ourselves, and ask critics. It's easy to criticize marginalized groups, and hide it as a kind of protection. I don't know if implicit bias applies to this instance of translation, but it's something that the articles don't discuss.

- Hanan Akbari

Language, Literature, and Power: The limits of "global literature," the question of "for whom," and untranslatability

These readings unsettle the idea that translation can happen in a vacuum, a simple practice of reconfiguring something in one language in the shape of another. Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef’s piece, “All the Violence it May Carry on its Back,” brought to mind Jodi Melamed’s Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism. Melamed challenges the idea that global literature alone can serve as a kind of antiracist technology. On the other hand, she says, it can be used in university settings to produce a class of "multicultural global citizens, and to uphold certain standards as (neoliberal) multicultural universals" by making accessible and fully knowable non-Western cultures "in a form that does not seem to require too much specialized knowledge" in preparation to work within "disciplinary and civilizing/disqualifying regimes that manage populations cut off from (or exploited within) circuits of global capitalism." In this political climate, it feels very important to say that diversity of literature and those translating it is incredibly important—and certainly a step forward from the white/Eurocentrism that long dominated US literary markets and classroom canons—but cannot alone free language from its colonial entanglements, nor can it alone free literature from a world order structured by global racial capitalism. 

There’s probably no easy answer for how, as actors within an inherently flawed and unjust structure, we can best move forward—as translators, writers, and even as readers. But Patel and Youssef’s insistence on questioning the "imagined reader" struck me as especially important. “There will always be a ‘for whom’ question,” they write. “Being conscious of the question and responding to it with intent, aware of how our choices include or exclude, will facilitate greater freedom in our craft.” 

And sometimes, they write, this means recognizing and honoring untranslatability—in translation, and also, I think, in writing. This brought to mind Jamil Jan Kochai's 99 Nights in Logar, which is written in English except for the penultimate chapter, where a family history that has been withheld throughout the novel is revealed in Pashto. Swept up in the narrative, I initially wanted to know what I couldn’t fully know from a poor Google Lens translation job, but ultimately was forced to sit with the fact that my linguistic/racial/national identity did not, in fact, make me entitled to having every story rendered in my own tongue—and that translation, in some cases, does perpetuate structures of oppression, of surveillance, of, historically, violence toward racialized cultures, religions, and geographies. That it is an important and necessary literary tool but also has been an imperial one. That some work can and should resist being translated into English.

- Abbey

Standing on "The Hill we Climb"

As we have studied, and many have explored, the self is all tied up in translations. It's Foucauldian. The translator has a relationship to the work of translation, and thus a power over its discourse. The translation stands on its own as well as with the original text, so, like all the translators we have read have said, who does the translating matters. 

I was both surprised and unsurprised about the reaction to the Dutch translator chosen for "The Hill we Climb." While it is significant that Amanda Gorman chose the translator herself, it is also significant that the translator could not represent fully all the ideas the poet was expressing because of her limited experiences.

This calls into question who should be translating and why. If I can't speak to the specific experiences of a woman living under an Argentinian dictatorship in the 1970s, should I be focusing my translation project on María Elena Walsh? I don't really have an answer to that question, nor the hundreds of questions being posed about the "right" person for the most "faithful" translation. If we were to ask Gorman, she might say that the White-dominated translation field "isn’t broken, but simply unfinished," and in a similar way we might say that while a completely faithful translation is impossible, it is crucial for every individual to strive for their idea of the most faithful translation, and that might mean stepping down from the role entirely.

- Lila

Who should translate?

I am uncertain where I stand on the spectrum of the question: who should be translating what? On one hand, having a translator who experientially can identify with some of the experiences of the original author seems to have some inherent benefits. In some ways, it could offer some ease in terms of not having to set aside the self so drastically while approaching translations. It also doesn't seem to evoke such cries from the critics regarding their work, who seem to be asserting themselves quite dominantly in the field of translation. In the case of Gorman, who had chosen the translator herself, received such backlash that the translator recused themself from the work. It seems what Gorman valued didn't line up with what the critics perceived she should value, and this determined the path forward. I'm not saying this final decision was wrong, per se, but it is interesting to think of the relationship between critic, author, and translator. 

Part of me feels like requiring a translator to meet certain specifications of similarity in order to be qualified to translate does some work of deprivation and exclusion. If a text does not find the exact "right" translator, then it could potentially not be translated. I think of the Vegetarian, if Smith had not translated this work, would it have made it across the world as of yet? Obviously, her approach was flawed and amateur in many ways, but is it of some value that it now exists in other languages because she decided to try? In the case of Gorman, because she was already a notable poet, it wasn't that difficult of a fix after her translator recused themself. Gorman's team picked a new team, and all was well. But for the case of many other authors and artists, this is not a luxury that is widely available. I'm not advocating for a "take what you can get" mindset because that contains a multitude of issues, but I think if we immediately disqualify a translator for their race, gender or geographic location, it could be detrimental in a few ways. 

As translators, I think it is our duty to continuously consider our own lens and how our own biases and experiences tint and make themselves known our own translations. This awareness, along with being aware of the author's intent, biographical context, geographical context, etc, is part of what makes a translator well-rounded and good at what they do. Translators can identify with the source texts in many ways, and I think these can be part of the reasons we choose something to translate.

Lauren

 The Inner World of Translation:

 

In All The Violence It May Carry On Its Back, the dark side of the translation industry is revealed within real examples the translators provided. The difficulties of being a translator if you translate from a non-hegemonic or colonizing language are still present to this day when we all focus or try to focus on diversity. I know what that feels like- or at least can imagine it. When I wanted to do a master’s on translation, finding a school that provided Turkish courses was a challenge and BU was one of the few schools. Trying to translate from a language -Turkish- puts me through a cycle that the translators, Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef went through. 

 

The pressure of not translating to the mother tongue maintains an oppression on translators who can actually translate and bring forth amazing translations. Rather than focusing merely on who does the translation and where the translator originally comes from, we need to focus on the quality of the outcome. If the translators from other cultures and languages are not provided a chance to show their talent and skills, how can we know that they can actually translate as good as the native speakers? Translation is not just about finding and sustaining equivalence in the target text, it is the transmission of culture. Therefore, translating as an outsider can enhance the quality and content of the translation bringing along various aspects. 

 

Additionally, Pilar Godayol’s article on Metaphors, women and translation shed light upon a different side of translation where identity was put aside and gender was the primary focus. Discriminating and labeling every concrete or tangible presence in the translation industry or field complicates the processes and bring up two sides: powerful and powerless. And, the example of Pandora destroys this discrimination and show us a way that we can actually be on the same side, on the same level of power and enhance our passion- which is translation.  After reading this week’s articles and witnessing different approaches, my final take away was, let’s judge the quality, the equivalence of the translation not the translators for who they are. If we can trust the process and translators ‘’even if they are women or non-native speakers’’, we will have the best translations circulating around the world. 

Ece Celikkol

Thinking about "Untranslatability"

    “Untranslatability is not a temporary barrier to be broken into but a fundamental right.” From Nariman Youssef and Gitanjali Patel’s essay, this quote lingered with me as I read the other articles for this week. What does it mean for untranslatability to be a fundamental right? It means, I think, that we, as a community of readers and translators, need to recalibrate our positionality to the work we undertake. The authors of this piece bring up the question of “Whose English?” when tasked with determining fluency along the lines of what “works in English”. This helped me to articulate one of the reasons why I felt uncomfortable with Damion Searls’ approach to his ‘Philosophy of Translation:’ throughout his talk, he continuously made statements along the lines of “this isn’t full English,” or, “this is almost English.” It seems painfully clear that he, as a white American man, has never had to stop to think about why he gets to be the judge of what is English and what isn’t. He may have had to justify his translation choices, but thanks to the privilege afforded to him because of his identity, he is not asked to justify why he translates, or if he should. As Youssef and Patel write, “Because power breeds entitlement, unquestioningly accepting and benefiting from the supremacy of standard English leads to the belief that anything can, and should, be translated.” This follows in to their point on untranslatability, which again puts them in stark opposition to the likes of Searls (I know I am using him as a scapegoat here, and he represents a more widespread school of translation thought), and his argument that “nothing is untranslatable.” The way I see it, to say that untranslatability exists is not to say that we should not translate those things. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that some ideas, feelings, beliefs, etc. in any given language cannot always be perfectly conveyed within hegemonically valued means, and arguing that they can be constitutes an act of violence that many scholars (such as Rebecca F. Kuang) believe is an intrinsic part of translation itself. 

I could go on about this essay, but I will also try to connect it to the other articles: it brings up the important question of the “heritage speaker,” and challenges this nomenclature as means of neocolonial control: “‘heritage’ is code for non-European, and functions as a perpetual reminder that we don't belong.” Sindya Bhanoo’s article tackles this question, and discusses how many ‘heritage speakers’ often are translators, though they do so naturally and not as a professional endeavor. Increasingly, however, authors and translators themselves are discussing the role of the translator vis a vis the text and the author, like we see in the case of Amanda Gorman’s translations and Bhanoo’s example of Junot Diaz’s preference for a Caribbean translator – though perhaps these discussions have been happening for years and simply have not received mainstream attention due to the Eurocentric nature of translation scholarship throughout modern history. Like the other articles, Bhanoo raises the question of who should translate what, and I believe we are offered some interesting solutions. One, among which, from Alex Marshall’s article, is the idea of team translations. At the end of the day, I think the main takeaway is that as translators, we always need to consider our relationship to the work. I don’t think that we should be boxed into only doing certain translations based on how many aspects of our identity align with the original work (unless this is explicitly requested by the author), but I think we need to remember that as translators, we must also be advocates for linguistic justice.

- Luisa

3/24/25 Blog Grace Ashton

 The articles about the controversy surrounding the translations of Amanda Gorman's poetry made me reflect on who has the power in literary translation. While Gorman chose the translator herself, it was the response from critics and the media that caused the Dutch and German translators to withdraw from the project. While the selected articles focused on the language pairs where the selected translation did not go through, I did some more research on what happened afterwards and who translated. Interestingly, the issue was resolved in German and Hungarian through a team translation, with translators from a variety of diverse backgrounds contributing their experience and perspectives (https://www.npr.org/2022/01/29/1072718452/amanda-gorman-poetry-translated-hungary-roma). While a team translation can pose issues with the translation itself, it creates more opportunities for more translators and some protection from external critics. Another option is translating outside of one's native tongue, which allows for greater diversity in potential translators. Just like with The Vegetarian, it is the critic's voice that takes up greater space than that of the author or translator.

Grace Ashton

To know that you know who you are: Translation, Teaching, the Self, and the Author

To know that you know who you are: 

Translation, Teaching, the Self, and the Author

by Meghan Miraglia 

I’ve been considering my identity in relation to the work I’ve been translating for quite some time. In fact, it was this idea (the incongruencies in identities between myself and the original author) that at least partially hindered me from taking this course at all. I felt weird about translating pieces by someone who had lived in another country, centuries before I did. I felt (and feel) weird about translating works by an author of color, especially where I occupy a position of historic and continued racial privilege. I felt (and feel) weird about translating works by men when I am a woman (though, many men don’t bat an eye when translating works by women, but that, I suppose, is a story for another day.).

When I say “weird”, what I really mean is a combination of startling awareness and discomfort. I was reminded of this sensation during Bruna’s talk on Friday, when she recounted the experience of reading samples of her work translated by various translators. She was shocked and dismayed by how many translators rendered her characters into a white, elite version of themselves – everything was different. Too different. The characters weren’t themselves at all.

I’m filling out applications for public and private school teaching jobs right now, and every school is asking for some sort of positionality statement. Administrators want to know who you are – but, more than that, they want to know that you know who you are, and how your identities impact your teaching. I incorporate my positionality statement in interviews and job questionnaires, and I reference antiracist and feminist theory in my cover letter because I believe it’s important to acknowledge who I am. It reminds me of Achy Obejas from the Washington Post article, when she assessed “whether she [could] do the translation [of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao] authentically”. Even though she was fluent in Spanish, she had to give consideration to whether she could “‘translate a book featuring Peruvian drag queens’”. Contemplation and awareness matter.

In a cover letter, it’s standard practice to write why you are a teacher, and why you are teaching your content area. My life as of late has been a perpetual answer to the perpetual questions: why teaching? Why English? and, more specifically, why literature? and why writing? I say some variation of the following. Engaging with diverse, quality, and rigorous works of literature allows us to see ourselves (mirror) and see others (window). For folks who occupy marginalized identities, seeing themselves is critical, as their voices have been historically marginalized and/or silenced in the publishing realm. For folks who occupy positions of privilege, seeing others is critical, as it is through empathy that we begin to dismantle systems of socio-political oppression. 

The personal is, as Lorde says, political. Literature is political. The publishing of literature is, you guessed it, political. As Patel and Youssef write, “anglophone literary translation [and the broader publishing realm] border force are the gatekeepers. […] They define the scope of a “good” text, what will “work” in translation, what will sell.”

So, I get it. And, I agree with Patel and Youssef’s statement that this “translator as bridge” metaphor is bunk. It perpetuates a colonial idea of translation: cross over, plunder/conquest, and return with the riches. It makes me wonder about translator’s notes at the beginning or end of texts (and, now that I’m writing that out, I am wondering why translator’s notes sometimes appear at the beginning vs. the end of a text. Hm.): do they do “positionality statements”? I think they should, even if the statement is brief, like, a handful of sentences. Contemplation. Awareness. Acknowledgement.

Translation as a Border Site (Tennant)

Pilar Godayol's argument about "the third age" of gendered translation metaphors reminded me of a William James quote that Maggie Nelson cites in her memoir The Argonauts: "We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold" (54). James and Nelson challenge the idea that conjunctions and prepositions are merely transitional tools in language and enrich their value by transforming them into sites of expression. If such a change were embraced by the world, the result would be a more expansive discourse. Relatedly, Gloria Anzaldúa conceives of translation as a "between" space that is reminiscent of a borderland, which she defines as "a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" and inhabited by "those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the 'normal.'" This metaphor conjures a space where binaries are destabilized and imperfection is championed as an unavoidable yet worthwhile aspect of cultural exchange. (Clare Cavanagh might call it a breeding ground for "joyous failure.") What I love about this depiction is the way in which it refutes the fraught, idealized notion of an original text ("said to have a totalized prior moment of being or meaning - an essence") and flawless translation ("an exploration of imbalance"). Instead, it humanizes and celebrates the role of the translator as "recognizing that solutions are often only partial and always varied." To invoke Derrida's "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," the concept of faithful translation "always attempts to conceive of structure on the basis of a full presence which is beyond play" (Writing and Difference, 279). According to Derrida, there is no definitive center or origin for structure, just as there is no original text in translation, because the so-called center "was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play" (280). The borderland is thus a functionally open, active, and pluralistic site of what Carolyn Shread calls metramorphosis that produces and reproduces a chain or sequence of meanings with no fixed origin. 

Clare Cavanagh's Refreshing Takedown of Terry Eagleton (Tennant)

I found Clare Cavanagh's essay about the poetics of loss to be refreshing in its hope and humanity. I was particularly inspired by her refutal of Terry Eagleton’s critique of literature, literary discourse, and the humanities as disavowing reality and being complicit “with class-interested strategies of smoothing over historical conflict and contradictions with claims of natural and innate organization.” I recently finished Eagleton’s book Literary Theory: An Introduction, in which he argues that a liberal humanist approach to reading and teaching is weak because “it grossly overestimates [the] transformative power [of literature], considers it in isolation from any determining social context, and can formulate what it means by a ‘better person’ only in the most narrow and abstract of terms” (180). He saves a frustrating paradox for the last chapter of the book, where he frames everything that preceded it as “less an introduction than an obituary, and that we have ended by burying the object we sought to unearth” (italics mine). Like Cavanagh, I cannot help but think that there is joy and power in defining literature as a special object, that romance and idealism can be revolutionary and expansive. Eagleton operates under the assumption that there is no reality outside of ideology and politics. Though I agree with this to a certain extent, I take issue with its all-consuming nihilism. He advocates for a rhetorical approach to literary analysis as a means of reclaiming literature’s utility within a socially and historically constituted world. But where is the joy and beauty in that? This notion underestimates the mobilizing power of aesthetic consumption and appreciation. After all, as Cavanagh points out, the suspended, controlled nature of literary time (as written by a “mortal hand”) only makes sense “against the backdrop of a world in which bullets can’t be halted by rhymes and poetry’s ‘tiny eternities’ are quickly gobbled up by greedy time” (italics mine). In this way, literature is innately contextualized. Professors can and should make these connections all the more apparent with paired readings and interdisciplinary examples, but a work of literature, studied in relative isolation, still contains more than Eagleton gives it credit for. 

Cavanagh, on the other hand, celebrates the imperfections of the craft, which are born out of (and come to represent and illuminate) the very limitations that inform the creative process, as well as human existence: “No merely human vessel can hope to contain once and for all a world that precedes us, exceeds us, and will finally outlast us... [The lyric form] can serve, though, as a perfect embodiment or enactment of the individual's ceaselessly renewed, joyous struggle to come to terms with a world that always lies slightly beyond his or her reach.” Eagleton’s nihilism is easy. What Miron Białoszewski accomplishes in his lyric “And Even, Even if They Take My Stove Away: My Inexhaustible Ode to Joy,” and Czesław Miłosz in her translation of it, is much harder, smarter, richer, and more conducive to “creative possibility” and “joyful failure.” Given the current political climate, I was also uplifted by Cavanagh’s radical inversion of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s thesis in “A Defence of Poetry” (1821): that writers, burdened with bleak wartime realities, become “their battered nation’s acknowledged legislators” (italics mine). No matter how seemingly bleak the reality is (“grey naked hole”), the writer is still able to build new forms, infused with “teleological warmth,” that destabilize, challenge, and/or liberate citizens from the moral absence and emptiness of that reality (“greynakedhole”).

 The Creativity of Loss

Clare Cavanagh’s essay, “The Art of Losing,” establishes a central theme: translation, especially poetry, inherently involves loss but offers potential gains and creative acts of recreation. Cavanagh critiques the expectation of perfect or literal translation, arguing that poetry often transcends literal-mindedness by exploring the forms of meaning and the meaning of forms. She parallels Elizabeth Bishop’s “art of losing” and the translator’s “art of loss,” suggesting a more humane understanding of the process. Cavanagh highlights the work of Stanisław Barańczak, a prolific translator of English poetry into Polish, using his translation of Bishop’s villanelle as a prime example of retaining form while navigating linguistic differences, such as the rhyme limitations in Polish. This act of re-creation can even enrich the target language, as Barańczak’s use of the villanelle form was considered a personal contribution to Polish versification. The essay also delves into the Polish poetic tradition of finding creation in loss, referencing poets who emerged as moral authorities during Poland’s national division and upheaval periods.

Furthermore, Cavanagh introduces the concept of “joyful failure,” particularly evident in the works of Szymborska and Adam Zagajewski, where poets grapple with the overwhelming abundance of the world, finding creative possibility in the inherent limitations of language and form. Piotr Kamiński likens the translation process to “polishing diamonds,” emphasizing the painstaking effort to preserve Szymborska’s deceptively simple style. His description of how the poem seemed to “leak” when translated word-for-word captures the challenge of maintaining the poem’s integrity without succumbing to literalism.

All in all,  translation is an art of navigating loss, but it also offers unexpected gains. To put it another way, it’s the art of finding beauty and insight within limitation and imperfection. 

~Ibrahim 

Translators Talk About the Poet

 Each word seemed to be correct, but when I read the poem in French, it was as if everything 'leaked', it all went down the drain – there’s no poem. Which is why I had to go back to the original and calmly, patiently, look for this 'tiny hole' the poetry had leaked out through and plug it quickly,

Despite working primarily with prose, I immediately resonated with this quote. When translating Japanese, there's always some small bit of nuance I feel is seeping out in even the simplest of sentences because if I were to translate them literally to capture that nuance, it would then read terribly stilted.

I can only imagine this goes doubly for poetry, Cavanagh discusses in The Art of Losing.

Back to Szymborska, I also found myself quite curious as to what this poem about buttons could be. For the translator to praise it that heavily, so much so that it changed her worldview, it must be quite the piece.

-Evan

On Translating the Lyric Form

 

Through Clare Cavanagh’s article, “The Art of Losing,” I appreciated the chance to think about what it means to translate the form in poetry. Cavanagh offers that those who translate lyric poetry are driven by the same “form-creating” impulse as the poets. As such, she defends the effort to translate the form, even if it means making tradeoffs or losing other aspects of the poem because it will nonetheless be creatively generative, such as by offering new perspectives and insights. In addition, Cavanagh doesn’t only look at what is slipping through the cracks to make her case but also does so by considering the very role of the lyric form’s “built-in limitations” (242) in the workings of the poem. In other words, she sees the form as very much a part of the substance and the meaning of the poem, not only the aesthetics. Of the many examples she offers to demonstrate how form and substance interact and reinforce each other, one is the translation of Milosz’s poem about the fragility of form, both in mankind and in manmade, which “retains its pathos in English precisely because Milosz and Pinsky have managed to reproduce so movingly the stanzas and rhymes of the original” (240) – through it, she shows how the form itself (i.e. the stanzas and rhymes) must be retained to keep alive the essence of the poem. And while I think her many examples of Polish poetry beautifully exemplify this mirroring of form and substance, I also wondered about how the “form-creating” impulse of a translation could be generative in a very different way than the poem. In passing, Cavanagh mentions the critics, such as Eagleton and Bakhtin, and their accusations of “aesthetic isolationism” in the lyric form. It made me wonder whether because the translation is already positioned within context (i.e. of working from and to a certain language, of having to break or reconceptualize the existing form in one way or another, by little or almost entirely) it is not (or can’t be?) aesthetically isolationist almost by definition, while the lyric poem could be because it can operate outside of context (i.e. become the “refusal of life actually conducted in actual society”)?, although of course, the Polish tradition of “poetic creation from loss” (241) more than demonstrates that this is not the rule. But all in all and perhaps most pertinently, I think Cavanagh pretty much had me at not having to despair of failure.

-          - Lois

Transparency and Translatability: Szymborska and Polish Poetry

Reading Clare Cavanagh’s The Art of Losing alongside the reflections of Wisława Szymborska’s translators I found myself noticing a tension at the heart of poetic translation: the negotiation between loss and gain. Cavanagh challenges the idea that translation is simply about “faithfulness” to an original text, arguing that poetry itself resists rigid literalism. Instead, poetry—like translation—is an art shaped by both constraints and creative transformation. I found this very interesting as someone who has always been a bit more intimidated by the translation of poetry than prose, as it invites more creativity and flexibility than I would usually associate with the practice. 

This idea is particularly compelling when applied to Szymborska’s work. As the translators in the other article note, her poetry appears “deceptively simple,” yet any attempt at direct, word-for-word translation results in something lifeless, as if the poem has "leaked" away. This makes sense with Cavanagh’s argument that translation is not a process of preservation but instead an act of recreation,  something dynamic and moving, which we've often talked about in class with regards to retranslation. 

I was curious, however, about what Piotr Wojciechowski describes as the "transparency" of Szymborska's works, and the ease with which they can be translated. While it doesn't contradict the comment about deceptive simplicity, it certainly adds some nuance to it. These works, in their writing, style, or ideas may lend themselves to translatability but the process still can't be approached without care and thought. Although it makes sense now, I also hadn't considered that some works may be inherently easier to translate, thinking more about what I find easier or more difficult. 

What I find especially interesting is how different translators describe their experiences with Szymborska’s poetry. Piotr Kamiński speaks of translation as “polishing diamonds,” emphasizing the precision required to capture her clarity. Meanwhile, Cavanagh describes how translating Szymborska changed her entire perception of the world. This suggests that translation is not just about transmitting meaning but about shaping the way we see and experience language itself.

- Kamryn Schult

Blog Post 7 by Drew

Oh my goodness, I love Clare Cavanagh! I didn’t know who she was previously, but “The Art of Losing” is the first scholarly reading this semester that made me tear up. How beautiful those final two paragraphs are! Her notion of translation as a wonderful impossibility, in the same way that poetry is, and in the same way that really everything worthwhile is, strikes me as satisfying and true.

Cavanagh’s firing on all cylinders in this article; her translations, criticism, and anecdotes all work for me. The “Birthday” translation is especially resplendent. Its sonic elements rock, and it’s a great example of the form/sound of a poem being more important than the words’ literal meanings. I’d love to see Cavanagh and Nabokov have a little debate. There’s a lot to be learned from both of them, despite the seeming diametrical opposition. That’s been a fun element of the readings this semester—how we can glean the resonant bits from the sundry perspectives.

It was also fun to see a translation by Boston University’s own Robert Pinsky! He’s mentioned working with Czeslaw Milosz in class before and remembers the experience very fondly. I enjoy “Song on Porcelain” quite a bit. Thanks!

the art of losing

 Clare Cavanagh's opening paragraph criticiizes those who criticize translation's ability to be "faithful" or "literal" or "perfect." I understand how it can be frustrating to hear these comments about a translation you worked tirelessly on. A translation is never "perfect," but neither is the original poem. 

Bishop's villanelle "One Art" is presented, with Stanislaw Baranczak's version of the poem. Then, an English translation of Baranczak's poem is given to us. This translation/adaptation of "One Art" from English to Polish to English is interesting, as I wouldn't have predicted that "SHE CRIED THAT NIGHT, BUT NOT FOR HIM TO HEAR" was heavily inspired by "One Art," although I do think of Bishop's villanelle when I think of villanelles.

Translation is unique as it can bring new poetic ideas & forms to languages, to cultures. Of course it will never be perfect; that is why new translations emerge. The imperfection of translation is what keeps it going.

- Hanan Akbari

Monody for Two Voices

It’s Clare Cavanagh’s attention to the poems and her humility which carry her article, “The Art of Losing: Polish Poetry and Translation” and lend her so much authority as a translator; I am reminded, once again, that translating is a test of one’s quality as a reader at least as much as one’s quality as a writer. This also reminds me, in an elliptical way, of the attention paid to texts by the early exemplars of New Criticism, where the available resources for the critic in their task of “improving opinion into knowledge” (Samuel Johnson, 1751; long before New Criticism) are so spare and so clearly defined: the text itself and the critic as reader. For translation, the task is different, but the materials are the same (unless the translator decides that they fully grasp the text, and then the materials are astonishingly diminished. What could it possibly mean to fully grasp anything: in mathematics you take the concept of 0, basic arithmetical operations, identity properties of addition and multiplication, and little else and the turn out to be unimaginably vast. What line of poetry is simpler than 2+2?). 

On the other hand, the translation of poetry requires an almost anti-poetic orientation toward the poem, as Cavanagh describes it, by compelling the translator to imagine the inseparably univocal speech act of the poem as somehow anything other than singularity. This is where the loss comes in, as such a treatment is based on fundamentally flawed first principles; there is a poem, you can read it or not, you can know the language or not, but what you cannot do is read it any other way, although you can certainly read something else. For translation, there is no escaping this something else and it is the radical choice to move towards it, conscious of its Borgesian futility, that prefigures the whole enterprise; translation, the irrational rejection of the not otherwise.

-Elijah Frydman

Linguistic enrichment and loss

 Clare Cavanagh’s essay The Art of Losing felt stylistically similar to many other essays I’ve read by translators in that it was a sort of justification for translation; an acknowledgement of the apparent “impossibility” of the task while still advocating for it nonetheless. This is not to say that it felt repetitive, because it did not: Cavanagh’s own background and expertise combined with her effective delivery made the piece a delightful and informative read. What struck me most about the essay was that the discussion of translation challenges and “impossibilities” was not boilerplate, the way it sometimes appears to be in various translator’s notes or other articles on the craft. Instead, it tied together Cavanagh’s argument, and created space for a meditation on what it means for something to be lost – it doesn’t just disappear, but rather it helps us to see the vastness of what the world holds around us. Similarly, I think, for language, as Cavanagh seems to agree with the school of thought that translation leads to linguistic enrichment; helping us to discover our own languages through the foreign (thinking about Friedrich Schleiermacher here, among others). 

I was also interested in the brief quotes by some of Wisława Szymborska’s other translators, who seemed to converge on the idea that Szymborska’s necessitated translation; that it “was poetry that was as if made to be translated”, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Szymborska herself was a translator? I think it would be hard to say, but I am always curious about what makes some literature more amenable to translation than others, especially with poetry, which often presents extreme translation challenges that require creative, if not controversial, solutions. Lastly, I was struck by a quote in Cavanagh’s essay: “...and it's a loss, but it isn’t a disaster” (236) Here she refers to those bits of poetry that are just impossible to translate over, whether it be due to linguistic or cultural constraints. I think that’s the right attitude to have, both as translators, and as readers of translations. In most cases, the benefits of translation outweigh the losses.

- Luisa

Translation is dynamic

I’m realizing as we read and discuss throughout this semester that so much of the angst around faithfulness in translation has to do with credit: if I’m reading Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian, am I reading Smith, or Kang? Is it more fair to “give credit” to one or the other?

In my last discussion post, I said that the goal of disappearing as a translator is not a particularly productive role, but I didn’t expand upon that. What I meant (I think) is that translation is not, as I’ve come to learn in this course, a static practice. A writer is considering the time and space they’re writing within, and the translator is considering how the source text’s time and space compares and contacts with that of the audience they’re writing for; these are factors that are changing constantly. 

This muddled loop of thoughts I’m trying to word succinctly circled back to while reading Cavanagh’s The Art of Losing. On page 5 she writes that “there is no equivalent to the villanelle in the Polish tradition,” therefore “the poetics of loss thus produce a clear gain for Polish poetry.” I hadn’t fully given thought to the function of Baranczak’s translation as an introduction of form into a new language. That alone feels like a large gain procured from the potential loss of a translation of One Art out of English.

Samantha

 The Art of Losing

 

The hidden message of calling poetry, and therefore translating it, the act of losing made me look at poetry translation from a different perspective. Losing here is actually winning, and the paradox reveals the creativity of translation. After reading Cavanagh, equivalence should not be sought within word-for-word translation or what we call literal translation. Indeed, literal translation can take place without the word-for-word translation process. The equivalence in terms of meaning and form can be conveyed with different words, and the same effect can be present in the target text. This "creating the effect in a different way" approach was also present in the translation of The Vegetarian. All loss is converted into gain.

 

Cavanagh’s mention of his son taking a blanket, putting it over his head, running down the hallway, banging into the walls at full speed, and falling down on the floor laughing his head off made me think of the translation processes as well as the poetry translation examined throughout the article. Additionally, the phenomenon the joyful failure comforts me, seeing other translators going through these phases where we fail and still enjoy failing. Translation is not always about the precise, high-quality outcome but the experience of trying to bring over the meaning in another language, which we enjoy working in.

Ece Celikkol

Inevitable Losses & Sheet Metaphors

I found much of Clare Cavanagh’s “The Art of Losing” to be a profound meditation on poetry in translation—in particular, her reframing of the inevitable losses that happen along the way. There’s something very true about this; loss is inherent to the process of taking something that exists and making something new from it. To understand and appreciate the new thing fully, we must accept both the source it was born from and the act of loss itself as its origin story.

I really loved Milosz’s translation of Bialoszewski’s “And Even, Even if They Take Away the Stove,” which ends with the not-quite-repetition (maybe more like almost-repetition-but-new-each-time) of “grey naked hole,” or “szara naga jama,” and this idea that “the world’s inescapable losses generate not only pain but also the creative possibility…a new way of seeing and something new to see.” 

I wonder how assessments and critiques of translations might be different if they took loss not as a sign of failure, but simply a sign that translation has happened. Rather, were those losses fruitful ones—generative? What new things would they help us to see? With Pierre Menard on the mind this week, too, change (and loss, and gain) is maybe inevitable with any kind of translation or reproduction of a text simply by virtue of who is holding the pen, and when, and where. 

The metaphor of “Marty’s game,” of translating poetry as a kind of joyful failure, of running into a wall and laughing, reminded me of the New Yorker article I’d read about Han Kang and Deborah Smith's (post-Vegetarian) process earlier in the year. In the article, Han describes a dream she had about translation, where she saw someone lying on a bed. “Though the sleeping figure’s face was covered by a white sheet, she could hear what the person was saying… A good translation, Han’s subconscious seems to suggest, is a living, breathing thing, which must be understood on its own terms, discovered from beneath the great white sheet.” 

I’m interested in the reemergence of this sheet metaphor, and of the translation being the thing beneath a sheet, or being generated from beneath a kind of veil. What exactly, I wonder, is the sheet here? Is it simply the rift or barrier that exists between two languages and cultures/geopolitical histories? Or two writers, two brains? Or is it simply learning to practice comfort with this not-knowing—understanding that our own subjectivity always hangs around us like a kind of sheet, and to communicate across difference always requires, first, acknowledging the sheet and all the failures and bumps that come with it?

- Abbey