Author as Gatekeeper?: Authors, Authority, and Controlling the Meaning

 

Author as Gatekeeper?: Authors, Authority, and Controlling the Meaning

by Meghan Miraglia

 

Isabelle Vanderschelden’s “Authority in Literary Translation: Collaborating with the Author” made some interesting points about authority and the role of the author in the translation process.

As I engaged with this week’s readings, like Lauren, I too began to think about my own poetry. Would I want to be involved, regardless of whether or not I knew the target language? I’m not sure. I would trust my translator. I like Duras’s viewpoint that “once a book is translated into another language, it becomes another book, and thus each version becomes a parallel but self-standing text” (22). This idea isn’t dissimilar from what many authors and poets already believe about their own work. For many, it is no longer “their” book or “their” poem, because it now belongs to the reader or the public. It’s a “non-possessive view on authorship” (23).

I think that collaboration and co-creating a translation can be helpful, but I wonder about the frequency/depth of communication between translator and author. Too much communication can have “a serious impact on the status of the translator… [and can] implicitly [question] their authority and legitimacy” (25). Constant surveillance is productive for neither party. Under these circumstances, yes, “the translator can be seen as a potential proliferator of discourses, and the author represents a means of controlling the meaning of the original” (26). It’s like a guessing game, with the author as the gatekeeper. Or, maybe more like “helicopter authoring” – think, helicopter parenting, but with translator as the child that the author-parent believes is incapable of making their own decisions.  

At the same rate, not communicating with an author at all feels…wrong. At least, it does to me, anyway. Maybe the answer is just…balance. Moderation. I don’t know. Translation is a conversation, no?

I disagree with the notion that the author is the only one with “power and legitimacy…in relation to the text” (26) – if that were the case, what would be the point in giving/selling the book to readers at all? What would be the point in writing? Translators should be empowered with autonomy and agency, though this may mean asking the author to relinquish/dismantle their notions of “correct interpretations” and singular meanings. Ultimately, translation “is about multiple readings of a text… [It is] the reception, interpretation, and reaction to the source” (28).

I’m unsure about my feelings toward Nabokov’s correspondence with Pertzoff, but I find his act of retranslating because it was “‘too tame in style and too inaccurate in sense’” (128) almost comical. Nabokov’s deep, unwavering commitment to accuracy (he says, “precise and competent translation”) is admirable.