Collaborating with the Author

 

While Isabelle Vanderschelden’s article sets out to consider different types of “cooperation” (22) between the translator and the author in literary translation, by framing the analysis around the “death” of the Author versus the reader (per Barthes), it seems to overemphasize the consequences of such collaborative efforts as zero-sum, and ownership bound. I don’t deny that the real and perceived status differential between an author and a translator does have to be a major consideration when thinking about what it means for a translator to collaborate with the author, especially given how the market operates – i.e. readers tend to feel comforted by and therefore desire the author’s seal of approval in the translation, which then perpetuates and cements the status differential. However, I wondered whether it is necessarily a given that the collaborative process has to be dictated by this dynamic. On this point, the article doesn’t really seem to explore the possible consequences of the author actively collaborating not as an authority but as another reader. I think many authors consider their book to no longer be theirs once published. In that sense, many authors do consider themselves dead to what becomes of the book. But they are still one of the most intimate readers and appreciators of that work so it could make sense for them to be engaged in the translation with the translator. Of course, not every author thinks about their work this way but some do and I raise it because I don’t think the article really explored what the consequences of a truly collaborative arrangement are in the confines of its premise, which, even in the examples of more active collaborations, seems to come down to what the author allows or doesn’t. (What it does consider is a loosened definition of the original, as in Borges). Along these lines, I guess when I’m translating, I don’t think to look to the author as the authority over the text. But I do consider the author as being able to read the text in the way the text asks to be read. This might sound like splitting hairs but to me, makes a world of difference in how we can collaborate in service of the text, or whether we can collaborate at all.

- Lois