In his translation of Borges’ Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, James Irby makes an interesting decision right off the bat: he italicizes visible in the phrase “The visible work”. Andrew Hurley also makes use of italics, but his is a bit more clear-cut: he only italicizes “oeuvre” which is consistent with his style throughout the rest of his translation in that he keeps foreign words in the text in italics. So what of Irby’s visible? Borges is of no help here, and probably gets a kick out of the ambiguity, as this phrase is fully capitalized in the original* Spanish, leaving it up to the reader/translator to decide what emphasis is placed where, and the implications thereof.
What I appreciate about Irby’s translation–in addition to his alluring alliteration in instances such as “plebeian pleasure” (4) and “elementary…epochs” (4) – is the slightly more cohesive tone of the narrator. I loved Hurley’s version as well, but my personal experience reading it made me feel a bit more as if I were reading a translation (not a bad thing!). Irby’s was more effective on an affective level, I’ll put it like that. One of those effective choices was the italicization of visible: I was so drawn to this word because it was already at the forefront of my attention after reading Vanderschelden’s essay and Nabokov’s letters to Pertzoff. By italicizing visible, Irby asks the reader to stop on that word, to hold on to it and emphasize it, and in doing so, to explore–or at least acknowledge–the invisible components of literature and translation that lay beyond a published text.
I enjoyed Vanderschelden’s essay as I felt that it employed examples convincingly to discuss different ways the author/translator relationship shapes the final product, paying special attention to the "invisible" work. With my current project, I work closely with the author, who was a friend of mine before literary translation was even on my radar, and because of that I try to remain aware of the risk that my idea of him as a person may cloud my reading of the text and translation of it (as Vanderschelden describes on p.28). I was also very interested in the idea of the sort of “invisible” correspondence (p.23) that takes place between author and translator, in cases when this dialogue is less formal/traceable than, for example, that of Nabokov and Pertzoff. What happens to my WhatsApp voice memos, where I ask my friend and author Mohammed Benmiloud to talk through Moroccan Arabic sayings such as : “enough of [insert object] to make a camel neigh”? This may appear trivial; most may not care about this casual back-and-forth. But for me, this is the heart of translation: it’s the trans-lingual, trans-cultural dialogue that manages to enrich not only a text but also the way we conceptualize the world around us. This kind of dialogue shows how we can think together in community to create sense and meaning. Perhaps I’m being idealistic, but I was feeling inspired after this week’s readings. As pedantic and snarky as Nabokov may be, he cared deeply about translation and cross-cultural exchange, as his letters showed. This, I think, is what it means to be a good translator, not how ‘faithful’ you are to the original text or how successful your translation is.
As a last note: Nabokov and Menard both seem to be fans of chess: as per Nabokov’s letters to Pertzoff and items e and g in the complete list of Menard’s works. Coincidence?
*After reading/rereading Pierre Menard I am highly sensitive to the word original. Perhaps I better say In the version which was posted on Blackboard from www.literatura.us - but I digress…
- Luisa Bocconcelli
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