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