Found in Translation

Conversations about Translation, moderated by Merve Emre ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Sponsored by Classical Pursuits For “On Translation,” the third season of the podcast The Critic and Her Publics, Merve Emre convened a panel of translators and publishers to talk about literary translation. We’ve collected all seven episodes below. The panel includes the translators Maureen Freely (who translates from the Turkish), Daisy Rockwell (Hindi and Urdu), Virginia Jewiss (Italian), Jeremy Tiang (Chinese), and Tiffany Tsao (Indonesian), as well as Adam Levy and Jacques Testard, the publishers of, respectively, Transit Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions. During the season, they discuss specific sentences from Marcel Proust and The Thousand and One Nights, how to start a new translation, the fraught emotional condition of their work, global English, and what makes one translation better than another.  These conversations were hosted in 2024 by the Hawthornden Foundation at Lake Como, in Lombardy. The Review has been collaborating with Lit Hub to publish transcripts and recordings of each episode of The Critic and Her Publics; the first two seasons—on criticism and editing—can be found here.   Advertisement   Practical Translation: Proust We begin the series with an exercise in practical translation: a discussion of seven different English interpretations of one, highly complicated sentence from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Mais à l’instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d’extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m’avait envahi, isolé, sans la notion de sa cause. First Sentences “The issue with [translating] famous first lines is that everybody is invested. It’s like saying that you have the real recipe for Texas chili. Everybody has a view.” Shame, Seams, Scars “A lot of translation is the middle part that nobody sees or hears or thinks about. If you’re not a translator, you believe that somebody finds a text and thinks, ‘Let’s put this into another language.’ [But] translation is reconstructing a text in a different language that has different parts. We have to use literary references. We have to use language play. We have to use all the things that exist in another language.”   Advertisement   Is English a Monocrop? The English language can flatten the literature of other nations, while at the same time expanding its audience many times over. For the translator, this creates a struggle. What might it look like to enshrine that struggle in the translation itself? Practical Translation: ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ There have been countless retellings of Scheherazade’s tales over the centuries, many of which were written down, leaving many different manuscripts. What, then, does it mean for a translator to “take liberties,” or to be “faithful to the text”? Passing Judgment How do we decide which translations are better than others? To Pay a Translator How should the translator be compensated when their contribution to the process of publishing a book is still so unresolved?     Advertisement     For everything else we’ve been publishing, visit the Review’s website. And let us know what you think: send your comments to editor@nybooks.com; we do write back.     Save $168 on an inspired pairing! Get both The New York Review and The Paris Review at one low price. Get the deal Politics   Literature   Arts   Ideas You are receiving this message because you signed up for e-mail newsletters from The New York Review. Update your address or preferences View this newsletter online The New York Review of Books 207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305   Preferences  |  Unsubscribe