MCLC: Sandalwood Death review (14,15)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: lklein <lklein at hku.hk>
Subject: Sandalwood Death review (14)
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I'd like to add on to Nicky's point by saying that you don’t have to know
the language of the original to comment intelligently on the translation.
In fact, the "accuracy" of the translation is usually one of the least
interesting things about it.

A translation is an interpretation and a performance. If you keep that in
mind, you can offer a discussion of a translation's strengths and
weaknesses in light of your own interpretation of the original for a
popular or general interest publication, but you can also do so if you are
unable to access the original. In fact, I believe that addressing
translation intelligently and accessibly, and in such a way as to avoid
the impression that all conversations about translation must regress into
a list of quibbles over "howlers," is all the more important for general
interest publications. I think it's the general public, more than
scholars, who will benefit from a deeper and broader understanding of
translation, though if scholars are not there to help provide that
understanding it will be tough going for everyone.

Lucas

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From: Canaan Morse <canaan.morse at gmail.com>
Subject: Sandalwood Death review (15)

As the editor of a small(er), specialist publication, I completely
sympathize with Jeff’s position: the contemporary editor is charged with
incredible task of publishing quality literature that will sell as many
copies/subscriptions as possible, and the demands of the reader/consumer
tend towards the general. On the other hand, I think the institutional
viewpoint of the general interest publisher is inherently unequal, caught
as it is between opposing forces, and the argument, “We wouldn’t want a
specialist’s limiting (because esoteric) standard stopping intelligent
people from writing” marginalizes the claims made for the centrality of
translation through overstatement because it can’t reasonably refute them.
Jeff’s repeated use of “the translator’s contribution” to refer to this
centrality suggests he sees the problem as one of individual credit. And
that problem does exist, as Jonathan Stalling has made clear, but other
voices (including Stalling’s) have come in to indicate that greater
importance lies at the level of the translated work itself.

Were this discussion to evolve further, I think it would be worthwhile to
examine the problem translation as an issue faces in a publishing industry
that relies on authorial fame, when the very concept of authorial genius
is an invention of the industry itself (see Richard Nash's "What is the
Business of Literature?" in VQR for an historical perspective on that
phenomenon). 

Canaan