Why Translation Matters (Why X Matters Series) Review

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Why Translation Matters (Why X Matters Series) ReviewWHY TRANSLATION MATTERS is a superb book, exceedingly rich for its 119 pages of text. Basically, it is a passionate statement of the role, creativity, and duty of translators of literature, written by one of the foremost Spanish-to-English translators working today, having to her credit published translations of Cervantes's "Don Quixote" and many of the major works of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa.

Most of the book is comprised of three lectures given at Yale as the first in a proposed annual series of lectures entitled "Why X Matters". Given her expertise, Edith Grossman addressed translation and why it matters. In addition to the lectures, the book contains a fourth chapter on translating poetry, which in Grossman's professional work has been poetry of the Spanish Renaissance.
Many of us who have not worked as translators, or whose work basically has been limited to classes in a foreign language, tend to think of translation as rather mechanical duplication or word-for-word transcription, i.e., for each word in the original language, substituting the most appropriate word in the target language. WHY TRANSLATION MATTERS certainly will disabuse anyone of that model. Let me quote two excerpts from the book:
"[T]he most fundamental description of what translators do is that we write--or perhaps rewrite--in language B a work of literature originally composed in language A, hoping that readers of the [translation] will perceive the text, emotionally and artistically, in a manner that parallels and corresponds to the esthetic experience of its first readers."
"To my mind, a translator's fidelity is not to lexical pairings but to context--the implications and echoes of the first author's tone, intention, and level of discourse. Good translations are good because they are faithful to this contextual significance. They are not necessarily faithful to words or syntax, * * * because words do not `mean' in isolation. Words `mean' as indispensable parts of a contextual whole that includes the emotional tone and impact, the literary antecedents, the connotative nimbus as well as the denotations of each statement."

Thus, for Grossman, translation is an interpretive art - akin to an actor performing Shakespeare or a pianist performing a Beethoven piano sonata. Indeed, it is almost as if the translator is another author, another creative writer, albeit paradoxically still tethered to the original author's story, tone, intentions, and level of discourse. This attitude is behind Borges's reported instructions to one of his translators to write not what Borges had said but what he had meant to say.
The discussion of the creativity of translation is to me the most interesting part of the book. In addition to that subject, part of the book is devoted more directly to the topic denoted by the title - "why translation matters". What Grossman says on this topic is pretty much what one would anticipate: Translation exponentially expands the audience for classics of literature and the products of foreign perspectives and experience, and it broadens considerably a reader's understanding of the human experience. It also enables the literary tradition of any language to be infused with fresh ideas, both substantively and stylistically, as is illustrated by the profound effect that Faulkner (in translation) had on many Latin American writers, who in turn later influenced (in translation) more contemporary writers in English.

As someone who has been immeasurably enriched by reading foreign literature in translation, I cannot sing highly enough my praise for WHY TRANSLATION MATTERS. I expect that it will prove of similar urgent interest to all who are sensitive to, bewildered by, or in awe of the art of translation.Why Translation Matters (Why X Matters Series) Overview

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