On Apr 23, 2005, at 12:08 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
> When I ask a translator to do work for me I always make clear that
> I'll be editing actively. I don't know how anybody manages to produce
> decent translations consistently without editing, but translations are
> almost never edited, and most translations in print are pretty ghastly
> as a result.
Mark -- for once, I must disagree utterly: as far as I am concerned, my
translations go out the same way as my poems do: tel quel -- as is, &
I'll have them printed thus or not at all. The editing is what I spend
most of my time doing in both roles, so once I see the work as ready,
that's it (even if years later I may rework some of it myself). Nor do
i think that editing will make a ghastly translation good -- laborious
&/or journeyman-like, maybe, but I'd rather start from scratch in that
case. -- Pierre
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"Lyric poetry has to be exorbitant or not at all." -- Gottfried Benn
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