As an editor my name is also on the publication, and I do feel
responsibility for what I publish. Much of what I edit or translate is
otherwise unavailable to readers who can't read the source language, so I
also have a responsibility to the original poet. But I should have said "as
actively as I think the text needs."
I agree that the truly ghastly can't be saved. But the truly ghastly
needn't be published if the editor actually reads it with an editor's eye.
And the good can often be helped. It might have been nice if some editor
had pointed out the mistake Edith Grossman made in the first sentence of
her excellent Don Quijote translation. Or do you think that would have been
overstepping? How about the book I'm reading at the moment, translated from
the Russian, in which the directions of northerly and swoutherly winds
appear to be confused? Or a book that I published with a serious mistake in
the translation of a title that got by me. Or a translation of my own that
went to press with "huella" carelessly translated as "footstep" when it
should have been "footprint?" Or a book of Max Jacob translations from a
university press in which "rez-de-chausee " is translated as second floor
and "le mort" and "la morte" are confused?" Or the many otherwise excellent
translations by others that I've published in which the translator was
missing a piece of information about the source culture and mistranslated
accordingly? Why would anyone be less than grateful in these situations?
And wouldn't an editor who didn't point these out be simply irresponsible?
Do you feel the same way about the translations of others that you
publish--nary a word ever?
Mark
At 10:04 PM 4/23/2005, you wrote:
>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
>
>=================================================
>"Lyric poetry has to be exorbitant or not at all." -- Gottfried Benn
>=================================================
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> http://albany.edu/~joris/CurrentEvents.html
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>Pierre Joris
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