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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Scott Esposito, April 22, 2011
To my mind, the problem is simple: reviewing literary translations is full of thorny issues and difficult questions, and I am as suspicious of anyone who claims to have answered them as I am of someone who tells me they know what art is. But! Which reader of Words Without Borders would say that right…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Suzanne Jill Levine, April 11, 2011
Throwing one’s hat into this ring can be a two-edged plume, mark my mixed-up metaphor. If we, wearing our translator hats (though not many of us can afford hats), tell reviewers that any adjective, from “brilliant” to “clunky,” unjustified by examples, just won’t…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Jonathan Blitzer, April 7, 2011
There is an anecdote about translation—which, fittingly, I´ve only come across second-hand—that involves an enthusiastic Ernest Hemingway gushing to a friend that finally, with a new translation of War and Peace, he can get through the whole novel. His friend then says, of the…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Rigoberto González, April 4, 2011
With so few titles getting translated into English, it seems ludicrous to impose too many conditions in terms of matching a book reviewer to a translated project, or even in terms of determining whether a translated project is worth reviewing. The sad fact is that those of us reviewing books already…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Lorraine Adams, March 31, 2011
Like many American-born English speakers, I have an unhappy story to tell about my ignorance of the rest of the world’s languages. It begins in my youth when I spent eight years studying Latin. This rendered me well-versed in Vergil, Horace and Catullus, but unfit for modern literature, conversation…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Tess Lewis, March 28, 2011
Being on the receiving as well as the dealing end of reviewing literature in translation, I’m particularly sensitive to the issues involved. More than three quarters of the reviews and essays I’ve written over the past decade have been about translations, a number of them from languages that…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by David Varno, March 23, 2011
This document was submitted to Words Without Borders for our series On Reviewing Translations, based on a collaboration between the three contributors that had been initiated prior to solicitation. SOME THOUGHTS FOR REVIEWERS OF LITERARY TRANSLATIONS You ought to review a translation as you would any…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by Daniel Hahn, March 16, 2011
I’m a translator, whose translations get reviewed regularly in the mainstream press; I’m also a reviewer who reviews translations regularly in the mainstream press. In probably more or less even numbers, I’d guess—for each one I get, I write one, give or take. Inevitably my feelings…
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Category: On Reviewing Translations
by David Varno, March 16, 2011
This week, we are launching a series to explore the ways that book reviews handle translations. Reviewers and translators each have varied opinions on how translations should be discussed, and on who should be doing the discussing. At a recent panel on the future of book reviewing, review editors stressed…
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