Chekhov’s Mistess

Dalkey’s Translation Experiment

We’re still celebrating National Slowetry Month around here and I’m already making posts on translation, which is next month’s celebratory emphasis. I haven’t even made up an anti-holiday for that one, although maybe I don’t need to because translation isn’t quite as big as poetry in the scheme of things, not that poetry is all that big in the scheme of things.

Anyway, I’m writing today about a book that I’ve yet to see. Dalkey Archive Press is publishing As You Were Saying: American Writers Respond to Their French Contemporaries. This book is interesting because it pairs short stories by French and American authors. Seven French authors wrote stories that were then translated into English and sent to seven American writers who either completed the original stories or wrote corresponding stories of their own.

The idea of the book is to not just promote literature in translation, but the idea of it, Dalkey’s Martin Riker said in a Publishers Weekly article. According to the article, only 3% of books published in the US are from translation – a figure you undoubtedly have heard – but in France that number is much higher, and 40% of books published in translation are from America.

So, like I said, I haven’t seen the book, but I will. Dalkey is giving out copies of the book at next week’s Pen World Voices Festival , which me and a bunch of others from the bloggernet will be covering. And there’s an excerpt in Harper’s.

comments

Hello!  I was browsing through your blog and saw this post; being interested in translation, I wanted to leave a few thoughts.  First, I’m not sure your statement that poetry is a bigger deal than translation sets well with me.  Of course, poetry precedes the translation, but to diminish translation’s importance (which you probably weren’t trying to do, though I don’t know for what other reason you’d seek to set up a hierarchy of importance) is a bit silly.  Just look at Borges-- his idea of translation was pretty radical, but his translations have become just as important as the original works themselves.  Ultimately, (and I think you’ll agree with me here, as next month is apparently translation-themed), translation is vital to promote awareness and enrich us culturally.

The translation project of which you spoke sounds interesting-- and almost seems to transcend the divide between work and translation, allowing the processes to happen simultaneously?  I’d like to find out more about it.  If you’re interested in French/English exchange of work/translation, check out a book called 1913, put out by a group in Paris called Double Change (with Le Pont Ephémère), a lovely book detailing a week-long collaborative translation project among writers such as Sebastian Smirou, Rosmarie Waldrop, etc. 

Good luck with translation month (May then?) and more later!

    – Julia (04/27  at  10:09 AM)

Thanks, Julia - my point with the heirarchy was that both poetry and translation are marginalized, but poetry less so than translation. Sorry that wasn’t clear.

To be clear in my intent, you may be interested in my posts (both of which are at least a couple of years old):

http://chekhovsmistress.com/index.php/budparr/article/op_vertaling/

and my report of a translation panel a couple of years ago,

Global Quijote

and my upcoming report on the two translation panels I recently attended as well as the new report by Esther Allen “To Be (Translated) or Not to Be”

So, stay tuned for those as well as some other things

    – Bud Parr (04/27  at  11:35 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: April 19, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Translation

Tags: Pen World Voices Festival

• Comments:2
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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