День переводчика ( En)

Happy International Translation Day everyone.

Funnily enough, I came across Tim Parks’ article, “The Writer–Translator Equation,” in the New York Review of Books only a few days prior to the celebration. The excitement, pain, sorrow and endless delays the author described in there made it fully relatable to me. Whilst the author didn’t have a contract, or a deadline, or another visible reason to push himself through that cruel ordeal, he felt that he was unable to escape it anyway. The main stipulation was simple yet in fact largely unattainable: just translate. Just do it. As ridiculously simple as it sounds, translation can be your heaven and your hell at the same time. And we all know why.

He did the job, but the revision turned into a complete nightmare: remember how Borges described the process of actual translating as both an act of amalgamation with the original writer and simultaneously a split from him? “To be, in some way, Cervantes and reach the Quixote seemed less arduous to him—and, consequently, less interesting—than to go on being Pierre Menard and reach the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard.” And so there: Parks—and me, and you, who are using more than one language on a regular basis in your life, and all of us—have to go through the hell of revision of our own perception of what we, like those who re-position the word order of one language with the instruments of another, have done to the initial text.

Using the subjunctive? Parks asked himself. Or re-imagining the structure of the text that once was broken to pieces and you must re-arrange it? How could you, as a human being with your own linguistic universe within, establish yourself on alien soil? And what if you never have full access to what “they” call “being idiomatic,” but you, already beaten by your own inner demons, would describe as being “nearly there,” but never quite? Enough to sound quirky in the best case or to be completely out of place in the worst (also the most common) scenario? Whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad, whispers that other inside you, and you follow a siren almost unconsciously.

Most of all it reminds me of floating in an ocean, which is dark, and deep, and threatening. You left the shore of your homeland and you are too far away to come back. Also, you don’t want to: you cannot see another coast, perhaps you never will, but what about an island in the middle? You are strenuous enough to reach at least that, although you know that it also could be your final destination.

So what will happen next? Nobody knows. Either you sink at that unknown seashore, or you will manage—using all your power—to pull yourself onward, and a slightly new version of yourself suddenly emerges. You have transformed into something you’ve never thought of being before. You have translated yourself. You are the translator of your own linguistic universe, with its compendium of joys and sorrows. Lucky you, and unlucky you. Enjoy and remember: there is no end to its trip. Happy Translation Day to you. And to all of you.