|
Interviews with Translators
The Center has compiled interviews with such distinguished translators as:
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIS BARNSTONE
By Thomas Hoeksema
The most striking feature of Willis Barnstone's production as a translator is the broad range of his interests and publications. His translation work reflects involvement with a wide variety of languages, cultural backgrounds, and literary periods. Volumes of his translations include the poetry of Mao Tse-tung, Sappho, St. John of the Cross, Pedro Salinas, Antonio Machado, Fray Luis de Leon, and a medieval Latin bestiary, Physiologus Theobaldi.
Read the full interview
AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER BUSH
By Carol Maier
Peter Bush's latest book is The Voice of the Turtle: An Anthology of Cuban Short Stories, which he compiled and edited for Quartet Books, London. He studied Spanish literature at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Currently, he directs the M.A. program in the Theory and Practice of Translation at Middlesex University.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR AS GEOLOGIST: W.S. DI PIERO'S "QUEST FOR RECOGNITIONS"
By John Rodden
W.S. Di Piero is not only an accomplished poet and critic, but also a translator of distinction. Di Piero began translating Italian prose and poetry during his 2 1/2 years in Italy in the early 1970s. His translation of Giacomo Leopardi's Pensieri (1981) was nominated for the 1982 American Book Award, whereupon Di Piero turned to poetry and rendered This Strange Joy: Selected Poems of Sandro Penna (1982). The American Academy of Poets recently honored the latter collection with the Raiziss/de Palchi Award, a newly instituted prize that will be given every two years to a translation of modern Italian poetry into English. Di Piero's third translation, The Ellipse: Selected Poems of Leonardo Sinisgalli (1983), received not only respectful notice from fellow critics but also earned him the Poggioli Award for Translation from the P.E.N. American Center.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATORS VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH KIMON FRIAR
By Marianthi Photiades
In a letter to Lawrence Durrell (June 1946), Anais Nin described Kimon Friar as "interesting... vital...one of the very few articulate human beings in the U.S.A. ... He is a poet." At the time he was director of the Poetry Center, New York City.
To most of us, Kimon Friar is known as the master translator of modern Greek poetry and more specifically the artist who dared to re-write the modern sequel of The Odyssey. Those of us who teach Greek literature on American campuses could not carry on our job without Friar. To us, he is the great facilitator.
Read the full interview
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARILYN GADDIS ROSE
by Carol Maier
Marilyn Gaddis Rose is the founding director of the Translation Research and Instruction Program at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Here, she responds to questions about identity, pedagogy, and assessment. The interview was conducted in Toronto at the MLA convention in December 1997 and continued on e-mail and in written correspondence between mid-January and early September 1998.
Read the full interview
AN INTERVIEW WITH EDITH GROSSMAN
By Maria Cecilla Salisbury
The following conversation took place in New York City during the Eighth International Conference of Translation at Barnard College. Edith Grossman (b. in Philadelphia, 1936) is today one of the most active and competent translators of Latin American literature. She rendered in English Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera and The General in his Labyrinth, the historic novel about the final months of Simon Bolivar. In 1992, under the title Maqroll, she translated three novellas by Alvaro Mutis, a writer whose recent works have brought him several major prizes in Europe.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD HOWARD
By Paul Mann
In the past twenty-five years, Richard Howard has published translations of more than 150 French books, works of fiction, drama, history, biography, and literary theory and criticism. The list includes many of the most important writers and works of the twentieth century: Andre Breton's Nadja, several novels by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Andre Gide's The Immoralist, plays by Jean Giraudoux, Gilles Deleuze's Proust and Signs, Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization, works by Roland Barthes and E. M. Cioran, and General De Gaulle's memoirs, to name only a few. This spring, David Godine will publish Richard Howard's first extended poetry translation, the complete Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA KING
By V. Louise Katainen
Martha King, an American Italianist who has lived in Tuscany since 1978, is a translator of the first order: her style is simple, clear, and meticulously faithful to the original. King specializes in the translation into English of 20th-century Italian women novelists and short story writers.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN R. LANE
By Ronald Christ
If, as Alfred Knopf has dubbed him, Gregory Rabassa is the Pope of Translators, then Helen R. Lane is the Empress--not Holy Roman, of course, but with a domain undiminished by any challenge such as arose from that earlier, dissimilar Pope Gregory (or from any modern Pope Joan, for that matter). To read Helen Lane's collected works--more than 60, translated from four languages--is to read a library of varying and important books, ranging from the widely-known The Three Marias, for which she received the Bulbenkian Translation Prize in 1979, and Octavio Paz's Alternating Current, for which she received the National Book Award in 1973, to the current When Memory Comes by Saul Friedlander and A History of Gastronomy by Jean-Francois Revel, which is now in press. Not to mention sub-titles for such brilliant films as Godard's Weekend or her very first fork, The Alchemists, which was published in 1961 by Grove Press as Part of its Profile Series. In the best sense, then, Helen Lane is a woman of letters, and as such she speaks with authority, grace and literary distinction about the works whose life she has made the work of her life.
Read the full interview
AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN LANE
By Clifford Landers
Clifford Landers: You have translated Nobel Prize laureates, among them Octavio Paz. Which of the Spanish-language writers was the most satisfying to translate?
Helen Lane: Easy. When I go to heaven, in the old-fashioned metaphor, I may take under my left arm as my masterwork Augusto Roa Basto's Yo el Supremo, because I think it is already a masterpiece of the 20th century and is certain to be read in the 21st. I try to choose books now at the end of my life that are going to go on.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON
Mr. Middleton, what were some of your initial experiences as a translator?
Well, I started translating as a schoolboy, but they were just schoolboy translations. I was entrusted with the task of translating a few odes of Horace. It was very difficult to do because my Latin wasn't that good, but at least I learned to appreciate the metrics of the Horatian ode. I can remember when I was in bed for a long time with a broken leg because somebody deliberately kicked me in a game of soccer, taking great pleasure in translating (16). The next thing I translated, about seven or eight years later, was also for fun--a poem by Walter von der Vogelweide. And then in Zurich when I was teaching and writing my Ph.D., I thought I'd translate a poem by Gottfried Keller that I liked very much, but it wasn't until someone put me on to Walser, and I became completely obsessed with Walser's prose, that I began to translate with publication as a goal.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH GREGORY RABASSA
By Thomas Hoeksema
This article on Gregory Rabassa initiates a regular feature in Translation Review that will focus on the role of the literary translator. Each issue will contain an extensive examination and evaluation of a prominent literary translator. The series is designed primarily to emphasize the translator as creative writer, and to call attention to the growing acknowledgement of the literary translator as a skilled artist. "The Translator's Voice" will be a forum for the translator's views on the art and process of translation. Because the translation problems are different, the series will feature translators of all literary genres.
Read the full interview
THE TRANSLATOR'S VOICE: AN INTERVIEW WITH HIROAKI SATO
By Nicholas J. Teele
Hiroaki Sato (b. 1942) is unique among translators of poetry in that he translates from his native language, Japanese, into a foreign language, English. In order to do this successfully, Mr. Sato has seen the advantage of adding to his own considerable genius for the sounds and nuances of the English language by enlisting the assistance of such very able American translators and poets as Burton Watson and Michael O'Brien, who further refine his translations. In resolutely trying to transpose into English as much of the tone and meaning of the original poem as possible, Hiroaki Sato has consciously selected those poems which most clearly lend themselves to translation. Through such a process, Mr. Sato cleverly avoids the traps of a translator who tries to tackle poems that are overly difficult to translate, and at the same time steers away from the need for excessive notes to explain poems to readers unfamiliar with Japanese culture. The results are to be seen in the nine volumes of translations of Japanese poetry Hiroaki Sato has published since 1973, beginning with Poems of Princess Shikishi (d. 1201). His most recent book is Chieko & Other Poems of Takamura Kotaro (d. 1956), published this spring by the University Press of Hawaii. Concerning his work, Gary Snyder has said, "Hiroaki Sato is perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English."
Read the full interview
THE INTIMATE PRESENCE OF THE OTHER: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN
By James Hoggard
Margaret Sayers Peden is one of the most highly respected and prolific translators of Spanish-language literature. Ceremonially honored by the Feria Internacional del Libro on December 4, 1998 in Guadalajara, she has brought into English major works by Pablo Neruda, Carlos Fuentes, Emilio Carballido, Isabel Allende, Juan Rulfo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and numerous others. Her many awards include PEN's Gregory Kolovakos Award (co-winner in 1992), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and an Honorary Life membership in the American Literary Translators Association, among others.
Read the full interview
ESPERANTO AND THE LITERARY TRANSLATOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH HUMPHREY TONKIN
By Thomas Hoeksema
Mention of the word "Esperanto" stimulates a number of rather predictable responses--"a game for linguistic theorists"; "another futile attempt to overcome the curse of Babel"; "synthetic languages have never worked."
Few well-educated individuals realize that Esperanto, the only project for an international language to attain the status of a complete language with its own world-wide speech community, has been in existence now for almost one hundred years. Even fewer are aware that there has been a revival of interest in Esperanto during the past decade on an international scale that demands critical attention and appraisal.
Read the full interview
THE MAKING OF A TRANSLATOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH CAROL VOLK
By Lee Fahnestock
Carol Volk is one of the few independent souls endeavoring to earn a living entirely through literary translation. Nine years out of graduate school, her dedication and industry have already produced 10 published books, with four more to appear this year and others underway, along with a considerable array of shorter works in translation and related fields. It seems a very good moment to interview a young translator with excellent training and high enthusiasm, at this early stage in her career.
Read the full interview
THE WRITER AS TRANSLATOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN WATSON
By James Hoggard
Ellen Watson's most recent book is We Live In Bodies (Alice James, 1997), a collection of her own poems that has been awarded the $6,000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. She is also the translator of The Alphabet In The Park: Selected Poems of Adelia Prado, seven novels, a biography, and a children's book from the Brazilian Portuguese. Translation Editor of the Massachusetts Review, she conducts writing workshops regularly.
Read the full interview
|
