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Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translator’s role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, “My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented.”
For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: “Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable.”
Throughout the four chapters of this bracing volume, Grossman’s belief in the crucial significance of the translator’s work, as well as her rare ability to explain the intellectual sphere that she inhabits as interpreter of the original text, inspires and provokes the reader to engage with translation in an entirely new way.
Grossman is at her eloquent best not when she makes plaintive, resentful demands that the "bloated international conglomerates" owning the major publishing houses face up to their responsibility to foster literature in translation, but rather when she reveals her joy in her work and her true inspiration…In the end, Grossman warmly…and gratefully rehearses the twofold answer to the question of her title: translation matters because it is an expression and an extension of our humanity, the secret metaphor of all literary communication; and because the creation of any literary translation is (or at least must be) an original writing, not a pathetic shadow or tracing of the inaccessible "original" but the creation, indeed, of a second—and as we have seen, a third and a ninth—but always a new work, in another language.
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Bertie Noland
reviewed Why Translation Matters on August 09, 2012 Why Translation Matters
Edith Grossman, renowned Spanish-to-English literary translator, has taken on the challenge of explaining why translation matters. She scarcely mentions non-literary translation, so a better title would be: Why does literary translation matter?
Another book on the subject of translation is "Is that a Fish in your Eye?" by David Bellos. He does discuss other forms of translation, such as business translation, and offers a good explication of Google Translate, which is clearly not on Ms. Grossman's radar screen.
Both books are extended essays on the art, value, and essence of translation. Both are thoughtful, philosophical, and replete with intriguing references.
Both make the point that without translated literature, we would be deprived of access to world literature with all of its cultural treasures. Ms. Grossman points out that only 2-3 percent of books published in the United States and the United Kingdom are literary translations. I regard this fact as a wonderful counter-argument to those who maintain that there is no value in studying foreign languages. Essentially, monolingual Americans are cut off from the vast majority of global literary production, even if the most prodigious classics are available.
Ms. Grossman explains the enormous challenge posed by the task of "bringing over" works of prose and poetry into English. She devotes a chapter to her experience translating Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and a separate chapter to her approach to a variety of poems, which are reproduced in both Spanish and English. She offers a very persuasive case that literary translation is a highly creative endeavor worthy of more recognition. Consider this cri du coeur about the low standing of literary translators:
"Putting to the side for a moment the dire state of publishing or the lamentable tendency of too many publishers to treat translators cavalierly or dismiss them as irrelevant, the fact is that it is no wonder translators are so frequently ignored. We seem to be a familiar part of the natural landscape'so customary and commonplace that we run the risk of becoming invisible."
This reminds me of a passage in Ms. Grossman's own fine translation of "The Bad Girl" by Mario Vargas Llosa. A professional diplomatic translator/interpreter is counseling his protégé to abandon his foray into literary translation: "Your livelihood is at risk. A literary translator aspires to be a writer: that is, he's a frustrated pencil pusher. Somebody who'll never be resigned to disappearing into his work, as good interpreters do. Don't renounce your status as a nonexistent gentleman, dear friend, unless you wish to end up a clochard."
This book represents Ms. Grossman's rejoinder.
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