Rosemary Arrojo - Fictional Translators: Rethinking Translation through Literature

Through close readings of select stories and novels by well-known writersfrom different literary traditions, Fictional Translators invites readers torethink the main clichs associated with translations and shines a light onthe transformative character of the translators role and the relationshipsthat can be established between originals and their reproductions. Arrojoexpertly builds her arguments on the basis of texts such as the following:

Cortzars Letter to a Young Lady in Paris

Walshs Footnote

Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray and Poes The Oval Portrait

Borgess Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Funes, His Memory, and Death and the Compass

Kafkas The Burrow and Kosztolnyis Kornl Esti

Saramagos The History of the Siege of Lisbon and Babels Guy de Maupassant

Scliars Footnotes and Calvinos If on a Winters Night a Traveler

Cervantess Don Quixote

Fictional Translators provides stimulating material for refl ection not onlyon the processes associated with translation as an activity that inevitablytransforms meaning, but, also, on the common prejudices that haveunderestimated its productive role in the shaping of identities. This book iskey reading for students and researchers of Literary Translation, ComparativeLiterature, and Translation Theory.

Rosemary Arrojo is Professor of Comparative Literature at BinghamtonUniversity, USA.

New Perspectives in Translation and Interpreting Studies

Series editors:

Michael Cronin holds a Personal Chair in the Faculty of Humanities andSocial Sciences at Dublin City University.

Moira Inghilleri is Director of Translation Studies in the ComparativeLiterature Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The New Perspectives in Translation and Interpreting Studies series aims toaddress changing needs in the fi elds of translation studies and interpretingstudies. The series features works by leading scholars in both disciplines, onemerging and up-to-date topics. Key features of the titles in this series areaccessibility, relevance, and innovation.

These lively and highly readable texts provide an exploration into variousareas of translation and interpreting studies for undergraduate andpostgraduate students of translation studies, interpreting studies, andcultural studies.

Cities in Translation
Sherry Simon

Translation in the Digital Age
Michael Cronin

Translation and Geography
Federico Italiano

Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies
Edwin Gentzler

Eco-Translation
Michael Cronin

Translation and Migration
Moira Inghilleri

Fictional Translators
Rosemary Arrojo

Rethinking Translation Through Literature

Rosemary Arrojo

First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Rosemary Arrojo

The right of Rosemary Arrojo to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-82713-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-82714-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73872-7 (ebk)

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To the memory of my parents, Catharina Visconte and Raphael Arroyo

I am grateful to all the countless colleagues, students, and friends with whom, in the last few decades, I have had the privilege of sharing my enthusiasm for critical theory and literary fiction in multiple venues and institutions not only in Brazil and the United States, but also in other countries such as Turkey, Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Northern Ireland. My analyses of most of the stories and novels discussed here were developed throughout many years and I am especially thankful to the colleagues who have edited previous versions of some of the pieces that I have revisited for this book. With their careful readings, these colleagues have helped me sharpen my thinking and refine my writing: Edwin Gentzler, Maria Tymoczko, Maria Calzada Prez, Jos Santaemilia, Jos Mara Rodrguez Garca, Carol Maier, Franoise Massardier-Kenney, Brian J. Baer, Klaus Kaindl, and Karlheinz Spitzl. I am forever indebted to Ben Van Wyke, who has been kind enough to read most of what I have written in the last decade or so and always offers me pertinent feedback and teaches me some English. I would like to thank Routledge and, more specifically, Michael Cronin, whose comments on my work have been stimulating and extremely helpful; and Laura Sandford, who has played the role of a kind, understanding publisher in the story of my life in the past two years. I am deeply grateful to my sister, Ana Maria Arrojo, whose friendship and care have been fundamental, particularly in the difficult times that coincided with the writing of most of the chapters that constitute this book.

This book has been engendered by my long-held conviction that fictional representations of the work of translators will shine a special, often unexpected light on the scene of translation as an asymmetrical encounter between different languages, interests, and perspectives. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, these representations are likely to allow some glimpses into what might be lurking behind the prevailing clichs associated with such an encounter and, therefore, into what is often repressed, barely theorized, or even acknowledged by conventional narratives about translators and their practice, particularly when this practice involves texts highly valued like those labeled as literary. In contrast to the usually sober discourse of scholarly studies, fictional texts focusing on issues of translation, authorship, and reading can provide a more nuanced frame of reference as they introduce us to translator characters that oftentimes reveal their inner struggles while facing the ethical conundrums associated with their work and the relationships they are expected to establish with author and/or reader figures that also have a stake in the process.

The storylines examined in this book feature intriguing versions of the all too familiar dilemmas that have informed the common discourse on questions of translation and interpretation for millennia and are mostly associated with the suspicious status of the translated text as the translators potentially inaccurate replacement of somebody elses original in another language and context, a replacement that inevitably fails to repeat sameness and for that is often perceived as a threat that can unsettle the alleged authority of the original and/or its author. A critical examination of these issues is especially relevant in the context of contemporary viewpoints that recognize the interfering role of translators not as something that needs to be curtailed or penalized, but as part and parcel of the process that inevitably transforms texts across languages and whose circumstances and motivations should be carefully investigated. I am referring to the importance of post-Nietzschean thought for an understanding of interpretation, often represented by approaches associated with deconstruction, poststructuralism, gender, and postcolonial studies that challenge essentialist conceptions of language and text and underscore the interpreters and the translators authorial role in the shaping of meanings and identities. As the translators visibility became the focal point of such trends within the discipline of translation studies, we started paying closer attention to the strong link that binds questions of language to power, and, therefore, to what ultimately anchors the hierarchical relationships that have defined the production and the reception of translations.