The Three Paradoxes of Literary Translation

Publication Date

2011

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Publication Title

Tabula Poetica

Abstract

There is a deep paradox at the heart of the literary translation: the translator works from an original to create a work of literature in a new language, but since it’s a copy, by its very nature it cannot be an original and thus cannot be literature. So we may as well all hang up our hats and go home. After all, there cannot be “world literature” if there cannot be translation. Luckily, what I’ve just told you is a lie. It’s a lie because there is a second and deeper paradox at the heart of the translator’s craft: translators create new originals in the new language which by their very nature cannot be copies. We are musicians interpreting a score, not interlingual fax machines. However, because we believe the opposite---that we are creating copies---we therefore don’t judge our translations in the same way that writers judge original literary works. Thus Vladimir Nabokov declares, “The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase” Following Nabokov and hoping to make good copies, we make clumsy literature. This is why translations read like, well, translations. What can be done about these paradoxes? That is the burden of this lecture.

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Lecture given at Chapman University in 2011

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