What a Translator Can Learn From Marguerite Duras

A translator will have to face a myriad of philosophical problems throughout the course of his or her translation, not the least of which concerns itself with authorial intent. What does this story mean to the author? What did the author want to do for the reader? And does it matter? It’s certainly a translation nonetheless if the translator works exclusively with the text and its language, but how much more richer would that same text be if the author his or herself were studied just as extensively? These questions take on another fascinating turn if we look at the life and work of Marguerite Duras, who’d said, “L’histoire de ma vie, de votre vie, elle n’existe pas, ou bien alors il s’agit de lexicologie. Le roman de ma vie, de nos vies, oui, mais pas l’histoire.” (The story of my life, of your life, doesn’t exist, or only perhaps as a study of words. The novel of my life, of our lives exists, yes, but not the life itself.”) La Maison Française at NYU, in honor of her centennial, has presented now two biographers, Laure Alder (Marguerite Duras) and Jean Vallier (C’était Marguerite Duras) with a third to appear in December (Camille Laurens). What the biographers have discussed presents some interesting perspectives on authorial intent as well as, of course, Duras herself.

The body of Duras’ work drew inspiration from her own life, something that we might loosely describe as autofiction, which has encouraged scholars to look to her novels for biographical clues. Vallier emphasized that she wrote to discover who she was; to relive and situate her experiences. But as she remembered, she also disremembered (as do we all) and reimagined, essentially altering her life stories to better illustrate desire. True to the term, the heroines of her novels are not strictly herself, but a fictionalized version of herself. And given this, attempting to understand her intentions by means of a biography would be counterproductive. Vallier ended his presentation speculating that many biographical “facts” were compromised so that the deeper, more emotional realities could be conveyed (they being at once what really happened, the memory of what happened, what could have happened instead… for what is felt is comprised of both the lived and unlived.)

Time and time again, when asked to explain her novels, Duras would say “It’s in the text.” “It” may not represent a biographical truth, despite how heavily her novels drew from her own life, but “it” represents a creative interpretation of that life. “It” is successful as a world of its own that doesn’t need the benevolent presence of another to explain it. The text itself should be the first place a translator goes for answers.

But let us say “texts” rather than “text,” for a translator would do well to understand the tropes that would appear over the course of her work, the reappearing characters, and most importantly, her style. Alder mentioned that her reading public was struck by her narrative voice; it was a voice familiar yet foreign grâce à the influence that Vietnamese had upon her French. As translators, we’re challenged first and foremost by the language, and in this instance, by the melding of two wildly disparate literary traditions (French and Vietnamese). Immersing yourself in the texts some gives way to the languages that compose it: her style, French literary style and Vietnamese literary style, asking au fond an understanding of these languages and how they work together.

Laure Adler was fortunate to know Marguerite Duras, and I was struck how differently Adler spoke of her as opposed to Vallier’s presentation. Where Vallier focused on her biography in a very American way (records, data, exhaustively) Adler wove in the emotional landscape, major events (whether real or exaggerated) and literary influences that contributed to her style. As a translator I found Adler’s presentation more useful, for she described Duras’ creative process as well as those other authors who would inspire her own writing. I was more interested to learn, for example, that she read and reread Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim) late into her old age, that she enjoyed T.S. Eliot and the works of infamous navel officer Pierre Loti.

Duras’ principle translator Barbara Bray had the good fortune of being her friend as well as her champion in Anglo literary circles. Their relationship exemplifies an ideal in the translator-author relationship: Bray believed in the power of Duras’ work and was struck by the language. She went on to translate the bulk of Duras’ work, in prime position to observe the evolution of Duras and her writing. For this, English-speaking readers have access to some exceptionally beautiful translations of Duras’ work. Missing from the list of translations, lamented Vallier, is one of Duras’ first novels, La Vie Tranquille. I was shocked to learn that Écrire (1993) and C’est tout (1995) remain untranslated as well.

Bray, who passed away in 2010, left us hard act to follow.

Vallier and Adler emphasized her enigmatic personality, and the overwhelming scope of her work… perhaps as a writer who lived by means of her novels; perhaps as a writer whose mind was never silent. Vallier encouraged readers to play close attention to nature’s presence in her novels, and Adler emphasized how vividly Duras’ characters came to her. While its perhaps impossible to decipher, as a psychologist would decipher, the “authorial intent” or “significance” behind her novels, a translator’s research should nevertheless immerse the his or herself in a body of text and the effect it has on the language. (Gauged by conversation with readers? Contextualized by public response?) Duras is an author that left a considerable impact upon the literary landscape, and regardless of her intent, the repercussions of her prose is something that readers can discover personally.

Vallier’s presentation wasn’t the last of them! Camille Laurens will be by La Maison Française on December 10th to round out the Marguerite Duras Centennial Lectures.  

Patrick Stancil Discusses His Translation of The Sleepworkers at NYU Bookstore

From 6 pm to 7:30 pm on November 18, NYU Literary Translation: French to English alumnus Patrick Stancil read and discussed his translation of Cyrille Martinez’s The Sleepworker which was published on October 14, 2014 by Coach House Press.

Patrick was joined by the program’s director Emmanuelle Ertel who read excerpts from the original French text followed by Patrick’s reading of the English translation. Emmanuelle followed the reading with some questions for Patrick about his translation process and experience with this book. Patrick and Emmanuelle read a couple of more excerpts, and then the audience asked Patrick some of their own questions.

Through both Emmanuelle and Patrick’s discussion and the discussion with the audience, the audience was able to gain a better understanding about translation work in general and Patrick’s personal translation experience.

Patrick discovered this book while he was pursuing his MA at NYU and a classmate of his recommended the book to him, and he was drawn in by the “scandalous” nature of the book. The book is loosely based off Andy Warhol and John Giorno and their film Sleep; however, Patrick did not research Andy Warhol or John Girono because he didn’t want any research he would have done to influence the overall translation of the book since it is only loosely based off of these two men.

There were a few difficulties Patrick encountered while translating The Sleepwalker. He said one of the most difficult things was finding or creating words that were made-up words in the French text. Another difficulty with the translation of the book was that there was not a clear overall plot.

One difficulty Patrick did not have to work through was translating the title. The original title of the book, Deux jeunes artistes au chômage, was already translated to The Sleepworkers by an employee at the French Publishers’ Agency. Patrick said that he did not want to change the title once he decided to translate the book because when he read the book, that’s what the title was, so to him, the book was already entitled The Sleepworkers.

Patrick also discussed the role the author, Cyrille Martinez, played in the translation process. Although Martinez speaks little English, he was present in the translation process. Patrick was able to talk to him about questions he had regarding the text, specifically those regarding the tone of the text.

Martinez also went to Toronto, Canada with Patrick for the launch party of the book which was a pajama themed party because of the title, The Sleepworker. Patrick said that because of the amount of time he spent working with the English text during the editing and translation process, the text started to feel like his own, and in an way it is. He realizes that the story and content are Martinez’s, but the English version is his.

It was fun to hear about everything Patrick has experienced with this translation, including when he saw his book at a New York City bookstore and an employee told him they are ordering more copies. Congratulations on your publication, Patrick!

“What is translation? Profanation of the Dead”: The spat over Nabokov’s Eugene Onegin

As we’ve no doubt come to discover in our efforts working with French, the entire exercise of translation is one beset by compromises and imperfections, strategic adjustments, additions and elisions and all the rest. There is–this is all to say–no such thing as a perfect translation, and indeed, in order to render even a passable one (which often feels like the best one can do), many decisions and changes have to be made. In no arena of translation is this balancing act more an issue than in poetry, where formal aspects–aesthetics, rhythm, style–are paramount, and the mission of the translator necessarily includes a lot more than a literal re-rendering of content. Thanks to this daunting complexity that poetry denotes for the would-be re-renderer (not to mention all the messy social and political dimensions present in the navigation of languages and cultures), to undertake and complete a poetic translation can constitute a fairly controversial act, sometimes spill over into real aggression, with real principles on the line. One such case is that of Vladimir Nabokov and his 1965 translation of Pushkin’s epic poem Eugene Onegin.

Nabokov, famously erudite and known for his acrobatic prose style in Russian, English and probably every other language, undertook his translation after publicly lambasting a translation of Onegin by Walter Arndt, wherein Arndt did his best to faithfully render the original’s complex rhyming scheme (iambic pentameter) and stanza form. Nabokov regarded Arndt’s efforts as a fool’s errand, believing it was impossible to maintain fidelity to the original content and replicate its poetic structure at the same time. The only way, he contended, to accurately re-render the poem into English would be to do away with all considerations of form (using free verse, in effect) and focus entirely on maintaining a literal, word-to-word fidelity to the original text–which decision, of course, proved to be far more controversial than Arndt’s own.

The reviews for Nabokov’s Onegin (published in 1965 in four lengthy volumes, two of which contained only annotations!) were a bit bewildered to say the least, and one article in particular–by the enormously influential critic Edmund Wilson in the New York Review of Books–sparked a venomous spat between the two writers, and the dissolution of their then-strong friendship. Wilson’s original review is full of harsh criticism for Nabokov and his “unnecessarily clumsy style, which seems deliberately to avoid point and elegance.” Wilson, no slouch in the wit department himself, piles on dig after dig, at one point noting that “The commentary, the appendices, and the scholarly presentation suffer in general from the same faults as Nabokov’s translation—that is, mainly from a lack of common sense.”

So naturally Nabokov responded with his own rant, published in the form of a letter to the magazine a month or so later, taking Wilson to task, offered as a precursor to an eventual “complete account of the bizarre views on the art of translation which have been expressed by some critics of my work on Pushkin.” In the meantime, Nabokov lays into Wilson’s own mistakes of Russian and assumes a tone of total incredulity that the latter would dare correct a native speaker, casting himself as “a patient confidant of [Wilson’s] long and hopeless infatuation with the Russian language,” noting that his friend couldn’t read Onegin without “garbling every second word and turning Pushkin’s iambic line into a kind of spastic anapaest,” and responding to a particular criticism with a terse “I do not think Mr. Wilson should try to teach me how to pronounce this or any other Russian vowel.”

Anyway, even if you have no particular horse in this race and don’t care one way or the other about literal fidelity vs. style approximation in translation, these letters are pretty extraordinary, and worth reading just to see these two giants duking it out in a public tete-a-tete. Of course, Wilson responded to the response, the debate raged on, but you get it; Nabokov’s admittedly eccentric decision to render Pushkin’s iambics into free verse had in effect resulted in a pretty major scandal (as far as translation scandals go, at least). His Onegin is still regarded as an anomaly in the annals of translation (probably because there hasn’t been any writer since with his unique combination of off-the-charts intelligence and strict, old-school literary principles), but his resolve never shifted an inch. In case you were still at all unclear on where he stood on translation, he even wrote a poem (in the form of so-called Pushkin stanzas!) entitled “On Translating Eugene Onegin.” Here is its none-too-subtle opening: “What is translation? On a platter / A poet’s pale and glaring head, / A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter, / And profanation of the dead.”

Another Successful French Literature Night at Cafe Cornelia!

On Thursday, September 25th, the current French Translation class displayed our hard work and skills when we read our translations on stage at Cafe Cornelia. This soirée‘s theme was “supertitles,” and our selections of from David Thomas’s On ne va pas se raconter des histoires definitely fit the bill! The short stories, having titles like Pistolet à eau, Anniversaire, and Je me manquerai, contained themes of love, separation, and loneliness, all painted with David Thomsas’s unique brand of humor.

The audience found themselves laughing out loud at the little banalities of life that these stories highlight, as Professor Emmanuelle Ertel read the original stories in French, and her students (Amanda Islambouli, Sisi Betances, Dominique Bouavichith, Janet Lee, Grace McQuillan, Mark Iosifescu, and Carrina LaCorata) read the English translations that we’d each worked on and had reviewed by the class.

We were hardly the only stars of the night, as NYU’s French Translation Alumnus Victoria Sheehan and Isabelle Milkoff kicked things off with an alternating French and English reading of the wonderfully titled How to find love when you’re a fifty year old parisian woman and other crucial issues by Pascal Morin. We also had the pleasure of hearing Tom Radigan and Maxime Touillet read us alternating French and English passages of The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who Got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe that had us all howling with laughter at its ridiculous scenarios. 

With these very super supertitles, the chuckles we all shared, and the great company over glasses of French wine, the night was nothing short of magical. 

If you’d like to catch us next time, be sure to make it out to Cafe Cornelia in the West Village on December 18th at 6 o’ clock! The readings should no doubt be interesting, as the theme is Gay and Lesbian Contemporary French Literature.

 

 

The Two Worlds Collide: French and American Literary Journals Ensemble

Studying literature (and translation) in New York City has an indisputable advantage over many a metropole for here the editors of enviable publications are members of a larger community of which you are suddenly a part. I spent this Friday and Saturday at the French Embassy sitting in on French & American Journals:  A Literary Salon, a flyer passed around after a roundtable at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge tipped me off several weeks before, where subjects very near and dear to me as a student of literary translation were addressed by the writers and editors very much involved in literature and its role in an increasingly globalized and digitized world.

Of greatest interest to me was Panel 3, composed of the founders of La Vie des Idées, Public Books and a contributing editor for Jacobin because La Vie des Idées and Public Books are in medias res a collaboration on the Picketty Effect. The two publications are in many ways mirror images of the other: their ambition is to present scholarly work on a digital platform so that its a) more accessible to the laymen/women and b) gives scholars another outlet aside from academic journals whose editorial process is often “glacial.” (Sharon Marcus’ word). Post-Capital, a much-discussed french novel by Thomas Picketty translated into English under the same title, editors Lucie Campos and Florent Guénard (La Vie des Idées) and Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom (Public Books) found in each other a likely partner to expand the discussion about capital, labour and inequality. Here, at the salon, they finally got to meet each other in person; the entirety of the collaboration (which involved a fair amount of translation) was done online, per the spirit of the novel and the spirit of our age.

Telecommuting was something that was brought up several times over across the board. The Believer doesn’t have an office (I know, me too, I’d imagined that their office had a communal turtle, colorful drafting tables, probably a few plants…) which means that the staff has to exchange ideas, images, articles, etc., online. Several other editors spoke of the internet with marked frustration. The transition for the more established journal came with growing pains, and the unedited content that fills the internet (this piece included) seemingly overwhelms professional articles.

The internet, this medium (and that’s just it: is it a medium? Is it a space? Is it thought?) allows journals to publish at little to no cost, but so can everyone else, and without a physical good to sell (a printed journal with a codex and binding) how can a journal sustain itself financially? Lucie Campos (La Vie des Idées) acknowledged that the journal was part of a larger institution, le Collège de France. The college and several other governmental institutions carry the brunt of the costs. The same can be said for Socio, Diacritics, Open Letters Monthly… many, many other journals of course that weren’t represented at the salon. Other revues, Inculte and Labyrinthe never intended to make money.

What the internet has allowed, je reprenne La Vie des Idées and Public Books, is in my opinion well worth the economic models’ upset. The transatlantic collaborative is the perfect example of what I hope to follow more and more frequently. Literary Journals could become a major benefactor of translated works. Every issue of The Believer is translated into Le Believer, and Socio’s editor-in-chief Atlani-Duault petitioned the translators in the audience to consider translating their issues.

Every panel ended with a list of novels or texts that the panelists hoped would be translated, whether it be from French to English or from English to French. Keep tabs on frenchculture.org where the list of recommendations will be posted bientôt.

Alumni Accomplishments and Highlights

NYU Master of Arts in Literary Translation: French – English

Accomplishments & Highlights

 

Three years after its creation by Emmanuelle Ertel, this one of a kind Masters program can boast a myriad of awards, grants, residencies and publications among its graduates, a large majority of who have pursued careers directly related to French and/or translation. Bolstered by courses taught by NYU professors including Eugene Nicole, Richard Sieburth, and Judith Miller, as well as invaluable mentoring by Emmanuelle Ertel and workshop leader Alyson Waters, the program’s alumni have been recognized by institutions such as Pen America and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and have signed publication contracts with prestigious publishers such as New Directions, the New Press, Coach House Books, and Yale University Press. Here are a few highlights, organized alphabetically:

Chris Clarke (2012):

Chris is currently pursuing a PhD in French (with a declared specialization in translation studies) at CUNY; he spent the last year in Paris on an exchange with Paris X Nanterre, where he taught as a Maître de Langue. His translation publications include excerpts from Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, published by New Directions in 2013, and “The Stations of the Cry,” by Olivier Salon, published by Words Without Borders in 2013. In June, Chris received a research grant to spend ten days at the Queneau archives in Belgium. He is an associated member of an Oulipo-themed research seminar/group based in France, which is a joint project between Paris III, Lyon and Oxford.  He will be heading up one of the groups for the digitization and encoding of the Oulipo archives.

Chris’ upcoming projects include two books for Wakefield Press, as well as shorter translations of work by Olivier Salon. He is also preparing translations for a potential anthology of selected works by Raymond Queneau.

Emily DeLong Harris (2014):

This fall, Emily heads to Paris where she will take MA classes in French literature at Université Paris 4/La Sorbonne.

Heidi Denman (2012):

Heidi translated Incandescences by Pius Ngandu Nkashama for Professor Nkashama P. Ngandu at LSU for possible publication.

Serene Hakim (2013):

Serene is based in Boston, where she previously interned at David R. Godine, Publisher. Her duties included working closely with the editor and reading French books to be potentially translated. Serene currently works for a literary agent. 

Christiana Hill (2013):

Christiana received a French Voices award in 2014 for her translation of Agnès Desarthe’s Partie de chasse, which she has submitted to several publishers. She also worked at Geotext Translations, a translation company that specializes in legal translation. Her duties included evaluation of documents to be translated for language, cost, and any formatting concerns. She also assisted with reviewing French>English translations.

This fall, Christiana begins SUNY Binghamton’s PhD program in Translation Studies (within the Comparative Literature department), for which she received full tuition and a 3-year teaching stipend.

Allison Schein (2012):

Allison’s co-translation of Marie-Monique Robin’s Our Daily Poison, translated with fellow NYU alumnus Lara Vergnaud, is forthcoming from the New Press in November 2014. The French Cultural Services awarded the translated book a Hemingway Grant in 2014.

Allison has been working with author Paul Kix, translating French-language source material, including works by François de La Rochefoucauld, for research purposes. She is also working on her translation of a play that is on its third run in Paris and is still touring around Europe: Haïm: à la lumière d’un violon.

In addition to her translation endeavors, Allison works at Chanel as a paralegal/translator. Allison reports that her experience at NYU was integral to her being hired, and that because of her translation background, she has benefited from a number of great opportunities within the company, including working directly with the CEO on translations of speeches and internal communications.

Yareli Servin (2014):

Yareli as working as a project manager for Akorbi, a Texas-based translation company.

Victoria Sheehan (2014):

Recent graduate Victoria is awaiting news on a position for the international translation company, Transperfect.

Patrick Stancil (2013):

Patrick received a French Voices Award in 2014, and was short-listed for the grand prize, for his translation of Cyrille Martinez’s Deux jeunes artistes au chômage, which is being published on October 14, 2014 by Coach House Press as “The Sleepworker.” He also translated two children’s books on architecture that are forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press.

In addition to his translation endeavors, Patrick works at New York University as an administrative aid at the Institute of French Studies. He recently participated in a panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival and will be attending the launch of “The Sleepworker” in Toronto in October. In November, he will be reading signing copies of his translation at the NYU bookstore.

Hannah Stell (2013):

Hannah works as a translation project manager for TransPerfect (receiving translation jobs from Sales, identifying the type of text and booking appropriate translators, and doing the final proofread of the file before delivery). Her most recent translation was a paid commission for the writer Francois Bon.

Sophia Tejeiro (2012):

Sophie’s translation of a play by Hervé Blutsch, GIZON, was staged at the Cornelia Street Café in 2012. Shortly after graduating, Sophie moved to France to work as a teaching assistant, and also participated in the Bus Bilingue project as an afterschool English teacher.

Lara Vergnaud (2012):

Lara received a PEN/Heim Translation award in 2013 for her translation of Zahia Rahmani’s France, story of a childhood, which was her thesis translation while at NYU. She has since signed a publication contract for the work with Yale University Press; the translation is forthcoming in 2015. Her co-translation of Marie-Monique Robin’s Our Daily Poison, translated with fellow NYU alumnus Allison Schein, is forthcoming from the New Press in November 2014.

Lara’s translations have appeared in Inventory, Pen America, Salon II, TWO LINES, and The Brooklyn Rail. In 2012, she was invited to participate in a translator’s residency in Lagrasse, France coordinated by l’Ecole de Litterature.

Peter Vorissis (2012):

Peter translated a book for the film industry after graduating, as well as excerpts of a graphic novel that were published by The Brooklyn Rail. This fall, he begins a PhD program in Comparative Literature (focusing on French, English, Greek, and translation) at the University of Michigan.

Margaret Yang (2013):

Margaret has done freelance translation work for a NYU journalism professor who is working on a book, which draws from extensive correspondence in French; Margaret translated about 125 letters from French to English.