Here’s an interesting article posted on Asymptote about the differences in Spanish and English writing. Even though it’s about Spanish in particular, the ideas can easily be carried over into French as well. The article provides some interesting in sights about the history of English writing and why we tend to have more repetition in our writing. The link is pasted below. Enjoy!
http://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2015/08/17/different-beauty-equal-beauty/
If any one is interested or knows someone who is (or might be) interested in learning more about the MA in Literary Translation: French to English program in the NYU French Department, check out this video on YouTube:
The Cornelia Street Cafe reading on February 25, 2015 was a success! Here are some pictures from the night which was dedicated to translations of French author Patrick Mondiano. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the next Cornelia Street Reading on Wednesday, April 22, 2015 devoted to the comic play Bien Lotis by Phillipe Malone. See you then!
Check out some pictures from the last Cornelia Street Café reading of 2014 that took place on December 18, 2014 with a theme of contemporary gay/lesbian fiction! And be sure to come to the first reading of 2015 dedicated to the works of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Patrick Modiano at the Cornelia Street Café on Wednesday, February 25, at 6:00 pm!
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.”
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.
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.
Theses are completed. Defense dates are approaching. And new students are getting ready for classes to start at NYU!
Welcome to the program Carrina, Maria, Janet, and Grace!!!
We look forward to hearing from you :]
We started classes on Tuesday, May 27th.
We are taking Creative Writing (in English) with Professor Rufo Quintavalle, and Translation of Classics (en français) with Professor Hédi Kaddour.
I think they’ll both be useful for us as translators– because we are writing as well as expressing the message of the author.
Prof. Quintavalle gave us two quotes to ponder about writing, the other day.
“The fiction I’m most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. None of my stories really happened, of course. But there’s always something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may be the starting place. Here’s an example: ‘That’s the last Christmas you’ll ever ruin for us!’ I was drunk when I heard that, but I remembered it. And later, much later, when I was sober using only that one line and other things I imagined, imagined so accurately that they could have happened, I made a story—‘A Serious Talk.’”
– Raymond Carver
“The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.
It follows from all this that there is no technique that can be discovered and applied to make it possible for one to write. If you go to a school where there are classes in writing, these classes should not be to teach you how to write, but to teach you the limits and possibilities of words and the respect due to them. One thing that is always with the writer– no matter how long he has written or how good he is– is the continuing process of learning how to write.”
– Flannery O’Connor
French and the city 