Vídeo da entrevista com tradutores na Flip 2010

A conversa com dois tradutores literários de obras brasileiras sobre a qual falei no post sobre a Flip que você pode ler aqui está disponível em vídeo num canal do YouTube criado pelo Itaú Cultural que patrocinou alguns eventos da Casa de Cultura este ano. É um trecho pequeno, mas vale a pena. Confira no YouTube.

Os tradutores Alison Entrekin e Berthold Zilly falam sobre os desafios de traduzir

obras como Cidade de Deus  e Os Sertões

Translation Tips on Twitter | Dicas de tradução no Twitter

If you translate into English, you might want to follow @anglais (http://twitter.com/anglais), the twitter of Anglocom, an agency based in Quebec City. As you know, tweets are 140 characters long only, but @anglais manages to pack very useful short tips in their messages. Tweets like "The Translator’s Checklist: Would the sentence be more readable if I cut it in two? Do so if the meaning and connotation stay the same", or "The Translator’s Checklist: Can any nouns be changed to verbs to add movement to the text? Using verbs will make your text sound more Eng." are simple yet excellent, clear, and to the point. I like to read them and remind myself of some things or even learn new stuff! I've had a few "oh, yeah" moments following them. I think Anglocom should put all of this together in a book or e-book.

(For information on Twitter, check http://twitter.com/about#about. Some people think Twitter is useless, that they don't want to know what other people are doing. This is not what Twitter is about. It might not be for you, but you shoudl at least know that Twitter is being used by professionals to exchange information and ideas. I suggest you look for translators on Twitter and see for yourself. My twitter: @marisebarros)

Translation Alchemists | Alquimistas da tradução

We've been "talking about" literary translation here so I thought this article, The Literary Translation Alchemists, by Anne-Marie Deraspe, published in Tabaret, the magazine of the University of Ottawa, would be interesting to complement our discussion. Some of the opinions in it don't relate exclusively to literary translation, for example: “Translators and interpreters have always played a determining role in the development of their societies and have been fundamental to the unfolding of intellectual history itself.”  (Jean Delisle, professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Translation and Interpretation). If you're ever feeling frustrated because you're translating something "dry", think about this - you're contributing to the development of society, whatever it is you are translating! :-)

Another rather obvious statement is also a good reminder, especially for publishers: “You can’t be an educated reader without reading translations. Otherwise, you would have to speak an incalculable number of languages.” (Sheila Fischman, translator). And for those who aspire to be writers themselves: “Translation liberated me and in a way gave me permission to become a writer. Translation imposes a silence that aids my development. Translating great writers has inspired me to go further, to become a better writer myself.” (Daniel Poliquin )

We are all "alchemists" in a sense. So I think you will enjoy reading the article. Here's the first paragraph:

      Since the dawn of writing, translation has facilitated the constant flow of ideas and forms, spreading knowledge and allowing the import and export of cultures. It is thanks to translators that historians have been able to gauge the permeability of borders between the East and West in ancient times, and to discover how India, China, Iraq and Spain have each in turn shaped and nourished western culture. Part of our mathematics, for instance, is based on the Indian numbering system, which was translated into Arabic and then into Latin and eventually transmitted to modern times. The same is true of many scientific and philosophical texts inspired by Indian and Chinese concepts and traditions that passed through Muslim Spain before being incorporated into European culture. [Click here to continue reading]


(Found out about this article through a tweet by @calutateo)

Anyone can translate | Qualquer um pode traduzir

I hadn't felt offended as a translator before until last Wednesday. I was at a round table when the discussion turned to how Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol was launched. Apparently, nobody had acess to the book before it was published in English, so translators around the world had to rush so that publishers could launch it in their countries. Luckly, the person said, it was Dan Brown; any "elementary" translator, virtually anybody, can translate him - meaning he's not Shakespeare or another important writer, therefore translating him is very easy.

Well, well, well. This offense is an old one, but feels wrong every time. In Brazil, translated books represent the biggest slice of the book market. You just need to check any bestseller's list to notice that. Publishers, agents and bookshops alike would be lying if they said they don't "like" Dan Brown: his sales figures are more than welcome. It would also be logical to think that book translators should be regarded with respect, receive part of the credit for a book's success (if not royalties) and be well-paid. Nothing is far from the reality. Book translators in this country are the most badly paid in the industry of translation. But that's a long discussion.

The thing is, in a market dominated by translations, the translator is almost completely invisible. Moreover, they are undermined with comments like this, which was not just an impulse comment: it reveals a notion that permeates the public in general and the Brazilian book market in particular. The notion that anyone can translate. As any translator knows, this is not the case. Bad translators produce crap translations which no one can fix. Translators invest time and money learning a language, studying translation, buying equipment, buying dictionaries, buying computer tools, etc., etc.

Dan Brown may not be a classic, but that doesn't mean he's "easy" to translate. I'm not going to discuss in detail all the aspects because I don't want this to become a long rant! But to think that translating well is easy can only come from someone who has never translated anything. If you're not a translator and you think it's easy to keep the consistency of a 500-page book, then you should attempt it yourself. And when you're finished, post a comment here!

Tradutores literários sobre seus autores | Literary translators on their authors

A partir de amanhã, 8 de novembro, e sempre aos domingos, o Sesc Pompéia, em São Paulo, promove o Encontros da Literatura - Tradutores, em que um tradutor falará sobre como é/foi traduzir um escritor de renome. Que ótimo! Não é numa feira de livros (vejam meu post anterior), mas é uma excelente iniciativa e uma maior visibilidade a essa categoria de tradutores (na qual, por sinal, não estou incluída!).

E no Rio de Janeiro, quem se propõe a realizar um ciclo de palestras como esse??

A programação é a seguinte:

Eric Nepomuceno - Traduzir Gabriel Garcia Marquez
08/11 Domingo, às18h.

Paulo Bezerra - Traduzir Dostoiévski
15/11 Domingo, às18h.

Ivan Junqueira - Traduzir Baudelaire
29/11 Domingo, às18h.

Boris Schnaiderman - Traduzir Tolstói
13/12 Domingo, às18h.

E a introdução aos encontros:
A obra “Romeu e Julieta” foi escrita em inglês. “Dom Quixote”, em espanhol. “As Mil e Uma Noites”, em árabe. “Crime e Castigo”, em russo. A singularidade de todas essas obras é que são grandes livros da literatura universal e que todas nos são possíveis de leitura em português somente graças ao laborioso trabalho de grandes tradutores. Com Tertúlia Tradutores, apresentamos um ciclo de encontros em que importantes tradutores da língua portuguesa apresentarão mestres da literatura, como Shakespeare, Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, entre outros. Nestes bate-papos, eles discorrerão acerca de obras clássicas que traduziram, a curiosa vida desses escritores imortais e sobre o desafiador ofício da tradução. Idealização e Curadoria de Tiago Novaes.

Todas as informações estão no site do SescSP: http://www.sescsp.org.br/sesc/programa_new/busca.cfm?conjunto_id=6373

"The original is unfaithful to the translation" | "O original não é fiel à tradução"

This is a famous translation quote by renowned author Jorge Luis Borges, who was himself a translator. His views on translation are frequently discussed by translation students (Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote is a must read). You can have access to a discussion on this topic via Google Books. I'm talking about the book Invisible Work, Borges and Translation by Efraín Kristal, which you can read online here . The book overview gives a good idea of the discussion, so I've transcribed it below:


"It is well known that Jorge Luis Borges was a translator, but this has been considered a curious minor aspect of his literary achievement. Few have been aware of the number of texts he translated, the importance he attached to this activity, or the extent to which the translated works inform his own stories and poems.

Between the age of ten, when he translated Oscar Wilde, and the end of his life, when he prepared a Spanish version of the Prose Edda , Borges transformed the work of Poe, Kafka, Hesse, Kipling, Melville, Gide, Faulkner, Whitman, Woolf, Chesterton, and many others. In a multitude of essays, lectures, and interviews Borges analyzed the versions of others and developed an engaging view about translation. He held that a translation can improve an original, that contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid, and that an original can be unfaithful to a translation.

Borges's bold habits as translator and his views on translation had a decisive impact on his creative process. Translation is also a recurrent motif in Borges's stories. In "The Immortal," for example, a character who has lived for many centuries regains knowledge of poems he had authored, and almost forgotten, by way of modern translations. Many of Borges's fictions include actual or imagined translations, and some of his most important characters are translators. In "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote," Borges's character is a respected Symbolist poet, but also a translator, and the narrator insists that Menard's masterpiece-his "invisible work"-adds unsuspected layers of meaning to Cervantes's Don Quixote. George Steiner cites this short story as "the most acute, most concentrated commentary anyone has offered on the business of translation."

In an age where many discussions of translation revolve around the dichotomy faithful/unfaithful, this book will surprise and delight even Borges's closest readers and critics."