The Translator’s Art of Failure: Engaging the Other in Imperfect Harmony

Authors

  • Katherine Silver

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21992/T9W61S

Keywords:

Translation, Latin America literature, cultural studies, Ethics

Abstract

Rather than view translation as a compromise at best, a failure at worst, and always derivative and secondary, I explore the practice of literary translation as one of engagement: with the text, with the Other, and with the world. I will discuss the nature of this engagement as dynamic, electric, life-affirming, an encounter and a dialogue that offers an opportunity for both unification and separateness, freedom and intimacy. From this perspective of the personal, I will reach into the realm of the “political,” the broader context within which translators work—the power differentials, the objective material conditions—and the specifics of my own translating relationship: between Latin American Spanish and North American English. My understanding of that relationship—which could be framed as the theory behind my practice—influences what I want to translate—passionate engagement—and how I translate: how I approach the object of desire. I will read from and discuss several of my most recent translations, texts that in themselves explore questions of language and power: the power of language to subvert, and the dis-harmonious and unequal association of languages and cultures in this “globalized” world, where issues of separateness and unification are often a matter of survival.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Katherine Silver

Katherine Silver has translated the works of many Spanish and Latin American authors, including Antonio Skármeta, José Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Martín Adán, Pedro Lemebel, and Jorge Franco. Last year she received her second NEA fellowship for her translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness, for which she also received a PEN Translation Fund grant. Her collection of modern and contemporary Chilean fiction, Chile, A Traveler’s Literary Companion, was published by Whereabouts Press in 2003. She has translated plays, screenplays—some for major motion pictures—and a wide assortment of academic and other nonfiction books. She also works as an editor and publishing consultant/manager, and lives in Berkeley, California.

Downloads

Published

2009-07-22

Issue

Section

TRANSLATION STUDIES