{"id":286756,"date":"2011-08-29T17:51:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T17:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/08\/29\/edith-grossman-tells-it-like-it-is-we-are-so-small\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:17:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:17:01","slug":"edith-grossman-tells-it-like-it-is-we-are-so-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/08\/29\/edith-grossman-tells-it-like-it-is-we-are-so-small\/","title":{"rendered":"Edith Grossman Tells it Like it Is [We Are So Small]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Publishing Perspectives,<\/a> there’s a profile piece by Hern\u00e1n Iglesias Illa on Edith Grossman, translator extraordinaire and author of Why Translation Matters.<\/em> (Which I wrote about at length for Quarterly Conversation<\/a> back when it came out.)<\/p>\n

Let’s start with an interesting part about Grossman’s recent translation of Don Quixote<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Grossman fell in love with Spanish as a teenager, thanks to a Spanish teacher \u201cwho was very good.\u201d She read Don Quixote<\/em> for for the first time in Philadelphia, where she grew up, in Samuel Putnam\u2019s classic 1949 translation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The half-century gap between Putnam\u2019s version and hers can be seen from the very first sentence of the book. Putnam translates the legendary beginning of Cervantes (\u201cEn un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme\u201d) as: \u201cIn a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall.\u201d It\u2019s an accurate translation, but somewhat clumsy, and that feels a bit dated. Grossman, less forced to follow the literality of the sentence and with an ear more attuned to capture Cervantes\u2019 intention, writes: \u201cSomewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

This \u201cI do not care,\u201d disdainful and conversational, reflects much better the mocking spirit of Don Quixote\u2019s narrator, who from the first sentence introduces himself as an unreliable guy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Is all these subtlety worthwhile? For Grossman, there is no doubt. \u201cThe importance of translation is self-evident,\u201d she writes in her book. Maybe that\u2019s why she feels bad about her battered professional colleagues, \u201cpoorly paid and with no job security.\u201d She describes most of them as people \u201cwho do not look for fame or fortune but do their work out of love for literature.\u201c<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She sure is direct . . . and honest. Which can result in some rather discouraging statements, such as this:<\/p>\n

\n

In her book, Grossman mentions the well-known fact that only three percent of the books published in the United States, Great Britain and Australia are translations, while in Europe and Latin America this percentage number fluctuates between 25% and 40%. \u201cWe English-speakers are not interested in translations,\u201d says Grossman. (An interviewer infected with translators\u2019 jargon would have commented that Grossman said this \u201cwith a sigh\u201d, or \u201cshaking her head.\u201c) \u201cI don\u2019t believe that this will change soon, since almost all publishers are part of large corporations and make their decisions under enormous pressure to be profitable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I mention then that a few small and medium US publishers have recently published translations of books by C\u00e9sar Aria, Alejandro Zambra and Juan Jos\u00e9 Saer. \u201cI love these publishers, and they have good people working there,\u201d she says. \u201cBut they are too small, they have a lot of trouble getting adequate distribution and good publicity or reviews in the media.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, OK. I was going to complain here about how difficult it is getting books into bookstores where the buyers won’t even take a call because “that sort of stuff doesn’t sell here on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.” (Or in Nebraska, the Mountain & Plains states, or wherever.) And I was going to point out that Juan Jose Saer’s Sixty-Five Years of Washington<\/em> sold out its first print run and was reviewed in the New York Times<\/em> and The Nation<\/em> among other places. But whatever. She’s right.1<\/a><\/sup> Even at our best, the lousiest piece from crap from Corporate Publisher X will get more penetration into the marketplace, which is the slow sick sucking part of the business, and I’m not sure it will ever really change.<\/p>\n

Obviously, Internet retailers have leveled the field a bit—all of our books are just as available through Amazon as anyone else’s—but in that case, when a reader is faced with an overwhelming number of choices (approx. 3 million new ones each year, including tons and tons of $.99 entertainments), it’s tricky for an unknown author from Peru to make it through. Ideally, when everything’s available, people would try new things and find some niche tastes, but in reality, we search for what we already know we want to find, and bust the Bieber while reading Twilight.<\/em> But that’s a subject for another post and\/or book . . . <\/p>\n

Anyway, Edie definitely calls it like she sees it, and although I have to be more optimistic than she is (otherwise, this whole thing—getting up in the morning, working at a small press, writing this blog—seems pretty damn bleak), it’s true that our impact is at least partially handcuffed by economic realities. <\/p>\n

All that said, I’ve been reading the new Saer book, Scars<\/em>, and am BLOWN<\/span> AWAY<\/span>. Everyone needs to buy this—it’s absolutely incredible and the most compelling book I’ve read in a while. Not to overstate the point, but it reminds me why reading matters. <\/p>\n

1<\/sup> At least about Open Letter. I think the presses distributed by Norton—Dalkey Archive and New Directions—and the ones distributed by Random House and Penguin—Europa Editions, NYRB<\/span>, Melville House—do get into almost all the locations they need to.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Publishing Perspectives, there’s a profile piece by Hern\u00e1n Iglesias Illa on Edith Grossman, translator extraordinaire and author of Why Translation Matters. (Which I wrote about at length for Quarterly Conversation back when it came out.) Let’s start with an interesting part about Grossman’s recent translation of Don Quixote: Grossman fell in love with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[19516,24256,1646],"class_list":["post-286756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-edith-grossman","tag-publishing-perspectives","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320326,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286756\/revisions\/320326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}