Open Thread: Books in Translation?
What’s Your Favorite Book in Translation? Your Most Recent?
Last October I was in Cleveland, Ohio, and scoped out a bookstore within walking distance of our hotel. It’s called Clevo. Every book in stock? Translated from one of many, many different languages—everything from Albanian to Zulu. I walked out with Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa (translated from Japanese by Stephen B. Snyder) and Foolsburg by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (translated from Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).
Tomorrow I’ve got a piece coming about books in translation; I just finished it last night. I tend to read a fair number of foreign books in English dress, whether fiction or nonfiction. That’s just where my tastes tend to run. That said, a store like Clevo is unique because only about 3 to 4 percent of books published every year in America are translations. That seems surprisingly low to me.
There are something like 7,000 languages in the world, and more than 20 major tongues. I know English speakers have a lot of things to say, but surely the rest of the planet has stories and ideas of interest. We’re not the only fascinating folks on this whirling rock.
I went back through my own reading log for the year and checked how many translated books I’ve read. (I’m only counting books I’ve finished reading, not books browsed or consulted for one reason or another.)
January: 1
February: 0
March: 2
April: 2
May: 1
June: 0
July: 1
August: 3
Ten total. That’s actually not many. It’s more than 3 to 4 percent of my total, but it’s hardly impressive. And yet many books in translation are impressive. Think of the classic authors of world literature: Balzac, Cervantes, Dante, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Goethe, Homer, Kafka, Tolstoy, Vergil. Impressive doesn’t even begin to touch it. This is to say nothing of exceptional contemporary authors in translation: Eugene Vodolazkin, Mario Vargas Llosa, Yan Lianke, Shusaku Endo, and hundreds more.
Just this month I read both Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses and Shusaku Endo’s Deep River. The first was hilarious, the second poignant. And my world is now a little bigger because of them both.
So here’s my question for you—actually questions, plural: What books in translation have widened your world? What have you loved? What have you most recently read in translation? How often to do you read books in translation? Do you seek them out?
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I've read a good amount of classic translated literature (the Russians, French, etc) but have definitely lacked in more contemporary translated works. One of my favorite reads so far this year (Ties by Domenico Starnone, translated from Italian) made me realize I need to seek out more contemporary stuff!
I went through a period in my youth, where I avoided most translations, because I wanted to learn to read books in their original languages - there was one important exception to this rule. But the only language I've managed to develop significant reading ability in was French - I can read Jules Verne fairly well but slowly, while Victor Hugo is barely within my grasp. So I have reluctantly resumed reading translations.
I have read two translations this year, 'Don Quixote' (Edith Grossman's translation) and an old but adequate translation of 'The Betrothed'. I enjoyed both reads, but my brain found 'The Betrothed's narrative structure more congenial to its reading habits than 'Don Quixote's episodic format. I also read Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', a very brief read that explains the Wuxia film style. I am currently working on other translated works.
I would say the translation that has had the most impact on me are those of the Bible, as the multitude of translations each offer a different aspect to the words. As a general rule, I find translations have less of an impact on me than books in my mother-tongue, because they are translations. Reading them often feels like watching a film originally shot in one language, but dubbed in another. If you watch the film in the original language, you gather far more about the emotions conveyed, even if you don't understand the language and there are no subtitles, than if you listen to the dubbed voices. That is the way I feel about translations.
When I struggle to read Les Miserables in French, I am detecting a rhythm or pattern of thought that no English translation can adequately convey, even if I don't fully understand every word. As much as I appreciated Edith Grossman's accessible Don Quixote, when I read the original - even though my rusty basic conversational Spanish only grasps 10-15% percent of Cervantes' 16th century Spanish - I can sense undercurrents of satire that do not translate. So, we are only reasing part of a translated author's work, not its entirety.