ALTA45 Panel: Getting Things Wrong, Or Upon Exactitude in Translation
The age-old question of exactitude in translation (Borges reference intended) begs an examination of what translation truly is.
If the original seed of any novel is “a cathedral of fire” (M. Cunningham) — the finished book is a 2nd-best version of that flame. Each subsequent generation (namely, translations) deserves the same forgiveness. And yet translators MUST strive for accuracy; the taboo against noting errors is misguided. First, do no harm — get it right. But to err in translation is to BE a translator. Translation mistakes are DEEPLY interesting, bespeaking distances between worlds, a gulf encompassed in the mirror’s face: fecund entanglements to be celebrated. Like continuity snafus, to catch mistakes is the work of a loving fan — so many Easter Eggs in the domain of translation.
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Moderator
Antony Shugaar is a writer, translator & US editor of FMR. He’s written for the Washington Post, NY Times, NY Review of Books, CJR, Lapham’s Quarterly, Village Voice, Ad Age, and Adweek. He’s translated over 100 books, 5 Strega-winners, Paolo Sorrentino’s Young Pope, and Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are, and has received two NEA translation fellowships (2007 and 2019). He lives in San Diego.
Panelists
Todd Portnowitz, translator of Midnight in Spoleto, Go Tell It to the Emperor, and Long Live Latin, has won honors from Academy of American Poets and Bread Loaf Translators Conference. His work has appeared in AGNI, Asymptote, Guernica, VQR, Poesia, Poetry and SW Review. He’s an Associate Editor at Knopf, co-founder of poetry blog Formavera and co-director of Brooklyn-based reading series Us&Them. Lynne Sharon Schwartz has written twenty-eight books: seven novels, poetry, essays, stories (Kirkus: every story in Truthtelling (2021) was “perfect”) and edited Crossing Borders, Stories and Essays About Translation and The Emergence of Memory, interviews with W.G. Sebald. Among her translations: A Place to Live by Natalia Ginzburg, Run for Your Life, by Silvana Gandolfi, and Smoke Over Birkenau by Liana Millu.