What better for a blustery Sunday afternoon than a translation
potpourri? And so: two novels written in English, one essay, one short course,
and a link…
I’ll start with Alison Anderson’s The Summer
Guest since it’s a novel with
a Russian theme: a modern-day British publisher, Katya, hires Ana to translate a
journal written by Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor whose own illness has
blinded her. The title’s summer guest is none other than Anton Chekhov, who visits
the Lintvaryov estate in Sumy, in eastern
Ukraine. The journal, which begins in 1888, makes up the bulk of the novel but
Anderson intersperses occasional chapters set in the 2010s, chronicling Katya’s
personal and professional problems—her husband’s absences and their publishing
house’s difficulties—as well as Ana’s work on the manuscript. Of course I relate
heavily to Ana, who can be observed checking spellings, splurging on books, and hoping
for a new project (did Chekhov really leave behind a draft of the novel he read
to Zinaida? could she translate it?), not to mention making an impulsive trip
to Ukraine toward the end of the book. Anderson’s greatest success in The Summer Guest, though, is Zinaida’s
journal, which beautifully meshes Chekhov’s gentlemanly humor and humanity with
Zinaida’s fears and hopes. The rapport he and Zinaida develop is poignant, and
the scene where the Chekhov brothers take Zinaida out in a rowboat is
particularly lovely: Zinaida feels freed, “suspended” from her darkness. Though
the framing device in The Summer Guest
felt a bit thin to me because I wanted to see Katya and Ana in greater depth, and
some of the current events mentioned felt a little tacked on, I’ll simply say (to
avoid spoilers!) that the frame allows Anderson to make the journal count twice.
More important to me, as a reader and recommender, though, is the readability
of the journal’s story, the colorfulness of the Chekhov and Lintvaryov families,
and the many admirable choices that Anderson makes when incorporating bits of
Russian language and background into her text. Her own translation work informs
her well; so, apparently did her research, which she notes in a brief
but informative afterword…
Which made me especially happy to read Anderson’s “Spurn the Translator at Your Own Peril,” on The
Millions. I won’t say much about it because you can read it yourself, here. (I
know at least one of you already read it: thanks to the reader who sent the
link!) Anderson writes about reader perceptions of translation, translator and
author invisibility (she takes a fun angle on this because of the mysterious
Elena Ferrante), what is (ahem!) found in translation, and even how we do it. She
mentions two to ten pages a day. And yes, of course she’s right that “it is a
pleasure.” She’s also right that translators make “interesting protagonists
within the fiction that is their province”: she notes novels including Rabih
Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman,
which I was lukewarm on, and Idra Novey’s Ways
to Disappear…
I loved Idra Novey’s Ways
to Disappear. She had me with her first sentence: “In a crumbling
park in the crumbling back end of Copacabana, a woman stopped under an almond
tree with a suitcase and a cigar.” Whether it was the repetition of “crumbling,”
the combination of the suitcase and the cigar, or the thought of almonds, which
I enjoy eating on just about anything, yes, dear reader, I bought the book. In
hardcover. I had to find out what happens when American translator Emma Neufeld
goes from snowy Pittsburg to blazing-hot Brazil in search of the almond tree woman,
Beatriz Yagoda, who happens to be Emma’s author. Beatriz has gone missing because
of gambling debts and Emma goes missing on her lets-go-running-and-lets-get-married
boyfriend because, well, our authors are part of us in some mysterious way. Has
Novey ever used the hairbrush of one of her authors? I don’t know and I don’t
need to know but I will say that I, personally, have never used a hairbrush (or
comb or other grooming device) belonging to any of my authors but oh my, what a
wonderful, fitting metaphor. On the same page (23, if anyone’s looking), there’s
a mention of Emma’s (earlier, of course) confession to Beatriz that she “hadn’t
been quite as dutiful in her last translation as in Beatriz’s earlier books,
and Beatriz had replied that duty was for clergy. For translation to be an art,
she told Emma, you have to make the uncomfortable but necessary transgressions
that an artist makes.” Yes, yes, and yes. I couldn’t wait to buy
the book because Novey mentions “the risk-taking, the reckless joys
of translation” in an LA
Times interview that my cousin clipped and sent to me… Risks and joys
are what make translation so exhilarating and I feel lots of reckless joy and risk-taking
in Ways to Disappear, too, and all of
it works and pays off for Novey. For more complete views: Heller McAlpin’s review
on npr.org or Catherine Lacey’s review
for the New York Times Book Review.
If you’re a translator looking for a short course in London,
in mid-July, you might consider Translate
in the City, where the tutor for Russian is Robert Chandler. I think I
first heard about the program from Anne Marie Jackson, an alumna of the very
first “Translate in the City” course: among other things, Anne Marie is a
co-translator of two volumes of Teffi that were just released (herewith, the 2016
translation list for details), including Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, reviewed
in today’s New York Times Book Review by
Masha Gessen. Translate in the City covers eleven languages and all are taught
by instructors whose main work is literary translation. Robert notes that many students
come to London from the US for the program.
And, finally, to end on an especially happy and
translation-related note, here’s an article by Alison Flood for The Guardian: Translated
fiction sells better in the UK than English fiction, research finds. And here's a Monday-morning addition, also in The Guardian: Daniel Hahn's The Man Booker International prize: a celebration of translation.
Disclaimers: The usual.
Thank you to HarperCollins for the review copy of The Summer Guest. The book has a release date of May 24, 2016. Especially
recommended for Chekhov fans.
Up Next: Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which I
just plain loved. Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I may yet call Faith.
Maria Galina’s Autochthons, which is getting eerier… The Big Book finalist
announcement is coming up soon, too.
