prepared speech fragments pared by the French writer Daniel Pennac occasion of the award granted to him by the "Conference on Literary Translation," published in "Il Manifesto" on 25 September 2009 and translated from Italian into English for our partner Luisa Pastore-Alinante Fernandez-Baca. To read this story from its source, click here: http://www.ilmanifesto.it/il-manifesto/in-edicola/numero/20090925/pagina/03/pezzo/260753/
translators Dear friends, my Pentecostal lay lights, let me thank you and express my astonishment. Let me express my gratitude for giving me this award, I wonder precisely for having chosen me. You say they are grateful for my general attitude towards the translators. But how grateful we are talking about? "If not for you, translators, perhaps it is a man who like me, who neither speak nor read, except itself, no language, not even the English (probably I'm the last European to this painful condition), even despite the Italian linkages through thirty years of friendship? A man like me needs of translators in the air.
You are my life. My life!
Thank you, my books are reborn and crossing borders. I say reborn, since the translation of a literary equivalent of a new birth, and the role it plays to the translator play in this birth can be considered on par with an act of creation. The idea of \u200b\u200btranslation is inseparable from created. The mere linguistic transposition is not an act of translation, but doubling that produces a Ostrogothic incomprehensible. (Just read the instructions for the use of my lavadora concebida en Alemania y fabricada en Corea con diseño italiano y electrónica japonesa, para sentirse inducidos, lingüísticamente hablando, al suicidio).
Para que una novela viva en otro idioma es preciso que alguien la imbuya de una nueva vida en esta nueva lengua. Y este alguien son ustedes. ¿Cuál es la nueva vida de una novela bien traducida? Pues, es la de un texto encarnado en una lengua distinta de aquella en la que tuvo origen ––es decir, en el caso de ustedes, en italiano –– al punto de hacerle exclamar al lector: ¡Parece escrito en italiano! (Lo cual, dicho sea de paso, no se puede decir de las instrucciones de su lavadora.)
How has achieved this illusion for the reader? Herein lies the mysterious formula of any translation excellent. It is, in this particular case, knowing transpose into another language lexicon of classical or popular foreign author, the pace of his writing, his musicality, his hints, allusions, multiple intentions, essentially everything that is written and could be called the spirit of the text. It's an ability that turns into something good translator and a psychoanalyst from the author. But when talking about the spirit of the text also speaks of the spirit of the language in which it is written that text. Which you make them aware also ethnologists linguists and neat. This ability to recreate the spirit of a foreign language in their own language can only be born of a merger with the text and the source language, combined with perfect mastery of the target language, yours. This dual power involves ubiquitous language and literature, or, rather, analog intuition, which imposes the translator to sink into a dimension of obsessiveness that, incidentally, is the same as the novelist lives in his work. In exercising this obsession Melaouah Yasmina, my Italian translator, Eveline Passet, my German translator, Vlatka Valentic, my translator Croatian Mitsubayashi Akira, my Japanese translator, Sarah Adams, my English translator, or Manuel Serrat Crespo, my English translator - to mention just a few - often arrive together with me to the very heart of my texts. But the obsession, dear friends, you know at the same time I, time consuming, requires time. And this time you have to recompense.
few years ago, someone asked me at a conference what he thought about the fact that the translator is the author's psychoanalyst (as the idea is not mine, and that Congress had complete unanimity in supporting it.) I said yes and suggested strongly that, according to logic, the remuneration of translators should be aligned with that of the psychoanalysts. I regret to say that there is unanimity ended. Nobody agreed with me, with the exception of the translators, who found the idea very amusing. The truth is that you are slaves of obsession without receiving the required remuneration for its duration. And yet still translating, and well in many cases.
When I hand down a poorly translated foreign novels, before blaming the translator I always wonder how long it has been given to it to be intimate with the text and the depths of the two languages \u200b\u200binvolved. And when I get the chance to read an excellent translation, my first reaction is the absolute gratitude for the translator who found time to his obsession, which was devoted to the literary utopia despite a market logic that is interested in literature only when the sums are large - very, very big - and it does not recognize a distinction between literature and instructions the use of our washing machines. Therefore, dear friends, for their ubiquity, its obsessiveness, for their commitment to each novel becomes part of world literature, I thank you. In particular, I thank Yasmina Melaouah today, who so often has made me reborn in Italian.
You are my life. My life!
Thank you, my books are reborn and crossing borders. I say reborn, since the translation of a literary equivalent of a new birth, and the role it plays to the translator play in this birth can be considered on par with an act of creation. The idea of \u200b\u200btranslation is inseparable from created. The mere linguistic transposition is not an act of translation, but doubling that produces a Ostrogothic incomprehensible. (Just read the instructions for the use of my lavadora concebida en Alemania y fabricada en Corea con diseño italiano y electrónica japonesa, para sentirse inducidos, lingüísticamente hablando, al suicidio).
Para que una novela viva en otro idioma es preciso que alguien la imbuya de una nueva vida en esta nueva lengua. Y este alguien son ustedes. ¿Cuál es la nueva vida de una novela bien traducida? Pues, es la de un texto encarnado en una lengua distinta de aquella en la que tuvo origen ––es decir, en el caso de ustedes, en italiano –– al punto de hacerle exclamar al lector: ¡Parece escrito en italiano! (Lo cual, dicho sea de paso, no se puede decir de las instrucciones de su lavadora.)
How has achieved this illusion for the reader? Herein lies the mysterious formula of any translation excellent. It is, in this particular case, knowing transpose into another language lexicon of classical or popular foreign author, the pace of his writing, his musicality, his hints, allusions, multiple intentions, essentially everything that is written and could be called the spirit of the text. It's an ability that turns into something good translator and a psychoanalyst from the author. But when talking about the spirit of the text also speaks of the spirit of the language in which it is written that text. Which you make them aware also ethnologists linguists and neat. This ability to recreate the spirit of a foreign language in their own language can only be born of a merger with the text and the source language, combined with perfect mastery of the target language, yours. This dual power involves ubiquitous language and literature, or, rather, analog intuition, which imposes the translator to sink into a dimension of obsessiveness that, incidentally, is the same as the novelist lives in his work. In exercising this obsession Melaouah Yasmina, my Italian translator, Eveline Passet, my German translator, Vlatka Valentic, my translator Croatian Mitsubayashi Akira, my Japanese translator, Sarah Adams, my English translator, or Manuel Serrat Crespo, my English translator - to mention just a few - often arrive together with me to the very heart of my texts. But the obsession, dear friends, you know at the same time I, time consuming, requires time. And this time you have to recompense. few years ago, someone asked me at a conference what he thought about the fact that the translator is the author's psychoanalyst (as the idea is not mine, and that Congress had complete unanimity in supporting it.) I said yes and suggested strongly that, according to logic, the remuneration of translators should be aligned with that of the psychoanalysts. I regret to say that there is unanimity ended. Nobody agreed with me, with the exception of the translators, who found the idea very amusing. The truth is that you are slaves of obsession without receiving the required remuneration for its duration. And yet still translating, and well in many cases.
When I hand down a poorly translated foreign novels, before blaming the translator I always wonder how long it has been given to it to be intimate with the text and the depths of the two languages \u200b\u200binvolved. And when I get the chance to read an excellent translation, my first reaction is the absolute gratitude for the translator who found time to his obsession, which was devoted to the literary utopia despite a market logic that is interested in literature only when the sums are large - very, very big - and it does not recognize a distinction between literature and instructions the use of our washing machines. Therefore, dear friends, for their ubiquity, its obsessiveness, for their commitment to each novel becomes part of world literature, I thank you. In particular, I thank Yasmina Melaouah today, who so often has made me reborn in Italian.
Etoo Barca claimed three million 