An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty-summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus- What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering "faithful"? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a "traitor" but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, "skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work." In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated-something, as Goethe put it, "impossible, necessary, and important."
An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty-summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus- What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering "faithful"? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a "traitor" but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, "skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work." In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated-something, as Goethe put it, "impossible, necessary, and important."
An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty-summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus- What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering "faithful"? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a "traitor" but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, "skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work." In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated-something, as Goethe put it, "impossible, necessary, and important."
An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty-summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus- What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering "faithful"? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a "traitor" but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, "skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work." In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated-something, as Goethe put it, "impossible, necessary, and important."
Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books, including works by Patrick Modiano, Gustave Flaubert, Raymond Roussel, Marguerite Duras, and Paul Virilio. Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he is also the author of Revolution of the Mind- The Life of Andre Breton and other books.
Lively, readable, and often funny … a likably idiosyncratic
sequence of essays on a topic that is of more importance than ever
in our globalized world … Polizzotti makes one feel that creating
and reading translated literature can be a genuinely pleasurable
experience.—Emily Wilson, New York Review of Books
Sympathy for the Traitor is lucid and erudite, but above all it is
engaging, entertaining and illuminating … as exhilarating and
invigorating as a lungful of chill, pure air in a classroom grown
musty with dogma.—Frank Wynne, THE SPECTATOR
With impressive breadth and scrupulous detail, translator
Polizzotti offers a manifesto about what translation is, what it
should be, and why it is important … Polizzotti's book is suffused
with expertise and displays his decades of experience in incisively
capturing the nuances of an esoteric discipline, while also
offering a passionate defense of his trade's larger
value.—Publishers Weekly
There is no such thing as a perfect translation, claims Polizzotti,
adding: “And so much the better.” Translation deserves to join
other forms of artistic expression on its own terms, but the
process should “start in homes and in schools.” This book has the
potential to inspire such a change.—Anna Aslanyan, Financial
Times
Sympathy for the Traitor is lucid and erudite, but above all it is
engaging, entertaining and illuminating and Polizzotti's manifesto
is as exhilarating and invigorating as a lungful of chill, pure air
in a classroom grown musty with dogma. He eschews the dour
fingerwagging that translation is somehow 'good for us', as though
it were literary cod-liver oil, and revels instead in those voices
that offer 'a particular delight, an irreplaceable thrill of
discovery that is available nowhere else'. As he persuasively
argues: if literature in translation is valuable in today's world,
it is because such minds and voices are exceedingly rare, and we
cannot afford to be ignorant of a single one of them.—New
Statesman
In Sympathy for the Traitor, his acute, pugnacious
manifesto, Mark Polizzotti takes issue with the
adage traduttore traditore: translators aren't traducers or
traitors, ghosts or parrots, or helpmeets, but writers in their own
write (as John Lennon put it). The longstanding ideal of the good
translator's self-effacement behind the towering original fails to
take full measure of their vital role in recognising their parity
with the author: 'It takes respect for one's own work,' Polizzotti
writes, 'belief that one's translation is worth judging on its own
merits (or flaws), and that, if done properly, it can stand
shoulder to shoulder with the source text.'—London Review of
Books
To Polizzotti, a translator deserves notice as an artist, no matter
how hidden her art may be. The ability to hide one's voice is an
art, and it's one readers should learn to look for. In other words,
Polizzotti asks readers not to suspend belief, but to catch
ourselves in the act of believing.—Public Books
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