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- [00:01]
A
Spring is here, and there's a whole new way to chai at Starbucks that's made perfect for you. Choose your sweetness, dial it up or keep things light. Add a touch of pistachio, a hint of strawberry or vanilla, or make it a spring classic with lavender. Because this season there's endless ways to chai at Starbucks. Hi everyone. I want to tell you all about another podcast I think you'll enjoy, College Matters from the Chronicle. College Matters is a weekly show from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it's a great resource for news and analysis about colleges and universities. You'll hear sharp discussions with Chronicle journalists offering fresh perspectives on the latest salvos from the Trump administration and keen insights about how faculty and students are adapting to technological changes. College Matters also features incisive interviews but with newsmakers, including recent conversations with Chris Eisgruber, Princeton University's president, and Rick Singer, who is best known as the mastermind of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Check out College Matters wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:12]
B
Hello everyone and welcome back to a new episode on New Books Network. I'm your host, Ibrahim Fauzi, and I'm super glad to welcome my guest today, Damian Searles. Damian studied philosophy at Harvard and is a prominent translator from German region, French and Dutch. Damian, thank you so much for joining me. And I want to start with something you return to often in the philosophy of translation, the idea that reading as a translator is different from reading as a reader. Could you talk a bit more about what changes when you read in that way? Is it simply a slower kind of reading or is it something else entirely?
- [01:50]
A
First of all, thank you so much for having me on. It's great to talk to you. And yeah, you know, in a way, reading is used sort of twice. And there are two different ways in that book, the Philosophy of Translation. Because on the one hand, reading just normally is great and magical and does a lot of amazing things and works in a very special way. And if you just think about reading as such, that kind of gets you a lot of the way into having better ideas about translation than usual. So, for example, you know when someone tries to ask, oh, how do you decide what words to use in a translation? I often it feels weird because I don't feel like I'm choosing from a menu like that doesn't feel like what I'm doing. I'm not deciding. And so what I realized I could sort of say back is, well, how do you decide what Mr. Darcy looks like when you're reading Jane Austen, how do you decide what Oliver Twist looks like? And the answer is, you don't decide. The book tells you you're reading the book, and the book tells you what they look like, what Anna Karenina looks like. And it's not about making decisions. And yes, Anna, the. You know, the book will tell you what Anna Karenina looks like, and you'll have a different picture in your mind than I'll have in my mind. But that doesn't mean you're getting it wrong. It doesn't mean I'm getting it wrong. It doesn't mean Tolstoy should have done a better job and been more specific. It just means that's how reading works. You know, you engage with it. You bring yourself to the reading experience. But then it's the book that tells you what the book says because you're reading it. So even if you just think about things that happen whenever you read, you know, that already helps you think about translation and kind of breaks this spell of like, there's this objective object out there that you're trying to photocopy as well as possible. At the same time, I do also say that reading as a translator is different. And I think the main difference is that normal reading, you just use language, but you're not really thinking about language. And this happens whenever a translator gets stuck and makes the bad decision to try and just ask someone. You know, I remember this happened to me early on. Like before there were Google image searches and I was translating this thing about the bus comes to the last stop, and then there's this little loop so the bus can drive forwards and not have to reverse. But then it'll be facing the other way to go back on its route. And what is that thing called? What is that loop called? I knew what it was. I knew what the German word meant, but I didn't know the English word. I couldn't think of it and I couldn't look it up. Cause I didn't know what the word was. And I couldn't do, like an image search or whatever. So I made the bad decision to get on a bus and ask a bus driver. Like, I got on a bus and waited till it wasn't that crowded, and then I was like, excuse me. Excuse me, sir, I'm a translator. Can I ask you a question? And so what is that thing called? And I explained it, and the driver said, it's called the end of the line because that's what it is. Like, that's how it is real to him. It's the end of the line. And I said, oh, yeah, great, thanks. But, like, say you were walking across the field and you, like, came across it. Like, you're not driving to the end of the line, but, like, what is it? And he said, it's the end of the line. And I said, okay, thanks, you know, bye. And realized that's the difference between reading as a translator and reading as a reader. In a way, like, when you're just communicating, you use the language to express your real relationship to it, what it is. But it's not everyone who thinks about the words, Right? I wasn't asking what is it? I was asking what is it called? And that's the, like, translator question that most people just don't think in that way. And then even when you're not stuck when you're translating, you kind of have to think, what's special about this sentence? What's special about this part of the book? Is it just normal, or is the author doing something? And the reason you have to think about that is if it's normal, you don't want to copy it. Like, German has a lot of passive sentences. And so if you're not thinking about it, you translate it into a lot of passive sentences, and it sounds bad. So what you have to do is you have to think, is this passive sentence just part of the language? In which case, no, you translate it into good, vigorous, active English. Right. Or is the author doing something with the language? And so that way of reading to sort of see, okay, how is this moment of the text standard or non standard? You know, that's something that's reading as a translator and that you don't really have to do when you're just reading it.
- [07:18]
B
Yeah. And you really flagged one thing that I really appreciated in the book, which is how attentive you are to moments where a text resists smoothness? And that made me wonder, how can a translator tell when a writer is doing something deliberately strange or in, rather than simply writing badly or unclearly? And how much familiarity with the language's literary traditions do you need in order to recognize that kind of deviation from the norm?
- [07:46]
A
Yeah, you know, that's a really interesting question, and I'm not sure I have an answer, because in my experience, it's just intuitive. You know, it's intuitive because I've practiced reading for a long time, and I'm a good reader. So even when I'm reading in English and I'm reading a translation from a language I don't know, I Feel like I can tell the difference between a good translation that's doing something interesting and literary and artistic versus a bad translation that's kind of deformed accidentally by qualities in the original language that the translator hasn't thought through enough and so has just kind of copied into English. So the English just sounds bad. Now. How do I know? I guess I don't know how I know, but I really do feel like I do, that there's a difference between, you know, something weird that's art and something weird that's just bad. And I'm like attuned to it because I practice that kind of reading a lot, I guess. I don't know. So, I mean, but what, what underlies your question about familiarity is really the issue of reading. Like, and when I'm reading a book that was originally written in another language, it's like, do I know enough to translate it and to understand what's going on? And the answer is, well, I know enough to read it because here I am reading it. And if I'm reading a Norwegian book, I'm not a Norwegian person or a native Norwegian speaker, nor did I grow up in Norway, but I'm getting something out of it. Here I am like in my room in my country with my background, and I'm able to get something out of it. So if I feel like I'm not really getting it, then that's not the right kind of book for me to translate. Just like, if the book is maybe some experience that's very different from mine that I can't connect to personally. Like, I may not be that interested in reading it, but once I'm reading it, I'm already proving that it's possible for someone from a different culture to get something out of it. Right? And so in a way, all I have to do is give the reader of my translation whatever it is that I got, and then they have a reading experience. And also I have to be, you know, open minded and open to criticism and not completely arrogant. So if someone comes along and tells me, actually there's all this other stuff in the book that you missed, you know, there's a problem here, then that criticism, if it's valid, you know, if someone were to say that to me, then I would say, wow, you're right, I shouldn't be the one translating this book. But in terms of the languages I translate from and the kind of literature I end up translating, you know, I read it and feel like I am a good enough. I am a perfectly fine audience for this book. So, like, what I'm able to get out of the. The book if I translate it, it's the kind of thing that people in English will appreciate being able to get out of the book.
- [11:16]
B
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think every book that you love and you want to pick up to translate speaks to you in a way or another, and it pops up in English. I mean, some sentences that pop up into your. In your mind in English, and then you write them down on the margins and. And so I'd like to move from reading into the actual work of translating. You're often working on multiple projects at the same time, sometimes across different languages and genres. What does your translation process look like both on a day to day level and over the longer arc of a project?
- [11:51]
A
In a way, yes and no. Like, there's certain things that are likely to go wrong when you're translating from a certain language. I gave the example of passive sentences in German. If you're translating from German, you might get a very noun, heavy, flat, verbed, passive, nothing really happens kind of English unless you're thinking about it. Because in German the energy is in the nouns, but in English there's not much energy in nouns. It's all in verbs and adjectives. So, you know, that's something that it's good to have it in the back of your mind when you're translating from German. Whereas another language might have another problem, like Spanish. The cognates with English are very flowery, so you tend to end up, if you're not really thinking about it, with the felicity of the occasion, of the maternal congratulations and all these Latinate words that don't sound good in English. Right. And so that's not a problem you have when you're translating from Norwegian, but Norwegian has other problems. Right. So in a way, the, the difference between English and each different language tells me something else about English. Like it's translating from German that teaches me about nouns in English being flat. And it's translation. I don't translate from Spanish, but French has this somewhat. You know, it's knowing about Romance languages that tells me, oh, that kind of word sounds a little over flowery or intellectual in English or whatever. But you know, in any case, whatever you're working on, like each author is or each book is gonna have its own thing that you're trying to really go deep into. And that kind of outweighs the differences between different languages, it seems like to me, you know, two different authors who write in Germany can be way more different from each Other than some German author and some Norwegian author.
- [14:00]
B
Yeah, this makes sense. And how does your translation process change when you're able to communicate with a living author compared to when you are translating someone who is no longer alive?
- [14:13]
A
Yeah, so I do do a lot of translations of classics or retranslations of classics where authors are. Are dead. But in a way, it's just the same kind of thing when there's a living author. I'm not trying to have them look over my shoulder and talk me through everything. I just ask them some questions after a first draft is done of things that are ambiguous in their language, but not in English. So the trans. So you have to pick, and I just do them the favor of asking them. So, for example, a child in German is a neuter noun. So when you refer to a child in the park that you see, it would be a child and its bicycle. And you can't do that in English. You have to say his bicycle or her bicycle. So either you have to kind of work around and rewrite the sentence, like there's a child riding a bicycle. Or I could just ask the author, like, hey, do you want me to say his bicycle or her bicycle? Or I could just pick. And if I was working with a dead author, I would just pick whether I'm going to assign a gender to this minor passing figure, or if I think it's important to keep it ambiguous, then I'll rewrite it and work around it. So, yeah, if there's a living author, that's one more kind of tool I can use to solve a problem. On the other hand, a lot of dead authors, there's like a Thomas Mann encyclopedia that I can go look stuff up in. And so that kind of takes on the role of, like, oh, if I'm trying to figure something out, go on the Internet, look at the research, just ask them if it's that kind of question, and so on. So it's maybe not as different as you might think, because, you know, the real issue is you're trying to read the book and then you're trying to write it in. In my case, English or whatever you're translating into. And. And the author isn't the one who knows how to do that, you know, like, because the author's not writing a book in English, I am. And so even when the author has a strong opinion of like, oh, I repeated this word, we have to repeat it. It's like, well, maybe the English word doesn't work in those two places. And it's just not an option unless you want it to be bad, you know. And so it's much better to work with authors who either understand that or are translators themselves or something. And in that case they always just say, you know, that's your job, it's up to you. Like, you have to make it work in English. I can just tell you something about what I was doing in the original language.
- [17:15]
B
Amazing. And where does authority sit in that relationship?
- [17:20]
A
In a way, it's like any collaboration or probably any office business relationship. Like, you have to be aware that you're bringing skills to this situation. And sometimes you're right, but you also have to be aware that you don't know everything about everything and that other people are right too, and you just figure it out. I think an example that is often helpful when people are getting hung up on like, whose is it? Is the translator the real author? Is it the author's book anymore? You know, has the translator stolen it? You know, all this kind of stuff is to just think about the movies. You know, we don't have a problem in the movies with saying, like, we don't say Robert De Niro stole the script from the screenwriter. And like, we don't really have access to what the movie means because we're not reading the screenwriter, we're seeing this actor. Nevermind the director, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the sound editor, all these other people. We just understand that it's a collaboration and it doesn't make sense to say, is this Martin Scorsese's line or is it Leonardo DiCaprio's line? Or is it the screenwriter's line? Like, we just don't worry about that. And, and I don't think we would be tempted to ask an actor, like, how do you feel it's okay to take on the authority to say the line in the way you want? Because like, that's their whole job, like that's what they're doing. So I guess I think that analogy is helpful if you find yourself kind of locked in this view of books where, like, books are the brainchild of one person and they have this magical connection and anyone else doing anything is like intrusive, you know, I don't think that's the only way to think about books. Jon Fassa, the Norwegian writer I translate, is very interesting about this because if you ask him, what did you mean? Well, if you ask him, what does the book mean? Or what does this scene? You know, what does it mean? He'll say, oh, I don't know, like that's up to you. Like, I just. I just wrote it down. Like, I don't know. And even if you ask him, what did you mean? He will usually just say, you know, I don't know. Like, I asked someone, is this piece of jewelry that a character sees, like, is it a real gemstone or is it just glass? And he said, I don't know, maybe the guy who sold it to him was cheating him. Like, it's possible. I think he thinks it's glass, but he's kind of naive, you know? And so it's like. It's not like it is his in his view either. He just is. He's the one who wrote it down is kind of how he sees it. And that's maybe a little more extreme than some writers, but I think it's true. It's just not automatically the case that the writer understands their own work the best. I mean, think about life. Are you the person who understands the most about you in the world, or are there other people who understand you a lot better than yours?
- [20:59]
B
Of course. Other people.
- [21:01]
A
Right. So, you know, that being said, I don't want to, like, make it mean whatever I feel like and trample all over it, but, you know, nor do the people who understand you, like, have no interest in your own opinions usually, I would hope. Yeah.
- [21:20]
B
This reminds me of my relationship with the author I'm working on now, because
- [21:25]
A
sometimes I ask him about.
- [21:28]
B
About things in the book, and he's like, oh, I can't remember if I wrote that or not. Right. I'm like, aren't you the author of the book?
- [21:38]
A
He's like, I don't know.
- [21:39]
B
I'm not sure about that.
- [21:41]
A
Well, you know, like, he was at some point, but even if he perfectly understood it at the time, which seems kind of impossible, you know, now it's however many years later. Like, why should his memory of having written it 10 years ago automatically carry more weight than you, who've read the book super closely yesterday?
- [22:06]
B
Yes, sure. And one of the most compelling parts of the philosophy of translation is how you talk about grammar, not as a technical obstacle, but as a worldview. German, for example, as you've just said, leans heavily on nouns in ways English doesn't. Do these structural differences force translators into creative decisions. Does creativity live precisely in the space between languages?
- [22:33]
A
I mean, that's one way to put it. That's not how I would describe it necessarily. I would just say that, yeah, if there were no differences between languages structurally, then translation could be quite mechanical. It would be like changing the Font of a book. Like, now I'm going to put the whole book in italics. That is mechanical, right? Because there's no difference, really. And since languages are different, you can't do that. You can't just put the book in English. By the same way, you could put the whole thing in bold face type or something. So I wouldn't necessarily say creativity like, lives in the gap, but I think I agree with what you're saying, which is that, like, it's because you're reading a book in another language, but you have to write a book in English. That, yes, you have to creatively write a book in English like it hasn't been written in English yet. And that's your job. So that job requires creativity or whatever you want to describe that as. So, yeah, I mean, I kind of agree, but that's not exactly how I would personally phrase it. But that's fine.
- [23:54]
B
And also, you talked about constraints in your book. What kinds of constraints do translators usually face and how do those pressures shape the work?
- [24:05]
A
Yeah, so, I mean, there's a couple of different aspects of that. One is, you know, the flip side of me saying translation is kind of about reading is that I don't really emphasize the writing that much. I mean, what translating is is you're reading one book, say it's in Arabic, and then you're writing a book, say it's in English, and, like, that whole thing goes together in some way. Whatever your philosophy is going to be like, you're reading and you're writing, and they're linked. And I talk mostly about the reading, and I don't talk that much about the writing, which I think, in a way, surprises some people, because it looks like what the translator is doing is writing a book in English. And what I say is, well, you know, that's more or less the same as any other writer writing any other book. You're trying to make it forceful. You're trying to make it express what you want. You're trying to make it sound good. And so one difference is that you're constrained by the original. So I'm not just writing whatever novel I feel like I'm writing the book that I just read. I'm writing someone else's novel. So that is a constraint. And the thing is that all writing is like that, more or less. Mostly it's less. If I just sit down to decide to write a novel on my own, I have much less constraint than if I'm translating it. But there's still, like, genre. What counts as a Novel. What would be recognizable to readers as a novel? What would publishers ever choose to publish as a novel? Their constraints of tradition and genre. And the big one is that all the English words mean something already, before I came along. That's a really huge constraint. That's so huge we don't even really think about it. But, like, using the language at all means you are using the particular language. Of course, you can come up with new words or do things in ungrammatical ways. A bit like, there are ways you can make up new words in a language. There are ways you can be ungrammatical in the language, but you can't just throw letters randomly on a page. No, you have to use the language that you have. That's a huge constraint. Right. So that's part of why I'm saying, well, yeah, sure, there's a constraint in translation, but maybe it's not the most important thing in the world. Yeah. The other sort of part of your question is the more, like, political or social, like, pressure from publishers, pressure on different responsibilities towards languages that are more or less powerful in the world, stuff like that. And that's a different discussion than this philosophical one about the constraints of genre or whatever. And I do spend some time talking about that in the book because I think it's important. But I think it so depends on your situation, your language pair, your background, your historical moment, all this kind of stuff that. What I mostly do in the book is sort of acknowledge all these issues exist as opposed to, like, coming down on one side or the other. Because the answer is always, it depends, you know, same as with a publisher. Like, if you're a publisher, do you publish a book by this person or do you publish a book by that person? Well, that's a big question. It has to do with the identity of the person. Do you want to champion new voices? Do you want to champion books by women, books by immigrants? Do you want to or not? There's a million questions there. And a big part of your life as a publisher is going to be navigating that. Right. But I'm not going to be able to, like, answer all those questions in a book. But I can just point out that, yes, the translator, too, has their own set of, like, real world pressures that they're operating with, like anyone else in any workplace.
- [28:27]
B
Yeah. And you write that AI can translate words, but not utterances. As AI tools continue to evolve, how do you see the role of the human translator changing?
- [28:39]
A
Let's just talk about bilingual dictionaries. Does a bilingual Dictionary threaten the role of a translator? Does a bilingual dictionary intrude on our humanity? What about a monolingual dictionary? Does the writer's role get diminished because there's a dictionary out there? Like, no, it's just a tool and it's not gonna solve the problem of writing the thing. So what I meant by the translate words, not utterances. I mean, that makes more sense if you read the book, but just briefly, it means that people use language. The word in a dictionary doesn't mean anything by itself. It only means something in a use. And you can hear as a person or you can read the use of language, and you're not like, looking up every word in the dictionary and decoding it. You're receiving the communication of whoever said it or wrote it. And that's what AI doesn't do because it compiles words and like, statistically, what words are next to other words. Fifteen years ago, for a language I didn't know as well, I would have to look up a lot of words in a bilingual dictionary. And now I can sort of copy paste. It'll sort of look up all the words at the same time, right? And so I'll get something that isn't a translation, but is just it from my perspective, you know, like instead of looking up the seven different nouns in this paragraph, like, oh, yeah, right, that means helicopter, that means whatever. And there's. They're all in there. And then I can do the process of translating it, like thinking about what the author is saying, thinking about how to say it in English and all this kind of stuff. So that to me is a pretty insignificant shift, right? It's just like, there's more efficient dictionaries that let you look up a paragraph instead of a word. Or, you know, basically the main thing is not being done by AI except if you want to talk about professionally. In other words, you. If AI is going to churn out something that enough people are willing to pay for, that a publisher won't hire a real translator anymore, then, yeah, that affects my job, you know, and that affects my life. But we're not there. And I mean, maybe in technical translation we might get there closer, we might not. Technical translation is not mechanical either, you know, but maybe the people who need to translate their medical equipment manual into every EU language before they're allowed to sell it in the eu, like, maybe they'll pass a law saying that it's allowed to be done by a machine. I think that would be a bad idea for the patients in other countries. But you know, whatever. Like, that will make a real world difference in the lives and paychecks of technical medical translators. But I don't think anyone's going to come along and decide to push a button and translate a Fossa novel and think that that's acceptable any more than someone will press a button and write a novel. But I think people will still want to read Fossa, even if the AI novel's cheaper, because Fossa's better and, like, what we want when we're reading art. So, you know, I'm not blind to its real world effects, but in terms of, like, what I actually go about my day doing, you know, it's just a tool.
- [32:48]
B
When you're retranslating a work, do earlier translations shape your choices? Do you feel any obligation toward earlier translations?
- [32:57]
A
Yeah. So, you know, whenever you're translating anything, you're bringing it into your context. You're not copying something. You're creating a new thing in your context, which was not the context of the original book. And a big part of that context is whether the author you're translating exists or not. If you are coming out with the 25th translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies, a big part of your context is knowing that most of your readers will have read the Duino Elegies in at least five versions. And, you know, what are you contributing? Why are you making this intervention? What are you trying to do? Part of your way of thinking about that depends on the fact that it's this known writer. Another factor would be that even if it's an unknown writer, an unknown writer from French or Spanish has a different built in reputation or level of cachet in the 21st century English language marketplace than a writer from a very obscure language or a language that's just translated less, even though it's not obscure at all, like Arabic or Chinese, you know. And so, yeah, so if you're retranslating something, that's kind of how it plays in, you know, why am I. What's the statement I'm trying to make? What's the sort of public intervention I'm trying to do by publishing this novel? That's the same thing any writer thinks about. And in this case, you know, how am I convincing anybody that it's worth reading my translation instead of someone else's? There's an answer, but I might have to make the case a little more explicitly than if it's a book that no one's translated before. Like, I don't have to present the fact that I have a specific take on Fossa, this Norwegian writer, when it's his new book and this is the first translation of it, you know, but if it's Dante and it's the hundredth translation of it, then readers will want to know, like, why should I pick up this one?
- [35:19]
B
As, you know, translators should say something about their translations. And I think from this point came the idea of the philosophy of translation. So how do you see the philosophy of translation engaging with or challenging Venotti's idea that translators are agents of their own invisibility? Yeah.
- [35:40]
A
You know, so with. With why did I write that book in general, I felt like there'd been a few really excellent kind of introductions to the idea of translation, where a translator would say, oh, maybe you've never thought about it before, but actually translation's very creative and interesting, and they would have a book that was kind of pitched for those readers. And there have been a bunch of translation memoirs recently, which are also great that this book is not. I felt like it would be a good time to do a book that wasn't kind of starting right at the beginning and justifying its own existence and being like, actually, translation isn't just mechanical. It's interesting and creative. You know, I felt like it was a good time to write a book that takes that for granted and just tries to, like, lay out a philosophy of translation that, you know, maybe goes another step. I'm not trying to say that in order to be dismissive of the other books. I'm just saying that the audience I felt was now there for someone who was coming to the book already thinking, oh, okay, translation's interesting. And I think that my status as someone who's a practicing translator, but who's writing a book called the Philosophy of Translation made it work differently than if I was a philosophy professor writing a book called the Philosophy of Translation. I mean, there's philosophy in this, and I've studied philosophy and stuff. But in terms of what do you think a book like this might be and why would you want to read it? I think a philosophy professor writing a book called the Philosophy of Translation might be kind of off putting in a way that someone who's maybe read some novels I've translated and is like, oh, what's his philosophy of translation? Will seem like it's a bit more approachable. And I actually think it is more approachable. I mean, that is a lot of the feedback that I've gotten that I'm very happy about. You know, I get an email from a grad student in Korea saying, thank you so much. Every other book I have to read for my master's exam gives me a headache. And it's so inspiring that you've actually proven that you can write about interesting things, but in an approachable way with some humor and, you know, not give me a headache. Right. So I love that kind of feedback. One reason I talk about philosophy instead of theory and translation theory is I feel like theory is a language for the initiates. You have to read your Foucault and you have to read your theorists before you can really be part of that conversation. And that's. That's fine. But I wanted to write a book for people who are also. Also for people who are not in that conversation or not in that conversation yet, who were just sort of interested, because I think that the theory conversation is not the only conversation worth having about translation. And so that's, you know, that was another kind of positioning of my book that I had in mind. What I think is interesting about your Venuti question is that Venuti's whole work kind of looks like it's doing two different things. It's a polemic that tries to actually increase the status and paychecks of translators and sort of really intervene in the real world publishing ecosystem. Right. And it's also this analytical theory book that talks about there's domesticating versus foreign translation, and here are the differences and blah, blah, blah. You, I think, are the first person who's asked me about, like, Venuti's main point in the first category, like, oh, translators are invisible in the marketplace and how can they increase their status and stuff like that. Most people who ever ask me about Venuti are talking about domestication and foreignizing and his theoretical terms, not his polemic intervention. And in fact, I, in my book, talk about his theoretical terms to some extent more than I talk about this issue of invisibility. I talk about domesticating and foreignizing. I don't talk about it that much because I actually don't think it's really helpful or doesn't really make much sense. I mean, I don't want to get into a big digression about him, but even he admits there's no such thing as foreignizing because you are translating it. He likes to say that a translation that's more sensitive or that kind of tries harder in English to match up with things in the original is somehow foreignizing, but it isn't. It's just good English, and it's just sensitive and it's not more of the other language because it's all in English, you know. And he sometimes will acknowledge that if pressed, or sometimes he'll say, yeah, if you're foreignizing it, you might be exoticizing it. And that means foreignizing can be bad. But I think what he usually does is he just throws these conceptual terms around as a way to kind of COVID for value judgments. So he doesn't say this approach is good. He says this approach is foreignizing, and that sounds better. So I kind of talk about that in my book. In terms of the issue of translator invisibility, I mean, I think what matters more is like negotiating royalties with publishers or, you know, getting to publish books about translation with your own name, or putting your name on the COVID with translation. Or like, to me, the, the translator invisibility polemic thing is like a real world issue that I just try and like get the best terms for myself in my actual life negotiating with people. Right. I'm not trying to solve that problem between the covers of a book. I'm trying to solve that problem by getting paid more. And so between the covers of the book, I talked about more of the theoretical stuff, which I think ends up being not that useful because I feel like it's just a cover for the polemic stuff that he was trying to argue.
- [42:39]
B
And I have a follow up question about Venuti, which is at what point does domestication tip to oversimplification?
- [42:47]
A
I wonder if that's something that you really have to worry about or not. I mean, when you're reading the text that you're translating, you're not trying to dilute it. The reason you like it is because it's different and interesting. And so if you are trying to bring across what's different and interesting, then you're not diluting it. You know, why would you even want to do that? Why is that something you even have to worry about? Now again, in terms of real world, like, oh, the publisher is not going to let you have a gay character because, you know, in our society that's illegal. And so you're going to have to change the content of the book. Like that kind of thing of course is real. And you have to, you know, push back against the political pressures or make your own decisions about how much of a risk you're willing to take or whatever. Like, of course all of that is real. Right? But I just can't, you know, I. Maybe I'm naive, but I think that translators are the last people who want to take out what makes the Original, interesting that they themselves have read and liked, you know, and then serve it up in some shallow, diluted way. Like, I don't know. I mean, it sounds bad and it sounds like the kind of thing someone might conceivably do, but when I actually think about it, I mean, have you ever felt like you were diluting something for me? No. Yeah, right, of course. But there's this idea, like, oh, we have to avoid the danger of diluting it.
- [44:36]
B
Yes.
- [44:37]
A
But, yeah, maybe that's just what we're doing by translating it at all. Like, of course we care about it. You know, is there really this danger lurking behind the corner for other bad translators? But not for me, you know, I don't know. Maybe it's just something that's kind of an artifact of the theory that he has a little bit, you know, the other, the other thing that some translation theory likes to talk about as this risk is sort of the overpowering hegemony of English, like crushing out the difference in the original language or whatever, which, yeah, sounds bad and, like, sounds like something you want to avoid. But is it really that easy? Like, can the translator just wave her magic wand and suddenly Homer's not Greek anymore? Homer's American, like, no. And why would they want to. Yeah. So is it really a danger or is it just something that sounds like a danger? I don't know. Like, I, again, I'm willing to have my mind changed. You know, I'm not so convinced that, like, my way is the perfect way. And obviously I can't be diluting anybody because I'm so great. You know. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying, okay, if you come along and show me some aspect that I missed, then I will learn the lesson. But I don't think I have to sort of preemptively beat myself up for being a diluter of the original, because that's not what I'm doing.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah. And how do you see the role of the translator as an. As a researcher? I mean, in the situations where the author is dead?
- [46:26]
A
You know, my answer is always, it depends. Right. If you are retranslating canonical Nobel Prize winning German author versus if you're translating the oral legends of Tibet for the first time into any European language, then you're going to have different responsibilities. So, you know, there's certainly some kinds of projects that require more research and respect and digging in. And, you know, part of your role is to convey this historical material that you can't assume your readers will know. Whereas if I'm translating Thomas Mann, like, that's not my job. Like, I don't have to defend the dignity of the German language or like, really try that hard to explain to people that World War I happened or whatever. You know, depending on the way you're publishing it. If you're publishing it as a student edition, then, yeah, you do need more footnotes than if you're publishing it just to be read as a novel or whatever. So, yeah, that's one of those questions that just really depends on the context. Like, I don't like putting footnotes in my novels that I translate, but that's not because I'm just cosmically right. It just means that I'm usually translating for what I think of as the genuine general literary reader who wants to read a novel. I don't see myself as translating like an academic text to teach in grad schools or whatever. And when I have found myself doing that, then it makes sense to put footnotes in. Yeah.
- [48:15]
B
And who do you imagine as the ideal reader of the philosophy of translation?
- [48:22]
A
Well, I imagined the book as something I'm offering to readers. In a way, that's what excuses the title, which could sound super arrogant. Like, who am I to come up with the philosophy of translation? Not a philosophy or some philosophies or my personal philosophy, but the philosophy of translation. And my answer is that I am just trying to not hedge and not waffle and not be vague and put something out there for readers to agree or disagree with and get whatever they want out of it. It's not a instruction book. It's not like a craft book about, you should do this, you should do that. It really is much more in the old school philosophy sense of like, yup, why don't you think about your experience and see if this matches what you've felt in your own life. And if it does, then it'll be compelling to you. Right. So I think it is, based on what I've been hearing back, like a pretty general book. Like I mentioned the anecdote of the grad student who was great grateful because it didn't give him a headache. But it's not only being read in schools, it's being read just by people who are interested. It's being read by translators and by non translators. You know, so one thing that your listeners might not have gotten from the title is that in a way, they're two haves or parts of the book. There's the philosophy part and then there's a lot of examples. And I was amused at one point where in the same week, I think I saw two reviews of the book. And one review said, oh, the first half with all the philosophy was so fascinating and so great. And the second half with all the examples was like a dinner party conversation. I mean, it was a good dinner party, but it was just anecdotes. And then the second review was, as I'm sure you can predict, the first half, oh, it's potted theory. Like we've seen it all before, it's fine. But the second half, when he gets into his personal experience, that was the part that was really interesting. And if only he had done more. Signed reviewer who's writing a personal memoir of translation that does all the second half stuff. So the fact that I got those at the same time, in a way tells me that I'm doing my job right, that there's something in there for whoever you are, depending on what you're looking for. And the fact that one person was like, first half good, second half bad, and the other person was the other way around tells me that both halves belong there because each half is sort of there for a different kind of reader. Right. And then other people who like both halves. So, you know, so, like, there are people who have experienced that many translators are hostile to theory, and many translation theorists are in a way dismissive of working translators and really appreciated that this book, in their mind, brought the two sides together. Right. So, you know, there's another contradictory reader to the other two. And. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm glad that the book is finding. Is finding all sorts of people. And obviously the only ones who ever email me are the ones who like it. So I have a skewed sense, but people do seem to really appreciate it. One thing I think that's kind of interesting is that it's being translated into languages that surprise me. It's not being translated. I thought that like German and Norwegian and French and the languages I translate from, and I'm talking about authors who write in that language that they would want to translate it. But no, the actual marketplace now is that if you're reading an intellectual book written in English in Germany, you're going to just read the English version. And so the publishers don't translate those books as much into German as they used to. So right now the book is being translated. My book, Philosophy of Translation, is being translated into Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Korean and Telugu, which is one of the Indian languages. So that's kind of interesting. Right? So it does seem to have either a reach that's wider than I thought or just like non European. Not that no one speaks Turkish, Chinese or Arabic in Europe, but you know what I mean. So yeah, I think that the kind of openness and sort of straightforwardness of like, yeah, these are the real issues has found a way to speak to people generally.
- [53:51]
B
Time flew by and we have taken up a lot of your time. So thank you for being on the show, Damian. We really enjoyed the conversation and we learned a lot from your brilliant, informing answers. Thank you so much, dear listeners, thank you for listening and please don't forget to share the show and recommend the show. Until next time.
- [54:24]
A
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