Problem-based teaching is all the rage, I hear, so maybe translation can serve as a point of departure of sorts. Here is the problem. Od njega, Javorka je prvi put čula riječ đavao. Vrag se u njezinom životu već javljao. Spominjali su ga i Nona i Nono, bio je prisutan u svakoj priči, uglavnom bezazlen,… Continue reading On demons, devils, Satan, et al.
Author: russellv
On Translating Miljenko Jergović
PEN gave me 500 words or so to write on this topic, which I have now written many thousands of words on in this blog, so I took a slightly different tack, beginning this way: I have been drawn since first becoming a reader to the sense of adventure that the opening pages of a… Continue reading On Translating Miljenko Jergović
Hacked, rigged, and “interesting”!
In a series of shocking and unprecedented revelations, anonymous sources on Russia have unearthed a complex plot to influence not only the U.S. presidential election but also key senate and house races as well. The alleged plot involved hundreds of proxy voters in neighboring states to those where their illegal votes would have been cast.… Continue reading Hacked, rigged, and “interesting”!
Sieges and The Unwritten
This piece by Miljenko Jergovic in my English translation was in the New York Times this weekend. I was impressed by the quality of the editing by Max Strasser. I’ve done a lot of editing, though not in a journalism vein, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. His light but confident touch was reassuring,… Continue reading Sieges and The Unwritten
The Personal and the Historical
A major feature of the Kin, sometimes rehearsed with surprising results, comes out in the following passage quite vividly. The narrator is describing life with his mother. She didn’t clean the apartment anymore or wipe away the dust. She only worked at her work place. And she was a good, thorough head of the accounting… Continue reading The Personal and the Historical
Editing and Self-editing
I think about the importance of editing often as I’m working. Partly this is because I am also editing other people’s writing as I write and translate. It is easier to separate these activities when the writing is of very different kinds, but sometimes they cross paths, and then I have to be careful that… Continue reading Editing and Self-editing
Uncles and Uncles
I am struggling a bit with the challenge of Turkishisms. There are lots of them in Rod, regionally specific words that derive originally from Turkish and retain something of their Ottoman-era stylistic aura. Sometimes they are referenced explicitly, sometimes they pass by without comment, but any reader of the original work will be aware of… Continue reading Uncles and Uncles
On compensation and explicitation
The phenomenon of compensation is well-known to translators. You cannot quite get that metaphor there so you put in one somewhere close by, not the same one using the same figure, but one that might do some of the same work. Or, even more commonly, the rhyme of the source becomes some other form of… Continue reading On compensation and explicitation
Catalogues, lists, parataxis, and pig spleens
One of the things my author does is list. He lists and lists, stringing objects and observations in long catalogues that are sometimes paratactic (without connecting words), and sometimes filled with and’s and but’s and gradations of these (such as the word “a,” which can suggest and, but, though, and a variety of other linking… Continue reading Catalogues, lists, parataxis, and pig spleens
On the loftiness of administration
I have two dogs. When one lies down, the other likes to stand over his head so that when the lying dog looks up he looks right into the standing dog’s penis. I tell the standing dog to knock it off, and he comes over to me all smiling (he does smile) and tries to… Continue reading On the loftiness of administration
Russell Scott Valentino 