Bricks without Straw

Paul Auster likens translation to shovelling coal. I think of it as more like laying bricks. With one small move at a time, you build a wall to bear a load of meaning. Oh, and it should somehow be exactly like another wall made from different materials for another climate by someone whose mental image of a wall is nothing like your own.

Translating literature involves one step more than, say, a government report does. Once your wall is level and plumb and structurally sound, you go back and add the ornaments and grace notes that madcap nineteenth-century masons always included. As we edit — and editing is writing is translation — we must step away from the text we’re reproducing and listen instead to the one we are writing. The translator’s voice will inevitably shine through, so why hide it? Why not find small nooks into which you can slip your favourite words...