{"id":384,"date":"2014-09-23T18:44:30","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T18:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/?p=384"},"modified":"2017-09-20T18:45:15","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T18:45:15","slug":"translators-take-ownership-of-what-authors-have-experienced-or-created","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/2014\/09\/23\/translators-take-ownership-of-what-authors-have-experienced-or-created\/","title":{"rendered":"Translators Take Ownership of What Authors Have Experienced or Created"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013 Rafa Lombardino (PLD member) \u2013<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an honor to humbly accept PLD\u2019s invitation to share some highlights about book translations, especially as related to our Portuguese language. After brainstorming a good subject to celebrate this new literary section, I thought about sharing my experience translating some letters exchanged by two Brazilian authors:\u00a0Emilio Fraia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ant\u00f4nio Xerxenesky<\/a>. [Check the first link in the section below for more info.]<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t met these two authors, nor visited the many places (Brazil, Mexico, France and more) they describe in their letters. However, while translating the messages they exchanged about trips, books and movies, it was as if I had experienced all that myself. This made me feel much like a voyeur, but I soon shook that off, because the letters and respective translations had been approved by the authors and would soon be published in a literary magazine. And I kept thinking about how the work of a literary translator is precisely that: to take ownership of the images an author describes\u2015whether they are scenes from their own life or something they imagined for their fictional plot.<\/p>\n

After all, how could we be faithful to the original without \u201cpretending\u201d we\u2019re going through the same situation in order to narrate these scenes in another language? Of course, there\u2019s always that aphorism, \u201cTranslate only what you can relate to and that makes you feel comfortable.\u201d Otherwise, there\u2019s a great chance you\u2019ll feel uncomfortable, no matter how good of a job you have done, or\u2015worse yet\u2015you may end up interfering in the translation if you don\u2019t put yourself in the author\u2019s shoes to give him\/her a chance to speak in another language.<\/p>\n

Well, \u201cinterference in translation\u201d is something we can discuss another time. For now, I\u2019d like to leave this one suggestion to my dear colleagues: take ownership of the images described in the text before you and tell the same story, using the author\u2019s words as if they were your own.<\/p>\n

Until next time,<\/p>\n

Rafa Lombardino<\/p>\n

COMICS<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Tom Gauld<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Tom_Gauld\"<\/p>\n

EXPERIENCES<\/p>\n

When a Translator Inhabits the Mind of an Author<\/p>\n

Letters exchanged by two young authors from Brazil are published by literary magazine<\/p>\n

[Click here for the article in Portuguese<\/a>]<\/p>\n

VOCABULARY<\/p>\n

Literary Characters Who Have Become Part of our Speech<\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian highlights some characters whose names became dictionary entries<\/p>\n

EDUCATION<\/p>\n

How do we Teach Literary Translation?<\/a><\/p>\n

Ampersand blogs about the challenges of teaching how books are translated<\/p>\n

BLOG<\/p>\n

The Translator Writes Back<\/a><\/p>\n

Collective site for book translators to post open letters in response to negative, unjustified<\/p>\n

criticism in literary reviews that mention their work<\/p>\n

REVIEW<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m Not Scared\u201d by Niccol\u00f2 Ammaniti<\/p>\n

Reviewed by author Gustavo Ara\u00fajo, who read Roberta Barni\u2019s Italian-to-Portuguese translation<\/p>\n

[Click here for review in Portuguese<\/a>]<\/p>\n

MUSIC<\/p>\n

Translating \u201cSampa\u201d by Caetano Veloso<\/a><\/p>\n

World Literature Today features a story by the translators of Caetano Veloso\u2019s \u201cSampa\u201d<\/p>\n

QUOTE<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSe voc\u00ea for imune ao t\u00e9dio, n\u00e3o existe literalmente coisa alguma que n\u00e3o possa realizar.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Foster Wallace<\/p>\n

Rafa Lombardino<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She has been working as a translator since 1997 and is currently the President and CEO of Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators who work together in multilingual projects. She is certified by the American Translators Association (ATA) in both English-to-Portuguese and Portuguese-to-English translations and has a Professional Certificate in English\/Spanish Translation from the University of California San Diego Extension, where in 2010 she started teaching classes on the role of technology in the translation industry. In order to diversify her career, she joined forces with self-published authors and small publishers to translate books into Portuguese and English. In addition to acting as content curator at eWordNews, a bilingual blog dedicated to literary translations and self-publishing efforts, she also coordinates two projects to promote Brazilian literature worldwide: Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories (CBSS) and Cuentos Brasile\u00f1os de la Actualidad (CBA).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2013 Rafa Lombardino (PLD member) \u2013 It\u2019s an honor to humbly accept PLD\u2019s invitation to share some highlights about book translations, especially as related to our Portuguese language. After brainstorming a good subject to celebrate this new literary section, I thought about sharing my experience translating some letters exchanged by two Brazilian authors:\u00a0Emilio Fraia\u00a0and\u00a0Ant\u00f4nio Xerxenesky. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-literary-corner","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}