Literary Translation As A Profession

'What a splendid art! And what a sad profession!'
Georges Bizet, on music

Taking into account the common ground in approaches to literary translation that might seem and indeed are historically very different, it is useful to look at the untapped potential in contemporary translation apprenticeship. To be sure, linguistic mastery as a prerequisite for the profession goes hand in hand with market-led communicative ideals underpinning the design of applied translation studies today.

This state of affairs means that the focus is more on formal linguistic equivalence than on literary savvy and on a type of literary cosmopolitanism that, in its anarchy, has given us some unexpected literary insights and bodies of work from various peripheral cultures. Important works in Russian, Cuban, African and regional European languages, not to mention Latin and ancient Greek classics, were all made accessible to wider audiences, they were all made ‘literary’, thanks to the labours and insights of translators. They were travellers, readers and critics of foreign literatures before they were translators. In contrast, translators today are more often than not contracted to work on specific titles given by publishers instead of taking it upon themselves to introduce authors and works, ask for their translation and explain their importance, relevance and cultural background. The underpinning idea here is, in the words of one commentator, 'more correct doesn’t mean better loved'.

Being part of a literary school or a literary movement seeking inspiration in other languages, mentoring by seasoned writers, the tradition of literary salons, these are all types of apprenticeship which the history of literature makes evident. Dominant in the past, they have been disappearing as new cultures of reading and writing emerged in the wake of mass publishing markets. To some extent, these developments have kept translators from becoming what modern markets could really use today: translators as cultural mediators, as ambassadors of foreign literatures and cultures. In the manner of Valéry Larbaud or Bruce Chatwin, they can act as facilitators of cultural exchanges, or follow Marguerite Yourcenar’s example, whose advice to translators was to reconstruct the library of the author they were translating.

Past translation traditions, such as the Portuguese in nineteenth century, and even contemporary practices in languages of limited diffusion in Europe, illustrate how intertwined translation is with literature and criticism. Here, translational writing springs directly from experiences including the sudden illumination which comes from contact with unexpected forms and devices in foreign works, the rapture of such discoveries and the desire to communicate them. Forms of literary cooperation may include either groups of scholars working on a major work (aka 'gang translation'), such as the Bible or the English translation of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, 'a quarto mani', or a duo consisted of a linguist expert and a field expert, all suggest different ways of managing a translation project. These are crucial considerations as more and more people are trained today to become translators, but find themselves thrown into literature without having a broad-ranging understanding of it, nor the cosmopolitan curiosity necessary to appreciate the marvels of foreign literary traditions.

It is evident how important it is for translators to make the best of opportunities to delve deeper into the culture out of which they are translating, to indulge in literary flaneurism, to take advantage of all forms of socialising with fellow translators and writers in their first and second languages, to publicise and share their work experiences and insights. There is a wealth of means to achieve all this despite handed-down preconceptions about translator’s solitude.