Saturday, March 10, 2012

A master translator speaks

From Worldcrunch, a brief but interesting article on Josée Kamoun, the French translator of Philip Roth, John Irving and Jonathan Coe: Why Philip Roth Sounds So Good In French: The Method Of A Master Translator

“The translator dances the tango with the text. When the text leads with the left foot, the translator steps back with the right. It is an extremely tight embrace, and, if possible, graceful...”
Posted by Riccardo at 10:42 AM
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousSunday, March 18, 2012

    well said text leads with the left foot,more information about translator is get this link translation business opportunities

    ReplyDelete
  2. JoshMonday, March 26, 2012

    That's brilliant. I can't imagine what a challenge Roth would be for a translator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFriday, March 30, 2012

    There's a whole novel about a translator which says much the same thing, very high quality writing: The Mistress by E S Purnell. I got it on Amazon. All about the magic and mystery of language, and a page-turner to boot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. EPFriday, April 13, 2012

    Interesting. This might be one of those where "the original is unfaithful to the translation."

    ReplyDelete

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