edited by Esther Allen ; Susan Bernofsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 28, 2013
Perhaps too textually dense for general readers, but the book raises and clarifies a variety of significant issues about the...
Translators reflect on their work: its mechanics, frustrations, rewards and meanings.
Editors Allen (Modern Languages and Comparative Literature/Baruch Coll.) and Bernofsky (MFA Program/Columbia Univ.) have assembled a knowledgeable and articulate collection of translators who describe in considerable detail a process that most readers think little about. Eliot Weinberger notes that “translators are the geeks of literature.” David Bellos talks about the problem of maintaining a sense of “foreignness” in a translation. Several writers also talk about the issue of whether to maintain some of the words of the original in a translation—a way to retain a sense of the original. Catherine Porter raises an issue that a number of the writers mention: their lack of status in the academic world and their virtual invisibility with readers. Several essays deal with the problems translators face in specific languages. Maureen Freely writes about translating Orhan Pamuk from Turkish into English; Jason Grunebaum discusses the problems of translating from Hindi to English. If the audience is South Asian, perhaps one method is appropriate, but if the audience is American, then what? There is some translation playfulness in the volume, too: Haruki Murakami describes his translation of The Great Gatsby, an essay that, in turn, Ted Goossen translates from Japanese into English—and then follows with some reflections of his own. Lawrence Venuti discusses the difficulty of translating from archaic literary forms. Co-editor Bernofsky describes how she revises—usually four drafts—as she prepares her own translations from German, and Clare Cavanagh closes the collection by showing how the villanelle, a poetic form unknown in Poland, arrived there via translation.
Perhaps too textually dense for general readers, but the book raises and clarifies a variety of significant issues about the many decisions translators must contend with.Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-231-15969-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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