A solid yet brief overview of the literary translation process for newbies.

Good quotes:
As Palestinian poet and journalist Mahmoud Darwish puts it in the preface to Poésie: La terre nous est étroite: ‘The translator is not a ferryman for the meaning of the words but the author of their web of new relations. And he is not the painter of the light part of the meaning, but the watcher of the shadow, and what it suggests.’

Martin Riker believes that making a book that evokes the spirit and particular energy of the original has to take precedence over making a book faithful to the original. He says that translators sometimes worry that steering away from a literal word-for-word translation will ‘corrupt’ the original text but says the fact is that a work in translation has already been corrupted by the act of translation itself. The new work, the translated work, is already an interpretation of the original, and unavoidably so.

The translation should not preserve literal words and phrases for preservation’s sake. To treat a translated book in this way is to treat it more as a museum piece than as a vibrant literary work, says Martin. He urges translators to use their own creative writing skills to adapt the original.

‘If references are not obscure or difficult for the original audience, they should not be obscure or difficult for the new audience.' (Martin Riker)