Reaction to Jose Manuel Prieto’s essay “Re vista:La Ultima Cena del Capitalism”
When reading the essay, Review The Last Supper of Capitalism by Jose Manuel Prieto where he talks about the translation of the poem “Epigrama contra Stalin.” by Osip Mandelstam. I learned that Prieto felt honor and at the same time challenge. Prieto says that in 1996 when the historian Jean Meyer was about to publish a book title Russia and its Imperious. He was asked to translate this famous poem from Russian to Spanish.
I observed that Prieto used a detail description of the situation in order to chose and translate a word. This method helps him create a link between the history of the situation in which the poem was written and the choice of word he uses.
The poem was a politic satire that cost the life of the author Osip Mandelstam. Prieto knew the poem well and had more than once recite it out loud. He also knew that the poem has been translated into French. According to Prieto, the French version was not good enough compare to the beauty of the original Russian. So Prieto as the translator had a big responsibility to capture the magic of the poem and at the same time keep the severity of its verses.
I found interesting to know how a translator feels when reviewing his work. In his essay Prieto says that, even though he translated the poem with caution and patience, he was never complete satisfied with the final results. He says that the poem had an artistic integrity value that when translating loses its aura. He thought for years that his translation never really mingle into Spanish but at the same time he would never change the words he used when he did the translation.
A large part of being a translator consists in recognizing which elements of a text are relevant to the task at hand, and which are not relevant. The title of Prieto’s essay, as listed on Blackboard, is “Sobre un poema de Osip Mandelstam” — and that title appears twice at the top of the document. That title also accurately describes the content of the essay, which is not about capitalism, but about translating a poem by Osip Mandelstam.
The magazine Letras Libras, in which the essay was originally published, gave the title “La ultima cena del capitalismo” to the entire issue in which the essay appeared; therefore, that phrase happens to appear immediately beneath Prieto’s name on the document that was posted on Blackboard.
Even so, there’s a lot of evidence on that same page to indicate that this is not the title of Prieto’s essay. Assessing that evidence and making a correct evaluation of it is a key element in interpreting (and translating) any text.
EAllen — December 30, 2013 @ 9:03 am