Reaction to “Anonymous Sources” by Elliot Weinberger
The first thing that caught my attention in Eliot Weinberger essay “Anonymous Sources” is the phrase that he said at the very beginning “no single one of us can know all the languages of the world” and I believe he is right; there are so many words even in our own languages that we don’t know and we have to look up the meaning; now a second language even if we studied for decades there are still phrases that we won’t understand. Translation workshops started decades ago and as one of the examples that Weinberger use is the translation of Chinese poems into English, It is and admirable work to take a phrase and express the same feeling, in different worlds, in a different language. Translations open the doors to many good writers so the rest of the world can read their work, which reminds me of another quote from Weinberger’s essay “translation liberates the translation language”, which means that even though a translation is having the same text in two different languages, the translation is read as something new.
A translation is a necessity in this world but is not a problematic. Why consider something a problematic when it is actually an opportunity to expand horizons? And that is just to talk about the work, what about the translators? All the work they have to do and they still remain invisible, anonymous, presented as the translator for someone else work. If we can read a translation and read it a something new, we should also recognize the person who made that world. Writes have a lot of work because they have to come up with new ideas, but a translator work is more difficult because even though the idea is already there they have to put themselves in someone else shoes and explain what this other person felt in their own words. Translation means change. It is not something original but it is to create something new.
The translator is a key piece in the literature world. It help lectors to get new books to read and help the writers to get more audience, so then, why is it that when we read something from a foreign writer, we remember the name or the author the name of the translator?
Teresa Cabrera
I very much appreciate your spirited defense of translation, Teresa! I see that Weinberger’s essay has inspired you. Perhaps we might go even further and say that each of us is the co-creator of all the books we read. It’s up to us to keep them alive.
EAllen — December 30, 2013 @ 7:08 pm