Article in forum on translation

[Bubba]

The Iowa Review has started a forum on literature and translation. I post a link to it here, as my own response--perhaps a bit immoderate--to the single article in the forum, by one L. Venuti, is looking a bit lonely.

[lenz]

I have posted a comment there, too. The article struck me as very silly and disjointed. I read a bit of Tim Parks' reply and was glad to see a sensible and, I thought, somewhat more knowledgeable piece than L. Venuti's.

[Bubba]

Your reply is a good one, lenz: courteous--rather unlike my own--but quite clear about what you thought about the piece. The pieces on translation by Venuti that I've read have always managed the seemingly contradictory feat of boring me and angering me at one and the same time.

[Eric]

I've just looked at Venuti's article: twelve pages contrasting the "belletristic approach" to translation to other approaches. No wonder translation bores the pants off people. Self-indulgent articles such as this one imply: "scholars and translators only; lay people keep out". Will anyone in America be enthused to treat literature in translation as normal, when the super-cerebrals have hijacked the translation agenda for their own narcissistic glory?